All right, everybody, uh, welcome. Regular, uh,
classmates of CSE 42 this semester, as well as
other interested, uh, students and, uh,
potentially also some members of the public. We're
very blessed today to be joined by Brett Cochran,
senior game designer from Blizzard Entertainment,
working on World of Warcraft. Uh, you know, just a
couple quick things about World of Warcraft, um,
as a way to kind of set the stage here. This is
one of the, uh, longest running, uh, massively
multiplayer, uh, online role playing games. It's
going to celebrate its 20th anniversary of release
this November. And, uh, in fact, I think there is,
um, uh, some, some news about a 20th edition, uh,
coming up, uh, as a release. And, um, this is this
is a game that has, um, been called by, uh, you
know, critics and historians, uh, one of the, um,
greatest massively multiplayer online role playing
games of all time. Also one of the greatest video
games of all time. Uh, people who, uh, write about
these things have noted that it has had a very
long lifespan. Like I said, it's been around for
almost two decades. Uh, when it was released in
2004, uh, it quickly became the most popular, uh,
massively multiplayer game of all time. It, um,
had over 12 million subscribers back in the 20
tens. And, you know, here's some stats from Game
champions.com about the right now of World of
Warcraft. World of Warcraft still sees many
millions of logins every single month with, you
know, apparently over 2.5 million daily logins.
This is a game that has had a huge impact on
society, and we are extremely lucky to be joined
by Brett today, who has been with Blizzard. Uh, it
looks like for quite a long time as well. And, um,
we're all very excited that you're here with us.
Brett. Thank you so much for, um, taking the time
and getting kind of clearances from the powers
that be at Blizzard to to join us and let us
record this so we can kind of, uh, share your, um,
time with us here live today with some other folks
in our asynchronous class who can't be with us in
real time. Um. Everybody who's here. You are
welcome to share questions. I would like to just
kind of recommend, you know, a kind of a simple
protocol for us, um, so that we don't end up kind
of stumbling over each other. Uh, I recommend
using the zoom text chat to, uh, to frame
questions if you kind of want to get them out
there. Uh, if and while Brett is talking about
other stuff. Um, and just to open things up and
I'm going to invite anybody who would like to kind
of start things off, um, to ask Brett the first
question. But before we do that, let me give Brett
a chance to to say hello and introduce himself as
well. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Um.
Yeah. I, uh, appreciate the opportunity. Um, I
actually just recently was able to give a talk
like this at my old alma mater. Uh, I went to the
University of Idaho. Uh, I studied it. It's all
kind of here, so I'm kind of reading this, too,
but, uh, I studied, uh, what's called visual
communications there. It was kind of the closest
they had to film. And then I started in physics,
thinking I was going to be a, uh, special effects,
uh, person in movies. That was my goal. Um, and
that's to say, the reason I thought that is,
growing up, I loved games. I wanted to make games.
My mom got me a book when I was really young, and
it had blurbs on, like, Sid Meier and a lot of the
originals. Um, and the first thing I saw on all of
their bios as I read it, each of the chapters is
there a programmer? And I was like, oh no, I gotta
learn programming. Let me do that. And then I
tried and my brain didn't get it. I and I was like,
well, maybe I can't make games. And so I went to
school for film. Uh, or the closest thing
University of Idaho had to it. Uh, and I ended up
finishing in this common history. Uh, I loved
history, how things connected. And I went to a
BlizzCon. Um, so fan convention that Blizzard puts
on. Uh, and they had a career in gaming panel, and
it brought up people from art and design and
programming. And somebody in the crowd asked, like,
what kind of majors are they seeing for people
that want to be game designers? And the guy that
was up there at the time, he's like, I probably
not the best to tell you, like, because I didn't
finish college. But the people I'm hiring right
now are mostly like history majors or poli sci.
And I'm like, hmm, I did history all my electives
in poly, so maybe I can do games. So I went up
afterwards, talked to the, uh, moderator who was
the, uh, manager for the QA department at Blizzard.
Uh, he gave out cards right there and said, you
know, we're hiring right now. If you send me this
information, um, I will put your name in the hat.
And so I applied two weeks later, and a month
later I was working at Blizzard, starting in QA.
Uh, so I worked in QA for about seven years. Uh, I
tested pretty much every game Blizzard put out in
that time frame from Warcraft to StarCraft. Diablo.
Um, also, first things that I worked on kind of
crazy at the time was, uh, uh, Warcraft three was
putting out patches. Diablo two was putting out
patches. So we had to do that. And this is back in
the day when you actually had to test the disk
still and get them all printed for every single
release. Um, so that was, uh, some early fun and
QA. Uh, I eventually worked on the Project Titan
before it got rebooted, and then, uh, it turned
into Overwatch. I moved over to the Wow tools team,
and so I got to learn all the Wow tools and start
to make my own stuff on the side. And that's what
I used to get me into working at Blizzard. Uh, I
started out doing professions, then rewards work
for about six or so years. And then, uh, just
recently I moved over to what we're calling the
live team now, and they're the team that's done a
lot of the in-game events for Dragonflight, and
then trying to do some more experimental modes to
try and see if we can reach new types of players,
or just give more options for players that are
playing in the Warcraft ecosphere. So like the
Plunder Storm event came from our team as an
example, or, uh, the new one that's coming up soon,
which is called like, uh, Wow remix. And we're
going to revisit, you know, a previous expansion.
As he said, we've got 20 years of content to pull
from. So we are looking at ways that we can
revisit it. So there's a lot I just put out there.
So yeah, uh, that's about all I got for an intro
and a little bit about me and my history.
Amazing journey you've been on already. I really
appreciate you capturing all that in, um, in such
a succinct, um, little narrative for us. I'm going
to invite, uh, folks again. Anybody have a
question you'd like to share with Brent? I have a
kind of stack of things I can dish, but I want to
give everybody a chance. Who took the time to be
here today to to share your your thoughts or your
questions with our with our special guest. Any
takers?
Somebody at the beginning had one. Do you want to
ask yours now or wait?
Oh.
Ben shared his and the texture. He said, I think
my main question is over time. Lots of games
online, especially like, wow, can you what's the
question there? Ben? I'm sorry, I'm not sure if
I'm capturing it.
You can unmute to Ben and ask your question
verbally if you want.
Okay. Thanks. Yeah. So I had to also move because
it's noisy. Um, yeah, I know you're in QA, but, uh,
it's kind of like a networking question. Or it
might be kind of in-depth, but, um, like, Halo is
a free to play game. Um, but I've noticed a lot of
people and just throughout my playing, um, after
the first year or so, it still has a lot of the
bugs that, um, and especially networking, like lag
issues and stuff. And it's really weird because,
um, I feel like, wow. Yeah, there's been a few
times that I remember you've been hacked by, like
overseas. I think there are some, you know, server
shutdowns that have happened and, and, but for the
most part, the has been so robust. And I remember
even going down to San Jose, uh, the computer
museum, and I think you guys had a server blade on
display. It was one of the realms. And I thought
that was pretty cool, is you got to see the actual
physical realm in person. But, um. Yeah, I was
just wondering kind of a general question. I don't
know how to pinpoint it down, but. What? Uh, if
you know anything about how they keep is so robust.
