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

- There's three types of fun, fun for the player,

fun for the designer, and fun for the computer.

- Is it PvP?

- It's all PvP. In fact, Rust is the most PvP thing in all of PvP.

- Well, I don't know what that means, but...

- Rust players know what that means. My whole career and my

family are thanks to EverQuest, so I think I won the game.

And we're idiots. We're reading the forums, and the forums are just

flaming us all the time. Like, "There's lag on this server,"

and, "Can't log into that ser-" And that's, that was our perspective

of what was happening. And when I showed up at that show,

it... One of the most emotional things in my life. It was

nothing but an outpouring of love. I had

believed I would never work any place but Blizzard.

I loved it. It was a part of who I was,

And I felt I was a part of it, and I literally thought I would

retire from the place. I never thought the day would come, and that was it.

- How painful was it to say goodbye?

- It broke me.

- Now, meanwhile, as far as the outside world is

concerned, you've disappeared off the face of the

earth, but you were actually working on a game.

The following is a conversation with Jeff Kaplan, a

legendary game designer of World of Warcraft and

Overwatch, which are two of the biggest, most influential games ever made. He is

genuinely one of the most amazing human beings I've ever

met. In the many conversations I was fortunate enough to have with him,

including while playing video games, he was always kind,

thoughtful, hilarious, and still and forever a

legit gamer, through and through. Of course,

he's always quick to celebrate the incredible teams of creative minds he has

gotten a chance to work with over the years, and they are truly

incredible. Blizzard has created some of the greatest games ever

made, games that to me personally have brought me

thousands of hours of fun, meaning, and

happiness, from Warcraft, to StarCraft, to Diablo,

WoW, Overwatch and more. So for that, a big thank you to

Jeff, to the entire Blizzard team, and to every

creative mind in the video game industry, giving their heart and soul

to build video game worlds that we fans get a chance to enjoy. This was a super fun,

inspiring, whirlwind conversation, pun

intended, with one of the most beloved gamers and game

designers ever. Full of memes, lulz,

wisdom, emotional rollercoaster moments, and of course, Blizzard

video game lore. Jeff left Blizzard in

2021, and has been secretly working on a new video game

called The Legend of California that I got a chance to play with Jeff. It is

incredibly beautiful. Set in the 1800s Gold

Rush era of California, it's an open world online multiplayer game,

part adventure and action, part

survival. Sometimes creating a feeling of loneliness and

desperation, and sometimes just awe watching the

sun rise over a beautiful landscape. It's unlike any game that

Jeff has ever worked on, and it's a game that I genuinely

can't wait to play with all of you. You can wishlist it on

Steam. Join the alpha later in March, I think, and early access is on the way. This

is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our

sponsors in the description where you can also find links to

contact me, ask questions, give feedback, and so

on. And now, dear friends, here's Jeff Kaplan. You were first a legendary video

game player, in particular in EverQuest,

before you ever became a legendary video game designer on World of Warcraft and on

Overwatch, which I think is a wild journey to go through from gamer to

designer. But first, let's go way back. When did you first fall in

love with video games?

- I was lucky. I was born in that golden era of coin-op.

So, I literally remember the first time seeing

Pac-Man. I was with my Uncle Ronnie, and he just kept

feeding me quarters. I think he wanted to play, but was too scared to,

so he, you know, his little nephew, he would just give him quarters to play Pac-Man.

I remember being at my brother's graduation in

Philadelphia, and they had an Asteroids machine in the

lobby. That was one of the first coin-op machines I had played as

well. And my brother and I would... we would

try to get the high score, and we'd finally get it. But we had to go to

bed early 'cause we were little kids. And then in the morning somebody

else had like beat our high score. And then, you know, I

grew up in Southern California in the '80s. I was born in '72. So, you know, I was a

kid with that skateboard BMX culture where

we'd ride two towns over. We knew all the pizza

parlors and liquor stores and arcades, and we

just lived in that coin-op phase. That was, that

was where the love started. And then you started to

see things like Pong. You'd go over to a friend's house, they'd have

Pong, and it was just mind blowing, like, we're playing this thing on the

TV and it was so much fun. Atari was a big thing at that time as

well. But the big one for me was actually

Intellivision, because my dad was an executive

recruiter, and one of his clients was Mattel.

And he said, "Hey, I... They gave me this thing," and he would get

discounts or free games. And my brothers and I just loved Intellivision. Like,

we would just play it endlessly. And the comparison

was always like, "Is this game close to what's in the arcades?"

And it was just such a golden era. And I think

the big moment where it really blew open

and kind of hit the next level was when the NES came out. And that, like,

NES with Super Mario- was kind of gaming at the next level at that

point. And I have, like, warm, fuzzy memories

even thinking about it to this day. I remember we

played Super Mario for weeks, my brothers and I, and then

I had a friend come over, and he showed me all the secret stuff-

... in Super that I didn't know existed at the

time. And it's... it was like suddenly, the world opened up more and games could be

more. And then there was, like, a big PC gaming push that hit me. My

parents ran their own business. Like I said, my dad was an executive

recruiter, and they bought an IBM. And this is, like, when it was DOS before MS-DOS

existed. And I was so disappointed, because, like, other kids had the

Amiga or the Commodore-

... which, you know, they were better for gaming than the IBM at the time. And

my mom, she really encouraged my brother and I. She bought a Zork.

You know, it was just Infocom word games,

and where your imagination would take you. Like,

Zork holds a place in my heart I think few games will ever touch.

- It's a text-based game?

- Text-based game. You know, you just type in, "Go west. Open mailbox." You know?

And...

- Okay.

- But it's that power of imagination. It's why the book is always better than the

movie, you know?

- Yeah. So, you're starting to see these creations of worlds that you can navigate.

- Yes.

- You can step into this world and you can lose yourself in that world.

- Yeah. You're transported. You're living there.

- Was Zork popular?

- Zork was insanely popular. And then there was Zork II- ... and Zork III.

- A trilogy. Zork trilogy. I see it. Okay.

- A- and it was weird, and, like, the... Sometime in the '90s, there was this, there was this

era of what they called CD-ROM games. That's how they branded

them. And they made a return to Zork, but it now had graphics.

And somehow, that just shattered everything, because the Zork you

knew in your head didn't exist anymore. Yeah, Zork was

fantastic. I think it might be open source

now, which I think is fabulous. But I highly recommend Zork. There was

also, in those days, on the PC that worked on our IBM, was Ultima-

... which was the Richard Garriott series.

And he was Lord British. We knew him as Lord British. He put himself in the

game. And you wanna talk about world- building. You

know, there was Yew Forest and there was all the characters. And

the first Ultima I played was Ultima II, 'cause Ultima I was before

my time. And that series, it was this RPG group based

PC game, and the worlds were just so

rich. Like, you could get on a rocket ship. You're playing in this fantasy

world, fighting demons, and yet somehow you could

get on a rocket ship. And then there was just all of this

sort of crazy stuff that would happen in

games that are based in the world. Like, there were bouncers in the towns,

and merchants, but if you really wanted to, you could try to rob

these people, or kill Lord British, you know?

That was something that was super hard. And when you're just a jackass

kid, you spend your time endlessly trying to do these

things over and over, and Ultima was really a profound kind of experience for me.

- And, of course, that led to Ultima Online, which is a legendary game in

itself, perhaps connected to EverQuest.

- Yes.

- Sort of starting to build these worlds that are massively

multiplayer online video games. Can you take me to

that journey? Like, as you started to get online, MMO world.

What were influential? What were fun for you?

- Well, the big one for me was EverQuest. But,

Like you mentioned, Ultima Online sort of was the

predecessor. It came before EverQuest.

And it was, like, one of those unfortunate times in my life where I

was actually at grad school.

- You were busy.

- I was busy, and I missed Ultima Online. Like, I

would have had that experience. And when you hear the Ultima

Online stories, they're some of the craziest,

funniest... You know, I know somebody who, they learned

how to poison in the game, and then they would

poison apples, then leave them on the ground, and somebody else would be

adventuring, then feed the apple to their horse and kill their horse.

Then they'd steal all their stuff and... You know, Ultima Online was kind

of... It was the earliest grief-based

experiment. Really, like, when you're treating the humans like ants in the ant farm.

That was kind of Ultima Online.

- Yeah.

- My first, like, what online gaming, what defined online gaming for me was Quake

and Doom and Duke Nukem. You know, it started with Doom

and they had a ... You could basically LAN. You could

network with your friends or you could connect with a modem and hook up with

somebody. And that was like a mind-blowing ... Just seeing

another entity in a video game and saying, "That's a

person on the other side of that."

That was magical, like, that that moment happened and that person

could be in another room or across town from

you. And Quake kind of took it to the next

level. Like, that's where everybody knew what they were

doing. The systems were more refined. And this Quake community formed with

all of these, you know, great websites, mods. The

community was divided into ... There were two castes of players. The low ping

bastards, the LPBs- ... and then the rest of us, you know.

And I remember rolling into Quake matches, you know, on a

dial-up modem with a 300 ping connection,

and I thought it was the greatest thing ever. Um,

and just, just connecting with people. Like

I said, the websites. To this day, the only gaming

website I read— I don't read any of the news sites anymore, but I read Blue's News.

Which was like, like ... Someone actually teased me recently.

I linked him a story. I'm like, "Oh, did you hear this new thing's coming out?" And I sent

the link, and they're like, "Dude, this is from Blue's News. Like,