Hey folks,
I asked Dave (Brevik) if he thought it would be cool for me to post something to the forums so you guys could get some details.
As many of you know, I’ve been in the game industry for a long time. Over 20 years ago I started a small gaming/computer company, mostly dedicated to the Magic TCG while still in university in Windsor (right across from Detroit). I was hired by Wizards of the Coast pretty quickly and worked there for 7 years, doing the same kind of thing that I did when I joined Gazillion (many 100+ hour weeks, trying to make games & programs as awesome as possible). That company got huge as Magic grew and we added games like Pokemon, D&D, L5R and many others to the roster and were acquired by Hasbro.
After that, I started the Game Development group at Upper Deck. We had some solid products like Yu-Gi-Oh, World of Warcraft TCG and the amazing Marvel & DC game (Vs. System). Like Wizards of the Coast, we had another billion dollar games assortment (that YGO, though…
. This again involved many years of 100+ work weeks while supporting a huge amount of games being built simultaneously by several development teams.
I took the Director of Creative Development job at Blizzard about 5 years later and worked with another group of incredibly talented people that brought new meaning to “crunch” times in game development.
After that, I really wanted to retire (and was blessed to have that ability), but an interesting League of Legends experimental project came calling and I worked on that for a couple of years. I became a player of Marvel Heroes because I knew some of the staff and loved the genre and the IP (Marvel). I came out of retirement to work with Dave (and the amazing staff) of Gazillion to help grow the game. Of course, many 100+ hour weeks came during that first year, as you all remember very well from my sleep/forum schedule.
All of this experience was amazing, but I knew I was getting to be an old man and for the last year or so I’ve talked with Dave on who we could grow at the company and make a smart succession plan for me. I got married to a wonderful wife who deserves some attention (assuming she isn’t an Elektra Skrull) and have a mom who is now a widow and deserves a bit more attention from me as well.
It was obvious that we had a crew of young designers who were incredibly talented and would be able to serve the game well. Ryan (Ryolnir) has had the title “Creative Designer” for awhile now for a reason. It’s because he should be Creative Director one day and I made sure that was in the works. Michael (Mayhem) is one of the most naturally talented designers I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a lot) - he is easily able to lead the hero design crew (which is key to the game). TheCosmicCupcake is incredibly dedicated and talented and she will very capably lead the team that creates items and events.
I do want to take a rest, but I have talked with Dave about helping out in the future in a minor or unofficial capacity, so we’ll see what we can work up, but I do want to make it super clear that the talent at the company is immense and the company is in very good hands
. When we run a company that is funded with real dollars from real people, we have to be super smart about keeping costs reasonable and smartly structuring everything to continue for the future. That means cutting salaries at all tiers (including Doom tier).
Note that several layoffs occurred, but they were all cost motivated and have nothing to do with performance. Any performance related cuts happened months & years ago.
I also want to assure people that the direction of the game is in a good place. All of the designers on the team 100% agree that the focus should be new content, working on balance, fixing bugs, improving quality of life and making events better and better.
I will still provide as much assistance to these guys and gals as time allows. I just typed up some feedback notes for Deadpool’s level 52 review, so get hyped for that.
Marvel Heroes players are amazing and they set are the ones that set the bar.