And maybe it's just the amount of servers you guys
have, I don't know. Uh, sure. I could talk a
little bit to that. Um, okay. Yeah. As a designer,
like a lot of our features we have to think about
in regards to player counts, um, and just amount
of players we expect to potentially bring back for
an event. Um, uh, and let me step back a step. So
some history, um, back when MMO was launched,
everybody's internet was not as good as it is now.
So one way they combated that back then was they
would create data centers that were regional. So,
uh, in the case of, wow, we still have remnants of
it. There's uh, East coast, West coast, central,
um, server blocks. Um, but technically they don't
use that anymore. But the reason we did that is
we'd have, say, a data center here in California.
And so the West Coast players would play and
they'd have to pay, um, to just the West Coast. So
that's how long your information had to transfer
back and forth. Um, and if you're on the East
Coast, it might have been in North Carolina. I
don't remember exactly where they all are. Um, as
as you're mentioned, infrastructure has improved
and, um, people have access to a lot more internet
and faster. They've actually consolidated it down
to one data center for the US region, uh, as an
example. And so that's one instance of technology
has improved. So we can, uh, do that. Now, the
realities of putting information through the pipe
is still there. Um, and so we definitely have an
issue when we get more than a certain number of
players, uh, we get limited by various factors. It
could be bandwidth, it could be your computer, um,
and it could be our servers having to process all
the information. So we've come up with a few
different technologies to address this over time.
Uh, one of the things that back in the day, what I
would do is they had these things. Uh, it's not
really a virtual server, but we'd have say, 12
servers as this is just not exact. But, uh, to
give you an idea that handle the world of, say,
North Brent, uh, that's the one I'm most familiar
with from QA. Uh, back in the day, would it be
divided into 12 different servers? And the
boundaries of those servers would then dynamically
change based on the population distribution? So if
there's a ton of people that were in and then the
server handling dollars ran would shrink as the
player count went up. And um, basically there's
some internal units that we have, but it would
shrink. And then other parts of the world that had
less people would be handled by one server, and
those sections would be bigger. Worked great. Um,
till we ran into some things like. When her grasp
was part of this. It was outdoor world content,
something new to try for North Ren, and it
basically had everybody on the server come to one
place and the servers not very happy about that
dynamically. So they put, uh, static amount of
space for winter grasp. And that was just it held
there and they put more effort there. So as the
times have gone along, we've had to find a way,
different ways to combat too many people in one
place and being able to calculate all of their
actions and everything they're doing and just
amount of people we can handle. And so later on
and warlords a Draenor, they, uh. This tech we got
for garrison. Basically said everybody that flies
into their garrison technically transfers over
into a new map, and they're on their own, and they
get their own garrison, which was really cool tech.
Um, the problem was everybody exited the garrison
at the exact same place on the overworld map, and
there's a lot of people playing. It meant there
were too many characters all trying to exit that
one map into the world map and our dynamic zones.
As I told you before, eight can only shrink to so
far. So everybody exiting in that space. It drew
everything to a close. And so Warlords Draenor had
this big issue at the launch where, uh, some of
the servers, you just couldn't do anything. You
just like you're in walking around and they call
it lag. Um, and it was server lag in this case
because we couldn't get the information and the
updates out faster. Our engineers, though, looked
at what we did for the garrison, and they
basically were like, what if we applied that same
tech to zones and reversed it? So if you went out
to a zone and the zone had too many people, what
if we just spun up another version of the zone and
put people on that? And this isn't something that
is brand new to MMOs, and it was something that
happened in past. MMO is a lot where you'd be on
different layers, right? And so that's what we
gate we basically did is you came out to um, and
so basically we used instances for the outdoor
world. Yes. Uh, in the past instances you'd go
through a portal, you'd zone to another map and
there'd be a server that could handle X number of
instances of that dungeon. Let's say. Well, we
essentially were able to do that for the outdoor
world. And so we use that now actually to say like
this event is happening, uh, for this holiday
outside ogre Meier, let's say, and we need to
accommodate for more people coming there. We may
turn down the player count on that zone, and it'll
make new zones so that people fighting there don't
experience as much lag. Um, we've made lots of
improvements to be able to put more people on the
same hardware, uh, over time. Uh, one of the
things the classic team, ironically using the old
code, I mean, it's new code, but the old setup,
they use the thing where they layer the entire
world instead of having it by zone. So their tech
works a little different, but they've been able to
put out 3 to 4 raid groups on each faction. So
that's 40 times six. So about 2400 players
potentially. That's 240 players. Put a little
factor in there. Uh, all in one zone, which is
something that you just wouldn't have been able to
do back in the original classic with the server
architecture, the server infrastructure and all
that. So anyway, there's a long story short of
kind of the evolution that we've gone through, but
we're still doing it. There's still issues with
how we do, uh, layers. Like I made an event in one
of the patches recently. That was an outdoor
scenario. And we run into the problems where
because it's by zone, uh, we wanted if now 30, 20
to 30 players to play this, uh, scenario. Well, if
there's five people that come up to the scenario,
but there is 30 people around the zone, but
they're not coming to participate in the scenario.
The scenario doesn't have enough people to be
successful. The opposite is it. We do have the
looking for group tool that'll pull people to
other layers so they can group together to do the
content, but that comes and it can get us past the
boundaries of our initial layering. So like we say,
this one should have 100. But if 3 or 4 groups
invite people, we can temporally go over it. And
so that's where you'll still see lag and stuff
like that. But we have a balance of how much do we
want to allow you to play with people you invite,
versus how much can the servers really handle. And
we balance those with every feature. Um, and so
yeah, hopefully that answers some of what you were
hoping for out of that question. Yeah, yeah, I
have definitely about the instances too. I didn't
realize that was, um, something I had remembered.
Um, yeah. So you brought that up and that was a
perfect explanation. Um, and the fact that, well,
I was also wondering if you guys had pioneered
anything, uh, as far as networking, but it sounds
like you did because you had to, like, re
rearrange basically the network and, and manage
that new influx of people. I do know that, like, I
don't know how much we do it. I know that we
consider it. Um, so this one is something that we
consider when we do expansion launches where we're
expecting potentially more people, but we don't
know exactly. Uh, a lot of our server architecture
does support the virtual servers that, uh,
services that are offered. For now where we can
basically, uh, scale them up if, uh, player counts,
just get huge for, uh, an event. So that's like,
you know, Amazon and other people offer those kind
of things. I don't know exactly which one we are
working with right now, but, um, that's another
way that our company and others can basically not
have the problem of the original MMO releases
where, you know, we just don't let people in. You
know, there was expansions when I first started
where there were three, five, six hour queues to
get in because just physically couldn't handle
more people. Um, so nowadays that's much less. And
we can usually expand into extra hardware when
we're planning ahead of time for it. Oh. Thank you.
Uh. All right, so what would you say have been the
biggest hurdles you've faced with trying to engage
players with live services? I interesting. Uh.
So one thing to kind of clarify. Wow is really big.
