WoW Diary Kickstarter - #1 Non-Fiction Book on Kickstarter, Pledges Closing Tomorrow

Classic Geposted 23.09.2018 um 22:58 von Anshlun

World of Warcraft Diary#1 Non-fictional book ever funded on Kickstarter

Click here to support The WoW Diary Kickstarter! Less than 40 hours left to pledge as the publishing of this post!

The end sheet of the book will be gold that reads “Original Kickstarter Backer" followed the publisher Whenitsready logo.

Gold foil title lettering on spine and front cover differentiates Kickstarter editions from non-KS prints.

Spot varnishing makes all the pictures shiny and opens an opportunity for shiny "ghost shapes" on an otherwise blank page.

Four Developers: How The WoW Diary Happenedon his blog

John Staats

I also pitched my book to Shane Dabiri, who had worked his way up from QA to Blizzard’s Chief of Staff. Shane and I were once housemates during our WoW years, when he was the team’s producer for art assets; sharing project leadership with Mark Kern, our producer for programming. Producers, in case you didn’t know, are people who enable others to achieve their goals. They grease the gears between departments and clear roadblocks. They enable other developers to get things done. Shane was WoW’s project lead until the pressure gave him ulcers, leaving Mark to carry the banner throughout the remainder of the dev cycle. Shane knew, as did everyone on team 2, that I’d kept a development diary about how we were making World of Warcaft. I interviewed everyone on the team, took screenshots, and chronicled our milestones and setbacks. Everyone was vaguely aware I might write a blog or book about it one day, and Shane was one of the guys who was most curious about my journal. I guessed that he would be sympathetic to my pitch about an independent publication, a voice from outside the communal direction of Blizzard’s PR department.

I surprised him with the book over lunch, the first time we’d seen each other in many years. As Shane paged through the prototype, I explained myself. He was grinning at the memories. After a long pause, he closed it and said carefully, “OK…I get it.” He held it aloft and continued, “Other people in the company will need to read this, and you know I can’t promise anything…but we’ll see what happens.” It was the best response that I could have hoped for.

The WoW Diary (in its current form) could have died right there if Shane had reacted otherwise. He could have been too busy or forgotten about it; he could have avoided many conversations about it and set it aside or referred me to someone else—who wouldn’t be as sympathetic toward my goal; or a dozen different things could have derailed it. Somehow, someone (I’m assuming it was Shane) had pushed it through the many departments in charge of scrutinizing such content. I’d gotten a license to use Blizzard’s images and, best of all, no substantial changes were made: Aside from a few corrections, the narrative was completely intact.

Read the Full Story on John Staat's Blog!

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