Overwatch League
| League name | Overwatch League |
| Current season | 2020 Overwatch League season |
| game | Overwatch |
| abbreviation | OWL |
| owner | Blizzard Entertainment |
| Commissioner | Nate Nanzer |
| League foundation | 2017 |
| Teams | 20th |
| countries |
 (11) | (4) | (2) | (1) | (1) | (1)
     |
| Title holder | San Francisco Shock |
| Streaming partner | YouTube |
| official website | Overwatchleague.com |
|
↓ Overwatch Contenders
|
|
The Overwatch League ( OWL for short ) is a professional eSports league for the video game Overwatch developed and fully controlled by Blizzard Entertainment . The Overwatch League aims to follow the model of the traditional North American professional sports by using a number of permanent teams and regular season games from, rather than the other eSports common leagues rise and relegation to use. Each franchise team is backed by an owner, and each team is guaranteed a minimum annual salary, benefits, and a portion of profits and revenue shares based on the team's performance during the season. The league was announced in November 2016, and the first twelve teams were formed within a year.
The first season started in January 2018, the regular season will last until June 2018, followed by playoffs and all-star weekend in July. A total prize pool of $ 3.5 million is available to teams in the first season.
format
The Overwatch League is owned by Blizzard Entertainment and operated by the Major League Gaming Organization (which is also owned by Blizzard's parent company Activision ). The Overwatch League plays similarly to most North American pro leagues, with all teams playing against each other in the season's playoffs, rather than being the norm in other esports leagues. The league currently has 20 teams, 12 of which were already represented in the opening season.
In its inaugural season, a number of preseason games were played in December 2017, regular season games scheduled from January to June 2018, and then a playoff for the championship was scheduled for July 2018. All games in the first season will take place at the Blizzard Arena in Los Angeles, with a capacity for 450 spectators.
In the first season, the main season consists of four 5-week stages, three games four days a week (Wednesday to Saturday) and a ten-day break between the stages. Each team plays 40 normal games during the season. 20 against teams in their division and 20 outside their division. At the end of each phase there is a playoff based on the performance of the teams in that phase for a single winner of that phase for a price of $ 125,000. Teams are paid out at the end of regular season play based on their overall rating, ranging from $ 25,000 to $ 300,000 for the first season.
The postseason is based on the teams' performance in all regular games at all stages of the season. The top team in each division receives an automatic free game into the postseason, while the top four teams in both divisions play a play-off match before facing each other in the semi-finals and finals. The winning team will receive $ 1 million and the total prize pool across all stadiums and finals is $ 3.5 million.
Player Eligibility and Benefits
While Overwatch is played in groups of six, league teams can have up to six additional players who can be swapped between games. The membership of a team is blocked at the beginning of the season. In the off-season, teams can bring in new players or swap players between teams. Currently the league is not regionally locked, so teams can use players of any nationality to fill their ranks as long as the team is based in that city or region. For example, the London Spitfire was made up entirely of South Korean players at the start of its first season. The only restriction for players is to be at least 18 years old and able to travel internationally.
Overwatch League players receive an annual salary while on a team contract. In the first year, a player's salary was at least $ 50,000, which was set by the league. In addition, the league offers players health and retirement benefits as well as assistance with accommodation and training. Blizzard required team members to provide the signed players with bonuses that represented at least 50% of the team's profits and revenues. Players can negotiate larger amounts with the owners of their team and share a larger portion of the bonus revenue from tournament winnings and other income. For example, Jay "sinatraa" Won secured the league's top salary of US $ 150,000 for his spot on the San Francisco Shock, along with a 50% share of the team's bonuses.
Players are expected to follow a code of conduct established by Blizzard while playing and representing the league. They can be punished with suspensions and fines if violated, in addition to the penalties imposed by the team themselves. A notable incident shortly after the league started saw Dallas Fuel Félix "xQc" Lengyel suspended from the league for four games and fined US $ 2,000 for commenting on another player who was viewed as homophobic. The Dallas Fuel continued to suspend him for the remainder of the first phase of the game. After further violations of behavior in the second phase, which led to another suspension, xQc was released from the fuel. As part of their benefits, players receive media training to speak to the press and the public about their roles, a problem that has already existed in previous organized esports systems.
