If I have to hear Chris Puckett ask if the crowd thinks the Shanghai Dragons can win their first game in their history of the Overwatch League forty more time I might just believe it’s possible. Fans’ affinity to rooting for the underdog has carried over to esports to a prevalent amount, but what are the best stories to tell when you want to get and keep an audience?
If we look at the most recent Smash 4 tournament at Evo 2018 we saw the least hype grand finals and thousands crying “dead game!” because Bayonetta is brokenly good. We even saw a crowd booing these Bayonetta players - and booing in esports is still a touchy subject. So who’s to blame in this situation? Is it the players for picking the overwhelmingly best character to stack the odds or the balance of the game? Ok, maybe a bad question, the answer is most definitely the latter, but when you’re a tournament organizer with the most eyes on you as there ever will be, some foresight into this would have helped tremendously. Nintendo, tournament organizers, or the players themselves needed to figure out a way to prevent this, whether it be implementing a ban system, implementing a balance patch, or disallowing DLC characters. But this also requires a closer look at the fighting game community as a whole. It’s much less the creators of these games or large tournament organizers telling these stories, it’s the fans, the independent casters, and the players that tell stories. And when you don’t want to hear a story of two broken characters interest dies and nobody’s around to tell a better tale.
Let’s take a look at League of Legends and how Riot tells their stories. League has been around for almost ten years now and is in its eighth competitive season. If we look at the growth of League’s competitive scene it’s not a stretch to say Riot has been getting things right, but to foster such a community they must continuously do it right and they must learn from mistakes. Their need to tell a better storyline begins in season 3 with the rise of Korean dominance. Up until season 3 every region seemed blissfully confident that they could compete on the Worlds stage without worry until the infamous caster and analyst MonteCristo broke all illusions and boarded the Korean hype train. It shouldn’t have been so much of a surprise, Korean esports players and teams have dominated multiple scenes since competitive gaming has been a thing, but Monte’s smug attitude and grand affinity for Korean teams hit a nerve with the community and evidently Riot as he became the poster child for the West’s salt. But he was right, and we’ve seen Korean dominance at Worlds since. The storyline has evolved since then, and Riot understands that if they want viewership at Worlds they need to tell better stories and get the fans involved and educated. To Riot’s credit they’ve done a great job at bridging language barriers and made these Korean teams approachable for a Western audience. We don’t get a whole lot of exclamations to the crowd of “Who thinks NA is going to win worlds?!” but instead we get discussions from Riot and teams themselves talking about how the West must adapt if they want to be competitive at these international tournaments. We’ve seen deeper analysis presented well from both NA and EU analyst desks with the occasional meme thrown into Jatt and Quick Stats and it’s made League fun to watch.
Aside from Riot’s East vs West storyline they’ve also had to battle meta perceptions. For the less gaming savy the meta includes all strategies outside of the game. Generally this relates to which champions are picked, who goes to what lane, what items to purchase, etc. When I talk about the meta it’s almost always going to be about champion picks and which ones are overpowered. And have there been some overpowered picks over the years. Worlds 2015 was an absolute mess of a meta where a pre-Worlds patch went live that made multiple champions so good if they weren’t banned they were picked to 100% win rates. At the time it still seemed taboo to talk about your employer’s balance team and topics of overpowered champions were talked around more than directly addressed. Casters and analysts seem to have come around to directly address problematic champions and what teams can do to stand more of a chance against these picks. It tends to be less undersold than in the past, and it’s refreshing to get realistic outlooks on what can be done against even the most overpowered of picks.
One final thought on League and why it is still a thriving esport. Because it’s been out for so long fans have been able to rally behind teams they’ve grown to love. Nearly every pro team has their own half-documentary half-reality show to keep fans invested. Many of these teams are multi-esport teams and this is great for the growth of esports as a whole. The more fans connect to teams the more games have potential of growing scenes and the more cross-esport storylines can be told of team histories, rivalries, drama, and future.
