The Overwatch League ruled esports. Then everything went wrong

Activision-Blizzard’s ambitious, much-hyped initiative has stalled.

See full article...

 

[solomonrex]

The key information here is that Korea never had a well developed sporting scene, so esports can expand into a void. Here, it will clearly take longer, and I would point our that most sports spending as viewers and fans comes later in life. Esports are a generation away from 60 year old Gen-Xers like me realizing that we can’t play with carpal tunnel and would rather watch. And I’m not sure these first esports titles have the right appeal for that. If it succeeds, it will look like golf, imo, with a healthy mix of grassroots participation and promotion alongside professional viewing. Perhaps of invitationals to YouTube influencers? Hard to say, but Korea is definitely a one of one case.

And despite what the article says about digital sports, a local scene and socializing is absolutely crucial for sporting. It’s the whole point really. That’s why it matters that the US is already saturated with sports, at least in urban areas where the money is.

 

[Stochastic]

"Many of these titles are fiendishly complex—as they must be to compel professional players. But if a gamer tuned in to a professional League of Legends or Overwatch 2 match, would they understand the stakes or skills involved?"

This is key. I became mildly obsessed with Overwatch from 2016-2018. I played over 1,000 hours and spent hundreds of hours watching live streams and Youtube videos and reading about the game. I tuned in to Overwatch League matches and generally enjoyed them, but there's no way a novice or non-player could parse the action in a game of professional Overwatch. The game is simply too complex and inscrutable for the typical casual viewer. This is also true of many other esports. When I watch a game of Dota or League, even though I understand the basic rules and the game objective, I have no idea what's going on.

Although to some extent indecipherability to novices plagues traditional sports (I have a hard time appreciating American Football), I think most ball-based sports are accessible to casual viewers, including people who never played the sports themselves. Soccer tactics are fiendishly intricate, but everyone can appreciate the skill and athleticism of the best soccer players in the world. And with traditional sports, it's relatively easy to keep track of the game state, who is winning, and what each team is attempting to do.

 

[dwrd]

"Many of these titles are fiendishly complex—as they must be to compel professional players. But if a gamer tuned in to a professional League of Legends or Overwatch 2 match, would they understand the stakes or skills involved?"

This is key. I became mildly obsessed with Overwatch from 2016-2018. I played over 1,000 hours and spent hundreds of hours watching live streams and Youtube videos and reading about the game. I tuned in to Overwatch League matches and generally enjoyed them, but there's no way that a novice or non-player would be able to parse the action in a game of professional Overwatch. The game is simply too complex and inscrutable for the typical casual viewer. I think this is also true of many other esports. When I watch a game of Dota or League, even though I understand the basic rules and the game objective, I have no idea what's going on.

Although to some extent this is also true of traditional sports, I think most ball-based sports are accessible to casual viewers, including people who never played the sports themselves. Soccer tactics are fiendishly intricate, but everyone can appreciate the skill and athleticism of the best soccer players in the world. And with traditional sports, it's relatively easy to keep track of the game state, who is winning, and what each team is attempting to do.

Traditional sports have professional commentators, who are frequently former players, for a reason. I will tune in to The International even though I don't play DOTA because I find the action at that level compelling, and the commentary is good enough that I can start to understand some of the intricacies myself.

My thought is that if an e-sports league can find themselves the next John Madden or Tony Romo and put them in the commentary booth, they will be on their way to becoming the dominant sport of the 21st century.

 

[Stochastic]

Traditional sports have professional commentators, who are frequently former players, for a reason. I will tune in to The International even though I don't play DOTA because I find the action at that level compelling, and the commentary is good enough that I can start to understand some of the intricacies myself.

My thought is that if an e-sports league can find themselves the next John Madden or Tony Romo and put them in the commentary booth, they will be on their way to becoming the dominant sport of the 21st century.

I would argue Overwatch already has that in the form of Mitch "Uber" Leslie. The dude is one of my favorite esports casters. Still, even with his commentary, Overwatch is hard for non-players to make sense of IMO.

