Overwatch was once pitched as 'Monetized Shooter', says Jeff Kaplan

Many players have felt conflicted about Overwatch since the hero shooter rebranded to Overwatch 2, then re-rebranded to Overwatch, and after the introduction of the eye-wateringly adorable Jetpack Cat, who also gets banned all the time for being too powerful. It could have been an even bigger mess: ex-Blizzard vice president and Overwatch co-creator Jeff Kaplan originally pitched the game as 'Monetized Shooter.'

Kaplan tells AI researcher and podcaster Lex Fridman in a recent interview that his idea came in a seven-page deck simply titled 'Monetized Shooter.' The first slide showed the League of Legends and Team Fortress 2 logos side by side.

When Hawley asked Kaplan to give the project a real name rather than an inflammatory placeholder, Kaplan says he immediately replied, 'It's Overwatch' — a name Blizzard developers had once wanted to use for the canceled multiplayer Titan.

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