The (former) head of Blizzard, J. Allen Brack, has stepped down. In his place, two vice presidents are now following in his footsteps: Jennifer “Jen” Oneal and Mike Ybarra. Both are not long with Blizzard, but have many years of experience in game development.
Who are the two heads? On August 3, 2021, Blizzard announced that head J. Allen Brack was leaving the company. This means one of the last known figures of the “old” Blizzard has now also departed.
Following Brack are now the two vice presidents Jennifer Oneal and Mike Ybarra as the new heads of the company, as Blizzard confirmed in the announcement itself. Shortly before, Activision head Bobby Kotick also announced: People will be fired.
The two new heads have not been with Blizzard for long, but already have many years of experience in the industry and in game development.
Together over 46 years of experience in the gaming industry
Who is Jen Oneal? The former developer and studio head of Vicarious Visions has been with Blizzard since January 2021. However, her studio has been part of Activision since 2005. During her time in the industry, she worked on:
- since 1998 as a tester
- for the first time as a coordinator on Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine (LucasArts; 1999)
- Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 as producer
- Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure as producer
- several Tony Hawk games as producer and Head of Studio
- Destiny 2 together with Bungie
Jen Oneal came to Blizzard through Diablo. Her studio was supposed to assist Blizzard in developing Diablo 2: Resurrected and was integrated in January 2021. The idea was to connect the studio overall with the Diablo franchise, also with Diablo 4.
Oneal is also highly engaged in promoting women in the industry. Since 2015, she has been a member of the Young Women’s Leadership Initiative, and since 2017, she has been a member of the Women Presidents Organization (via Linkedin.com).
The title image is sourced from the career page of Blizzard (via Blizzard.com).
Who is Mike Ybarra? Before his career at Blizzard, Mike Ybarra worked over 19 years at Microsoft and another 2 years at software developer Hewlett-Packard. At Microsoft, he was early on as a manager and worked on:
- Age of Empires Online
- Ryse: Son of Rome (Legendary Editions)
- Sunset Overdrive
- Quantum Break
Ybarra joined Blizzard in November 2019, so he has also only been with the company for nearly 2 years. There, he has so far also served as a manager and as executive vice president. As some players discovered, Ybarra even seems to enjoy playing WoW himself (via WoW forums).
With the two new heads, it seems a signal for openness is to be set and a new direction for the future indicated. The change follows the big sexism scandal that has been following Blizzard since July 22, 2021.
How Blizzard will develop under the new leadership remains to be seen. Both Oneal and Ybarra have extensive experience with inclusiveness and equality.
Blizzard’s biggest brand, World of Warcraft, is currently also wavering. Players are repeatedly dissatisfied with the content and recently more so with the payment system:
Players are asking: Why are we still paying a subscription for WoW?