Um, there's been and there's been more players
that have played wow than currently play wow. Um,
and they're, they're all different types. So we
actually start to break it down a little bit and
have different player segments that we keep in our
head. Um, so whenever we come up with a new
feature, we actually outline who we think the
player segments that will most engage with it. Um,
and, and we want to be realistic about that,
because if we're making an outdoor scenario, the
PvP players aren't going to be engaged. So we have
to be okay with that not being part of that
feature. Um, that being said, we do have other
people who are with an eye towards though, so like
adding were a warm mode content for PvP or a new
battleground that's going to be in the new
expansion. Um, so. Trying to engage longer term.
We have to keep all of those people in mind, and
our leadership is starting to do kind of a better
way of, uh, looking at each of our releases. So
one thing we have done with, uh, Dragonflight that
has been good on retention, retaining players and
keeping them engaged is we have eight week patches.
Patches are bigger and smaller in size along that,
but we try and put something out each of those
cadences. Um. Uh, to be honest, it's really just a
lot more people were needed to kind of accomplish
that as well as planning. Um, but we can now start
to plan out those different player segments that
are features we think will hit so that they're
slowly rotating or hitting different ones in those
different, uh, time frames. So every one patch,
for example, will have the, the normal content
that every wow patch would have a raid, a dungeon,
outdoor questing, and that one we expect to hit
the majority of players and then the other ones.
You might not have something for everybody in the
five. We we added the sevens as kind of a where we
could add some quests content to lead into the
next patch, but we can also add some new features,
some repeatable. And now with our live team,
hopefully an experiment every so many cycles. So,
um, how what are the hurdles, the hurdles? Our
content takes time. Uh, you know, in the past,
with less people, we were working on one project
right into the next project. And if you were on
one of the support teams, like I was on rewards,
we were the always the last one in the chain. I
worked on pretty much every patch up until like 92,
and then I got a break for one patch and got to
start working on Tenno. You know, uh, it's a a
busy process. Live services are full time work and
never stop, and that's a reality of way a lot of
games are going these days. Um, and it's a show of
success, though, and you kind of have to keep that
pedal going to keep your players engaged and
interested. Um. It's tough. Uh, there's no silver
bullet. Uh, that's. Um, what you have to do. But,
yeah, biggest hurdle is just. Planning a far
enough advanced, having a good leadership team
that can help do that. Um, and being, uh,
strategic about your resources, trying to kind of
leapfrog them, give them a time off. I think my
biggest thing as I've been in the industry for 16
years. I've been a developer for about eight. Um,
you burning out? This is a question I got a lot.
Is burning out is a high likelihood, um, and
probably more likely in a smaller studio than a
larger one. Ideally, um, just because you're going
to be doing more hats, you're going to have to be
involved in everything. Um, I think the industry
as a whole is getting better about keeping this
stuff in mind and working towards trying to, uh,
make sure you have less over time. Over time used
to be just the norm. Now it's a, uh, let's try to
not do it at all. Or if we know we have to do it,
let's be judicial about it and say, let's let's
talk through everything. Like, is there any way
around this? No. Everybody's cool with just this
one a little bit. Like it's very much
strategically planned now versus just expected. Uh,
and that's an evolution of about ten years. So.
Yeah. And I imagine as students. Hey you guys,
you're OT is getting that project done before the
deadline. So it's I, it's going to happen. And I
think that there's also some part of it is this is
why people want to work in games probably more
than tech, you know. And a lot of times you're
going to be working on similar things, but you're
interested oftentimes in the game stuff, uh,
sometimes more. You know, there's probably people
that are super excited about, you know, making the
next outlook. But in games, hopefully you're
invested in the game, you enjoy it. You're, uh, um,
you're getting to, uh, involved. You want to make
it the best product. And so there's an impetus to
try and put more into it. And I think I would say,
don't do that forever. And, uh, if you do it a
little bit, uh, that's fine. That's kind of a
reality of this kind of industry. But um, but yeah.
So there's a little bit about that one.
All right. Uh, what are you looking for in a new
developer today in terms of education? So this
one's a tough one. Um, I'll speak to design first.
Um, design is the most unknown. Uh. There are some
programs out there, and there are some classes at
some schools that are in this vein that are great
opportunities for you to see if this is what you
want to do. For a designer, though, your best
thing you can do is get involved with groups, and
maybe it's with programs at your school, or just
game jams on your own, or becoming a modder. Uh,
the more projects that you can work on, the more
things you can put together that show your
aptitude and your eye towards design and design
principles will help you getting a job as a
designer. And I will say you don't have to have a
fully made game. Uh, board games, uh, write ups
that are clear, um, taking part in projects and
kind of outlining what your role was. What are the
things you learned? How did you, uh, improve the
thing? All of those show how you think about stuff.
And that's the really important part. Completing
projects is huge and will set you up above
somebody who hasn't. Um, so just always saying
that out loud, try and finish something. Even if
it's one thing, then you can actually say like,
hey, I finished this and you have you can put up a
page that's kind of like the highlights of it,
what you learned, what were the what were the
problems you had to face and how you overcome them?
Those are always really good. Uh, probably for all
types. Um, but designed mostly for programming. I
have not been involved with a lot of the early
parts of a programming interview. I sat in on a
couple that are more, uh, how do you work with
designers? So I'll speak to that, um, how you work
with other people on teams and how you can
interpret somebody's design into actually making
something as a programmer is really big. Um,
oftentimes programmers have a static set of skills
that you have to have to meet a bar. And a lot of
times I would say if you're looking at a specific
company, look at their job postings for the type
of programming that they do. Most all of them will
have it and learn those programming languages. Um,
a lot of the new tools, such as Unreal or Unity,
they'll oftentimes have hooks in for programming,
but also kind of help you do some design work to
get your ideas. But you can showcase your
programming by making something, uh, through those
kind of editors on art. This one's one I'm least
familiar with, but, um. There's a lot of art
contests out there. Um, that would be something I
would highly recommend. The other part of art is
portfolios usually end up being key for art. Um,
you want to show your skill and technique. Um, but
when you're going to go work for a company, you
also want to see. They want to also be able to see
that you can make art in their style. So I would
recommend as you look at where you want to work or
what openings are maybe out there to try and
imagine yourself drawing or modeling something
that fits that world, because it's great in art to
have your own stuff and you'll be able to maybe
work on your own game someday. Um, or find some
people that want to make a game together. And you
can do art direction, but a lot of the times
you're going to be hired at a company that's going
to have a goal in mind or a game they're working
on, and they're going to have you making art for
that game. So I just want to put that in your head,
like making all of your art that you want to make
your technical skill show is great. Having some
art or trying to do at least some example for the
group or the game that you're most interested in,
I think can also help, because it can also see if
you can make something in the style of something
else. Um, so I hope that kind of covers some of
those areas.
