The document discusses the strategy of Blizzard Entertainment, the creator of popular games like World of Warcraft. Blizzard's strategy is to focus on creating high-quality, enjoyable entertainment experiences for gamers. This allows them to achieve sustainable growth through game sales and subscriptions to their online gaming service. World of Warcraft in particular saw tremendous success, becoming the most subscribed online role-playing game due to its appealing design that made it easy for anyone to learn and enjoy, regardless of experience level.

1. What is Strategy? Interpreting and Understanding the Strategy of Blizzard Entairtainment Course 2304 Media Management Jessica Larsson 21154@student.hhs.se

2. Whatis Strategy? My definition: The understanding of success factors in your industry and the implementation of these in a way that best suits your capabilities in order to achieve sustainable growth. source: own thoughts and previous course literature (2301) The components of strategy: Vision is the abstract ideal state that a company wants to achieve. The mission is the concrete goals set to achieve the vision. The strategy is the “how” of the mission and the business model is the box in which all of these are put together. The key is consistency and a clear communication of each of these and how they relate to each other. source: own thoughts and interpretation of literature (bachelor program)

3. Blizzard Entertainment: Creator of high quality computer games and provider of one of the world’s largest online gaming-services Battle.net WoW or World of Warcraft: A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Blizzard Entertainment, released 2004 (1st version came 1994). In 2007, 2008 and 2010 expansion sets were released and more coming. source: eu.blizzard.com and wikipedia.org What is Blizzardand WoW?

4. Mission statement: Dedicated to creating the most epic entertainment experiences...ever. Business model: Creating high quality computer game experiences in order to achieve sales and subscriptions to gain revenue (a monthly subscription is required to utilize the gaming-service), both through new development and extensions. WoW became the most subscribed MMORPG game in the world in 2008 and still is. (>12 million subscribers around the worlds and growing). source: eu.blizzard.com and own interpretation Blizzard Mission and Business Model

5. Blizzard Missionand Business Model Comment on the success of WoW: Warcraft's real success, though, hasn't been in engaging these hardcore gamers. Instead, it provides an experience that just about anyone can sit down and learn in a few half-hour sessions, regardless of previous experience. The Blizzard brand -- in the same way as Apple … -- means user-interfaces that are easy to learn and satisfying to use, and you can see that same philosophy echoed across nearly two decades of Blizzard hits. soruce: http://blog.games.yahoo.com/blog/153-six-years-on-why-is-world-of-warcraft-so-enduring

6. BlizzardStrategy Strategy: By focusing on creating well-designed, highly enjoyable entertainment experiences, Blizzard Entertainment has maintained an unparalleled reputation for quality since its inception. source: eu.blizzard.com Comments: Little in World of Warcraft was innovative upon its release; much of its concepts were familiar to players … But Warcraft simply did them better. source: http://blog.games.yahoo.com/blog/153-six-years-on-why-is-world-of-warcraft-so-enduring Each member of the Blizzard Entertainment staff is a true game enthusiast, giving the company invaluable insight into creating products for gamers. source: eu.blizzard.com

7. BlizzardStrategy Statement Strategy Statement (Collis&Rukstad): “computer games (scope) of the best quality (advantage) in the industry, continuously developed, to provide a unique experience that can be shared by everyone (objective)”