Rob Pardo urges execs to stop laying off teams after hit games

At GDC in San Francisco, former Blizzard chief creative officer Rob Pardo closed his keynote with a clear message for industry leaders: if your developers have already delivered a success, the best way to repeat it is by keeping those developers on the payroll.

"If you create a game that truly endures, it's incredibly difficult... But in my experience, if you built a game like that, you also built an incredible team. And personally, I think the game team is more valuable than the game itself," he said. Pardo argued that behind every successful release are unforeseen setbacks, well-intentioned missteps, and necessity-driven solutions.

"All of the mistakes, the learning, and the north stars that led the team to the final product are long buried," he said, noting how Blizzard's early Warcraft 3 concept shifted away from smaller-scale hero focus but kept elements like heroes, leveling, and items that became defining features.

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