12/22/2022 at 09:30 am by Karsten Scholz – Blizzard boss Mike Ybarra has turned to the community in a last “End of Year” update to review the past year, the employees and players for their passion to say thank you, while also announcing the return of BlizzCon for 2023.
With the holiday season and New Year just around the corner, Blizzard CEO Mike Ybarra is taking this opportunity to reflect on 2022, praising the new company culture, thanking the employees and players for their passion and doing one or two exciting things along the way Sprinkle info nugget. You can find the entire post on the official Blizzard website. Below is the summary.
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Exciting 2022 for Blizzard
According to Mike Ybarra, 2022 was an exciting, great year for Blizzard. Here are some of the key milestones of the year:
The launches of Dragonflight, WotLK Classic, Overwatch 2 and Diablo Immortal. The announcements of Warcraft Arclight Rumble and the new survival game Played Blizzard games this year. 50 million new players are said to have created a new account this year and played at least one Blizzard game. Internally, the personnel carousel at Blizzard has turned quite a bit. Holly Longdale, for example, is no longer just responsible for the classic content of WoW, but for the entire WoW franchise. Blizzard co-founder Allen Adham, as Chief Design Officer, will ensure in the future that the slogan “Gameplay First” will be used again in all Blizzard games has top priority.
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Significantly improved corporate culture
For Ybarra, the most important milestones of the year also clearly include the progress that was made internally in terms of corporate culture. Putting employees and players first is the foundation for Blizzard’s new era, Ybarra said. To ensure this, Blizzard introduced a new position of VP of Culture, which will be filled by Jessica Martinez.
Makaiya Brown acts as the new DE&1 Lead. The new Chief People Officer goes by the name of JD Roux. Internally, there has also been a lot of talk about the values that Blizzard wants to stand for. Last but not least, there has been a step forward in terms of diversity, such as increasing the proportion of female/non-binary employees or employees who represent an ethnic minority.
BlizzCon is coming back!
As a side note, Mike Ybarra also explained in his post that April McKee is now Executive Producer of BlizzCon, and yes, BlizzCon will be back! There will be more about this in early 2023. Also exciting: The development of the new survival game seems to have really started. The size of the team has doubled over the course of the year and further reinforcements are to follow in the coming year.
