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 &#8211; available to wishlist on Steam today, with alpha later in March.
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EPISODE LINKS:
The Legend of California (Steam Page): <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/2550530/The_Legend_of_California">https://store.steampowered.com/app/2550530/The_Legend_of_California</a>
Jeff&#8217;s Game Studio: <a href="https://www.kintsugiyama.com/">https://www.kintsugiyama.com/</a>
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OUTLINE:
(00:00) &#8211; Introduction
(02:24) &#8211; Sponsors, Comments, and Reflections
(10:47) &#8211; Early games: Pac-Man, Zork, Doom, Quake
(25:12) &#8211; Writing career &#8211; 170 rejection letters
(40:45) &#8211; EverQuest obsession
(53:43) &#8211; Getting hired at Blizzard
(1:09:11) &#8211; Lowest point in Jeff&#8217;s life
(1:15:16) &#8211; One of Us
(1:19:33) &#8211; Early Blizzard culture
(1:39:15) &#8211; Building World of Warcraft
(1:56:59) &#8211; How WoW changed video games
(2:14:21) &#8211; Single-player vs Multi-player
(2:35:15) &#8211; How Blizzard made great video games
(3:01:04) &#8211; Online toxicity
(3:08:38) &#8211; Why Titan failed
(3:25:48) &#8211; Overwatch in six weeks
(3:52:46) &#8211; Best Overwatch heroes
(4:01:16) &#8211; The challenge of matchmaking
(4:04:40) &#8211; Rust
(4:15:01) &#8211; Why Jeff left Blizzard
(4:37:14) &#8211; Diablo IV
(4:38:42) &#8211; Getting back to making video games
(4:47:38) &#8211; The Legend of California
(5:01:23) &#8211; Greatest video game of all time
(5:09:30) &#8211; AI and future of video games
PODCAST LINKS:
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&#8211; Clips Channel: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/lexclips">https://www.youtube.com/lexclips</a>

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#493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming

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