Daily Arcade Gaming Podcast

In early May, gamers across the world will get the opportunity to dig into Overwatch a few weeks ahead of its official release. The multiplayer’s open beta will ostensibly be for the purpose of stress-testing the game’s online systems, but considering how close the release date for the full game, there isn’t much time after the beta for Blizzard to implement any changes before the game goes public. Plenty of beta tests have been performed throughout theOverwatch’s development in order to ensure that things run smoothly for the game’s full release. Watch: Equity Arcade discuss this article   Instead, Overwatch’s open beta serves primarily as a marketing opportunity: a small piece of free content to hook players into the game, drum up discussion in online communities, and cement a fanbase for the product in anticipation of later sales. This tactic is being used increasingly often by developers looking to build up interest around their projects and is commonly accepted as fairly standard practice for modern dev