All right. What is reward design, exactly? Uh, so
this is another aspect of Blizzard being a big
company that, uh, I should clarify. So. The bigger
the company, the more specialized the people on
the team will most likely get. So, uh. World of
Warcraft is really big. I think there might be 506
hundred people making World of Warcraft now. It's
crazy. Uh, so we have under design, we would have
quest design, encounter design, reward design,
system design, and combat design. Um, world
builders or the new level design. Uh, just as, uh,
Claire for Taylor. And and they focus on different
things. And so the quests people will make the
stories and the quest lines and what some of the
people are doing in the outdoor world. And then
once they've set that up, or in combination with
the reward designer, they'll talk about like, what
are our goals for this area? What are the players
going to do? What are the repeatable things? And
the reward designer will look at that and say, I
have this cool idea for a toy that could come from
this quest line, and it's tied more to the story
versus, okay, this area is going to have a lot of
repeatable content, a lot of daily quests, or a
lot of, uh, objectives out in the world that you
can interact with or rares you can kill. And then
the reward designer probably will have to do
something where they look at the pacing of the
area and how, um, is there a faction that all of
this content is around? How do players then
progress that faction? So the reward designer
would not only build all the rewards for all the
individual quests and activities, they'd build the
rewards for the faction and as it progresses, then
they'd also do, um, the tuning of the drops that
will either do the rep rewards or the currency you
would use to spend on the vendors. So rewards is a
huge gambit. Basically anything you ever pull out
of the game, whether that's cosmetic for your
character, um, the gold you use to spend on other
parts of the game, uh, the things to buy, the
things that you will sell to other people,
professions, um, fall into the rewards bucket. At
Blizzard on World Warcraft. Um. Other companies
that are smaller in indie companies, uh,
especially, you're going to have to wear a lot
more hats. So their reward designer might be the
same person that's making their quests, that maybe
the same person that's doing their combat design
or their systems of like how the menus and the
flow work. So as you look at companies that you're
going to work for a, uh. A company that's smaller
may you may benefit if you have, uh, knowledge or
experience, say on game jams or something, working
and holding many hats versus if you really have
this one thing that you're really excited about,
like if you just want to do combat design and
whatnot, a lot of the bigger games. So, you know,
you talk about the Triple A's, those ones will
most likely have people doing just that type of
work because the game so big to need somebody to
specialize. So.
That's that's kind of where reward is. Um. So
since I keep getting ads about it, what exactly
does a technical artist do and what are their
responsibilities? Um, also, you mentioned interest
in film. What did you want to do in film, and how
do you feel it was valuable to your current
position? Uh, film buff, what are your favorite
films? Okay. Uh, so first one, um, a technical
artist. So a technical artist is. Um. It's it's a
really it's a growing field. It's, uh, similar uh,
VFX as its own artist and grouping is also pretty
new. Um, but technical artist covers, uh, artists
that are really good at figuring out the interface
between. Dev tools and art. And a lot more times
nowadays when art is made for video games. Uh,
I'll give you an example. World Warcraft artists
might make a whole character armor and what they
look like. And then our tool, they'll hit a button,
it'll say, uh, what's your code for the database?
And they'll get that from their producer and
they'll put the name of that in and they'll hit go.
And there's these tools that they have now that
the art tools like Maya max will go through this
pipeline to get that art into the game. And so
with a character. Our game pipeline there. We'll
split it up all. We'll cut up all the armor into
different slots that will go on the character. So,
um, the helm will save out as a as a separate
model. The shoulders will save out as a separate
model. All the rest of the character used to save
out as textures that just morph onto the character.
We had some additional things that we could do
where we can morph the character's model to give
different looks. So like whenever you saw Big
Gloves, it's actually the character's hand still
just enlarge to certain dimensions. And so when
artists would make their new art, they make the
textures and they'd say, I want it to have the big
gloves. And then in the editor later on, somebody
has to mark the flag for big gloves, so the
texture wraps around the character correctly. Tech
artists understand that pipeline and where things
can go wrong, uh, and how to fix each of those. So
they're looking more at the art through a
technical AI, uh, and kind of helping with that
pipeline. They also do stuff, and this is kind of
cliche, let's more technical, but, um, maps. Uh,
so, for example, our tech artists handle making
all the maps for World of Warcraft. Um, and one of
that reasons is, is the maps you'll need to make
the map. You only need to make highlights around
the map. You'll need to make the interacts. When
you click on this map it goes to the next one
lower or higher the hierarchy. So there's like uh,
certain art assets that are technical artists will
take on, um, just due to how they get set up in
the game or, um, that aspect, uh, when I talked
about the characters, uh, the other thing that our,
our, our tech art team lead was, uh, uh, we're
talking a lot about these days, but with machine
learning, something that they've done previous to
this new AI generative AI debate was, uh, every
helm we had to make about 13 of them because we
had 13 different races. And. Wow. And if you have,
uh, character that's a dog and has a long snout,
and you put the helm, that was fitting on a human
on it. Now there's a snout sitting out through the
front. And so they'd have to actually copy the
helm and then make a new version and stretch the
polys around so that it went out in front of the
snout. And they'd have to do that for all 13 races.
So what they did is this group also, uh, they did
some machine learning and taught it on all the
helms they've done, uh, for the last 15 years. Uh,
this is how you do all the changes from the human
one that we make to all the 13 races, and now they
have a helm fitter. So make the helm on the human,
and they'll run it through this program. Who will
do all the changes and save out Helms for all
those races. So basically, it's where the art
world, uh, mixes with technology and just
technical implementation. They also do our physics.
Uh, so like if, uh, somebody makes a flail art,
the artist will have a flail and they'll send the
model through with, uh, some instructions, and
they make the bones, um, and they make the
weighting. Uh, rigging is oftentimes under tech
art. Um, and so those would be animation helpers
and skinning and stuff like that. So rigging is
usually associated with tech art. Uh, so there's a
lot of things in the tech art these days. Um. But
that's kind of the niche area. It's it's they're
definitely looking for a lot of people that have a
little bit more tech minded ness, but also art. Um,
and that's probably why you're seeing it, because
it's a very in-demand section of the, the
workforce. So, uh, interested in film? What did I
want to do in film? Uh, I wanted to do film
editing. Uh, that was the thing. I just like to
put things together. Um, and so I made some, like,
a lot of films and not really like full films in
high school, but a lot of things for, like,
assemblies and like hype things and putting, uh,
highlight reels together. And so I was going more
towards film editing and potentially trailers.
That's kind of where I was heading. Uh, but and
then, uh, I was like I said, I was going to work
for six months and moved to Hollywood. And then I
went to BlizzCon and changed direction completely.
Uh, favorite films and directors? Um, I am a big
fan of Spielberg. Not all the films, but a lot of
them. I do like, uh, a little bit of the 80s vibe.
Um, so a lot of the Tony Scott ones from that time
period, some of his later ones, I like to, um.
More recently. I'm not off top my head, I. I am
not following it as close as I used to, so I just
enjoy all films mostly. Now. I usually go to a
film every weekend. All right. Uh. What are your
personal thoughts on how AI is changing the
landscape of the digital world, specifically game
design? How do you feel the pros and cons of AI?
Also how you see evolving in the industry? So
again, um, we haven't used any generative AI on
our team yet. Um, I have some friends that have
used it a bit here and there. Um. I've heard and
that that it helps kind of with some of the low
level programming stuff. Um, I do think that a lot
of the programming that we need on new features
and big features still needs, um, personal
architecture, and I don't think that'll ever go
away. Uh, whether or not, you know, they can build
some of the framework and then have some of the
later stuff filled in. I think that'll be kind of
a direction things will go on the programming side.
