I was ready to write off Overwatch as just another game.

A well-meaning, incredibly polished game and amazingly fun game, but not something that I thought was going to be an eSport. I got in during the first beta weekend and while I had fun, there were many things that felt fundamentally flawed about Overwatch that led me to conclude that it won’t be a successful eSports title.

But with the re-opening of the beta and the improvements that the Blizzard team has put in place, it seems that the team behind Overwatch is dead-set in turning it into the next pro shooter.

WELL-POLISHED. After the first wave of beta tests, the Overwatch team came back with updates to the game that greatly improved the gameplay experience. But is it enough to push it into eSports?

As the world’s largest games developer, Blizzard certainly has the experience, resources and clout to turn just about anything into the next eSport. Their latest push into creating a studio dedicated to be the “ESPN of videogames” certainly won’t hurt Overwatch’s chances, but in a world where competitive videogames are saturating the market, does Overwatch have what it takes to survive and thrive?

Read: Activision-Blizzard’s Grand Plan: A TV Channel for eSports

Today, where every game developer wants to make the next big thing™ in eSports, I believe that there are three ingredients for a successful competitive title: A. Layered experience and accessibility B. Skilled gameplay C. A rich spectator experience

A layered experience

Immediately, Blizzard’s design chops become apparent in this department. Without missing a beat, a new player can start playing any of the Overwatch heroes currently available without having to spend an extra minute reading up on complicated abilities. Even the more skill-testing heroes have kits that make sense and are often better learned by just playing. Experienced players who main certain heroes however are noticeably better at playing them than beginners.

This is called a layered experience. For the most part, Overwatch is easy to get into yet it retains a level of complexity enough that experience can bring out the potential of heroes. This is a concept that the current crop of eSports titles (with the exception of FPS like Counterstrike: Global Offensive) defy, but is rapdily becoming more important. With so many games coming out of the woodwork that cater to your core, competitive gaming audience, having a title that can get casual people to play and keep them trying to get better is a hallmark of good competitive design.

But if a layered experience is so important, how can games like Dota 2 and League of Legends (both games that have a ridiculously steep learning curve) continue to grow year over year?

This is where accessibility comes in. A competitive player-base that drives the tournament scene is always a small-part of your actual, total player-base. Games like Dota 2 and League of Legends are able to support a competitive environment in part because they are free-to-play games.

The accessibility of eSports titles and their competitive population comes down to sheer numbers. If only a fraction of your Overwatch players turn pro or even bother to be competitive, then having a significant barrier to entry prices out potential pro players.

There is hope however. Today’s fastest rising eSports title, CS:GO, is not a free-to-play game. It continues to do well however as it is a relatively cheap buy-in, especially when compared to Overwatch’s hefty $59.99 price tag.

Skilled gameplay

Notice that I mentioned that for the most part, Overwatch has a good level of complexity. While I fundamentally think that this is true, there are some current design decisions within Overwatch that stifle skilled gameplay.

In order for a competitive scene to truly blossom within a game, it needs to reward skill in a way that players can reasonably deal with situations through better play. One only needs to look at the history of the Smash games to see this in action.

Competitive players from Smash Melee initially flocked to the latest release, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and found that at the top-tier of competition, skill wasn’t nearly as rewarded as picking Meta Knight or camping the right side of the screen.

Overwatch has some fundamental flaws that mimic this. Overwatch’s current design is easy to compare to Team Fortress 2 (TF2), but after a few rounds, it really feels more like a cross between older FPS titles like Quake with TF2 sensibilities.

Matches play out quick, with a lot of one-on-one duels coming down to good movement control, positioning and aim. Skills are varied and there’s theoretical counter-play involved, yet some elements leave a lot to be desired. Instead of rewarding skill, they reward certain hero picks more.

COMBINATIONS. On some maps, combinations of heroes are currently too much to handle. Torbjorn and Bastion in particular, can be a handful on maps with small chokepoints.

Bastion (a robot that transforms into a stationary gun turret) on some defense maps (first half of Hanamura for example), paired with Torbjorn (a builder-hero that puts down automatic gun mounts a la TF2’s Engineer) make matches feel bland.

The rework on Bastion doubling his HP and armor on turret mode and Torbjorn’s auto-lockon on his turrets, coupled with the nerfs on offensive flanking heroes such as Tracer and Genji, make counter-play nigh impossible on some maps.

Similarly, Junkrat on second or third round LiJiang Tower is a nightmare and will demand multiple flanking heroes to deal with. On some maps, chokepoints are very narrow, making a Junkrat literally just aiming upwards and left clicking a multi-kill machine.

Yet the seeds of a great, skill-based game is embedded in Overwatch. One way that the design team can foster strategic thinking is in creating a new competitive mode built to balance some combinations of heroes. The newly deployed Control mode (reminiscent of King of the Hill) has the makings of it, but it isn’t enough.

Instead of Control, I would like to see a mode where rounds start by locking in team compositions before the fight. Teams then cannot switch heroes until they are done with the round. This can give the game an element where teams have to commit to their strategies, giving it a whole new strategic dimension. Hero picks and compositions would not guarantee victory however, as teams then have to execute properly, giving Overwatch more tactical depth.

After a round is complete, teams can then go back to the drawing board with what they learned or what the next round demands of them and redraw a new line-up of heroes. It will also allow people to follow the action better as opposed to having chracters switch on the fly.

Good for the spectators is good for the game

Overwatch has some great play to it, but it needs a little extra juice. A great viewer experience is something that’s becoming an increasingly important cornerstone to compete in a saturated games market.

Compare Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone. One has an unexpectedly successful eSport scene develop around it simply because its a joy to watch and spectate. The other is a simplified MOBA that still retains the opacity of Dota 2 and League of Legends.

In order to understand why a clean, visual experience for the spectator is important, let’s compare Overwatch to CS:GO. CS:GO is a game that has a very clean visual experience and a very pronounced language of how matches and rounds flow.

It’s easy for spectators who have zero prior knowledge of the intricacies of CS:GO to watch, follow and be excited. For the uninitiated, it literally does boil down into: “There’s a guy there. Shoot him and you win.”

This, combined with a deep, layered experience and strategy, is the winning recipe for CS:GO. For newbies, seeing a person shoot another person or plant a bomb is easy to digest. For fans, watching the in-game buy round decisions or a late-game site retake skirmish is an experience to behold.

Overwatch, by comparison, combines the opacity of MOBAs (owing to multiple heroes doing wildly different things) with a frenetic, 3D-explosion symphony. It can get really chaotic to watch.

CHAOTIC. Overwatch’s gameplay is extremely fun, although it’s visual noise might confuse spectators.

Luckily, Blizzard has announced plans for a spectator mode. I would like to see them also integrate robust broadcasting tools into Overwatch to help casters follow the action from a bird’s eye perspective that can cut across the visually noisy design on some maps. Quake III did this with fixed camera positions that took a wide-eye view of the action despite the chaos of multi-color laser beams and rocket jumping. I grew up watching Quake tournaments on the Arirang channel so an improvement of that can go a long way.

Conclusions

Overall, Overwatch is a very enjoyable play experience and one that I’m confident can make the transition into a competitive title despite its drawbacks. A clean execution that fosters skilled gameplay and takes care of your spectators can do wonders for Blizzard’s latest shooter.

Until then, fans will patiently wait for even more goodies from the development team…or just a damn beta key access.

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