Blizzard Albany (formerly Vicarious Visions, Inc.) is an American

video game development Video game development (sometimes shortened to gamedev) is the process of creating a video game. It is a multidisciplinary practice, involving programming, design, art, audio, user interface, and writing. Each of those may be made up of more speci ...

division of

Blizzard Entertainment Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and Video game publisher, publisher based in Irvine, California, and a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard. Originally founded in 1991, the company is best known for producing the h ...

based in

Albany, New York Albany ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. It is located on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River. Albany is the oldes ...

. Founded in 1991, the company was acquired by

Activision Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one o ...

in January 2005. In January 2021, Vicarious Visions became part of Activision's sister company

and was merged into it in April 2022.

History

The studio was founded by brothers Karthik and Guha Bala in 1991 while they were in high school. In the late 1990s, Vicarious Visions appointed Michael Marvin, an Albany-based investor and entrepreneur, and founder and former CEO of

MapInfo Corporation MapInfo Corporation, initially incorporated as Navigational Technologies Incorporated, was a company that developed location intelligence software. It was headquartered in North Greenbush, New York. Its products included a desktop mapping app ...

; and Charles S. Jones, investor, who sat on the boards of various software and industrial companies including Geac and PSDI, to its board of directors. Under their leadership, a sale of the company was negotiated to

, earning the original investors over 20x their initial investment. In January 2005, Vicarious Visions was acquired by publisher Activision. In June 2007, Activision closed the Vicarious Visions' office in

Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, part of the San Francisco Bay Area. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the population was 82,376 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Mountain V ...

. On April 5, 2016, the Bala brothers announced that they had left the company. The brothers then founded Velan Studios in November 2016. On January 22, 2021, Vicarious Visions was moved by

Activision Blizzard Activision Blizzard, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Santa Monica, California. Activision Blizzard currently includes three operating units: Activision, Blizzard Entertainment and King (company), King. Founded in July 2 ...

from a subsidiary of Activision to a subsidiary of

. Going forward, more than 200 employees of Vicarious Visions will be employees of Blizzard. Vicarious had been working with Blizzard for about two years prior to this announcement, and specifically on the planned

remaster A remaster is a change in the sound or image quality of previously created forms of media, whether Mastering (audio), audiophonic, Cinematography, cinematic, or Videography, videographic. The resulting product is said to be remastered. The term ...

of ''

Diablo II ''Diablo II'' is a 2000 action role-playing game developed by Blizzard North and published by Blizzard Entertainment for Microsoft Windows, Classic Mac OS, and OS X. The game, with its dark fantasy and horror themes, was conceptualized and des ...

'', '' Diablo II: Resurrected'', and Blizzard felt the move would be best as to have Vicarious' group provide continued support not only on the remaster but also on other ''Diablo'' properties including ''

Diablo IV ''Diablo IV'' is a 2023 Online game, online-only Action role-playing game, action role-playing dungeon crawling game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth main installment in the ''Diablo (series), Diablo'' series. ...

''. Vicarious Visions

studio head Studio manager, studio director, or studio head is a job title in various media-related professions, including design, advertising, and broadcasting. Design and advertising A design or advertising studio manager's responsibilities will typically ...

Jen Oneal moved to Blizzard's management and was succeeded by Simon Ebejer, previously the studio's

chief operating officer A chief operating officer (COO), also called chief operations officer, is an executive in charge of the daily operations of an organization (i.e. personnel, resources, and logistics). COOs are usually second-in-command immediately after the C ...

. On October 27, 2021, Blizzard informed Vicarious Visions employees that the studio would change its name. The studio was fully merged into Blizzard on April 12, 2022, and was renamed Blizzard Albany, otherwise retaining its offices. Blizzard Albany's

quality assurance Quality assurance (QA) is the term used in both manufacturing and service industries to describe the systematic efforts taken to assure that the product(s) delivered to customer(s) meet with the contractual and other agreed upon performance, design ...

team, about 20 members in size, announced a unionization drive in July 2022 as Game Workers Alliance Albany. It follows

Raven Software Raven Software Corporation (trade name: Raven; formerly Raven Software, Inc.) is an American video game developer based in Middleton, Wisconsin, and part of Activision. Founded in May 1990 by brothers Brian and Steve Raffel, the company is most ...

