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

Jeff Kaplan · 5h 10m · youtube.com ↗

29 korrents from this recording

Jeff Kaplan did not write this page.

Every claim below is a statement made in this recording, quoted word for word and linked to the second it was said, so you can hear it rather than take our word for it. The wording comes from the transcript published alongside the recording; the sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording.

0:32:28 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
The question to put to a young person is what they want to do, not what they want to be — the roles are a costume and asking about them is cruel.

Their wordsSo 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.

Interesting
51 min later
1:23:54 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
A small team is not a compromise: it is the only size at which everyone is in the room for every decision, including the ones outside their discipline.

Their wordsThe 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.

Interesting
1 min later
1:24:36 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
The less two people on a team interact, the more they vilify each other's point of view — which is where "the artists just don't get it" comes from.

Their wordsAnd 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.

Interesting
3 min later
1:27:06 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
If you recruited the best person in the industry, you owe their suggestions the treatment the best in the industry deserves rather than starting from doubt.

Their wordsThat 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.

Interesting
4 min later
1:30:47 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
A creative lead's job is to take the idea they think is wrong and try to make it work, because the best ideas come out of developing someone else's.

Their wordsAnd 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

Interesting
8 min later
1:39:11 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Not knowing what they were doing is why the World of Warcraft team succeeded, and being full of experts is why the Titan team failed.

Their wordsAnd we failed horribly, and we had the best of the best on that team. And it’s because everybody was too much of an expert on how to make a groundbreaking phenomenon MMO.

Interesting
9 min later
1:48:10 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Crunch is wrong when it is imposed — an executive on a forty-hour week has no business telling anyone to stay late — but a person choosing long hours on their own life's work is not the same thing.

Their wordsI don’t think executives who take off and work 40-hour weeks should be telling anybody to stay late. I think that’s wrong and immoral. But to me as an individual, as long as I’m not telling other people to do it, my life’s work is my passion and I want to do it as much as possible.

Interesting
8 min later
1:56:20 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
You design along the path of least resistance: players will take the cheapest route to their goal, so the designer's job is to put the experience they want played on that route.

Their wordsAnd I’ve heard it outside of Blizzard, other people in the industry, which is you design along the path of least resistance.

Interesting
2 min later
1:57:57 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Other players must be present in an online world but never compulsory: forcing interaction is what kept MMOs small, and letting people play alone is what made World of Warcraft enormous.

Their wordsAnd what makes an MMO, massively multiplayer online game, massive is having the other people there. And they’re so important or else the world feels kind of wrong and dead. But the concept that we have to force you to interact with them to do anything is very off-putting to a lot of people.

Interesting
3 min later
2:01:03 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Ask gamers what kind of player they are and they describe the player they wish they were, so a designer has to watch what people do rather than believe what they say.

Their wordsWe all, to some degree, lack the self-awareness of how we tick. So we’re all different types of gamers, but if you ask me to describe the type of gamer I am, I might actually be giving more of a picture of the type of gamer I wish I was or the type of gamer I want you to think I am versus the type of gamer I actually am.

Interesting
1 min later
2:01:34 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
You cannot be an exceptional game designer without playing enormously, and a bad game teaches as much as a great one.

Their wordsAnd the weirdest part about it is you’re not just looking for the greatest hits. You learn just as much from a shitty game that you do from an amazing game.

Interesting
3 min later
2:04:49 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Game design has no textbook, so a designer has to keep their own list of the elements of fun the way a writer keeps the elements of fiction.

Their wordsAnd there’s no, like, textbook that exists for game design, at least none that has been introduced to me yet. But I think about, like, elements of fun.

Interesting
20 min later
2:24:29 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Ant-farm design — building something to watch what the players will do — is the wrong way to design a multiplayer game.

Their wordsWhich is, you know, you’re the game designer who’s playing God, and players are the ants in your ant farm, and you want to see what they’re gonna do, which is not the correct way to be a good multiplayer designer.

Interesting
10 min later
2:34:58 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
A live game has to be architected so it can be hotfixed on a dime; waiting for a client patch to fix what is broken is already too slow.

