Overwatch (video game)
Overwatch is a multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. It was released in May 2016 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
Overwatch puts players into two teams of six, with each player selecting one of several pre-defined hero characters with unique movement, attributes, and skills; these heroes are divided into four classes: Offense, Defense, Tank, and Support. Players on a team work together to secure and defend control points on a map and/or escort a payload across the map in a limited amount of time. Players gain cosmetic rewards that do not affect gameplay, such as characters skins and victory poses, as they continue to play in matches. The game was launched with casual play, while Blizzard added competitive ranked play about a month after launch. Blizzard states that all Overwatch updates will remain free, with the only additional cost to players is through microtransactions to earn additional cosmetic rewards.
Gameplay
Overwatch is Blizzard's fourth major franchise, and came about following the 2014 cancellation of the ambitious massively multiplayer online role-playing game Titan. A portion of the Titan team came up with the concept of Overwatch, based on success of team-based first-person shooters like Team Fortress 2 and the growing popularity of multiplayer online battle arenas, creating a hero-based shooter that emphasized teamwork. Some elements of Overwatch borrow assets and concepts from the canceled Titan project. After establishing the narrative of an optimistic near-future Earth settling after a global crisis, the developers aimed to create a diverse cast of heroes that spanned genders and ethnicities as part of this setting. Significant time was spent adjusting the balance of the characters, making sure that new players would be able to still have fun while skilled players would be a formidable challenge against players of similar calibre.
Overwatch was unveiled at BlizzCon 2014 in a fully playable state, and was in a closed beta from late 2015 through early 2016. An open beta in May 2016 drew in more than 9.7 million players. The release of the game was promoted with short animated videos to introduce the game's narrative and each of the characters. Overwatch has received universal acclaim according to review aggregator Metacritic, with game critics praising the game's accessibility and enjoyment.
Overwatch features squad-based combat with two opposing teams of six players each. Players choose one of several hero characters, each with their own unique abilities and role classes. The four character roles include: offense characters with high speed and attack but low defense, defense characters meant to form choke points for enemies, support characters that provide buffs and debuffs for their allies and enemies respectively (such as healing or speed alterations), and tank characters that have a large amount of armor and hit points to withstand enemy attacks and draw fire away from teammates. During the pre-match setup, players on a team will be given advice from the game if their team is unbalanced, such as if they are lacking defensive heroes, encouraging players to switch to other heroes pre-match and balance the starting team. Within a match, players can switch between characters in-game following deaths or by returning to their home base, which is encouraged by the game's overall design.
A screenshot from Overwatch while in-match. The player and their
allies are indicated in blue, while the opposing team is in red. The
character's health bar is shown on the bottom left, their main skills
and attacks are shown on the bottom right, and their progress towards
their ultimate is shown in the bottom center.
A second meter tracks how many in-round points a player has scored, which are rewarded for killing or assisting in killing, providing team defense or healing, and scoring objective points. When a certain threshold is reached, the player character's icon will be "on fire", representing that that character is a threat, but otherwise does not directly affect gameplay.
At the conclusion of each match, the game server determines and replays for all players a short period of time from a specific player as the "Play of the Game" based on a number of factors that highlight a high-scoring play, such as a rapid number of kills or an effective use of team healing. Up to four individual achievements for players on both teams are then highlighted and players are given the option to select one to promote. Obtaining the "Play of the Game" or the most votes during this post-game are rewarded as experience points for the player's meta-game.
Players gain experience following a match towards a metagame experience level based on several factors such as whether they won or lost, how effective they used their character's main powers, and beating past personal records in a number of categories; this experience is only gained when playing on the game's matchmaking modes and not in custom games. On gaining an experience level, the player can earn a loot crate, which contains a number of cosmetic items for certain heroes, including victory poses, paint sprays, alternate color schemes and voice lines. They may also earn in-game currency which can be used to purchase specific cosmetic items directly. Duplicate items are rewarded with in-game currency. Players also have the option to purchase loot boxes with real-world currency through microtransactions.
The game's maps are inspired by real-world locations; the first three maps unveiled ("King's Row", "Hanamura", "Temple of Anubis") are inspired by London, Japan, and the ruins of Ancient Egypt, respectively.
