Many people probably know Ben Brode as the game director of Hearthstone, or the figurehead that stars in many of the Hearthstone videos that the people over at Blizzard put out. While Ben Brode has had an extensive and successful career working on Hearthstone with Blizzard, the game director posted on the official Hearthstone forums that he will be departing from the company.
“After 15 years at Blizzard and almost 10 years working on Hearthstone, I have made the incredibly difficult decision to embark on a new journey,” says the former game director as he opens up his forum post. “Man that was a hard sentence to type.”
This announcement might come as a shock to some, as the comfortable tenure of Brode would be the dream of any game developer. Starting work with Blizzard in 2003 as a Night Crew Game Tester, Ben Brode got his first shot at creating Hearthstone all the way back in 2008. Back then, he joined “Team 5,” the development team that would go on to nourish and grow the CCG giant that is now Hearthstone.
“I am very proud of Hearthstone. I think we made an impact on the industry,” continues Brode. “But as proud as I am of Hearthstone, I am even more proud of the team.” He states that even though he is the face of the game most times, the “80+ people on the development team are still there, and they are the ones actually making the cards, brawls, events, missions, and feature.” While sad to see Ben Brode leave something that he helped build from the ground up, the former director is “confident the game is in the best possible hands,” and he is “excited to see where a new generation of leaders takes Hearthstone from here.”
As for Brode’s future, he is “going to help start a new company” and the company is going to “probably make games, but we haven’t figured anything else out, yet.” He also goes on to be ecstatic about “designing, programming, and actually creating things again.”
He closes out his letter to the community by giving a shoutout to “the passionate community of players – I will miss you, and the laughs we shared together. Thank you for making being a part of Hearthstone so much fun for me. I’ve loved every minute.”
There is currently no word on who or when someone will fill in Brode’s shoes for the future of Hearthstone. Wherever Brode goes next on his journey, we wish him luck, and we know that he will always bring his hilarious charm to the table.