Joanna Faris became the new president of Blizzard. Before that, she was responsible for Call of Duty for a couple of years

Microsoft has announced who has replaced Mike Ybarra as head of Blizzard Entertainment. 37-year-old Johanna Faries became the president of the studio. We tell you what she was doing before.

The appointment can be called strange. Faris is not from Blizzard or the product teams. Moreover, she has also been in the gaming industry relatively recently, less than six years.

Faris has spent most of her career in the National Football League (NFL). Starting as a coordinator and business development manager, she has grown to the position of Vice President of Team development in 11 years of her career.

After that, Faris moved to Activision. For the first two years of her work in the industry, she held the position of commissioner in the esports department of Call of Duty. In this position, she was responsible for the work of the Call of Duty League.

For understanding, Call of Duty League is an organization that oversees esports teams, supports them, organizes competitions in the game, is responsible for how and by what rules tournaments are held, and so on.

In August 2020, Faris was promoted to the position of senior vice president and head of all esports leagues of the company. As a top manager, she became responsible for all Activision Blizzard leagues, including the Overwatch League.

Already in April 2021, Faris was appointed CEO of the entire Call of Duty division. Important: this happened a few months before the harassment scandal at the company, which led to strikes, stock drops and lawsuits. That is, the appointment cannot be called opportunistic.

However, according to Microsoft Studios vice president Matt Booty, the new president of Blizzard Entertainment is the "executive champion" (here, perhaps, a leading activist) of the Black Employee Network, an internal corporate group responsible for inclusivity in the company.

Under Faris, three Call of Duty were launched — Vanguard, Modern Warfare II and Modern Warfare III. The last two became box office hits. Modern Warfare II earned more than a billion dollars, and developed in just 16 months, Modern Warfare III turned out to be one of the two best-selling games of last year in the United States.

Does this speak to her as a strong manager — most likely, yes. At least, she did not destroy the processes built up before her.

On the other hand, it was with her that the problem with naming the series worsened, which not only leads to constant confusion, but is also the subject of jokes. For example, there are three different games called Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The original 2009 title, a remaster of the 2020 campaign and a separate 2022 game.

Anyway, according to Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier, the appointment of a top Activision manager as head of the studio for many Blizzard employees could be an unpleasant surprise. The studios had significant disagreements, including regarding the timing of development.

Recall that while Activision manages to bring Call of Duty software to the market every year, Blizzard spends more than five to six years developing its own games. Apparently, the team is afraid for their processes.

But perhaps Microsoft felt that it was Activision's experience in regularly bringing Blizzard products to market that was lacking. Plus, the fact that Blizzard Entertainment was at the center of a sex scandal in 2021 could also play a role (then employees accused the studio of discrimination, and a number of colleagues of misogyny and harassment).

Joanna Faris takes up her duties on February 5th.