glad I could be here to host your

hangover i want to say I'm extremely

humbled to be in front of so many of you

you guys have created experiences that

have made me so happy as a gamer so on

behalf of all gamers out there myself

thank you for what you guys have done i

also want to give a shout-out to my team

it's always a little awkward at blizzard

because everything we do is a team

effort so whenever we put one of us

forward

I like to remind everybody that

everything we do at blizzard is a team

effort i think a lot of you guys who

work on team-based games understand how

important the team is so to my team I'm

honored to be speaking on your behalf

hopefully I don't screw it up so world

building is the theme of this year's

dice summit and it's one of my favorite

things about video games it's it's

probably the area that I feel most

comfortable in so it's very excited to

be asked to talk about world-building as

it relates to overwatch so what I want

to do is start with a concept from one

of the movies that we made called recall

and in this movie it features a doctor

named Harold Winston who has a baby gorrila

on the moon and at one point that the

baby girl had never seen anything beyond

just boring moonscape his whole life and

he has this moment where he shows baby

Winston what planet earth looks like and

he says never accept the world as it

appears to be but dare to see it for

what it could be and I feel like this

more than anything else really sums up

the world-building philosophy on

overwatch and I'm going to come back to

this later on so i just wanted to share

this with you and remind you of it so

the story actually begins with the

project before overwatch which was a

project called titan so Titan was to be

a successor MMO to world of warcraft

it's something that we began development

on in 2007 and for various reasons we

ran into a lot of trouble on the project

and ultimately in may of 2013

we had to put an end to the to the

project which is very rough because at

that time the team had grown to be about

a hundred and forty developers and we

were really emotionally invested in what

we were trying to do with the game so as

may of 2013 rolled around we got the

team in the room 140 people 80 of us

were told that we would be permanently

relocated to other teams within blizzard

we'd go on to work on Diablo hearthstone

world of warcraft heroes of the storm

starcraft 2 etc about another 20 of the

developers would be long-term loans on

those projects and what long-term to us

means is anywhere from six months to two

years so you were going to come back to

the shit to the Titan team anytime soon

what was left was a group of about forty

developers who were given the task of

come up with a new idea for a blizzard

game in six weeks and if we came up with

a concept that was compelling enough we

would move forward and we make that one

of our next projects if we didn't come

up with something that was super

compelling we too would be redistributed

to the other teams at blizzard

needless to say it was it very daunting

almost devastating sort of mindset that

the team was in because we were unsure

of what our future was going to be and

it was during this time that overwatch

was born

now I've been a blizzard for almost 15

years and I always thought in the early

years at work at blizzard that one the

dreams that I had as a blizzard

developer was having the opportunity to

come up with a new blizzard game

it seemed like it would be the most fun

sort of inspiring activity but fast

forward to may have 2013 we were going

through that process in a period of sort

of despair there wasn't a lot of hope on

the team we were very nervous about what

our future was so we started off with an

ideation process and we came up we

decided to sort of split our six weeks

up into these two week blocks so we

spent two weeks on an MMO that was in

the blue another blizzard universe that

we haven't made an MMO and a lot of

choices for you to figure out which it

was

and then we also spent another two weeks

on a brand new MMO that took place and

completely new intellectual property and

during this time almost on the side we

started cooking up this idea that became

overwatch and where the idea came from

was we had an amazing artist by the name

of Arnold saying who was drawing these

fantastic character designs have done

many of them back on project tighten and

we were sort of looking at his work and

then at the same time as we were doing

these MMO pitch ideas with a class

designer by the name of Jeff Goodman who

had also been an encounter designer did

all the big raid bosses on world of

warcraft and he had all these amazing

class designs and we started to think

about you know well what if we took

Arnold and Jeff you know strengths and

put them together and that really led to

the project that was to become overwatch

so this was an early rendition that

Arnold did of what the overwatch lineup

might be and some of these characters

were actually taken from the project

before which was project tighten and

there's a lot of inspiration that we had

taken from Titan in particular title was

a game that wanted to take place on

planet earth and we had this sort of

concept of a future worth fighting for

that was coined on Titan but we were

never able to figure it out and make it

work

fast-forward to overwatch and we were

starting to figure it out more we had a

really talented artist by the name of

Ben zhang who this was in I think June

of 2013 where he created this concept

picture we start talking about how we

want it over watch to play and how we

want to overwatch to feel and been made

this image that I think really holds up

today for those of you have seen over

watching knows what the game looks like

this was almost like a guiding light

image for us about the game that we

wanted to create and I need to say this

for our subreddit so it doesn't implode

know the hero in this

Center is not the hero who thinks think

it is thank you for putting up with the

head so as you guys know Blizzard has

been fortunate enough to work in some

very exciting IP spaces and world

building is something that we really

enjoyed doing is one of our favorite

things we've been fortunate enough to

explore high fantasy in the Warcraft

universe we've been lucky enough to go

to high science fiction and starcraft

and then also gothic fantasy in diablo I

think any blizzard developer feels very

comfortable in these spaces if you got

to go up to blizzard developer and say

hey we need an idea for a diablo dungeon

or we need an idea for a starcraft

planet or warcraft zone

this is our natural comfort space but

with overwatch like with project titan

we wanted to push ourselves into a new

frontier that we haven't explored and

that blizzard that challenging frontier

happened to be planet earth and it was

really daunting to us for awhile on

titan we really struggled our developers

would often ask the question what's cool

about planet earth we love these fantasy

universes that we explore we love these

science fiction universes that we

explore but what is so interesting about

planet earth to us that we can make a

blizzard game that takes place there so

our first step was to sort of study you

know how were other games approaching

planet earth or what was really going on

in gaming around planet earth and we

found I mean there's a lot going on and

when you put things like sports games to

the side for a second and look at the

universe building that was happening

there there was some incredible stuff so

you know starting off an obvious one is

post-apocalyptic and some of the most

beautiful games of our era were

post-apocalyptic I look at a game like

last of us which I think we can all

agree on is is pretty much a masterpiece

or fallout 4 so some incredible work

being done in this space and it didn't

feel like there was a lot of breathing

room for us to make a new statement

felt like a very daunting place for us

to go equally daunting to us because

some incredible games were being built

in the space was realism I think I've

lost more hours of my life to the

battlefield and call of duty series than

anyone have frequently told the story

about how world of warcraft production

literally shut down for a week when the

battlefield 1942 wake island demo came

out i'm not sure how many of you

remember that but we just stopped work

and pretty much bombed each other for a

week and we actually it was one of those

moments where you get the team talking

to like okay that's enough battlefield

guys it's time to get back to making

world of warcraft so we decided you know

like with tight and we wanted to go back

we want to finish the challenge and

finish with this work this future world

worth fighting for we weren't seeing a

lot of games exploring the space of what

is near future earth but in a sort of

positive hopeful way and this is the

place where we wanted to be and we

wanted to explore so as we embarked on

this journey to two world bill was to

become the overwatch version of Earth we

actually started with world of warcraft

and we look back on some of our basic

tenants of world-building from World of

Warcraft and the pictures that I've

chosen to show behind me are very

deliberate it's the human starting area

of world of warcraft for those of you

not familiar with it and it encompasses

Elwynn forest red Ridge duskwood and

Westfall and these areas are unique

because they each have their own special

story but the variation is what was

important to us they very deliberately

our art director on overwatch who

happened to be the art director on

original world of warcraft at the time