On the art side, I think we'll continue to try and
find the places where artists are. Redoing things
over and over again, like repetitive stuff. And I
think that's where the best focus would be first.
Uh, I do understand the, the worries of like, can
you just make art from scratch? And I don't think
we're there yet. I don't know what'll happen if we
get there. Uh, I do think that the work that
artists do is very important and very, uh. Uh,
critical. Um, especially, uh, in, you know,
working with a designer to, like, figure out what
something should be. I think, like, for me as a
designer, something that might be useful. And this
is, uh, just now that we have it is. I have this
idea I like. I would like to get some reference
material together to then give to the artists. I
think that's an area that would help me as a
designer. Um, you know, it's like the clip art
search back in the day. Like, I think we can do
way better at that. And being able to, uh, get a
better set of, like, references, but then still
relying on the iteration with, uh, artist and.
Yeah, like, I'm, you know, I'm working on a new
project and I'm getting, uh, world work. We're
gonna have mount for it. And seeing, like, you
know, that artists will give us like, six ideas in
a really basic concept, and then we can say like,
hey, we like this aspect of one, we like this
aspect of three. And then they'll do, um, a
mixture of that or uh, two variants that are a
mixture of that. And, and I think that that
process will happen no matter what. Um, I don't
know where things will turn out later on. I know
that it's a common question. I know that even
internally, people are starting to think about
where we go and what we do. Um, it's too, too
early, I think, to say for sure. Um. But yeah. So
it's a good question. It's definitely going to be
what your guys's, uh, industry is going to be
using and facing. So. Uh, favorite part of
Warcraft one was the excessive clicking comments
by each unit, right? Uh. Yeah. So they called
those, uh, the ******, uh, emotes. They were
****** if you clicked on them too many times. Uh,
so that was always a fun part of it. Um, when I
worked on rewards, I was much more on the, uh,
creative, uh, side of rewards. I wasn't a huge fan
of making economy models. Um, and so we had this
thing and. Wow. Which we call flavor tax. So an
item will have its name. And then under that in
quotes, it'll have kind of a quote that's setting
off the item a little bit more. And that's where
we'd put some of that fun stuff. So I'd like a
comment that would make the name kind of have a,
uh. Hip hop culture vibe or just be like, oh, that
was funny, you know? So, uh, that's definitely
where my, uh, my stuff would lie as having fun. So
I did the Secrets of Azeroth event that was in.
Wow. Um, it was our attempt to, uh, some of our
older designers had some time extra back in the
day, and they'd make these really elaborate
secrets and hide clues everywhere. And we want to
do that again. But we felt like only certain
people really could participate in that until it
was all figured out. And so as Secrets of Azeroth,
we tried to do, uh, what's the more approachable
thing? And so we kind of did something where we
went back to even, like, original. Wow, where if
you read the, uh, the quest text, you could figure
it out. Whereas nowadays we just show you a lot of
times where to go. And so that was kind of a fun
little way to get some of that. Um. Extra flavor
in where we do some toys that could teach you
where to go. And, uh, basically like this person's
like not as helpful. And so that could be a fun
way of getting those little, uh, vibes from those
old wow, uh, ticks that you're commenting on. So,
uh, yes. Uh, you worked in QA. What was it like?
What did you look for when testing games? Uh, yeah.
So I worked in QA for about seven plus years. I
worked as a, uh, tester and then lead, um, our
specialist, and then leads, um, on it. Um, yeah, I
guess have to be an example. Like, everybody
thinks, like it's, you know, grandma's boy and
you're you're going in and you're just playing
games all day, and, um, it's it's truly a job. And,
and certain people are good at it and some aren't.
Um, one of the questions that was asked in my, uh,
interview was, uh, if you were tasked, uh, in
Diablo to walk along every square around the edge
of every map and drop an item and make sure it
didn't fall off the map, would you be able to do
that? And so that, you know, they were trying to
kind of get a vibe of, would you be okay with
something that's super tedious and super
monotonous? And nowadays we wouldn't do that. Uh,
uh, you do something more systematic. Uh, and I
think that's what I saw as I went through QA, we
changed from test everything to being smarter
about what you need to test and how to test it. Uh,
so in QA, you ideally would get to work with the
designers and the engineers to understand what's
happening in the game and how it works. And then
you would sit back and say, all right, I know how
it would work. Where can I see the parts that it
could break down? Where does it cross over into
another feature? Where does, uh, where do I need
to check one thing versus 20 things? Where where
are the differences in put it and how are they
different. So. Showing, and this is probably a
great thing for just if you're a designer, how to
like check your stuff, uh, or a programmer if
you're going to do unit tests and stuff like that.
All of these. I think that logic is there. Um. But
basically, uh, some of it though is like, hey, if
you're testing art in a, in a environment as a
tester where you ran around and you looked for
things floating, it looks for seams and cracks
where things didn't quite fit together. Uh, and
this was where you found, like, the people that
were inquisitive and good at finding stuff. It's
like, well, what if I'm that player that went
under the bridge and looked up like, there's no
content there, but there's going to be somebody
that does that. So I'm going to do that and then
you have to time find out. Well, I never actually
textured anything underneath the bridge. So
there's a bug, you know. Um, so yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
You basically you're trying to break stuff. You're
trying to think of what the player is going to try
and do. Um, it's super important. Um. Around, uh,
rewards. Um, like we found a person who understood
how rewards fit together and how economy systems
flow together. And just a much more technical side
of design. A certain QA person's got a mentality
for that, and we found those, and we'd foster them
and make sure they stayed in that spot, uh,
helping us and moved up that way because it's it's
a knowledge thing, like how much you know, how
something works is really important. And so like,
you know, to Tiffany's thing in chat is try and
break everything. The more you know about a thing,
the more likely you are to find the breaks. Our
players. Are so numerous and so many of them are
going to have I mean, be programmers are going to
try and build things to exploit, are going to find
the try and find the shortest route to the best
reward or anything that we missed so that they can
get the reward ten times faster. And that's kind
of where QAS role helps, is to find those. Those
cracks in our design, those, uh, cracks in our
engineering before it hits the player. So it's a
race out of a lot of times. So. Uh, how big of a
part does automation play in QA for? Wow. Uh, so
for QA specifically, I am not as sure these days.
Um, we had some rudimentary automation when I
worked back about ten years ago, and the different
teams have had different amounts since. Right now,
the automation group is actually on the Wow team
directly, uh, instead of just being in QA. And
they do make tools to help QA as well. QA also has,
uh, a new group at at Blizzard that does a lot of
tools to help players, uh, help testers enter bugs
directly from the client. Um, that's a big one.
