Overwatch League's Inaugural Season

The Latest Craze in eSports, the Overwatch League

The Overwatch League (OWL) is taking the gaming community by storm. Week after week, the Twitch audience numbers keep increasing. Between the numbers, the talent, and the broadcasting team, the OWL is on the fast track to success.

The OWL is composed of 12 regional teams with up to 12 players each that compete in the Blizzard‘s Overwatch. The league is broken down into 5 stages which are five weeks long and each team plays two matches a week. Each match contains four maps with a fifth map tie breaker, if needed. The team with the most match and map wins then proceed to stage playoffs where the champions take home $100k in winnings and the runner up team $25k. At the end of Week 4, there are League Playoffs, Grand Finals (worth even more money), followed by an All-Star Weekend.

The players

Most of the competitors are between the ages 18 – 24. Essentially, they’re still kids and some of them still act like them. Already the league’s dealt with toxic players, illegal activity, and just downright childish actions. During the short tenure of the Overwatch League, there’s been sexual misconduct allegations, racist/homophobic comments, and crude hand gestures to the audience/camera to name a few. From a management standpoint, it looks like the league is currently babysitting a bunch of kids and supervising them playing video games.

Despite the immaturity, I can’t take away the fact they’re still very talented at the game. If you’ve ever played Overwatch, then you know how hard it is to make the headshots with Widowmaker on a flying Pharah. Consistently sticking a pulse bomb on an opposing Tracer or ult-ing Genji is challenging to say the least. These players do it time and time again and seemingly with perfect ease. Talent is the foundation of the Overwatch League and it’s what brings in most viewers every week. These eSports “athletes” give the standard or casual Overwatch player some new strategies and possibly even a new level of gameplay to aspire to.

The casters

Speaking of gameplay, while fun to watch, the highlight of the entire Overwatch League experience is the casting, hands down. The commentators, including my favorites Erik “DOA” Lonnquist and Christopher “MonteCristo” Mykles, are what really bring the entire production together. They deliver high energy play-by-play analyses during gameplay and bring an unmatched level of excitement that keeps the audience on the edge of their seats. Without them, OWL matches would be as boring as watching your siblings play video games with the music and sound off, and really, who wants that?

If DOA and MonteCristo are the the John Madden and Al Michaels of the Overwatch League, then the desk analysts are the JB, Terry, Howie, Michael and Jimmy (sorry for the NFL reference). Analysts include Chris “Puckett” Puckett and two to three other rotating members like Soe “Soe” Gschwind, Jonathon “Reinforce” Larsson, and Josh “Sideshow’ Wilkenson. The team breaks down each match, map-by-map, while giving viewers insight on the how, where, why, when teams may have broken down or excelled.

Puckett runs a very professional desk and keeps the production moving and on schedule between the breaks in gameplay. He does an excellent job keeping the desk on the subject at hand and segues from topic to topic like a champ, even though I do miss the T-Mobile crowbar from time-to-time from Goldenboy.

Future of the league?

In the end, the OWL is going through some growing pains in its inaugural season, and that’s to be expected. Those growing pains will only turn into learning experiences and make watching the league that much more enjoyable. Hopefully we’ll see some older players or at the very least, some more mature attitudes from the competitors. Yes, they’re young, but they’re being paid to play on an international stage, have some self respect. Infractions should be dealt with harsher punishments just like any other pro sport out there. Maybe that will make athletic sports rethink their system.