Kaplan to Blizzard: 'Stop Writing a F**king Book'

Former World of Warcraft director Jeffrey Kaplan has told staff at Blizzard, in less than polite terms, to cut down on its exposition.

"Basically, and I'm speaking to the Blizzard guys in the back: we need to stop writing a fucking book in our game, because nobody wants to read it", he said in a Game Developers Conference talk.

"We need to deliver our story in a way that is uniquely video game", Kaplan explained. He has a point. While few people would argue that narrative should disappear from games altogether, there's ongoing debate over what form it should take. Even Steven Spielberg's weighed in.

Kaplan, who left work on WoW to develop Blizzard's next MMO, went on, "We need to engage our players in sort of an inspiring experience, and the sooner we accept that we are not Shakespeare, Scorsese, Tolstoy or the Beatles, the better off we are."

He went on to note that, for what it's worth, "Shakespeare couldn't 3D model his way out of a paper bag".

Blizzard has also grabbed headlines at GDC thanks to its senior VP of design, Rob Pardo, seemingly confirming that the next Xbox is in development by saying his company is in talks with Microsoft about its third console.

^{Source: Shacknews}