Do you think a ‘Support a Creator’ system would work well in Overwatch?
It has obviously been a huge success in Fortnite and it has trickled down into other games and publishers, such as Supercell and even Epic’s entire store.
Debatably, OW Creators + Streamers are what is keeping the game popular and trending. Of course the Overwatch League is a nice boost to the esports fans and popularity due to its sheer marketing power, but the more casual audience is attracted and retained through streamers and content creators - in my opinion.
I feel Blizzard should support creators in a way that is more or less identical to how it works in other games such as Fortnite - if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. In other games it requires minimal effort to add a creator ‘tag’ in the game and percentages of lootbox sales and maybe OWL tokens can go to that specific creator.
I’m definitely biased, I am a creator myself so this kind of feature would benefit me. However, I do feel that it’s a win-win situation for both creators and viewers/players. Players that might not be able to support their favourite creator through traditional methods of subscribing/donations, can add their tag into the game and support their creator by just doing what they’d normally do (buying lootboxes - though mostly during events and OWL Tokens). More funding to creators will almost definitely result in higher quality content through higher production value and this kind of system could potentially assist streamers and YouTubers to go full time - dramatically increasing the amount of OW content created thus hype around the game.
On the surface, it may seem that Blizzard would just lose money for this. However, with creators being incentivised by Blizzard themselves (as more streams/content dedicated to OW will more likely increase your reach thus code usage) it is likely they will want to stream more + create more content on YT etc. Epic Games + Fortnite has proved that this system boosts viewership, I don’t see how it could be massively different for OW.
This could, like Epic, be expanded to the entire Blizzard store (excluding partner games (Call of Duty) I’d assume, but great if not!) where in game purchases + items and even game sales can be tied with a creator code.
I’d like to hear your thoughts on this kind of system, if there is anything Epic does poorly that could be improved on and any general discussion about this topic!