Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming | Lex Fridman Podcast #493

- There's three types of fun, fun for the player, fun for the designer, and fun for the computer. - Is it PvP? - It's all PvP. In fact, Rust is the most PvP thing in all of PvP. - Well, I don't know what that means, but... - Rust players know what that means. My whole career and my family are thanks to EverQuest, so I think I won the game. And we're idiots. We're reading the forums, and the forums are just flaming us all the time. Like, "There's lag on this server," and, "Can't log into that ser-" And that's, that was our perspective of what was happening. And when I showed up at that show, it... One of the most emotional things in my life. It was nothing but an outpouring of love. I had believed I would never work any place but Blizzard. I loved it. It was a part of who I was, And I felt I was a part of it, and I literally thought I would retire from the place. I never thought the day would come, and that was it. - How painful was it to say goodbye? - It broke me. - Now, meanwhile, as far as the outside world is concerned, you've disappeared off the face of the earth, but you were actually working on a game. The following is a conversation with Jeff Kaplan, a legendary game designer of World of Warcraft and Overwatch, which are two of the biggest, most influential games ever made. He is genuinely one of the most amazing human beings I've ever met. In the many conversations I was fortunate enough to have with him, including while playing video games, he was always kind, thoughtful, hilarious, and still and forever a legit gamer, through and through. Of course, he's always quick to celebrate the incredible teams of creative minds he has gotten a chance to work with over the years, and they are truly incredible. Blizzard has created some of the greatest games ever made, games that to me personally have brought me thousands of hours of fun, meaning, and happiness, from Warcraft, to StarCraft, to Diablo, WoW, Overwatch and more. So for that, a big thank you to Jeff, to the entire Blizzard team, and to every creative mind in the video game industry, giving their heart and soul to build video game worlds that we fans get a chance to enjoy. This was a super fun, inspiring, whirlwind conversation, pun intended, with one of the most beloved gamers and game designers ever. Full of memes, lulz, wisdom, emotional rollercoaster moments, and of course, Blizzard video game lore. Jeff left Blizzard in 2021, and has been secretly working on a new video game called The Legend of California that I got a chance to play with Jeff. It is incredibly beautiful. Set in the 1800s Gold Rush era of California, it's an open world online multiplayer game, part adventure and action, part survival. Sometimes creating a feeling of loneliness and desperation, and sometimes just awe watching the sun rise over a beautiful landscape. It's unlike any game that Jeff has ever worked on, and it's a game that I genuinely can't wait to play with all of you. You can wishlist it on Steam. Join the alpha later in March, I think, and early access is on the way. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description where you can also find links to contact me, ask questions, give feedback, and so on. And now, dear friends, here's Jeff Kaplan. You were first a legendary video game player, in particular in EverQuest, before you ever became a legendary video game designer on World of Warcraft and on Overwatch, which I think is a wild journey to go through from gamer to designer. But first, let's go way back. When did you first fall in love with video games? - I was lucky. I was born in that golden era of coin-op. So, I literally remember the first time seeing Pac-Man. I was with my Uncle Ronnie, and he just kept feeding me quarters. I think he wanted to play, but was too scared to, so he, you know, his little nephew, he would just give him quarters to play Pac-Man. I remember being at my brother's graduation in Philadelphia, and they had an Asteroids machine in the lobby. That was one of the first coin-op machines I had played as well. And my brother and I would... we would try to get the high score, and we'd finally get it. But we had to go to bed early 'cause we were little kids. And then in the morning somebody else had like beat our high score. And then, you know, I grew up in Southern California in the '80s. I was born in '72. So, you know, I was a kid with that skateboard BMX culture where we'd ride two towns over. We knew all the pizza parlors and liquor stores and arcades, and we just lived in that coin-op phase. That was, that was where the love started. And then you started to see things like Pong. You'd go over to a friend's house, they'd have Pong, and it was just mind blowing, like, we're playing this thing on the TV and it was so much fun. Atari was a big thing at that time as well. But the big one for me was actually Intellivision, because my dad was an executive recruiter, and one of his clients was Mattel. And he said, "Hey, I... They gave me this thing," and he would get discounts or free games. And my brothers and I just loved Intellivision. Like, we would just play it endlessly. And the comparison was always like, "Is this game close to what's in the arcades?" And it was just such a golden era. And I think the big moment where it really blew open and kind of hit the next level was when the NES came out. And that, like, NES with Super Mario- was kind of gaming at the next level at that point. And I have, like, warm, fuzzy memories even thinking about it to this day. I remember we played Super Mario for weeks, my brothers and I, and then I had a friend come over, and he showed me all the secret stuff- ... in Super that I didn't know existed at the time. And it's... it was like suddenly, the world opened up more and games could be more. And then there was, like, a big PC gaming push that hit me. My parents ran their own business. Like I said, my dad was an executive recruiter, and they bought an IBM. And this is, like, when it was DOS before MS-DOS existed. And I was so disappointed, because, like, other kids had the Amiga or the Commodore- ... which, you know, they were better for gaming than the IBM at the time. And my mom, she really encouraged my brother and I. She bought a Zork. You know, it was just Infocom word games, and where your imagination would take you. Like, Zork holds a place in my heart I think few games will ever touch. - It's a text-based game? - Text-based game. You know, you just type in, "Go west. Open mailbox." You know? And... - Okay. - But it's that power of imagination. It's why the book is always better than the movie, you know? - Yeah. So, you're starting to see these creations of worlds that you can navigate. - Yes. - You can step into this world and you can lose yourself in that world. - Yeah. You're transported. You're living there. - Was Zork popular? - Zork was insanely popular. And then there was Zork II- ... and Zork III. - A trilogy. Zork trilogy. I see it. Okay. - A- and it was weird, and, like, the... Sometime in the '90s, there was this, there was this era of what they called CD-ROM games. That's how they branded them. And they made a return to Zork, but it now had graphics. And somehow, that just shattered everything, because the Zork you knew in your head didn't exist anymore. Yeah, Zork was fantastic. I think it might be open source now, which I think is fabulous. But I highly recommend Zork. There was also, in those days, on the PC that worked on our IBM, was Ultima- ... which was the Richard Garriott series. And he was Lord British. We knew him as Lord British. He put himself in the game. And you wanna talk about world- building. You know, there was Yew Forest and there was all the characters. And the first Ultima I played was Ultima II, 'cause Ultima I was before my time. And that series, it was this RPG group based PC game, and the worlds were just so rich. Like, you could get on a rocket ship. You're playing in this fantasy world, fighting demons, and yet somehow you could get on a rocket ship. And then there was just all of this sort of crazy stuff that would happen in games that are based in the world. Like, there were bouncers in the towns, and merchants, but if you really wanted to, you could try to rob these people, or kill Lord British, you know? That was something that was super hard. And when you're just a jackass kid, you spend your time endlessly trying to do these things over and over, and Ultima was really a profound kind of experience for me. - And, of course, that led to Ultima Online, which is a legendary game in itself, perhaps connected to EverQuest. - Sort of starting to build these worlds that are massively multiplayer online video games. Can you take me to that journey? Like, as you started to get online, MMO world. What were influential? What were fun for you? - Well, the big one for me was EverQuest. But, Like you mentioned, Ultima Online sort of was the predecessor. It came before EverQuest. And it was, like, one of those unfortunate times in my life where I was actually at grad school. - You were busy. - I was busy, and I missed Ultima Online. Like, I would have had that experience. And when you hear the Ultima Online stories, they're some of the craziest, funniest... You know, I know somebody who, they learned how to poison in the game, and then they would poison apples, then leave them on the ground, and somebody else would be adventuring, then feed the apple to their horse and kill their horse. Then they'd steal all their stuff and... You know, Ultima Online was kind of... It was the earliest grief-based experiment. Really, like, when you're treating the humans like ants in the ant farm. That was kind of Ultima Online. - Yeah. - My first, like, what online gaming, what defined online gaming for me was Quake and Doom and Duke Nukem. You know, it started with Doom and they had a ... You