And thus I’ll transition into the Overwatch League and why it hasn’t held my interest nearly as much as other esports. The Overwatch League began its inaugural season by establishing teams around the world rooted in already established franchises. Household names like Cloud 9, Immortals, and NV became the London Spitfire, LA Valiant, and the Dallas Fuel. This effort was meant to attract more newcomers to the esports scene, but ended up isolating its most hard core fans as they continued to try to cater to this new audience. It was an interesting strategy that mimics traditional sports but it especially fell flat for me when there was no Chicago or even Midwestern team. They tried to fabricate rivalries between the two LA teams and the two Texas teams, but when it came down to it the story told was still an East vs West tale, who could stand up to NYXL, Spitfire, or the Dynasty - all Korean rosters scattered throughout the globe. As the season went on my perception of the league continued to dwindle, the storylines were uninteresting, the inner-team drama was immature and messy, far too few rivalries naturally formed, and the majority of matches became predictable 4-0’s. Then we have the Shanghai Dragons that didn’t take one series the entire season. This didn’t come as a big surprise either, during the preseason almost every analyst predicted them to do poorly for many various reasons, and regardless of the reason the Dragons were an embarrassment to the league. The overall performance level of the league did rise though, and the East vs West storyline became more interesting, and more inclined to be told, as the Korean trio began losing games. In the end though it was a Korean team dominating the finals, with more pleas of “Who here thinks the Fusion can not get 3-0’d?”. All of this being said, there is room for growth and improvement, both from the players and how the league tells its stories. Rivalries will more naturally form, deeper analysis between teams can be presented, personalities will rise, and storylines do not have to be pushed as hard.
In the end it proves to be hard to sell storylines for new games and new leagues without any history to present to the fan base. As much as I harped on the Overwatch League they did well to gather a new and growing fan base for many of their teams. It’s apparent I was not their target audience but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t feel hopeful for its future. As the league grows and history is written more interesting storylines can be told and more fans can hop in. I look forward to the continuing growth of the industry and credit Blizzard for getting many people interested that likely would never have considered watching video games to be a thing anybody would do.
If we look at the most recent Smash 4 tournament at Evo 2018 we saw the least hype grand finals and thousands crying “dead game!” because Bayonetta is brokenly good. We even saw a crowd booing these Bayonetta players - and booing in esports is still a touchy subject. So who’s to blame in this situation? Is it the players for picking the overwhelmingly best character to stack the odds or the balance of the game? Ok, maybe a bad question, the answer is most definitely the latter, but when you’re a tournament organizer with the most eyes on you as there ever will be, some foresight into this would have helped tremendously. Nintendo, tournament organizers, or the players themselves needed to figure out a way to prevent this, whether it be implementing a ban system, implementing a balance patch, or disallowing DLC characters. But this also requires a closer look at the fighting game community as a whole. It’s much less the creators of these games or large tournament organizers telling these stories, it’s the fans, the independent casters, and the players that tell stories. And when you don’t want to hear a story of two broken characters interest dies and nobody’s around to tell a better tale.
Let’s take a look at League of Legends and how Riot tells their stories. League has been around for almost ten years now and is in its eighth competitive season. If we look at the growth of League’s competitive scene it’s not a stretch to say Riot has been getting things right, but to foster such a community they must continuously do it right and they must learn from mistakes. Their need to tell a better storyline begins in season 3 with the rise of Korean dominance. Up until season 3 every region seemed blissfully confident that they could compete on the Worlds stage without worry until the infamous caster and analyst MonteCristo broke all illusions and boarded the Korean hype train. It shouldn’t have been so much of a surprise, Korean esports players and teams have dominated multiple scenes since competitive gaming has been a thing, but Monte’s smug attitude and grand affinity for Korean teams hit a nerve with the community and evidently Riot as he became the poster child for the West’s salt. But he was right, and we’ve seen Korean dominance at Worlds since. The storyline has evolved since then, and Riot understands that if they want viewership at Worlds they need to tell better stories and get the fans involved and educated. To Riot’s credit they’ve done a great job at bridging language barriers and made these Korean teams approachable for a Western audience. We don’t get a whole lot of exclamations to the crowd of “Who thinks NA is going to win worlds?!” but instead we get discussions from Riot and teams themselves talking about how the West must adapt if they want to be competitive at these international tournaments. We’ve seen deeper analysis presented well from both NA and EU analyst desks with the occasional meme thrown into Jatt and Quick Stats and it’s made League fun to watch.