Roles
Main article: Characters of Overwatch
Characters in Overwatch come in four varieties: Offense,
Defense, Tank, and Support. These roles serve to categorize the heroes
of Overwatch by similar characteristics that can be used to describe
them and their play style. The first appearance of an Overwatch character in a released game was on April 19, 2016 in Heroes of the Storm.- Offense: Offense characters have high mobility and are known for their ability to deal large amounts of damage. To balance this, offense characters have a low number of hit points.
- Defense: Defense characters excel at protecting specific locations and creating choke points. They can also provide several means of field support, such as sentry set-up and trapping the enemy team.
- Tank: Tank characters have the most hit points out of all the characters in the game. Because of this, they are able to draw enemy fire away from their teammates to themselves, so as to disrupt the enemy team.
- Support: Support characters are utility characters that have abilities that enhance their own team and/or weaken the enemy team. They might not deal the most damage or have the most hit points, but the buffs and debuffs they provide ensure that their teammates who do will make short work of their opponents.
Map types
Each Overwatch map has a specific game mode that it supports, which include:- Assault: The attacking team is tasked with capturing two target points in sequence on the map, while the defending team must stop them.
- Escort: The attacking team is tasked with escorting a payload to a certain delivery point before time runs out, while the defending team must stop them. The payload vehicle moves along a fixed track when any player on the attacking team is close to it, but will stop if a defending player is nearby; should no attacker be near the vehicle, it will start to move backwards along the track. Passing specific checkpoints will extend the match time and prevent the payload from moving backwards from that point.
- Assault/Escort: The attacking team has to capture the payload and escort it to its destination, while the defending team tries to hold them back.
- Control: Each team tries to capture and maintain a common control point until their capture percentage reaches 100%. This game mode is played in a best-of-three format.
Game modes
Overwatch features several means of gameplay, including tutorial and practice modes against computer-controlled opponents, causal matchmaking, weekly brawls, custom games, and competitive or ranked play.Casual matchmaking allows players, along or with invited friends, to be randomly matched against others. The game servers would attempt to match the gathered players in party via a dynamic queue with others based on general skill level, only broadening outside this search range if it took a long time to find matching players. Blizzard works to adjust this matchmaking approach to make sure players will find matches of people with roughly equivalent skill level. For example, in June 2016, Blizzard removed the option for players to avoid specific opponents; the option was meant for players to be able ignore trolls, but instead found that highly-skilled players were being put on these avoidance lists and were having difficulty finding games or would be matched with new and less-skilled players.
The Weekly Brawl mode was inspired by Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft's Tavern Brawls. These matches feature unique rules, such as players forced to play a specific hero or a specific class of hero, or may force a random hero on the player each time they respawn; as the mode's name suggests, these Brawls will change weekly.
Custom games enable players to have open or private games with several possible options that can be adjusted, such as match length, which maps to play, limitations on character selection, and similar options that are used to create the Weekly Brawl matches. Players do not gain any experience from playing in custom matches as they would in the causal, ranked, or weekly brawl modes.
Competitive mode enables players, segregated in both region and platform, to participate in ranked play. Competitive mode is run in seasons that last for 2.5 months each with a break of two weeks between each season to allow Blizzard to make necessary changes to this format; an exception was made for the first season which will only be 1.5 months long to align timing for future seasons. Players must have reached level 25 from causal matches to partake in competitive play. Before they can play any ranked matches, they must play through ten preliminary matches that used to assign a skill rating from 1 to 100 based on a combination of several factors including the player's performance and the performance of those that were part of their matches. Subsequently, this skill level will be used to match players in all further matches for that season. The player's skill level can move up or down during a season, influenced by their performance and by winning matches against higher-ranked players or losing matches to lower-ranked ones. Matches taking place on Control maps are played best three-out-of-five rounds instead of two-out-of-three as in causal gameplay. Matches taking place on Assault, Escort, and Hybrid map types are broken into two rounds, with teams swapped between attackers and defenders each round. Teams can score a point as the attacker by completing each objective (capturing a control point or escorting the payload past a checkpoint). After these two rounds, the team with the highest score wins. If there is a tie, a random coin flip is made to assign one team as the attackers, and they are given two minutes without any overtime to secure a control point to win the match, otherwise the defenders win. Blizzard has stated that this mechanism for breaking ties may change in future seasons. Players who complete the prerequisite ten placement matches will gain cosmetic items unique for that season, and further cosmetic rewards, including special "golden" weapons, will be awarded to the top players by skill for each season. Kaplan remarked that competitive play was Blizzard's "big focus", anticipating that it will "require a few season's worth of iteration before we're in the place we want to be."
