7/9/2023 0 Comments Overwatch video shortsRecently retired Blizzard Senior VP of Story and Development and Overwatch Creative Director Chris Metzen identified what perhaps best distinguishes Blizzard from other game publishers when he said “Blizzard is the hero factory”. Triumphs, defeats, betrayals, deaths, redemptions through this interactive form of entertainment, players ran the full gamut of emotions as the characters of these universes were continually developed and fleshed out. Each game included some form of a story mode, usually in the form of a single-player campaign, where players followed or played as their favorite heroes while going on epic adventures. This is a process called “world building”, a core attribute of the Blizzard design philosophy. Instead of constantly pumping out additional franchises or needless and frequent extensions of these franchises, Blizzard would go years or even decades between sequels, making sure that each game added additional breadth and depth to the world and characters of its franchise. Prior to Overwatch’s release in 2016, after 25 years of operation, Blizzard had just three main franchises or “universes” the high-fantasy universe of WarCraft, the sci-fi universe of StarCraft and the gothic-fantasy universe of Diablo. In fact, Overwatch itself was born out of the ashes of one such scrapped product Project Titan (an amazing story of redemption and product development itself, but outside the scope of this article). While other videogame publishers may scramble to release new franchises and iterative sequels to those franchises every year, players of Blizzard games are very accustomed to things being done according to “Blizzard time”, meaning that the company is completely willing to delay the launch of a product for years, or even scrap it completely, if it does not meet standards of quality or is not a fit with the company’s ethos. Quality, depth and heart take absolute priority over quantity, speed and even (short-term, at least) profit. The common interests (including Dungeons and Dragons and 80’s metal), values and “spirit” of this founding group served as a foundation for Blizzard’s game development philosophies which continue to define the company and its products to this day. Blizzard was started by a core group of recent college grads and video game enthusiasts in the early 90’s. Overwatch’s success story is one of a great product combined with great marketing the game might have achieved moderate success with only one of the two, but the extent of its overwhelming success is a result of a combination of both.īefore diving into the specifics of the animated shorts, for the sake of those who may be less familiar with Blizzard or the PC gaming industry, I’ll give a brief overview of the company’s history and what makes it unique. Be that as it may, the greatest game in the world could fail to pick up a critical mass of players and fade into obscurity if not supported by sufficient marketing efforts. Undoubtedly, the most important key to all this success is the simple fact that Overwatch is just a great game not only fun to play but also featuring a universe and characters that just ooze heart. In late January, it was announced that sales of Overwatch had surpassed 25 million, which is particularly impressive for a relatively expensive “full-box” or “pay-to-play” game, competing within a sea of “freemium” or “free-to-play” alternatives. This was just the latest in a slew of Game of the Year awards taken home over the last few months by Blizzard’s first new franchise in almost two decades, including the 2017 DICE Awards and 2016 Game Awards among many others. Last week, Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch won “Game of the Year” at the 2017 Game Developers Conference Awards.
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