- Yeah. And what eventually broke me was it used to be like in 2016 and 2017, I felt very in control.
Of the Overwatch team and the direction of the game as a game director, you know, working with Ray Gresko as the.
Production director, it felt like we were running Overwatch.
And we were very, very successful and doing a good job.
And I think the fans were happy.
And then as we transitioned, you know, Overwatch League was the best intention.
You know, my parents always say, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
That was the Overwatch League, and it ended up being an albatross.
And then Overwatch 2 is the same thing.
And what it boiled down for me, like what sort of.
Ultimately broke me in my Blizzard career was I got called into the CFO's office, and he sits me down and he.
Says, it, he gives me a date, which at the time was 2020 and was going to slip to 2021, but at.
The time, it was 2020. And he said, "Overwatch has to make.
In 2020, and then every year after that, it needs a recurring revenue of ."
And then he says to me, "If it doesn't do dollars,.
We're gonna lay off a thousand people, and that's gonna be on you."
And that was just the biggest fuck you moment I had in my career.
It felt surreal to be in that condition.
And as somebody who's worked on a lot of games, made a lot of games,.
You get in these meetings where they're like, "There's Fortnite has 1,400 people working on it.
If you just hire.
1,400 people and make it free-to-play, we'll make that money, right?"
And that was, 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. I was like, it's,.
We're done here. Luckily for Blizzard, that CFO is no longer there.
- I mean, Blizzard is one of the greatest companies in the history of Earth.
They've created so many incredible video games.
It's so difficult to create so many hits, and they were done not by chasing money.
They're done by small incredible teams,.
The hodgepodge that you describe taking big risks and falling in love with the thing they do and then just chasing it,.
Working extremely hard. And.
Just because you figured out a way how to make a lot of money doesn't mean it's not,.
At.
The.
Core.
This.
Incredible.
Creative.
Journey.
That's incredibly difficult to pull off.
And just because you got a bunch of really smart creative people who have somehow figured out how to pull it off.
Multiple times in a row doesn't mean you can just treat it like a machine.
Every single time, it's this beautiful journey of a hodgepodge of weirdos working together, and weirdos have to run that thing.
If you have, ever have a chance to create something special, you have to have weirdos at the helm.
And it, it, the degree to which you don't have weirdos at the helm, creative minds at the helm,.
And you're a businessperson at the helm, get out of their way, right?
You can't, you cannot have the meetings like you're describing.
And I don't just speak about this particular company.
It's just the entire industry. I just,.
There's so much joy to be had if we keep creating great games, and I just hope we get to see those.
Great games.
- I think there's a message to creative people out there and people who make stuff.
We're generally, we're so focused on the love of the craft.
That we get lost in it and we love doing it, and we're not cutthroat.
And we don't have that kind of ambition.
We have a different kind of ambition.
But there's this whole world, especially as soon as you're lucky enough to have success, that are very cutthroat and very ambitious.
And for whatever reason, we keep giving ourselves to them, and we need to stop giving our so...
World of Warcraft, when we made it, there was no CFO at Blizzard.
You don't need a CFO to make World of Warcraft.
You need artists, engineers, designers, producers, and an audio team.
- You don't need to bring in...
Just because you're making a lot of money doesn't mean you need to now start adulting by bringing in a CFO.
You can figure it out. - And there are great finance guys.
Like I've worked with finance guys who get it and get out of the way and respect, and they're gamers, and they.
Sort of understand, but like,.
I wish developers would understand their own value more.
And stop handing the golden goose to people who don't deserve it.
- How painful was it to say goodbye?
- Uh, it broke me. I think after you've been at a place like Blizzard, which I love Blizzard.
To this day, I have nothing but warm, fond memories.
I mean, there's those moments where you're like, "I wish that hadn't happened," but.
On the whole, that place is mecca for game development, and everything I have.
Is due to Blizzard. They provided for me and my family, made me the person I am, so.
Separating from Blizzard was one of the most painful things.
And I was very sad when I resigned, and I didn't realize how broken I was until recently, like the mourning, grieving.
I had gone through of like...I think I'm a little fucked in the head for not being there any...
How could I give that up?
How could I not be there anymore?
It It.
Was.
Really,.
Really.
Painful.
Leaving.
- Can we just speak to,.
