John Staats was one of the first lead developers, and first level designer, for the massively played multiplayer game World of Warcraft. He created 90 percent of the vanilla game’s caves, crypts, dens, mines and hive tunnels. He also designed and built half of Vanilla WoW’s Dungeons and spent ten years on the project. He helps give valuable insight into how the entertainment industry works, anything from video games to Hollywood…
“One of the things that most surprised me about going into the industry is how hard it was to hire someone who is really good at what they do. Every studio, I don’t care how popular they are, it’s very hard for them to find someone who is willing to polish their work and what I mean by that is somebody who is willing to redo their work over and over again until they cannot improve it any more. 99 percent of people they finish the job once and they want to move on to the next thing. If you can show a studio that you’re willing to redo something over and over and produce something that’s polished on your own then you’re a way more attractive hire because that means the art director or the director of programming doesn’t have to be on you all the time to actually finish something releasable. Just coming out with a portfolio, don’t even have a big art portfolio just do one or two things that are super super good and they will absolutely snap you up. Every studio I’ve been to a couple studios they all say the same thing. Yeah it’s just they’re looking for someone who has that own motivation to improve what they’re working on.”
Staats used his handwritten notes during his time at Blizzard to write a highly anticipated book, The World of Warcraft Diary, which he says is not only a look at the game but a look at the intricacies of the industry as a whole.
The WoW Diary was funded through Kickstarter, where it made nearly six hundred thousand dollars and is now available here.
Here is a link to John’s website as well.
Listen here to the full interview:
