Jeff Kaplan: preference

Transcript context

…Yeah … kind of, which I think is not necessary. I don’t think executives who take off and work 40-hour weeks should be telling anybody to stay late. I think that’s wrong and immoral. But to me as an individual, as long as I’m not telling other people to do it, my life’s work is my passion and I want to do it as much as possible. I find myself, I don’t think I’ve ever worked less than 10 hours in a day. Like that… 10 hours is like a normal-ish day to me. And I enjoy lots of weekends working because I enjoy it. It brings me pleasure and fulfillment. And all of that said, from a place of caution, especially in this era when people are very touchy about it. I don’t try to impose that on anybody else. I don’t want anybody to feel like they’re obligated to, but please understand it’s what makes me who I am, that work ethic. I enjoy it. I actually… Some of my fondest memories are from those WoW crunches. And then looking back and reading some of these stories, it’s pretty cool because me, as a fan, on the receiving end of some of those video games, you bring joy to millions of people. It’s awesome. Let me ask you about quests, but first, quick bathroom break if it’s okay. Quick 30-second thank you to our sponsors. Check them out in the description. It really is the best way to support this podcast. Go to lexfridman.com/sponsors. We got Fin for customer service AI agents, Blitzy for code generation in large code bases, BetterHelp for mental health, Shopify for selling stuff online, CodeRabbit for AI-powered code review, and Perplexity for curiosity-driven knowledge exploration. Choose wisely, my friends. And now, back to my conversation with Jeff Kaplan. Okay, we’re back. So I think it’s fair to say that before WoW, MMO leveling, like in EverQuest, consisted of, maybe that’s simplifying it a bit, but standing in one spot and killing monsters for hours. You helped develop with WoW, I would say a revolutionary idea of quest-driven leveling, where there’s a story driven, quest driven guide through the world, and it so happens that as part of doing that, you’re also leveling the character. So the leveling is both fun and is the engine that drives the story that then also immerses you into the world and pulls you in more and more and more and more. So take me through this process of developing that idea of quest driven design.…

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