More Hearthstone veterans join Second Dinner
Three former colleagues join former Hearthstone game director, Ben Brode at new studio
Three more Blizzard veterans have reunited with former Hearthstone game director Ben Brode at his new studio, Second Dinner.
Today, the studio announced that Jomaro Kindred, Yong Woo, and Michael Schweitzer would take on the respective roles of art director, production director, and engineer. All three will share the title of co-founder with Brode.
Kindred previously worked as the senior concept artist for Blizzard's Hearthstone team, where he spent over four years. In a public post to Facebook, Kindred reflected on his decision to leave Blizzard ahead of the Second Dinner announcement. "I actually spoke about this same particular subject at this year's Blizzard Art Summit," he wrote. "That is, the willingness to face your fears and dare to step out of your comfort zone. I think that facing your fears head on will result in many things that may come in the form of successes and failures and will inevitably help you gain the wisdom and skill to level up in a major way. So now is that time for me!"
Woo served as production director for Hearthstone at Blizzard. In his nine-year career with the company, he also worked on StarCraft II and Diablo 3. Prior to Blizzard, Woo held leadership roles in multiple mobile startups.
Schweitzer's tenure with Blizzard is the longest of the three, having begun as an associate software engineer on the original World of Warcraft in 2005 and working across the Battle.net, Hearthstone, and StarCraft teams during his time with the company. After several years focused on Hearthstone, Schweitzer was moved to Blizzard's incubation team in 2016, where he worked on creating new Blizzard IP.
The three will join Brode as a part of the Orange County-based studio to develop an unannounced project.