esports
The Overwatch viewer offers a world of possibilities ahead of Season 2 of the Overwatch League. With OWL headed to broadcast TV, the viewer could be the Overwatch feature that helps secure new fans.
The Overwatch viewer, debuted at BlizzCon 2018, is set to make big changes to the game at professional level. Currently just a prototype, the viewer is an in-client feature that’s currently exclusive for PC players via the Battle.net client. It allows fans to have the same control over what they see as commentators, meaning that viewers can choose which player they want to spectate at any given time, as well as having access to a top-down view of the match that displays information such as player locations, ability cooldowns, and Ultimate percentages.
The reason that this is important is because in February 2019, Season 2 of the Overwatch League is due to be broadcast on ESPN and Disney. This means that the popular esport will be made accessible to a much wider audience, some of whom will have never watched esports before. In order for people who aren’t familiar with the game to become interested in it, they need to be afforded a degree of control – that way, they can learn at their own pace as the game goes on. Although the Overwatch viewer is currently just a prototype, it’s likely that it debuted at BlizzCon in order to test the waters before it was implemented into how competitive Overwatch is consumed overall.
Power to the players
Although Season 1 of the Overwatch League was a huge success and fans tuned in on a weekly basis to see their favourite teams, it could be a little daunting at times to lack any kind of control over who you were spectating. If Fleta got a Quadruple Kill with his Dragonblade while you were spectating Zunba, watching the replay after the roar of the live audience was never quite the same.
Granted, if you had chosen to spectate Zunba in the first place, it would have been slightly different, making having to watch the replay at least slightly less anti-climactic. By granting players the power to choose who they spectate at any given time, they’ll never really feel as if they’re missing out on any of the action.
As soon as Fleta pulls his D’ Blade, the viewer can instantly make the switch, or perhaps even view his zipping dash resets from a top-down perspective, depending on the preferences of the person watching. This makes viewing the game far more engaging, as offering the spectator the opportunity to instigate regular perspective switches makes paying close attention worthwhile. Perhaps more importantly, though, this feature also helps to educate new viewers on the mechanics of the game – the kind of spectators who may have never even watched a single esports match before.
What’s an esport?
It is true that OWL will likely have a tough time on ESPN for the first little while. Many traditional sports fans may not welcome the change; however, the CS:GO World Final was shown on Sky Sports this year and was received with a unanimously positive reception. After all, esports necessitate the same things as regular sports – they require dedication, hard work, and talent that only a tiny fraction of the world possesses. They’re not something that anyone who likes to play video games as a hobby can just opt to partake in on a whim.
No matter what kind of competition you watch, you can always appreciate when somebody is ostensibly skilled at something. Although the in-client viewer is only a prototype at the moment, if it’s ready for the televised showings of OWL Season 2, it will offer a real pull factor to those who aren’t necessarily familiar with Overwatch, or video games in general.
The fact that this viewer is a completely new and unique spectating feature is also a huge selling point; you couldn’t really strap a camera to Kevin De Bruyne’s head, but you can offer a first-person perspective for all of the players partaking in a professional Overwatch match. Instead of trying to replicate traditional sports, Overwatch can lead the charge toward televised esports by establishing the ways in which it is different to them and championing these ways as its own niche.
Seoul Dynasty? I support Fissure
Since the new Overwatch viewer allows spectators to choose which player they watch at any given time; this means that you could hypothetically spend the entire match spectating a single player. Although it isn’t necessarily recommended, if you have a favourite player, then you can literally just watch their game start to finish. Overwatch may be 6v6, but you can choose to be a fan of an individual player more so than any actual team – if you want to, that is.
This is particularly important not just for spectators, but for newer players who haven’t yet made a name for themselves. At BlizzCon’s Overwatch World Cup, players like Team UK’s Cameron 'Fusions' Bosworth and Team China’s Huang 'leave' Xin absolutely stole the show. Fans who had been testing the new prototype likely spent the majority of their matches spectating those two players, as they hadn’t been seen outside of Contenders before. Each player quickly made a name for themselves, with Fusions getting picked up on a two-way contract by Boston Uprising and Toronto Esports less than a week after BlizzCon.
Seeing so many players going from zero to hero keeps fans in the loop, allowing them to be more involved in the matches and the League overall. This new system offers spectators a real opportunity to engage; instead of half-listening to the commentary while sending a text message, fans can make use of the new-found control at their fingertips, switching between all 12 first-person perspectives and the top-down view to their heart’s content.
One small step for Overwatch, one giant leap for esports
Blizzard’s new client isn’t just important in relation to Overwatch; it’s a step in the right direction for esports as a whole. Although it’s an important feature in the sense that it’s making quality of life improvements for fans of the Overwatch League, it also exhibits a firm sense of self. As an emphatically video game-esque feature, it helps to establish that Overwatch recognises its inherent status as an esport and seeks to build on that. As opposed to conforming to what it isn’t, it’s championing what it is.
This unwavering confidence will be quintessential to its trial run as a commercially televised esport. While long-term fans will certainly tune in to Season 2, the OWL will need to retain the attention of newcomers who may know absolutely nothing about it. What better way to do this than to show off a little? If you’ve got it, flaunt it.
Overwatch is riveting to watch, even for people who may not be completely familiar with it. In order to prove that, though, it needs to be emphatically watched for sufficient time to pique people’s interest. The swanky new in-client Overwatch viewer, if (or when) it’s made compatible with televised matches, will help to keep people engaged for long enough to see JjoNaK get a quadruple kill with Zenyatta, making the atmosphere in the Blizzard Arena spike electric, and better demonstrating the immense energy imbued in Overwatch at professional level. Anyone would find turning that off difficult. The Overwatch viewer will be the catalyst that catapults Overwatch – and if other titles follow, esports in general – into the mainstream.
