Waching daily Nov 2 2017

Obviously we're doing the dress rehearsal today

for Overwatch World Cup.

For the first couple of matches we're going to be doing

a lot of testing of match pausing and resuming

as we try and troubleshoot specific cases

that we think we're going to run into during World Cup.

Alright, a lot to do today. Let's make a great game.

We love these esports community

and I think that this is kind of the first time

that I feel like we really have had a chance

to give to the community the kind of esports experience

that we wanted to give.

Esports is where some of our most passionate

and most engaged players are.

That community helps us make really informed decisions

about changes that we need to make to the game.

Whether they're from a future stand point

or from a balance perspective.

Esports was always kind of the other side of the coin.

There is also a huge community out there

that just enjoys watching awesome esports action.

We try to view it not just as developers but as spectators.

It just builds excitement around the office.

It's fun coming in on Mondays you know,

going like "Did you watch all the games during this weekend?"

It's just fun. It's a fun thing to be part of.

I like it, let's get this on.

Our game is fast paced, is...

Everything is flashing on the screen, everyone wants your attention.

So one of our main tasks this time around

was to figure out how to make that better.

One of the features that we added was team uniforms.

My favorite feature is the team uniform system.

The ability to dynamically change the colors within the editor.

We took the effects of the game and team colored them,

so they match the team uniforms.

Everything from the heroes' skills

to the UI and everything in between has been customized per team.

As a viewer you are like

"In the kill feed I saw D.Va kill 5 people",

I wish I could have seen that.

So instant replay really allows us

to go back to this moment in time

and curate that moment.

And let us look at it from a couple of different angles.

Instant replay allows the observers to go back in time

and re-watch an event.

Observer can load up the instant replay for that

and watch it from any different angle the want.

They can watch it in slow-mo.

We can just load up that moment

in an instant replay and show it off again.

We would need a solution to be able to watch heroes like Tracer or Genji.

One of the ways we did that is by doing the third person smart camera.

With the smart camera you can focus on

what's going on in the action.

Essentially where the heat of the shot will be.

I think the top-down map

for observers and for casters

is going to be particularly important and is a tool,

actually THE tool,

that I wanted most as an analyst

when I cast the game.

This was really, first and foremost,

designed to be a tool for you guys.

It was not a,

"Oh God, we got to get this up on the broadcast."

It was, "Observers and casters need this

to do their job right."

I think it makes the broadcast so much better.

I know with the NFL commentators,

so it's a day during the week

where they get to sit down with the team and talk to them for an hour.

I think that content creators, coaches,

teams that want to learn,

it's super valuable for them to get better.

Statistics will now be tracked across multiple matches.

So, you can really see things like trends of a player.

Is a player getting worse as the series are going on?

Is he getting much better?

What really makes it a great sport

is the stories and the drama

of the players behind...

the people that are actually doing the controlling.

I think as a color caster, being able to have those stats real time

that's huge to give context to the game.

I think statistics lets you

be able to enjoy the game from a perspective of,

"Hey, I really like this team and here's why.

I can really tell you that this player on this team,

I think he's the best D.Va player in the world

and I can prove it.

With stats, you can objectively say

that player is actually the best

in the world right now.

Because really esports,

yes, it's a game,

yes, it's a sport,

the competition is super important.

But really at the end of the day,

it's about the people and telling the story of those people,

and that's what we're really super excited about.

All these features.

Overwatch esports is really evolving all the time.

We're not done. We have a huge list of things to get through.

You're going to be seeing new features come into play.

You're going to be seeing improvements made to our existing features.

We know that every event should be better than the last,

and we're going to keep building on top of

what we've already delivered for esports.

You can really expect

that the Overwatch team is going to be fully backing

the esports experience.