Plot
See also: Characters of Overwatch
The backstory to Overwatch is described through animated shorts and other information distributed by Blizzard in promoting the game.[26][27]Overwatch is set sixty years into the future of fictionalized Earth, thirty years after the resolution of the "Omnic Crisis". Prior the Omnic Crisis, humanity had been in a golden age of prosperity and technology development. Humanity developed robots with artificial intelligence called "omnics" which were produced world-wide in automated "omnium" facilities and put to use to achieve economic equality. The Omnic Crisis began when the omniums started producing a series of lethal, hostile robots, which turned against humanity. The United Nations (UN) quickly formed Overwatch, an international task force to combat the Omnic threat and restore order.
Two veteran soldiers were put in charge of Overwatch; Gabriel Reyes and Jack Morrison. Though Overwatch successfully quelled the robotic uprising and brought a number of talented individuals to the forefront, a rift developed between Reyes and Morrison, and Morrison became the de-facto leader of Overwatch while Reyes took charge of Blackwatch, Overwatch's covert operations. Overwatch maintained peace across the world for several decades in what was called the "Overwatch Generation", but the rift between Morrison and Reyes intensified. Several allegations of wrongdoing and failures were leveled at Overwatch, leading to public outcry against the organization and in-fighting between its members, prompting the UN to investigate the situation. During this, an explosion destroyed Overwatch's headquarters, purportedly killing Morrison and Reyes among others. The UN passed the Petras Act, which dismantled Overwatch and forbade any Overwatch-type activity.
Overwatch is set some years after the Petras Act; without Overwatch, corporations have started to take over, fighting and terrorism have broken out in parts of the globe, and there are signs of a second Omnic Crisis occurring in Russia. Former members of Overwatch decide to reform Overwatch despite the Petras Act, recruiting old friends and gaining new allies in their fight.
Development
Development of Overwatch followed after the 2014 cancellation of the ambitious massively multiplayer online role-playing game Titan, a game that had been in development at Blizzard for seven years. Blizzard co-founder Michael Morhaime stated that with Titan, "We didn't find the fun. We didn't find the passion." even after re-evaluating the project. The large Titan team was cut to a much smaller group and tasked to come up with a new project; Overwatch became Blizzard's second attempt at launching a new franchise since StarCraft in 1998. Creative director Chris Metzen noted that to avoid the same failure that Titan became, their group had to rethink how Blizzard's more successful games had come about, ignoring the scale and business opportunity of the end result and instead understand what tools and skills they had already to build from. In brainstorming ideas, the team thought about the current state of first-person shooters (FPS), a genre that many on the team had played throughout their careers, which has enjoyed many groundbreaking titles but still has a potential for innovation, according to director Jeff Kaplan.Kaplan states that some of the ideas in the current FPS they wanted to emulate were the trend of near-future realism exhibited by games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the use of in-game maneuvers like rocket jumping and grappling hooks that helped players move with fluidity across maps, and team-based shooters such as Team Fortress Classic and Team Fortress 2. At the same time, multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games were starting to take off, which required players to cooperate with others to successfully win the match. Kaplan said that their team considered how to adapt the large-scale and fast-paced gameplay of Team Fortress 2 with the smaller scale and cooperative nature of MOBAs, forming the basis of Overwatch. Metzen also commented that the concept of teamwork in Overwatch was partially influenced by their own team's current morale following the cancellation of Titan. Metzen said that during Titan's development, the team was highly fractured which impacted the project's cancellation. On starting Overwatch with a smaller group, they all wanted to come together and support each other to make their next game a success, "a redemption story for us as people and as craftsmen". Morhaime described Overwatch's intention as to "create an awesome [first-person shooter] experience that's more accessible to a much wider audience while delivering the action and depth that shooter fans love." On the FPS nature of the game, Kaplan commented that "the real focus of the shooting in the game is not to chase realism. We don't have real world guns in the game. You're not playing a soldier in a present-day military conflict."
Initial development of the game began with creating the first Hero character, Tracer, who was based on a character from Titan with similar time-manipulation abilities. They used Tracer and a single map based on the Temple of Anubis, to test how well the core mechanics played, according to assistant game director Aaron Keller. They added three more Heroes—Widowmaker, Reaper, and Reinhardt—to start polishing the gameplay mechanics, which even at this stage Keller stated that it compared very closely with what the released game would present. They had even considered releasing Overwatch with a limited set of heroes at this point, as they had felt the game already had a finished feel to it.
