Blizzard's most senior software engineer David "Zoid" Kirsch has announced his retirement from the company and the games business.
The industry veteran has an enviable list of credits to his name, having worked for some of the biggest companies in the business and some of the biggest games of the last 20 years, including World of Warcraft at Blizzard, Dota 2 at Valve, and the Metroid Prime trilogy of games for Retro Studios.
Publicly announcing his retirement on Twitter, Zoid looked back on just a few of his career highlights in the Twitter thread. These include his Capture The Flag mod for Quake (which ended up landing him a job at id Software), playtesting Left4Dead after joining Valve, unveiling the all-conquering Dota 2 for the first time back in 2011, and a little anecdote about a video conference call where he was addressed by one Shigeru Miyamoto. Heard of him?
Back while working at Retro Studios on the original Metroid Prime (which released in 2002), he was on a conference call with a bunch of Nintendo designers, including Miyamoto. While looking at one of his miniboss designs, the Nintendo honcho called him "Zoid-o-san":
Yep, we think we'd find it pretty amazing if Shigeru Miyamoto called us by our nickname, too — and the respectful -san on the end would be the icing on the cute anecdotal cake.
While Zoid says he's retiring to focus on himself and his family, his final tweet in the thread suggests he might not be done with the games industry forever:
Happy retirement to Zoid from everyone at Nintendo Life! As for the rest of you, let us know below how you'd like to be addressed should you ever find yourself on a video call with a Nintendo legend. (Just remember this is a family site!)
Comments 14
That’s an achievement in of itself. Being addressed like that by arguably the greatest game designer of all time. Enjoy your retirement and be proud!
He really has some good Story behind his Career
Have Fun Zoid o San
So he’s just on a break, not actually retiring?
The gay agenda even in the subheader!1!!
I'm kidding. Cute story.
Just so you know, I got called ‘ossan’ once, which is pretty much the same thing. And it was by a robot, but that’s also pretty much the same thing.
Actually, I think being called a middle-aged git by a non-sentient lump of plastic is probably one - maybe two - steps higher on the universal ‘respect-o-meter’ than our boy Zoid managed. But fair play to him anyway.
I think @Tasuki is the one to ask if we can have a Zoidberg in the comments?
(if I'm remembering wrong, I'm sorry)
Zoid retiring!?!?! This is not possible. I feel....old. I remember when he was just "one of us" in the Quake mod scene...I remember 3wave CTF being the hot new thing. Now he's a retiree?
Can someone dig a hole? I need to crawl into my grave now, apparently.
Never heard of this guy.
@Ulanda good for you..?
@NEStalgia How old are you?
@Mips Younger than Zoid-san, apparently. Younger than @thanosrexxx (sorry to throw you under the bus, I'm just ribbing you). Older than most everyone else since I still think of Zoid as one of us kids.....
Heck old enough to remember when every id employee, including Dave IIRC, was given a Lambo. "Indies need higher prices" my foot.
@NEStalgia Interesting, but a touch of avoidance going on there
Come on, spit it out - I’ll help - I’m 50 this year. First gaming experience was playing space invaders in a chip shop in the late 70s. Then Atari 2600 then Spectrum.
@Mips avoidance and denial are not the same thing
Otoh, woot, another nl'er in younger than. I like to keep count. It would be nice to run out of fingers for that task.
You hear that, Thanos, we're kids again!
@NEStalgia Well, I actually DO have a lot of experience with buses, you know...
And I'm not the oldest here. Our mutual friend @rjejr beats me by some years, and then there's this other member, don't know his name anymore, but I do remember he liked farming games, and last year, he had a forum topic running asking a LOT of questions about it. And that guy was well into his 70's, so it all depends on how well you've done your research, apparently.
And I'll always remain a kid inside. Even full grown adult men still like to play with cars and stuff, and the ones we can't pay for, we've nowadays simply replaced for their digital versions...
@Mips Don't bother. @NEStalgia would sooner get hit by a train than give up his actual age. Me, I don't mind all that much, especially since it's also relatively easy to find out if you take a look at my profile.
I'm a bit older than you, and my first gaming experience also precedes yours by a bit: playing Pong on a Pong home console on a portable black & white TV. After that, we moved on to the Atari 2600 and so forth. The rest is in my profile, in case you're curious.
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