"Have you ever seen Napoleon Dynamite?"
I'll admit it: When I sat down with former Blizzard developer Jeff Kaplan to discuss his legacy and what comes next, I hadn't anticipated being asked questions myself--especially ones pertaining to one of the early aughts' most iconic (and absurd) comedy films. Yet it took only 20 minutes until we reached this point--when discussing the tragedy of Uncle Rico felt like a both a natural and important conversation to have.
Despite being a self-proclaimed introvert, it's easy to see how the World of Warcraft developer went on to become not just the director of Overwatch, but the highly public face of the game. There is an openness to Kaplan that fosters trust--a warmth that makes conversation feel natural. This quality was most assuredly what Blizzard was looking for as it readied itself to launch a new tentpole title that needed to make World of Warcraft-type money.
From Overwatch's reveal in 2014 to Spring 2021, Kaplan was all but synonymous with the hero shooter, personally delivering showcases, press conferences, and developer updates to its massive playerbase. But despite this--and a nearly two-decade-long career at Blizzard--Kaplan ultimately chose to leave the company after demoralizing corporate interference. As such, Kaplan's new studio, Kintsugiyama, is founded on one core belief: Game developers should be the ones making game-related decisions.
For the past few years, Kaplan has kept his head down in a self-imposed hermitage, his focus solely on developing Kintsugiyama's debut title, The Legend of California. From building server networks out of his dining room to getting ignored by industry contacts who once clamored for his attention, the transition from AAA legend to independent studio head has been "humbling," according to Kaplan. Yet, stripping away the corporate apparatus has only sharpened his drive to prove that great games are built by passionate developers, not corporations.
GameSpot: I'll start off by saying I listened to the podcast you did recently with Lex [Fridman]. And so I don't want to retread too much, but I do think this is probably going to be similar in tone--definitely not in scope. Don't worry, I won't keep you for five hours.
Kaplan: I'm shocked. I hope you at least listened at 2x speed. Yeah, it's--it's a long one, that's for sure.
It was so interesting though! Genuinely, like one of those "Behind the Studio" specials. I loved it. But before that interview, it had been a really long time, I think, since a lot of us had seen you in the spotlight. You went from a very, very public-facing role to a bit of a hermitage, I would say. Can you talk a little about that? Was that intentional?
It definitely was intentional. I think for me, and this is going to sound ridiculous but, I'm not someone who likes attention. I'm not much of an extrovert. I don't have a heavy social media presence. And so, a lot of me putting myself out there when I was at Blizzard was sort of to serve my game and my team--doing a job and a role.
And there were a lot of emotions mixed up in leaving Blizzard, but one of the things that was sort of much needed for me, on a personal level, was that withdrawal. To stop reading the subreddits, to not talk to anybody. It's not like I had a game that I needed to talk to anybody about, and I don't have the need to see my name in headlines or, you know, like, "Let's Google and see where I'm being mentioned today." That's just not me as a person. So, it was very soothing to my soul to sort of fade into the background and just put all of that aside for some time. It was pretty great, actually. It was very needed for me.
That's completely understandable. I feel like, especially towards the end of your time at Blizzard, [things were] obviously very tumultuous. I can assume it was very stressful. What's funny is I actually spoke to [current Overwatch director] Aaron Keller a bit about this [Overwatch's spokesperson] role, an d he said the exact same thing. He said, "I think it was always just out of necessity, there needed to be a face for the game."
Yeah, and you know, there doesn't need to be. I think there's a lot of companies that do a great job promoting their games without putting an individual developer forward. Like, I think of Valve or Rockstar. They don't necessarily put somebody in the forefront.
But I think it was good for Overwatch to sort of let the players know, "We're one of you, we're listening." It showed a level of transparency and engagement, like, "Hey, this thing is being made by real people." Blizzard always runs the risk of kind of, "Oh, it's just a nameless, faceless corporation" if we don't put ourselves out there. I think people like Aaron or myself, kind of [thought], "Hey, we should really let these people know: We play the game too. We have opinions too."
