"Overwatch" success by Blizzard Entertainment generated new job announcements by the game developer. These Blizzard job listings hint at the new direction that "Overwatch" will take.
As Parent Herald cites "Overwatch" accumulated 10 million players within a month of its release. By August, this number had risen to 15 million. By October numbers indicated 20 million "Overwatch" players.
Jeff Kaplan reveals some of the major changes in store for Symmetra—coming soon to the PTR! | https://t.co/iTaKciFdmI pic.twitter.com/OcZaiNdjAo
— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) November 22, 2016
Announcements made pre-Blizzcon 2016 indeed evidenced the success of "Overwatch" for Blizzard. Reveals include a goal of future "Overwatch" DLC packs that will fund development and allow free content for players.
The two seasonally-themed calendar "Overwatch" DLC events (the Summer Games and Halloween Terror events) established solid strategy for Blizzard. This kept "Overwatch" fresh and interesting for players.
It should come then as an interest to "Overwatch" players that a job opening posted on the Blizzard US site indicates requirement for a lead software engineer. Particularly, the lucky hiree will be involved in this: "a robust first-person engine for an unannounced project."
Considering that Blizzard supports games well after release – and extremely rarely start new projects over extending and improving their current games, and the fact that "Overwatch" has only been around a few months - the job posting will not be for a new game. Quite probably the job listing is for new "Overwatch" (their only first person shooter) updates rather than a new project.
The requirement for a new engine may come about from the desire to take the game into new directions. Speculation on this could lead "Overwatch" players to a new single player campaign component or a broader PvE (Player versus Environment) component, as teased by the Halloween Junkenstein's Revenge event.
Alternatively, a first-person MOBA gametype is also a possibility. This would require more than the current game engine can provide. In any case, the need to expand the engine means that Blizzard has other ideas for "Overwatch" that most likely are beyond the current engine. “Overwatch” is currently available on PS4, Xbox One and PC.
