Fans curious about the Overwatch 2 devs’ thoughts on Marvel Rivals finally got their answer when streamers asked them about other hero shooters.
The hero shooter genre has become quite competitive lately with Marvel Rivals looking to dethrone Overwatch 2 and a 6v6 MOBA-like FPS in development from Valve.
Marvel Rivals is still awaiting a release date. Still, its beta playtest left Overwatch 2 players excited for the future. As it turns out, the Overwatch 2 devs are also curious to see how the game evolves.
During an interview with streamers ‘Flats’ and ‘SVB,’ Game Director Aaron Keller and Lead Hero Designer Alec Dawson were asked about upcoming hero shooters and OW2 clones.
“Do you look at them and get lessons from them? Like, relearn some lessons. There’s one, one that rhymes with ‘Arvel Kirvals,’ that’s going through a lot of the same decisions that early Overwatch went through. Does having them experiment for you in some ways kind of give you lessons?” asked SVB.
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According to Keller, the team is “always” looking at other games to see how they adapt to challenges, especially once those titles find their “core audience.”
“We always look at other games and we try to learn. It’ll be interesting to see how some of these other games, whether they change over time, also. I think there is a decent part of the gaming community, especially the free-to-play community, that jumps from game to game. The ones that don’t, they kind of become your core audience.”
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The Game Director explained that these “core audiences” will be extremely vocal about how they want the experience to go and how the game should evolve. Keller noted that these competitive players can start discovering balance issues and it’ll be up to the dev teams to solve those problems.
“It’ll be nice to watch other game teams work through those issues and see what they do to solve it,” he added.
Alec Dawson also chimed in, highlighting the importance of competition in the gaming industry.
“Competition is good. It’s healthy. And it starts to crystalize what makes your game special. It helps you hyper-focus on those things. I think Overwatch is very special for a lot of reasons and I think a lot of that is the love and care we put into our heroes.”
These comments come as Overwatch 2 is undergoing a bit of an identity crisis. Blizzard has revealed plans to revert the 5v5 shooter back to its 6v6 roots with a series of tests as well as other format changes.
It’ll be interesting to see if the team can look to Marvel Rivals and other titles for inspiration as the series tries to pinpoint its future.