Jeff Kaplan departs

 Unto the realm of forever

The trick about being the head of a studio, or even just the director of one particular game, is that literally everything you do, whether that be within the scope of the game in question or outside it, will be measured against the very health of the industry nugget we're focused on. I find it curious to note how something as mundane as a studio switch-over after the launch of a game can be seen as an 'ill omen' of ships being jumped before some looming iceberg, as though we're in Peter Pan and cannot fathom a reality where the captain does not go down with the ship. I'll be honest that I've fallen victim too for this plague of "Something at all is happening! Let's talk about it for a while", simply because I love to light up a conversation over any vague spark of a topic in order to fill up the endless void of my boring existence. Yet even in acknowledging, and in some ways confessing to, this way of thinking, I'm still going to do that exact thing right now as we talk about the recent departure from the Overwatch team; freakin' Jeff Kaplan!

Now it's not like 'Overwatch' is some struggling live service with a shoddy launch and several thousand hours of pathetic struggling and microtransaction begging left ahead of it before investors can even begin to think of it as a success. Overwatch is a game that has carved out it's name in history through the sweat and blood of others just as much as it has on the carcasses of a thousand pretenders to the throne. Inheriting the hero shooter title from themselves and then going on to redefine what it even meant to be a hero shooter was hardly a walk in the park for Blizzard, as was solidifying themselves so unshakeably in the public consciousness that almost every other game from that time with even a slightly competitive team shooter edge was seen as a rip-off. Battleborn was ripped down in it's wake, unjustly, and that was just a MOBA. Lawbreakers wilted against her brilliance, and according to all the press footage I've seen around that which is all definitely taken from real unbiased members of the public, that was the single greatest game ever made! Overwatch surpassed them all, even it's own past, to reign eternal as the king of kings; Diavolo would be proud, provided he didn't King Crimson past his entire monologue on accident again.

Jeff Kaplan has been part of that journey for the whole way through, and in many ways his mug has been the one that people in the community just automatically associate with the team behind this incredibly successful game. Many times have I seen meme videos that directly call out Jeff in reverence or disgust. Movements addressing Kaplan directly about a recent buff or nerf, outrage threads calling for action whilst invoking his name and even the odd decently creepy fan page post. In many ways Kaplan was the heart of the community in all the good times and the bad, making his departure one of the most curious cases of identity crisis that I can think off occurring to an online game this old. Who is the god of the Overwatch community now? Where are they? Summon them now and call their wrath upon me! You cannot, for the community has yet to randomly pick one yet. (My bet's on the community manager getting some love in the near future)

But Jeff isn't just leaving Overwatch behind, (I mean, it'd be kinda weird if he just stopped being game director for one of the most profitable games the company has ever had. Can't really see anyone willingly doing that and still sticking around) he's also putting to rest his 19 year tenure at Blizzard in a frankly ballsy career move. I can't even imagine having the courage to walk away from such a position unless I was literally dragged out of the office with security and dogs nipping at my heels. (Although I'd imagine the wealth and prestige make for a fine safety net. Plebs like me can but imagine.) On his way out Kaplan said the usual kind words that are plastered on the exit contract of every tech company, though personally I do see a lot of genuine affection behind his words of love towards the team, because of course. And finally he left with a command to the Overwatch community to not be too big of arses to the surviving Overwatch team. Okay, he didn't phrase it exactly like that, but that was the gist.

How very wholesome, no? "Where's the twist?" You cry. "Stick in the knife and twist it, why don't ya? There can't be a departure without some rampant speculation." And to be fair there's actually one readily laid out for us here. Because, obviously, Jeff's departure comes in the wake of the mythical beast that's proven to more elusive than the double horned winged lizard-corn that I see in my dreams; Overwatch 2. Remember that game? I sure don't, especially since it was announced and given an actual gameplay trailer before the conjunction of the spheres back when dabbing was still somewhat funny in an ironic context. I mean, I know that Blizzard are sort of know for announcing their games the very second someone in the department thinks up a name, but good lord you'd have thought there'd be something more about Overwatch 2! And in the absence of real news, some have taken Jeff's pilgrimage into the Undying Lands as signs of trouble in... well, Limbo, I guess.

I mean, what else can you conclude when the head of the first game can't even find it within himself to stick around for the grand release of the next game? Well, it could be that he's not the project lead for that game, or maybe he just doesn't need to be part of it anymore because his job is done, or maybe he just doesn't care about Overwatch 2 because the rest of Blizzard doesn't seem to care enough to explain what it's even supposed to be. So it's a sequel with shared infrastructure with the first game, made both to supplant and expand upon what the first game did in such a way that it doesn't even look like a different game? So way make a sequel at all? Do a 'Among Us' and make it an update, charge for the update if you have to. I don't know, maybe I'm talking craziness here.

Nothing can really be directly equated to Jeff's absence and development troubles given, as I've mentioned, this is a Blizzard development cycle we're talking about here. Whilst Bethesda have said to lean into the extreme of announcing games months before launch now; (Or at least they said they were doing that. Looking at ES6 with it's 2024 prospective release date.) Blizzard take the absolute other end of the spectrum. Overwatch was postulated on ad nauseum before it's formal announcement, but even when it was revealed there was a rather decent two year window before it and release. That was two years of near silence, however, with the odd beta trailer absolutely torn to shreds by hopefuls looking for sneak details and features they could stick in their Youtube thumbnails with yellow circles. (Was the yellow circle meta widespread back then? I forget) With any luck Overwatch 2 is following a similar trajectory meaning that the next title should be landing- in less than half a year? hmm... maybe this one is just taking a little longer to cook. The point is, losing Jeff isn't a sign of development stalls, not when this could just be your bog standard, dime a dozen, stupidly long development times. An expose article by Bloomberg is the only sign of that, and until we see those tweets making their way around, we can breath a sigh of relief that Overwatch 2 is coming. Eventually.

Personally I'm not really sure how I feel about Kaplan's departure. Though I was never a diehard of the community, and haven't even played Overwatch in multiple years at this point, his was a face and name I knew all the time, like the Todd Howard or Gabe Newell of his own domain. (Just... you know- probably not as rich as either of them) This is sort of like seeing that couple you used to hang out with divorce. You don't really see them much anymore and you probably weren't going to hang out with them anyway, but it's a wrinkle in the tapestry that you mourn for nonetheless. A sign that things don't stay the same, which of course they don't, but it doesn't mean that realisation can't strike you sometimes. So I wish good luck to Jeff boy wherever he goes, and only hope that the next sacrificial lamb to step into his shoes has any ounce of an idea what he's let himself in for. (I suspect not.)