Overwatch Open and Overwatch Contenders
Professional teams in the league have the option to search for new players in two additional Blizzard leagues.
The Overwatch Open division, launched in June 2017, allows amateur teams to move from the best players in normal competitive mode (who qualify in the top two levels at the end of the game's playing time) to a structured season and postseason format with intra-regional matches. Players who play all non-playoff games for their team can collect a small amount of credits for Blizzard's digital storefront, while regional winning teams can get higher payouts. The Open division is played in seven different regions: Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, Brazil, Australia / New Zealand and Southeast Asia.
Teams can then advance from the Open Division to the Overwatch Contender League, which is considered the sub-division of the Overwatch League. The Contenders League was used to bring existing regional tournaments (Overwatch Apex for South Korea, Overwatch Premier Series for China and Overwatch Pacific Championship for other Asia-Pacific countries) under the same banner and to expand them to other regions, especially North America and the European series, which comprises a total of five regions. Teams participating can be amateur or sponsored teams, and the tournament is structured similarly to the Overwatch World Cup events, including a structured cash payout for the top ranked teams in each region. Two new regions will be added in the 2018 season, Australia and South America. In addition, the top eight teams in the Open Division in each region will be invited to a Contenders Trial in 2018 to compete in an Promotion and Relegation tournament at the end of a Contenders season in order to compete in the next Contenders season.
regulate
Overwatch is a six-on-six team based first person shooter video game. Generally, the goal is to work with teammates to take down or repel opponents, to make an attack on a target, or to defend a target. Players choose one of 31 heroes from the game, each with their own predefined weapons and skills. However, each player on a team must play a unique hero. A player can switch to an available hero if they are eliminated before standing up again or if they return to their current spawn point, allowing teams to dynamically adjust their make-up based on the current situation.
Within the league game, two teams (one as the home team, the other as the visiting team) are played at least four games in a regular game, with each game having a specified card type (Escort, Assault, Control and Hybrid). . The pool of specific cards from the standard Overwatch rotation is determined at the start of each phase, so teams can determine their player lineups and strategies while changing the season's metagame. A team may only replace players between games. The team that has won the most games wins the game. If teams are tied after four games, a tiebreaker game played on a control card (which cannot end in a tie) will be used to break the tie and determine the match winner. The standings are based primarily on the game's total win / loss, but the ties are broken based on the game's total win / loss. Therefore, all four games are played in one game, even if a team has already won three wins for the game. All other ties for the placement of the tournament are broken first on the head-to-head match win / loss record and then the head-to-head match number. All tournament games are played on five cards with a best-of-three.
Control cards are played in a best-of-three matchup, with teams trying to take a central control point. Once a team has control of a point by removing all opponents from that point for a short period of time, they must defend the point as their percentage of control over the point slowly increases to 100%. If the opposing team can clear the defenders and keep the point clear, they'll take control, even though the original team retains their percentage of control. Once a team has achieved 99% of the required control, the opposing team must be released from the point in order to end the 100% capture and make the round.
The other three card types, Assault, Escort and Hybrid, are based on one team attacking, taking control points and / or moving a payload through control points within a limited time while the other team is defending against them. For league and other competitive games, the games on these cards are played in at least two rounds, with teams alternating between attacking and defending teams between rounds. In league play, the visiting team plays the offensive first and is scored based on how many checkpoints they have captured, and if they cannot fully capture the next checkpoint or escort the payload, how close they are to their next target. The latter is based on the maximum percentage of control over the control point or the most distant area of the payload; however, teams must occupy at least a third of a checkpoint to be considered for this, otherwise their result will be treated as if they had not taken any of it. When the team has successfully completed all objectives, the time remaining (the "time bank") is recorded.
