Abiotic Factor game director Jeff “Zag” Kin shares a deep emotional connection with Blizzard’s classic real-time strategy game.
In a recent interview, Kin, the lead developer behind the popular game Abiotic Factor, opened up about his personal gaming preferences and favorite titles.
Beyond logging over 1000 hours in PUBG: Battlegrounds, Kin expressed a particular fondness for Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. He noted that he played it “long before he ever thought about making games.”
Kin credits the Blizzard strategy game as the first title that “truly captivated him.”
He continues to play Warcraft II to this day, describing it as a game he “will never delete.” Kin elaborates on his enduring affection:
“[…] There’s something special about the games you played as a kid, isn’t there? There’s that nostalgia factor. Sometimes you just want to launch it. I play a campaign level or a scenario, or I just click around on the screen. There’s something comforting about those sounds and the noise. Sometimes you launch the game just to hear the sounds again – it’s like listening to an old favorite song.”
Kin also highlighted that Warcraft II serves as a unique method for him to cope with stress, acting as a form of “therapy”:
“It’s funny, a couple of days before your email, I had just launched [Warcraft II]. And I’m trying to remember why. I think I was exhausted from work then. I probably thought, ‘I just need this. Let this be my little distraction.’ I don’t know. Maybe it’s like a replacement [for psychotherapy] – guys just take and launch Warcraft II.”