I've been putting this one off for a long time. But now that my summer job search is over I can breathe a little easier and share one of my favorite moments in the search: an invitation to the Blizzard campus. Not that I'll be working at Blizz this summer, but I'll explain myself in the post right after this one.
(If you don't know: Blizzard makes World of Warcraft. That's all the background you get. If you're not on board, this train's leaving the station without you because we're headed to Awesome Town and it's an express.)
Even if you are in the know, consider this: WoW has made Blizz rich. Dirty, rotten, filthy, stinking rich. It's changed the way they think and do things. It's spread wealth around the company. It's shifted the balance of power in the office politics. It's affected their game design and their corporate culture way more than a merger with Activision has.
These things become evident from the minute you get past the huge Hollywood-esque gate that looks like it's serious about protecting something. Everyone gets free valet parking. This is less of a "we don't want you wasting time on such plebian things" perk than a matter of necessity. Their parking lot is so overcrowded that they have to have professionals whose job it is to park cars as physically close together as possible. Cars are double- and triple-stacked everywhere you look.
Except for the front, by the entrances to the three buildings on campus. A few top execs park their exotics in the spiffy spots, and there's one spot with a special sign:
"Reserved for /loot winner"
I wasn't kidding about WoW affecting the culture around here.
So my meeting was with a pair of recruiters over lunch. Like a lot of top-notch companies, they had a lovely cafeteria that served a great club sandwich. I nervously chatted about school and what I hoped to do, what games I played, and so on, and my two recruiters quickly let on that they don't just require talent at Blizzard. They require fanboys. This wasn't me. One recruiter took a break from the conversation to make a quick phone call. In hushed tones, I heard talk of a "WoW box," but I strained to make conversation with the other recruiter while that was going on anyway.
Afterward, I was given a tour of one of the office buildings. There are three: one for the WoW team, one for everything else (Warcraft, StarCraft and their top-secret stuff) and one more for support facilities such as IT, the cafeteria, and the gym. I got a walkthrough of the WoW building.
These are some truly great offices. The mood lighting is fantastic, couches abound, it's extremely well-designed, everyone's in a comfy environment, and every developer I was introduced to had the exact same thing to say: "This is the last job you'll ever have." As my guide (their amazingly awesome and generous senior recruiter, who I'll sing the praises of more later) walked me out of the UI department, one of them yelled, "Can you bring some more Kool-Aid?" Buncha jokers, those UI guys. In all seriousness, very few people ever leave Blizzard, which makes their recruiting process very strenuous since they only get one shot to fill a job.
I even had the chance to meet the producer of WoW. The guy got pretty high praise from others inside the company, and right from the handshake he had a different vibe from everyone else in the company. While I had mostly met with laid-back developers lazily working on a quiet day in the office, this guy J. was business. He was very nice, but certainly intense. His time was not to be wasted. And yet, with a prod from my wonderful guide, he offered some advice to an aspiring producer: "Let yourself be pigeonholed into what it is you want to do."
That may have been the best part of that visit. That message - persist in what it is you want to do - is as much a part of the game creation culture as rags-to-riches story are part of the American cultural heritage. But to hear it that one time, from a man so respected and in a position so admired, was reaffirming beyond words. The way he phrased it made it much less a case of "You've gotta fight to get to where you want" than a case of "The tides will knock you around; let them guide you into the place you want to be." The idea is hard to get across at 1am. But it's gaming Zen, I promise.
My tour concluded with the back corners of campus: the surprisingly active basketball and volleyball courts. Blizz, for being a place full of white males, has more than its fair share of physically active people.
And then my tour really was over and I was sent back to the valet stand. "Oh, wait!" my recruiter exclaimed. "Do you have a minute?" she asked.
Of course I did.
I followed her back into the WoW building, but this time didn't follow her behind closed doors. I waited at the reception desk for what must have been 15 minutes. Finally, she came back out with a Blizz goodie bag. Inside was the usual stuff you get at industry events - t-shirt, hat, that kind of thing.
But this bag was much heavier. Also inside was a copy of WoW, the first expansion, strategy guides for each, and a one-year subscription. That phone call that had been made over lunch was for my sake.
"If you want to work for us?" started the recruiter, pointing to the game. "Get cracking."
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As a post-script to this story, I kept in touch with the recruiter. It was obvious that I wasn't a "culture fit" for Blizz, in HR-speak, but she was more than happy to set me up with her corporate cousins at Activision. I gave her my mailing address, and in March arrived my very own pass to GDC. It was my first time for that conference, and it was a blast.