EPTI've disappeared over the past two months, and want to update everyone about what's going on.
When I posted at TeamLiquid, I was always doing so on my own time, with my own opinions. It was always a difficult balance, because as some of you know, I was also a Producer at Blizzard Entertainment the past two years, and was often involved with or leading projects that revolved around StarCraft. Maintaining that balance of posting as an individual, and not as someone representing the company, was always hard. I witnessed first-hand, many times, where the word or private thoughts of an individual employee was immediately taken as the company’s official gospel.
Many people say Blizzard is “distant” and “out of touch” with its communities. That may be true in the sense of not officially posting on a site like this, and that feeling is perpetuated by the carefully worded and PR-friendly statements you see on official outlets. In my personal view again, a company with fans that are as passionate about their games as Blizzard fans are simply has to be that way. You have to understand that everything you say will be analyzed, criticized, and studied for hidden meanings. When a company’s, or by extension its employees, words take on that much meaning you can’t afford to be indiscriminate about them anymore. The popular counter-examples of other game studios “doing it right” and getting down and dirty with the community and appearing to listen better are, frankly, because what they say doesn’t matter as much.
None of that isn’t to say I didn’t frequently disagree with the “Blizzard PR way” of doing things, and I often butted heads with the PR Director in order to do things and say things I thought the SC community would enjoy. It really stung when I saw the frequent and inevitable “Blizzard doesn’t care” and “Blizzard hates SC cause they got WoW” comments on sites and forums. You don’t know how many times I just felt like replying and telling those people they had no idea what they were talking about. But it boiled down to not crossing that line between posting as an individual and an employee, so I didn’t.
Now that I’ve left Blizzard, I will say so just once. The people who say that are simply wrong. The company cares deeply about the game and so do many of its employees. People still play it at work and the inherently geeky side of game company employees has come out more than once with heated lunchtime debates over zerglings. Here’s something to consider for those of you who haven’t worked in a game studio before: when you have an 8 year old game that isn’t bringing in much money anymore you don’t devote time to still patch it, try to keep on top of the endless hacks, and spend your time organizing events that are by no means cheap (BlizzCon, BWI) because you don’t care. Most of the rest of the game world thinks Blizzard is crazy to still be doing stuff for a game this old, and they’re probably right. So now, without any worry about being interpreted as an official statement, I can frankly say fuck off, a few of you really don’t know how good you have it with a company still willing to support a game this old.
That said, I really want to thank the people in the community that made it all worth it. You kept me motivated, and made me try my very best to overcome obstacles to be able to do some fun things for the community in return. Blizzard, and the SC community, really owes a lot to the people who helped so much behind the scenes. Some of their contributions were publicly visible, others were not, but they all rocked. A few that come to mind are FakeSteve, Uhjoo, Jonathan from GG.net, Bill307, Mora, Manifesto, SI, Wufan, Excal, Ashur, Illintar, Ilvy and Entropy. Two other people that just made things plain fun for me are Rekrul for the fun times showing Brett, myself, and bunny around Korea during BWI, and Legionnaire who was always lots of fun to go have a beer with at events and is just a genuinely classy person.
I needed to make a change in my life and for various reasons and have left the company. I won’t go into the reasons why I left. I’ll just say I enjoyed the years I worked there, met some great people at the company, and continue to believe that they will make top notch games well into the future. I’m also sorry that I won’t be able to see the Sandlot come to fruition. I hope you guys will be patient with Brett who had to take over when I left with basically no notice. On the technical side he had to basically figure out everything I was doing, who I was talking to, and try to pick it up with minimal delays to the event, which isn’t an easy task. The event is his as much as it was mine though.
Something you’ll never see on an official Blizzard site is how this event came to be. I’ve seen some nice theories like “make up for SC Ghost”, “increase sales in Korea”, etc. Want the truth? Brett and I were really drunk on a Wednesday work night at the Goat Hill Tavern in Costa Mesa. We started brainstorming something really unique and fun we could do for SC. Between downing beers and highly analytical statements about tournament mechanics like “fuck yeah that would kick ass” the Sandlot came to be.
Although I realize very few people will care to read this far into a post that’s way too long, but seriously… thank you to all of you guys at TL.net and in the community.
As for myself, I will be starting a new position on Monday with another company I really believe in: Razer. Although a lot of my new position will be behind the scenes, doing global strategic planning for the firm, it is a company that’s almost as tied into gaming as Blizzard is. Every one of their products is made with gaming in mind, for a gaming audience. I already know that a bit further down the road, there will be some exciting opportunities to get involved with the SC community again in that position. I can’t wait for the day.
Good luck man, and as always I GOT YER BACK.