Instead, they spent about two years on developing out the rest of the characters, gameplay balance, and graphics. In addition to character balance, the development team needed to find ways to balance the characters with the various maps, wanting to provided areas across the maps for each character to have an area where they could be effective. The number of characters in the game was not fixed; though released with 21 different heroes, Kaplan stated the team played around with various goals, potentially as high as 40 unique heroes and across six different classes. Kaplan credits Jeff Goodman, a veteran designer in Blizzard, for figuring out the right number of heroes, classes, and balance between the characters. Keller noted that as the cast starting approaching about 15 characters, the team started to worry that there were too many for players to learn and may dilute the experience, but they strived to assure both uniqueness and balance across the slate of Heroes. The team felt the game was ready for release in November 2015 after adding the last two characters, Mei and D.Va, to the roster.
Overwatch was developed with half a dozen features to bring in a wider audience, including an accessibility feature for color blind individuals. During development, one important goal was to have "combat clarity" for the player, so that when a player moved into a new area, enemy characters would be clearly visible. This was enabled by contrasting the hues and saturation levels used for players to those used within the maps, and creating characters with distinctly different silhouettes to allow a player to identity the hero from a distance, including whether they were friend or foe. They found during development that having players be able to change heroes in mid-match to be important to gameplay. This inspired them to forego plans to release Overwatch as a free-to-play model with microtransactions or with paid downloadable content but instead make it a single-purchase title. Keller said that they wanted players to be able to jump to any Hero as necessitated by the situation, and the free-to-play or downloadable content approach could limit that ability if none of the team's players had purchased access to that hero. Keller also stated that the free-to-play/downloadable content model could fragment their player community, with gamers only playing with friends that had the same content instead of all available players. A further goal in development was to avoid the negativity that often occurs in other competitive game environments, and, along with strides to make the narrative give a positive message, made specific choices in gameplay design to remove elements they felt fed negativity. One such choice was omitting kill/death ratios from the various statistic summaries, as according to Kaplan "some characters don’t need to kill to be effective". To promote a friendlier playing environment, Blizzard penalizes players that "rage quit" (purposely leaving a match before it is complete) with a penalty on player experience points after a match, and will permanently ban players that they find "cheating or using hacks, bots, or third-party software".
Blizzard had anticipated including competitive mode - in which players would compete in a five-tier ladder progression against players of similar level to ascend that ladder - but had difficulty with matchmaking during Overwatch's open beta that caused low-ranked players to be pitted against much more highly-ranked players, and that they had not accounted for players to fall out of a tier if they started to perform poorly. An improved competitive mode entered open beta testing within Battle.net's public test region on June 21, 2016, and was launched on Windows on June 28, 2016 with consoles expected to have this in early July. Competitive mode on the Xbox One version was added on June 30, 2016, while the PlayStation 4 version is expected with a week of that.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office suspended Blizzard's application for a trademark for Overwatch due to "a likelihood of confusion" with a previously registered trademark by Innovis Labs. On October 13, 2015, Innovis Labs and Blizzard settled a pending lawsuit. A week later, on October 21, 2015, Innovis Labs surrendered their trademark registration for Overwatch.
