Excerpt from the article they posted today relating to Kanezaka:
What was collaboration like during work from home for an undertaking as large as a new map?
Christin: I would say the collaboration went very well!
Klafke: It did! We have a chat room where we talk daily about the map, sharing screenshots of our progress and asking questions. In this regard, the collaboration was actually easier than in the office, because in this chat room we have everyone involved in the production of the map. Everyone has visibility of whatâs happening, what state weâre in, and what needs to be done.
Hedegren: This map was also entirely made while working from home, and as someone whoâs never really done that before, it did take a bit of getting used to. However, the entire Overwatch team was super quick to adapt to working from home. Even though weâre not physically in the same space, the team has been excellent in always sharing ideas, playtesting, and giving feedback often, which has made the experience great.
My Commentary:
So there you have it all of you people in the last 8 months who keep using COVID as an excuse to back OWâs devsâ decisions and lack of pretty much anything WHILE also being slow and delaying OW2 seemingly. Just like basically every similar gameâs companies had said months ago.
The move to WFH was a pretty quick adapting process and then was pretty easy and had no impacts. Yet all these other similar games have been getting content at pretty much the same speeds they had been before COVID.
YES Blizzard told us OW2 development meant no more OW1 content (since Blizzcon 2019) other than a new hero (Echo). But if the move to WFH was easy and has made their work and collaborating together EASIER than working in the officeâŚwhy the delays on OW2 and seemingly claiming to be not in the near future as Jeff said in the last Dev Update?
This is coming from the mouths of 4 different OW devs saying that the shift to WFH was easy and made things easier for the team to work on things together.
Yeah, the Covid excuse is a stupid one considering theyâve been working on OW2 since whatâŚ2017/2018? And theyâve been working from home with no issues for a whole year + now and theyâve stagnated stuff in OW since 2018.
Thatâs 2 whole years where the team has done minimal work in this game.
Thereâs no excuse for OW2 to not be out right now. Heck, thereâs no excuse why the two maps that they understand thereâs a problem with (Paris + Horizon) havenât been fixed in a year. Or why weâve only gotten one new hero in a year. I could go on.
Itâs right there on PlayOverwatchâs website and their Forum Bot made a thread with a link to the article. And idk what you are even on about seeing as I even bolded the âdataâ for everyoneâs convenience in the excerpt I put in the OP.
Donât like it? You can get out of this thread then. Itâs not nonsense, itâs literally taken straight from an article BLIZZARD published themselves.
And if you go to Morten Hedegrenâs twitter page, youâll see a post from March 6th 2020 saying he officially started at Blizzardâs OW team. Jeff said it himself that Morten joined the team and got straight to work on Kanezaka as a warm up project as a new hire. Meaning this map was pretty much cemented in April.
It was confirmed to have been in the making since the end of 2017 which finally gave us all a reason as to why the content release schedule was as slow as it was and not faster for a BRAND NEW and BOOMING game. And to think we all thought it was cause of OWL only
Just wanna point out that they explicitly said âin this regardâ referring to the use of a chatroom to discuss the map and share progress. Iâm sure it has impacted them in other ways, such as voice acting and such. While it is good to hear the devs themselves say this we should keep in mind that it could be other matters holding back progress. Not saying youâre 100% wrong, I just wouldnât take this as confirmation that theyâre 100% where theyâd like to be. Making a Deathmatch map â basically remaking an existing game and adding another game into it while also making more heroes. This could have been said to ease the unrest of the rumors that theyâll have virtually nothing to show next month.
While I understand the frustration, zero of us here are Blizzard employees and thus have no clue what theyâre working on, or how much theyâve done already. Maybe tone down the aggression? Not trying to be a dev simp here, just saying you donât know what their work life has been like so itâs not really fair to decide when they should and shouldnât have the game released. Personally, Iâd rather let them release it when they feel itâs ready and have it be good than release it when people want it and have it disappoint.
Theres a difference between designing and making a game map then making an entire whole new different game that has improved looks and even more gameplay and features.
