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Last week, former Blizzard vice president and game designer Jeff Kaplan made his first public appearance since leaving the World of Warcraft and Overwatch developer in 2021, revealing his independent game studio, Kintsugiyama, and its upcoming frontier survival game, The Legend of California.
Days later, Kaplan continued that momentum with a casual 10-hour stream of a pre-alpha Legend of California build. While showing off the work Kintsugiyama has done so far, Kaplan flexed some of the newfound PR freedom he enjoyed in his recent retelling of his departure from Blizzard, speaking bluntly about his distaste for the dysfunction and hostility in discussions surrounding recent game launches.
“I understand voicing your opinion,” Kaplan said as the stream entered its ninth hour. “But like, if a game comes out and you don’t want to play it and you’ve never played it, shut the fuck up. No one cares. We don’t need to hear that you weren’t into it.”
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Kaplan, who owes his career in game development in part to his own, often-harsh shitposting about EverQuest design decisions, acknowledged that he’s “given it out at times.” But crucially, he said, his circa 2000 EQ1 design takedowns were at least motivated by having played the game in the first place. In contrast, he says the “nerd baby rage” from online hatemongers isn’t even worth acknowledging, “because you’re so off the deep end that it’s not even worth listening to you.”
“There are certain forums or Reddits or whatever where it’s just like, yeah, that one’s on ignore from now on. They’re not actually productive in any way,” Kaplan said. “It’s just who can get the most points by being outraged. I’m bored with it.”
Tim Ford, Kaplan’s fellow former Blizzard dev and Kintsugiyama co-founder, echoed his opinion, saying that “it’s not impressive” to be as awful as possible about something that isn’t to your liking.
“It’s not difficult to shit on something,” Ford said on-stream. “Apparently, it takes a ton of courage to say, ‘Hey, I actually like this thing. I don’t care that you don’t like it. I like it.'”
Unnecessary roughness in internet discourse isn’t a new phenomenon by any means, but we’re now living alongside a media ecosystem that thrives on loudly, insistently, and often preemptively declaring that a game is dead and irredeemable instead of, you know, ignoring something you’re not interested in. While no single game developer’s frustration will do much to change it, it’s nice to know when your exhaustion is shared.
Kaplan, however, mused that he might have been a little too freewheeling with his language.
“I’m probably going to get in trouble for everything I just said, but I’m at that point in my life and career that I just don’t care anymore,” Kaplan said. “The closest I come to a midlife crisis is giving zero fucks.”