Narrative
To develop the game's themes, Kaplan stated they wanted to create a future that was not typical of what a post-apocalyptic world might be like, opting instead for a future where conflict still exists but a "bright and aspirational vision" is maintained. The title's creative director, Chris Metzen, acknowledged that parts of Overwatch, such as maps, share "continuity" with Titan. Citing a desire to keep its game styles "simple", and because it contradicted its emphasis on accomplishing goals as a team rather than trying to achieve large numbers of kills, Overwatch does not contain a traditional deathmatch mode. Metzen stated that "we have a long legacy of developing multiplayer games, and it came down to 'is it even possible to build a shooter that doesn't feel cynical, that doesn't feel cruel, that doesn't feel nasty? Can you build one that really promotes teamwork and relationship and having fun with your friends, and not getting killed with a thrown knife from halfway across the map as soon as you jump in?'" Kaplan has expressed that this theme continued into the aesthetics of the game, commenting, "when it comes to the setting and art style and tone of the universe, a lot of games like to approach the future in either a very dystopian way, or a post-apocalyptic way," and adding, "we wanted to make something bright and welcoming, that featured a lot of deep, rich colors. A lot of the modern realistic games tend to focus on gritty gray, brown palettes."The narrative for Overwatch is led by Blizzard's senior game designer Michael Chu. Creating a narrative for the game was a challenge compared to past Blizzard titles as the game lacks a single-player mode or a traditional story-telling mechanic. Instead, the story crafters for the game sought to create a spanning narrative that could be injected into the game through the short in-game dialogue and unlockable hero skins. Outside of the game, the narrative is primarily driven through a transmedia storytelling method. This gives the developers some flexibility as to where they can take the story as Overwatch is expanded over the years. The narrative can still be seen being hinted at through map environments and character dialouge within the game itself; Chu explains that "you get a character like Soldier: 76 and he says, like: 'back in my day we'd have this payload delivered'. And then you get a character like Zenyatta, the robot monk, and he'd say something like: 'becoming one with the objective'. So we find these ways to really differentiate them and it makes for unexpected and sometimes ridiculous lines." Blizzard felt they had strength in developing a narrative for a large universe of characters as they had done for Warcraft. Chu expressed that they wanted to diverge from the fantasy and science fiction elements that were prominent in their main three franchises (Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo), stating "we wanted to try something different with Overwatch, so what we decided to go for was the future of Earth. We always wanted the game to be about heroes, so we took a lot of inspiration from comics and superhero stories of our youth and today." Once it was determined Overwatch would be played on a near-futuristic version of Earth, the writers recognized the possibility of having a global-spanning set of characters and locations set in an "inspirational future". Metzen sees the Overworld universe as having potential dynamics over time, but Blizzard does not yet have plans for how to implement this within the game.
Characters
See also: Characters of Overwatch
The playable characters in Overwatch were meant to be a diverse cast, covering a broad range of genders and ethnicities, including non-human characters.
The team envisioned the characters akin to superheroes in this narrative, each with their own abilities, background and personality that could stand on their own, but could also fit into the larger story; this notion translated into the characters being agents for the game, which Metzen said still captures the "heroism and vibe" that superhero stories carry. The team did not want to have any characters that served solely as villains in the game, but did develop some of the characters, like Soldier: 76, to have an unsure purpose within the narrative.
Kaplan credits artist Arnold Tsang from coming up with the preliminary designs of all the heroes in the game. The narrative and characters themselves were then developed through an iterative process between the gameplay developers, artists, and promotional media as they worked to bring the narrative together. One example given was that of Doomfist, a character introduced into one of the game's promotional videos where his gauntlet was on display. This led to the creation of one of the maps that expanded upon the Doomfist concept, making that a title passed down between others in the past, and seeding some of the existing heroes' backstory has having connections to the Doomfist title. Though they have no plans to introduce Doomfist as a playable character, this process gave them a sufficient starting point to work from should they introduce Doomfist in the future. Other examples of similar iterative expansion to the characters given by Metzen and Chu include the heroes Genji and Hanzo who were characters borne out of an initial single character concept and leading to them being rivals of each other, and the introduction of Lucio as a means to expand upon the loosely connected Vishkar Corporation concept that was part of Symmetra's backstory.
Character animations were created by Blizzard's David Gibson. To help give more personality to the 3D-rendered animation, Gibson applied traditional methods used in 2D limited animation, such as smear animation, instead of relying on motion blur effects, creating more exaggerated animations that support the feel of the game.
While the developers were aiming to avoid sexualization of the characters, there was some criticism of the female characters of the game during its development. Anita Sarkeesian commented on the lack of diversity in the female heroes' body types from the game's first twelve revealed characters, while Nathan Grayson of Kotaku remarked that "Overwatch's women are mostly super slim and clad in cat suits." In response to these criticisms and to reassert their commitment to diversity and avoiding sexualization, the team developed a new female character, Zarya, a Tank class character with an atypical body shape. Following promotional images featuring the female character Tracer in March 2016, a thread on Blizzard's official forums drew attention to one of Tracer's victory poses, which was critiqued by a user as out of character and oversexualized. Games Director, Jeff Kaplan, apologized for the pose, stating "The last thing we want to do is make someone feel uncomfortable, under-appreciated or misrepresented," and confirmed that Blizzard planned to replace the pose. Kaplan's response drew mixed reactions from the gaming community, with many claiming Blizzard had forgone its creative control over the game and censored its content to placate one offended user, while others praised Blizzard's willingness to listen to the community and adhere to standards for portraying a character according to their personality. Jeff Kaplan later stated that the team was already unsure of the pose and was thinking of changing it. The following week, a replacement pose was released, although it was noted to be similar to the original pose. The replacement pose was alleged to be influenced by a Billy De Vorss cheesecake pin-up illustration. The pose was replaced during the game's beta period, before the game's launch.