That was huge. Um, automation though, uh, our
automation team, they all set up tests to do
stress testing. So, like having hundreds and
hundreds of clients all log in and process, like,
they can do simple stuff pretty easy, like, you
know, complete this quest and then this next quest
and then take this thing, um, or they do, uh, a
lot of our performance testing where you'll go to
of different places on a map with a, um, with an
NPC and do every, all directions to get the
performance of that location, and they'll find hot
spots, and that'll be something that'll be
presented over to, uh, our art team to kind of
look at, like, okay, what's the big thing that's
causing the performance spike in this area? They
also do rate testing where they can do the
performance of a raid without having to have, like,
people that know how to complete a raid really
well. Um, so, yeah, stress testing is usually what
a lot of automation is used for. Uh, DPS rotations
is another one. The community has kind of
developed like how to sim, uh, stats and gear for
a long time now. Um, but we can use similar
techniques to find out how much damage is a
character doing with its full kit. And they can
use that data to, uh, try and tune things closer
before it goes live. And then a lot of games
nowadays have a lot of data hooks in it. And, uh,
so this isn't quite automation, but it's analytics
is huge. Uh, big data. Right. You know, um. All
that information from Warcraft logs. So it's all
these people doing these dungeons and whatnot like
that data is available and parsing it, figuring
out like who's high, who's low, why are they high,
why are there low. And that's the part that
becomes the designers and the developers is
there's a website called Wow Head that posts all
the information about our game every time we put
out something. Right. And, and it's fun. You know,
we even look at stuff like, oh, I didn't know we
were adding that, you know, um, but the thing they
do is they'll post the Warcraft logs board. Right.
And and that's great. It shows you at a glance
which, which class is doing better or worse.
Generally, one of the things that you don't always
think about is and this is something our class
people have to think about, is the top one on that
DPS say it's a we have classes. The classes have
three specs usually. So let's take one hunter. So
there's a range hunter that's called marksman.
That's the traditional hunter. Then we have the
Beastmaster Hunter which is got their loyal pet,
and they fight together. And then you have a
survival hunter who's, like, able to survive, puts,
traps, downs, melees. And it doesn't have the
range component. Our best players will sim and
figure out what of those specs has the potential
to do the most, and then the best players will
play that spec to the exclusivity of the other
ones. And so there will be, say, it's marksman
right now. So all the best players are playing
marksman and they're playing it and they're doing
100 100 DPS. Let's say if those same top players
played, say, Beastmaster, they might be able to do
98 DPS. So they're only 2% off, which is maybe a
target that they set up. Right. But because the
best are playing the top one and the middle and
lower are playing the next one, the chart on Wow
logs might show that the, uh, The Beastmaster is
like at 76 or 80, like, and they're like, way
behind. That's that's an over, uh, exaggeration.
But that's a thing that you have to kind of look
at is if the best people are playing the best one,
but if the best player will play the second best
one, it's really only slightly less. That's where
you have to be careful, because then if we just
tweaked the second one a little bit now it's the
best and everybody plays that one and that one
because the top, you know. So there's a lot of
like nuances when you look at data. And I think
that's an important part that people miss. Uh when
you're starting to look at data and derive things.
Um. So anyway, that's a tangent, but uh oh.
Hopefully entertaining. Uh, our players are so
numerous. Someone will try everything eventually,
no matter how stupid it sounds. Very true. Yeah.
Um, the, uh. Other than Blizzard games, what games
are you drawn to that you play, want to play and
just haven't had time for? Ooh. Uh, I tend to play,
uh, city builders and strategy games. That's kind
of where my, uh, uh, I do play a lot of. Wow.
Still, um, but, uh, I'm a big Total War fan, so I
do a lot of that, and I do a lot of city building,
like banished was an older one that I still keep
going back to. Um. Games. I wish I had played more.
A lot of them I, I don't have a console right now,
so I've missed out on a lot of the last wave of
really good console games, and I have a lot on
steam that I just not have played, so I need to
get better to do that. Uh, any of these games
impact what you do with the projects you work on?
I think that is a very, um, common thing that
players will see something in one game and want to
see if it will work in their game. Uh, I think a
lot of times I can usually use, uh, videos from
YouTube and stuff like that to, like, kind of get
an idea of what they tried and see if it might
work. Um. I play a lot of the classic version of
Wow right now, and that's, I think a cool part of
what we're doing with Wow is we kind of have
different flavors that hit even, you know, we
talked about PvP versus raid versus outdoor
players in the mainline game. But we also have, as
we talked about, 20 years of players. And a lot of
those players played the early game, which is very
different than the later game. And so. There's a
lot of people talking about like, well, should we
just transfer everything from the old game to the
new game? And I think that's also where what are
you those players, what are those players want
versus what do the main line players like? And uh,
you know I, I constantly I'm thinking about why do
I enjoy playing, you know some of the classic
stuff and what can I implement in the main line.
I'm making that similar or has some of those
elements. But I do know that a lot of those people
don't play the mainline game anymore. A lot of the
mainline people have different time schedules than
those people had in the past. So it's a lot of
factors you have to think about when you're trying
to look from one game or even one type of a game.
In the case of Wow, with classic to, uh, versions
and mainline. And do they match, uh, trying to put
a, uh. Arts mode into World of Warcraft, you know,
may not work well or or very hard to implement. Uh,
we did garrisons, and, you know, garrisons had
some arts elements. And, you know, we enjoyed
those features as they were, but they're very hard
to make and very hard to tune and hard to make it
feel like you're still playing. Wow. So you always
have to be careful when you're trying to pull
those. It's much easier when the genres are very
similar. Uh. I always had such a deep and
fantastic history. Laura. Any tips for creating
lore story aspects of a game? Uh, that's I think,
you know, one of the pieces that I got into this,
uh, I believe I'm a world builder at heart. I, uh,
I was not a great grammar person or whatnot for
writing, but I love to explore what could be in an
area. Uh. I think, as with, you know, Tolkien or
any of those writers, the more details you have,
the probably better you'll be in the long run. But
I would say, and I think I've learned as you have
to cut those down and down and down. So when
you're presenting and talking with somebody, they
need that initial thing that's going to hook them
and then they'll love to talk to you more later.
So, um. I think writing out some of your
characters and what their role is in the game, how
do they fit in? We'll help get you an idea of
what's important to have communicated to the
player, versus what you could add later as kind of
supplementing your world. Um, we kind of do what's
like, what's the character, um, journey through
this feature. And I think if you can tell somebody
like, you know, as a player I would interact with
this person, this is the kind of character they
are. I would be working with them or they would be
directing me. Like, as you start to kind of
envision the player's journey through some
elements of your feature, your game, uh, it's
going to help inform you to know what additional
information do I have to communicate to the player?
Uh, in puzzle games, the world is has to be much
more fleshed out and much more, uh, dynamic
because players are going to be interacting with a
bunch of stuff. And if, if the only thing they can
interact with is your puzzles, then your puzzles
became super easy. But you know, you also don't
want to have them as they like are just checking
everything to see if, uh, if it's valid for your
puzzle. Um, and if you have too many, then they're
going to check out because it's like, well, now I
have to read everything. But if if they click on
something and it's interesting and it gives a
tidbit or it gives some information that might be
useful later, those things will start to connect
in people's minds and help your world be much
richer. Um. Yeah, I am lucky, you know, because
World of Warcraft does have a ton of law and stuff
to build on, so I don't have to do that from
scratch. But one of the first things I did, um,
heading down this path was before I even became,
you know, part of QA. I was at University of Idaho.
Still, I was, uh, I worked in the labs, uh, three
in the morning, and I would be like, you know, wow.
Hasn't gone to this area of their world. I wonder
what could be there. And I just started to, uh.
