Overwatch 2's recent collaborations with anime One Punch Man and Kpop group Le Sserafim were a way for the developers to share their love of something with fans, according to the game's executive producer.
Talking to TRG at Blizzcon 2023, Overwatch 2's executive producer Jared Neuss says that the purpose of the collaborations wasn't to bring more people to Blizzard's shooter but to share something the Overwatch 2 developers were passionate about with the game's audience.
"What's funny is I haven't really thought about these collaborations in terms of widening the audience," said Neuss, adding: "I assume it does that a bit for folks who have love for the thing that we're collaborating with."
"I really look at it as sort of like a love letter from the team to, to our players about these things that were passionate about, right?" he adds. "Like, One Punch Man was something that the team was absolutely out of their minds about, they were so excited to release it and get in front of players. With Le Sserafim, we have a tonne of Kpop fans and this is something that they really wanted to get out into the world.
"For me, it's less about how do we bring in an audience that loves this thing and more about: 'how do we express our love for a thing, knowing that our love is mirrored by a lot of our players.'"
The future for Overwatch's collaborations, said Neuss, is going to be about the game crossing over with properties and things that the team loves, with the hope that many players will also be able to share in that enthusiasm.
"A lot of the stuff that we have lined up I know is going to be exciting for folks," he adds.
Following this crossover, Neuss says that he's personally excited about the idea of crossing over with other video game worlds.
"My passion is really around these different worlds that teams create and so I would love for us to do game collaborations in the future," says Neuss.
Overwatch 2 is developed by Blizzard Interactive, part of Activision-Blizzard King, the company was acquired by Microsoft in October this year. in addition to their own titles like Gears of War and Halo, Microsoft also owns Bethesda which is behind games like Fallout, Doom, and Wolfenstein.
"Being able to dip into worlds that that we love and that our players love would be super exciting for me, and you know we get to do that obviously with other Blizzard titles but there's a lot of games outside of Blizzard that I would love to see us do collaborations with at some point."
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