What is the relationship between gamers and the developers who make games? While looking through articles related to the recently released game Overwatch, I noticed their understanding of the audience and the responses the developers (Blizzard Entertainment) gave to fans on their comments and criticisms about the game. In this article I hope to show this relationship between the developers and gamers.
When making games it is important to understand who your audience is and how to appeal to them. Blizzard has had no problem doing this “Blizzard specialises in making incredibly polished, welcoming games that people love, and now it’s turning its attention to first-person shooters with overwatch” (Tucker,2016). Overwatch shows its ability to cater to a large variety of players with a large roster of different playable characters with different playstyles, point systems and rewarding characters differently. This sometimes is not beneficial to the game due to some fans not liking some aspects of specific characters within game and in the fandom itself (Todd, 2016). I found that some aspects of the characters have to be separated to how is the character is played. According to some average player’s opinions most if not all characters have a fun, unique playstyle to each character and with the difference in play, promotes more time played with different characters (Tassi, 2015). This shows Blizzards ability to produce hours and hours of content of fun with a lot of variety to give players.
Other aspects of the gamer/developer relationship are the responses to criticism or complaint by the fans about certain elements of the game; “in spite of Blizzards statement, which made it clear that the developer agreed with the comments that had been made and were not” entirely happy with the original pose” in the first place, the cry of censorship rang out across the web” (Gordon, 2016), this quote was from an article about the developers answering the comments about an in-game character pose that certain fans disliked and a compromise was made to change this pose slightly to appease the fans that made the criticism. This shows that the developer is listening to the public and show that they care what their fans think of the game.
Looking at Blizzards new individual property moving forward, it appears to me that they are interested in fan response and feedback. This allows them to produce games that meet the ideals of their customers. With gamers giving their input, developers can produce content that meets the standards of their audience.
References
Derrik J. Lang. 2016. ‘Overwatch’ game developers find creativity in diversity . [ONLINE] Available at: http://phys.org/news/2016-05-overwatch-game-creativity-diversity.html. [Accessed 13 June 2016].
Jake tucker. 2016. Overwatch wants you to love it, and it’s hard not to . [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.alphr.com/games/1003622/overwatch-wants-you-to-love-it-and-it-s-hard-not-to. [Accessed 13 June 2016].
Matt Gerardi. 2016. Overwatch embraces the pow positivity. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.avclub.com/review/overwatch-embraces-power-positivity-237915?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=feed. [Accessed 13 June 2016].
Nathan Grayson. 2016. Overwatch’s New Progression System Is A Big Step In The Right Direction. [ONLINE] Available at: http://kotaku.com/overwatchs-new-progression-system-is-a-big-step-in-the-1758582886. [Accessed 13 June 2016].
N/a. 2016. JEFF KAPLAN REVEALS PLANS FOR OVERWATCH. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.drakemoon.com/overwatch/jeff-kaplan-reveals-plans-for-overwatch. [Accessed 13 June 2016].
Paul Tassi, 2015. Analyzing All 18 Of Overwatch’s Playable Beta Characters. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/11/02/analyzing-all-18-of-overwatchs-playable-beta-characters/#6432ad0d75fc. [Accessed 13 June 2016].
Gordon . 2016. Opinion: Why Blizzard’s Overwatch Decision is Not Censorship. [ONLINE] Available at: http://gamerant.com/blizzard-overwatch-tracker-censorship-opinion-104/. [Accessed 13 June 2016].
Todd. 2016. trapped. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.chaoticblue.com/blog/2016/06/trapped/. [Accessed 13 June2016]
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