Well, there'd be a town and there'd be this
faction, and I. I put pages and pages together. I
had fun doing that. Um, as I tried to talk to
people. When I finally did get Blizzard about
stuff like that, I found out I just had too many
details to talk to anybody out of the gates, and
you just have to. That's. So that's just a tip I
will recommend, uh, shape your stuff to your
audience and make sure you have. It's kind of like
the news pyramid. If you take a communications
class, you have, like, the headline and then the
major details, and then you have more and more.
Think about that. Whenever you're approaching
anybody with a project or a feature or something
you want to like, get them excited about, have
that. Uh, early when some details that you have in
your mind. But maybe you don't present in your
presentation or something like that, but, uh, yeah,
frame it like that.
Uh, as someone who actually enjoys writing. Uh,
are there roles for writers? I've seen job
postings for game writing, such as? Senior writer.
Are you familiar with those positions? Uh, yeah.
So I think this is also goes back to how big is
the company you're applying for and the teams that
they're working on. Uh, all teams will have
somebody doing. Uh, all games will have somebody
doing writing, whether or not that person is
dedicated to just writing, or they're the ones
that say, write the quests and make the quests.
And so they're writing as they're doing that
content. Um, usually I think. Most games will have
somebody who's in charge of the story, um, and, uh,
they may be so high up or the project so big that
they're not necessarily writing the actual words
that will make it into the game. They may just be
directing and handling the story and having some
people like, pitch them ideas, and they kind of
make sure it all stays together. Um. They're
probably still considered a writer in that group.
World of Warcraft has a narrative team now. Um, it
I I've been there since it started. Uh, so
basically there was a a world lead world builder,
and they were a quest designer that eventually got
up to the top level, and they'd be in charge of
making sure all the quests and the story strings
went the right way. And then that position, they
hire somebody outside them that was going to be
the lead narrative designer, and they would be
reviewing our text to make sure we hit, you know,
tones of characters and stuff like that. Um, you
know, before that, it was just on the individual
quest designers to hit as best they could. So they
started this department and they've grown it. And
so now they'll check the text I write for my
features. They will, uh, potentially be on loan to
my, um, features when we have like a more
narrative focused, um, part of it and, uh, I mean,
there's seven or so on that team now. Um, but
again, we're a big team. Uh, most, most games will
probably have 2 to 3, um, writers. Um, it just
really depends if you have a shooting game, you
know, uh, something that people kind of don't
remember, even if you're like, you know, you have
Overwatch or League of, like, uh, the Apex Legends,
those characters say about 20 lines in different
places. And so you have the writing that's writing
for gameplay. Uh, and that's going to be part of
every game. And then you also have, um, the more
narrative and the more story driven writing. So
even in those games, they're going to have a lot
of times they're like, uh, kinds of conversations
or, you know, you'd have Rinehart and Birgitta
happen to be next to each other for a certain
amount of time. They may have a quick little
dialogue between each other. And those are ways
that you know, the the game. Teams can also get
some narrative into those stories, or they have a
dedicated group that makes the outside content
that adds those story elements to the game that
doesn't have as much. So, uh, lots of roles. They
are called writers. Um, quest design, uh, mission
design would be other roles I would look at. If
you're a writer looking into games, um, some of
the companies may ask you to make the missions and
the quests along with those, but, uh, it will vary
based on the company.
Brett? Could I, could I jump in and, uh, ask kind
of a connective question. Um, there have been some
really great questions about different roles.
Could you share a little bit about the story,
about how your journey at Blizzard allowed you to
move through different roles? Um, once you made it
into the organization? Uh, yeah. Um. So moving
into games, I did it. I knew I wanted to probably
be a designer at some point, but I didn't realize
how many different types of designers that were at
Blizzard. Um, so now that I'm in, right, you know,
I'm in the company, I'm doing QA work. I am
starting to learn more about video games, uh,
about the culture, how the companies work, which
is, you know, something that you just don't know,
you know? And, uh, game companies are doing better,
showing you kind of behind the scenes stuff these
days, but, uh. As I was working in Cuba, I got to
know how the process worked, how the company works.
Um, later in Cuba, as I got up into higher levels,
I got into leadership, which gave me more access
to the developer teams and how they worked even
more, and what types of things different people
did. Uh. I went that way. Uh, nowadays, though,
they have more, uh, what they're calling them
embedded QA. Um, back in the day, we, uh, you know,
we were in another building and only people above
a certain level got to go over to the developer
building and get the notes from the designers and
bring it back, you know, and tell us what we were
going to test. Uh, so there was a little bit of,
like, that closed offish ness when I first started
in QA. But, uh, over time, I worked with, uh, with
the Overwatch team before it became Overwatch. And
as a shy person, our goal and my goal with the
co-leads was how can we make testing more
efficient, better for the testers, better for the
designers, and, and foster a culture where we're
talking a lot more and working a lot more together?
And as I did that, um, I got to help. Overhaul,
how we tested things, how we understood things,
the information we got from the developers. And I
quickly learned that I didn't want to also report
on fellow testers and how well they're doing. And
so that's where it said, like, I really don't want
to be a leadership in QA. I want to be a designer.
So my manager at the time was like, do you think
that you have the tools here on the team to try
out and perfect your designing? And so I was like,
yeah. So I used the editor, the Overwatch editor
to make my own missions or uh, like I'd spent.
He'd give me, you know, certain amount of time on
Fridays to make stuff. And I think that's the big
thing that you have to understand when you start
working at any company, you're working now, your
time to do stuff for trying to find that next job
or that next project is limited. And if you happen
to have over time, you know you're also not having
that extra time at home. Uh, so this is where at
college and working on these projects you guys
have for school, but also finding some people that
have shared interest or just spending some of your
time early working on mods or things like smaller
projects to get those, um, find out what type of
design you want to do. Um, is huge because then
you're starting out, uh, ahead of the game. Like
for me, I was starting to make things in an editor.
Uh, I was working on a team before Overwatch, but
that got kind of rebooted to Overwatch. And so the
things I was making didn't work for Overwatch. So
as I was trying starting to make inroads towards
being on that team, that was no longer a
possibility. So I moved over to the Wow tools team,
and I made stuff in the Wow engine and then
started to make stuff to sell myself as a
candidate, uh, when an opening opened up and, uh.
I think that was what I learned is you have to do
projects to know if you like doing the things in
those projects. And I was able to pivot some, you
know, I do some quest stuff, and I found out that
I was not as good at writing and I didn't like
editing. And so as I got into the reward side, I
did professions where I got to do a little bit of
the editing and small amount of the words to a
point where I was having fun doing that part, but
I didn't have to worry if, like my story idea, if
the story changed, all that's just thrown out.
