We’ve heard plenty of reports about Activision Blizzard in the last several days, mainly because of a book written by someone who interviewed many people who helped found the company and watched it go from “gaming juggernaut” to “business-focused game publisher.” That shift in tone apparently affected many things, including certain elements you didn’t realize. For example, there wasn’t much to be excited about with Overwatch 2, as the game was meant to be a “big sequel” to “expand the universe and what you could do in it,” but instead, Activision Blizzard turned it into a gratuitous microtransaction nightmare that the vast majority of the universes’ fans don’t want to play. They want the OG game back instead.
We could spend a while talking about the failure of that game. Instead, we’ll talk about a key piece of information that was dropped on a Reddit AMA by Jason Schrier, who wrote the book we referenced about the “Rise and Fall of Blizzard.” In one of the questions he took about the book, he revealed that there was an Overwatch 2 series meant to happen on Netflix, among other Blizzard franchises getting the animation tap, but they all fell apart, and not for the reasons you might think:
So, yeah, that happened, and that’s a shame for the most basic of reasons. While not every show that Netflix puts out is quality, it has done rather well with its “gaming animes,” as proven by the one they did with Konami’s beloved vampire franchise, and Lara Croft is about to get her own series on the platform.
Had Blizzard been able to pull this off, it would’ve served as another way to “expand the universe’s story,” not unlike how they used to do that with the various character trailers and special PVE events that indicated that there was so much more to this world than what we saw in the gameplay and beyond.
Upon this tweet getting posted, many people “in the know” revealed that there was so much going on behind the scenes that truly ruined what this universe could’ve been. It wasn’t meant to be the live-serve title we have now, but an ever-expanding gaming universe that so much could’ve been done in:
Thanks to that book, we know that the game’s former head, Jeff Kaplan, is partially responsible for its problems, but ex-Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick was also a huge problem as well. No matter who you point the finger at, this franchise isn’t anywhere close to where it was before, and it’s not likely to get back to its glory days anytime soon.
