What's up, everyone?
This is Jeff from the Overwatch team.
We're here with an awesome update.
This one's going to be
a bit of surprise for you all,
because we have a brand-new feature
coming to Overwatch,
and one that's really exciting to us.
So, the feature is called the Workshop.
And the Workshop
is coming to the game browser.
Now, I know there's immediately a ton
of questions about "What is the Workshop?"
The Workshop is a scripting mode
that will allow you to make
custom game modes
within the custom game browser,
but also allow you to do
really cool things.
For example, you could even prototype
your own Overwatch hero using this system.
To give you a little bit of history
about how we came up with this idea,
we have 2 amazing programmers,
one by the name of Dan
and one by the name of Keith.
We gave them some free time
to work on whatever they wanted.
And these 2 programmers
were really familiar
with working with our scripting system
that we use to make the game.
And they said, it would be super-cool
if we gave the players some of the power
that we have as programmers
and as game developers
to make whatever they could come up with,
wherever their imaginations
would take them.
So Keith and Dan put a custom layer
of interface
and a custom scripting system on top
of the one that we use to make the game
so that all of you,
on both PC and console,
can start creating your own game modes.
The system is really powerful
and I have to warn you, up front,
this is more of what I would call
a power-user feature.
The people, I think, this will speak to,
most immediately,
are people with some experience
with other scripting engines,
that are available publicly
on the Internet,
or people with programming backgrounds.
Really, anybody
who understands the logic of game-making
and how game events are chained together,
will have an easier time creating things.
Now, Keith and Dan have done a good job
of making the feature
as accessible to everyone as possible.
We also plan on putting a special forum
up on the Blizzard website
that allows you to interact with us
and ask us some questions
on how to use it.
But, you might be wondering about examples
of some of the things that you could make.
And we're going to put some examples
into the custom game browser
so, that way, you can open up modes
that we've already made
and see exactly how they were made
and start tweaking them yourselves
and adjusting different variables
to have different outcomes.
One mode that's really fun,
and we look forward to seeing you tweak
and do you own thing with,
we call the Molten Floor.
And in this mode,
any time a character is on the ground,
they catch on fire.
So you imagine how fun
a game mode could be
with characters like Pharah and Lúcio
who have the ability
to stay off the ground.
You could make something really
interesting and special there.
We see a lot of you trying to create modes
like hide-and-seek in the game browser
and now you can make much more
powerful versions of hide-and-seek.
We have a game mode
that I just think is awesome
and we'll probably include in the Arcade
at some point
called Mirror Deathmatch.
And Mirror Deathmatch,
I think, is really fun.
What that does is,
it's Free-For-All Deathmatch,
but every player in the map
plays the same character for 1 minute.
So, for one minute we're all McCree
then the next thing you know
we're all Hanzo
then it switches over and we're all Ashe.
So it's a much more balanced version
of Free-For-All Deathmatch.
Something that I've read on the forums
and in social media from all of you
is that you love Mystery Heroes,
but some of you
would like to have a version
that you call Balanced Mystery Heroes.
And you've talked about
what if Mystery Heroes
had a certain number of tanks
and a certain number of supports
so at any time
the two teams were relatively balanced,
even though
there were random heroes happening.
Well, with the Workshop
you could create that exact mode now.
And you can decide. Do you want 1 tank,
or 2 tanks or 3 tanks?
Or 1 support, 2 support?
It's really up to you.
And it's very easy,
once you set up the mode,
to change some of those variables.
Now for those of you who are familiar
with game logic and scripting,
or familiar with programming,
you'll know that as you're working
on creating something custom like this
you often need to go through and find out
why it's working or not working
just the way you intended.
And programmers in the audience
will understand what I'm talking about,
when I say you need a debugger,
something to help you find any issues
that you've created in your script.
Luckily, the Workshop is coming with
what we call Workshop Inspector,
which is a custom debugger
that will allow you to run your game mode
and it will report back to you
why certain things are happening.
Or sometimes it's even more important
to know why aren't they happening.
You expect a certain thing to happen
and it's not.
We think that will be really cool, too,
and really helpful for you.
One of my biggest hopes,
I know this is a power-user feature,
and there's some technical knowledge
needed to use it,
but my hope is that some of you
who have never gotten to play around
with creating game modes
and creating game logic,
or maybe prototyping a hero,
this can be the first time
that you can open up
one of the existing scripts that we have,
take a look at it in the Workshop,
and start to learn how we made it.
And maybe, you'll realize that you, too,
could be a game developer someday,
and you can make really cool stuff.
We're hoping that this opens up
a whole new wide array of game modes
that the community is going to create.
And that there will be
some really fun stuff out there
for all of you.
I also need to put this
in the right context.
This isn't a map editor.
You won't be able
to create custom geometry
or import art into the game
that doesn't currently exist.
It mainly allows you to control
the game logic behind game modes
and what's happening
with different heroes.
But, trust me, it's extremely powerful
and we expect you,
and are very excited for all of you,
to do great things.
We hope you enjoy it.
All of the work that you create
on the PTR,
is going to be able to be copied over
using a share function that we're adding.
And the share function is really cool
because, previously, if you had
a really good rule set in custom game,
it wasn't trivial to share that.
Now you'll be able to generate a code,
and put that code in,
whether it's on PC or console.
And it works on both of those.
And create this custom game all over again
that you've either gotten
from somebody else or created yourself.
We're extremely excited to see
what you all do with this.
We hope it opens up a whole new world
of Overwatch to you all.
And we hope you love
and enjoy the Workshop.
Thank you.