In the second round, the home team must try to match or exceed the value of the visiting team. When the first attacking team has achieved all objectives, the second team must also end the game. Otherwise, the new attacking team will be shown the score they need to get through the game UI and on the map. If they succeed they win the game, and if they fail to get those points it is a loss. If both teams have the same result but no time remains in their time bank, the game is a tie. Otherwise, additional Sudden Deathmatches will be played to try to break the tie. The tiebreaker rules depend on the card type, but in general each team has the option to play as the attacking team, starting with the time left in their time bank to try to get the best possible score. In these sudden death rounds, no time bonus is granted when reaching a checkpoint. Multiple series of sudden death rounds may be required if both teams achieve all of their goals and still have time.
Overwatch League games are played on a custom Blizzard server. This server is also available to league players for practice battles between games. This version of the game will receive similar updates to the main commercial game, adding new maps and heroes, and changing the various hero skills based on tests within the public test servers. However, these updates are not applied immediately as for the commercial game, but instead of more frequently than once every six weeks, effectively between the phases of each season, a natural placement according to Nanzer. For example, a patch from the end of January 2018, which had a significant impact on characters like Mercy and could have disrupted the metagame, was only transferred to the league server in mid-February, at the beginning of the second phase. For matches, each player is equipped with an identical desktop computer, monitor and noise-canceling headphones to eliminate any disadvantages related to computer or graphics processing, but players can use their preferred keyboard and mouse.
history
concept
Overwatch's development began around 2013, at the time when eSports and spectator video games were gaining huge popularity due to the availability of live streaming platforms. However, the development of the game was not dedicated to esports. According to lead producer Jeff Kaplan, "It is dangerous to be tied to esports too early in the game's life" based on Blizzard's experience in esports, and instead planned esports goals by observing the game's community of players. During Overwatch's beta phase between late 2015 and mid-2016, Blizzard observed that players were already forming ad hoc contests and tournaments for the game. According to Nanzer, who was Blizzard's global director for research and consumer insights before Blizzard took over the League's commissioner role, he was considering the potential if they were responsible for setting up these competitions. Nanzer said, "If we set up a league the right way and put the right investment into it, we can monetize it in a way not dissimilar to traditional sports." With that in mind, Blizzard began laying the groundwork for the Overwatch League. Part of this involved adding competitive features into the main Overwatch game, such as ranked players, where experienced players would be able to climb a leaderboard ladder so they can be noticed by eSports team organizers. In October 2016, Bobby Kotick, CEO of Blizzard's parent company Activision Blizzard, first mentioned the Overwatch League, which describes how viewership for user-generated esports content is around 100 million, which is the viewership for professional NFL and NBA games Exceeds provide "professional content" through the Overwatch League to reach these viewers.
The Overwatch League was officially announced at Blizzcon in November 2016. The announcement said the league will have franchise teams that will hire Overwatch players to compete in live arenas and via video streaming. Teams would provide competitors with salaries and benefits and "promote team and player development". Rather than following the format of other eSports that use relegation and promotion like in the League of Legends Championship Series, Blizzard wanted to follow the American model used in more traditional sports. Kotick believed that "nothing like this has really been done before" in esports.
For Blizzard, the cost of running the league would be offset by traditional professional sports league revenue streams, such as advertising and physical league merchandise. Kotick also said that because of the digital nature of esports, Blizzard may also receive revenue from virtual league items to fans, and additional sales from Overwatch and other games, and they are able to make more lucrative "over-the-top" Advertising opportunities that would not exist in traditional sport. " Kotick said shortly before the inaugural season began, "It's a little before you see certain revenue streams, but we're already seeing a lot of traction and excitement from the fans."
extension
Blizzard searched for potential team members to include teams that are located in a geographic area. Blizzard believed that with new activities related to supporting their team, such local teams would generate more interest in eSports from viewers and potential sponsors. A first meeting for future team owners took place at Blizzcon 2016 after the league was announced, with New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke among those attending. During the formulative period, Blizzard hired Steve Bornstein, former president of ABC Sports and CEO of NFL Network, as the company's esports chairman, with a particular focus on broadcasting and presenting games played in the Overwatch League.
