In no particular order, I would like to start off with Blizzard’s Overwatch. In the year of 2018 Blizzard released a special skin for the character of Mercy. This stylish pink skin was available from May 8th to May 21st with a price of $15 (USD). Blizzard Entertainment would go on to donate 100% of the proceeds to Breast Cancer Research Foundation. The guaranteed minimum donation started at $250,000 (USD). In July of 2018, Blizzard announced a total of $12.7 Million was raised by the players.

Overwatch

https://youtu.be/BIQBvOGspmw – Video : Pink mercy l Support BCRF l Overwatch

In 2021 Capcom partnered with the Breast Cancer Research Foundation to release two different skins for the fan favorites of CHUN-LI and RYU. This event would run for an entire month from October 12th to November 12th. Both characters got a pink skin with a reversed highlight option for the price of $5.99 (USD) each or $9.99 (USD) as a two-pack. The guaranteed minimum donation started at $25,000 (USD). In June of 2022, Capcom would go on to announce that a total of $75,000 was raised by the players.

Destructoid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJgBYSLNbgM – Video: Street Fighter V – BCRF x SF 

Behemoth decided to release their own DLC in 2011 that would help support Breast Cancer Awareness. A brand-new character that goes by the name of the Pink Knight was released for $1.99 (USD) on February 8th for the PSN. This charismatic character was also released alongside a Lollipop and four other brand-new weapons. 100% of the revenue was stated to be donated to charities involved with breast cancer research. The Pink Knight is still purchasable on Steam for $0.99 (USD). However, it is unknown if the partnership is still ongoing. It is also unknown how much money was raised.

2014 was an exceptional year for Bandai Namco as they decided to launch their Ms. Pac-Man Ribbon Campaign to benefit the National Breast Cancer Foundation. During the month of October, Bandai Namco released a Pink Maze for their Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man mobile games. This Pink Maze cost $0.99 (USD) with 100% of the proceeds set to go to the National Breast Cancer Foundation. It is unknown how much was raised during the month of October.

2014 was an exceptional year for Bandai Namco as they decided to launch their Ms. Pac-Man Ribbon Campaign to benefit the National Breast Cancer Foundation. During the month of October, Bandai Namco released a Pink Maze for their Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man mobile games. This Pink Maze cost $0.99 (USD) with 100% of the proceeds set to go to the National Breast Cancer Foundation. It is unknown how much was raised during the month of October.

SCS Software created their own DLC in 2019 to also support Breast Cancer Awareness. On October 1st of 2019 a $1.99 (USD) Pink Ribbon Charity Pack was released for Euro Truck Simulator 2. 100% of the proceeds were stated to be donated to reputable Breast Cancer research and awareness charities. The Breast Cancer Research Foundation and the Alliance of Women with Breast Cancer were the two named research/charities. The Pink Ribbon Charity Pack can still be purchased to this day and the partnership is ongoing.

These are just a few of the many video game publishers that have helped in the fight against Breast Cancer. I hope many of the huge name publishers see how much of a difference they can make with their following.

Overwatch 2 hasn’t been confirmed, but recent leaks suggest that it’s basically about as confirmed as Diablo 4. That is to say that we’re just waiting for Blizzard to say the words.

It’s in this awkward in-between period between leaked reveal and confirmation that we begin to ask a lot of questions. Will Overwatch 2 feature a new roster? Will it include new modes? How much of our progress in Overwatch will carry-over to the sequel?

Yet, somewhere at the top of the list of questions regarding Overwatch 2 is, “Is it time for an Overwatch sequel in the first place?”

The sequel business used to be simple. You make something that’s successful then you release a sequel to a few years later that usually just gives people more of the original. experience. Sequels were sometimes cheap cash grabs of the originals, but they served a sometimes necessary and vital function for all kinds of entertainment industries.

When it comes to gaming, though, things have changed. Many games have replaced the traditional sequel structure with a “live service” model which sees a game be continuously updated over a period of months and years. It has problems of its own, but this model does typically stretch the “value” of a game over a longer period of time than we used to see.

That brings us to Overwatch 2. As games like Destiny 2 have shown, there are times when a sequel in a live service environment can be seen as an even more unnecessary cash grab than ever before. After all, if a game can be updated for years and years to come, then what’s the point of forcing players to buy a completely new game?

So to see if Overwatch 2 needs a sequel, let’s try to answer a few questions about Overwatch as it is.

Are Overwatch’s Graphics Outdated?

Well…yes, but the better question may be “Does that matter?”

Blizzard games have never really relied on featuring top-of-the-line graphics as the studio has typically preferred to emphasize creative art style over raw graphics. As we’ve seen, that lends their games a kind of timeless appeal.

As such, it’s not like Overwatch is hard on the eyes. In fact, its colorful visuals help it stand out amongst an endless series of similar drab titles. Given the relative lack of visual advancements since Overwatch was first released, it’s debatable whether or not a new Overwatch game would even look that much better than the first.

To be fair, a new engine could help Blizzard iron out some lingering performance issues and help ensure the health of Overwatch over a longer period of time. However, many of those improvements would be on the back-end of the game.

Does Blizzard Need an Overwatch Sequel to Add a PvE Campaign?

Again, this is somewhat debatable, but honestly, it feels like the answer here is “No.”

We’ve seen Blizzard add PvE missions to the base Overwatch experience. It’s not unreasonable to suggest they could add a permanent series of PvE events to the game, or even just continue to tell a story via these special PvE events.

An upgraded engine for a sequel could make it easier for Blizzard to add such modes to the game, but we’re not sure a sequel is strictly necessary for that purpose.

Is Overwatch 2 Needed to Make Major Changes to Overwatch?

This depends on the specifics, but the obvious answer again here seems to be “No.”

Blizzard has made major changes to Overwatch. They recently even added an entirely new system that dictates what kind of team compositions you can build. Only they can tell you what the limits of the current Overwatch system are, but it certainly doesn’t seem that they’re being held hostage by the shell of the game. We’ve even seen fans use the Overwatch engine to make entirely new games.

Unless Overwatch 2 is going to completely change the way Overwatch works (which, aside from some rumored alterations, certainly doesn’t seem to be the case), it feels like a sequel isn’t necessary in this respect.

Will Overwatch 2 Be a Profitable and Successful Sequel?

As always, this is what it comes down to. Sequels exist to generate hype and make more money. If Overwatch 2 is going to be another full-priced (or close to full-price) experience, then Blizzard will almost certainly see at least short-term revenue gains from it.

Still, Overwatch isn’t as popular as it once was. You can blame that on some design decisions, but many Overwatch players left because they felt burnt out on the game and gravitated towards other titles. At present, it looks like Overwatch 2 is set to deliver mostly more of the original game plus a few more notable alterations. What’s up for debate is whether or not Overwatch is still popular enough to inspire millions of people to pay for that game again, especially if the original continues to linger on in any notable form.

Not long after Overwatch released in 2016, Chris Metzen stepped down from his role in Blizzard. While he had not been a founder, he had become a core component in the foundation of the company. He created many character designs and animations, provided many story concepts for their main franchises, and even voiced several important characters within those stories. His exit, along with other long-time leaders in the company, seemed to be a turning point in how Blizzard would function.

Blizzard’s desire to join in on the throngs of games reaching for always-online “games as a service” platform came to the surface with the launch of Diablo 3. A game franchise that previously had been just as viable to play completely offline since online now required a constant internet connection even when solo. This fell apart at launch as players installed the game and tried to log on only to see errors and failures to connect. The game was unplayable by some people for days.

On top of this, Diablo 3 featured an auction house where players could spend real money (with Blizzard taking a cut) to buy in-game weapons, armor, and other items. This worked off of a design where players would receive loads of gear not relevant to their character so they would have to dump it on the market and purchase loot that would actually help them. These issues were ultimately addressed, but clearly, Blizzard had started down a path of poor decisions based on profit.

Blizzard’s use of “loot boxes” in Overwatch is often cited as the starting point for the normalization of the practice in mainstream full-priced games. While the company denies any negative attributes of this practice, it has undoubtedly left a lasting negative impact on the gaming community. Again, the profitability of the company was prioritized over the quality of the game.

