2328: Play of the Game

I’m really enjoying Overwatch. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I think it’s the first competitive multiplayer game that I’ve actually wanted to “git gud” at enough to be truly competitive in the online sphere. I don’t know if I actually have the skills or the talent to be able to do that, of course, but I’ve been performing reasonably well in the current “Quick Play” mode — effectively a “pre-season” warm-up — and getting a good feel for characters. So much so that when the proper Ranked Play mode makes an appearance in the near future, I feel confident stepping in and attempting to prove my worth.

Overwatch is also helping me to understand the appeal of e-sports. I’m still not entirely sure I would ever want to sit and watch a game of Dota 2 or something (as opposed to actually getting stuck in and playing it) but, playing Overwatch, I certainly feel something while I’m playing. It’s particularly thrilling to claw back victory from the very jaws of defeat, and all of Overwatch’s various game modes are well constructed to always make this a distinct possibility, meaning it’s pretty rare to feel like you’re being completely dominated unless your team is particularly incompetent.

It’s quite entertaining to see the varying reactions of people you play against. Competitive gaming culture has, for the most part, instilled the impulse to type “gg” (Good Game) after a match has concluded — the online equivalent of a friendly handshake after a sports match — and more often than not you’ll see this shorthand pleasantry being exchanged once the victor has been decided. (It’s occasionally accompanied by “wp”, which means “Well Played”).

But there are some people out there who don’t like losing. Some people like the guy who responded “no” to my “gg” after one match because he lost, and he didn’t like losing. People like the guy who, in all caps, told his entire team to uninstall the game and that they were a “useless fucking team” after losing; he didn’t like losing, either. And people like the guy who judged everyone on which character they picked, with sniper Widowmaker obviously being “for noobs”.

Then, of course, there was the Chuckle Brothers my friend James and I encountered earlier, who starting sniping at each other in chat during the match and gradually escalated to threats to “wreck” each other. I may have prodded the fire a bit, but it was too hilarious not to troll a little bit; by the end of the match they’d both made themselves look like complete douchebags to the other participants, and one in particular (who was on the opposing team, who lost against me and my comrades) seemed to think that the fact he’d killed my character several times somehow made him superior than me and the rest of my team.

Me, I don’t mind if I win or lose, because games of Overwatch are good fun, and the game is balanced well enough that I’ve only had one or two matches that I felt were completely imbalanced, and that was largely because the opposing side was using unconventional tactics that none of us knew how to counter. (Six Torbjorns is a force to be reckoned with… until you figure out Roadhog and Pharah.) It’s a competitive game, after all, so by its very nature there has to be a winner and a loser in each and every match. If you want to win more, you practice and get better, just like anything — just like real sports. There’s no sense getting angry and throwing a tantrum over it, because, more likely than not, that’s just going to alienate you and make you less likely to be able to put a coherent team together — and coherent teams with good communication will always perform better at this sort of game.

I’m very interested to see how Blizzard plans to implement the ranked system into Overwatch; while I’ve never played Starcraft 2, I understand its online ranking system is pretty comprehensive and gives you a good idea of where you stand in relation to the rest of the community, so I’m expecting something similar here. I’m also expecting the game to have a good, long lifespan; Blizzard has a good track record of continuing to support its games over time — particularly those with multiplayer components — and with Overwatch proving as popular as it apparently has been so far (the amount of fan art out there already is insane!) I think we’ll be seeing Overwatch tournaments and leagues for a good few years yet. And, for the first time, I want to be part of them.