Blizzard’s new boss wants to have fun with games. But first, his company is in a crisis
LOS ANGELES — Mike Ybarra is a man chosen to lead in a historic moment.
His Blizzard Entertainment has been singled out as a symbol of the male-dominated gaming community’s worst impulses, specifically those that include boorish, frat-boy-like traits.
Alleged inequities and harassment at the company were the centerpiece of an ongoing 2021 lawsuit filed by the state of California that painted the firm and its Activision Blizzard parent as paragons of a broken, sexist industry.
Even Blizzard’s attempt at damage control blew up in its face. Ybarra’s August 2021 promotion to help right the ship was met with controversy when the first female co-leader of the company left amid reports of unequal pay.
Making games is timeconsuming, costly and difficult. But changing a culture? Perhaps that’s a near-impossible task.
“No doubt this has impacted people,” Ybarra, who was named president this February, says of Blizzard’s recent history. “It has impacted morale.”
Ybarra, who calmly answered questions for 45 minutes about Blizzard’s reputation and how to change it, says he welcomes the challenge. He’s soft-spoken but direct in his words, nodding, smiling and eager to talk about his game obsessions. He begins a conversation by praising “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge” and says the art style of the action genre mashup “Neon White” has him smitten.
For now his non-Blizzard game opinions will have to wait. His company is in a crisis.
“We’re committed to changing our culture,” says Ybarra, 47, who has the unenviable task of restoring stature to a firm whose atmosphere was forged long before he joined in 2019.
“We’ve had a tough twoand-a-half years,” Ybarra says. “We’re listening to our employees. I’ve always firmly believed that when there’s a good culture across teams, creative excellence flows. So I call our culture team ‘team zero.’”
Ybarra is eager to talk about said culture team and the new hires leading it, as well as the tweaks and pledges Blizzard has made in his first few months as president. He hopes the new measures will once again make the company worthy of the plaques outside its Irvine headquarters pledging inclusivity, trust and personal responsibility — phrases that surround a giant statue of a “World of Warcraft” orc.
At stake, however, is more than whether one of the bestknown names in gaming — also home to “Diablo” and “Overwatch” — can show it understands the meaning of the word “maturity.”
Workplace and popular cultures in recent years have been put on blast, spurred in part by the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements. The lawsuit levied at Activision Blizzard is one of the biggest entertainment stories of this young decade. It showed that the gaming industry could no longer operate below the radar of more established Hollywood peers. The case was seen as forcing the game community to have more open discussions about its hiring practices, salaries, once rebellious reputation, sexual harassment and workplace abuse.
“Talk about walking into a fire,” says Andrew Uerkwitz, an interactive media analyst with investment firm Jefferies, of Ybarra’s assignment.
Activision Blizzard has at various points been seen as dismissing the allegations, most recently in a mid-June Securities and Exchange Commission filing in which the company’s board of directors stated they found no evidence that executives “intentionally ignored or attempted to downplay” harassment claims. Such a statement contradicted a bombshell Wall Street Journal report that argued Activision Blizzard’s top leader, Bobby Kotick, was aware of egregious sexual harassment allegations, including the protection of an executive whom human resources recommended be terminated.
“They could have been industry leaders in addressing entrenched issues that are industrywide and not specific to that company,” says Carly A. Kocurek, a video game historian and author who is an associate professor of digital humanities and media studies at Illinois Institute of Technology. “But they took a more defensive posture.”
The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing’s 2021 lawsuit would be seen as the impetus that drove Microsoft to seek to acquire Activision Blizzard, a pending deal worth $68.7 billion that could see Kotick walk away from the company with millions.
Ybarra often steers the conversation to optimistic statements for the future rather than squarely addressing the past. But he’s aware that some charges in the lawsuit were already public opinion.
For example: a video from a 2010 Blizzard convention that went viral on social media in the wake of the lawsuit. In it, a female fan asked for women in “World of Warcraft” to not look like “they stepped out of a Victoria’s Secret catalog.” A panel of Blizzard men, including former chief J. Allen Brack, laughed at the question, joking that they would look at other catalogs.
“It saddens me to see that video,” Ybarra says.
“It reminds me of how important the culture work we have is,” he says. “It represents what I hope we are growing beyond. I know we will grow beyond. I don’t think it ever ends. There’s no high-five that we met our commitments. This is something that is going to be in our DNA forever.”
‘THIS IS MORE PERSONAL FOR ME’
Ybarra is vocal in his video game fandom. He’s active on Twitter, where he’s just as likely to discuss retro video game box art as he is new Blizzard initiatives. On his Twitch channel one can find him talking “World of Warcraft” or offering light commentary for video game hype events such as Microsoft’s recent showcase of upcoming Xbox titles. He gleefully answers fan questions about the first game he ever played — “Ultima Exodus” on Commodore 64. “It was the first game that made me go, ‘I know what my life is all about,’” he said.
Before joining Blizzard, Ybarra spent more than two decades with Microsoft, where he was instrumental in developing the Xbox brand and expanding its game portfolio.
This could have been a celebratory moment for Blizzard. Ybarra has just overseen his first major launch as president. The release of the mobile-focused “Diablo Immortal” racked up more than 15 million installations. Although not without criticism, initial reviews leaned positive. The game provides a swift and approachable introduction to the franchise, presenting a heavily detailed hellscape that’s full of life — and death.
Bringing a game like “Diablo Immortal” to market is why, in part, Ybarra joined the brand, founded by three UCLA students in Irvine in 1991. He says that when he joined Blizzard as a senior executive he recognized, even then as an outsider, that a change needed to come.
“It’s not about the position, the money or anything like that,” Ybarra says. “This is more personal for me.
“These games,” Ybarra says, “have connected me with my best friends, lifelong friends. I have such incredible memories playing with (‘World of Warcraft’) guilds 10, 15 and 20 years ago. I saw an opportunity where Blizzard needed different leadership. Blizzard needed more transparency and a focus on culture. We needed, frankly, to serve our players with more content on a more frequent basis. When the phone rang, it gave me an opportunity to do that. How can I make an impact? How can the games and Blizzard as a company make an impact for the next 20 years like it has for me? That’s why I’m here.”
“Diablo Immortal” won’t become one of those impactful games without some hitches. . Since launching, the game has reignited a debate t over monetization efforts and whether randomized items encourage predatory, gambling-like behavior. The central argument is that it can be expensive to progress deep into the game, especially if one desires to compete with other players.
“When we think about monetization, at the very highest level it was, ‘How do we give a free ‘Diablo’ experience to hundreds of millions of people, where they can literally do 99.5% of everything in the game?’” Ybarra says.
In a follow-up email a Blizzard spokesperson noted that the vast majority of players are not spending money, although the company declined to offer specific stats. Ybarra says Blizzard is well aware of the gripes but will defend the title by citing its high rating and 110,000-plus user reviews on Apple’s App Store, implying the complaints are not reflective of the broader game-playing community. Additionally, the company says it has collected data that tells it about 50% of “Immortal” players are new to the Blizzard ecosystem.
“The monetization comes in at the end game,” Ybarra says. “The philosophy was always to lead with great gameplay and make sure that hundreds of millions of people can go through the whole campaign without any costs. From that standpoint, I feel really good about it as an introduction to ‘Diablo.’”