Last year at Blizzcon, the announcement of a mobile Diablo game shocked and angered many longtime fans of the franchise. Diablo Immortal would be developed in conjunction with a Chinese developer and shared many similarities with an existing game they had created, Endless of God. This whole process was Blizzard’s attempt to tap into the massive Chinese mobile gaming market, which has for years been the largest in the world. With this newfound pile of money to chase after, Blizzard was more than willing to capitulate to the Chinese government in recent events.

Blitzchung, a professional Hearthstone gamer, recently shouted on a Blizzard Taiwan stream “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age.” This, of course, referencing ongoing protests in Hong Kong that are vehemently opposed by the Chinese government. In response, Blizzard stripped the player of his winnings, banned him from tournaments for a year, and fired the hosts of the stream despite them only being adjacent to the announcement.

It is to be expected that they would at least remove the VOD (video on demand) of the event from Twitch, but the fact that they took such egregious measures to punish someone for standing up for freedom is just simply sad. These are the actions of a company so desperate to drive their stock price back up that they’re willing to dish out unjust punishment based on ambiguous policy. It is the cherry on top of the frozen shell that Blizzard has become. A company that once exemplified the best parts of gaming has seemingly lost everything that once made it so great.

While some may trace Blizzard’s downfall back to their merge with Activision, it has become more obvious in recent years that the vision of the company isn’t what it used to be. I expect in the coming years, they’ll continue to cash in on the nostalgia of their fans by continuing to release things like a remastered StarCraft and Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft Classic. Meanwhile, I believe the franchises going forward will keep trending toward monetization-heavy experiences that lack the quality of previous games. It would take nothing short of a miracle to turn them around at this point.

For me, Blizzard is a lost cause. I can’t see myself being invested in any of their games in the future given current circumstances. Will you still be interested in future titles like Diablo Immortal? Do you plan on continuing to play games like Overwatch and Hearthstone? Has any of this changed your perspective on Blizzard?

In another classic “Jeff from the Overwatch team” video , an announcement and briefing about the new method for matchmaking in Overwatch shook the foundations of what the game has been for the past three years. Soon, rather than queuing up and trying to form a cogent team through varying levels of heated debate or outright rage, you’ll be queueing up as either a tank, support, or damage. Each of these will have their respective queue times depending on how many people are playing, but more interestingly, they’ll also have their own matchmaking rating. This means you could be the world’s greatest tank and the world’s worst support and get in matches that correspond to your skill level in each.

This is going to come with some upheaval to the way people put together their team structures. More coordinated teams, especially in competitive, use team setups that have a variety of different roles and hero use. Having to conform to the “2-2-2” (two tanks, two supports, and two healers) design will mean that individual character choice will have a larger impact than simply stacking healers or tanks. This also means some characters will need to be rebalanced. Some of the more recent characters that could be defined as “cross-role”, such as Brigitte, will be rebalanced to better fit into their primary roles. Brigitte will be shifted more toward healing and have less survivability in order to be better at keeping the team alive when only one other healer is available. This could extend to other characters as well and be a defining factor in those developed in the future.

What this means to me, and probably many other people who have moved on from a game that that seemed to get a bit stagnant, is that we finally have a new reason to get back into it. It has the potential to limit toxicity from reactions to what heroes players pick and will streamline the team forming experience as a whole. While it obviously will still be necessary to switch characters on the fly if things aren’t going well in a match, there’s now going to be less of those moments where you question how you ended up with four damage heroes. In addition, if you have a hero you enjoy playing and practice with a lot, you have a much better chance of playing them as much as you’d like. That’s a huge positive for people who don’t want just may not be into other types of gameplay. I am still curious about a couple of things, such as which characters are going to be rebalanced and how pro teams are going to adjust, but I’m excited nonetheless.

Will you be jumping back in Overwatch to try this out? Does it make it sound more appealing if you’ve never tried the game before? I’d like to hear how other players who have moved on are reacting to this change in the fundamental matchmaking process.

