It’s been over four years since I spoke to anyone on the Overwatch team. The heady days of BlizzCon 2017 are a lifetime, a global pandemic, the company’s biggest-ever scandals, and a lot of very hard days ago. In prepping to speak to Geoff Goodman, lead hero designer, and Brandon Brennan, senior hero designer, a casual glance at the Overwatch subreddit revealed excitement that after 900 days the upcoming PvP beta would be the first hands-on with Overwatch 2. How do they feel about all the waiting, and what has taken so long?
“I don’t feel great!” Goodman admits with a rueful smile. “We talked about it, way back. We talked about how we were going to, on the production side, develop Overwatch 2 alongside Overwatch. Maybe we have to chill out on Overwatch but that will let us come out with Overwatch 2 faster – ripping the band-aid off kind of deal. We lose some of the updates, but we get the big splash.”
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It can’t be overstated how many development studios, publishing houses, tiny indie games to triple-A blockbusters and much more go into a plan exactly like this one with the best intentions in the world. Sacrifice X so Y can be better, quicker, and everyone will be happy. In my experience, Y never comes fast enough and X ends up languishing longer than anyone would like. That’s life.
“That’s the plan, right?” continues Goodman. “But then suddenly that time, which we were hoping was a small amount, becomes a large amount of time. Now we’re so invested in this plan, everything’s so connected with all the heroes we’re making and the hero reworks – it’s like we can’t even break out of this and try to take a piece of the game and throw it on live. It just doesn’t work. It’s unfortunate.
“I think the whole team was kind of upset and annoyed a bit with the timing of how everything got delayed. There were a lot of reasons for it, it wasn’t just one thing. [But] we kinda rallied around this release date, getting PvP out there, getting back to form, getting content in people’s hands. As much as the players love to have that content, and they definitely clearly do, we love making it for people. It’s hard for us to have these ideas that we want to get out there, big changes, and we’ve sort’ve locked ourselves away a little bit. We’re really hyped to get back to it, get back to giving players awesome new stuff much more frequently.”
What’s the hold-up? Well, it’s been a busy few years for everyone, but the constants of game development are the same – production costs. It takes a certain amount of time to design, develop, make art for, code, test, refactor, explore, balance, bug fix, throw out and start again, and finally prep and release new stuff. This is a mixture of easier and harder on games that are building on a strong base like Overwatch, as for every ready-made fix or useful tool built over the years, there’s legacy code or other restrictions that get in the way.
For Orisa particularly, the Overwatch 2 update brings a new spear weapon and new animations – some of the most expensive things you can do in terms of time and effort required of art and design teams. But there were even more ambitious possibilities in the pipeline.
“Some of our early discussions, we were talking about completely changing her model, getting away from the horse/centaur aspect. Doing a totally different design.” explains Brennan, who worked on Orisa specifically. “Doing that is a huge production cost – we would be basically throwing away all this work we already put into Orisa. But we did seriously consider it, we had three or four totally different looking hero concepts, bipedal ones. She was carrying a shield, she looked very tribal, it was super cool.
“We stayed away from it because of the production costs but also there’s some unanswered questions with how players would respond to something like that. Do we have to leave the old Orisa in the game for them to play? Is it something we bring back in custom game modes and whatnot for them? It felt more correct to go the direction we did than to chase a totally new hero.”
These concerns aren’t limited to just characters, or art, or sequels, and it’s the number one concern at almost any game studio. The key is usually to do as much as cheaply as possible to see if it’s good first before then putting it into production and asking concept artists, modelers, network coders, animators, and whoever else to get to work on it.
“It is a pretty constant topic for everything in the game, actually, production costs. I mean, Blizzard is not really a studio that is shackled to dates,” laughs Goodman, “but that doesn’t mean we’re completely free from all concerns of production costs and time. We try to allow ourselves the flexibility to try anything, especially in prototype, trying to find the fun. Maybe Orisa’s spear is good, maybe it isn’t – if we can figure that out before we even touch the production pipeline, that’s the best way to do it. We try to dig that out as hard as we can before we even start putting a new hero or rework through production. But we do have the flexibility to have a little more time than some other studios, for sure.”
As well known as Blizzard’s ability to delay games until they’re just right is the studio’s endless recent troubles with workplace culture. Underpaid and overworked staff, discrimination, high-profile departures and much more has made the news these past couple of years far more than anything the development teams have put out. I’d be remiss to sit down with senior devs at the company, folks who’ve both been there well over a decade, and not ask how it’s been.
“I mean, man… it’s been tough. To say the least,” begins Goodman, who, for what it’s worth, did not seem to be speaking from a script. He wasn’t comfortable but he didn’t shy away. I’ve spoken to a lot of Blizzard developers over the years and this wasn’t something that seemed like it was straight from the PR department. No doubt they’ve been briefed on what should be said, but it sounded like it came from the heart. Goodman is also in a senior enough position, with years of speaking to press under his belt, that I know he can speak more freely than someone earlier in their career may be able to.
“Y’know, the Blizzard teams kinda have their own culture,” he continues. “It’s been talked about [internally] that sometimes it’s hard to transfer to different teams within Blizzard because it’s almost like it’s own mini-ecosystem. I think we really, on our team, we really felt… we were just really affected by it. Straight up, a lot of people left. I totally get it, I totally understand where they’re coming from. Morale, y’know, it takes a big hit.
