Jeff Kaplan: preference

Transcript context

…Yeah. It’s harmful to a discipline to think that you understand the world. Most other folks don’t, and you have nothing to learn from them, really, and they’re deluded in some kind of way. That’s so powerful. Fast-forwarding a little bit, when we formed Team 4 and… Which went on to make Titan and ultimately fail, and then that got rebooted as the Overwatch team, the idea that I tried to get through to the team was to make an assumption. And really, like, Blizzard is one of the top game developers in the world, and we were very fortunate when I was there, and I imagine it’s this way today, that we could recruit whatever talent we wanted. The best of the best wanted to come work at Blizzard. And if you sort of go through the paces of that and say, “Okay, when we recruit somebody…” Let’s say we’re recruiting an artist to make props. Boxes, chairs, whatever. That is the best prop artist in the industry. That’s who’s gonna show up on our doorstep, so when they show up here, we should treat them like the best prop artist in the industry instead of starting from a place of doubt and cynicism. So, when that person speaks up and says, “I think…” Like, with Overwatch, for example, “I think we should do this. ” You know, “We should do X instead of Y.” Instead of saying, “Well, I’m a believer in Y, why are you against my idea X?” You should take a moment, have a deep breath, and say, “Man, the best prop artist in the industry is suggesting something.” Why don’t I listen to it?” I actually do it for myself, like this kinda thought framework or thought experiment. Whenever I’m talking to a new person, especially if I feel, myself, a little bit tinge of that feeling. Usually, it happens with, like, a really young person, like an undergraduate student or someone like this. I pretend that they are the smartest person in the world in my head, and then not… Like, it puts me in the mode of, like, assuming I have a lot to learn from them, and it helps. You actually, like, really listen. I literally think they’re the smartest, wisest human on Earth. It helps me.…

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