В свежей статье из серии "Взгляд директора" директор Overwatch 2 Аарон Келлер и ведущий дизайнер Алек Доусон рассказали о своих поездках в Китай и в Германию на встречи с игроками и презентации новинок.
Director’s Take: Have Game, Will TravelHello everyone, Aaron here! Last week, the team launched Season 18, one of our biggest seasons to date. If you caught even the first few minutes of our
latest Dev Update, you know exactly how jam-packed this season is!
On top of a new Hero, Stadium upgrades, and a revamped Progression system, we’re also running an event straight out of the big leagues. We partnered with pro basketball star Luka Dončić — and a Grandmaster in Overwatch—for the Play Like Luka event, where you can earn up to 77 loot boxes and try out his Stadium builds.
Traveling may not be allowed on the court, but it’s a (fun) necessity as a game director. Season 18 was such a big moment that we wanted to get the word out across the globe. I headed to gamescom in Germany while Alec Dawson traveled to China with several members of the dev team to participate in community launch events for Wuyang. Here are some insights from our trips:
ALECSneaking into this blog really quickly—what an experience it was celebrating Wuyang in Chengdu! I was lucky enough to jump on a plane alongside Kenny, Joshi, and Daryl (some of my wonderful coworkers) and talk about our latest support Hero. I could go on for a long time about our experience at Dujiangyan Panda Base, drinking tea at Mount Qingcheng, and the endless amounts of
delicious Sichuan food, but the most special part of the trip was meeting Overwatch players from the region.
Our last day of the trip included a large community event with show matches (we played against JinMu, a Chinese Overwatch esports pro!), a light presentation, and face-to-face discussions with players. We had about four hours of great questions and open dialogue from players who truly love Overwatch. We saw players who had necklaces with their ranks on them and even met players who were getting married to people they met in game! These discussions were a beautiful reminder of how meaningful a game like Overwatch can be to people. For a dev, that's a big shot of energy and the same type of feeling we get after BlizzCon. It carries you for a while.
The community event was also a great reminder that Overwatch is a global game. The way you play, the Heroes you play, and your current concerns can differ from region to region. We recognize that and it's front-of-mind for our team after these trips. For us to meet the needs of our players, we can't think of you all like a monolith; we have to drill down to specific answers for specific player groups, whether that's based on region, rank, or you exclusively being a Mystery Heroes enjoyer. Don’t be surprised when you see region-specific feature tests or events. If we see them go really well, they could turn into initiatives for everyone.
Hopefully, we can do more of this in the future. Not just meeting you all, but having discussions where there's a personal element to it—where there's real context. Look forward to us doing more Q&As in our developer livestreams and if you ever see us at an event, don't be too shy to say hello and ask questions. Back to Aaron.
AARONThanks, Alec! To me, spending time at a massive convention like gamescom always feels special. I love all the energy around gaming in general. For Overwatch in particular, I was able to meet fans of the game, including some who had also been at the OWCS Finals in Stockholm late last year. Here’s looking at you, Rose! I was also able to completely bungle a few shout-outs for them. Sorry!
Overall, the fans we talked to in both China and Germany were really excited for the new season but also for the general direction of the game. We often hear that same reaction from our community: excitement for this season as well as the overarching future of Overwatch.
Our goal for Season 18 wasn’t just to make a big splash, but to also level up the whole game. If you look at what we released this season, you’ll start to see a pattern. We doubled down on Perks, upgraded our Progression system, added to our Competitive systems, and launched a massive set of releases for Stadium. The start of this year focused on adding big new features with Perks and Stadium while this season was about refining those additions and leveling up the rest of the game.
The overall strategy that we’ve been using to guide our releases is to start every year with a huge, game-defining moment and then follow it up with a big mid-year beat. We tested this strategy in 2024 with the launch of Season 9, which included a new version of our Competitive system as well as a host of gameplay changes, such as passive healing.
At the time, we weren’t sure if we were ready to commit to this annual cadence since it was untested for us. We worried that making changes to the core game could turn people away from it. Fortunately, you’ve reacted pretty positively, so we made plans to do the same thing this year with the release of Perks in Season 15. When I look back at the history of our releases in Overwatch, I think we’ve been too conservative. As we release more game-defining features, it seems to increase your excitement for the future of the game. It does the same for us!
Coming away from that lesson, I can now say that we’re happily pursuing this cadence as the general direction for the “Overwatch year.” We aim to kick the year off with something huge that changes the way people think about playing the game and I think we’re getting comfortable making these bigger and bigger each year. We also want to follow that excitement up with a mid-year season that doubles down on those features and emphasizes improvements to existing gameplay elements.
If you watch closely over the next few months, you’ll see hints about the future of Overwatch—a future where we become less conservative and create high-impact, high-octane moments that hopefully blow your minds.
I’m super excited for this future and I hope you are too! Thanks for reading. Let’s make a great game.
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Тема: Директор Overwatch 2 намекнул, что разработчики готовят крупные и ошеломляющие новинки для игры (Прочитано 509 раз)
