What if Overwatch had its own K/DA?

General Discussion
1

For anyone who doesn’t understand, League of Legends released a music video last year in November. It has blown up with over 100 million views on Youtube, loved by the community and by those who have never played the game before.

What if Overwatch did something like this? It could bring in new audiences and boost attention through a marketing aspect that isn’t touched upon very often, it wouldn’t have to follow the same footsteps by combining rap, KPOP, and regular pop music together but the cultural diversity among the Overwatch cast could allow for so much freedom in these areas (D.Va singing in Korean, Sombra in Spanish, Lucio in English, etc), though all of this does fall on voice actors being comfortable with singing, so that could be a problem (though the karaoke on Busan is amazing thus far).

Aside from the music aspect, characters could get skins and have an in-game event. D.Va and her mech could be decked in diamonds and gems, Sombra could have rapper attire with Spanish heritage mixed in, while Lucio could have his DJ attire mixed with a take on classiness (similar to his Jazz skin but more prestige and celebrity-ish, his weapon could be dressed like a giant microphone). Of course, these skins nor band have to be canon.

What do you guys think? Is it plausible or have I lost my mind?

12 Likes
2

They make one comic a year and you expect them to make a full on music video with in game content

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3

The league video came so late to the party I cringed. Kpop died a whiiiile ago; overwatch doing it would be even worse tbh.

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4

Yeah, I figured Blizzard’s content stalemate would be the death of a project like this. But let’s pretend this is a universe where Blizzard has their content schedule put together and is possible to do.

I mean, it wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea and I don’t listen to KPOP at all so I understand. I’d rather instead of just focusing on KPOP like K/DA did, they bring in the diversity of heroes (Sombra singing in Spanish, anyone?) but D.Va just came to mind originally with her Korean heritage. Besides, Overwatch is massive in Korea, the success internationally has potential.

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5

I would honestly love an Overwatch Music video with idol skins to match, but as LongJohnTbag said, the OW dev team struggles making enough content as is, I doubt they would put the resources into a music vid. At least not for a couple of years.

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6

If they did, it’d take an eon and a half, because it’d probably be an animated video (not even gonna start on how lengthy a process animation is) and they’d have to make a song on top of that.

To give perspective, gorillaz makes (or more specifically, releases. for all we know, they could be working on those for a lot longer) a vid about once a month, but their animation compared to blizzard’s is like comparing a public broadcast to a full budget movie.

7

I think it would be incredibly cool if pulled off well. Especially if it comes with a small event and a skin line. Blizzard doing music crossovers isn’t unheard of with ETC, but it could very easily come off as just copy-catting Riot.

Riot has done a very good job with their music videos. I think Pop/stars has been their most successful, but I also enjoyed the Mortal Reminder video. I also like that riot has both K/DA and Pentakill, so multiple bands with very distinct visual styles.

1 Like
8

It would go horribly against the personalities of most of the characters, and with Blizzard’s track record there’s just no way this’d ever happen.

9

Which is why variety would help, Overwatch has so many heroes with different backgrounds. In time, they can only be compared for being “songs about video games”.

Resources and time aside, could it work in your eyes?

It doesn’t have to be strictly canon though, also why would Riot pick Ahri, Evelynn, Kai’Sa, and Akali instead of other characters like Jinx, Sejauni, etc? Its because of appeal and slight connections. Same thing here, they wouldn’t go for Zarya or Roadhog but rather characters who have/can have some sort of a passion in this (I could totally see D.Va, Sombra, or Lucio singing but again, not being canon is fine).

10

Don’t get me wrong; I’m speaking as someone who listened to kpop for quite some time. I still technically like it (primarily bigbang; most of my groups are long long gone besides them). It’s just ugh; I’m sick of it being piggybacked on. It’s all BTS’s fault.

2 Likes
11

Well, theres a few ways I can this going…

  1. It would be praised, and the mains who are in the video will be really happy to get skins like this and hope for the dev team will be reignited for stuff like this.

  2. SJWs or bitter people will call out the “scanty” clothing and say keep skin out of Overwatch or some garbage. Mostly just generalization of the body (but it seemed to work pretty good for league considering the video is at 120m views.)

The bitter people would complain yet again since they’d find that resource time could be better spent in something other than a music video, like balance (but tbh i’d be happy if they stay FAR away from balance since they always muck it up with each update.)

  1. Nothing. Might get a few million views and people will treat it like a yearly cinematic and forget about it a few months later.

I really hope number 1 is the case if there is something like this, but you’re expecting a lot from a company that barely releases any content as it is right now.

