Overdevelopment and "Games as a Service"

What happens when you overdevelop a game? Seems like a bit of a silly question, but with the number of
self avowed "games as a service" going around nowadays, it seems like an important part of design to
consider. How is developing content past the point of "release" different?

The best way to do that is to look at examples out in the wild, and I have two perfect candidates right 
here: Overwatch and Team Fortress 2!

...Don't look at me like that. I'm choosing these two games for a couple of reasons: they show the
dangers of overdeveloping their respective aspects (skin design and mechanics), but succeed where 
the other one fails. They're good examples to compare and contrast, I am really not trying to say they're 
the same game pleasedon'tkillme

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So, let's start with Overwatch, more specifically, the interweaving mechanics of Overwatch. Every 
character has different stats and abilities, and a core foundation of how the game is meant to be played 
with is understanding and playing with how they interact. Reinhardt can shield, but quick flankers like 
Genji or Tracer can get around it and give him trouble. Torbjorn has area control with a turret, but 
Junkrat can quickly demolish it with grenades. Those sort of interactions are what the game is built on
top of.

The basic ideas of characters during development and how they all interact are (hopefully) carefully 
considered. How does the tanky shield guy work with the mobile healer? How does the quick flanker 
interact with the other flankers? These basic ideas and basic interactions are key to it, and the way 
new characters like Ana or Doomfist have been added make life hell for the game's developement.

Let's compare. Mercy is a mobile, self sufficient healer who is built around sustainability and keeping 
allies in there. Lucio is a very mobile healer who trades large sustainability for mobility. Zenyatta has
comparatively little mobility, but makes up for it with huge offensive power.

Ana is a single target enemy disabler who can also provide burst healing and a burst of raw power to 
one ally. She's not really built around any one core concept and brings in a bunch of totally new 
mechanics to the game that directly impact others.

You could also look at Sombra, who brought invisibility, teleporting, the ability to disable your abilities,
AND the ability to do that to your entire team. Or Doomfist, a tanky offensive diver who gets stronger the 
more he hits you.

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The point isn't "these characters suck", the point is that they're complex ideas with totally new
interactions with everyone else being thrown in after the game is out of the initial development phase.
That spells issues for the game, and it's telling that if you look at competitive history, every single
new character (besides Moira, for now) has broken the metagame at some point simply on the back
of the mechanics they introduced.

New mechanics being thrown in is always a risk, and it's simply because your game has already 
"matured" out of the ideas stage. Things are solid. Thousands of people are playing. The way it works
has become analyzed and scrutinized. And to tape more content that fundamentally rocks that boat is
risky as all hell. Overwatch overdevelops its new characters, and as a result, balance is a lot
harder to get to.

Now, let's swap focus to TF2, which does this a lot better. That's not to say TF2's balance is... good.
But it's never suffered from this "new mechanic slapstick" Overwatch gets all the time. Why?

1. New characters are never added, it's always new weapons. The cast of 9 characters is exactly the
same as at launch. This means radically different ideas and concepts don't get thrown in every time.
Whenever you want to add a melee weapon for the engineer, it's still gotta be a wrench-like item
that behaves like the others on a fundamental level. This can lead to stagnation, but considering that
ideas like "get a new disguise on backstab" and "mini-sentry" have led to cool new playstyles, it's clear
smart design can get around it.

2. The new weapons usually encourage a new way to do the same thing. Take the direct hit for Soldier.
It does more damage, has faster rockets, but a much, much smaller blast radius. That means direct
hits on enemies are vital. It doesn't change how the rocket works, but it changes the details (I.E less
aiming at feet).

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3. When a new mechanic is added, it adheres to the character's core ideas. Pyro got a jetpack in the 
latest update. While this seems like a radical change, it still stays close to his character ideas of flanking
and catching people off guard. So it fits well.

Overwatch doesn't do any of this. New characters have radically different mechanics, totally new 
playstyles, and there's no core ideas being adhered to. This isn't to say Overwatch's way is worse, 
mind you. It leads to a lot more vareity and interesting interactions. However, it makes it a lot harder and
unstable to keep the game balanced and interesting.

Alright, that's enough playing. Let's look at the games, and by that I mean the visuals. As in, TF2's 
visuals. Are bad.