I'll also add that the skill of the spectators/camera people is critical in esports. Bad camerawork has plagued the Overwatch League from the beginning. Before the Overwatch League, South Korea had its own Overwatch esports league (Apex). The camera work was notably better than OWL's. The spectators were highly skilled and had intricate game knowledge. Their ability to anticipate plays allowed them to position the virtual camera in just the right spot at just the right time. OWL spectators are decidedly less skillful (or at least they were the last time I watched a couple of years ago), making following the chaos of an Overwatch match all the more difficult.

 

[KeillRandor]

Traditional sports have professional commentators, who are frequently former players, for a reason. I will tune in to The International even though I don't play DOTA because I find the action at that level compelling, and the commentary is good enough that I can start to understand some of the intricacies myself.

My thought is that if an e-sports league can find themselves the next John Madden or Tony Romo and put them in the commentary booth, they will be on their way to becoming the dominant sport of the 21st century.

This. When I first watched an NFL game on TV (Channel 4?) here in the UK years ago, (since I was up late and it was the only thing on), I hadn't a clue about the actual sport itself, but the expert they had on as part of their own presentation (they default to the US stream/commentators during the actual game) was really good at explaining the basics at the time, so it stuck (Mike Carlson). I wouldn't call myself a 'fan' of the NFL, but it's not something I actively avoid if it's on, because I still know enough of the game to follow it properly.

 

[Coppercloud]

This is key. I became mildly obsessed with Overwatch from 2016-2018. I played over 1,000 hours and spent hundreds of hours watching live streams and Youtube videos and reading about the game. I tuned in to Overwatch League matches and generally enjoyed them, but there's no way a novice or non-player could parse the action in a game of professional Overwatch. The game is simply too complex and inscrutable for the typical casual viewer. This is also true of many other esports. When I watch a game of Dota or League, even though I understand the basic rules and the game objective, I have no idea what's going on.

Although to some extent indecipherability to novices plagues traditional sports (I have a hard time appreciating American Football), I think most ball-based sports are accessible to casual viewers, including people who never played the sports themselves. Soccer tactics are fiendishly intricate, but everyone can appreciate the skill and athleticism of the best soccer players in the world. And with traditional sports, it's relatively easy to keep track of the game state, who is winning, and what each team is attempting to do.

This is why I always thought rocket league could be a good break out spectator e-sport. I also thought they should have a platform to stream it in 3d so you could watch games on anything from a Google cardboard like phone rig to higher end 3d headsets. It's simple enough (and with real world analogues) that it's a low barrier of entry for spectators, but has enough defiance of physics to still be solidly in video game space. I just thought the 3D viewing would be a great hook to drive it home.

 

[Orbital Homestead]

The original devs are gone. OW2 is a mess. Even before that happened the league was in trouble. The commentators didn’t really understand how to do their jobs.

 

[Fobus]

Well, Overwatch sucks as a game. It's a well polished blizzard game, but it has a very flat skill curve, where actual skill is in team cooperation. Once player base dwindled, so did any hopes for gigantic Esport scene.

 

[Coppercloud]

Although to some extent indecipherability to novices plagues traditional sports (I have a hard time appreciating American Football), I think most ball-based sports are accessible to casual viewers, including people who never played the sports themselves. Soccer tactics are fiendishly intricate, but everyone can appreciate the skill and athleticism of the best soccer players in the world. And with traditional sports, it's relatively easy to keep track of the game state, who i

At the same time I think you discount the requirement for comprehension before you can enjoy spectating regular sports. I have never played football or soccer, and only really played basic games of basketball in phy-ed. I sometimes witness games because people have them on and am completely overwhelmed with what people are cheering and jeering at. I get the point of the games (put thing in the thing) and even some of the rules (I learned what a first down is! And I understand off sides and out of bounds. I even know what the 3-point line is for) but it still looks like indecipherable chaos to me.

This is especially evident when penalties are called. People will immediately yell about how something should have been called, or shouldn't, or was a good call, and I'm just like "wait, what? Who was I supposed to be watching?"

 

[DrewW]

On a micro level, I think the Overwatch 2 debacle definitely hurt them.

