Happy post-BlizzCon, everyone! And what a BlizzCon it was. Putting on this event is always a labor of love and dedication, and we hope everyone had a fantastic time celebrating Overwatch with us. I’m Eric Elliott, a member of the Comms team for Overwatch and the Lead Producer on Questwatch. As we rest and recover from the weekend, I would be remiss to not take a few moments to write out a huge thank you to this community for embracing this very weird and fun and simply delightful TTRPG experience, and to also share a brief behind-the-scenes look at how it came together. And of course, to my partners-in-crime in bringing this all together, Lara Tran, Kim Horn, and Megan Reardon.
Megan has often said that the venn diagram of Overwatch and Tabletop fans is a circle, and it has been so emotionally fulfilling to see her proven true. She and I first committed to trying to do this following the 2025 Overwatch Spotlight, and every single person who we pitched it to immediately jumped on board to bring it to life. Truly, the easiest pitch either of us have ever been part of. Putting this together behind the scenes was a dream come true, and to watch Matt, Anjali, Chiara, Carolina, and Darin bring it to life may have caused a few tears to be shed (understatement, to be clear).
In celebration of putting this unique panel together, we have been beyond fortunate to also get to use it as a means to raise money for Make-A-Wish®. So, if you haven’t had a chance, head over to the online auction to check out and bid on some special items before the auction ends on Sunday the 20.
With the short time we have you here, I would love to showcase some of the absolutely bonkers work members of the Overwatch team did to create those items:
Matt Mercer during an early test play through of QuestWatch.
First-off, the story. Jude Stacey came up with several delightful story pitches, but one immediately stood out to everyone: Questwatch, a return of Overland from Season 5, that integrated the BlizzCon reveal map of Watchpoint: Grímsvötn. Matt Mercer then ran with this in spectacular fashion!
Once we had the story and main location, we had to have a map, right? Mike Hardison jumped in to build Grimstone Keep from scratch. Mike is one of our game lighting experts, and pulled inspiration from the actual upcoming in-game map in the design elements of this physical set. Once hand-crafted, he painted the map, complete with custom LED lighting to make the lava glow!
And then came the minis! Justin McMillan went through numerous iterations in designing the miniatures. He used base models of our Heroes then combined aspects of different skins to match the feel of their Questwatch counterparts. Let us know on social if you can figure out which skins were used! And then after all of that, he went through various printings to get the size and details just right.
One of the coolest parts of minis is the painting. And having a world-class miniatures painter as the game Art Director doesn’t hurt, so in came Dion Rogers to bring to life our intrepid Heroes. The extra details and flourishes are bonkers, and will surely captivate the auction winners as much as they have this team.
You can bid on the game-used mins, an extra painted full set, as well as an unpainted set.
One cannot play without dice, so Myrna Sayuri Kusano took the task to heart. The Overwatch Hope and Talon Fear dice are my personal favorite details.
For Matt, he needed a special GM Screen. Mike Hayes designed, cut, and sewed this leather screen (signed by Matt Mercer) that includes special Talon-Fear markers printed by Justin and painted by Dion.
To add the ultimate touch, Sadie Boyd came in and designed a new Questwatch logo to add flavor to the screen. Sadie also worked on the gorgeous on-screen assets!
Even more work than this went into everything, including Keyart led by Nesskain, a special site set up by Jude Cross for crowd participation at the Anaheim Convention Center, and Brian Weers led audio design and musical cues.
This blog was almost 4x longer but with too much detail than we really have time for today, so we may share even more in the future, but for now, I need to once again thank everyone. From those on the team that created beautiful items, to the brilliant VAs, production crew, cosplay creators Kai and Migi, brilliant dev partners I may have forgotten, and everyone who has supported this. Overwatch is a special universe we get to all be part of, and to be able to expand it in such a way has been a dream come true.
Thank you, and let’s make a great game!