I don't know, I don't think we can give enough love to Blizzard.
It's a legendary company.
For me personally, for everybody, for millions of people, created some of the greatest games ever, Warcraft, StarCraft Universe, Diablo, WoW, Overwatch.
What made it such a legendary game company?
Just looking back at the whole of it?
- The start is Mike, Allen, and Frank.
It was run by three gamers.
They were, all three of them, programmers.
They made the games before they just ran the company, so they knew what each of us as developers beneath them were.
Going through, and they protected us.
They shielded us from all of the nonsense, and even when they would align with a businessperson, they had a COO in.
The early days named Paul Sams, and Paul protected us.
You know, they just, they found great people who got it.
The company when I joined was, like, 95% developers and, like, 5% operations.
It's,.
When I left, it was, you know, 50/50, and that's like a 4,500-person company.
That.
Love of the games and the respect and good treatment for game developers.
Really turned it into the place that it was, just the commitment to excellence,.
The high-quality bar and then finding these passionate people like Chris Metzen or Sam Didier, they were, like, the visionaries of early.
Blizzard, Allen Adham, of just these worlds that we're still making and we're still playing in today.
It was infectious and it was inspirational, and you wore the Blizzard blue with an esprit de corps.
Like, you felt proud to be part of it and you felt like you had made it to be there, and everything.
You did, you did wanting to respect and honor those who had come before you.
I know that sounds almost cheesy saying it that way, but it really had that sense of reverence, like you knew you.
Were part of something special. You didn't take it for granted.
- Yeah. That's the sense. Reading everything, that's the sense I got.
Everybody there was a part of it.
That truly, truly, truly honored that time.
Just to take a small slice, what were some of the brain...
So you mentioned Chris Metzen. You gave so much love to so many.
People on the team, but I gotta ask about Chris Metzen, who I would, by the way, love to do a podcast.
With at some point. What were the brainstorming sessions with him like?
It seems like those are pretty like, awesome.
- They were the best. Like, you could walk into a room.
Like, the way I would work with Chris is early on when I was more junior, it was just sort of getting.
Creative direction from him. "Hey, Chris, I'm about to work on this zone called Westfall.
What are your ideas? You know, how could I capture them in gameplay?
Well, that won't quite work. How about like this?"
It was more like that. Later on, like, I still remember, the first discussion I ever had with Chris about Wrath of.
The Lich King, I went up to his office like, "Hey, we're finally doing it.
We're doing the Northrend expansion.
You know, what excites you about Northrend?"
And that's all you had to say.
And he would draw a map.
And he'd start pulling up old, like, Warcraft II and Warcraft I manuals and, you know, showing you, like, pictures he and.
Sammy had drawn and, like, maps and he, all of it, he would just go on for an hour and then I.
Would sort of digest. I'd just listen, taking constant notes.
I'm photographing his whiteboards all the time, and then I go back and start to put those into design flow of, like,.
"Okay. What's a zone? What's a dungeon?
What could be cool? What should come first?
What should come last?" You know, Lich King, for example, we wanted to try a very specific design to counter a problem.
We had in Burning Crusade, which is everybody entered through the Dark Portal through Hellfire Peninsula, all the server programmers hate you.
Because everybody loads into the same zone at the same time.
Lich King, we split them up for better player flow.
Plus, it's more interesting the more choice you have.
You know, Sid Meier says, "Games are a series of interesting choices," so we give them two starting zones, but.
That was the flow with Chris.
And so often we would just, like, okay, in that first meeting, Chris had put a zone called Grizzly Hills on the.
Board. Well, I don't know anything about Grizzly Hills.
"Hey, Chris? Talk about Grizzly Hills."
If you didn't interrupt him, he'd just go for an hour.
And you have no idea how much of it, like, he had pre-thought about or had existed in previous lore.
And how much of it he was just making up on the spot.
He's just that charismatic and captivating.
- Creating these worlds and being able to- ...
Brainstorm through them and together, I mean, that is what you're doing.
As a consumer of those worlds, you kind of take it for granted.
That they're incredible, but, like, you're crafting them.
Like, you're looking at a blank sheet of paper and then together coming up...
- My job, as I saw it working with Chris, was I had to on World of Warcraft specifically working with Chris,.
