So I took a look at the so-called “Creative” Director, Alex Afrasiabi’s credentials and lo-and-behold, nothing substantial justifies his elevation from a modest associate quest designer in Vanilla to his current position of the head of CDev. Besides his time as an associate quest designer, the only other thing he is credited for is participating the Looking for Group WoW documentary which I haven’t even heard of before.
I couldn’t find any evidence of that he has written anything, even short stories, nor could I find any evidence that he has even completed any education regarding creative writing. Hell, I can’t even find if he ever was an avid DnD enthusiast like so many of the old Blizzard stalwarts who have long left.
This is going to sound harsh because it needs to be said: Alex Afrasiabi is now the head of Creative Development because of Corporate Nepotism. He has no experience in any creative endeavor outside of World of Warcraft, there is no evidence that he has even been versed on the basics of creative writing. He was a long-time employee who started as a minor quest designer and stuck around long enough to be rewarded with the position of Creative Director.
This matters because if you look at the directors of other departments, such as art design, music and voice acting you generally find people that deserve to be in positions. This shows in the game itself where you can see how excellent the art, music, and voice direction truly is because artists, 3D modelers, musicians, and dedicated voice actors are in their respective positions.
Why is Afrasiabi Creative Director when there is no evidence that he has ever created anything more substantial than small quests such as: “Bingles’ Missing Supplies”?
Is it? I often go to the site ArtStation to browse art and 3d models posted by hired artists who work in game development. You can even find artists who have worked on WoW and browse their pages to see other projects they have worked on, along with examples of their talents they likely package with their resume.
Alex has no credits for anything but WoW. If this was the 90s and Blizzard was not established this would be fine. But Blizzard is not small anymore. They clearly hire for talent and experience in every other aspect I listed. Why is Alex Head Creative when at best he contributed to some events such as the build up to AQ?
I feel like you’re being purposefully ignorant of what Alex has contributed in the past. It’s been far more than simply just the buildup to Ahn’Qiraj or Bingles’ Missing Supplies - he’s credited as the lead quest designer for the first two expacs, so we can safely assume his part was at least a tad bigger than you give him credit for, regardless of whether or not you can find written proof in the public access, or your current feelings about him.
He’s credited as Lead Quest Designer in BC, lead World Designer for Wrath, and has been working continuously in a leadership role at Blizzard as far as I can tell since 2007. This is not a fair characterization of his work.
Not to be a snob, as I’m no author myself, but no, the video game industry doesn’t exactly draw highly sought after talent when it comes to writers. If you’re serious, you usually go into other fields. Christie Golden, for example, is probably the most qualified writer they’ve had, but she’s made her career in franchise genre fiction which is… not well regarded in the literature world.
You take what you can get.
Jeez, I guess there’s no way to say that without sounding like an elitist jerk…
If it helps, I don’t really judge personally. And I’m a big fan of what many would consider schlock. Anyone who puts themselves out there is already doing better than 99.99% of people in my opinion. I think people often simultaneously take themselves and their preferred media far too seriously while failing to engage in actual analysis/retrospection.
None of that excuses his lack of meaningful credentials or experience outside of WoW. There is also a vast difference between designing quests and having skill as a writer.
Would you want the guy who created low quality soundbites for the first 2 RTS games to be in charge of the orchestrated score modern WoW has just because he is a long time employee?
Should Blizzard have kept their concept art limited to what programmers could draw instead of hiring real concept artists?
The point is Alex’s lack of meaningful skill as a creative director shows. Probably because he has no record of formal training on how to write narratives and characters.
Alex is definitely more like the “lead” writer than Christie Golden is which is why a lot of the ire directed at her is so misplaced.
That said Alex has essentially been the “lead” writer since at least Cataclysm as Chris Metzen stepped into more of a meta position and/or became disassociated from the day to day of C-Dev. Even though his background is not in professional writing (neither was Chris’s), if you at any point have enjoyed WoW’s narrative, chances are good Alex was instrumental in that.
It may be a lack of direction or leadership from Alex, or an inability to advocate on C-Devs behalf when fighting battles over creative decisions with the team at large, but it’s definitely not because Alex is not skilled.
As anyone who has been in a long-term career, what you are “trained in” or have a degree in rarely means as much as what you learn from doing a job over the years.
I do think Alex insulates himself from criticism too much. For example, he rarely interacts with the community and has no social media presence.
To be fair, the stuff that is well-regarded by the snobs who staff MFAs and write for journals tends to be um…An acquired taste, shall we say.
Because good writing is totally the result of reading Robert McKee in an undergraduate creative writing course Mommy and Daddy paid for.
Ray Bradbury? Uneducated hack. Herman Melville? Bum. Faulkner? The dude worked as a mail carrier, for Pete’s sake! Andy Weir? He studied STEM (ew) and didn’t even graduate!
Look, Afrasiabi’s a dick and I don’t like BfA, so I don’t disagree with what you’re really saying. But it’s just false that there’s anything inherently wrong with cultivating and keeping in-house talent. The dude doesn’t have “outside credits” as far as I can tell because he worked full time at Blizzard.
Just pick on the dude for the turd-show that is BfA and stop being an elitist about writing.
Either way, Blizzard is so completely closed-off and secretive about how Creative Development functions (they aren’t even allowed to read fan fiction) we will probably never know or understand what dysfunctions led to BfA. Blizzard will never address it. We can only hope the writing improves next expansion.
And the answer appears to be yes. Glenn Stafford worked on both the sound and music in both Warcraft I and II and is now a Senior Composer for World of Warcraft and credited with quite a bit of music in BfA.
His true influence started with Cataclysm which was the first massive nosedive in creative content, he designed quests before then.
Here’s a thought experiment: If the soundtrack for BFA was unfocused, tinny, badly mixed and filled with low quality stock samples and was composed by someone with no musical credentials outside the company or any records of musical instruction, would you not blame him for squandering resources? Would you not make the basic logical conclusion that his lack of credentials made him a poor choice to direct an entire aspect of the game?
Alex has not written anything. Alex has not been trained to write or even to direct the effort of other writers. Alex is a quest designer promoted to a position he would not have gained if he had applied for it without being a Blizz employee. Just as I am sure if someone asked to be hired for 3D model design and had no previous training or experience or even examples he would be turned away.
This is not stretch. Credentials matter. Alex has none outside of Blizz. It is not a stretch to put two and two together and see that the only reason he is Creative Director is due to his status as a veteran employee. That’s nepotism.
He’s a veteran employee because he’s largely responsible for the sweeping success they’ve had. Do you not understand that if you do well at your job, you move up the company ladder? Is it nepotism for me to get a promotion after working at a company for two years, even if I haven’t worked anywhere else?
The industry just doesn’t attract much in the way of professional writers, they aren’t compensated that well and there isn’t much prestige from their peers for their efforts. See the Writer’s Guild awards decision to not even consider video game writing for awards.
Outside of certain developers like BioWare or Obsidian most developers do not employ people whose only job is to write. Christie Golden writes pulp fantasy and she’s the closest thing to a professional writer Blizzard has, and even then she works on all of Blizzard’s IPs and only on dialogue for the most part.
The writing in BfA is terrible, but not because Blizzard doesn’t hire a professional prestigious writer. Just hiring a novelist would in no way fix WoW’s narrative, it could even make it worse.