(Below is the beginning of a report filed at MTVNews.com.)
LAS VEGAS — Late last week, employees of the Red Rock Casino Resort Spa were taking down the signs and stands from the three-day DICE video game summit. They were packing up the framed art from the Into the Pixel exhibition. They were dismantling the show.
But sitting in one of the hallways amid this activity, Frank Pearce, co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, was revealing hopes and plans for things his company might build. One of those plans would, in a manner of speaking, put "World of Warcraft" on cell phones. There were other bold notions too.
Pearce has a deep voice, shaved head and goatee, a video game developer not unlike "Stone Cold" Steve Austin in look, if not in as surly a demeanor. He's the executive vice president of product development at Blizzard, where work has begun on some major things, such as a "World of Warcraft" expansion; "StarCraft II," a sequel to a game that has become a national pastime in South Korea; and some new massively multiplayer games, which the world first learned about when a job post for work on a next-gen MMO was posted on Blizzard's Web site last year. About that job post: "That was not by accident," Pearce told MTV News. "We have to figure out what's next for Blizzard after 'World of Warcraft,' and we have to get the best people in the industry that we can get helping us figure that out."
In the biggest surprise of his conversation with MTV News, mentioned right before the banging and clanging of the conference's tear-down overwhelmed the interview and forced a relocation outside, Pearce confirmed that a very small team in Blizzard just might be creating a slice of "World of Warcraft" for cell phones.
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