Overwatch as a Shared Universe: Game Worlds in a Transmedial Franchise

Joleen Blom's paper contends that transmedia storytelling theory, as developed by scholars such as Jenkins, Klastrup and Tosca, Wolf, and Ryan, does not adequately account for the affordances of games, and it uses Blizzard's Overwatch franchise as a case study to argue for a different framing. Its central thesis is that the game, its comics, and its short films do not constitute a single coherent transmedial storyworld. Instead, the franchise is better understood as a "shared universe," a concept that draws on Benedict Anderson's notion of imagined communities to describe connections that players construct in their imaginations rather than connections the texts establish on their own.

The argument rests on the ontological differences between game worlds and fictional storyworlds. Following Aarseth, the paper emphasizes that game arenas are objectively explorable and rule-bound, and they are often isolated and non-cumulative, with each map standing apart rather than building into a continuous geography. Overwatch's game modes, such as escort, assault, and control, reinforce this structure by prioritizing gameplay over narrative progression. Heroes, too, function primarily as gameplay affordances, and their mechanical roles may contradict the characterizations found in comics and films. Blizzard's practice of introducing new heroes simultaneously through gameplay and story paratexts further illustrates how the franchise's coherence depends on the interplay of separate media rather than on a unified fictional world.

The author's proposed framework locates the sense of community in the experience of play itself. Connections among the game, comics, and films are established on representational and presentational levels through shared emblems, a common developer, and internet access, while the feeling of belonging emerges from players' constant awareness of one another during multiplayer matches. Drawing on Anderson's idea of "homogeneous, empty time," the paper argues that the internet makes this awareness tangible, even though the links between the separate worlds remain imagined. Ultimately, the study concludes that storytelling alone cannot sufficiently capture the distinct virtual world of a game, and that Overwatch is therefore most accurately framed as a shared universe sustained by consumers' ongoing engagement.