Blizzard Designer Talks Titan MMO Failure!

Overwatch is the highly anticipated new game from Blizzard. But before that game ever came to be, the team behind Overwatch were working on the mysterious “Titan” MMO also for Blizzard. It was in development for years until it truly crashed and burned. Being scrapped entirely. Even though Overwatch came as a result of that, Designer Jeff Kaplan, still remembers the failure. He told Gamespot:

“You had a really amazing group that was working on Titan,” he said. “They were really talented individuals, but we failed horrifically in every way … In every way that a project can fail. It was devastating.

You had these people who either came from other companies or from within Blizzard, and were used to working on games that were very successful like a World of Warcraft, for example. To go through such a complete and utter failure is very hard for people who are used to experiencing success.”

Ultimately, the failure of Titan helped lead the team to work harder on their next project, which was Overwatch, and it united them in their desire to make a hit:

“I think a lot of us were asking ourselves, on an individual basis, that question. So when it came to move to Overwatch there was an extremely tight bond on the team and a ravenous hunger to show the world that we’re not failures and we can make something really fun.”

By all estimations, Overwatch looks to be another hit. We’ll see for certain on May 24th.