BlizzCon, Community and “Clueless Gamer”: Blizzard President Johanna Faries and Conan O’Brien Talk Gaming – Hollywood Reporter

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood ReporterSubscribe for full access to The Hollywood ReporterThe comic, podcaster and TV host and the video game executive spoke to THR after their panel at SXSW.
By

Alex Weprin
Media & Business Writer
For a lot of consumers, particularly younger consumers, video games are increasingly about connectivity as much they are about entertainment. Games are about immersing yourself in a world, controlling a character, or propelling a narrative forward, sure, but increasingly it is also about hanging out with your friends in a virtual world, and catching up as you work toward a common goal: Defeating an enemy, for example.
It is in that context that Blizzard Entertainment said this week that it is bringing back BlizzCon, its annual gaming convention for fans of its franchises, which include World of Warcraft and Overwatch. The announcement was tied to a panel discussion at SXSW Tuesday, featuring Blizzard president Johanna Faries, and podcaster, comedian and TV host Conan O’Brien.

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The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Faries and O’Brien shortly after their panel ended.
Johanna, you announced earlier that BlizzCon is coming back after a few years hiatus. Can you explain why you decided to bring back the event, and what you hope to accomplish when it returns next year?
Faries: It’s iconic in terms of Blizzard’s legacy, so I think all of us really shared a passion for bringing it back. It was just a matter of how and when, and let’s make sure that we continue to raise the bar. [There have been] a lot of internal conversations over the last year, a lot of really deep, insightful feedback loops around ‘what have we learned? What do we want to see get better?’ And also, not only for the community side, but also the employee side. You know, I spent a ton of time with employees who also spend so many hours of their day making BlizzCon go. I really wanted to hear from them what they want to see in terms of their own experience. So I think we feel really good that with this announcement this morning, it seems like the hype is real. Seems like a lot of good chatter. So we want to take our time with it and come back strong.
Conan, you went to BlizzCon in the past, right?
O’Brien: I was at BlizzCon [in 2013], yeah, and I went in determined to pretend that I was the greatest gamer of all time. I was quickly unmasked, but refuse to acknowledge it.
Gaming has really emerged as the future of entertainment in many ways. Johanna, I was hoping you can speak to, as someone who came from the NFL, the most important programming on television, to now running this huge gaming company, how do you think about where gaming fits into this larger entertainment world?

Faries: I think coming from the NFL, there’s a lot that is similar in as much as to your point, this sort of iconic stature, the sense of people are scheduling their time, their calendars, their rituals around it. There’s tribal passion for these brands. What I think was different and continues to be, having moved into the sector about six years ago is a couple of things: How unbelievably global gaming is as a platform. So how we’re lighting up, even just when you think about blizzard’s IP across different parts of the globe, what needs to be true in terms of our collaborations, or how we think about launching or releasing content, that’s a lens that is really differentiated, I think, as compared to other parts of the entertainment industry.
The other thing I’d say is the rapid pace of interactivity, so not just in terms of the gameplay, but community feedback. That’s what Conan and I talked about on stage a lot, this hyper-iterative, always in conversation, always playing off of one another in terms of what we release and what our community wants to see us do next, and how that agility has to be chased with a real sense of good timing, good leadership, good technological capabilities, as much as creative. So I love that, because I think it’s this nexus, in many ways, for all things tech, all things creative, all things community, all at once.
Conan, as someone who left linear TV to kind of embrace digital, embrace the podcast, digital world, how do you kind of see gaming fit into what you do? You have Clueless Gamer [the digital segments where O’Brien attempts, often haplessly, to play a new video game] but how do you embrace the digital-first entertainment world that we’re seeing?