That was sort of the strategy, but it comes at a cost to you personally. I know a lot of extroverts who love it and are like, "I just did press for eight hours and I feel energized!" And I'm like, "Oh my god, I need to hide under a rock for seven days because I did one interview."
It's interesting that you bring up Rockstar, because there was a recent Dan Houser quote that was essentially about him being honored to forever be associated GTA, with Rockstar, but at the same time, it sets up these expectations when you do embark on this new endeavor yet you no longer have the footing that a ginormous, larger-than-life studio can provide. Especially one that is now owned by Microsoft, you know?
I was wondering, how do you look at your former relationship with Blizzard as you work on Legend of California? Is this something where you're like, "Oh, thank god, I have this pedigree, I have this attachment. People know who I am and that kind of helps have this recognition?" Or are you a bit afraid of the expectations that might be there?
I'm really torn. That's an excellent question, and I'm torn. As a creator--and I feel like I'm speaking on behalf of my team here, [because] you know, it's not just me by myself. I'm on a team of 33 amazing people. [But] I feel like if you were to ask any one of us, we would all say, "Yeah, bring on the high expectations." We want to be best-in-class game developers.
Now, the reality is, do we have the ways and means of a Blizzard Entertainment or of a Microsoft? Obviously not. Just the fact that we're 33 people versus the team sizes over there--that's the hard part, where [you have to] temper your expectations.
But in terms of the quality of the craft, we would want to be held to the same high standard. It's a little bit of a mixed answer there. Is our game going to have the same scope as World of Warcraft? Obviously not. We haven't been working on it for 20-plus years with however many thousands of people have touched World of Warcraft at this date. That's not going to be the case, we're not going to have that scope. But in terms of quality and attention to detail, we would hope to be held to a high expectation.
Something else that stood out to me recently was what you said in that interview with Lex [when] you were talking about the six weeks that you had to come up with different ideas leading up to Overwatch being created. There were two rules that [Blizzard] gave you, and one of them was, "Oh, it needs to make World of Warcraft-type money." And you were like, "We quickly kind of threw that out because that is Monopoly money, that is fake, you cannot think about that. That cannot be part of the factor when it comes to creating art, creating games."
I wonder--with you and Tim [Ford, co-founder of Kintsugiyama and former gameplay engineer on Overwatch] now being in charge of this studio--have you had to rethink [your relationship to] money now that you have these people who are dependent on you? Do you still try to take money out of the equation as much as you can?
We have a financial responsibility to our employees, and we want to keep this going. A lot of them, you know, came from these prestigious places to be with us because they believed in either me or Tim, or this game idea, and we want to serve them. So, we do have a financial responsibility.
With that said, something that Tim and I have always shared--and we used to talk about back when we were at Blizzard--is the best way to make money is to make a really great game. In a weird way, keeping the focus on making a really great game would be our best path to making money anyway.
And out of the 33 people in the studio, 32 of them are game developers and one of them is an operations person, Angela. And even she puts her hand into game development. We're all creators here. And I think if I go to most of these people and I say, "Hey, you really need to think about the bottom line," and, "How are we going to make X dollars by Y date?" They don't know how to compute that. They're not able to do that. But if I go to these artists and designers and engineers and say, "You need to make a really great system for this game. Like, we're going to put horses into Legend of California, and it needs to feel like a AAA in terms of control, in terms of art, in terms of the design, in terms of why I care about my horse…" They know how to activate on that. And that's the path for us to be financially successful someday.
It's very interesting, you saying that you have 32 developers and one person in operations. It's refreshing given the current state of the industry. I want to talk to you a bit [more] about that structure and, you know, what it's like watching all the corporate consolidation in the industry [and seeing studios] where operations and the people who are looking at the money [control] a company's direction. What has it been like for you kind of operating antithetically to that?
