Simon Ebejer says his career trajectory shifted toward his goal of becoming a studio head when he joined Vicarious Visions in Colonie as chief operating officer 4 1/2 years ago.
With the studio’s recent merger into Blizzard Entertainment, his career goal has become a reality. Ebejer has stepped into the role of Vicarious Visions studio head after nearly 20 years working for Activision, Blizzard’s parent company. Meanwhile, Jennifer Oneal, former studio head for Vicarious Visions, has been promoted to executive vice president of development for Blizzard.
Why was now the right time to join Blizzard? We’ve been collaborating with Blizzard for some time now, and we have a great relationship with Blizzard, and so over time, we all just recognized the opportunity we had together, and it just made sense for us to forge a long-term partnership. While working together, it’s become clear that we have an alignment in our values, particularly in the quality bars we set for ourselves and the passion that we have for making epic experiences to excite both VV’s and Blizzard’s fans.
What does this move mean for the work you’re doing at Vicarious Visions? I can’t wait to share more about what we’ve been working on and all of the great things that we have in store for Blizzard fans. What I can tell you is that from a game developer’s perspective, we’ve always admired the amazing communities surrounding Blizzard’s games and the ways that Blizzard has expressed great care for their players, including everything that goes into BlizzCon and their gameplay-first approach.
Do you see Vicarious Visions growing its team? We do have roughly 200 developers. They will be fully dedicated to Blizzard games and become Blizzard employees, but we will be keeping our name and identity as Vicarious Visions. With all the amazing franchises that Blizzard has, we will likely grow to continue to have the right staff in order to meet the demands of all of Blizzard’s fans.
When you started as chief operating officer, was it your goal to eventually become studio head? I’ve been with Vicarious Visions for about 4 1/2 years. I’ve been with Activision for almost 20 years. I’ve worked at other Activision development studios, including Neversoft Entertainment and Infinity Ward. I started my career in video games as a producer, and so the production management aspect of video games was always something that interested me. As my career progressed, of course I did begin to have aspirations of eventually running a studio myself.
When I transferred to Vicarious Visions from Infinity Ward, I was coming from being the production director of Infinity Ward to the COO at Vicarious Visions. In taking on this broader, more operational, studiowide role, I was moving in that direction. It is something that I’ve had as a goal of mine. At this point now, I’m thankful and humbled and honored at the opportunity to become Vicarious Visions studio head at this incredibly exciting time where we’re merging with Blizzard and just moving into an incredibly exciting time for our future.
Do you feel a special responsibility becoming a studio head during the pandemic when people are spending a lot more time playing video games? I think that it is important during this time in our world history, when people are at home playing a lot of video games and they are isolated from the pandemic, that video games have an incredible opportunity to bring people together and to create communities and to keep people connected. It’s important to continue to bring games to people to help keep people’s bonds tight and keep people connected. Video games in general are important to me in that way, especially right now, and I would be saying the same thing about the importance of video games whether I had just become Vicarious Visions studio head or not.
Considering the increasing popularity of video games, do you have thoughts on how that can be leveraged in the Capital Region? I want video games and video game development in the Capital Region to continue to grow. It has been growing over the last several years, and I think that that’s incredible. ... I want all of the developers in the region to continue to be successful because the stronger we are collectively as a video game community, the more gravity the area will have to draw more and more talent into the region, which benefits us all.
What games are you playing right now? I have been playing a lot of Animal Crossing on the Switch because my wife also plays it. I have an 8-year-old son, so I spend a lot of time playing Lego games with him. And then for myself personally, I’ve been playing a lot of Diablo III.
Do you have a favorite? My favorite game of all time is Pirates! by Sid Meier.
Interview has been edited and condensed
Simon Ebejer
Title: Studio head
Organization: Vicarious Visions
Age: 49
Born/grew up: Melbourne, Florida
Resides: Latham
Family: Wife, Sandy; son, Nate, 8 years old
Education: Bachelor’s degree in business and finance, University of Phoenix