On a macro level, there is no on-ramp for esports. No little league equivalent for kids and no moday night football for adults. I have been an enforcer for multiple Pax East PC Arenas and let me tell you, it's way harder for an ignoramus like me to casually watch esports than psports.

 

[Coppercloud]

On a micro level, I think the Overwatch 2 debacle definitely hurt them.

On a macro level, there is no on-ramp for esports. No little league equivalent for kids and no moday night football for adults. I have been an enforcer for multiple Pax East PC Arenas and let me tell you, it's way harder for an ignoramus like me to casually watch esports than psports.

Yeah, this is huge. You definitely need to be able to scale from youth, to casual adult, to pro, which some of these could but don't on an organized level. But more importantly in the current world of developming a sequel or just losing popularity in 3-8 years anyone who started "little league" overwatch won't be able to play pro overwatch as an adult. It won't be around.

 

[nbs2]

The article suggests that comparisons to the early 20th century are dangerous, but I think it and some of the comments are missing what gave those US based sports (and even those outside the US) a chance to grow.

Those sports weren’t artificially boosted and grown. It was the chaos of teams setting up competitions with one another, often the rules agreed to for just that event. Stronger teams survived, weaker teams dissolved. Teams moved. Most who played were expendable and played for a relative pittance. The stars who could catapult the sport because of their skill and personality were offered significant sums. Growth was organic.

I can think of two significant leagues where that organic growth didn’t happen at the end of the 20th - Major League Soccer and the WNBA. The former is won’t be mistaken for a major league but is doing ok; the latter is still failing to launch. MLS worked, in part, because of its centralized-planning model which gave the league time to get its feet under it. The WNBA is more akin to OWL with trying to copy the model of already established leagues. The difference is that OWL doesn’t have a big brother league that funds the league to ensure continuing operations.

Long term, I think someone will have success in the space. I don’t know if it will be OWL.

 

[bongbong]

How much of a factor was moving from Twitch to YouTube that the article claims to have affected esports popularity? Any hard numbers to back this up? If this is really true, then why not return to twitch and see if this has a positive effect

 

[Lonyo]

ActiBlizz didn't try and take a popular game and make an esports scene for it, they tried to make an esports scene for a new game (which was then moderately popular).

They tried to force it by throwing money at it.

Most other popular games are esports competitions because they are popular games that then got popular enough that esports was a possibility for them. While not necessarily fully organic, they are much more organic than Overwatch.

It was only ever going to be a thing if the game got and stayed popular enough, which could only happen after the fact because the esports side was developer/publisher led and started almost when the game came out.

 

[Ben G]

Yeah, this is huge. You definitely need to be able to scale from youth, to casual adult, to pro, which some of these could but don't on an organized level. But more importantly in the current world of developming a sequel or just losing popularity in 3-8 years anyone who started "little league" overwatch won't be able to play pro overwatch as an adult. It won't be around.

I don’t think it’s just “won’t be able to play pro overwatch as an adult”, it’s also “won’t be able to watch pro overwatch as an adult”.

If you played basketball/baseball/football (either American or world-wide) as a kid, you’ll have a much easier time following a professional game. You’ll have a basic idea of what the players are trying to do and some appreciation for the skill and athleticism of what they are doing versus what you could do.

Sure, I played plenty of video games as a kid, but as a Gen Xer, they were nothing like the games being played for eSports. However, American Football is still basically the same game that I played all those years ago.

 

[Honeybog]

Overwatch League 2022 Summer Showdown, for example, was less popular than the two previous years’ events, according to Esports Charts, with just 51,000 peak viewers—particularly grating when you consider franchise owners pay upward of $20 million to license a team.

So you’re saying it’s an underwatched league?

 

[DJ Farkus]

eSports coverage suffers compared to "traditional" sports for several reasons. These are my biggies having struggled to comprehend coverage of OWL or LoL:

- Lack of focus, or a ball or a "McGuffin". Team shooters are too chaotic to follow, with multiple concurrent matchups playing out at the same time. Invested fans of traditional sports can appreciate deep-strategy away from the ball, but novices can still follow the basic action because the games have a single point of focus.