could basically LAN. You could network with your friends or you could connect with a modem and hook up with somebody. And that was like a mind-blowing ... Just seeing another entity in a video game and saying, "That's a person on the other side of that." That was magical, like, that that moment happened and that person could be in another room or across town from you. And Quake kind of took it to the next level. Like, that's where everybody knew what they were doing. The systems were more refined. And this Quake community formed with all of these, you know, great websites, mods. The community was divided into ... There were two castes of players. The low ping bastards, the LPBs- ... and then the rest of us, you know. And I remember rolling into Quake matches, you know, on a dial-up modem with a 300 ping connection, and I thought it was the greatest thing ever. Um, and just, just connecting with people. Like I said, the websites. To this day, the only gaming website I read— I don't read any of the news sites anymore, but I read Blue's News. Which was like, like ... Someone actually teased me recently. I linked him a story. I'm like, "Oh, did you hear this new thing's coming out?" And I sent the link, and they're like, "Dude, this is from Blue's News. Like, what time machine did you just step out of?" And guy named Stephen Heaslip... I'm probably pronouncing his name wrong. I apologize, but it was actually through that site that I learned about EverQuest. They had those programmer plan updates, the .plan files. And guys like Carmack would ... You know, they'd post about what code they were writing or how they had optimized something, or just their personal life. Like, you know, the Ferrari talk would always happen— once they had achieved success. And there was an id programmer named Brian Hook, and he said, "I'm leaving id to go work at Verant," which became Sony Online, "to work on this game called EverQuest." And I was like, "How does anybody leave id, the greatest institution in all of gaming ever, to work on any other game?" I'm like, "This guy must be crazy. Or whatever this EverQuest thing is, I need to see it. I need to know what's going on." And if he hadn't have made that post, I never would have checked out EverQuest. - We'll talk about EverQuest, but since you mentioned Carmack and, uh, Quake, what can we say about the genius of John Carmack? Why was he such an important and influential human in the history of gaming? - Those early geniuses at id ... Like, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you right now if they hadn't had the breakthroughs that they had at the time. Um, gaming engines were evolving, but the level of breakthrough that they achieved with Wolf 3D, that was the first... I remember playing Wolfenstein when it was a 2D game. You'd run around. You'd dress up as a German. You'd throw a grenade. Um, to see it in 3D ... And it, it's funny. You look back at the screenshots or videos of it now, and it seems almost childish. Like, "Oh, why, why were you so excited about that?" And you were transported. There ... It was the intimacy of first person. You know, putting the hands in front of you, holding the gun, being transported to Nazi Germany, but you're the hero fighting the Nazis. And then the evolution. Like, when Doom came out, I'm a huge Army of Darkness fan. Like, one of my favorite movies of all time. And I was like, "This is Army of Darkness, the video game." You know? Like, "Give me the boom stick. Here we go." And the graphical advances ... But it, it wasn't just how the game looked, it was how it played. The smoothness kept getting better. The responsiveness the sharpness of the gameplay. You have to credit id in those days and Carmack and Romero. Um, I ... As somebody who worked on an FPS, I ... That wouldn't have existed without them. Credit where credit's due. - And by the way, we should say you're ... As a gamer, your range is incredible. You are a legit first-person shooter gamer, but you also obviously love the more MMO world, rich, exploratory kinda game. So it's fascinating. But yeah, there is ... On the technology stack that brought something like Quake or Wolfenstein 3D to life, there's a threshold which you pass of realism where you can immerse yourself into that world. I had the same exact experience with, uh, Wolfenstein 2D taking a step to 3D, and it was like tears in my eyes. Like, "This is incredible." Like, my memories of Wolfenstein 3D is it was like ultra realistic. It's silly to say now. . It was the feeling like you were there.Yeah, what an incredible age. And some of that, the storytelling, a lot of that is the- technology that brings that kind of 3D world to life. It's incredible. But before- we get too far on that tangent you mentioned grad school. We should mention that you have a master's degree in creative writing from NYU, and you wanted to be a writer. You told me your main influences were Kerouac, but also Hemingway, Salinger, Bukowski, Orwell. What drew you to storytelling in that medium of writing? What aspect of the human experience were you trying to put down on paper? - Well, it started with being a fan first and being inspired and reading, and it's the, not only being transported to a different world or into a different person, but also, you know, the way that stories can touch emotions in you and trigger feelings sometimes you didn't even know you had. And that was very appealing for me. And the big challenge with it is, and I think this is for anybody who creates anything, is putting yourself out there. Um, to some degree, there's a lot of ego that goes into that moment where you say, "Well, I've been reading, you know, 1984 or Green Hills of Stranglethorn, and I think it's amazing. And now I'm gonna try to write something that somebody is gonna read." Uh, that's a giant leap of faith. You know, that's a moment of putting yourself out there completely, and there's gotta be some part of that that's ego. There's some part of it that's masochistic. Um, and I think for people who want to create and build stuff, they can't help but to do it. You don't really have an option. That's just how you're wired, and you're gonna do it anyway. And, you know, I admire people like Dickinson who can just write all the poems and leave them in a drawer to be discovered by somebody else. You know, that's one way to go about it. - Yeah, Franz Kafka, you know, a lot of the stories he wrote, never published, and he asked for all of them to be destroyed. And then it's only because of his friend that ignored his request that we even have many of his stories. It's like to be that kinda... I mean, clearly, there's some masochism there, some tortured soul. But then there's also the ego like you mentioned. I was entertained by this story of James Joyce, When he was a young man, 18, 19, Declared that he's going to be the greatest writer of the 20th century. And he turned out in many, in the eyes of many to be one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. But there's, like, millions of kids just like James Joyce, writers, they're declaring exactly that, that turn out not to be. But that is in some cases, in many cases, maybe most cases, you have to have that ego- ... to say, "I'm gonna..." Yeah, right. "I read 1984," "and I'm going to write the next 1984." - Yeah. And I do think ego is a big part of it. it's one of the many lessons I've learned. Hearing your Kafka story is funny, because fast-forwarding to how my writing career ended— ... I literally threw away everything, I mean, in a dumpster. I used to keep copious notes, like journals, my writing journals, everything I ever read, every story idea. I probably had 20 volumes of just handwritten notes. And then I also kept personal journals of just, you know, to keep the writing habit up of just, you know, what happened in my day, how I was feeling, all of that. And then either digitally or typed, I had all of my manuscripts, and I threw it all in the dumpster. - What was that decision? Do you remember that decision? What was that- what was that like to just take that part of your life and just put it in a dumpster? - Yeah. It was I think it was necessary. It was necessary. This is like rationalizing it after the fact, you know, which is easy to do. You know? But at the time, I think I was so broken and so defeated with failure that I needed the moment. It was like throwing in the towel for a boxer, you know? It's that moment of like, "I'm not gonna win this fight, and you need to move on from it." And if there was any element of that sitting around, I'd be tempted to try again or bring it out of the drawer 10 years later. - We should mention that you did give it a- a real try. You've mentioned receiving over 170 rejection letters in one year when submitting your stories. So there's a lot of rejection. So it was a long chain of rejection. And then what was that like, the rejection? - It was hard. Um, I had moved from New York. Um, I did the most terrible dumb thing that I knew I was doing at the time. I had a really great group of writer friends from grad school in New York, and I think writing is a very lonely, solitary thing. But weirdly, writers kind of support each other and just, "Who do you give the story to?" You know, you don't wanna give it to your mom or dad, you know. You kinda wanna give it to somebody who's gonna really punch you in the nose and tell you what's wrong with it. And I had left that writing circle to move back to California. - Did you take a bunch of drugs, take your typewriter and drove across, uh- - No. - ... across the United States and then wrote a book about it? Or just to take Kerouac as an example. Anyway, sorry. You went just- - I might have been more successful had- ... I done that. - Uh, so sorry. So you went back. - So I moved back to California, and I did it for a girl. And I think within two months of moving back, we were broken up. So... And I knew it when I was standing in