Flagship Studios Interview

GameSpot has conducted an interview with Bill Roper about his and some of the other ex-Blizzard employees' plans with their new game development company, Flagship Studios. A snippet:
Q: So what are the goals of the new company? What is most important to the team?

A: The single biggest goal of the company is to make a great game. That was always our focus when we worked at Blizzard and it served us exceptionally well. You get past a lot of issues when you keep the game in the forefront of your discussions and thoughts. It's the thing that allows us to have heated, passionate discussions about game mechanics, balance, technology, look, feel--everything, really--and still walk away friends. No one takes it personally because it's all about making the game better. Another part of this is ensuring that everyone in the company has a voice. We encourage input on anything from everyone. While you have to ensure that the right people reserve the right to make the final call, it honestly does help the process to have a lot of people looking at and playing the game, and then getting their ideas into the mix. One thing that I think is refreshing for the publishers we have talked to is that we include them in that philosophy. They see a lot of games in various stages of development and their thoughts on our game are important to us.