We've got some sad news today for Hearthstone, Alec Dawson, one of the more communicative developers on the team, has left.
Alec stated in his tweet announcing his leave that he will still be working at Blizzard and has moved on to an "Unannounced Project" which will reunite him with some of his favourite people. Chakki and Gallon are going to be taking over communications for final design, so if you use Twitter, give them both a follow.
Alec started is journey at Blizzard back at the start of 2018 as a Game Designer, moving on up to Senior Game Designer last year and a Lead Game Designer back in March of this year. In his initial time at the company, he worked as a set lead for both Saviors of Uldum and Scholomance Academy before moving over to leading final design.
Before his time at Blizzard, Alec was a vocal member of the community, running the Golden Wisp podcast, starting all the way back in November 2014 and running for 156 episodes up until right before he joined the Hearthstone team.
We'll miss you, Alec!
Quote From Alec Dawson Career Update: Today is my last day on Hearthstone. Working on Hearthstone was a dream but I’ve decided to chase after some new dreams. I’ll be joining an Unannounced Project at Blizzard and reuniting with some of my favorite people. Incredibly excited, so much to learn!
Lookout for future final comms from @Chakki_HS and @GallonHS. And lastly, just want to say thank you to the Hearthstone community. Working on this game was an absolute joy.
Where is Alec Going at Blizzard?
This "Unannounced Project" and Alec saying that he was going to be reuniting with some of his favourite people makes us think this is the same project that Mike Donais, Peter Whalen, and the recently departed Conor Kou are all a part of.
Those folks and all their other team members must be cooking up something good. It'll be interesting to see if their project ever goes public, since not everything Blizzard creates does.
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Comments
Nerfs were too spicy
kek
So many people have been leaving HS for unannounced projects... and none of them have been announced. At this point, I think Ben Brode is up to something sketchy lol
Ben Brode is running his own company and is no longer at Blizzard. Most of the high-profile leaves from the Hearthstone team over the past few years are no longer with the company.
Blizzard has devs move off games to work on new projects all the time. Sometimes they don't make it out of a concept phase though.
Ben said on Twitter earlier this year that they were hoping to make some kind of an announcement in the next 12-ish months, so 7-ish months to go! https://outof.cards/second-dinner/3062-ben-brodes-second-dinner-is-hoping-to-announce-their-new-game-in-the-next-12-ish-months
I see, I didn't know it was common for people to move around in Blizzard, but I am excited to see what Brode has been working on for the last few years.
I am too. Almost the entire team at Second Dinner has card game backgrounds which makes me believe it has to be in that genre. My expectations is that they're going to do something wild to shake things up since it is realistically the only way they're going to break into the market. Using Marvel IP certainly helps push things along, but if your card game doesn't bring new and exciting stuff to the table, it might be dead on arrival.