Post-release development
Blizzard will support the game through various updates, such as the competitive mode that is planned to be added in June 2016, and potential changes to how the Play of the Game is selected to showcase non-attacking-based Heroes. Other updates will come from monitoring the game and adjusting various attributes of the Heroes to better manage their expectations they had in designing the game and in response to player feedback. For example, one of the first planned updates is to change the strength of McCree's alternate fire "Fan the Hammer" ability, which can do a great deal of damage to most targets. Blizzard felt this attack should be lethal to most of the Heroes but should not be able to take out Tank-based characters in a single shot, and plan to reduce the damage to address this. Not all updates will be equivalent across platforms; a planned update will reduce the damage of Torbjörn's auto-aiming turrets on console versions but will not be applied to the Windows version.Blizzard has plans to add new characters and maps to the game. With respect to characters, Kaplan expected they will release these one at a time, rather than in groups, allowing the new character to be stabilized before adding the next. Kaplan referred to the negative feedback received after the grouped introduction of the final three characters—Genji, Mei, and D.Va—during the closed beta period, which if repeated could be "disruptive" to the game's community.
Marketing
Announcement, promotion and release
Overwatch was formally announced at the BlizzCon event on November 7, 2014; the game was playable during the event to all attendees, with fourteen characters available to select from. During this event Blizzard released a cinematic trailer and an extended gameplay video for the game. A month after the BlizzCon event, in December 2014, Blizzard published character introduction videos to its YouTube channel, and followed up on this May 2015 by posting weekly videos of game footage and character highlights.A closed beta period for Overwatch across all three platforms began on October 27, 2015. The closed beta was put on "extended break" in December and brought back in February 2016. Following the March 2016 release announcement, Blizzard also announced an open beta period from May 5 to 9 for any registered user of the Battle.net client. The open beta proven popular with Blizzard reporting over 9.7 million players participating, and as a way of showing thanks, extended the open beta period by one extra day.
In the week prior to release, Blizzard arranged to have three giant-sized boxes (approximately 15 feet (4.6 m) tall) of various Overwatch heroes, as if being sold as packaged action figures, put on display across the globe at Hollywood, Paris, and Busan, South Korea. The displays were created by Alliance Studios, led by Steve Wang, who has collaborated with Blizzard before on past projects, and Eddie Yang. After planning the design of the sculptures in January 2016, teams across the world, including Droga5, Scicon, Stratasys and Egads, raced to print, finish and assemble the works in time for the game's release. Propelled by Overwatch, Blizzard had over 50% of the American advertisement share among gaming industry brands from May 16 to June 15, 2016.
Overwatch was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One platforms on May 24, 2016, with the game servers coming online at 00:00 BST that day. Blizzard allowed retailers to sell physical copies of the game on May 23 to help players prepare for the servers' launch. Unlike previous Blizzard releases, there are no plans for a version of Overwatch for OS X. Blizzard has expressed interest in supporting cross-platform play between console systems in the future, though has no plans for Windows-supported cross-play due to the advantage of keyboard-mouse controls over controller-based ones. The game will be supported by updates, including new maps and characters. All of the additional content will be free for existing players and does not require additional payment. Blizzard hoped that through this method they can alleviate the concerns of some players.
Two special editions of Overwatch were released alongside the base game. The Origins Edition, available both as a downloadable and retail product, includes the base game and five additional character skins, as well as other bonus items for other Blizzard games via Battle.net. The Collectors Edition, only available as retail, includes the Origins Edition content as well as a statue of Soldier 76, one of the playable characters, the game's soundtrack, and a source book.
