If you follow the Overwatch forums, you'll most likely know that game director Jeff Kaplan often responds to fans when they have questions or concerns about the game, and now he has responded to one forum post again, this time about the challenges in managing the community.
The thread was concerning whether the Overwatch team had enough staff and why responses were sometimes so slow from the dev team, and Kaplan clarified that responding and communicating isn't always easy.
"When we launched Overwatch in May of 2016 our team comprised 70 developers," he started. "When I say developers, I am specifically talking about artists, engineers, producers, sound/music designers and game designers. We're now at just north of 100 developers. We do have a few open roles (you can check our job site for these) but we mostly feel pretty good about the size of the team in regards to the things we'd like to accomplish. One of the things we value as a team is the concept of doing more with less. Even though I wouldn't say we're necessarily a "small" team as modern development standards go, we're certainly not an overly large team either."
"Our passion and love is for making and playing Overwatch. Things like posting on the forums - for many of us - is not a normal or core part of our job. From Day 1, we felt like we wanted to be a development team that communicated more openly with our player base. We tried to make as many posts on these forums as possible. Our intention -- more than anything - was show a presence and let you know that we're listening. We're not naive enough to think that we can sufficiently address each player's concerns here. But we do want you to know that we - the OW development team - are here with you, listening."
Kaplan also went on to emphasise that the team communicates directly with the fans using real names, not through PR or anything like that, which can sometimes be daunting, especially because once they say they're working on something, that's remembered. It's because of how scary this is that there's only a few people who post mostly, including himself, but they still can't get round to everything.
Do you think Kaplan and the team are managing the community well?