Blizzard assumed that the Overwatch League would have a seven-figure payout for the winning team at the end of a season. The league's first, shortened season was scheduled to begin in Q3 2017, with full seasons starting in 2018, with the league having semi-annual season breaks in Q4 of that year. Before the start of the league, Blizzard planned a "combine harvester" in which the players were invited to seek guaranteed team contracts.
Little information about the league came out of Blizzard after the initial announcement in November 2016, leading to some speculation that the league was in trouble. During that time, however, Blizzard worked behind the scenes to engage potential team members who wanted to hold back to deliver big, sweeping announcements instead of information. In May 2017, ESPN reported that the league had struggled to sign franchises that ESPN attributed to two editions. The first were the high base cost of starting a franchise, starting at $ 20 million with higher costs in urban markets like New York City and Los Angeles, and much higher than other eSports League buy-ins. Second, there would be no revenue sharing until 2021, which would make recovering franchise costs difficult. These difficulties result in a delay for the start of the first season. According to ESPN, once the Kraft group agreed to support a Boston-based team (later called the Boston Uprising), it had a snowball effect towards the creation of six other teams.
The first seven teams were unveiled in July 2017 and additional teams were announced in the months that followed. With its first twelve teams hired in mid-December, Blizzard announced that its first season will run from January to June 2018, with a preseason in December 2017 and a championship tournament in July 2018. A possible thirteenth team, supported by Wes Edens, had been in discussion but missed the season 1 deadline.
Blizzard announced in September 2017 that it had acquired a former The Tonight Show facility at Burbank Studios in Burbank, California, which was being converted into the "Blizzard Arena," an esports venue originally used for both Overwatch Adversaries as well as was used for the Overwatch League games, and eventually planned for other Blizzard eSports. With its own arena, the Overwatch League was able to establish itself as an orchestrated event compared to other eSports tournaments and the players could be better connected to their fans. Blizzard launched the first Overwatch attendees at the Blizzard Arena in October 2017 to test the facility's capabilities and make changes to enhance the player and viewer experience in time for the December 2017 Overwatch League pre-season.
In July 2017, it was announced that the Major League Baseball Association was filing a trademark dispute over the logo that Blizzard had registered for the League in its complaint to the United States Patent and Trademark Office that Blizzard's logo was too similar to them and can cause confusion. However, no further registrations were filed by Major League Baseball within the required dispute period, suggesting that either the federation had decided to end the dispute or that the federation and the Overwatch League came to a secret understanding to the league allow to continue to use the logo.
begin
To support viewing of broadcast and streaming media, Blizzard made cosmetic changes to the game. Each of the teams was given a unique color scheme and character skins with these colors and team names / logos were added for these matches. Overwatch players outside of the league can purchase a character's skin using tokens, a special in-game currency that is added the day before the start of the first regular time, but which ensures that the teams receive a portion of the revenue from the Receive your team's skins. Later, at the start of the second phase for the first season, Blizzard offered players tokens to watch the live broadcast of the games on one of the official channels.
Blizzard has also worked to create an AI-based cameraman who can follow the action of the game and select important instant replays. During regular season games, Blizzard employs a team of approximately 80 to 100 people to manage the game and its broadcast. This includes on-screen moderators and interviewers, game speakers or "shoutcasters", "overseers" who use the AI cameraman and monitor a game from different angles to provide viewers with the best view and technical support. Among these, Blizzard has brought to Shoutcast matches including Christopher "MonteCristo" Mykles, Erik "DoA" Lonnquist, Matt "Mr. X" Morello, and Mitchell "Uber" Leslie. Blizzard released a special Overwatch League app in early January 2018, just before Season One began, to provide schedules, results, highlights, and other details on the league's progress.
During the preseason of the first season, the games were only streamed through the Blizzard website and through its subsidiary Major League Gaming. Right before the start of regular time, Blizzard and Twitch signed a two-year deal with Twitch to become the only third-party stream broadcaster for the Overwatch League in the world, with the exception of China. Twitch will offer these streams in English, French and Korean and encourage viewers to watch these streams with in-game items for Overwatch. The deal was reported to be worth at least $ 90 million.