my studio apartment when it was empty in New York and I was about to close the door for the last time. I had that like, you know, little me on the shoulder saying, "Dude, what are you doing?" "This... You're making one of those epic life mistakes that is gonna come back to haunt you." And I ended up alone in California, and I think it was a good three years that I structured my life where I was gonna write for eight hours a day, because it's that writer's habit. Like you have to just force yourself, "This is a job. This isn't a hobby. Whether I like it or not, rain or shine, sick or healthy, I'm gonna write for eight hours a day." And I did. Um, I was fortunate. Like I said, my dad had his company and he hired me as a research associate. So I was calling up generating name lists for a recruiting company, and I would take... Whenever there was East Coast assignments, I would take those so I could start at like 5:00 in the morning. And I created all this space for me to write, and I just... I had a dog named Jack- ... who was... He was a Jack Russell Terrier. And so everybody's like, "You're a writer, you named your Jack Russell Terrier Jack." I'm like, "Because I named him after Jack Kerouac." "It's poetic and epic," and- - Yeah, of course - ... I just looked like a dumbass, but- ... it was just me and this dog. And I was writing, you know, all that time intensely. And this was mid to late '90s, so even though internet existed, email was very primitive and you had to send a manuscript off, like printed paper- ... to all... Like, I was trying to get short stories published in literary magazines, and you had to send envelope with return self-address stamp. So it was expensive, too. Like if you didn't have money, you were just... There was a cost to it- ... to every single one of them. - You had to pay for the rejection letter that you would eventually receive. - Yeah. And the, like, big thing that you were hoping for was that the editor would write you a note with the rejection letter. Like, um- - Keep going. - Yeah. And you'd like cling onto this. Like, it was like, "Oh, Glimmer Train said, you know, showing promise." You know, and you just hang onto that for like a week, you know, pretending like that was... But it was just soul crushing. And I really stuck... And I became more and more isolated. Part of that was leaving that group of writing friends in New York. I'm prone to just introversion anyway. The type of person I am. Breaking up with the girlfriend at the time. I just sort of fell into that world of like all I was doing was writing. And it broke me. Like, I went into very deep and heavy depression. I drank too much. I really had a problem with alcohol. And all those things compounded into just deep, deep depression. And I don't... There wasn't like a magic rejection that broke me. That would have been epic if like- ... someone out there is like, "The dude who..." "I'm the dude who broke Jeff that one day." But I just had a moment where I said, "This is gonna destroy me." And... Like, I don't want to be discouraging to anybody, because I really do believe, like you hear it so much, like, "You have to work for your dreams, never give up." Like, we're trained this way. Like, "Never give up." The universe... Actually, maybe not the universe. A group of editors at literary magazines across the United States was telling me it was time to give up as a writer, like I wasn't cut out for it. And I stopped. - Sometimes, you know, closing a door is required for another door to open. That's one of the hardest things to do, is to walk away. - Yeah. And I think, rightly so, our parents, our coaches, our mentors train us not to give up. And I think a lot of us take pride in that, "I'm never gonna give up. I'm gonna do this come hell or high water." And sometimes there's that reality, especially when you're now in your mid-20s, where you have that moment of like, "Am I really gonna be this? Like, am I ever gonna sort of find the light here?" And, maybe, and it's so hard, it's so hard to have this moment, "Maybe this isn't my calling in life," especially when you don't know what the next calling is gonna be. - That's so painful. It's 'cause you've invested so much of yourself, of who you are, of the dreams you've had, of this just whole conception of yourself, and you're watching yourself slide down in terms of becoming isolated, suffering more and And then you just have to somehow figure out how to- get out of that. And it is true. In that situation, the way to get out is the dumpster. Is to cut it off. Is there advice you can extract from that? There's a lot of young folks who are in that same situation. - Yeah. This is one of those hindsight things where, you know, having gone through it and ended up okay on the other side, which you don't know at the time, you know? When you're a young person in your late teens or early 20s, there's so much pressure on you. And I really think adults don't help. You know? Every time you run into the younger nephew or whoever and you start to say things like, "Oh, what's your major? What are you gonna do with that?" "What do you wanna be?" It's such bullshit to do to a human being. You know? - You're so lost in the world. I mean, most of us are lost our entire lives, but especially in your 20s, you know, like, you're lost. So the questions like, yeah, "What are you, what are you doing? What's your major? What's the career?" And so on, that's not the point, man. I'm trying to find, I'm trying to move through the world, I'm trying to run through the world to find the thing that sparks my heart, to find the passion, to find what I'm meant to be on this earth for. And there are really, I mean, that is a real hero's journey of searching as a young person. That's a real, like, you know, all the adults, with their wisdom, they've stopped searching often. They've done the lazy, the comfortable thing. They found their thing. And so now they look back, they don't remember how much suffering and how, how much uncertainty that young people have to deal with. - It's, there's confusion, there's pressure. Like, the pressure we exert on younger people for having it figured out is, it's insane. So the advice that I always give, and it sounds so stupid, like this sounds really trite, but focus on what you wanna do, not what you wanna be. The, the pressure that society kind of puts on us is, you know, "Oh, do you wanna be an astronaut? Do you wanna be a firefighter? Do you wanna be a writer? Do you wanna be a game maker?" And I think we get lost in the trappings of, like a vision of what that role is- ... and how to perform as a fake actor in that role. Versus when you're off the clock and no one's asking you any questions- ... you know, you're not at Thanksgiving dinner and your uncle's pressuring you into, you know, what your future's gonna be for the rest of your life. When you go home, how do you spend your time? Like, what makes you happy? What brings you fulfillment? And through those paths, you're gonna find out what you're gonna become, not what you wanna be. It's, "What do you wanna do?" - What do you wanna do? The thing that brings you joy on a moment by moment basis. Yeah. That's brilliantly put. And speaking of which, that's where you took the pivot. You switched to video games. How did that happen? Gradually? Suddenly? - Gradually and suddenly. So when I had that fateful moment where I just sort of gave up with writing, I had these days where I'd structure eight-hour chunks of just, this was writing time, you know? I'd sit solitary typing. All that was gone. And, you know, I could still support myself, which was nice. And then I had this free time and I wasn't spending it with anybody, I was just alone. Me and the dog, Jack. And I just poured it all into EverQuest. You know, I, it was 1999 when that game came out. And I had a friend, Victor, like kind of a lifelong friend. One of the few friends I had who played computer games, 'cause there was a stigma to that. You know? It wasn't, you didn't walk around telling people you played games. They thought you wasted your time. And my friend, Vic, had bought EverQuest. I'm like, "That's that game that that guy Brian Hook went to work on. Is it good?" And he's like, "Yeah, you gotta play it." And the moment I logged in, I was just transported. It was the world of Norrath. And it wasn't just the world itself and how it looked, I thought the game was gorgeous, it was the mechanics, you know, that I was this halfling rogue that, you know, had to go out and adventure in the world, and when I killed stuff, I got experience, and I needed better loot to kill more stuff to get more experience. And the sort of draw of progression in the game it was amazing. I, and I just lived my life of, "I can't wait 'til the next time I log in." There was a lot of escapism going. It wasn't all healthy. When all was said and done, when I finally had quit EverQuest three days later, you could type in the command /played to see how much played time you had. I had, I think it was like 272 played days in three years. So you start to do the math on like, how much time- ... in those three years I was living in that world. It was...It was kind of insane. - Well, that's over 6,000 hours- ... of gameplay. Wow. So here going to Perplexity, EverQuest is a long-running 3D fantasy, massively multiplayer online role-playing game, MMORPG, set in the world of Norrath, as you were saying. First released in March 1999, it is an online role-playing game where thousands of players create characters, group up, and explore a persistent shared world. It's widely regarded as one of the foundational MMORPGs, helping define raid content, guild systems and 3D online worlds. That's the other component of it. There's... It's all humans and they group up- ... and they raid together in the game. - Yep. In the context of EverQuest, raiding is usually around 30 people or more getting together to conquer something that you couldn't beat otherwise. And to do successful raiding, you usually needed to join what in EverQuest everyone referred to as an Uber Guild. So I had this great pride in my EverQuest journey that I... Most of the time leveling up I was unguilded or I was in like a role-playing guild with rogues only. And it was when I got to Level 50 in EverQuest was the top level, I got invited into this guild called Legacy of Steel, which on our server was the top. Every server had a top guild. And I was on a server called The Nameless Server, and the top guild was Legacy of Steel. And that, the thrill of getting 30 people together to go see if you could beat, you know, Nagafen, who was the fire dragon, or Vox, who was the frost dragon, and needing perfect coordination to pull it off, it was insane how fun. Like, you would literally scream out. You're alone in your room at home- ... but you felt like you were there with these people and you would audibly cheer out when you won, and you'd feel depressed when you lost, and it was a game of high highs and low lows, and it did everything right. It was amazing. - So that was a big leap for you to go from the proud lone warrior to a member of a guild, Uber Guild. And then there's that epic story of you rising to the top to become the leader of this Uber Guild. - The leader... Yeah. So organizing people in an online game like EverQuest is like herding cats- ... 