In some ways, it's been wonderful. It was the dream and the reason that we did this, me and Tim. It was that moment where you start to get those messages from above--when you're in a large corporate setting, and you're like, "This makes no sense. What just came down from above is absolutely ridiculous, and it's going to make us less money, not more." And they're doing it for money reasons, and we're "just" the creative game dudes, you know?
They're telling us to do this for some financial reason, and it's not going to be good financially, and it's not going to be good for the players, and it's not going to be fun. None of this makes sense. And you have those moments of, "I wish we were in control. I wish we could be the decision-makers."
Everything that Tim and I did was to structure this company so that's exactly the case. We are completely in control. We can make all of the decisions. We make the decisions about what date we land on, all the business decisions behind the game… We can make all of those.
There is this moment of like, "Oh shit. We're the ones making all the decisions."
There's nothing to hide behind at that point. But if we screw it up and we get it wrong, I think, the type of people we are, that's exactly what we want.
In a weird way, we have a lot to prove. We have a lot to prove as individual developers--that it wasn't the corporate logo or the studio that made those games great, it was the individual developers that made it great.
And then we want to prove being a development-run studio is more successful and better for the players. And we even want to prove remote work works, because we're a fully-remote studio. We have all these things that we kind of want to prove, but it is being out on that tightrope for the first time with no safety net underneath us. Like, "Okay, we're picking the date, we're picking the business model," and nobody's backstopping us on that. And we kind of love it, but we haven't fallen from the tightrope yet, so who knows if we're going to make the right decisions.
Kind of on that same note, I know you did just wrap up [an] alpha, I believe, right? What is some of the feedback that you're sitting with right now? How do you feel about the overall state of the game so far?
The feedback's been great. We've learned a lot, and it's actually been a great test for Tim and I of your previous question. Our first [public] alpha--which was called Alpha 3 and couldn't be more confusing, but that's because we did Alpha 1 and 2 internally and we're bad at naming--but we couldn't hit the concurrency we wanted to hit.
The feedback from the players was wonderful. They're like, "This is so cool, we love the world, it's beautiful." They can't post enough screenshots of sunrise and sunset. Like, every screenshot you ever see of the game is sunrise and sunset. They love the horses, they love the ranch, they love the buildings. So, we were getting all sorts of great feedback, but we could only have 30 people on the server and we weren't happy with that. So, after our first alpha, that was the first time Tim and I had to make one of those decisions where we actually pushed all of our dates out.
We thought we would have been in beta and even early access by the end of this year, and we pushed it all out to 2027. That was, I think, the first time where it was like, "Hey, game developers, put your money where your mouth is. Are you really going to slip the date when it hurts you the most?" And we did.
[With] Alpha 4, which was our most recent alpha test, concurrency went from being 30 people per server all the way up to 100 people per server. And the feedback was really great. Alpha 3 and 4, the top issue that people complained about was our ladders are not intuitive--that they're kind of wonky.
So I spent all weekend fixing ladders, and then my first meeting today was on ladders to go over more changes! [But] something like ladders being the top feedback that we get is--if ladders are our biggest problem--we're in really good shape right now. They're not like, "The game's not cool," "The world doesn't look pretty," "I don't know what to do in this game." They're complaining about ladders. We're actually excited about that.
Regardless of what [Blizzard] team I'm interviewing, [I hear about] this idea of the hero fantasy. That seems like the studio's core tenet. And fantasy in general is such a big part of Blizzard as a studio. Yet The Legend of California is a lot more grounded. And so I'm curious, what led you to create something that is more realistic? Where do you think your background and working on these fantastical properties comes into play? Where will people see that?
I think for me, the inspiration was very natural. When I was at Blizzard, one of my favorite people to collaborate with was Chris Metzen. Chris is a brilliant creative director and he's so much fun to work with. And there was also a guy there named Sam Didier, and Sam was--how to describe Sam? He was almost the art director of art directors at Blizzard. Like, the initial Blizzard vibe art style really came from Sammy. And Sammy and Metzen were two peas in a pod. It didn't matter if it was Starcraft or Warcraft, it was all kind of their vibe.