Future extensions
Blizzard plans to expand its geographic reach to have more teams and establish global stadiums and implement home / away team formats, with teams traveling between these locations much like professional leagues. This approach is not expected to be applied until the league's third season. The enduring nature of the teams with the Overwatch League, compared to promotional and relegation formats, would allow team owners to find additional revenue models by running their own stadiums and the merchandising opportunities for them, Morhaime said. In February 2018, after completing the first phase of the inaugural season, ESPN reported that revenue projections for the league exceeded expectations. Some insiders claim the league's revenues were four times higher than originally planned. This was partly due to his Twitch streaming deal and new advertisers like Toyota and T-Mobile who came on board as advertising partners for a couple of weeks. Blizzard plans to start buying investors for new teams in March 2018, but because of the higher projections, Blizzard has stated that the franchise fee for new teams in Season 2 will be greater than $ 20 million. Some reports put numbers between $ 35 million and $ 60 million. While ESPN stated that it should be easy for Blizzard to attract new American teams, teams from Europe will find it harder to invest as they look for security and history to invest. ESPN also noted that South Korean investors are unlikely to be invited as their products do not have global distribution, while many of China's main investors already have potential conflicts of interest with other esports leagues.
While all players were under contract in the first season, Blizzard is not ruling out the potential for players to form unions or otherwise become free agents; Nanzer says that such decisions are left to the players.
Teams
Twelve teams, each based in a global city, competed in the first season of 2018. In the second season eight more teams started. They are divided into two divisions: the Pacific Division with the teams on the American West Coast and teams based in Asia, and the Atlantic Division with the American East Coast and European teams.
season
2018 season
Pre-season game for the first season started on December 6th, 2017. The official season started on January 10th and continues through the finals in July 2018. Teams played at the Blizzard Arena in Los Angeles, although Blizzard hopes teams will eventually compete in future hometowns after traveling. Intel and HP were the league's first sponsors, in multi-year agreements including the provision of HP gaming computers and Intel processors. After the first week, Blizzard announced that Toyota was a sponsor, with the auto company providing support and running competitions for spectators, against the ad space during the games and in the Blizzard Arena.
After the second week of play, Blizzard changed the order of the cards played in a match based on feedback from players and viewers. Originally, the four games were played in the order of Escort, Assault, Control and Hybrid. During the first two weeks, some matches with 2-1 were entered on the final hybrid map, but due to the nature of this map type, it is very easy to get connections to the other map types, which increases the chances of losing the team that uses them last card enters to be able to tie the match; This also results in a non-exciting ending to a game for the spectators. Beginning with the third season of the season, Blizzard swapped escort and hybrid card order, with escort cards less likely to end in a tie and make the finale more tense.
Viewership numbers for the first night of the game through Twitch's English show reached over 415,000 viewers, while never falling below 285,000 once the game started, which exceeds typical Twitch viewership; additional viewers not included include those watching the other voice broadcasts on Twitch, and MLG's own streaming media. Blizzard reported that over 10 million viewers watched the League games in all streaming formats in the first week and that the Blizzard Arena sold out every four days of the week. According to Kevin Chou , the CEO of KSV Esports who runs the Seoul Dynasty, the owners had seen a consistent audience of more than 50,000 during the regular system as a success for their investments.