Aside from Riot’s East vs West storyline they’ve also had to battle meta perceptions. For the less gaming savy the meta includes all strategies outside of the game. Generally this relates to which champions are picked, who goes to what lane, what items to purchase, etc. When I talk about the meta it’s almost always going to be about champion picks and which ones are overpowered. And have there been some overpowered picks over the years. Worlds 2015 was an absolute mess of a meta where a pre-Worlds patch went live that made multiple champions so good if they weren’t banned they were picked to 100% win rates. At the time it still seemed taboo to talk about your employer’s balance team and topics of overpowered champions were talked around more than directly addressed. Casters and analysts seem to have come around to directly address problematic champions and what teams can do to stand more of a chance against these picks. It tends to be less undersold than in the past, and it’s refreshing to get realistic outlooks on what can be done against even the most overpowered of picks.
One final thought on League and why it is still a thriving esport. Because it’s been out for so long fans have been able to rally behind teams they’ve grown to love. Nearly every pro team has their own half-documentary half-reality show to keep fans invested. Many of these teams are multi-esport teams and this is great for the growth of esports as a whole. The more fans connect to teams the more games have potential of growing scenes and the more cross-esport storylines can be told of team histories, rivalries, drama, and future.
And thus I’ll transition into the Overwatch League and why it hasn’t held my interest nearly as much as other esports. The Overwatch League began its inaugural season by establishing teams around the world rooted in already established franchises. Household names like Cloud 9, Immortals, and NV became the London Spitfire, LA Valiant, and the Dallas Fuel. This effort was meant to attract more newcomers to the esports scene, but ended up isolating its most hard core fans as they continued to try to cater to this new audience. It was an interesting strategy that mimics traditional sports but it especially fell flat for me when there was no Chicago or even Midwestern team. They tried to fabricate rivalries between the two LA teams and the two Texas teams, but when it came down to it the story told was still an East vs West tale, who could stand up to NYXL, Spitfire, or the Dynasty - all Korean rosters scattered throughout the globe. As the season went on my perception of the league continued to dwindle, the storylines were uninteresting, the inner-team drama was immature and messy, far too few rivalries naturally formed, and the majority of matches became predictable 4-0’s. Then we have the Shanghai Dragons that didn’t take one series the entire season. This didn’t come as a big surprise either, during the preseason almost every analyst predicted them to do poorly for many various reasons, and regardless of the reason the Dragons were an embarrassment to the league. The overall performance level of the league did rise though, and the East vs West storyline became more interesting, and more inclined to be told, as the Korean trio began losing games. In the end though it was a Korean team dominating the finals, with more pleas of “Who here thinks the Fusion can not get 3-0’d?”. All of this being said, there is room for growth and improvement, both from the players and how the league tells its stories. Rivalries will more naturally form, deeper analysis between teams can be presented, personalities will rise, and storylines do not have to be pushed as hard.
In the end it proves to be hard to sell storylines for new games and new leagues without any history to present to the fan base. As much as I harped on the Overwatch League they did well to gather a new and growing fan base for many of their teams. It’s apparent I was not their target audience but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t feel hopeful for its future. As the league grows and history is written more interesting storylines can be told and more fans can hop in. I look forward to the continuing growth of the industry and credit Blizzard for getting many people interested that likely would never have considered watching video games to be a thing anybody would do.
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