'cause, you know, everyone has their own will. Some people are loot motivated, some people want the guild to do well, some people are just lonely and want people to hang out with. And there was also a lot of depression in the EverQuest community. It was something I suffered with, but a lot of people, you know, anytime you're feeling sad or down, you're looking for escape. And one of the great things video games brings us is escapism. And escapism isn't always bad or negative- ... but when you sort of abuse it to escape your real life problems, it's bad and negative. - So there's a mix of pain and darkness that pain can manifest as- ... all part of this community. - Yeah. And what's weird is you enter the cycle where being with other people gives you comradery and relief and makes you feel like you're not doing so bad in life, but you can quickly enter a cycle of... But then you're withdrawing from life and it makes you feel that way more to where you can only get the fix from the game at that point. So it's... Psychologically, there's a lot going on there. - And so you had to work with all of that. You have to get a bunch of people together to do a raid, who are all human beings going through complicated psychological journeys of their own. Some are talking shit, some are just quietly lonely, just looking for some loot. - In the late '90s, everyone was talking shit. You know what I mean? Like, the gaming culture was just a different thing back then. But it was a great group. It was super fun. It was people from all walks of life. And to coordinate these people, like you just had to repeat everything like 200 times. Like, "Okay, we're gonna port from North Ro. Everybody get to North Ro." And then you'd have to repeat that for like six hours- ... to have any chance of like 20% of the people showing up in North Ro. And I sort of like... At first I joined the guild, I was just like the bright-eyed, bushy- tail. Like, I was like one of the few rogues in the guild. I just wanted to be helpful. I really admired the people running the guild. Like, we had a great guild leader. and it was just a really fun experience. And, you know, the guild leader one day just disappeared. Like, he quit and he was going through, you know, his own thing, and that's what would happen in EverQuest. Like, people would just kinda disappear all of a sudden. There wasn't a, "Hey, in about a month, I'm gonna stop playing because I'm starting this new job." People... people had to quit in some dramatic way, where they just disappear, and basically, our guild leader stopped playing. - Did you miss them when they disappeared? Like, we should say that most of the people, maybe all of them, were anonymous. So you just- ...have a username, and you don't really say who you are in real life. - Absolutely. In those days, there was a great stigma to mentioning your, any real-life info. You just kind of kept it all really close to your chest, and you never knew who was male or female. You kind of assumed everybody was male. - Safe assumption. - And then it was a surprise if they were actually female. Like my wife, for example, that's how I met her. - You met her in EverQuest? - I met her in EverQuest. - That is a true love story, right there. - Yeah. Yeah. - Wow. - The funny part for me with EverQuest is, you know, you play a game as much as I played EverQuest, and people are like, "You threw years of your life away." Like, "You can't win a game like that." And I'm like, "I don't know, like, sitting here today, my whole career and my family are thanks to EverQuest, so I think I won the game." - Yeah, yeah. You're like the, the, "Well, actually..." guy. - Well, yeah, exactly. - Your life will be on the Wikipedia page somewhere that says, "Well, here's an example of somebody-" "... why video games are awesome." Yeah, I mean, some of it... I should mention this as an aside. For me and many people I know, yes, it's hundreds of hours, but some of the happiest hours and days of my life. Like, looking back, it all worked out. During it, you are pretty low, and you think, "I... What am I doing with my life?" All that kind of stuff. But, like, looking back, just the all-nighters you pull playing a particular video game, allowing yourself to really fully be immersed seeing the sun come up, and by the way, many of those games, for me, were Blizzard games. It's just an incredible thing that video games have been able to do. I think you know, it used to be, and still is somewhat the case, that books do that kind of same thing. They- ...they take you on a journey. But video games, for a long time, you're right, they had a stigma. Like, I couldn't tell people. I felt like I was doing, like, heroin or something. Like, I felt like I was doing this secret, dark thing. It's usually in the... It's, it usually is in the dark. There's just a secretive nature to it, like I'm doing something really dark and shady. - It wasn't mainstream. - It wasn't. - It wasn't... There was a stigma to it. And one of the weirdest parts of that is, you know, I mentioned, like, you could type in the /played in EverQuest. Well, if you did the /played on how much TV people watch, what would that look like? It would blow- ...6,000 hours out of the water, easily. Well, it... 20 years ago it would have. You know? Not today. - Now it's the phone, yeah. Yeah. But then it is hard to say goodbye to that world. Those are also really painful times. How hard was it to say goodbye for you? - To EverQuest? It was really hard. And there were times where you try to quit. - Oh, you took a break sometimes? - Yeah. You think you're quitting for good. You'd have those moments of, like, "I'm doing this too much. I need to move on in life. I'm gonna put it down and walk away, and hopefully not come back." And there were times where you did come back. When I finally did leave EverQuest, it was actually extremely easy, because I was psychologically done with the game at the time. It was not shortly, but not too long after a new expansion had come out. At the time, it was Shadows of Luclin. Which didn't speak to me like the expansions before. Like, the one before that was called Scars of Velious, which was an amazing expansion. And I had gotten the job at Blizzard, and I guess I'm just an obsessive person. So all the time and energy that I had put into EverQuest, the second, you know, the second my first minute started at Blizzard, that was my new obsession. - So speaking of which, you have to tell the epic origin story of how you got the job at Blizzard. As we said, you were this legendary gamer, and now legendary troll, on EverQuest. Username, Tigole. You gave a lot of edgy feedback to the devs, Telling them in now famous... There's several rants. There's a famous one where you tell many of them to do a bunch of things, including to pull their heads out of their asses. You were loved and respected because you gave a lot of specific ways that the game could be improved. And that's an important thing to say. You weren't just talking shit. You actually really loved and cared for the game, and you gave them, in the language of the time advice on how to improve, Their game. And it's funny, because, like, you look back to those messages, it's inspiring to me. It should be informative and inspiring to a lot of people, because you're really, legit, full-time talking shit. And now, and you always have been, like, one of the kindest, most loved human beings in the entire gaming industry. Anyway, how did that lead to you getting a job at Blizzard? - So when the first guild leader left, Legacy of Steel, the founder... He, he was a guy named... His online name was Dread. That was his name. He left, and our guild was kind of in this listless spin for a while. And eventually, somebody stepped up and took his position as guild leader, and that person's name was Ariel- ... who was this blonde wood elf warrior, Female, who always refused to wear a helmet because they thought their character was so pretty, wanted to show their face all the time. So Ariel was a great guild leader for us, and made me like an assistant guild leader, raid leader, officer type in the guild. And over time, Ariel got busier and busier, and, you know, would send me messages like, "Hey, I'm not gonna be online, you know, tomorrow," or, "I'm not gonna be online tonight. Can you run the raid? Can you run the raid?" And running the raids was very natural for me. And it was my first experience with leadership in my life, of like how do you motivate people? Like, what does motivation