Jeff Kaplan talks about building Overwatch at DICE Summit 2017. These characters were the work of Arnold Tsang.
Jeff Kaplan talks about building Overwatch at DICE Summit 2017.
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How Overwatch became Blizzard’s most hopeful and accessible world

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

Blizzard’s blockbuster game Overwatch is set on Earth, but it’s a place that most people wouldn’t recognize. Set 60 years in the future, the landscapes and maps of the game reflect Blizzard’s own unique vision for how our future will unfold.

Jeff Kaplan described the creative process for building the world of Overwatch in the opening talk at the DICE Summit, the elite game event in Las Vegas this week. The game director’s story showed the behind-the-scenes thinking for building the world of Overwatch, which has sold more than 25 million copies to date.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.