Related media
See also: Overwatch animated media
Blizzard opted to tell the story of Overwatch across various
mediums, rather than include a story mode; Chu stated, "One of the
things that's really great is we're able to leverage the strengths of
these different mediums to tell different parts of the story," citing
Soldier: 76's appearances in fake news reports, an animated video
narrated from his perspective, as well as the Hero short. Chu has also remarked that the reasoning for Blizzard's method of storytelling with Overwatch was a emphasis on a "gameplay first" philosophy.In March 2016, Blizzard announced that they would be releasing comics and animated shorts based on Overwatch in 2016. The related media announced includes six digital comics, an animated short series, and a graphic novel called Overwatch: First Strike, which focuses on the story of several in-game characters including Soldier: 76, Torbjörn, Reaper, and Reinhardt. The novel is being written by writer Micky Neilson and artist Ludo Lullabi.
Blizzard began releasing the series of animated shorts in March 2016; the shorts maintained the style of the game's cinematic trailer, which centered on a battle in which Tracer and Winston fought Reaper and Widowmaker in the Overwatch Museum. A collection of these cinematic sequences played in movie theaters across the United States as part of the game's launch event. The first episode of the animated short series, Recall, was released on March 23. It centers on Winston and Reaper, and features flashbacks to Winston's childhood. The second episode, Alive, showcased a standoff between Tracer and Widowmaker, and was released on April 5. The third episode, Dragons, featuring the brothers Hanzo and Genji, was released on May 16. The fourth and final episode of the series' first season, Hero, stars Soldier: 76, and was released May 22.
Professional competition
Overwatch was not developed with any dedication towards eSports; according to Kaplan, though Blizzard had had success with committing to eSports with the development of Starcraft II, they had found that "it's dangerous to be overly committed to esport too early in the lifespan of the game", instead seeing how the community developed this over time as they saw from Hearthstone. Kaplan stated they included and planned for features for the game to support the competitive community. Following the last closed beta in April 2016, there was serious consideration to promote Overwatch as a new eSport; Dan Szymborski writing for ESPN stated that Overwatch was poised as the next big eSport for having a sufficiently different look and playstyle from established eSports titles like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Call of Duty, enough variety in maps and characters, and strong support from Blizzard to maintain the game for a long time. Bryant Francis writing for Gamasutra also noted the speed and short match times of Overwatch make the game highly favorable for viewership, further supporting the title as an eSports candidate.Just prior to the game's release, PC Gamer writer Stefan Dorresteijn contacted professional eSports players for their opinions; one gamer, Paul Chaloner stated, "[Overwatch] needs a much better spectator system," going on to elaborate, "Right now, it's incredibly difficult for commentators and viewers to see the skills of the players: who used their ultimates and how did they interact? Who is on cooldown and who has changed hero?" Fellow eSports player Seb Barton and Michael Rosen criticized the game's map designs and game modes; Barton remarked that "the game modes are a little hit and miss," adding that "King of the hill [Control] is super exciting and fast paced but then you have the payload [Escort] maps, which are just a snoozefest for everyone involved." Rosen expressed a need for tweaking to the maps used for the control game mode, as they are "just too prone to the snowball effect. The moment the attacking team captures the first control point they don't just have the momentum, but also the ultimate advantage for the second and final capture point."
In June 2016, the Electronic Sports League (ESL) announced that they would host the Overwatch Atlantic Showdown, the first international Overwatch competition in August 2016. The competition will use four open qualifiers beginning in June, followed by regional qualifiers and then a final online qualifier. Eight teams will then compete for a six-figure prize in the finals to be held at Gamescom 2016 from August 20–21.