look like? What does discipline look like? How do you inspire people? When do you force people versus encourage them, you know? So it was a learning experience for me on the fly, and I had the safety net of the real guild leader would log in eventually. - I should mention, I'm just now reading about, doing a bunch of research on Justinian of the Roman Empire, and he rose from being a peasant to being emperor, so I see a lot of parallels in your life journey, from peasant to emperor, but go ahead, I'm sorry. - At least EverQuest guild leader, that's- that's as much- - Uber guild leader- - ... as I could say. - Uber guild leader. - Uber guild leader. Best guild on the Nameless server. So as time went on, Ariel became busier and busier, and then one day, they contacted me and we were having this like whisper back and forth, and they said, "You- you're gonna have to take over the guild. I'm just too busy." And then it came out later ... Well, let me back up a second. I started fooling around ... Like around this time Half-Life 1 had come out, and with both Duke Nukem and Half-Life 1, one of the incredible things that those companies did back in the day was when they shipped the game, they shipped the editor on the CD. And if you were curious enough, you could like fire up that editor and fool around with it. So I made a Duke Nukem level, and you'd send it off to like those UK programming magazines, and you know, you'd get excited because your level was in, you know, some random magazine. And then I started making like Half-Life levels. And Ariel had stepped down as guild leader. I had become guild leader. And then at one point, Ariel contacts me and says, "Hey, you know, you were talking about those Half-Life levels you made. I want to see those." I'm like, "Oh, that's cool." Like, "I didn't know you played Half-Life." Like, "Yeah, maybe we can get a server up and I can play them." And Ariel tells me, "No, mail them to this address in Irvine." And- because I— again, to rewind in the time machine for a second, to send something like a Half-Life level over the internet would have- ... taken like 12 hours. So you actually like burned it onto a CD and stuck it in the mail. So I put my Half-Life levels, I sent them to Ariel, and he says, "You know, my name's Rob. I'm a designer at Blizzard Entertainment." "Um, we're— I— I hear you're in Pasadena 'cause you mentioned it." You know, I would write about, you know, the Rose Parade and all these things on our website. You know, I kind of ... It was blogging before blogging existed, so he knew I lived in Pasadena, and he's like, "Irvine's only an hour away. Why don't you come down, see Blizzard, and you can also meet..." and he names like four people in the guild. And I'm like, "They all work at Blizzard too?" He's like, "Yeah, we're all Blizzard." And it was so weird because during that era, I didn't have a lot of money. It was not like ... Kind of nowadays it feels like everybody plays every game, but you had to be selective. So like I never bought StarCraft or Diablo or Warcraft. I was much more of the Half-Life, Quake, Quake III guy around that time, and I'd never played a Blizzard game, and I just got invited to like go to Blizzard Entertainment. - Was Blizzard already legendary, you know, with the Warcraft and StarCraft? Is it... Is there... Is it... Was it building this like great legend of this game company that seemingly doesn't miss? - It was very much on its way to enshrining itself as being one of the legendary game... Like, it was beloved— ... by gamers, but there were still ignorant people like me who hadn't played, you know, War II or Diablo II or StarCraft, which was shocking to people. - So you weren't like freaking out, freaking out? - No, I— I was freaking out in a different sense. I'm like, "Am I gonna get mugged when I-" Like, "Who are ... Is this a scam?" Because you didn't meet people off the internet. So I drove down there. Um, I ended up... There was— there was Rob Pardo— ... who at that time was the lead designer on Warcraft III, and he was Ariel. You know, so okay, it wasn't a woman after all. It wasn't this blonde wood elf. You know, I don't know what you expect at that point. It was Rob Pardo. To this day, a great friend of mine named Scott Mercer was the enchanter in our EverQuest guild, a guy named Dalomin. There was a guy named Roman Kenny who was like this—Totally psychotic wizard who played in our guild. And I had lunch with these guys, you know, we just went out to Irvine to like a restaurant. And, you know, forgive me for the misuse of the phrase, but it was like my coming out moment. And we talked about games having that stigma and being embarrassed about who you are and what you like. Like I, up until that point, I would never tell- Mm-hmm ... friends, family, like, "I love games. I'm playing this game EverQuest. It's so cool, we just killed a dragon." And so you were hiding this part of your identity. And I'm out to lunch with these guys in Irvine, and we're talking about dragons and swords and, you know, raid tactics and talking shit on all the people in the guild. And I, literally had this moment where I felt like myself for the first time. I just felt like so comfortable, and that was an eye-opening moment. And after that, after that lunch happened, he invited me for a couple more lunches down, you know, just... Uh, I just saw it as like, "Oh, now, I'm..." You know, I made friends with these people online. Now, we know each other in real life, and they happen to work for this game company. And at another one of the lunches, they invite this troll warrior to have lunch with us, whose name in the game was Barfa, the Troll Warrior. Mm-hmm. And Barfa, Barfa wasn't somebody who played with us all the time, but kind of like Ariel got into the guild kind of on the side. You know, it was one of those like inside invites of like, "Who's Barfa?" "I don't know, but Barfa is in the guild now." And there was at the time, it was a new dungeon called The Hole, and we had never done it before. And we jumped down in this hole, and we're doing this whole dungeon, and everything goes wrong, as it's prone to do in EverQuest. And the whole guild escapes except for Barfa, whose troll character's so big, he can't jump out of the exit. Mm-hmm. And I had this potion that was like a really expensive potion that was a teleport potion that, you know, no one but someone in the uber guild could afford at the time. And I hand the potion to Barfa, and I say, "Here, use this. It'll teleport you out." And I'm a rogue, I can just stealth and get out of the dungeon on my own. So I saved Barfa, not really knowing who Barfa was, and I did it with a very expensive potion. Mm-hmm. Having lunch, Rob introduced me, "This is Allen Adham. He plays Barfa." Mm-hmm. I'm like, "Oh, Barfa!" And we, you know, he has a... "You saved me in The Hole that time." Well, it turns out Allen was the founder of Blizzard, and he was the head... He was sort of the head of everything at that time. It was Allen, Mike Morhaime, and Frank Pearce. And what I didn't realize what these lunches were, like I just loved them because I felt like I was myself. I felt true happiness being surrounded by these, you know, people who were talkin' about video games and I felt comfortable around. And one day, Rob logs into EverQuest. He wasn't playing much at the time, and he said, "I want you tomorrow to check the Blizzard job site." Mm-hmm. I'm like, "Okay, like, I'll check the Blizzard job site." And they had announced World of Warcraft, and posted on the job site- Mm-hmm ... was the job for an associate quest designer. And the funniest part of it was, I forget if it was a requirement or a plus in the job description, but they're like, "We really want somebody with a creative writing degree." Hmm. And I'm like, "You guys set this up for me." Like, they were just looking... And it was that hindsight moment of like, actually, these guys were just interviewing me- Yeah ... for six months. And they were actually friends, and they were really cool about it too. And I just had the fuck it moment like that, that job opened up. I applied with all my heart, you know? Like, it, they had a bunch of quest writing on it. And then I went through like a pretty hardcore six-month recruiting process because they never hired designers from out of the company. Traditionally, designers were promoted from within Blizzard. Either they would like transfer out of other disciplines, or they would come from quality assurance, tech support. So hiring somebody off the street was kind of a big deal for them, and they really put me through a grilling. Um, I met with... It was the first time I met Chris Metzen- Mm-hmm ... who is maybe the most inspirational, creative person on the planet. And you instantly... They paired me... They did this interview pairing. There were these two guys. It was Kevin Jordan- Mm-hmm ... who was one of the original designers on WoW. Really, he doesn't get enough credit for his contributions. He was one of the earliest class designers, PvP designers. But he's a really quiet guy. Mm-hmm. And they paired him with Chris, and Chris just owns the room, you know? Mm-hmm. Chris, you could just sit and listen to him. He's so creative. He's so passionate. And the way he articulates things, like you just instantly become a fan of Chris when you're around Chris. And Chris, Kevin, and I go to lunch at, at this Italian place that was across the street from Blizzard, and I remember...Chris made a stop to buy cigarettes , you know, on the way to the interview. And then every other word out of Chris's mouth was like, "Fuck," and, "Shit." And I'd come from this whole, like, corporate culture from my dad's recruiting business, where I'd never imagined somebody would curse in an interview, or stop to buy smokes. And again, it was like, "I'm around my people." Like, I never smoked, but just, you know, being around people who didn't care about- ... what the corporate norms were was so inspiring. And then my last interview was with, uh, Alan and Rob, and a great programmer named Bob Fitch. Like, I think he's one of the first five developers at Blizzard. Uh, and they took me to an ARCO station that had a Jack in the Box. You know, how, like- ... sometimes they'll combo? It was like ARCO Jack in the Box. And that was my final interview at Blizzard, was at the ARCO Jack in the Box. And I remember thinking to myself, "These guys just brought me to a Jack in the Box that's in an ARCO station. I need to work here." Like, this is... "These are my people." "This is where I belong." Like, it was the greatest thing ever. And so, yeah, that's my crazy journey to Blizzard. - Uh, started at the bottom and end up at the top in a Jack in the Box. Can you speak to... 