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This is gonna be a lot easier to explain. TF2 has added to much stuff onto how it looks, and it's so 
scattered nowadays there's no consistent art. The game is cartoony yet keeps a muted colour 
scheme, except for unusual hats which have wacky effects. It has a 1970's "retro-future" look until
someone puts on a banana or samurai hat. It has a striking, easy to read colour scheme until a RED
spy can put on a blue-ish coat. This has been a well documented issue by fans, so I won't go on
(here's a great video on it), but the point is: the art style has been "developed" so much it's not much
of a style anymore.

Overwatch, by comparison, does a great job of this. Let's look at some of the more extreme changes
in skins and why they still work great.

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McCree's Blackwatch skin makes him look rougher and more striking, but it still holds to his "lone 
gunslinger" look. It's basically a more "edgy" take on his default clothes, and while it changes a lot, it 
holds true to his design readability and core ideas.

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Sombra's "Augmented" skin is a "future punk" take on her style, with more wires and tech. It's like if you
filtered her fashion through a cyberpunk filter, and it still looks like her. Just more... cyberpunk.

That's the general point, anyway. They're never just adding stuff to the designs. They're always making
sure it keeps to the original idea behind it, and always looks like the character at a glance. It's remixing
fashion, not adding onto it, and it works great.

I think, to wrap this up, this idea of "overdevelopment" I'm trying to get across is: in a sentence:

"Adding more stuff because you need to add more stuff."

Overwatch just adds more mechanics in that don't adhere to a core. TF2 just adds more hats in that
don't adhere to a style. And both game's respective strengths stay strong to this. It's not a bad thing
to add more stuff. Overdevelopment isn't doom and gloom. But it's always going to be very risky, and 
always a tight line to walk.

The Villain Issue in Overwatch

There’s been much hullabaloo over the newest Overwatch character revealed, Moira. Specifically in the circles I frequent, there’s been even more hullabaloo about the fact that there is a more than slim chance that she’s a trans woman. Her body type fits, her last name is traditionally assigned to men, she has a David Bowie skin for god’s sake. It’s all speculation at the time of writing, but it’s nonetheless an exciting prospect.

...Well, except for one thing.

Overwatch has a villain issue.

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In the past I’ve praised the cast of Overwatch for being diverse, well at least compared to most media. While I don’t hold Blizzard’s writing in the highest regard, all the characters felt realized to a certain level and it never felt like they resorted to any overt stereotypes. Except… well, Talon.

Talon is an explicit terrorist organization in the Overwatch universe, for those uninitiated. They’re the de facto villains, regardless of like what you think of them morally. They play the part of villains and are written like villains. And if the fans are on track (and even if they’re not), they’re mostly minorities.

This is a pretty loaded topic, I’m well aware, so, to preface why I think this is an issue, we need to be thinking in terms of how we “other” people and groups. There’s a very well documented record about how we as a species will take those in a group we want to demonize and make them as some other group, not the same as us. Look at the way we talked about non-white people. How both sides in a war characterized the other as brutish, less than human. It’s a thing that happens, overtly and subconsciously. It makes us look at people as different, and we fear difference. That in mind, most of the villains being part of a minority in our culture is… a problem.

To go down the list quickly:

• Doomfist is African.
• Sombra is Mexican.
• Reaper is American, but his skin is not white.
• Widowmaker is white, but she was essentially brainwashed into loyalty.
• And there is a damn good chance Moira is transgender.

There is a long and sordid history of minorities (from a North American perspective) being the villains in our media, being the “other”. Think of the dastardly Mexican villain in old westerns. The crazy “Indians”. The tribes of Africa being portrayed as brutish and less than the white man. The demonization of LGBT+ peoples as being pedophiles, and strange deviants to show how weird and evil they are. So uh, maybe we should stop filling up our fictional terrorist organizations with minorities?

I’m not trying to argue for no minority villains, nor do I think that individually any of the Talon group are bad characters wholly. I’m saying that collectively, I’m seeing some dangerous biases and worldviews take hold in the Overwatch universe, where minorities are more likely to be the villains… just because? That’s not very accurate, and is, in my opinion, pretty thoughtless and just flat out isn’t a good thing.

We need to be more thoughtful about this spread. It’s not “just a game”, because media in all forms impacts the people who interact with it. I don’t want to see anyone who’s not white, straight, and cis constantly shuffled off into villain roles. Villains are not bad. Making us all villains is bad. We can do better.