I took a very long and windy road to get here.
My undergrad, I went to school to be a veterinarian.
That was my path that I was going down.
I was an animal science major in college and… its a very different path where I am now.
I love video games, though, and I love Blizzard.
Blizzard was the pinnacle for me.
I had no idea what video game development was.
I wanted to see what it is.
I wanted to be a part of it.
And I basically did anything.
They were just testing games, and that parlayed into a bizarre role of recruiting-slash-facilities management.
As opportunities unfoldedas the company grewthere were more and more things that I was getting responsibility for.
And I did my best not to screw all those things up along the way.
Take us through a recent workday.
Thats a very collaborative process.
I get a lot of mail; Im copied on a lot of things.
They basically just accumulated.
That goes into a leadership meeting for Blizzard that I go to.
And then I go into a series of meetingsa lot of meetings.
Actually, we fight against meetings.
Its really important to me to stay in contact with them.
This is a creative environment and Blizzard is fueled by peoples passions.
Its really important that people are motivated and excited.
And that leads into my lunches, which usually are one-on-one lunches as well.
Thats a lot of digging deep into the problem of the moment.
We have play test every day.
What apps, gadgets, or tools cant you live without?
We use Confluence a lot for many things at Blizzard.
We have a lot of internally developed tools that we use as well.
Whats your workspace setup like?
I do a billion things in Excel, even when I have bigger tools at my disposal.
My actual workspace is an office with a whole bunch of chairs in it.
My door is usually open and people will just come in and talk to me about random things.
We do have white boards, and they are pretty crazy.
Theres a lot of stuff on my whiteboard right now that I didnt erase because it was so chaotic.
When I say triage, its about sitting down and prioritizing.
Whats your best email hack?
For a very long time, I was driven by rules.
I get a lot of mail; Im copied on a lot of things.
They basically just accumulated.
Now, even though I get literally thousands of emails, I am filtering my mail manually again.
Take us through an interesting, unusual, or finicky process you have in place at work.
Heroesmakes patches and releases constantly.
To do that, we start closing gates off.
Once you get to golden ticket, nothing changes without an approval.
Like, I got a golden ticket, I can change this now.
Today, that process is very, very curated.
At any moment, were stampeding towards locking down a built so that we can release it.
Did all the things that we wanted to do make it?
Or did we yank a whole bunch of them out because we didnt have time for them?
The games still going to patch, its just a question of whats inside of that patch.
Our Live Operations team lives in perpetual state of release finalization.
It takes village to make a game.
We dont ship things until theyre ready.
And it was a very different thing for us.
I kind of call us opportunistic enablers.
And so production is the biggest part of that.
Whats your favorite side project?
Its not really a side project, But for me, its like a real shifting gears: Blizzcon.
I grew up with parents who were really passionate about their jobs.
My veterinary path was me trying to go, Well, I need to be professional.
I talked to them, and they reiterated to me, you gotta follow your passions.
Thats what weve always done, and we would encourage you to do that as well.
And I had to make some difficult life choices at that moment to change my path.
Whats a problem youre still trying to solve?
Theres nothing that we do that I ever say, Cool.
Were done with that.
Check that box, were done, and lets move on to something else.
Its always a question of, What if we try that?
That part of it is exciting work.
Id get really bored, I think, if I mastered game development.
That challenge never goes away.
On one hand, you never get some permanent sense of satisfaction, like, I mastered it!
But that quest to get better, and see the constant improvements, is so satisfying.
I do play a lot ofHeroes of the Storm; Ive played, like, 7,000 games.
I play pretty much every night for a couple hours.
I sacrifice sleep to playHeroes.
And there I was, and it was atrocious.
Do you have a favoriteHeroes of the Stormcharacter?
We released a character named Blaze in January.
Usually Ill play a new hero until the next hero comes out, and Ill bounce around.
Ive been playing Blaze almost nonstop since January, which is kind of insane.
I just fell in love his his kit, the way his abilities interact.
He also has a lot of sustain and escapes and things so he doesnt die a lot.
