uring a presentation at DICE this morning in Las Vegas, Team Blizzard discussed the company’s history and shared stories with the assembled crowd of developers, publishers and other game-industry types. In addition to those behind-the-scenes stories, Blizzard shared a slide with a list of cancelled projects. While a few were publicly known, the list—which included Games People Play, Crixa, Shattered Nations, Pax Imperia, Denizen, Warcraft Adventures, Nomad and Raiko—included more than a few head-scratchers. As Blizzard’s CEO and co-founder Mike Morhaim explained, they don’t release failures.

Interestingly, one notable game was absent from the list. Where was the elusive StarCraft: Ghost? We ran into Blizzard co-founder and senior VP Frank Pearce a bit later and asked why the game was a no-show among no-shows. His response? “Yeah, we’re still in denial about that one.” There you go; it looks like it’s still in stasis.

During the actual presentation, we learned more about the painstaking (and seemingly painful) iterative process the software giant employs during its development process. For instance, the classic SNES game The Lost Vikings was originally envisioned as a Lemmings-like game with 50 different Vikings, rather than the three that the game finally ended up featuring. The team also discussed the potential perils of working within such a globally popular industry—as illustrated with concept art showing a Pandarin Brewmaster dressed in samurai gear. It seems the company didn’t initially think of the cultural friction that exists between the Japanese and Chinese, and Chinese players were quite vocal against having their beloved national peace icon wearing Japanese garb. In all, it was a great look at what goes on at one of gaming's biggest names.