And I had so much fun [working with them]. I worked a lot on World of Warcraft, and obviously I worked a ton on Overwatch. I would have loved, like… If Chris Metzen would have said, "Hey, what are you and Tim doing? You got a gig for me?" Of course. In a heartbeat. And we'd be making Chris's worlds again. But for me, this was a fun opportunity of like, "Well, what's a world that I'm excited about that has sort of my influences in it?"
Tim and I both grew up in California. I've lived here over 50 years of my life at this point--or just, just under 50 years, now that I think about it. I'm not that old. So, just under 50 years I've lived in California. It's a wonderful place that is exciting to me.
And the cowboy influence is purely from my dad. I grew up like every day getting driven to school, and I'd be listening to Willie Nelson. His favorite genre of all time was cowboy movies, and I actually had this regret [because] when I was growing up, it was always like, "Ah, dad, why are you making me watch another boring, black-and-white cowboy thing?" Because I was, you know, into Star Wars and Indiana Jones. I was that kid. But it had an effect on me. And I had this moment of like, "I really want to explore what that looks like." That was sort of the evolution of making this game.
Also, as fun as Overwatch was to work on and WoW was to work on, something a little edgier is exciting to me. I didn't leave Blizzard to try to make a Blizzard game. I left Blizzard to make a Tim and Jeff game. If we just wanted to make those worlds, we should have just stayed there and done that.
The game type, the setting, the vibe of it all… What is--me, Tim, and these other 31 people we're so fortunate to work with--what is our vibe? What is the--you know, I hate to say it--buy the first Kintsugiyama game? That's exciting to us.
I feel like it's very humbling when you realize that your parents actually are kind of cool. Like, that was me 100% with my mom. She was very into Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal, and '80s fantasy. That's what I grew up watching, and now I look at the games I play, my writing, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh." They really paint all over you as a person.
Yeah, she influenced you! It's a huge influence. I absolutely have that for my parents. My dad and his love of Westerns in particular.
He used to take us--there was in Hollywood this thing called the Golden Boot Awards, that was the name of it. And all the classic cowboy actors would go. I don't know how they even had an award ceremony because it was the same guys every year and they were not making new movies! But they were all there. Like Clayton Moore, who was the original Lone Ranger, and all of these like famous cowboy actors. I was just a little kid, and my dad was like, "That's so-and-so! That's Gene Autry!" I was exposed to all of that without realizing what it all meant, but it was pretty cool and it definitely had an influence on where we're at today.
I'm so glad to know that story. I think a lot of people are interested to know a little bit more about what's been going on in the quiet space of development. The Legend of California feels very different from what you've been doing.
But getting back to that former spotlight, Overwatch has gone through a lot this year--it dropped the 2 from the name, added 10 heroes in one year… There are a lot of these like really big changes. What is your relationship with the game now? Do you ever pick it up and play it? Do you watch any of the Spotlight streams? Do you still feel that sense of like, "Wow, I worked on that. That's kind of my baby and I still feel this tenderness there?"
I'll say yes and no to parts of that. Oddly, leaving WoW was a training moment for me. When I left WoW to work on Titan, it was, I think November or December of 2008. And WoW was who I was at that point. I worked every minute--every waking minute--on WoW. If I wasn't working on WoW, I was playing WoW. And every time I played WoW, I had this notepad next to the desk that I'd be filling out to walk in the next morning and go, "These are all the things we need to change."
It was kind of shocking in a very negative emotional way to step away from WoW, because it was such a part of who I was and how I identified. It was who I was as a game developer.
I kind of went through a little bit of shock leaving WoW back in 2008. So, when I stepped away from Overwatch in April of 2021, I was kind of used to that moment of what it meant to give all of yourself, your heart, your soul--because it's not just a job, there's no one who can do this and have it just be a job--and then have this shocking moment where you realize it doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the team, belongs to the players, it belongs to Blizzard, but it doesn't belong to you.
