If the hype surrounding Diablo II is reminiscent of the science-fiction movie business, the production environment is moreso. My visit to Blizzard South, the new production headquarters in Irvine, Calif., was almost a sucker-punch; I'd driven from West Hollywood for an hour, deep into Orange County, only to find myself -- figuratively speaking --- right back in Hollywood. Blizzard Studios felt far more like a television or film production house than a software firm.

Storyboards filled the walls, showing the arc of the game's plot and key scenes from the game. Some offices were set up as mini-recording studios, where composers worked out the score on electronic keyboards. Full-size cardboard characters advertising earlier productions stood in corners, alongside posters and boxes of toys.

Despite death-march time lines on the whiteboards, most of the production staff looked calm. This, too, was right out of the Hollywood experience. People don't seem anxious -- they're immersed in creating an incredible experience that some people will even call a work of art.

If there's one significant difference between the game industry and Hollywood, however, its in the presence of women. While female producers and directors may still be a scarce commodity in film, women make up a significant percentage of the production designers.

"We'd love to have more women work here," says Roper. "But most game designers are gamers and men play a lot more computer games than women." This is the case even in the cinematics department, which relies heavily on common filmmaking tasks such as editing and sound design. "People go from gamer to employee. We don't get people applying out of film school," says Matt Samia.

Samia notes a different problem with people coming from mainstream computer graphic effects companies. "Most CG houses are very big and specialized, and the programmers there tend to be specialized, too. They'll have one person who only does textures or something. For games, they need to be more generalized." Blizzard's cinematics team, a tightly knit family of programmers, consists of seven regular artists plus three sound designers. ("There's been almost no turnover within the cinematics group since I started with Blizzard," Samia laughs.) If computer effects companies like Pixar are the equivalent of the big film studios, the Blizzard cinematics group is the indie film company.

Few people think of game companies as the equivalent of independent filmmakers, however, and most of the Blizzard cinematics team are programmers and gamers learning the ropes at making movies. "It's hard to find talented [non-gamers] when people don't know what you're doing," Samia says. It's entirely possible that moves such as putting the Diablo II intro up for Academy Award consideration may bring in that new talent.

As Blizzard takes its first steps into non-game media, the biggest concern for everyone I spoke with is quality. The big-screen disaster "Wing Commander" -- based on a popular computer game series -- was brought up by several Blizzard staffers as an example of what they would not want to have happen.

"If we can do it without losing focus, there are things Blizzard will explore," says Wooley, the P.R. coordinator. "But we're not going to do it just for the sake of doing it."

Industry analyst Ron Hayden suggests that the best way to ensure quality is to avoid attempting to make game plots and movie plots identical. "I can't think of a single case of a movie plot making a successful game or of a game becoming a successful movie," he notes. The track record of games based on movies and TV shows supports that assertion. The recent Interplay release Starfleet Command is the first "Star Trek" game that has had a measure of critical and commercial success -- but Starfleet Command is itself based on an old paper-and-dice war game, Star Fleet Battles.

The key for success may be to let the games and movies play off of each other, to explore different aspects of a fictional universe. Hayden goes on to say, "LucasArts is a good example of this -- the games that work are the ones that let you explore this great universe they've created, not the ones that follow the strict plot line of an individual movie."

With Diablo II -- as with other role playing games -- the plot is as much a method of giving structure to the game's world as it is a tale of a particular character. The player provides the character's real story. When my Barbarian leaps into the fray with battle axes in each hand, when my Amazon drops a target from across the room with a well-placed arrow, when my Necromancer animates the bones of his dead enemies to fight at his side ... this is how I tell my part of the story.

As I play the game, watching the cinematic scenes and immersing myself in this virtual world, I am reminded of the moment that I turned the corner in the Blizzard hallway and saw the storyboards. I had wondered, Was this to be a movie or a game? With the theatrical release of the short Diablo film, it turned out to be both. Soon, perhaps, the distinction will be irrelevant.

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