Blizzard is looking for new employees and has a clear target audience: Pen&Paper nerds. What does this mean for the next game?
In recent days, Blizzard has made a number of smaller and larger announcements. The breaking of the taboo that in WoW Horde and Alliance will soon be able to play together, a new survival game has been announced, and now even the launch of the Overwatch 2 beta seems just around the corner.
But another detail gives reason for excitement: Blizzard is looking for new employees, and at least one of them should be quite a Pen&Paper nerd.
What is it about? It’s about a new job posting from Blizzard. Apparently, they are not just working on a new survival game and an upcoming Warcraft mobile, but also on other unannounced projects. For this, they are currently looking for a “Lead Content Designer” who should take care of the story and mission design of a new game.
What is special about it? Some of the requirements and “bonus points” may seem a bit strange. Notably, Blizzard is looking for someone who has “experience in creating and running Pen&Paper RPG campaigns and/or live-action RPGs”.
In other words: If you spent your youth at LARP festivals or with elaborate DnD campaigns full of character sheets and D20 dice, you fit the pattern they are looking for.
So if you have always had a love for Pen&Paper role-playing games and have mastered one or another campaign as a game master, you should give it a try. At least if the other “little things,” like knowledge in programming languages and a lot of prior experience in game design are also present.
What kind of game could this be? Since the Lead Content Designer is explicitly required to have experience in designing quests and RPG mechanics, it seems likely that it is an RPG focused on solo content. However, as some of these contents are supposed to have “replayability” and also focus on a “shared world,” the game will likely also have coop components – but that is basically the case for all Blizzard titles.
Those expecting the next big MMORPG from Blizzard should temper their expectations a bit. According to their own statements, the development team is quite small – probably in a similar framework as the Hearthstone team was back then. Whether that remains the case is of course uncertain.
However, it is unlikely that the project is another mobile title. Typically, a focus on mobile content is additionally mentioned in Blizzard’s job descriptions. However, that was not the case with this description, leading to the assumption that it is a PC and console title.
But perhaps this is just a clever trick to get Blizzard employees a new Pen&Paper game master. After all, it is well known that many at Blizzard like to engage in this hobby in their free time.
It will probably take a few more years before we hear more extensively about this new game – but at least “classic” RPG fans seem to be at the center of the title.
