Big news, everyone! Hearthstone’s Game Director Ben Lee was a guest on Coin Concede podcast. You can listen to the full episode here. He talked a bit about game design, Mercenaries game mode, Hearthstone in general, teased some future plans, and so on. Be sure to check out the interview, because he’s really insightful. However, he also dropped a massive bomb – it looks like he’s leaving Hearthstone team.
Ben has been the game’s director since December 2018. He wasn’t a very public figure like Ben Brode back in the day, but he’s always been very busy internally. I had a couple of opportunities to talk to him and what I could tell is that he genuinely cares about the game. And you, as a player, could probably notice that too. Looking broadly – not at specific card designs or metas – Hearthstone has improved greatly during his time as a director. We’ve got new game modes (Battlegrounds, Duels, and a more controversial Mercenaries), new class, duplicate protection across all rarities, a more generous rewards system (that was communicated really poorly and players had to fight for it, but I still count it as a win overall), a much faster balance cycle, and so on. It’s true that we don’t know how much of that was done because of his decisions and how much was pushed by the rest of the team, but the game was clearly evolving and trying to stay relevant.
While Ben is leaving Hearthstone team, he stays at Blizzard. He will work on an unannounced Blizzard project. If you think that you’ve already heard that somewhere, then you aren’t wrong. We had similar announcements from other Team 5 members – starting with Mike Donais and Peter Whalen over two years ago (!), Conor Kou a year ago and Alec Dawson as recently as 5 months ago. While we can’t obviously tell whether they have all joined the same unannounced Blizzard project, I would say that the chances are high. Just recently we found out that Blizzard is looking for talent for their new survival game so this MIGHT be the project they’re all joining. However, if I had to guess, I would say that it’s a completely different thing that we’ve yet to hear about. I just wonder how far along it is and when we will see it announced.
Nathan Lyons-Smith, the current Hearthstone Executive Producer, will take over for now, but Ben Lee will still stay around for some time to ensure a smooth transition for the team. Ben spoke highly of Nathan, saying that he not only works at Team 5, but he’s also a passionate Hearthstone player that wants the best for the game. Realistically, however, regular players won’t see any changes for a while. Any broader scope decisions take a long time to go through, and I honestly think that Nathan will keep the game on the right track when it comes to new features etc. We should start hearing from him soon once he starts doing more public communication.
