John DeShazer

John DeDhazer is a lead battleground designer at Blizzard Entertainment responsible for developing the map ideas that become new Battlegrounds in Heroes of the Storm. He creates these map layouts and is the design point of contact on the team for Battleground art, sound, and UI.

Background
DeShazer joined Blizzard in 2015 as a game designer on the Heroes of the Storm team, where his first projects included working on Sky Temple and Tomb of the Spider Queen. He was promoted to lead battleground designer shortly thereafter. Before joining Blizzard, DeShazer was employed at Red 5 Studios where he spent six years working on Firefall, contributing to the game’s open world level design, small PvP arena designs, combat, and creature design.

DeShazer holds a degree in History from Loyola Marymount University. He is a passionate games enthusiast whose initial love of games arose from tabletop gaming and has been enjoying board games and different miniatures-based strategy games for over 20 years. He used to own a store that supported a community for playing and buying/selling these kinds of games.