Blizzard on how it "failed horrifically" with Titan

Blizzard's Overwatch, the upcoming shooter that's generating a massive amount of hype, is just around the corner, but the team working on it was previously working on Titan, a cancelled MMO that was never even properly announced.

Blizzard designer Jeff Kaplan recently spoke with Gamespot about Titan, saying how the studio "failed horrifically" when making it: "You had a really amazing group that was working on Titan, they were really talented individuals, but we failed horrifically in every way ... In every way that a project can fail. It was devastating."

Kaplan goes on to talk about the pressure of working at a studio as successful as Blizzard, and working on a game that ended up being canceled.

"Nobody said a word, everyone was super supportive, but I think there was this inward embarrassment of like, 'No, we need to prove that we're worthy of being at Blizzard too. We can make something that makes the company proud.' It was a trying period of time and there was a lot of pressure. The team is used to pressure, but never quite at that magnitude, and it helped to forge us in a lot of ways."

This failure caused the team to do a little soul-searching and ended up with them feeling driven to create something brand new, leading to the creation of Overwatch. If the team had to go through one (albeit massive) failure to come up with what is looking to be another Blizzard home-run, then it was probably worth it.

Overwatch is a team oriented first-person shooter, and releases on May 24 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. An open beta will begin for the game on May 5. You can read our most recent preview of the game here.