Battleborn (2016)
Battleborn was a hero-shooter that was released near the release of another major hero-shooter mentioned in my previous blog, Overwatch (2016). The release of these two games stirred the pot for discussion of if there were room for two games with very similar character design and somewhat similar gameplay design to coexist in the oversaturated market of popular multiplayer shooters. In its lifetime, the game’s active player count peaked at just around 12,o00 players. In one of the last days of Overwatch‘s existence, the active player count reached around 9.2 million players. The game, including its online-only singleplayer campaign was shut down on January 31st, 2021. The game was announced in 2014 and was called “the most ambitious video game that Gearbox (The developers) has ever created.”
Lawbreakers (2017)
Lawbreakers is another, multiplayer first-person hero-shooter that the gaming community once again stirred the pot as another title similar to Overwatch. While a couple aspects like its twitch-shooter-esque (fast paced) nature and gamemodes should have separated comparisons with Overwatch, it didn’t stop the gaming community to speak out about how much the game reminds them of the then year-old hero-shooter. Like games of its genre, it features a roster full of characters with varying personalities, abilities and because of this, it struck the gaming community as a valid point of comparison to Overwatch. Similar to Battleborn, Lawbreakers saw a peak player count of under 8,000 players on steam.
More info on these games
Two videos were made on these games by the youtuber known as Crowbcat that document the moments before they were released and the delusion of their lead developers and shortcomings in video game advertisement. I will link them below, warning for language.