Their wordsYou know, obviously, we patch our games and that’s where we fix a lot of bugs, but if you really wanna run a game like Overwatch or World of Warcraft successfully, you need master level engineers who have architected the client and server in such a way that you can hotfix the game on a dime.

Interesting
10 min later
2:45:23 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
A game is at its best on the day it is pitched, and every day of development moves the real thing further from the imagined one.

Their wordsWhen you come up with the idea and you start pitching it to people, that’s the best the game is ever gonna be, and then you work on it.

Interesting
9 min later
2:54:25 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Social media is built so that maximum hyperbole wins, and the negative direction pays better than the positive.

Their wordsAnd unfortunately, social media in general is designed in such a way where the maximum hyperbole works, and that’s how you get the most points is by being max hyperbolic.

Interesting
4 min later
2:58:46 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Weathering a firehose of criticism is now part of a creator's skillset, and it is quietly removing creators whose work the world will therefore never see.

Their wordsNow part of the skillset is being able to weather like a fire hose of criticism like the world has never seen.

Interesting
13 min later
3:11:24 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Ideas are infinite and worthless; vision is the ability to shepherd one into existence, and Titan had an idea with no path to reality.

Their wordsWhat I call vision is the ability to not only take a great idea, but shepherd it into existence, and you’re doing that through inspiration first and foremost.

Interesting
3 min later
3:14:50 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
A game must be incubated by the smallest possible group with whatever technology is to hand, and the team expanded only once the idea is proved.

Their wordsThe right way to incubate a video game is you have the smallest group possible and you try to get the idea across with whatever technology you can get your hands on, using other engines, using art from whatever. You prove out that idea, and once you know what you’re doing, then you expand the team.

Interesting
4 min later
3:18:21 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
The best feature you can add for the player is shipping.

Their wordsThe best feature we can add for the player is shipping.

Interesting
9 min later
3:27:49 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Scope is a creative decision, not a production one: the game, art and tech directors have to do the cutting themselves.

Their wordsThe mistake I see on a lot of game teams is scope becomes a production problem.

Interesting
27 min later
3:54:57 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Players say they want a fair match, but what they actually want is to be slightly better than the other side — and no matchmaker can deliver that.

Their wordsAnd the reality of what they want is they want a match where they’re slightly better than the other guy.

Interesting
2 min later
3:56:48 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Overwatch put too much weight on whether the team won; a hero shooter built today should foreground individual contribution, because that is how people actually play.

Their wordsSo I would, if I was to redo it today, or for any aspiring hero shooter makers out there, I would actually downplay the team factor, and try to put more focus on individual contribution.

Interesting
10 min later
4:07:13 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Almost no game ever catches the wave, so a game that has caught one should be ridden to the end rather than paused to build its sequel.

Their wordsThere’s this phrase of catch the wave, ride the wave. Most games fall off the back of the wave. They don’t catch the wave. No one plays it or plays it for two weeks.

Interesting
13 min later
4:20:09 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
You do not need a CFO to make World of Warcraft — you need artists, engineers, designers, producers and an audio team.

Their wordsWorld 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.

Interesting
36 min later
4:55:53 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Breath of the Wild is the greatest game ever made: most games become best in their genre for getting one thing right, and it gets all of them right.

Their wordsThere’s so many things that that game gets right that other games are lucky if they get one of those things right, and are… become best in their genre just for getting that one thing right. And Breath of the Wild does them all right and the best.

Interesting
8 min later
5:03:44 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
The trouble with AI as a development tool is that it is overconfident in what it delivers, and its hit rate is nowhere near good enough.

Their wordsThe problem with AI right now is it’s overconfident in what it tries to deliver.

Interesting
1 min later
5:04:44 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
No creative work should ever be used by AI without its maker's permission; doing it is no different from stealing.

Their wordsI think there’s a lot of moral concerns around AI when it comes to creative pursuits as well, like no one’s creative work should ever be used by AI without their permission.

Interesting
3 min later
5:08:00 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Small studios are the future of gaming: the genuinely new ideas come out of them, and the big studios acquire rather than generate them.

Their wordsSmall studios are the future of gaming. The big studios basically acquire the small studios for new IP and ideas, and the small studios grow in. The really compelling, new, innovative ideas are gonna come out of small studios.

Interesting