Reception
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Pre-release
Before its release, Overwatch experienced a period of pre-launch attention not typically expected; Game Revolution noted that "[Overwatch's] reputation has quickly permeated through cyberspace, attracting attention from people who may not traditionally put down $40 to $60 each time a new first-person shooter releases." The game's open beta, which attracted 9.7 million players, was also noted to be heavily covered by the media.Critical reception
Overwatch received universal acclaim upon release, according to video game review aggregator Metacritic.IGN's Vince Ingenito awarded the game a 9.4/10 and praised the game's characters and maps, writing "Overwatch takes just about every possible opportunity to make its cast and locales seem like people and places rather than puppets and scenery." Ingenito added that the game has a "strong online experience that gets you into games quickly and reliably." The Verge's Andrew Webster praised Overwatch and previous titles Titanfall and Splatoon as "friendly online shooters" that have room for both new and casual players who may not desire to master the game but can still compete fairly with others, and for expert players that can utilize the various heroes to adapt to the dynamic tactics of the game. Webster went on to cite the atmosphere of Overwatch as a reason for the game's approachability, writing, "The first thing that makes Overwatch's world appealing and approachable is, well, its world. This isn't the dour brown-and-grey shooter you might be used to. Instead, it's bright and colorful, with a cast of characters that's eclectic and diverse." Caty McCarthy of Kill Screen echoed similar thoughts, writing "When playing Overwatch, the player is absorbed by its radiating positivity. It's a world filled with lively color and energetic, playful competition, much like Nintendo's creative kid-friendly ink-shooter Splatoon." Mike Minotti of VentureBeat heavily praised the game, giving it a 98/100 score, commending the team-based gameplay, the game's diverse character roster and colorful settings, as well as the unlockable cosmetics earned through level progression and the smooth server connection Referencing its similarities to Team Fortress 2, Minotti confirmed that "[Overwatch has] distinct classes, the team- and objective-based combat, and a bright, cartoon-like art style," and that "Overwatch certainly takes plenty of inspiration from Valve's online shooter series," but opines that "[Overwatch is] just better." Daniel Tack of The News & Observer also positively received the game, expressing that "no matter what happens – win or lose – you’re going to have fun," adding that "the game's strength lies in its simplicity and polish." Tack went on to praise the game's characters, writing "Unforgettable characters are the lifeblood and driving force of Overwatch." The Denver Post's Hugh Johnson lauded the game for its emphasis on characters, rather than focusing on traditional first-person shooter tropes, such as weapon load outs and incremental level upgrades. Johnson went on to insist that the characters are balanced writing, "The big question with class-based shooters like these is whether or not the characters are balanced," expressing that "some characters are naturally better, but no character is so overpowered that their mere presence spells doom for their opponents." In June 2016, Vulture's Joshua Rivera listed Overwatch as one of the "best video games of 2016 (so far)," writing, "It's hard to separate Overwatch the game from Overwatch the phenomenon — and why bother, both are fascinating."
The online magazine Inverse, while expressing an overall positive reception for the game, pointed out McCree, teams composed of only one character, issues with matchmaking, and the Play of the Game as problems that should be fixed by the game's development team. Gabe Gurwin of Digital Trends, directed criticism at Blizzard, for their decision to exclude the story from the game, which left players "with a great game, a great story, and no way to reconcile the two."
Commercial reception
A week from its launch, Blizzard reported over 7 million Overwatch players with a total accumulated playtime of 119 million hours; by mid-June Blizzard reported more than 10 million players. The NPD Group, a video game industry tracking firm reported that Overwatch was the third best-selling retail video game in the US its month of release. However, when including digital sales Overwatch was reported to be the fastest selling game during its release month. SuperData Research estimated that Overwatch brought in more than $269 million in revenues from digital sales worldwide in May.In June 2016, Gametrics, a Korean Internet cafe survey website, reported that Overwatch overtook League of Legends as the most popular game played across 4,000 of Korea's PC bangs.
Fan base
Overwatch's fan base has been noted to be generally kind and supportive; Daniel Starkey of Wired wrote, "where many fresh games struggle with an endless stream of player complaints and developer-prodding, Overwatch's community is vivacious and jubilant." A gamer with cerebral palsy publicly praised the game's customizable controls, which let him make his first snipe in a video game. One of Blizzard's artists, Roman Kenney, drew concept art based on one gamer's daughter's original Overwatch character design.Blizzard has encouraged creative fans of Overwatch to make artistic content based on the game. To support these fans, Blizzard released the Hero reference kit in early 2016, providing official colors and costume and weapon designs for all 21 Heroes present at the game's launch. Fans have used these, the game's animated media, and other assets to create a large amount of content, including art, cosplay, and anime opening-style music videos. Some Overwatch concepts have created internet memes such "Gremlin D.Va", a meme which focuses on the character D.Va, portrayed through gamer stereotypes. There also exists pornographic fan art of the game, with Pornhub searches of Overwatch characters partaking in sexual activities spiking by 817% shortly after the release of the open beta. Blizzard did not intend for pornographic fan art to be created, and have made an effort to remove these works.
Overwatch
Cover for the game's Origins Edition, featuring the Hero character, Tracer
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| Developer(s) | Blizzard Entertainment | |||
| Publisher(s) | Blizzard Entertainment | |||
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| Genre(s) | First-person shooter | |||
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer | |||
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