2 Likes
12

So many people I know swoon over BTS and it sort of made me go "oh, is the KPOP fandom really this, um, dedicated (crazy)? It sort of gave me a bad view towards it until I heard some other songs made by other groups, heard K/DA, and saw the performance this summer in Korea by Fromis 9 when Busan was announced.

13

I can see this, people always want skins, especially ones that aren’t locked behind seasonal events. I have faith in Blizzard making good skins when it comes to modern/casual appeal.

This depends on how Blizzard design the skins, a dress (if done right) or jacket and jeans aren’t exactly skimpy or unethical. If they went the Riot route with their skins then yeah, there’d be an outcry in the community.

Honestly, this would be treated as a cinematic in terms of appeal and no one really complains that they make those and how they affect balance, etc. Besides, the simple counter-argument “music/design/cinematic/sound teams =/= balance and game development teams” would shut them down.

If done right, I doubt this would be the case. Getting appeal from different audiences is important and songs do that very well. Overwatch cinematics themselves already get a lot of attention (Dragons has 27 million right now with Reunion already at 8 million), add in some music and non-Overwatch appeal (different languages, modern-day culture references, catchiness, etc) and you’ve guaranteed not-failure.

One can always hope. :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
14

I corrected you in my head at first then I realized I’m dumb. It technically was last year :sweat_smile:

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15

Hard to believe we’re in 2019, huh?

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16

If we see many more cuts in content people will probably start to question the value of the cinematic that is made for Gamescom.

Cinematics require a lot of work from a bunch of people for example, here are the credits from The Last Bastion:

Cinematic Credits

Senior Vice President, Story & Franchise Development Operations: Chris Metzen, Michael Ryder

Vice President, Art and Cinematic Development: Nicholas S. Carpenter

Senior Director, Audio: Russell Brower

Project Music Director: Derek Duke

Additional Composers: Neal Acree, Jaroslav Beck, Sam Cardon, Chris Velasco

Supervising Sound Designer, Cinematics: Paul Menichini

Audio, Cinematics: Alexander L. Ephraim, Isaac Hammons, John Thomas, Kyle Webb

Audio, Sound Design: Shawn Minoux, Jacob Rhein

Audio, Production: Carlos Almeida, Tony Blackwell, Dennis Crabtree, Caroline Hernandez, Lyndsey Koehler, Michael Roache, David Seeholzer

Senior Casting & Voice Director: Andrea Toyias

Audio, Voice Over: Peter Steinbach

Blizzard Animation, VFX Supervisor: Jeff Chamberlain

Blizzard Animation, Director of Technology: Mark A. Brown

Blizzard Animation, Show Leadership: Stephane Belin, Angela Blake, Aaron Chan, Shimon Cohen, Ben Dai, Jeramiah Johnson, David Satchwell, Kevin Vanderjagt, Mathias Verhasselt

Blizzard Animation, Show Leads: Samuel Alicea, Nathan Boyd, Toni Bratincevic, Graham Cunningham, Ben Deda, Drew Dobernecker, Frank Du, Anthony Eftekhari, Joe Frayne, Mike Hardison, Jason Huang, Joe Jackman, Jim Jiang, Bill La Barge, Mark Lai, Hung Le, Vincent Lee, Chris Luce, Meg Morris, Enrique Munoz, Andrew Paules, Corey Pelton, Laurent Pierlot, Glenn Ramos, Fabio Stabel, Peter Starostin, Don Ta, Jon Teer, Nelson Wang, Wey Wong, Kenson Yu

Blizzard Animation, Leadership: Jonathan Berube, Ricardo Biriba, Tok Braun, Ted Burge, John Burnett, Laurent Charbonnel, Steven Chen, Dan Cox, Michael Eizenberg, Chris Evans, Hunter Grant, Doug Gregory, Terran Gregory, Steeg Haskell, Parag Havaldar, Jason J. Hill, Sheng Jin, Mike Kelleher, Jared Keller, James McCoy, Matthew Mead, Marc Messenger, Matthew M. Robinson, Michael Sandrik, Steven S. Shapiro, Peter Shinners, David J. Stephens, Seth Thompson, Chris Thunig, Joey Tobiska, Xin Wang, Taka Yasuda

