Ivan Van Norman Leaves Darrington Press

The company director leaves after several years.
van norman hed.jpg


Ivan Van Norman has departed Darrington Press after a four-year stint. The veteran game developer and director announced on LinkedIn that he had departed the company, having left sometime earlier this month. Van Norman was previously the company director, responsible for creative oversight, product development and team collaboration as well as providing a public presence for the company.

No reason was given for the departure, although Van Norman says that he'll be focusing on Hunters Entertainment as well as several other passion projects.

Darrington Press announced earlier this week that they had hired Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford as the Creative Director and Game Director for Darrington Press, working on both Daggerheart as well as other new games.

Van Norman's full post can be found below:

As people have been reaching out, I wanted to let everyone know that I am no longer working at Critical Role.

I couldn't be happier to have worked with such an excellent group of people, who have worked so hard and passionately to create great things. While I am proud of everything the Darrington team has accomplished over the last four years, I am excited to move on to new opportunities.

In the meantime, I will be using this time to focus on the company I started 15 years ago, Hunters Entertainment, as well as pursue a few passion projects that I now have time to put effort into.

I have always enjoyed new ventures, and Darrington was the largest one by far. There is no greater joy than bringing talented folks together and making games worth participating in.

I wish everyone at Critical Role and Darrington Press team all the luck with Daggerheart. It is an amazing game, and everyone who worked on it should be proud of what they’ve accomplished.

Onto the next adventure!
 

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Christian Hoffer

Christian Hoffer

I’m going with the strong assumption he got let go. It’s not personal it’s just business but it’s funny how it’s framed very differently when it a wotc person and yet we are assuming
A new edition wotc lets go of people
Darrington - project is finished and people are let go

The only thing we know is that Matt was involved in the hiring and maybe firing and the only one who is 100% safe is Matt
 

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Ivan's title according to the DH book was "HEAD OF DARRINGTON PRESS". They've hired two people — none for that position — and no-one else has left. This is quite different than amount of people that's impacted whenever something happens at WotC.
 

Wait, is this a thing? Did I completely miss something this important as them using AI to write?
No, it's sarcasm given comments in WotC threads.

Bolongo said:
I didn't even know he worked there.

I recognize the name and face because for a while he was in a bunch of youtube videos about roleplaying. I'm fuzzy on the details, and can't recall seeing him for several years now.
I remember him with some other voice actors doing a live play of a zombie apocalypse society moving into a recovery phase. It got cut off early, but was interesting.
 


Is it also possible that Ivan has been planning to leave for a while but waited until his replacement was onboarded before he formally left?
Could be all of the above. He might have wanted more pay for his work, or to focus more on his personal projects, but wanted to stay until Daggerheart was officially done. He could have even intentionally waited until after DH has been selling for a little while, so the announcement of his departure didn't hurt sales. So he bows out with DH on his resume, keeps all his friends, and can now pursue his own stuff (possibly with better profit). Win/win.
 


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