By Nelson Schneider - 06/10/23 at 02:51 PM CT
In an unsurprising, yet still disappointing bit of news, Blizzard recently announced that the studio will be ceasing development on the cooperative campaign-based ‘Hero Mode’ of their Arena Shooter sequel, “Overwatch 2.” Instead, “Overwatch 2” will remain an entirely PvP-based game, just like the original “Overwatch,” causing many people to wonder exactly why we needed an “Overwatch 2,” exactly.
Of course, Blizzard has also discontinued service for the original “Overwatch,” making the shift of “Overwatch 2” from ‘something completely different’ to ‘more of the same’ feel even more like a blatant cash-grab and a Nintendo-style ‘reselling our customer base the exact same thing a second time, for full price’ than it already appeared to be.
The reason this news is unsurprising is that, just within the last few years, Epic Games’ “Fortnite” underwent a nearly identical shift in its ultimate goals. While “Fortnite” was originally meant to be a Free2Play cooperative Tower Defense/Shooter hybrid, Epic decided to implement the incomprehensibly-popular Battle Royale mode as a way to raise money for further development of the cooperative mode and to test their server infrastructure to ensure that they’d be ready once it was time to launch the final product. However, after years of foot-dragging and stalled development, Epic ultimately canceled the final release of the cooperative “Save the World” mode, leaving it in perpetual beta with no further development plans for the relatively small number of people who purchased Early Access.
The MeltedJoystick Crew, especially our resident Blizzard fanboys, Chris and Erstwhile Matt, were really looking forward to experiencing what ‘Overwatch’ was about, without being obliterated by Ritalin-popping 8-year-olds in PvP matches, just like we were looking forward to a new take on the ‘Dungeon Defenders’ model of hybridizing Tower Defense with something less boring that was allegedly going to be offered by “Fortnite.” Yet, we will ultimately end up playing neither of these games due to the relevant modes ending up on the cutting room floor.
Why, though, are these Big Games Industry studios still doing this? Why cut cooperative campaigns from Free2Play games? We’ve already seen the concept of Live Services taking it in the shorts in recent years, and the big push to make e-sports as popular as real sports never really set the world on fire.
It must be more of that Invisible Hand taking its sweet-ass time to regulate what sane and intelligent people could have told us from the outset, had they only been asked.
