How Hacking Diablo Sparked My Lifelong Career in Programming

I’ve grown up on Blizzard games. Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo were some of the first PC games I've ever played as a kid. In fact, it was Diablo and the first incarnation of battle.net chat that got me into programming. Between the lack of any real internet security back then and the open-source examples of battle.net chat bots and numerous tutorials, it was a great way to get started programming.

Diablo, in particular, was my gateway into programming and all the nerdy subcultures that came with it. It was one of my favorite games to play, and I found myself continuously being drawn back to the game. The humor, the action, and the setting were perfect. It was also incredibly challenging to play as a 12-year-old. I probably shouldn’t have been playing a game called “Diablo” at that age, but here we are. Its difficulty led me to first download third-party cheating tools, precursors to the modern-day Cheat Engine. After a while, I learned how to edit these tools to further tailor the game to my play style. This ranged from creating my own items, spells, and even classes. While the base game allowed you to play a Warrior, Sorcerer, and Rogue, I’d often create my own characters, giving warriors the ability to use spells or sorcerers to more efficiently use swords. Everything was all pretty rudimentary, reusing existing animations and image assets, and the game would often crash, but I was having fun.

Then I took the leap online.