Former Overwatch boss Jeff Kaplan has been getting chatty following the announcement of his new open-world survival shooter, The Legend of California. And he’s now shared his thoughts on the toxic side of gaming fandom – what he calls “nerd baby rage” – offering some advice to those who insist on loudly complaining to developers about games they have no intention of playing: “Shut the f*ck up, no one cares.”
Kaplan was speaking during a 10-hour gameplay stream for The Legend of California, and was answering a question about the possibility of official role-playing servers before taking a bit of a tangent. “It’s really hard,” he revealed. “As a game developer, you can’t make a game for every single player [and] some people just won’t want to play this. There’s a lot of weird anger from the Overwatch community about this game… some of them are in love with it [but] some of these people are like, ‘I don’t want to play that game!’ [and] I’m like, ‘Yeah, then just don’t play it, it’s cool…no-one’s putting a gun to your head… you do you…just play the game that makes you happy!”
That led Kaplan onto the “weird [phenomenon of] ‘I gotta nerd-rage out’ because that’s what the internet’s trained me to do…”, which he discussed in more detail. “It’s one thing if you’re playing a game and… let’s say… I play a paladin and they nerf the paladin and then I get a little upset and I voice my opinion because I so love this game and I’m bummed that my paladin is nerfed. Like, I can kind of understand that a little bit; I never understand being hostile about it, being rude about it, but I understand being upset and I understand voicing your opinion.”
“But if a game comes out and you don’t want to play it,” he continued, “and you’ve never played it, shut the fuck up, no-one cares. We don’t need to hear you weren’t into it. What is with this, ‘Oh my god I’m so upset they decided to make this game that I have no interest in’…? Who cares about my opinion if I’m not going to play it, and if I’ve never played it? Why does my opinion matter on that? If you play it, great, you have an informed opinion… but there needs to be a little more ‘spread the love’ and a little less ‘I freak out and I baby rage and therefore I get upvotes…’ The echo chamber is just kind of insane.”
Kaplan noted he’s “been on the receiving end of a lot of nerd baby rage,” so has first-hand experience of how it’s received. “I’ll tell what it does,” he explained. “As a game developer who’s been in charge of teams, who has the ability to do something about it, I just f*cking ignore you. That’s all you’ve accomplished. It’s like, “I’m not going to listen to you anymore because you’re so off the deep-end that it’s not even worth listening to you at that point…”
“I know there’s a lot of other game developers hanging out right now in the chat,” he added, “and we talk about it… There are certain forums, or Reddit, or whatever, where it’s just like, ‘Yeah that one’s on ignore from now on, they’re not actually productive in any way. It’s like, who can get the most points by being outraged. I’m bored with it, I’m bored with the outrage at this point, it’s not interesting, come up with something new… I’m probably going to get in trouble for everything I just said, but at that point in my life and career, I just don’t care anymore.”
Kaplan announced his departure from Blizzard Entertainment – where he was both vice president and Overwatch lead – in 2021, after 19 years with the company. He’s remained largely out of the spotlight since then, working with a small team at independent studio Kintsugiyama on its first game, The Legend of California – an open-world, action-survival shooter, set on the mythical Island of California during the gold rush era, which enters early access later this year. Following its recent unveiling, Kaplan has been pretty chatty, talking about the likes of “the biggest f*ck you moment I’ve had in my career” while at Activision, and the “disaster” of Blizzard MMO Titan.