O’Brien: For me, my story changed radically in 2010 when I had my spat with NBC, the disagreement over the Tonight Show. And what was an eye opener for me was that I was really, in a sense, saved by the internet, and this whole community rose up. And this was a time when they, you know, the way television used to work is they just pushed a button and you went away, and they pushed a button and I was supposed to go away, and this huge community on Twitter rose up and had my back, which enabled me to sell out a nationwide tour with one tweet, and then go on that tour and communicate with my fans, tell them where I was going to be, where my shows were going to be, and how they could physically meet me and then do that, which led to the TBS show, which we made much more interactive and much more savvy, which led to Clueless Gamer.
What I found for me, which has been profound, has been that the old model was “try to get to as many people as possible, even if they’re only semi interested.” And that no longer feels right to me. I saw that there’s this other way to communicate with people, which is to be more authentically myself. Keep doubling down on being authentically myself. Try to evolve as myself, but connect with people who are passionate about what I’m doing. And that’s more than enough. I like having fervent, engaged fans who are having a conversation with me. And so going forward, I don’t know exactly how gaming is going to play a part of it, outside of Clueless Gamer. But I can tell you the fact that I’m just here at SXSW, and wanted to sit with Johanna and talk to her and talk to the people who are going to be the Blizzard fans that are going to be at BlizzCon that feels like a way of getting to my people, and afterwards, so many people in the crowd had Conan Pop dolls, which is an offshoot of a Comic Con phenomenon that I did for five years. So there are all of these intersecting streams, and this is a really great place. It was a great opportunity for me to sit and talk about this phenomenon and talk about how it’s all evolving, and get a chance to be in this world, if even just for an hour or two on stage. So I’m hoping that that journey, to use an overused word, continues. I don’t know where it’s going to take me, but I’m up for the ride.

Johanna, how do you approach making your games accessible to as wide a group of people as possible?
Faries: We were just talking about this coming off the stage. I think Conan’s [Clueless Gamer] series create a narrative around, look, you don’t have to necessarily occupy a certain level of avidity or familiarity with the game to be a part of it. And I think that realness affords accessibility, affords a sense of approachability that, frankly, we as a gaming industry are starving for to sort of bust through those myths that you don’t have a place here, it’s quite the opposite.
The second thing I’d say is, I think certainly it’s something we obsess in our games is to meet the player where they are, to sort of intuitively have the tech such that the first time user experience or other anti-toxicity or anti-cheating technologies are there so that it becomes less sweaty, to use a gaming term, to onboard players and to really know almost at first impression, whether this is their first hour with a game, or 10 years with a game, such that we can meet them at their pace.
Conan as someone who is the clueless gamer, someone who does these segments where you are the rookie who doesn’t really know what he’s doing, it does seem like a way to introduce games to people who maybe can relate to to you, but still find it fun and interesting and engaging.
O’Brien: I devoted my life to comedy, but whether I was working on Saturday Night Live or The Simpsons or my late night show, or any other iteration of my different shows, there was always a sense that I was making something that I liked, and I was hoping that people out there would like it too, and trusting in that, it’s almost you have to have kind of a religious faith. And I think that’s the same thing that’s happening in the gaming world. Yes, there are people who their hands are moving so fast on the controller you can’t even see what’s happening, and they’re accessing all these different levels and tools and capabilities, and they’re moving, and I could never in a billion years do what they’re doing. But I still enjoy failing at the game. I enjoy trying. I enjoy really pissing off my son, who’s very good, and can’t believe how terrible I am. There are people who are terrible golfers, and their favorite part of the week is going out to the golf course.

Gaming should not only be the domain of people who have devoted their lives to it. It should be something that people try. They dip their toe in the pool. They experiment. There are some of these games where you can literally just wander around and look at the world. And I have done that. I have wandered around and hung out with a horse… I’m not trying to be young. I’m just a guy my age who’s enjoying a new experience. So I think in that way, it’s a way to connect. It’s a way to stay connected to people, and it’s a way to have fun that didn’t exist at this level 20 years ago.
Johanna, at the beginning of the SXSW presentation you gave Conan a Doomhammer [a powerful weapon in the game World of Warcraft] on behalf of Blizzard. Conan, what are you gonna with that thing?
O’Brien: I’m in a 23 year marriage, and so it’s going to be a conversation, because I’m going to walk in later tonight with a 65 pound Doomhammer, and I’m going to say “I think this looks great in the living room.” And my wife is going to have another idea, but that Doomhammer will reside in my home, and I pity anybody who breaks into my home right thinking they can steal or rob from me, because I will bring the wrath of the Doomhammer down upon them, if I can lift it above my shoulder.Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every daySign up for THR news straight to your inbox every daySubscribe for full access to The Hollywood ReporterSend us a tip using our anonymous form.

Source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/blizzcon-returns-blizzard-president-conan-obrien-interview-1236161900/