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

Jeff Kaplan is a legendary Blizzard game designer of World of Warcraft and Overwatch, now preparing to launch a new game, The Legend of California, from his new studio Kintsugiyama – available to wishlist on Steam today, with alpha later in March.
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*EPISODE LINKS:*
The Legend of California (Steam Page): https://store.steampowered.com/app/2550530/The_Legend_of_California
Jeff’s Game Studio: https://www.kintsugiyama.com/

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*OUTLINE:*
0:00 – Episode highlight
1:27 – Introduction
4:07 – Early games: Pac-Man, Zork, Doom, Quake
18:33 – Writing career – 170 rejection letters
34:06 – EverQuest obsession
47:04 – Getting hired at Blizzard
1:02:32 – Lowest point in Jeff’s life
1:08:37 – One of Us
1:12:54 – Early Blizzard culture
1:32:36 – Building World of Warcraft
1:50:20 – How WoW changed video games
2:07:42 – Single-player vs Multi-player
2:28:35 – How Blizzard made great video games
2:54:25 – Online toxicity
3:01:59 – Why Titan failed
3:19:09 – Overwatch in six weeks
3:46:07 – Best Overwatch heroes
3:54:37 – The challenge of matchmaking
3:58:01 – Rust
4:08:22 – Why Jeff left Blizzard
4:30:35 – Diablo IV
4:32:03 – Getting back to making video games
4:40:59 – The Legend of California
4:54:44 – Greatest video game of all time
5:02:51 – AI and future of video games

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