{"id":17804,"date":"2018-04-20T18:04:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-20T18:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/316811"},"modified":"2018-04-20T18:04:00","modified_gmt":"2018-04-20T18:04:00","slug":"hearthstone-game-director-ben-brode-departs-blizzard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/04\/20\/hearthstone-game-director-ben-brode-departs-blizzard\/","title":{"rendered":"Hearthstone game director Ben Brode departs Blizzard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Hearthstone<\/em> game director and longtime Blizzard developer Ben Brode has announced that he is leaving the developer to \u201ctake a crazy risk\u201d and help start a game development company of his own.<\/p>\n<p>Brode, who has worked on <em>Hearthstone<\/em> for 10 of his 15 years at Blizzard, shared all of this in a <a href=\"https:\/\/us.battle.net\/forums\/en\/hearthstone\/topic\/20762317811\">heartfelt post on the <em>Hearthstone<\/em> forums<\/a>, tracing back the path his career has taken and thanking his coworkers and the <em>Hearthstone<\/em> community for their support.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was 20 years old when I started here. My first role was \u2018Night Crew Game Tester,\u201d wrote Brode. \u201cSince then, Blizzard has been good to me. I got to cast esports events, announce BlizzCons, play in Rock Bands, write raps, and work with incredible people. But the biggest opportunity came in 2008 when I joined &#8216;Team 5.&#8217; The <em>Hearthstone<\/em> Team.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Brode notes that, while he has enjoyed his time with the <em>Hearthstone<\/em> team, he is looking forward to stepping out of his current role and getting back to hands-on development like programming, designing, and \u201cactually creating things again\u201d with the studio he is helping to start.<\/p>\n<p>While his post doesn\u2019t mention who will be at the helm of <em>Hearthstone<\/em> development following his departure, Brode shared that he isn\u2019t worried about the future of the digital card game he helped put on the map.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI get too much credit by virtue of being a public face, but the 80+ people on the development team are still there, and they are the ones actually making the cards, brawls, events, missions, and features,\u201d said Brode. \u201cI am confident the game is in the best possible hands, and I\u2019m excited to see where a new generation of leaders takes <em>Hearthstone<\/em> from here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hearthstone game director and longtime Blizzard developer Ben Brode has announced that he is leaving the developer to \u201ctake a crazy risk\u201d and help start a game development company of his own. Brode, who has worked on Hearthstone for 10 of his 15 years at Blizzard, shared all of this in a heartfelt post on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}