, another Activision Blizzard subsidiary, whose QA team voted to unionize earlier in the year.

Game history

'' Terminus'', an online multiplayer space trading and combat simulation game, won two

Independent Games Festival The Independent Games Festival (IGF) is an annual festival at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the largest annual gathering of the independent video game industry. Originally founded in 1998 to promote independent video game developers, ...

Awards in 1999. They became known as a leading developer of handheld games breaking ground by the ''

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater ''Tony Hawk's Pro Skater'', released as ''Tony Hawk's Skateboarding'' in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Europe, is a 1999 skateboarding video game developed by Neversoft and published by Activision. It is the first installment in ...

'' series, developing

Game Boy Advance The (GBA) is a 32-bit handheld game console, manufactured by Nintendo, which was released in Japan on March 21, 2001, and to international markets that June. It was later released in mainland China in 2004, under the name iQue Game Boy Advanc ...

and

Nintendo DS The is a foldable handheld game console produced by Nintendo, released globally across 2004 and 2005. The DS, an initialism for "Developers' System" or "Dual Screen", introduced distinctive new features to handheld games: two LCD screens worki ...

titles in the franchise's main series as well as one spin off. They developed the first three ''Crash Bandicoot'' GBA games. Vicarious Visions developed ''

Spider-Man Spider-Man is a superhero in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, he first appearance, first appeared in the anthology comic book ''Amazing Fantasy'' #15 (August 1962) in ...

'', '' Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro'', ''

Ultimate Spider-Man ''Ultimate Spider-Man'' is a superhero comic book series that was published by Marvel Comics from 2000 to 2011. The series is a modernized re-imagining of Marvel's long-running Spider-Man comic book franchise as part of the company's Ultimate Ma ...

'', ''

Crash Nitro Kart ''Crash Nitro Kart'' is a 2003 kart racing game developed by Vicarious Visions and published by Universal Interactive for the PlayStation 2, Xbox (console), Xbox, GameCube and Game Boy Advance, with abridged ports later released in 2004 for the ...

'', '' Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast'', '' Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy'', and ''

Doom 3 ''Doom 3'' is a 2004 first-person shooter, first-person shooter game developed by id Software and published by Activision. ''Doom 3'' was originally released for Microsoft Windows on August 3, 2004, adapted for Linux later that year, and Vide ...

'' for the Xbox. Vicarious Visions developed for the ''Guitar Hero'' series on the Nintendo DS and

Wii The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America, and in December 2006 for most other regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major home game console, f ...

platforms. For '' Guitar Hero: On Tour'', Vicarious Visions created the "Guitar Grip" peripheral for the Nintendo DS, which emulates the guitar controller for the portable system. It was revealed on June 10, 2011, that Vicarious Visions was working on the 3DS version of '' Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure'', and would go on to have an important role in developing the Skylanders game series, creating the games '' Skylanders: Swap Force'' and '' Skylanders: SuperChargers''. On December 8, 2016, Vicarious Visions announced that they were partnering with

Bungie Bungie, Inc. is an American video game company based in Bellevue, Washington, and a subsidiary of Sony Interactive Entertainment. The company was established in May 1991 by Alex Seropian, who later brought in programmer Jason Jones (programme ...

to work on the ''

Destiny Destiny, sometimes also called fate (), is a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual. Fate Although often used interchangeably, the words ''fate'' and ''destiny'' ...

'' franchise.

Game engine

Vicarious Visions Alchemy is the company's game engine. It was released in 2002. It was originally called Intrinsic Alchemy and developed by Intrinsic Graphics before being renamed after Vicarious Visions acquired Intrinsic Graphics in 2003.

Games developed

Cancelled games

Notes

References

External links

* {{Microsoft game products 1991 establishments in New York (state) 2005 mergers and acquisitions 2021 mergers and acquisitions American companies established in 1991 Blizzard Entertainment Colonie, New York Companies based in Albany County, New York Former Activision subsidiaries Video game companies based in New York (state) Video game companies established in 1991 Video game development companies