“I’ve been here a long time, but especially for newer hires where they’re new to the industry, they’re like, ‘Aw man, it’s awesome, I get to work at Blizzard, I’ve played a lot of Blizzard games,’ and there’s this pedestal that’s there from early on. For good reason – our games are really great – but you don’t really hear about the culture stuff. Then this comes out and suddenly it really changes how you perceive everything.
“It was definitely a big morale hit. Our team though, I think we ultimately galvanized a bit. First, you’ve gotta look inward to make sure that we feel like ourselves and our team are in a good spot, make sure that everyone feels safe and has the ability to speak out and say what they want. Once we were there, we sort’ve galvanized around it and doubled down, focused on the game and our culture.
“It’s hard to know exactly – I hope that everyone’s happy. It seems that everyone is much happier now and things are going forward but I think it’s still there and it still lingers.”
I wasn’t expecting to hear from Brennan on this topic – he mentioned himself when answering another question that this was the first time he’d sat down with the press. Often on broader, trickier questions like this the more senior (and, thus, more press-trained) developer will take it on. However, he spoke up after Goodman was finished, and talked about his personal connection to Jeff Kaplan, the former game director who left the company just before many of the accusations of wrongdoing started to come to light. While Kaplan wasn’t a part of that whole saga, his departure was certainly one of many big hits the team, and the company, took over the last two years.
“The morale hit is real. People leaving is never gonna feel good,” he begins. “You mentioned Jeff’s departure, Jeff Kaplan, I would just go on to say that my joining of Blizzard Entertainment – 10, 12 years ago whatever it is now – was in large part due to the old interviews and discussions Jeff Kaplan would have about World of Warcraft and how inspiring I found those. He was a big reason why I pursued a career at Blizzard. To see him leave – it hurts.
“But the people we have leading now, with Aaron [Keller, Kaplan’s replacement as game director and 20 year Blizzard vet], he’s personally worked with Jeff for so long – probably longer than I have been alive. Not to make him sound old, sorry,” he laughs. “It’s an easy transition to rally behind Aaron just because of that history and the philosophies they share. And we have a lot of other people on the team just like Aaron – Geoff included – who have been here since the beginning. I still trust and believe in those people. That’s where I draw my strength from to continue to make Blizzard what I always envisioned it as being.”
Goodman also puts his weight behind Keller: “I think Aaron has done an excellent job. I don’t envy that position. Not a job I would personally want. It’s a tough act to follow for sure, I think he’s… they’re pretty big shoes, but he’s filling them out, he’s doing a great job.”
Only time will tell how Keller matches up to Kaplan and the massive impact he had on the community, and the fame he gathered beyond even Overwatch players. Keller’s developer updates are different, for sure, and don’t have the same energy to them, but it’s early days yet – and a good game launch will certainly help.
That’s another topic that’s relevant: the future and how Blizzard can move forward with new games. Just hours before our interview, the World of Warcraft team got to reveal Dragonflight in a livestream – their new expansion with a lot of expectations to fulfill. Shadowlands, the most recent WoW entry, landed somewhere between understandable COVID-disrupted disappointment and unmitigated disaster, depending on who you ask. Dragonflight needs to deliver, and it looks good, with even the ever-skeptical, incredibly hard to impress, and legendarily moany World of Warcraft community getting a little bit excited. I ask how Goodman and Brennan feel about that announcement and the reaction.
“I used to work on WoW, still have a lot of friends over there, still play every expansion,” Goodman says, visibly excited. “But I hadn’t actually been following what they’re doing right now so a lot of that announcement was new to me, I was messaging people – ‘Oh that’s really cool, I didn’t know about this.’ I got to fanboy out a little bit, was kinda fun.
“One of the perks of being able to work at any studio, I imagine, is you get to get in real early alphas and get sneak peeks of what’s going on. There’s a lot of stuff coming up in Blizzard’s future that’s looking really good, so yeah I’m really excited for that.” Unsurprisingly, Goodman doesn’t elaborate on what exactly those early alphas were for or about. Maybe next time.
Brennan follows up, “I play a lot of Burning Crusade right now, the Wrath of the Lich King announcement was exciting to me.
“As far as moving on and getting excited about players playing the games that we’re making…” he continues, “A way that people describe these phases and growth is like, ‘turning the corner’. I don’t know if I would say that? I’m ready for us to rise above what’s happened and grow from it, don’t turn the corner and turn a blind eye to it, just be better. Get these games into the player’s hands and get them to be excited about something from us for once. I do think we’re approaching that moment, it at least feels that way to me.”
That, certainly, is the key. Be better. The people in charge at Blizzard need to be better at respecting their employees, at planning and managing, and not protecting abusers. The developers – those who don’t need to be removed entirely, anyway – need to be better at protecting those who need it, at being part of a safe environment.
And the games need to be better. Blizzard must fend off the ever-heel-snapping (or even overtaking) Riots, and Square Enixs, and the dozens of smaller off-shoot studios that have popped up from high-profile departures. Culture change, you would hope, will lead to that higher quality and it’s clear there’s a lot of passion, at least from these two, to do just that – be better.
Written by Ben Barrett on behalf of GLHF.
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