Hearthstone’s D&D, Magic vet Mike Donais dishes on designing Blizzard’s market-leading giant

Mike Donais knows a thing or two about card games. After all, he worked on the granddaddy of them all — Magic: The Gathering. He’s also done a turn on Dungeons & Dragons and board games. This makes him a natural for his role as the senior producer of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment’s market-leading digital card game.

GamesBeat interviews Donais at an event at Blizzard’s headquarters in Irvine, California, before the launch of the Whispers of the Old Gods expansion. As he talked, the veteran talked about topics light and heavy — selecting expansion themes, making Hearthstone cards, how his long background with fantasy games help shape his approach to game design, and how the dark lore of Lovecraft is such a great fit for gaming.