additional
Some commentators observed that of the 100+ players selected for the teams in the first season, none of them were female. Some noted the absence of Kim "Geguri" Se-yeon, a South Korean teenage gamer who is recognized as one of the most skilled Zarya players and the first woman to play in the Overwatch APEX League. During the press day prior to the start of the season, the teams admitted that they had considered signing on the Geguri but encountered problems with such an action. The Houston Outlaws said there was a language barrier issue with their potential teammates, and there were complications regarding co-ed accommodations for teams. The team also claimed that if they got her on board there would have been questions from outside commentators about whether it was a press stunt or some other legitimate reason, and the nature of that legitimacy would overshadow her career. Other teams like the London Spitfire and New York Excelsior had seen Geguri as a free agent but ended up wanting to work from an established group of players who had worked in leagues in the past. Team members realized that they wanted to make the roster more diverse, but doing so partially makes it necessary to make the community around Overwatch less venomous and more welcoming. Nanzer also said he wanted to see a wider variety of players in the league, but was aware that there are cultures where professional video game players have social stigma that can be an obstacle to doing so. In mid-February, during the first season of Season 1, Geguri was signed by the Shanghai Dragons, making her the first player in the league.
Additional concerns have been raised over several league fines and suspensions imposed on a number of players for their behavior. Journalists found that some gamers carried over the toxic nature of their days as YouTube or Twitch stations, where gamers often routinely ridiculed their opponents; Many of the fines and suspensions are the result of similar behavior that appears at the league level. The Overwatch out-of-league player base also had toxicity issues, which Blizzard is trying to cope with with better reporting tools. In addition to requiring League players to adhere to the Code of Conduct, Blizzard is also monitoring how these players behave during off-league broadcasts, and will punish players who engage in toxic or inappropriate behavior, even if they are not part of one League session are. Some of this bad behavior had affected at least one of the league's sponsors, HP Inc., as the behavior is associated with their brand, although, according to HP Product Manager John Ludwig, such issues were not unique to esports.
Season 2019
The second season began on February 14, 2019.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ 'Overwatch': Birth of a Professional Esports League . In: Rolling Stone . ( rollingstone.com [accessed April 18, 2018]).
- ^ Blizzard to launch pro sports league for 'Overwatch' . In: USA TODAY . ( usatoday.com [accessed April 18, 2018]).
- ↑ Day one of the Overwatch League is officially sold out (in a 450 capacity arena) . In: PCGamesN . ( pcgamesn.com [accessed April 18, 2018]).
- ↑ a b Overwatch League will show matches four days a week, each team will play 40 times a season . In: pcgamer . ( pcgamer.com [accessed April 18, 2018]).
- ↑ a b Veja o que você precisa saber sobre a Overwatch League . In: Dot Esports Brasil . ( dotesports.com [accessed April 18, 2018]).
- ^ Overwatch League teams, structure, schedule and, everything else we know . In: PCGamesN . ( pcgamesn.com [accessed April 18, 2018]).
- ↑ Do You Want to be a Pro Overwatch Player? Here's How Much You Could Make. Retrieved April 18, 2018 .
- ↑ NRG signs 17-year-old Overwatch pro sinatraa for $ 150K . In: ESPN.com . ( espn.com [accessed April 18, 2018]).
- ↑ Hannah Dwan: Overwatch League | Commissioner Nate Nanzer on diversity, player unions and where the league's rules are . In: The Telegraph . 2018, ISSN 0307-1235 ( telegraph.co.uk [accessed April 18, 2018]).
- ↑ Dallas Fuel suspend XQC for anti-gay slurs; OWL fines player . In: ESPN.com . ( espn.com [accessed April 18, 2018]).
- ↑ 'Overwatch' pro suspended for 'racially disparaging' emote . In: Engadget . ( engadget.com [accessed April 18, 2018]).
- ↑ Blizzard boss Mike Morhaime talks about the future of Overwatch League . In: polygon . ( polygon.com [accessed April 18, 2018]).
- ^ The new Overwatch Open Division promises 'more formal' competition for aspiring amateurs . In: pcgamer . ( pcgamer.com [accessed April 18, 2018]).
- ↑ Overwatch's esports is getting a minor league . In: VentureBeat . May 22, 2017 ( venturebeat.com [accessed April 18, 2018]).
- ↑ Australia and South America plans to join Overwatch Contenders in 2018 . In: pcgamer . ( pcgamer.com [accessed April 18, 2018]).
- ↑ The Overwatch League: Teams. Retrieved on April 18, 2018 (German).