Jeff Kaplan, the former director of Overwatch, stated in a recent interview that he has maintained a "clinical separation" from the game he once helmed, revealing he has not played it since April 2021.
Kaplan, who spent nearly two decades at Blizzard Entertainment before departing to pursue independent game development, explained that this approach was a lesson learned from his previous exit from the World of Warcraft team in 2008. He described his departure from WoW after six years as a more emotionally impactful experience than leaving Overwatch. "Oddly, leaving WoW was a training moment for me," Kaplan told GameSpot. "When I left WoW to work on Titan [the game that would eventually become Overwatch], it was, I think, November or December of 2008. And WoW was who I was at that point. I worked every minute--every waking minute--on WoW. If I wasn't working on WoW, I was playing WoW. And every time I played WoW, I had this notepad next to the desk that I'd be filling out to walk in the next morning and go, 'These are all the things we need to change.'" He characterized his identification with WoW at that time as profound.
This past experience informed his strategy when leaving Overwatch. Kaplan aimed to establish a "healthy separation" to avoid dwelling on past projects. "I was kind of used to that moment of what it meant to give all of yourself, your heart, your soul--because it's not just a job, there's no one who can do this and have it just be a job--and then have this shocking moment where you realize it doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the team, belongs to the players, it belongs to Blizzard, but it doesn't belong to you," Kaplan said.
To maintain this detachment, Kaplan avoids engaging with Overwatch-related content. He has stopped reading subreddits, watching YouTube videos, or searching for information about the game or his name in relation to it. "I sort of just disconnect. I actually tell all the algorithms like, 'Yeah, I'm not really interested in Overwatch anymore. I know you think I'm the Overwatch guy, but like, that's just not for me anymore,'" he explained.
Kaplan drew an analogy to the character Uncle Rico from the film Napoleon Dynamite, a figure obsessed with past glories. "I don't want to be Uncle Rico," he stated. "Overwatch happened. I was a part of it. There's a group there now and Overwatch is now about them. Both the players and the developers, that's their Overwatch now. They're making it, they own it, they play it. I'm onto this new thing, and that's where I'm at in my life." Kaplan is currently working on a new game, "The Legend of California."