Episode Notes

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.Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep493-scSee below for timestamps, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc.

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EPISODE LINKS:The Legend of California (Steam Page): https://store.steampowered.com/app/2550530/The_Legend_of_CaliforniaJeff’s Game Studio: https://www.kintsugiyama.com/

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OUTLINE:(00:00) – Introduction(02:24) – Sponsors, Comments, and Reflections(10:47) – Early games: Pac-Man, Zork, Doom, Quake(25:12) – Writing career – 170 rejection letters(40:45) – EverQuest obsession(53:43) – Getting hired at Blizzard(1:09:11) – Lowest point in Jeff’s life(1:15:16) – One of Us(1:19:33) – Early Blizzard culture(1:39:15) – Building World of Warcraft(1:56:59) – How WoW changed video games(2:14:21) – Single-player vs Multi-player(2:35:15) – How Blizzard made great video games(3:01:04) – Online toxicity(3:08:38) – Why Titan failed(3:25:48) – Overwatch in six weeks(3:52:46) – Best Overwatch heroes(4:01:16) – The challenge of matchmaking(4:04:40) – Rust(4:15:01) – Why Jeff left Blizzard(4:37:14) – Diablo IV(4:38:42) – Getting back to making video games(4:47:38) – The Legend of California(5:01:23) – Greatest video game of all time(5:09:30) – AI and future of video games

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