Is I was like the translator into gameplay of what Chris wanted, how to get it to play like how Chris wanted.
So my favorite story is we're working on Burning Crusade and we're in this meeting and Chris is like...He's the gentlest, sweetest.
Guy, but because he carries himself with such confidence and everybody's in awe of him, the junior developers get kind of intimidated.
By him. So we're in this meeting and we're talking about Silvermoon City because we're introducing the blood elves, and Chris is.
Like, "And Silvermoon City's got the tallest fucking tower in all of Azeroth.
I mean, it is the tallest thing.
You know, it's mind-blowing, the awe of it.
Only the blood elves could build it."
Fast-forward like two weeks later. I'm walking through the hall and I see a bunch of level designers and artists are all.
Like crowded around the screen, and on the screen they've dragged Blackrock Mountain and Karazhan and the Stormwind Cathedral.
I'm like, "What the fuck are you guys doing?"
And they're like, "Well, Chris said that the Silvermoon Tower had to be the tallest thing in World of Warcraft-" "...
And so we're measuring how tall all of these other things are so we can make the tower taller."
And I'm like, "Guys, Chris doesn't know how tall the Burning Steppes, you know- ...
And the cathedral in Stormwind- ...
Is. What Chris means is just make the tower really fucking tall."
"You don't need to measure it."
And they're like, "Oh, okay. That's okay?"
Like are you willing to take the heat if he- I'm like, "I'm willing to take the heat on this one, guys."
- Yeah. It's just a feeling.
It's a vibe. It's- - It's a vibe.
- Yeah. And I also just personally have to give all the love in the world for the current Diablo IV team,.
Because I've spent most recently out of the Blizzard games, I've spent a huge amount of time in Diablo, and they've created.
Some... And it's not just the loot, all right?
It's the whole experience, the art, everything together.
And the seasons they've created, they've created a really wonderful world.
So I can, I could see, I could feel how much effort goes into that.
- They're crushing it. And I think Diablo IV in like modern times is one of the best worlds that they've built.
And they know,.
They understand Diablo players. Like that community is so hard and so demanding, and that team is amazing.
- Yeah, there's a lot of richness.
It's like there's this really... I mean, I don't know how often you get that, but it's really the perfect Diablo game.
They've really like evolved a lot, grew a lot.
So there's this whole mathematical component of just so many numbers everywhere and it's all balanced really masterfully.
And then all, of course you have to come up with new content with the seasons and they figure out ways to.
Do that, so and, and, and a crazy pace.
And still make it super fun.
- They're a great live team, yeah.
- And for me personally, like I said, the co-op, the couch co-op experience have been really like that aspect of it.
Is really great, just all of it.
It's one, one of the greatest games in recent history.
One of the things I wanted to mention, 'cause this is a powerful speech is sort of instead of doing some kind.
Of a corporate goodbye as you were leaving Blizzard,.
You allegedly shared with your team a video of David Bowie giving advice.
And people should go watch this clip.
But if I may read it, Bowie says, "Never play to the gallery.
Always remember that the reason that you initially started working was that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if.
You could manifest in some way, you would understand more about yourself and how you co-exist with the rest of society.
I think it's terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other peoples' expectations.
I think they generally produce their worst work when they do that.
And the other thing I would say.
Is that if you feel safe in the area that you're working in, you're not working in the right area.
Always go a little further into the water than you feel you're capable of being in.
Go a little bit out of your depth.
And when you don't feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you're just about in the right place to do.
Something exciting." Speaking of which, you are.
Just about in a place to do something exciting.
After leaving Blizzard,.
Uh, you told me that you tried to take some time off.
How did that work out for you?
- Not so well. My wife, who is wonderful, told me I needed to take at least a year off and just,.
You know, I'd been going really hard.
I'd gone 19 years barely taking vacation and I let Blizzard consume me.
And, you know, I was crushed by leaving because I loved the place, and.
I didn't know what to do with myself.
I was pulling weeds in the backyard.
- Literally. Gardening. - Yeah. Well, she won't let me garden in the garden 'cause that's hers- ...
But I'm allowed to pull the weeds.
So I got very good at that.
I was very proficient. And then of all things, I cracked out on Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War and I.
Unlocked Dark Matter Ultra, which I'd- that's like a crazy achievement to do in that game.