- Replays. Again, traditional sports are more relatable because we see replays showing athletes with amazing body control doing things we know our bodies can't do. Show me a OWL replay, and it's more difficult to truly appreciate the exquisite millisecond timing, even if a good announcer tells you how hard that move was.

 

[Stochastic]

One problem, is that esports haven't made their way into gambling circles to the same degree as traditional sports. Sadly a whole lot of money comes from gambling in sport because it's easier to understand the physical differences in players/sports than the mental difference in esports.

Gambling pumps zillions of dollars into traditional sports that would probably otherwise fly under the radar. Murdoch has been going big on sports rights and gambling companies at the same time because of the synergy between the two.

If esports could find their gambling audience they'd probably take off. As it is, even if they can get eyeballs it's hard to generate a whole lot of revenue by that itself.

esports gambling is definitely a thing.

Well, Overwatch sucks as a game. It's a well polished blizzard game, but it has a very flat skill curve, where actual skill is in team cooperation. Once player base dwindled, so did any hopes for gigantic Esport scene.

Overwatch has its share of game design problems, but I disagree that it has a flat skill curve. There's a clear difference in skill between good players (Grandmaster rank) and the best pro players.

 

[Lonyo]

esports gambling is definitely a thing.


Overwatch has its share of game design problems, but I disagree that it has a flat skill curve. There's a clear difference in skill between good players (Grandmaster rank) and the best pro players.

https://kotaku.com/match-fixing-report-shows-how-gambling-has-ruined-korea-1772739147https://www.polygon.com/2014/3/18/5522192/korean-league-of-legends-player-fixed-matches-suicide
Also in the UK at least you can go onto mainstream gambling websites and put bets on LoL/etc matches.
https://www.bet365.com/#/AS/B151/

 

[DJ Farkus]

One more important point about eSports vs traditional sports: consistency.

Fans of traditional sports don't become "deep" fans overnight. It typically takes years of watching (or playing) to learn all the strategic subtleties. The games/leagues accommodate this by remaining consistent over the years. Strategies evolve, but the games largely remain the same.

If I put in the effort to become a deeply vested fan of an eSport, I am "rewarded" for this effort by seeing the game quickly become unpopular or superceded by something almost completely different.

It's hard to conceive of a potential eSport game that could maintain popularity, momentum, or consistency for even a decade, much less longer (tho I acknowledge there are still people competitively playing old-school games like Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter).

 

[UndyingShadow]

ActiBlizz didn't try and take a popular game and make an esports scene for it, they tried to make an esports scene for a new game (which was then moderately popular).

They tried to force it by throwing money at it.

Most other popular games are esports competitions because they are popular games that then got popular enough that esports was a possibility for them. While not necessarily fully organic, they are much more organic than Overwatch.

It was only ever going to be a thing if the game got and stayed popular enough, which could only happen after the fact because the esports side was developer/publisher led and started almost when the game came out.

Precisely this. I don't think esports, as a concept, is failing. Blizzard just fumbled it mightily! They focused on esports so hard that they cancelled an entire GAME (Heroes of the Storm) when it failed to become esports fire immediately.

A lot of us who played the game are pissed about that....a lot more when they basically abandoned Starcraft II in the same way.

Blizzard went from one of the most respected gaming companies to the least, because they tried to chase money as an esports company instead of as a game company.

 

[baelnic]

I I liked watching the Heroes of the Storm tournaments. MOBAs ground capturing and overhead camera lend itself to a traditional sports style broadcast. I’ve never really understood FPS broadcasts though. Typical too fast paced and a poor viewing angle for me imo.

 

[NameRedacted]

One problem, is that esports haven't made their way into gambling circles to the same degree as traditional sports. Sadly a whole lot of money comes from gambling in sport because it's easier to understand the physical differences in players/sports than the mental difference in esports.

Gambling pumps zillions of dollars into traditional sports that would probably otherwise fly under the radar. Murdoch has been going big on sports rights and gambling companies at the same time because of the synergy between the two.

If esports could find their gambling audience they'd probably take off. As it is, even if they can get eyeballs it's hard to generate a whole lot of revenue by that itself.

I might agree except that in North America at least, sports gambling has only been legal for a few years, and in the few years before that only as “Fantasy Sports”, and evens then, only for the past 15 years.