Sports like football, baseball, and basketball have historically split up the year in the United States, each dominating their own months of the year with moderate overlap to serve as the entertainment for America. For a variety of reasons, the average viewership for these sports has been on a notable decline for several years now. That viewership as a percentage of total Americans makes the trend even more dramatic. This has resulted in some movement to improve the games and make them more streamlined – appealing more to modern younger audiences who can and do find more entertaining and gratifying hobbies.

Esports, despite taking root in the 1990s, has only recently begun to take off. This is in part due to the growth of streaming and streaming platforms – making the massive hurdle of getting a television spot much less important. Competitive gaming has become much more mainstream, with some colleges creating esports programs and drafting teams to represent them. Sponsors have gone from being small event-related companies like computer hardware to multi-billion dollar mainstream advertisers like Mastercard and Coca-Cola. Winnings have correlated to this massive rise, going from thousands of dollars to tens of millions at modern events. Today, as millions of people tune into gaming competitions around the world, all of these numbers will only continue to increase.

Will there ever be a point where esports overtake traditional sports? Perhaps, but there are a lot of obstacles on that road. The first being the ever-changing nature of the games being played. It’s not just that a game popular enough to warrant an esport event is virtually guaranteed to change to some degree between each major tournament, it’s also the very nature of players to simply move on. The ebb and flow of Dota 2 is plain to see as it met its peak average players nearly three years ago. That isn’t to say it’s on its way out by any means, but no game stays popular forever.

There’s also an issue relating to the general relatability of a game when compared to a traditional sport. If you look at football, the average person may not get the nuances of specific play calls, pass coverage, clock management and so on, but they can see the core components to know when one team is doing well and one is not. Many popular esports games have moments where even those familiar with the game can lose track of exactly what’s going on. Clusters of combat and a kaleidoscope of colors from effects on screen can make things far more difficult to discern for a newcomer.

Traditional sports also have the advantage of teams being representative of regions. That way, even someone that doesn’t play a specific sport or doesn’t know what’s going on can have a team that represents them. They can feel invested and cheer for someone no matter what the situation. Esports have historically been without that regional affinity, but Blizzard made an effort to change that with the Overwatch League.  While the quality of Overwatch as watchable esport is debatable by some, Blizzard has invested heavily in trying to make it grow. It even has blazed a trail for mainstream distribution on television channels like ESPN. It’s hard to say how effective this is so early on in its lifespan, but it’s clearly something that is making progress.

Traditional sports have been and will continue to be money machines. They will continue to be an attractive choice for advertisers and the goal for many talented athletes all over the world. They may dip in favor over time, but they’ll stick around for the foreseeable future. Esports, on the other hand, is still in its infancy. It may not continue its meteoric rise forever, but everything is indicating that it is here to stay. The future has plenty of room for both traditional sports and esports to shine brightly, but one of these two is definitely more capable of adapting to changing times than the other.

What do you think? Are traditional sports going to become a relic of the past with a limited following in the future? Do esports grow to become the main pastime around the world? Or, does everyone just give up and watch reality TV?

It has been nearly 11 years since Blizzard (as a part of Vivendi) merged with Activision and became Activision Blizzard. Since that time, the value of the company has steadily climbed, even as some of its core franchises were met with public criticism. Nearly every game developed primarily after this merger (StarCraft 2 was already in development) has had public perception issues—usually relating to monetization. Diablo 3’s in-game auction house led to a game with a loot system built to drive a desire to buy and sell products for real money. Hearthstone was the company’s first real “Free to Play” game, a monetization method generally designed to coerce players into heavily investing in microtransactions. Overwatch became one of the first games to popularize the concept of buying a full price game and having optional in-game loot boxes and microtransactions. Then, most recently, Diablo Immortal became Blizzard’s first fully mobile game to the stunned silence of the audience at Blizzcon 2018.

Blizzard seems to have shifted its corporate culture from creating games that appeal to specific fanbases to one that places a much stronger emphasis on building profitable games. Being a brand on the face of the stock exchange will do that to any company. Where once Blizzard was only scrutinized by their customers, now the value of their company can be at stake from a game that doesn’t perform as well as they had predicted. With that perspective in mind, the choice to take Diablo to mobile makes a lot more sense. Mobile games are one of the largest gaming markets in the world, especially in China. That is why Diablo Immortal is being co-developed by the Chinese company NetEase. The country has well-established laws prohibiting foreign publishers from operating games there, meaning the partnership is most likely a method to enable access to that market, giving them the ability to reach millions of Chinese gamers. With the right game, it could be a very successful endeavor.