So I did that, and then I just,.
I couldn't help it, like it's how I'm programmed.
It was like at this point it's late spring, early summer and I'm just sitting in the backyard and I just started.
Writing with Notepad about.
Here's a game I want to make.
And it was so terrifying.
Because for 19 years I had worked with the greatest developers, I thought, in the industry.
And, you know, there'd be moments where it's like, "Okay, I wanna do like a game world map."
Like, "Hey, Erin, you're amazing at making game world maps.
Like, you do that." And you know, I, like, "I need some story hooks.
Hey, Chris, what do you think would be cool here?"
Like, you know, it's so collaborative and I was surrounded by the best of the best, and there I was by myself.
And I was out there again, and I loved it.
It brought all the joy of game making.
I thought games were no longer fun to make because it was only about business,.
And somebody's asking me for unreasonable amounts of money and unreasonable amounts of time.
And I had forgotten the pure joy of the craft of making games, and.
I was designing, I was going on, I was watching YouTube videos to learn Unreal and Adobe Illustrator and all these things.
To like help me make games, whatever, Blender.
Um, I had no right to be doing any of that, and it just felt so amazing to do it.
And I sort of realized, I came to two realizations.
One,.
I never wanna work for someone else again.
I never wanna.
Create something and then have somebody take my baby away from me, you know?
That's really hard when- when that happens, and it's sort of happened a few times now, you know, where you have to.
Just let something go that you created.
And I wanted it all to be focused on the craft of making games, the art, programming, design, audio, you.
Know? Like, just not about the bullshit of the games industry.
I'm not interested in the games industry.
I'm not interested in the business of games.
I'm not interested in the entertainment industry.
It's just game jamming, making stuff that we're gonna play together.
And around that time, my I call him my development soulmate.
There's a programmer named Tim Ford.
He reached out and he's like, "Hey, man..."
He was like an associate tech director on Overwatch at the time.
And he's like, "Yeah, I don't think I can do this anymore.
It's just not like it was, you know, I just handed in my notice."
And I'm like, "Whoa, you know, well, if you wanna do something together, like fuck it.
Let's take a stab and, you know, just see what happens."
And Tim came over to my house, and well, before that, he says, "My last day's on Friday."
"And my exit interview's at like 1:00.
I'm gonna be over to your house at like 2:00 that afternoon."
And I'm like, "Well, don't you think you should take some time off, Tim, you know, before whatever's next for you?
Take a month off, you know?
Meg, his wife, will appreciate it, you know?
Just go pull weeds in the garden for a while."
And he's like, "I'm a programmer.
All I'm gonna do is program for a month if I take a month off.
I might as well start programming our game."
Which- - Brilliant - ... it was so awesome when he said that.
- Brilliant. - He came over and I pitched him this idea for a game, and I pitched him, "Let's start a.
Company." And that was it. Like, that was the birth of us making a studio.
- 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. - Yeah, I needed to be away from the world.
I needed to not have... I wanted to not get attention from anyone.
I needed to not read my name on Reddit or...
You know, any internet site. I wanted to not come up, let some other Jeff Kaplan bubble to the top- ...
Of the Google, you know, search list.
- You know our man Dinoflask is gonna be all over this conversation, right?
- Oh, God, well, there's, yeah, this- this one's gonna set him back some time.
But, yeah, I needed- - You know what to do.
- Uh, I needed for none of that to happen.
I just needed to be able to, like, mourn the loss of Blizzard- ...
And create on my own so it was great.
And at that time, like as soon as it was announced that I was leaving Blizzard, I had like 60 people reach.
Out to me. It was, this was April of 2021 and investment money was nuts, both like the VC money.
And the strategic money was crazy, like the, especially the Chinese companies, because apparently they weren't getting, publishing numbers in China or.
Something. The whole economy was crazy, and so just everybody was trying to throw money at me, which was a very good.
Position to sort of be at to start a company.
So what Tim and I did was say, "We're not doing this for money, but here's the game we wanna make, and.
It's gonna take this many developers, and we think it's gonna take this length of time, and that means the budget is.
This. And we need, for any of these people who wanna invest in us, we gotta hit that number, but after that,.
We're not gonna go for more money.
It's not an auction to raise as high as we can go.
We're gonna optimize for control."