With the current advertising landscape, it’s easy to forget that we all grew up in a world essentially devoid of sports gambling. Yet sports survived fine.

 

[ArcBaltic]

On a macro level, there is no on-ramp for esports. No little league equivalent for kids and no moday night football for adults. I have been an enforcer for multiple Pax East PC Arenas and let me tell you, it's way harder for an ignoramus like me to casually watch esports than psports.

It really depends on the esport. Fighting games and Smash for example being grass roots competitions have a massive structure of online and offline small scale tournaments with low barriers to entry. And their communities have built a lot of infrastructure to make onboarding new players into the scene significantly easier over the years. Other esports shepherded by like Riot and Valve have similar community based infrastructures around them though the upper level is no where near as organic.

Activision Blizzard didn't wait for organic growth of it's scene. In fact it actively tried to snuff out anyone who wanted to host smaller scale tournaments unless they were super tiny. ABK for the most part ignores it's self created minor leagues which has created this weird feedback loop of a few farm teams is South Korea being the place where a majority of the OWL talent comes from. Esports that didn't snap their fingers and spend 100s of millions of dollars overnight to conjure a scene have shown pretty consistent healthy growth,

That said we're starting to see a paradigm shift where potential competitors have realized that being a full time content creator pays better, offers better longevity, and has significantly less stress. I think that realization is probably more detrimental to the longevity of esports.

 

[WhiteShadow]

There is clearly an audience for esports, but because game change all the time esports its impossible for it to be as big as the traditional sport. If league like the NFL change to a completely new sport with different rules every five year it would not be as popular as it is today.

 

[truth serum]

One problem, is that esports haven't made their way into gambling circles to the same degree as traditional sports. Sadly a whole lot of money comes from gambling in sport because it's easier to understand the physical differences in players/sports than the mental difference in esports.

Gambling pumps zillions of dollars into traditional sports that would probably otherwise fly under the radar. Murdoch has been going big on sports rights and gambling companies at the same time because of the synergy between the two.

If esports could find their gambling audience they'd probably take off. As it is, even if they can get eyeballs it's hard to generate a whole lot of revenue by that itself.

Gambling on esports is huge in China. Probably one of the reasons OWL is doing so strong there. The downside is sometimes there are some awfully questionable outcomes in APAC matches.

 

[solomonrex]

One more important point about eSports vs traditional sports: consistency.

Fans of traditional sports don't become "deep" fans overnight. It typically takes years of watching (or playing) to learn all the strategic subtleties. The games/leagues accommodate this by remaining consistent over the years. Strategies evolve, but the games largely remain the same.

If I put in the effort to become a deeply vested fan of an eSport, I am "rewarded" for this effort by seeing the game quickly become unpopular or superceded by something almost completely different.

It's hard to conceive of a potential eSport game that could maintain popularity, momentum, or consistency for even a decade, much less longer (tho I acknowledge there are still people competitively playing old-school games like Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter).

StarCraft in Korea had more than a decade and built a TV following, as it turns out. There are increasingly “evergreen” titles like Minecraft, Forza, Fortnite, etc to a certain extent, perhaps it just needs a little more time to develop.

 

[randomcat]

The fact that traditional sports and esports both involve "games" does not make them interchangeable in terms of monetization.

They seem to think that esports will appeal to the combination of all gamers and all pro sports fans to create a customer base bigger than either one, when they're really looking at a narrow cross-section of customers who like both. That's fine, that's a market, but it's going to be a niche source of revenue for the foreseeable future in comparison to unit sales of games or ticket sales for traditional sports.

 

[Resolute]

As someone who did enjoy watching OWL since its inception, there are two additional factors the Wired author is missing:

The first is that Blizzard completely abandoned Overwatch for three years to focus on the awful 2.0 update. A stagnant game meant declining interest in Overwatch, and therefore OWL. The league runners tried to counter this and keep the league a little bit fresh with gimmicks like randomly banning heroes for periods of time - literally, randomly. They were drawn out of a hat. But when people stopped caring about part of Overwatch's ecosystem, they stopped caring about all of it.

