Being the face of a video game is a demanding role, as the people who step into these positions involved in these roles often find themselves on the receiving end of a lot of toxicity. Former Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan knows this all too well, as he promoted the hero shooter for several years and regularly interacted with its fans--albeit at a "personal cost."
After leaving Blizzard Entertainment in 2021, Kaplan has been quietly working on The Legend of California, the in-development game at his new studio, Kintsugiyama. Reflecting on his time as the face of Overwatch, Kaplan spoke to GameSpot about how Overwatch needed someone to fill that role. For Kaplan, this was part of Overwatch's growth and continued existence, and he felt it was needed at the time.
"This is going to sound ridiculous, but I'm not someone who likes attention," Kaplan said of his time in the public-facing position. "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."
Overwatch--and Blizzard as a whole--has had tremendous highs and lows over the years. During periods of content droughts or Hero changes, players would often target Kaplan and other developers on the game with verbal abuse and threats. There has never been a silver bullet to eliminate player toxicity, but Blizzard discovered that dropping a ton of content into Overwatch helped change player sentiment.
While his departure from Blizzard back in 2021 wasn't easy, Kaplan said that being freed of the responsibility of being associated with Overwatch and fading into the background turned out to be "pretty great" in the end.
"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," Kaplan said. "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."
Kaplan went on to explain his thoughts on if studios even need a public face for their games, citing both Valve and Rockstar as companies that "do a great job of promoting their games" despite not having a designated speaker.
"There doesn't need to be [one]," Kaplan said. "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 [current Overwatch director] Aaron [Keller] 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.'"
Currently, Kaplan and the rest of the team at Kintsugiyama are working on The Legend of California, a multiplayer survival-action game set in the wild west. The title doesn't have a release date yet, but if you're interested in taking part in an upcoming playtest for the open-world shooter, you can check out its Steam page and request access.