14 DAY TRIAL // Overwatch is shaping up to be the biggest coming video game project from the team at Blizzard, but the studio is claiming that its focus is not on future monetization for the title but on making the titles as engaging as possible from a gameplay perspective.
Jeff Kaplan, a game director working on the experience, tells Eurogamer that they are currently very happy with the decisions made about the business model and are focusing all their efforts on the addition of new features.
If Overwatch manages to be fun for all those who play it, the company will find it easier to discover ways to convince the community to pay for certain elements, even if they are only cosmetic.
The beta process for the game is being used both to evaluate the core mechanics and tweak them to see how much core content the player base wants to have access to on launch.
The studio is also testing the network infrastructure and the matchmaking process, which is very important to an experience focused on multiplayer.
At the moment, Overwatch is set to arrive with 21 heroes and plenty of maps on the Xbox One, the PlayStation 4 and the PC.
Kaplan states, "All the heroes are going to be included and as gamers, we thought it was a very straightforward, easy to understand business model. You focus less on the business model and more on the game itself. And we were not expecting what’s going to happen after the game has launched. We hadn’t figured out what we were going to do yet, and people kept asking the question."
Gamers will get new maps and heroes for free once Overwatch is launched.
Blizzard has a lot of content it can explore for its new title
Overwatch uses a first-person perspective and the core ideas of a shooter, but the essence of the title lies in cooperation between members of a team, which is required if they aim to win the six on six engagements.
The 21 characters featured in the game are spread into roughly four categories, focused on aspects ranging from attack to tanking and support, allowing each player to find a role that he enjoys and specialize.
The beta for Overwatch ran until December 10 of this year, and Blizzard is keeping the forums active until December 18 to allow those who took part to deliver feedback.
At the moment, the studio is working to improve game mechanics and plans to bring the title back online during the first few weeks of January.
Many Blizzard fans were surprised when the company announced that it would launch Overwatch as a full retail title rather than using the free-to-play model that worked so well for Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm.
The fact that free content is planned means that those who invest in the game initially will have plenty of reasons to stay engaged with it in the long term.
Overwatch will be offered on all platforms on June 21 of next year.