'Cause you mentioned some of the low points in the... in depression. Through that journey, how did you find your way out? So, can you just... A lot of people are sitting in those low points right now listening to this. What kind of wisdom can you draw about finding your way out, finding your people? - There were a lot of really low points. Uh, I'll give you the weirdest one. I started drinking a lot, and alcohol was something that I really wrestled with until my early 30s. And one of the things I'm most proud of today is sobriety and having been sober for such a long time now. And I remember I was- I was just ha- I would like buy a bottle of Old Grand-Dad and- ... like, drink the whole thing by myself, and then watch the Oscars. I remember I was ... Of all things, I'm watching the Oscars, which is just such a fake, bullshit environment. But I was like... You know, I was really drunk and all those people seemed so together and successful and polished, and I just... It made me... It was that contrast that made me feel like such a failure. And it all seems so stupid and unimportant to me now. Um, I became... You know, I got in that constant struggle of try not to drink, but drink to make it feel better. I was lucky, My parents were very supportive of me, even in my 20s, even after I, you know, quote-unquote left the house. I went into therapy and that was very helpful. You know, know, extremely helpful. And one thing I learned is that you have to find the right therapist for you. It's not just checking a checkbox of, "I went to therapy." It's about finding somebody who sort of helps you get out of whatever rut you're in, in a way that's healthy for you. And, um, I tried antidepressants, but I hated... I just hated taking pills and feeling like something was in me, and making me feel different. I never responded to it. And then the hardest thing, you know, which I've never mentioned to anyone, and is hard for me to talk about, but eventually I went through ECT, which is electroconvulsive therapy, shock therapy. And that broke me out. And I would never endorse that as a miracle. That was... I was at such a low point that people were very worried about me and my wellbeing- ... and what was gonna happen, and that was sort of an extreme pull-the-rip-cord, like there's-nothing-else-to-lose moment. And I think that was the difference maker. That, and starting at Blizzard. - To find... I mean, there is a- there is a deep loneliness there when before you met those guys at lunch, you're alone, like in a really deep fundamental way. Like, in the way you weren't in New York with the writing- with the writer's group, right? And so that must've been an incredible experience just to see the guild. - Yes. It was everything I nee- I... As such an introvert, you- you think that there are extroverts and introverts, and introverts don't need anybody, but weirdly, I think introverts almost need people more. And we don't always know how to engage- ... in the right, healthy ways, and how to find people and how to connect with people. And it was- it was great. Um, one... The thing that had attracted me to creative writing was the solitude of it, and the fact that you didn't have to collaborate, and you could just write what you wanted to write and it was all you. You would succeed on your own or you would fail on your own, and that was very attractive to me. And the thought of creative collaboration was actually off-putting. I'd spent all four years of undergrad interning at Universal Pictures, 'cause I thought I wanted to be in film, and it was such an unhealthy creative collaboration in the film industry. It's a very, you know, I look up unhealthily to the film industry and admire it and, you know, grew up with all these legends who had come from there. But it's like a caste system. And I was on the bottom of the caste system as an intern, and I was seeing how the other people who were low caste in the film industry were treated, and it was just horrible, you know. But games was different. Games was very flat. It didn't matter if you were the CEO or the boss, like, the way Mike and Allen carried themselves with, you know, me, who was an associate game designer, you felt like an equal. And I think it... Not just the comradery, but the part that shouldn't be overlooked is the work itself and the work ethic. That's what really pulled me out. - Hard work on a thing you love. - I have to, if you may allow me, read the prophetic one of us, quote, "one of us" post you made on April 18th, 2002. Because in some deep sense, you, I think, remained one of us. The... I apologize to bring up Justinian the emperor, but remained a kind of peasant gamer, a true gamer, who happens to be also be designing the games. And so this post kind of speaks to that. It's fascinating to read, because that was at the very beginning, right? You didn't know anything. You didn't know the games you would end up creating. Title of the post, "If you want something done right." He wrote, "This week, I accepted a position as associate game designer with Blizzard Entertainment. Specifically, I will be designing quests for World of Warcraft, Blizzard's MMORPG based on the popular Warcraft series. In addition to my duties as quest designer, I will also be expected to contribute to helping design the end game content for World of Warcraft. The reason I'm sharing this information, besides the fact that I have a masochistic love of reading rants and flames about myself, is because I know that the fans of this site are hardcore MMORPG players. The readers of the site have also come to know my personal opinions on what constitutes a fun gaming experience versus what feels like a complete waste of time or poorly designed encounter." Wow, you're very eloquent in this post and without too much shit talking. "You've all read my opinions on such things as tedious key camps, obvious time sinks, devoid of any story or linear narrative, quests which reward the lucky over the skilled and quest rewards which are out of sync with the amount of time and effort required to complete them. I hope that my association with World of Warcraft will serve to comfort MMORPG fans that one of us is on the other side of the fence, looking out for the interest of the player." And you go on to describe some of the high hopes you have for World of Warcraft, which is really fun to read because you don't realize- - Now- - ... it's gonna be, like, one of the greatest games of all time played by millions of human beings, just where those millions of human beings are playing for hundreds of hours, thousands of hours. It's crazy. It's funny that this... one of us is writing at the dawn of a new age. The final paragraph is, "So with all that is going on with me, you'll have to excuse any lapse in updates to the site here. I will try my hardest to give you slack or something to read while you should be working. But in the meantime, there's a whole world of NPCs. They need to learn the words kaksagur and mo'fucker, in quotes, and the like. Although something tells me I'm already in trouble with the boss." One of us, Jeff, one of us. That was a beautiful, beautiful post. Did you in fact get in trouble with the boss? - No. No. My boss was Allen. And Allen was very understanding and he... they kind of knew what they were getting into- when they hired me. And that post actually embarrasses me when I hear it now. There's so much ego in it- ... and I think that's... it's got that 20 year old- ... you know, "I don't know what I don't know." - "I know exactly how to fix this video game and all video games and-" But there's brilliance behind that. There's a passion behind that. Like, we're... when you're a gamer and you really put in the hours in a game like EverQuest, you understand what makes for a compelling experience. You don't, at that time, understand how much hard work is required to create that experience and how much uncertainty there is, how difficult it is, how many trade-offs there are. How your designs, when they actually are brought to the world and are experienced by thousands of people, millions of people, they are different from the division you had for it. So all those elements you don't know, but you have to have that ego in the beginning, right? Do you even have the guts to try? Do you have the guts to put in all that work? So what were the... what was it like? What were the vibes of early Blizzard like? They've... at this point, Warcraft I and II, Warcraft III is in production. StarCraft. These are legendary games. I don't... I spent probably over 1,000 hours in these games combined. I played Warcraft I, II, III. I played StarCraft I and II. I played WoW, of course. Diablo I, II, III, IV. Play Diablo II with "Stay a while and listen," with Deckard Cain. - Stay a while and listen. - I mean, some of these characters, some of these experiences just, they'll stay with me forever. Anyway, so big thank you to those early Blizzard folks. What was it like? What was the team like? What were the developers like? What were the vibes like in those early days? - It was the dream. When I showed up at Blizzard on my first day, the office was on the University of California Irvine campus at the time. They have this research and development park where, if you're like a tech company, you can get office space there, and Blizzard took up... When I joined, it was three-fourths of the building was Blizzard, and there were... There was like a building right next to it that had like Cisco and, you know, it was like all kind of techy places. And it was so funny because you drive up and like everything was very serious and corporate, and then outside of the Blizzard offices, everybody is wearing black T-shirts and shorts and throwing frisbees and playing Hacky Sack and on scooters and skateboards, and you're like, "Okay, that's where, that's where Blizzard is." So it was that environment. I remember walking in the door and thinking like, "It feels like I'm walking into a dorm room-" "... 