Jeff Kaplan's incredibly well designed and written story should be acknowledged as a perfect training ground for military people to work as a team, rather than by themselves.
Conceptualize this: you enter a game where there are 6 people on each team with two different objectives in different scenarios. A team trying to defend the point with a cart filled with explosives, while the other team is trying to attack and capture the cart to carry it and move it to the required destination while trying to fight off the enemy and to stop them from stopping them, as if it is just like a zombie apocalypse with one team trying to explode and destroy the city to eliminate all off the zombies and hope to cure the infection by eliminating all of the holders of the disease.
Sounds as if it’s a perfect game for training teamwork, right? Well yes of course it is. A game revolves around more teamwork than any game that has been developed this decade with the main idea that if a team does not play together then that team will definitely end up losing every fight over and over again.
As Overwatch is supposed to be a team game, there are some features that cause this to take away from the idea that it is a team game, for example: the ability to hide your profile so the player base will not be able to see and understand what heroes that particular player excels at. “ I'm talking about hiding profiles. This is a very anti-teamwork change. In what world is not knowing teammate's experience considered a healthy I'm talking about hiding profiles. This is a very anti-teamwork change. In what world is not knowing teammate's experience considered a healthy”
). This quotation underlies the huge issue with this change and how it will cause the player base to be dived. It’ll also end up causing major issues for the player as they will have to somehow figure out what heroes a certain player can play and what heroes they cannot. This is a major major major issue since in the military you need to have specific roles for each person on the team, you cannot have a commander in charge when they prefer and excel at being a medic.
To be very honest, this game will probably never be a training ground for the military to work on their teamwork. Reason being is because the game is now old. 3 years old as a matter of fact, and since there has been no movement towards the military for the past three years, then there will be definitely no such thing happening as its too late now and also because it is just a game. “Game for kids” many would say. Which is a very foolish answer to give since it requires the same amount of teamwork that military professionals need to succeed in their battles.
The last thing to talk about before I end this Topic and probably to never be opened again is the fact that a game like this, with such perfect execution, was unable to get the recognition it deserved because it looked cartoonish. Overwatch is a game that is manufactured by Blizzard. “Overwatch is the eighth Activision Blizzard game to generate $1 billion in revenue, according to the publisher's fiscal Q1 2017 financial statement. And the company says it is the fastest-growing franchise ever from developer Blizzard.”
This right here shows that it is a near perfect game with sales that are remarkable. Therefore there should be no reason why a game that is filled with teamwork:, shouldn't be a training ground for the military to work on their communication.
Written by Alabbas Al-Shatari
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