1 Overwatch Game Was Inspired By The Unlikeliest Source, Developer Confirms

Have you ever wondered what makes a shot successful? Monitoring so satisfying? Sure, the visual feedback is great, but it’s the audio cue that really gives the feeling of a job well done. This “seed“Sound has become an iconic part of the beloved hero shooter experience, but its origins might surprise you.

It turns out that the sound that has been giving gamers an adrenaline rush for years was inspired by something completely unrelated to gaming. In fact, it’s a sound that many are intimately familiar with, even if they’ve never set foot on a virtual battlefield.

How a Beer Bottle Became Overwatch’s Most Iconic Sound

The revelation comes from the Monitoring Collector’s Edition sourcebook, in which sound design supervisor Paul Lackey shared the story behind the game’s hit detection sound.

According to Lackey, the team went through several iterations to try to find the perfect sound that would stand out from the mix without being too intrusive or sounding like it belonged to a specific hero:

TIL: The sound of Overwatch punches is the sound of a beer bottle being opened
byu/Ohrwurms in Overwatch

That’s right — the satisfactory one”seed” that players have come to know and love is actually the sound of a beer bottle opening, flipping, and twisting slightly. It’s just another example of the creativity of the sound design team at Snow stormbecause they managed to transform something so banal into an integral part of the Monitoring experience.

On that note, however, some players have even suggested taking the beer bottle inspiration a step further:

Comment
byu/Ohrwurms from the discussion
in Overwatch

While it may seem a little too obvious, it’s clear that the beer bottle sound struck a chord with gamers.

A Toast to the Future: Will Overwatch 2 Bring More Boozy Inspiration?

While most players embraced the beer bottle-inspired sound, some questioned the logic behind using a reverse sound effect.

After all, if the original sound is that of a bottle opening, doesn’t the reversed version technically represent a bottle closing?

Comment
byu/Ohrwurms from the discussion
in Overwatch

Other players have grown nostalgic and expressed a desire for more customization options for typing sounds, similar to those available in Team Fortress 2:

Comment
byu/Ohrwurms from the discussion
in Overwatch

It is interesting to note that, even though this comment was made over 8 years ago, Overwatch 2 still doesn’t offer any customization options for hit sounds. It seems like Blizzard is sticking with the beer bottle inspired sound and has no plans to let players change it anytime soon!

As the game continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see if the sound design team Blizzard may find other unexpected sources of inspirationIn the meantime, we’ll have to stay tuned and keep our bottles of beer close at hand.

What do you think about the origins of MonitoringThe ‘s shot detection sound? Does knowing it’s an inverted beer bottle opening change the way you look at things when shooting in the game? Let us know in the comments below!