Kaplan Discusses Possible Changes to Overwatch's Play of the Game

Lizzy Finnegan

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Kaplan Discusses Possible Changes to Overwatch's Play of the Game

"It's nowhere near as awesome as I think it will be some day."

The Overwatch team has certainly been keeping itself busy. Yesterday "very far" along in development [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/170053-Blizzard-has-officially-announced-the-next-Overwatch-event#&gid=gallery_7190&pid=1]. And, apparently, they're still working on fixing the game's Play of the Game feature.


Speaking with Waypoint [https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/in-the-company-of-heroes-an-interview-with-overwatch-designer-jeff-kaplan?utm_source=wptwitterus], Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan discussed a number of topics about the game, including inclusivity, pandering, the game's latest hero, Orisa, and more. One of the more interesting topics comes at the end of the interview, however, and centers around Play of the Game.

"There are a lot of changes we would like to make to Play of the Game. We'll continue to iterate on the algorithm to make it smarter and pick better things," Kaplan said. "We also have these ideas right now, like Sharpshooter and Life Saver, which are actually pretty cool: Sharpshooter, for example, demonstrates multiple long-range shots. The problem is that it's they're not shown very cinematically right now, so we would like to make some changes so that the camera tracks the action better. Same goes for Life Saver-a lot of the time you don't even realize what's happening, but somebody is doing something that saved somebody else's life. Without some changes to the cameras and the cinematography of the moment, those aren't great right now."

Kaplan then said that at this point, the team is at "about 70% of where we want Play of the Game to be." While he says it does catch "a lot of cool stuff," he also states that it's "nowhere near as awesome as I think it will be some day."

Yesterday, Kaplan took to the forums [https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20754085345#post-6] to request that people continue to send him videos of disappointing Play of the Game clips.


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Proto Taco

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They also need to take into account assists. There's nothing quite like setting up your Pharah for a team wipe with a well-placed grav-bomb on the last capture point and the PotG completely ignores you because you weren't the one who got the kills.

In fact, given the team-based nature of Overwatch I'd argue that ONLY assists should be PotG because that fits better with the optimistic co-operative narrative of the setting. Not to mention it'd encourage people to work together rather than chase their own glory.