Do You Find Value In Video Game Crossover Events?

Today, Blizzard dropped the trailer for the Overwatch 2 x Street Fighter 6 collaboration. This was something we knew about earlier in the week, thanks to an oopsie on the PlayStation Store, but today’s trailer confirmed it.

As I was scrolling through Reddit, I came across the trailer. And, as any good Reddit lurker would, I took a peek at the comments and saw someone ask if anyone else felt “numb” about crossovers. The comment pointed out a few games, including Fortnite, which is notorious for crossovers of all kinds, as examples of just how many we have.

It’s (sort of) a question I’ve pondered myself, although not in the same way. My thought process is “What do these crossovers add?” Many crossovers, it seems, are more of a “this anime, game, whatever is popular right now, so let's throw it in”. Depending on the game genre, that’s not exactly bad. As an example, Fortnite’s world seems built for that kind of thing.

But for those of us who aren’t playing those types of games, but are instead playing games that are heavily story-focused, it can be a bit weird. There have been a variety of crossovers in the games I play. Final Fantasy XIV has done more than a few. Some – like those tied to other Final Fantasy games – make sense. After all, some of the Reflections are based on the worlds of the other Final Fantasy games. Even the Nier raids are designed in a way to fit into the lore of the XIV world. And then there’s the Fall Guys event that pops around whenever the devs need to keep us busy for a while.

Of course, with the last crossover, players get all kinds of silly goodies, and that’s really the point. But from a universe-building standpoint, it’s a little weird.

Another example would be the Genshin Impact x Horizon Zero Dawn crossover that happened a few years back. The collab gave everyone Aloy as a playable character for free. She’s just sat in my character list ever since, with me scrolling past her whenever I’m messing with my roster. I’m sure there are people who have her on their teams, but my narrative, world-building focused brain just rolls right past her.

HoYo announced a crossover event for one of its other games, Honkai: Star Rail, over the weekend. The crossover will bring Fate/stay night characters Archer and Saber to the game. As the reveal was a teaser at the HSR concert, there wasn’t a lot of information provided. So, I’m left wondering if and how this will tie into the greater world of Star Rail. It seems there will be some sort of full event, as while one of the characters will be a login gift, the other will not. Given that HSR takes place on a lot of different worlds, it shouldn’t be too hard to have a solid narrative tie-in. One can hope anyway.

All that said, most of the time, when I see a crossover event, I’m personally not all that excited about it. I’m not upset either. After all, if nothing else, I typically get something free out of it, and it’s difficult to argue with that. But as more and more games roll out with more and more crossovers, I do wonder about the value that actually brings to the game for players. Yes, some people will be excited to see their favorite characters from another IP for a bit. But is that at the expense of the quality of the storytelling in the game these favorites are being brought into?

Also, with games that do these things a lot, do they feel as special as they used to? It’s not exactly novel if you’re doing it all the time.

I do see the point from a dev perspective. On the surface, doing a crossover with a popular IP seems like a way to attract fans of that IP who’ve never played your game before. That said, I don’t care how many times there’s a Doctor Who crossover, I’m not playing Fortnite.