In this chapter we will, whenever relevant, address the fanworks’ proximity to the official brand and canon of the game. While fan creators reinterpret, reimagine, and expand official game characters through fanworks, our particular interest lies in how fans and official corporate entities negotiate the meanings and status of fanworks. Postigo 2003, Kücklich 2005), as a type of networked production, has become “an ‘innovation agency’ that engineers transformations of business and consumer practices towards open innovation networks” (Banks and Humphreys 2008, 403). Other research has explored how the simultaneously exploited and enjoyed co-creative labour (Terranova 2000, cf. Earlier research on productive game fandom has widely discussed the value provided by fans to individual games utilising concepts like ‘playbour’ (Kücklich 2005 Sotamaa 2007 Wirman 2013) or ‘gift economy’ (Hellekson 2009 Turk 2014) and often refers to fans’ influence on game longevity and increased profit (e.g., Jenkins 2006 Peuter and Young 2019). This chapter looks at a variety of Overwatch fanworks, such as fan art and cosplay, and the ways in which Blizzard Entertainment has officially or publicly recognised them. Many fan creators operate in a legal grey area profiting from their works on platforms like Patreon (Kretzschmar and Stanfill 2019, cf. Instead, such controversial and transgressive (Mortensen and Jørgensen 2020) fanworks that make up a significant amount of fan labour are actively disavowed via legal action. Other areas of fandom, such as erotic parodies and other sexually explicit materials, are typically not acknowledged despite the game’s creative director’s note about pornographic fanart as ‘an inevitable reality of the internet’ (Grayson 2016b, cf. Footnote 1 It has, among others, hired cosplayers as official ‘representatives’ of new characters during launch events (Carpenter 2018) and regularly shared fan art on official social media accounts as forms of endorsement. As a common corporate response to the works created by fans, some aspects of this fandom are openly endorsed by the game’s developer-publisher Blizzard Entertainment. The game has attracted an enthusiastic and productive fan base that produces derivative as well as transformative works largely building on the game’s ever-expanding roster of diverse characters. Now, fans who want more, like the Apex Legends ping system, have more information.With over 40 million players across the globe, Overwatch is not only a colossus of online gaming but also a notable object of game fandom. Players will remember the update that included new voice lines for competitive play, like fall back and push up. He was adamant about not confirming anything for the near future. He confirmed they “definitely considered it” and have a prototype of it right now in testing. When a fan asked about the possibility of incorporating a ping system, Keller officially responded. Overwatch developers tease ping system on Reddit The team answered a lot of questions from fans, along with plenty other developers and artists from Activision Blizzard. Aaron Keller, the game director for Overwatch 2, already announced big changes were coming soon to the original Overwatch. After the live stream involving Overwatch 2 on May 20, the team announced that they would take questions on Reddit. The Overwatch developers spoke on a Reddit AMA involving large-scale updates to the original game coming soon, along with teasing a new ping system.
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