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

Jeff Kaplan is a legendary Blizzard lead 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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*Transcript:*
https://lexfridman.com/jeff-kaplan-transcript

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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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