Does Blizzard have a path to climb out of this downward spiral? Has the negative reaction to Diablo Immortal and the recent cancellation of an unnamed StarCraft first-person shooter caused them to rethink their strategies? Well, one of the reasons this StarCraft game was canceled was to focus resources on creating Diablo 4. They’ve obviously seen how little the American market desires for the franchise to go to mobile, so things may be turning around in that particular area.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Diablo 4 won’t have its own set of design or monetization issues, but we do have to consider what happened with Diablo 3. After its troubled launch, the developers committed to building a game worthy of the franchise history. With the removal of the paid auction house and the addition of a significant amount of content, the game was much improved. A solid expansion was released and even now seven years later, the game still has content being released. Diablo 3 is a more rich and enjoyable experience in 2019 than it ever was in 2012. Multiple consoles have even had adapted ports of the game and each has been well received. Contrary to the perspective given by the development of Diablo Immortal, Blizzard still shows signs of understanding their core customer base.

Still, Activision Blizzard laid off 800 people a few months ago – even after announcing record profits. Moves like this can be demoralizing to development staff and, depending on the target of these layoffs, it could inhibit the actual development process directly. While virtually every company has an ebb and flow of employees, a volatile workplace is not a productive workplace. Especially for one that requires creativity as well as tolerance for the tedium of working out bugs.

Blizzard will undoubtedly continue efforts to focus on its existing intellectual properties and build games that expand upon them for as long as possible. Blizzard is still a huge company with thousands of employees, so they’re not going to disappear overnight no matter how bad things get. The factor that determines whether they’ll continue to be relevant down the line is how committed they’ll be to delivering the type of games that made them so popular. I don’t mean remaking StarCraft and WarCraft, but building on their franchises with new exciting content. Diablo 4 might be the first step back on the right path, but it could also be one that takes them further toward a future of being forgotten.

Everyone is talking about Blizzard’s newest IP release, Overwatch.  This team centric, objective driven, non-twitch focused first person shooter (FPS) has many game enthusiasts excited and eager to see the official release.  I on the other hand feel cautiously optimistic at best.

I enjoy shooters as much as the next person and I’ve never felt particularly interested in being especially competitive with them, outside of my own friends of course.  So Blizzard’s first jaunt into the FPS should appeal to me considering that, as usual, they are making it as accessible as possible to hit a wider market.  While this business plan continues to provide Blizzard with steady streams of income, it also doesn’t seem to encourage much in terms of innovation or challenge.

Many people seem excited for Overwatch, but the more you read the more it becomes clear that everyone is more interested in what Overwatch could become.  Seasoned players of games like Team Fortress 2 (TF2) are hoping Blizzard will provide the matchmaking system they have been begging Valve to provide for years.  Players like myself are hoping that the world, characters, and story might redeem the company’s storytelling capabilities after disappointments like Diablo III, World of Warcraft (post WOTLK), and Starcraft II.  So far though, Overwatch seems mediocre across the board.

Now I haven’t gotten my hands on the game obviously because my only exposure was through the Blizzcon Virtual Ticket.  None the less, the characters look generic with A-typical archetypes being displayed across the various champions. You’ve got your healing angel, your sniper assassin (a re-skinned Sarah Kerrigan with extra cleavage), a dark hooded reaper named Reaper, etc.  This might be all well and good for providing traditional characters that are easily recognizable for experienced and non-experienced gamers, but it doesn’t cut it in the slightest for providing something worthy of being called “different.”

This is what I fear for Overwatch.  While on the surface the talk is nice about unique characters with backstories, it seems like Blizzard has reached for the lowest hanging fruit with each one of their newly revealed heroes.  Still, I did say I was optimistic, because with a new venture may come the willingness to adapt and give the market what it is asking for.  Let us hope then that the market asks for something it hasn’t seen a thousand times before.