Angry when a new game you don’t care about is announced? ‘Shut the f**k up, no one cares’, ex-Overwatch director says

The former director of Overwatch has delivered some stern advice to players who complain when new game announcements don’t appeal to them.

Last week Jeff Kaplan revealed The Legend of California, a new open-world online first-person shooter set in an alternate California during the Gold Rush, and the first game from his new studio Kintsugiyama.

Following this, over the past weekend the former Overwatch game director streamed the game for 10 hours on Twitch alongside studio head and co-founder Tim Ford.

During the stream, Kaplan shared a wide range of information about the game and the developers working on it, as well as his general views on the state of the games industry.

At one point nearly nine hours in, Kaplan then decided to discuss his views on people who are negative about game announcements and who feel the need to voice their anger at the reveal of a game they have no interest in, noting that some Overwatch fans were expressing annoyance that his next game didn’t appeal to them.

“As a game developer, you can’t make a game for every single player, that they all want to participate [in],” he said. “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. Some of them are in love with it. It’s like a Venn diagram.

“There’s the people who are like ‘I love that game, but I also love what Kintsugiyama is trying to do and I can play that’, and there’s some of these people who are like ‘I don’t want to play that game’ and I’m like ‘yeah, then don’t play it, it’s cool’. No one’s putting a gun to your head to play the game, you know?

“You do you. The fact that you want to play Overwatch is amazing. I love that. That is awesome, I hope you want to play World of Warcraft, I hope you want to play Diablo 4, I hope you want to play Hearthstone, I hope you want to play Rust, I hope you want to play 7 Days to Die. Play the game that makes you happy.”

“But the weird ‘I gotta nerd rage out because that’s what the internet trained me to do’? I want to talk about my view on nerd rage. It’s one thing if you’re playing a game – let’s say I’m playing a game, and in that game you have Paladins and Warlocks, and I play a Paladin and they nerf the Paladin. And 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.

“I can kind of understand that a little bit. I never understand anyone being hostile about it, or 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, and you’ve never played it? Shut the fuck up, no one cares. We don’t need to hear that you aren’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’? I’m not running to the internet every time there’s a TV show on… well, I’m not watching any TV shows either, but who cares about my opinion if I’m not gonna play it, and if I’ve never played it? Why does my opinion matter on that?

“So if you play it, great, you have an informed opinion and good for you. But there needs to be a little bit more ‘spread the love’ and a little bit less ‘I freak out and I baby rage, and therefore I get upvotes’ or whatever. The echo chamber is just kind of insane, and as somebody on the receiving end, I know in my life I’ve given it out at times, but I’ve also been on the receiving end of a lot of nerd baby rage.”

Acknowledging that some of his peers from other studios were watching the Twitch screen, Kaplan went on to add that any player who complains about a game they don’t care about is generally ignored as a result.

“I’ll tell you 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 fucking ignore you. That’s all you’ve accomplished, is ‘ah, I guess I’m not gonna 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, I see a lot of familiar names, and we talk about it. There are certain forums or Reddits or whatever, where it’s just like ‘yeah, that one’s just on ignore from now on’.

“They’re not actually productive in any way, it’s just sort of like ‘who can get the most points by being outraged’. I’m bored with it, I’m bored with outrage at this point. It’s not interesting. Come up with something new.”

Ford added: “Also, it’s not impressive, it’s not difficult to shit on something. Apparently it takes a ton of courage to say ‘hey, I actually like this, I don’t care if you don’t like it, I like it, how about that’.”

The Legend of California is a Wild West themed first-person shooter set during the Gold Rush, but in a fictional island of California rather than the real-life version.

“Explore, gather, craft, build, hunt, and fight your way across a vast untamed frontier,” the game’s description on Steam reads. “Whether you choose to travel alone or work together with friends, your mission on this mythical island is not just to survive, but thrive. Stay strong, stake your claim, and become the true Legend of California.”