This means that in this game and its peripheral media, players are in a continuous process of having to piece together, re-adjust, and change their understanding of the constantly fluctuating characters in the game product they have already bought and played. Yet Blizzard Entertainment frequently adjusts the game’s heroes to the extent that complete mechanics of the heroes are changed around, as in the case of Mercy’s overhaul. Overwatch too uses characters to create a narrative landscape in its peripheral media on which the competitive matches of the game take place, frequently updating the game with new heroes, which not only broadens the narrative landscape, but also lets players explore new gameplay possibilities in each individual match. Within our current transmedial practices, fictional characters are a vital component of users’ engagement with media such as novels, films, comics, and games, among others, and play a major role in the strategies that companies employ to attach users to their products (see Brooker 2012 Harvey 2015 Pearson 2019 Blom 2021 Nakamura and Tosca 2021). Overwatch (Blizzard Entertainment 2016b) represents one such product: being systematically altered by Blizzard Entertainment so that the players’ interpretative agency over their meaning-making-how they make sense of the game and play it-is heavily subjected to the developer’s evolving authorial intentions.

However, more than ever before, games require constant internet connection to be played, which grants developers, such as Blizzard Entertainment, the possibility to alter their content rapidly and frequently based on fluctuating financial and other strategic needs. The players of games, like anyone who engages with media content, do not simply consume, but take an active part in the construction of the game to create their own unique version of the work (Mortensen 2003). According to Ebony Elizabeth Thomas ( 2019), in our participatory culture of the digital age, the meaning of media works is constantly negotiated as more people participate in writing, reading, playing, and watching different media for work and leisure. This change to the hero caused the player to not only adjust to how they engage with Mercy inside the Overwatch game, but also influenced how they perceive her as a fictional being-as a character, that is. Of Overwatch’s healer characters, in August 2017, Blizzard Entertainment changed the healer’s ultimate ability to resurrect all allies at once to one where her abilities were only amplified in order to prevent Mercy players to hide until her ability was ready to be used.

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