The second is that the meta shifts were sometimes so crazy that the gameplay lacked cohesion from month to month while also introducing many dreadful metas that simply were not fun to watch. GOATS is the biggest example of this. It was shit to watch, shit to play, happened right at OWL's peak, and lasted so long that people got bored. IIRC, that was the genesis of the random hero bans. To try and break that up.

But the OW 2.0 update has only made things worse. They launched last season on OW 2.0, even though the update had not released yet for users. That came out in the last season segment before the OWL playoffs. And with it came two new heroes (Sojourn and Junker Queen) that Bliz needed so badly to sell players on coming back that they were horribly broken. And that shifted the OWL meta so hard that literally every week of the regular season to that point meant nothing. A team that was good in one meta was dreadful in this one. It also led to what is easily the least enjoyable phase of the game/league's history as Literally every team picked the same 5.5 heroes for literally every single map. Four of five spots were locked hard, and the fifth was Sojourn or Ashe, depending on situation. There was no variety at all.

So what does Bliz do? Nerfs the shit out of Junker Queen and releases another new horribly overpowered hero for the playoffs. Which, again, made all that came before meaningless.

OWL sucks because the game sucks. The game sucks because they can't figure out how to make the game fun. And as a consequence, OWL sucks more. It's a death spiral that is so deep that Blizzard should really just shutter the whole thing.

 

[Rauth85]

E sport ruined wow. Imagine if there was never arena.

Just everyone go back to tf2. It has hats.

 

[metavirus]

It’s almost as if there was a way to watch high-caliber gaming competitions for free on some sort of free distribution medium, not hampered by local monopolies and local team broadcast blackouts. From that perspective, hanging out in a crowded stadium to watch things going on on a TV seems rather quaint- and niche.

Edit: grammar fails

 

[LesDawg]

Speaking as a guy whose interest and involvement in electronic gaming both began and ended with Pong, Tetris, and Space Invaders, I have to say this is one aspect of modern digital culture that I totally do not get. I'm totally willing to agree that any non-criminal activity that some people find entertaining to watch is legitimate entertainment. But can I really claim to understand the attraction of watching someone watch a computer screen? Nope.

 

[metavirus]

Speaking as a guy whose interest and involvement in electronic gaming both began and ended with Pong, Tetris, and Space Invaders, I have to say this is one aspect of modern digital culture that I totally do not get. I'm totally willing to agree that any non-criminal activity that some people find entertaining to watch is legitimate entertainment. But can I really claim to understand the attraction of watching someone watch a computer screen? Nope.

It does make me fascinated to ponder what weird meta shit Gen AA will come up with to out-do watching other people watch other people watch people play video games. Yes, it’s a thing.

 

[Antz37]

Overwatch League 2022 Summer Showdown, for example, was less popular than the two previous years’ events, according to Esports Charts, with just 51,000 peak viewers—particularly grating when you consider franchise owners pay upward of $20 million to license a team.

So you’re saying it’s an underwatched league?

I think he's saying that the franchise owners were sold lemons based on graphs where line went up.

 

[acscitech]

Honestly, I'm surprised they didn't fumble this operation sooner. While I'm sure other factors played a role, I'm not surprised it ended the way it ended. Considering how Heroes of the Storm turned out, and those leagues and tournaments, the amount of hype and build up, and then came the crashing free fall. Looks eerily and unsurprisingly similar.

 

[hasib]

Traditional sports also manage to be popular among people who never develop a deep understanding of the game play. Regional rivalries, maintaining ties with their old schools, family traditions, tail-gaiting at the venues, having a reason to gather at house parties and bars are all reasons that people are sports fans. Many of these combine into a social web that is compelling even to people who don't care about the actual games or know the rules, players, etc.

I really don't see eSports making headway here (but if it does, more power to them).

 

[truth serum]

""So what does Bliz do? Nerfs the shit out of Junker Queen and releases another new horribly overpowered hero for the playoffs. Which, again, made all that came before meaningless.""

This right here. Blizzard has learned nothing. I've been a die hard OWL fan since the beginning and I didn't even watch the playoffs because it was so nonsensical.