Jeff Kaplan Was An Industry Icon, Now Peers Ignore His Emails: Ex-Overwatch Director Talks "Humbling" Reality Of Indie Dev
5 days ago by inlandempire to c/games
I can barely even remember if I played 2, but I remember his name from 1. He was in charge of Overwatch 1, and decided to make himself personally the public face of the game...
And once he did that, it wasn't just downhill, it was 90mph towards the Grand canyon.
The same thing rotted his brain that rots every billionaire's brains.
It's not about the money, it's about a person achieving game while being mostly surrounded by people whose careers depends on what you think of them. You stop getting any negative feedback and everyone tells you you're stunning and brave no matter what.
Seems like a prick.
What makes you say that? He doesn’t seem to come off that way in the interview.
Personally I always enjoyed his Overwatch Updates, and the Yule Log video he did. The down-slide for that game was definitely when he left and for good reason too. Leaving a company because you’re told “make x dollars or we lay off 1,000 people” is justified and what a sane person does.
Going indie I think was a good move, tho this is the first time I’d heard that’s what happened and have never heard of his game before.
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@sh.itjust.works
Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)
Posts.
- News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
- Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
- No humor/memes etc..
- No affiliate links
- No advertising.
- No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
- No self promotion.
- No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
- No politics.
Comments.
- No personal attacks.
- Obey instance rules.
- No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc..)
- Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.
My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.
Other communities:
go to feed...
From what I learned somewhere, he is actually pretty prolific, but for overwatch 2 they made him community director because they hoped they could cash in on his likeability, and then they just pressured him to the point that he decided to leave.
And it seems like most of these awkward announcements were a direct result of blizzard management putting pressure on him.
What I'm trying to say is, I'm not sure he was involved in Blizzard's decisions, so I withhold judgement.
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