I was more prepared for that with Overwatch. World of Warcraft was more painful for me to leave than Overwatch was.
And with Overwatch, I had a very almost clinical separation, knowing how the WoW thing had gone. I've literally not played the game since April 2021.
We had added Echo. She was the last hero. And that's my memory of Overwatch--how it played in April of 2021. I don't, for my own psyche, I don't read the subreddits. After I said my goodbye to competitive Overwatch and the Overwatch subreddit, I never go back and read. I don't watch YouTube [videos]. I don't search for my name in Overwatch. I don't search for Overwatch. I sort of just disconnect. I actually tell all the algorithms like, "Yeah, I'm not really interested in Overwatch anymore. I know you think I'm the Overwatch guy, but like, that's just not for me anymore."
And I just do that for a healthy separation. I do have those moments, very emotional [moments], where sometimes I'll see a picture from BlizzCon 2014, where we announced Overwatch. It is, to this day, one of the most special days in my life, you know?
Watching Chris go out there and announce it, and getting to follow it up with him. The way my team felt about it. I'm so immensely proud of everything that everybody at Blizzard, not just Team 4, did to make Overwatch a great game. Like, SNFD, or Story and Franchise Development, the cinematics group at Blizzard. [It is] the most talented cinematics group in the history of video games.
A thousand percent agreed.
I still have so much pride, I hold all those people in the highest regard. But just for my own sanity… Have you ever seen Napoleon Dynamite?
Oh, so long ago, but of course.
Okay, there's that character, Uncle Rico, who's like, "I was good at football," and he's always like out there, like watching the old videotapes of himself. I don't want to be Uncle Rico!
Overwatch happened. I was a part of it. There's a group there now and Overwatch is now about them. Both the players and the developers, that's their Overwatch now. They're making it, they own it, they play it. I'm onto this new thing, and that's where I'm at in my life.
That's a great answer. I love the imagery, too, of, "I don't want to be the guy who peaked in high school," you know what I mean?
And I think hearing that--alongside you saying, you know, "Bring on the expectations"--it makes me even more excited for The Legend of California. It's very clear you're pouring everything into this. With all this passion and this background working at a really big studio, do you ever feel like you have these dreams or ambitions but then realize, "God, I don't know if we have the means to make this real?" Do you just get scrappy? How do you go about it?
We definitely get scrappy. We do insane scrappy things! I'm laughing because like, if you saw my dining room right now… it's the IT department of Kintsugiyama. It's completely consumed with empty boxes and computer parts. That's an example of a world that didn't exist when I was at Blizzard.
It's very humbling because… you go from a lot of success. Like, think of World of Warcraft and Overwatch and the levels of success that those games have had. Also the level of success that I enjoyed personally in my career being associated with those games. And no part of that is me saying I'm the guy who made those games by himself, it's just the reality of a 19-year career at Blizzard. But you go from that success to essentially having the reset button pushed on you. You start completely from square one, at the bottom of the mountain.
It's actually eye-opening in a great way, even if it's painful sometimes. How people treat me now versus how when I was at Blizzard.
I have many people in the industry who won't return my emails, who won't even give me the time of day.
Yet how they treated me at Blizzard--because they knew I had that connection and they wanted to be associated with that--was so different. And, you know, you can kind of go glass half-empty, glass half-full with that. The half-full version of it, which I really enjoy, is it shows you where truth is, it shows you where loyalty is, it shows you people's true nature. It makes you realize that there's a lot of managing up and people using you as a means to an end.
And I like the hunger. I always said that part of why Overwatch was so successful was we were so broken from Titan that we were hungry and we had something to prove. And I feel like that's when the best things get made. It's the plight of the artist, you know? Like, it's when you're down and nobody believes in you--when at any point it might all fall apart--that you are challenged to be your best and come up with the coolest, most creative things.