Right? And that's a that's a thing. That's just
part of the iterative process too, that you'll
learn is, uh, you have to be okay killing your
darlings or it's, you know, or, uh, is a phrase
and. Everything is to make things better, but the
more things you try, the more projects you work on,
the better you'll know yourself and knowing what
you want to do longer term. Uh, so that's that's
what I learned. I got to work in professions. I
did rewards for a long time, and I knew I wasn't
wanting to really do rewards forever. Uh, and
there's some realities of, like, you know, I was
one of the senior people, so, you know, had a lot
of the, uh, knowledge to help the next group of
people working on the, the next expansion. So it
was very hard for them to transition me to this
new team that I'm on, just because now I've
already gotten so much knowledge in this one. But,
uh, it did help me. I did what I and this is I
think something else that's good to know is, you
know, people change jobs change roles. Uh, I've
been lucky to be a wizard for the whole time and
be able to find spots at Blizzard that I could
learn new things and move into. Um, sometimes
that's going to be going to another company. Um, a
lot of times we see people leaving Blizzard just
because they've done all that they wanted to do or
could learn about the MMO game and maybe the other
games that our company didn't interest them, but
they wanted to go do something different. And I
think that's okay. But again, trying out all the
different projects, um, help you to know what you
like and help you to know what to focus on and do
more of.
All right. Uh, um. As globalization of development
and post-Covid remote work had an effect on the
culture of game development. Blizzard. Uh, most
certainly, um. Uh, when I first started. And this
is something like generally about, you know, I
don't know how many of you guys are working versus
just students so far, but any job you start
working at, you're going to meet great people that
you're going to have really good time with, hang
out, um, get to know more. Uh, that'll happen
probably more as you're early in your career and
they are also early in their career. Um, as I
pointed out, you know, I was growing and learning
and gotten new positions. So were the people I
started with. But those new positions were at
other companies. So keeping connected with people,
just friends was that way. And that's, I think,
what's really happening to the whole industry. Um.
We, uh, we're all working in the campus up until,
like, March 15th or whatever of 2020, I think it
was, or 19, whatever. And they were like, all
right, we're going to go home for two weeks and
see how this works out. And they'd had like 2 or 3
people test out taking their equipment home. And
we shift the whole game remotely. So it's possible
like a whole expansion. And uh, during the
pandemic, when we needed more people, we had to
hire people, and they were remote and some of them
were going to be permanently remote. We I think at
Blizzard had an advantage where we had offices
around the world already. So in a malaise like
some of our technology was set up to coordinate
and work with people. Uh, also in the pandemic, we,
uh, acquired some new development teams in other
parts of the US. Um, so it's different. I
ironically, we're back to hybrid work, so we're
three days back. Um, then you can take Monday and
Friday and work from home if you want. Or you can
just ask if you need to take a day and work from
home, like I'm working from home today so I can
chat with you guys. Um, uh, I think that the
reality that's kind of weird is I was ready to
come back because I enjoyed being in the office,
and there's, like, so many conversations that
happen, just like everybody's towards the end of
the day that I want to start something new and you
just start chatting or like, I have this idea, do
you have a few minutes? You can do that remote it
just harder. Um, but now we have a couple people
remote, and we have a couple people in office that
we're always going to have to do meetings pretty
much with zoom, even if somebody is, you know, a
couple of them are right in the same room. So I
think that that fundamentally, uh, game
development has changed. And it's tough. Like if
you are a remote person, your connectedness to the
team is going to be less and and there's a
managers that are, you know, their job is to try
and figure out how to less than that, how to
improve it. Um. The, uh. The big parts there is,
uh. Wow. Or any game is very collaborative. How
well you navigate, uh, working through all of your
communication methods, whether it's Zoom or Slack
or Teams or, uh, Jira for your bug tracking and
task tracking, all those things, the better you
are at doing those things with other people, the
better you'll be able to make the games. Uh. We
have a lot of people back at work, which is really
cool. And, uh, they have events on campus from
time to time where they'll talk about a new
release of all the different games Blizzard's
working on. And I think that's a really cool part
about being part of a bigger, uh. Company is I get
to see those things interact with all those. Uh, I
think there's also perks, probably at a smaller
company, too, that you have, like a more tight
knit group of people working, um, towards, like, a,
uh, more maybe closer to your heart type project.
Um, so there's bonuses of both of those. Um,
definitely. Things have changed, uh, over the time
I've been there. I was there for 16 years. The
blizzard I started with is very different than the
one we're at now. It's still fun. Gets to hang out
with people, get to have to jam about making games
every day. So. I don't know if that does. It
doesn't quite, but remote's a big option now and
it's going to be even more going forward. Uh.
Let's see. Was there any changes in Microsoft?
Quark. Blizzard? Uh, so, um, I, I haven't seen
anything change on my immediate team. Uh, I think
that's probably due to our team had kind of come
up with the new cadence and the new vision and all
that stuff. Uh, prior to the to the to the
Microsoft thing. So I know all I can speak to is
just my experience on wow. And, um, basically,
we'd outlined what we wanted to do, what we wanted
to change, and, uh, they came in and asked us if
they needed if we needed anything. And we kind of
outlined the stuff that would help. And, you know,
so far our leadership team's kind of just been
plugging forward. So I feel like not much will
change until, you know, unless something
drastically goes wrong. I think we're we're doing
whatever we were doing before. So.
All right.
Any other questions people might have?
All right, well, I might have to go at three. So
unless there's any more, I, I mean, or if just
anybody has a generic ending. Questions.
Yeah. No problem. And if you guys have any other
questions you come up with, um, you can have, uh,
Ethan email on my way, and I can do my best to
answer them and, uh, get back to you. So. Brett, I
you know, I want to tell you how, um, how grateful
I am. And I'm sure folks here live now and I'm
sure the students who watch this later on are two
for taking the time out of your busy schedule to,
um, to tell us, uh, about your experiences and and
your advice and your recommendations for everybody
here who, who want to have, um, a career and a
life like the one that you have crafted for
yourself. So congratulations to you for, uh, for
being part of what is really one of the most
spectacular, uh, kind of collective endeavors in
video game history. World of Warcraft is just got
so much impact on society worldwide. Um, I, I'm
really, um, thrilled that we got a chance to
connect with you today and that you shared your
time with us. No problem. I, I, I enjoy doing this,
and I've been lucky to get the opportunity to do
it a couple times. Uh, one last thing I would say
to, uh. Internships are kind of one of your best
opportunities to to showcase if you can do
something. Um. Oftentimes if you do an internship,
uh, you're doing the job and they already know you
can do it, and it's pretty quickly. Uh, so keep an
eye out for that. Uh, I know for Blizzard end of
October, early November is when those get posted.
Um, be aware and there's lots of people apply. So
that's again why my recommendations of work on
some projects get some stuff while you're just
doing school, either of school projects or the
more the more they'll set you apart. So uh, again,
uh, art, watch out for contests and internships
too. And engineering especially, you can find
internships in all types of fields, too. Uh, and
and gaming doesn't have to be your first stop.
Start on the journey. You can always start
somewhere else and work your way towards it, too,
just as, uh, you know, kind of hopefully I should
I did, um, and yeah, good luck to everybody. And,
uh. I hope you have a good rest of your day and,
uh, semester and, uh, thanks again. Thank you.
Brett. We'll be in touch and follow up. And, uh,
thanks for that offer to be a resource that, um,
the students could, could, uh, forward questions
to through, um, through my email. Um. So grateful.
I hope you have a great rest of the week, and
we'll be excited to see what you and your team
bring forth with, uh, 20th anniversary just down
the road on the calendar. It is. I wonder, you
know, we'll have to see what comes up about that.
Uh. All right. Wonderful. Take care. Thank you.
Brett. All right. Bye.