Jeff Kaplan: belief

Transcript context

…Especially when you’re young. I got to see this kinda interesting thing. So I was at I spent, that’s what we’re talking about, you’re from Pasadena, so I’ve been spending a lot of time in Caltech and working on robots, and we get to see students come in from high school. Undergraduates come in and, like a tour, hang out with the robots. And middle school also. And the interesting thing you see, the younger that they are, the more prevalent this effect, which is all of them are kind of afraid to show that they think a thing is awesome. They’re all… You could just feel they’re checking, “Is it okay?” So they’re kinda like the default mode is whatever, this, everything is stupid, this is stupid. You know, ’cause that’s the safe place to be. It’s a real act of vulnerability. I would say it’s an act of courage, especially for a young person, to be like, “Holy shit, that’s awesome.” Like, I’m gonna, if I think this is awesome, I’m gonna be the nerd, I’m gonna take the risk and be made fun of for saying, “I love this,” in that case, it’s, “I love this robot.” So that’s an actual psychological effect that also young people are dealing with, in-person also. So I think, I just wanna say, for young people listening to this, be vulnerable, be courageous and say you love a thing if you love a thing. And do more of that on the internet, I think. I think people make up the internet, people build the internet, and young people, more than anybody else, define the future of the internet. So put more love out there in the world. If you love a video game, if you love Overwatch, say you love it. I couldn’t agree more. You know, as somebody who’s taken a lot of heat online, like any game developer, you just get destroyed. Doing what you do, you must get destroyed, you know? And it doesn’t matter, you get 100 compliments, it’s the one, you know, you’re… And you’re supposed to read it and supposed to be fine with it and have it not affect you. It’ll stay with you for years, you know? I have those. And I think of it, like the cheesy, the cheesy way I think about it is like, is there some kind of social Darwinism going on? And my big worry is that there are creators… Like, now being a creator of anything, writer, musician, you know, make online videos, whatever creator means to you, make games. Now part of the skillset is being able to weather like a fire hose of criticism like the world has never seen. And I make up these scenarios in my head of like, would Van Gogh have existed if, you know, Reddit and all these things were out there commenting on… Like, how many people were able to communicate with Beethoven in his lifetime, or in a week? Like, how many influences could comment on his music directly to him? Versus like if I want to insult Brad Pitt right now, I can just go on 10 different devices and do it. And it’s like that level of access is very dangerous, and I worry that there is a whole group of people who’s receding from us that will never see the brilliance, and they’re being shut out by the negativity. There- there’s a very real example, was Jay Wilson, who I think is one of the great design minds, who was the game director of Diablo III. And he took so much heat, it just affected him to the point where he essentially retired from making games. Went and, you know, wrote novels. I was very happy for him because, you know, I’m glad he found his place, and I think he’s getting back into making games now. But we lost, we essentially… Like, think how many people loved Diablo III and played the shit out of Diablo III. And Jay is one of the people you have to thank for that. And yet that community basically removed him from making games for like 10, 15 years, and it feels criminal to me. Yeah, absolutely. They… So this is a call to action, again. People out there, support, support, especially young creators, support them. They need it. Like you think negativity has no cost, but it does. You’re robbing the world of some of the great creations. And also, allow creators to suck and to improve. Because that’s what the process of creation is like, is to take risks. To take risks meaning being vulnerable, being cringe. To doing the thing that like, the embarrassing failure where you’re standing there in a silly clown outfit, on stage, dancing, and nobody’s laughing. And it’s a… Comedians go through this all the time, when… They talk about this all the time, when they bomb, right? They, the act just doesn’t work, and you have to go through that. And you have to, you have to support the creators through that journey. In order to have great things, we need to support those folks. So, after shipping WoW, Wrath of the Lich King, again, many consider it to be one of the great expansions for WoW, you stepped down as WoW’s game director and switched to developing Titan. This epic huge game that promised to be the, sort of the MMO to end all MMOs. I mean, it’s kind of a legendary vision for a game, right? It’s gigantic. With a lot of, like you said, a brilliant team, a team that’s now hardened and knows how to do a great game. But it was canceled after seven years in development. So, tell me, what was the vision of the game and what happened?…

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