And I kind of thrive in that environment over the spoils of riches, you know? "Oh, are we getting bought for $69 billion today?" It all feels like Monopoly money. And you can do no wrong. Like, the fans are just going to be excited about whatever we announce at the thing, you know? It doesn't matter because our marketing is so slick that we can pull the wool over their eyes. I love having to earn it every second of the way.
In that sense, starting over feels wonderful to me, even though it's a little weird to me that people aren't returning my emails, you know? I'm like, "I made you a billion dollars. You'd think you'd return my email," you know? But hey, whatever.
That's disappointing to hear. It's not surprising, unfortunately, but it's disappointing. But, you know, one of the cool things whenever I talk to independent studios or smaller studios is that everyone says kind of the same thing. When you do have these constraints, the art that emerges--the visions that come out of it--are so much more precise and special because you do have those constraints. It kind of forces you to pick what matters and you don't get to hide under anything.
And I do want to ask, since it was [alluded to], is there any part of you that feels like you kind of dodged a bullet leaving before the Microsoft [acquisition]? That would have been shortly after you left, right?
Yeah. It was announced very shortly after I left. I have no idea. I have no idea how Microsoft runs things, so I don't really have a good opinion of, "Is Microsoft a good steward to Blizzard? Are they not?"
I'm sure it's always tricky. I would say the best people to ask are the people at Blizzard right now, but they're probably not comfortable answering that honestly! But I have no idea. This isn't me like walking on eggshells and not wanting to say anything stuff about Microsoft, it's like… Literally I've never worked for Microsoft, so I have no idea.
Yeah, I completely understand. Were there any other things that you wanted to share either about the last few years or about The Legend of California?
I love working with this team. That's been really special--the small team environment, having Tim as my partner, and creating a development-run company.
The magic of Blizzard when I joined was that Frank, Mike, and Allen, who were the founders of Blizzard, were all programmers. They knew what it was like to try to put pixels on a screen. And so founding a company that's developer-run, not MBA-run, is wonderful.
I'm really hoping we can prove to people that you can feel the heart and soul of the development team in The Legend of California. And the example I kind of use is with music and with a band.
If you have a favorite band and one of the musicians leaves, the band is never going to be the same. Most bands just dissolve if a core member leaves, you know? Or, if you're like, a Van Halen fan, [you know] David Lee Roth Van Halen is nothing like Sammy Hagar Van Halen. The developers who make your games are extremely important and their influence really matters. The games can keep getting made without them, but they'll never be the same games.
That's very poignant, especially now. I mean, look at the recent Halo transfer. There is such a disconnect from higher-ups, it would seem. They think, "Well, if we have this property, we just can hand it to whoever and they can play in this space, and it's going to be special because it's a special property," when it's like, no, it was kind of always about the people who made it and what those developers bring.
And with how often layoffs happen, we see all of these people who have been working on games for 20, 30 years who can't get jobs at these major studios. They have all this expertise, they have this baton that they should be passing and knowledge they could be sharing with other people, and they're just not getting to do that. We're seeing a very devastating loss of knowledge and expertise and experience. This is all like a tangent, but I really appreciate hearing a developer say, "This is one of the tenets of our studio. We want you to feel the developers, not necessarily just the studio name like on it."
That's awesome. You actually articulated how I feel better than I could say myself! I think people need to hear that. I actually was lucky enough to work with a number of Halo 1 and Halo 2 developers from that day, and they haven't been attached to that franchise in ages. And I'm like, "It's not just Bungie. It's like these developers are the ones who made it. They made it what it was."
People will play these games and they're like, "Ah, how come this doesn't feel as good as it did when I was 15?" I'm like, "Well, because we're not 15! And also because all of the people who made that game no longer work on it!" Like they either can't get jobs or they're, you know, stuck doing this other thing as a support for this game.
Yep, it's so true!