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What was happening inside Blizzard when Marvel Rivals rolled up and snatched away a chunk of the Overwatch audience? Game director Aaron Keller fielded the question at a GDC panel attended by GamesRadar+, acknowledging that Marvel Rivals "definitely had an impact on us in a lot of different ways" and pondering how the player response could inform decisions on Overwatch.
"One of the biggest ones was seeing the amount of excitement that new players to Rivals had for this big drop of heroes," Keller says. "It got us talking. Hey, what if we could just drop 30 new heroes into Overwatch? What would player reaction to that be? Because it almost felt like the release of that game was something like that. So it actually kind of helped us clarify a bit the types of releases we wanted to make going forward.
"Maybe, from the way I'm answering the question, you can kind of see some of the strategy behind the Season 1 launch that we just did with the five new heroes," he adds.
Blizzard previously billed Overwatch Season 1, arguably one of the most confusing names in the history of live service games, as the "beginning of a comeback" for the once-unrivaled but long-struggling game. Keller also touches on this in his GDC talk, which was titled, "Lessons Learned In Running A Game The Hard Way: How Blizzard Revitalized Overwatch."
Keller proposes a correction to this title: "How Blizzard Is Revitalizing Overwatch." The transformation is very much ongoing, he says, and while less definitive, this title is still a lot better than "How Blizzard Tried To Revitalize Overwatch."
"I started this talk by saying that, in order to play a live game in the present, players need to have confidence in its future," Keller concludes. "And I think that players' newfound excitement for the future and what's coming is the true mark of confidence in the game and in the team. And I actually sleep better at night than I did three years ago, or even than I did three months ago."
The final slide of Keller's presentation, proudly putting Jetpack Cat front and center, reads: "When belief returns, a game doesn't just survive - it gets a second life."