'cause it was just posters on the wall." And there were actually, like people would have futons because they'd be sleeping because we would work so much back then. But the vibe was... It was very small. Like Blizzard, the day I joined in May of 2002, was fewer than 200 people, and that included... There was a whole group up in San Mateo called Blizzard North. So Blizzard South, the Irvine group, was responsible for StarCraft and Warcraft, and there were two development teams at Blizzard. It was called Team One and Team Two at Blizzard South. Um, Team One was revered. These are the RTS guys. They made, you know, StarCraft, Warcraft II, and they were, at that time, they're working on Warcraft III. Team Two was kind of the red-headed stepchild. Like apparently, before I joined, they had tried to spin off a second team multiple times and failed, and then they finally decided they were gonna make World of Warcraft. There was a game called Nomad. I don't know what that game was exactly, but that was what Team Two was working on at first. That got scrapped, and Allen stor- steered the team towards World of Warcraft. And there's amazing designer named Eric Dodds. He'd go on later in his career to be the game director of Hearthstone. Him and Ben, Ben Brode basically were the core designers behind that. But Eric and Kevin Jordan were these two key designers working on World of Warcraft for Team Two, and then you had this tech group that was headed up by John Cash. And John Cash, the first day that I showed up to work on Team Two, they said, "You have to go get your login from John Cash." I'm like, "John... The John Cash from id?" And, you, you know, John Cash has a skin. You could be John Cash in Quake III. So, and then he saw me, and he, he was a huge EverQuest player, and you're like... He was like, "You're the guy who runs Legacy of Steel." I'm like, "You're John Cash." We had, we had that moment where we kind of fanboyed out on each other. And it was just... The vibe was so cool there. Like, there were very few producers. So a game team, there are five core disciplines that make a video game. You've got engineers or programmers who are writing the code. You've got the art team that's making all the visuals for the game, and that spans everything from like 3D modeling, characters, environments, to also animation, tech art, you know, making it all work. You've got game design, which some companies don't have design. The artists and the engineers do it. Valve famously has very few designers because everybody there is a designer. But in companies where design is a discipline, which it very much is so at Blizzard, game designers are sort of the creating the game experience people, you know, setting up all the systems and content in a way that gets the player to navigate through the game. - So that's part of a story, part of this quest design, part of it is like how you move through the game world. - Yes. So game designers, there's a spectrum, like same with art, same with engineering, of roles within game design. Some are more heavy on the systems side. So like any game that you've played where loot drops- Diablo IV, World of Warcraft, you know, Escape from Tarkov, whatever. If there's loot dropping, a designer has planned out very carefully what drops where and at what percentages. That would be like a systems designer. A content designer is somebody who's gonna make quests or write storylines, or there might even be a narrative designer, which is even more focused on a story. But designers, you know, run the gamut, and then you've got these jack-of-all-trade designers that can do it all. Um, so that's the design group. There's production, which is project management, and production is different at every game company you go to. So if you talk to someone from EA or Blizzard, production might be very different. They might be the boss. They might actually be a designer or they might be more of a project manager. And then one of my favorite disciplines on a game team that's often overlooked is sound and- ... you know, audio, which is comprised of the sound designers and composers. And there are two things, I think there are two things that no one realizes how much they bring to a game until they're missing, and that's audio and lighting. Because most of the time, we're playing without these things, and it just feels a little off and wrong. And when you have a great lighting artist or you have a great composer or sound designer, like, it... the experience. You're just tapping into these senses that you wouldn't otherwise. But that's who comprises the game team. - Is the lighting, you know, all the different kinds of graphics, would that be under the art team? - Yeah. Lighting, you're gonna have lighting under the art team, but they're gonna be best friends with the graphics programmer. And, you know, like I mentioned with design, there's this wide spectrum on the engineering team, you have some guys who are like, Architectural geniuses who are coming up with, you know, the server client model or the networking or whatever. Others are more, like, gameplay focus. On Overwatch, we had an audio programmer just doing nothing but audio hooks for the audio team. And on every game team, you're gonna have graphics programmers who will work with people like the lighting artists or the environmental artists, character artists on shaders, and basically any way to make the game. They'll always ask, "What's your vision? What are you trying to get it to look like?" They'll want an illustration of what should the world look like, and they'll be the ones who say, "I know how to write code to- that will let you do that." So you partner a great graphics programmer with a great lighting artist, and that's... That's actually the creative tension behind games and what makes game teams so unique, is if we were to line them up on some crazy spectrum, on one end, you're gonna have the artists who... They're creative, dare I say emotional- ... you know, they are artistes on that end. And on the other end, you have the most logical, brilliant programmers whose minds just work very differently from the most creative art- Like artists could be sitting, you have a meeting with them and they'll just sit illustrating. If there's any piece of paper, they're drawing on it. Um, and programmers, you know, they're just so brilliant and organized in their thinking and everything is so logical. And then in the middle are people like the sound designers, the- the game designers, and the producers. They're kind of a little bit in- in all those fields, but it's the brilliance of taking people who are so vastly different in their interests and talents, but aiming them at that shared goal or that shared vision of the game that, like, really makes something special. - And there, I mean, you showed me the size of the team for World of Warcraft, but you've also are well known for working on quite small teams to create these incredibly huge games. What is the- the power of a small team in this kind of context where a lot... there's that creative tension? Is it- is it because a small team avoids maybe the compartmentalization, like the modular where the artists now have their own wing building where they never talk to the engineers, that kind of thing? - Absolutely. I mean, you hit the nail on the head. The bigger the team, the more you become a cog in the machine. And on a small team, the way I like to describe it is you get to have a loud voice. If we're a small team, let's say we're gonna make a game and it's at sort of the incubation period of a game and there's only 10 of us, all 10 of us are in the room for every decision. You know, I'm not a server networking guy, but I'm in the room for that discussion. I'm not an illustrator, but I'm gonna sit in the room when we decide what the art style looks like. As soon as the team starts to grow, we become compartmentalized. It's exactly like you said. And there's a weird thing that happens that's just kind of a human nature thing. The less you interact with somebody, the more you sort of become alienated from them and vilify their point of view. You tend to look at what they do and say with skepticism rather than trust and belief in them. And I find on smaller teams where we all know each other's names, I know what everybody's working on every day, they know what I'm working on, everybody can talk to each other, there's none of that stereotyping of a discipline. On big unhealthy teams, you start to say things like, "Well, the artists just don't get it." "They don't understand what we're trying to make." And when you back up and you think about the statement that you just said, it's like... Such an asshole statement. Like, really, all the artists don't get it? Like, that's... A, that's not true. B, that's sort of demeaning to them. Like, they signed up for the... This is their life's work, too. This game is gonna be as much theirs as it is mine. So who am I to say a statement like that? - Yeah. It's harmful to a discipline to think that you understand the world. Most silly other