Not really. The âcompletely new gameâ is mainly new maps and heroes. They jsut said making this new map was pretty easy after a short and quick adjustment period. The engine is exactly the same with SOME adjustments. Also, thinking of a lot of the new systems for OW2 are literally pen and paper brainstorming until they are ready to code them in (talents, pick up item interfaces and ideas, progression systems, etc). If they could design and code an entire map with no issue, they can do the rest too.
Though I do agree that they are delaying it, I do not agree that justifying making a simple map then making a game would be considered easy.
Map: Just a design of a platform and buildings, nothing too much to add besides shapes and textures and sound files.
Game: An entire game programmed from scratch. But lets say its OW2, they would have to add advanced features, add more heroes which can be hard, add more maps, add more modes, add a cross over feature, make an entire new look. And donât forget, I believe that they even said they wanna use OW2âs look engine into OW1 so OW1 heroes will look like OW2 heroes but maybe like only the eye and skin color textures, possibly hair.
But itâs not being made from scratch in the slightest. It will be played off the same engine OW1/PVP uses just with some improvements. Even if the engine canât be used yet for coding all the OW2 things that depend on the new engineâŚWFH and just brainstorming and finalizing the ideas on paper to get ready for coding once the engine was ready is NOT hard NOR a completely new game from scratch that WFH is preventing for months and months.
Like dont get me wrong. I can understand some minor slow downs in the realm of a month or so, but they said it themselves like other similar gamesâ companies have said in the past 8 months. The transition was a bit of an adapting process and then was very easy after the short time of adapting.
So the fact that OW2 seems heavily delayed after 3+ years of development AND PW1 being 99% shafted until OW2 is very frustrating and comes across as very lazy on Blizzardâs end if these other companies are still churning out content (regardless of a âsequelâ or not). Then to compund everyoneâs frustrations, they act tone deaf and release a FFA map which is a gamemode that Blizzardâs own analysis a year ago found that only THREE percent of players playâŚ
Doesnt bother me in the slightest. Losers will be losers. You just gotta let them slip further and further into loneliness and nothingness.
Anyone that has had any sort of experience in an office environment over the last year (especially within a technology company) knows that people havenât stopped working - theyâve been doing the exact same job, from home. Blizzard didnât close for 6 months because of COVID - and in their financial reports, they continue to state that their games havenât been delayed because of the pandemic.
If itâs announced that OW2 is releasing in 2022, then either that was the original âplanâ all along or some other internal issue has caused the delay. My guess would be that delays are caused by either the story (because itâs quite clear to me, at least, that the Overwatch lore is being made-up as they go and there seems to be some turnover among the writing team) or trying to develop enough content to justify charging full price for the sequel (I bet they werenât too happy with some of the feedback from Blizzcon 2019).
As to whether or not itâs acceptable for Blizzard to announce that Overwatch would be a âgame-as-a-serviceâ product at launch, only to effectively drop support for it 4 years later in order to work on a sequel that would take 2+ years to launch⌠well thatâs another matter.
Working from home have one major issue - infrastructure. Not everyone have enought powerful PC. Blizz need to have members secure connection to data banks and assets, etc.
Guys in that article talk more about communication between departments and individual devs.
So process of making map and assets might be longer due to restrictions I mentioned earlier but communication with upper menagment and coworkers somewhat got better making approval process easier.
So Covid excuse is still valid. They needed to shift whole project into new infrastructure that slowed them down.
Honestly I think it might made them slip few months from orginal date - Q1 2021.
Bur as you said content really fell in quality around summer 2018 so possibly they started first works around winter 2017. Althou we still got maps, heroes, balance changes, OWL, so they focus were split. Still around 5 years for âbetter DLCâ is much.
Lol i just got flagged and got an automated message from the forum bots. This community really is getting worse and worse by the day. The actual toxic person with low effort trolling skates by but I am the one getting flagged for calling someone out on their crap. Figures.
Iâve worked with companies that have encountered this problem - not everyone has a $30000 CAD workstation in their house, nor can they take one home to work on.
The solution? Remote access from a work laptop back to the workstation in the office.
