Blizzard's new team-based multiplayer shooter, Overwatch, is set in a futuristic version of Earth, but it's not so separated by time and space as StarCraft, or as fantastical as Warcraft and Diablo. The game's diverse cast of characters come in a variety of shapes and sizes, genders and non-genders, ethnicities and ages. Look at the game's 12 confirmed characters, and you'll see an eclectic bunch.

That's by design, the developer says. It wants players to feel well-represented by its cast of men and women (and robots and gorillas).

During a press conference at BlizzCon today, Blizzard's Chris Metzen and Jeff Kaplan were asked about the representation of women in their new game and their approach to designing female characters. Metzen responded that Overwatch is indicative of a change in how Blizzard thinks about and designs its heroes.

"We've heard [from] our female employees and ... even my daughter tools me out about it," he said. "We were looking at old Warcraft stuff on YouTube, a cinematic ... and my daughter is like, 'Why are they all in swimsuits?' And I'm like 'Ugh, I don't know, honey.'

"I think we're clearly in an age where gaming is for everybody," he continued. "We build games for everybody. We want everyone to come and play. Increasingly, people want to feel represented, from all walks of life, boys and girls, everybody. We feel indebted to do our best to honor that. There's a lot of room for growth, but specifically with Overwatch, over the past year we've been very cognizant of ... trying not to over-sexualize the female characters. I don't know that we've over-sexualized the male characters. But it's something that we're very sensitive to."

"We want that to be a part of who we are, what our brand looks like and appears to our community. Mike [Morhaime] talked in a roundabout way to that in his speech this morning. So it's something we're very cognizant of. We want girls to feel kick-butt, equally represented."

"We want everybody to feel kick-butt," Kaplan added.

Metzen was also asked about how nervous he and the Overwatch team were in launching a new property, the company's first in a long time. Instead of recounting nervousness, Metzen talked with a sense of relief about what games like Overwatch are doing for Blizzard's company-wide morale and sense of creativity.

"For a lot of years, World of Warcraft, it blew up so insanely. We had no idea what that would do," he said. "While that business got its feet under it — honestly, we almost became the World of Warcraft company for a while there... I think we did really good work, but there was a spark that got eaten by the scale of this mammoth business. What you see happening, the last couple years, with Hearthstone and Overwatch, I feel like: We didn't go anywhere, but we're back. I feel like this studio's sense of raw energy and creativity, the focus and appreciation for smaller scale projects, has been rekindled.

"World of Warcraft is our most precious product, we obviously have a great team driving that business, but you start to see this spark now, smaller points of engagement that are totally driven by passion, by people geeking out of their minds. You can feel it around the studio. It's wonderful. After 20-something years it's the coolest time to be at this place."