folks don't, and you have nothing to learn from them, really, and, They're deluded in some in some kind of way. That's so powerful. - Fast-forwarding a little bit, when we formed Team Four and... Which went on to make Titan and ultimately fail, and then that got rebooted as the Overwatch team, the idea that I tried to get through to the team was to make an assumption. And really, like, Blizzard is one of the top game developers in the world, and we were very fortunate when I was there, and I imagine it's this way today, that we could recruit whatever talent we wanted. It... The best of the best wanted to come work at Blizzard. And if you sort of go through the paces of that and say, "Okay, when we recruit somebody..." Let's say we're recruiting an artist to make props. Boxes, chairs, whatever. That is the best prop artist in the industry. That's who's gonna show up on our doorstep, so when they show up here, we should treat them like the best prop artist in the industry instead of starting from a place of doubt and cynicism. So, when that person speaks up and says, "I think..." Like, with Overwatch, for example, "I think we should do this." You know, "We should do X instead of Y." Instead of saying, "Well, I'm a believer in Y, why are you against my idea X?" You should take a moment, have a deep breath, and say, "Man, the best prop is suggesting something. Why don't I listen to it?" - I actually do it for myself, like this kinda thought framework or thought experiment. Whenever I'm talking to a new person, especially if I feel, myself, a little bit tinge of that feeling. Usually, it happens with, like, a really young person, like an undergraduate student or someone like this. I pretend that they are the smartest person in the world in my head, and then not... Like, it puts me in the mode of, like, assuming I have a lot to learn from them, and it helps. You actually, like, really listen. I literally think they're the smartest, wisest human on Earth. It helps me. - I had that, like, I think... You know, I'm no expert. I'm a game designer, so, like, as much psychology as I know is how to manipulate people into having fun, hopefully. Like, I don't know, I don't have an important job. But psychologically speaking- - That's fun. - ... I... One thing I think a lot about is ego, and I think about insecurity. And insecurity, we all have. Like, all of us as human beings have insecurity. It just manifests itself in different ways. And as we kind of go through our life journey, the insecurity also changes. So, like, some people, for example, use their insecurity to rip other people apart. Some people destroy themselves through their own insecurity. Some people destroy everybody with their insecurity. But I had that moment as a young lead, when I first was made a lead on, like, World of Warcraft, where I felt it was very important to be right and to, you know, be shepherding the correct idea. And I actually got pulled aside. Like, Pardo and I had a meeting with a couple people who weren't game designers, and it's always tricky as a game designer because constantly everybody is throwing ideas out in- on a game team. Like, there's no shortage of ideas ever. And we were in some meeting about something, and these people kind of threw out these ideas. And I wasn't mean to them, but I very kind of systematically, like an insecure, you know, ego-driven new lead would do, I kind of, "Let me tell you why that's wrong, and let me tell you what we're gonna do instead." And after the meeting, you know, Pardo pulled me aside, and he said, "You're a very smart designer, but you shouldn't do what you just did to those people. You should always listen to what people have to say and try to make their ideas work." And I just... Over and over, I was like, "Okay, anytime an idea comes my way, let's try to make it work." And it went from this kind of thing that I didn't believe into to actually, like, a core part of who I am today as a leader, as a game designer, as a game director. And some of the best ideas have come from developing other peoples' ideas- ... where your first reaction is like, "No, that's wrong," and then just kind of sticking with it and going, "But how could we make it work?" And the most gratifying part when it succeeds is they get all the credit, and you've sort of elevated this person who Whose idea wouldn't have been championed, whose idea by the insecure, egotistical lead of, you know, early 2000s would have just said no. Now their idea is the thing everybody in World of Warcraft or Overwatch is just loving, and they get all the credit. - I should give context to the listener who doesn't know about the great Jeffrey Kaplan, That you're one of the most humble and always give credit to the team for everything and anything. And so everything we talk about today, I know you're probably resisting constantly giving credit to the team on everything. So you're the famous, "Hi, I'm Jeff from the Overwatch team," right? So just as a small aside, thank you for your humility through through your career, and thank you for always celebrating the team. But let's talk about WoW. Let's talk about World of Warcraft. Tell me what the early days of developing WoW was like. Maybe we should talk about what World of Warcraft, WoW is, going to Perplexity here. World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online RPG where you create a character, level it up doing quests and dungeons, and progress your gear and power in an open fantasy world called Azeroth. At a basic level, you move, use abilities from your action bar, follow quests, and gradually learn a combat rotation that fits your class. And there's all kinds of characters and roles and classes. You pick a race, appearance, starting zone, small racial bonuses. In a class, how you fight, what your role is in groups. Can you continue, fill in some of the gaps, what is World of Warcraft? - World of Warcraft, first of all, more than anything, is a world. Like, it's a world that you can live in with real other people, and everybody's kinda living out their fantasy. Chris Metzen, who was the creative director on World of Warcraft, and really, like, Allen Adham, who's one of the founders of Blizzard, calls Chris "the heart and soul of Blizzard." And it's almost like when you're making a Blizzard game, you're making Chris' imagination at some point. And Chris famously said, "The lead character of World of Warcraft is the world." And I always believed that. So you're trying to create this place that's exciting and dangerous, but comfortable, but uncomfortable and gorgeous, and, you know, it should feel massive, and it really is. It, it's, you know, can take a half an hour to get from one end of the world to the other. But it's this world you're living in. The world is divided into two warring factions. There's the Horde and the Alliance, and that was a very important, very controversial decision that was made by Allen Adham, was the champion of the Horde and Alliance. - And that in the early days, there was a really strong division. - Strong division. - Like... You pick a side and then you hang around with only people of your kind. - Yeah, and you get it tattooed in real life on you. Like, the amount of people who walk up to me and show me their Horde tattoo. - That's awesome. - Like, it's epic. It's like it's become who they are. Like, if you were to say, like, "Hey, Lex, come play World of Warcraft with me. We're Alliance on Tichondrius," you'd be like- - Right - ... "Dude-" - Lose my number. - "... Alliance?" - Like, "Okay, I don't think we can be friends anymore." But the Horde-Alliance decision was really controversial because in EverQuest, it was mixed race. They had all the races kind of like WoW did, but they could all group with each other. And Pardo and I came from EverQuest, where we felt like this was a horrible decision Allen was making. And we argued, Allen, Rob, Bob, Fitch, and I would have lunch every single day, and we would just talk about WoW and the core design of WoW. Rob wasn't even on WoW at that time. He was finishing Warcraft III. And we would fight over the Horde-Alliance split, if it was a good idea or not. And Allen had... He came from more of the Dark Age of Camelot community, which was another massive multiplayer online game that was more PvP based. And he said the magic of that game was they had three factions, and he liked the fact that you were instantly on a team. You weren't a loner in the world. And whether you liked it or not, you had people on your side. And Rob and I just argued and argued against it, and then sometime before beta, Allen retired. He went on to run a hedge fund, of all things. Like, got super into poker, got super into finance, left, and retires, like, I think it was nine months to a year before WoW shipped, which is kinda nuts. And Rob takes over as lead designer in Allen's stead, and to Rob's credit, the first thing he did was go... Speaking to what we were speaking about earlier, he said, "Allen's a smart guy. The fact that he was fighting so hard for-" "... Horde Alliance, we gotta do it." And, uh, Rob and I sort of changed our point of view and got on board with Horde Alliance and went all in. And so, you know, the early days of WoW was... It was a great team. It was a mix of these veterans that we all looked up to. You know, we had Mark Kern running the team. Shane Dabiri was, you know, legendary Blizzard developer. Bill Petris was the art director, and then we had Metzen, who was sort of like... Metzen was the cool big brother we all, you know, aspired to be. Uh, I'm older than Metzen, but I looked up to him like a big brother. And then there were a lot of us who had never done it before, or they had also pulled a lot of people from other teams and other game types. Like, for example, the guys building the dungeons, they hired out of the Quake community. And because they didn't…

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