The Diablo 3 Podcast #118: David Craddock Interview, “Stay Awhile and Listen”

Flux interviews David Craddock, author of “Stay Awhile and Listen,” an oral history that tells of the foundation and early days of Blizzard and Blizzard North and the earliest evolution and creation of the Diablo series.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:56 — 44.8MB)

The book is available today, October 31, 2013, and you can see the official press release plus purchase information in this news post.

Click through for show contents and approximate times for each topic.

We first interviewed David about the book project on The Diablo 3 Podcast #49 back in November 2011.

Show topics with approximate starting times:

  • 1:00 — SAAL Volume I is coming out today (Halloween 2013). Excite?
  • 6:30 — The earliest console games they worked on were terrible boring work for hire just to pay the bills.
  • 11:00 — Mo’ money, mo’ problems. Condor becomes Blizzard North and it’s Porsches for everyone! (Not really.)
  • 18:00 — The Diablo 1 creators wrote virtually none of the story in the game. It all came from Bliz Irvine (including the cinematics, which Bliz North was shocked to see for the first time). Yet many fans liked that story much more than what we got in Diablo 3. Ambiance and brevity work better than overdone cut-scenes?
  • 30:00 — Does David Craddock consider himself a journalist or an interviewer? Or both? He considers Stay Awhile And Listen an “oral history.”
  • 36:00 — This book runs right up to the release of Diablo 1. Why stop there? Everything changed then? Is the author happy with how the book turned out?
  • 43:30 — Reading the book gave me the desire to go back and play Diablo I again. David still plays it all the time.
  • 46:00 — Final thoughts and book buying information.

    • The Diablo 3 Podcast Episode Guide in DiabloWiki.net provides links to every show, plus quick summaries.

    Related to this article
    You're not logged in. Register or login to post a comment.

    4 thoughts on “The Diablo 3 Podcast #118: David Craddock Interview, “Stay Awhile and Listen””

    1. +2

      I really enjoyed this. I was actually a little hesitant to listen to it at first because usually when I listen to any kind of “creator interview”, I’m always disappointed. I see a great movie, let’s say, and yet the director just seems dull and clueless in interviews. For once, my doubts were proved wrong. David seemed knowledgeable and passionate about the topic, yet also like a pretty cool guy besides. Again, other interviews like this can leave me feeling a little “ooookay” coming away from them, but here I felt “Man, that sounds pretty damn interesting”.

      I’m actually getting a Kindle Fire HD for Christmas, so I’ll pick this up then. I don’t like reading books on my PC.

      • +1

        Thanks for giving the interview a chance! Flux is a great guy to bounce discussion off of, and I’m so proud of how STAY AWHILE AND LISTEN 1 turned out. I hope you enjoy it!

    2. Bought this day one and rifled through it! Great read with what I think has a lot of lessons for aspiring game creators (maybe? I’m not one of them).

    Comments are closed.