Blizzard Animation, Artists: Jeffrey Arnold, Jongha Baik, Recca Baldwin, Tom Banker, Ben Barker, Jason Barlow, Michael Bomagat, Jeremy Butler, Chris Capel, Neil Carter, Ray Chih, Craig Chung, Paul Cohen, Matt Cordner, Doug Creel, Stuart Cripps, James Crowson, Donnachada Daly, Barret Davis, Eric Degner, Michael Diaz, Brittany Drew, Mustazar Essa, Kent Estep, Ken Faiman, Chad Fehmie, Jason Fleming, Julien Forest, Shuntaro Furukawa, Kyle Gaulin, Scott Giegler, Taso Gionis, Keith Glass, Yvain Gnabro, Eric Grimenstein, Jeremy Gritton, Scott Gudahl, Steven Guevara, Justin Hammond, Alon Helman, Cole Higgins, Chikako Hoffman, Mike Horning, Steve Horrocks, Ray Hsu, Kenny Huang, Yong-Ha Hwang, Atsushi Ikarashi, Shawn Janik, Darryl Johnson, Jessica Dru Johnson, Chung Kan, Morgan Kelly, Robin Khamsi, Ren Kikuchi, Eddie Yonghyun Kim, Ronny Kim, Yohei Koike, Ross Krothe, Marissa Krupen, Dan Kruse, Billy Lam, Scott Lange, Crystal Leal, Moonsung Lee, Yeon-Ho Lee, Shawn Liang, Kent Lidke, Christian Liliedahl, Kuan Lin, Tianshu Liu, David Luong, James Ma, Pravin Mahtani, James Maloney, Mark Mancewicz, Brett McConnel, Casey McDermott, Stephen Melagrano, Andrew Melnychuk-Oseen, Jihyun Nam, Sada Namiki, Jeremy Nelligan, Adrian Niu, Sherman Ohms, Matthew Onheiber, Mark Orme, Andrew Page, Luca Pataracchia, Trevor Payne, Jason Pethtel, Jamie Pilgrim, Kirti Pillai, Zachary Podratz, Alan Precourt, Justin Rasch, Bryan Repka, Gregory Reynolds, Danielle Romero, Davy Sabbe, Rosendo Salazar, Kaz Shimada, Douglas Smith, Karen Soh, Sharmishtha Sohoni, Joon Shik Song, Joon Soo Song, Sengjoon Song, Curt Stewart, Jonathan Styles, Takuya Suzuki, Geordie Swainbank, Paul Taylor, Shannon Thomas, Selig Tobiason, Quang Tran, Ellen Trinh, Miurika Valery, Brandan Vanderpool, Kelly Vawter, Roger Vizard, Joerg Volk, Jung In Wang, Wei Wang, Les Watters, Brian Wells, James Wright, Chris Yang, Anthony Zalinka, Boyang Zhu, Fabio Zungrone

Blizzard Animation, Technology: Johann Helgi Agnarsson, Chris Allen, Kenneth Lloyd Ayers III, Zachary Bauer, Michael Beal, David Biggs, Cathy E. Blanco, Julie Anne Brame, Jud Bumpas, Rudy Cortes, Tom Craigen Jr., Chrstopher Garcia, Vimanyu Jain, Saber Jlassi, Piotrek Krawczyk, Maxim Lazarov, Jami Levesque, Xiyang Robert Luo, Vinod Melapudi, Huong Thuy Nguyen, Lucas Panian, Chris Rock, Billy Shih, Funshing Sin, Michael Su, Thomas V. Thompson II, Rob Tomson, Theresa Wolf

Blizzard Animation, Production: Wendy Berry Campbell, Leonard C. Chang, Jennifer Conn, Tony Cosanella, Eric Kieron Davis, Jake Fenske, Shu Fujita, Casey Glenn, Kim Kotfis Horn, Stephanie Marroquin, Melissa Morris, Rachel Richmond, Bobbak Sabet, Brandy Stiles, Jessica Ponte Thomas, Gurpreet Singh Wahla, Sarah White

Director of Production, Blizzard Animation & Creative Development: Phillip Hillenbrand Jr.

Cinematic Re-Recording Mixers: Juan Peralta, Gary Rizzo

Foley Artist: Gregg Barbanell

Foley Mixer: Darrin Mann

Additional Cinematic Sound Design: Timothy Nielsen

My expectation would be that each major cinematic runs well over a million.

Team Four could potentially give up a cinematic in exchange for either $ to hire more staff or to borrow staff from other games for a period of time to help with the balance/design.

The different team argument works on smaller things that you couldn’t really swap the staff on at all. Cinematic content is a long term massive undertaking that isn’t bringing in that many views.

17

It would be very cool if they could do something similar but I doubt they could/would do something like that.

18

YoU knOw wHAT tHIs REwINd NeEDS??

19

Yeah but lol is less cringe than Overwatch heroes.

20

I would be pretty awesome, but…I unfortunately do not see them doing anything like this. As others have said, we wait so long for lore/comics/shorts that a full-on music video seems unlikely.

I do love this video, though - it’s catchy and well-made. :grinning: