Jeff Kaplan: evaluation

Transcript context

…Me too. But we would look up that person’s account. I would do that all the time. I love looking up people’s accounts and seeing- … what would happen. It’s like, yeah, he had the six-game losing streak. He had an eight-game winning streak before that. There was no post about how awesome is this. And the human psychology doesn’t allow for that. One of my hindsight regrets about Overwatch, and this is, I think we did the right thing in the moment. It’s you know, like, I wouldn’t go back and redo it, but if I was making a hero shooter from scratch today, I would make it less team-focused. And we put all of our eggs in you noticing if the team won or lost. And we downplayed your individual contribution as much as possible. There wasn’t a scoreboard. We had a medal system, but the medal system was, in my opinion, it was not good because the losing team got medals and the winning team got medals. And on the losing team, they would use that. They would weaponize it against their teammate. “Well, I’m the top kills, and all you guys are making us lose.” And it’s like, “Okay, you’re the top kills by like one, and you guys still lost.” So I would, if I was to redo it today, or for any aspiring hero shooter makers out there, I would actually downplay the team factor, and try to put more focus on individual contribution. Because that’s just how people play. They’re, they’re selfish. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s just, it’s that human nature, they can’t help. And in terms of how they experience the game, in terms of how they derive joy from it, or how they see the challenge of the game is individual. Even when you’re on a team, you’re still feeling- … it’s individual, a fundamental individual experience. Let me, as a small aside, before I forget, since we mentioned first-person shooters so much, outside of Overwatch, what are some of the great shooters of all time that you’ve played?…

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