Despite some big changes happening with Overwatch lately, former game director Jeff Kaplan hasn’t touched it since the year he left Blizzard. In fact, he actively avoids the game in every way he can, he told GameSpot in a recent interview.
Before Overwatch, Kaplan rose through the ranks on the World of Warcraft team, starting in QA and eventually becoming game director. He described his departure from the WoW team in 2008 as “a training moment” for when he would leave the Overwatch team, and Blizzard altogether, in 2021.
“I kind of went through a little bit of shock leaving WoW back in 2008,” Kaplan says. “So, when I stepped away from Overwatch in April of 2021, I was kind of used to that moment of what it meant to give all of yourself, your heart, your soul–because it’s not just a job, there’s no one who can do this and have it just be a job–and then have this shocking moment where you realize it doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to the team, belongs to the players, it belongs to Blizzard, but it doesn’t belong to you.”
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Kaplan says he “had a very almost clinical separation” with Overwatch after what he went through with WoW. As a result, he stopped playing it the moment he left and has actively avoided it ever since.
“After I said my goodbye to competitive Overwatch and the Overwatch subreddit, I never go back and read,” he says. “I don’t watch YouTube [videos]. I don’t search for my name in Overwatch. I don’t search for Overwatch. I sort of just disconnect. I actually tell all the algorithms like, ‘Yeah, I’m not really interested in Overwatch anymore. I know you think I’m the Overwatch guy, but like, that’s just not for me anymore.'”
In an interview from earlier this year, Kaplan said he fully expected to retire from Blizzard, but the company’s former CFO broke him by threatening to lay off 1,000 people if Overwatch didn’t meet certain financial goals. Kaplan called that meeting “the biggest fuck you moment I’ve had in my career, it felt surreal to be in that condition.”
Kaplan went quiet for several years before reappearing with a new studio and a new open world survival cowboy game called The Legend of California, which he’s heading up alongside former Blizzard developer Tim Ford. He says the new game is an opportunity to explore something more personal to him for the first time. “I didn’t leave Blizzard to try to make a Blizzard game. I left Blizzard to make a Tim and Jeff game.”
