Maddy Myers

My Hunt For The Mysterious Man Or Machine Controlling The Blizzard Arena’s Light-Up Halo

The Blizzard Arena stage has a massive light-up halo on the ceiling that serves as a progress bar for Overwatch objectives. As a team captures a point, the halo fills up with that team’s colors. It’s an impressive illustration of who’s winning. And it’s all manual. Or so I’ve been told. The other elements on…

The Blizzard Arena has a slick setup for in-person Overwatch League spectators, featuring screens with the faces of all six players throughout every match, underneath larger screens of their hero lineup. You can’t get that on the Twitch stream, nor can you hear the crowd scream “USA! USA!” whenever Seoul Dynasty makes a mistake.

A Viewer’s Guide To Overwatch League

Overwatch League kicks off tomorrow in the Blizzard Arena in Burbank, CA with a trio of matches starting at 7 pm Eastern. Blizzard will broadcast the league’s games via both Twitch and Major League Gaming. Preseason matches only broadcasted on MLG, which had the dubious benefit of no available viewership statistics. Now that the debut…

Blizzard Can’t Leave Mercy Alone

All of the support players in Overwatch League will have a tough time during the first competitive season, slated to start next Wednesday night, and it’s all because of the character Mercy. The angelic healer has undergone multiple makeovers in the past few months, all with the intent to balance her most controversial ability: the…

How Not To Stop Your Nerdy Child From Becoming A Pro Gamer

Pro gaming has yet to become normalized enough for the parents of America to feel proud of their offspring for pursuing it professionally. At least, not until those children defy all expectations and start making hundreds of thousands of dollars in tournament winnings. Parents of pro gamers told the Wall Street Journal all the tactics…

Maddy’s Top 10 Games Of 2017

Every game on this list served as a balm for the depression cave that I lived inside throughout 2017. I’m pretty sure these games happen to be good even if you’re not depressed, since most of them popped up on my coworkers’ own best-of lists, but I had such a dire need for escapism this…

Tier Lists Are Full Of Shit

Almost no one played as Blanka in Street Fighter IV. This is because the low-tier green Brazilian is weird, doesn’t play like any other character in the game, and is widely considered not to be very powerful. Nonetheless, Street Fighter V is adding Blanka into the game this January after two years without him. I…

This January, Rising Thunder will return as Rising Thunder: Community Edition, including local play and the source code for an open-source server. In March 2016, Riot acquired the up-and-coming fighting game and shut off its servers. The team’s been quiet since, but announced today they’ve “moved on to develop something new.”

What We Liked And Hated About Overwatch League Preseason

Blizzard’s Overwatch League is maybe the most ambitious American esports league ever, and its preseason wrapped up this weekend. The Compete staff, with an assist from our one blogparent that we’re still on speaking terms with, breaks down what went well last weekend and what can be improved for the regular season. The real matches…

The StarCraft Foot Heel Won’t Be Cowed By Angry Brands

Lim “Larva” Hong Gyu won the finals of last week’s Zotac Cup Masters Showmatch while playing StarCraft: Remastered with his foot and pretending to take a nap during the match. Zotac, the hardware company sponsoring the tournament, put out a statement in Chinese threatening to “officially ban Korean player Larva from attending any Zotac Cup…

Snake Eyez Stands By Street Fighter‘s Massive Bear Hug Man

Darryl “Snake Eyez” Lewis is one of the best Street Fighter players in the country. But he barely cracked the top-64 at last month’s North American Regional Finals Last Chance Qualifier, and he’s only ranked 20th on the Pro Tour headed into this weekend’s Capcom Cup. Why is the 2017 CEO champion going to have…

Riot’s Whiny Esports Ad Gets The Response It Deserves

Desus Nice and The Kid Mero just tackled esports on their comedy talk show, thanks to Riot’s latest masturbatory advertisement showcasing League of Legends pro players. Riot’s video, which juxtaposes clips of notable esports haters like Colin Cowherd with emotional esports moments like Faker crying, argues that people should take esports seriously. Mero doesn’t buy…

Philly’s Overwatch League Team Has Pulled Out Of The Entire Preseason

The Philadelphia Fusion, the Comcast-owned Overwatch League team, just pulled out of their pre-season matches, citing “player logistics issues.” The Fusion had been scheduled to play the debut match of the OWL pre-season against the Florida Mayhem tomorrow. Blizzard has announced that the San Francisco Shock will be replacing the Fusion in tomorrow’s match. You’d…

StarCraft Pro Wins With His Foot, Naps Mid-Match, Thinks He’s The Shit (Update)

Lim “Larva” Hong Gyu proved last night that he can win a StarCraft: Remastered match with his foot. During the finals of the Zotac Cup Masters Showmatch, Larva made quick work of his opponent’s base, and in the game’s final moments, he lifted his bare left foot onto the keyboard to tap in a few…

Ryus, Ranked

Some Ryus are better than other Ryus. Here is the official Compete ranking of the following notable Ryus. Hot Ryu Ryū ga Gotoku, a.k.a. Yakuza (for the Wii U, PS2 and PS3) A dragon Young Ryu (from the Street Fighter V tutorial) Ryu Hayabusa (from Ninja Gaiden) Ryu Hyun-jin Ryu Ryu (from Breath of Fire)…

Riot Games Admits They Had No Plan In Place For Abusive Pros

The League of Legends Championship Series has issued a 20-month suspension of Li “Vasilii” Wei Jun in response to abusive behavior he displayed last month on his Twitch channel. During one of his broadcasts, the pro gamer screamed and threatened his then-girlfriend and overturned furniture, culminating in a visit from local police. A few hours…

Fight Me, Paul Tagliabue, In Real Life Or Street Fighter

Former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue doesn’t like the esports trend. He doesn’t bunk with his peers in traditional sports who have leapt to invest in esports teams and leagues. And he doesn’t think esports are “sports.” I think Tagliabue and I would agree on one thing, which is that the term “esports” sucks. It sounds…

Street Fighter Pro’s Wife Does Enough Shit-Talking For The Both Of Them

On Saturday, Marcus “The Cool Kid93″ Redmond fought his way back through the losers bracket in Red Bull Battle Grounds’ Street Fighter V last chance qualifier for Capcom Cup, eventually securing himself the first-place trophy and a spot in the North American Regional Finals the next day. Redmond held his trophy aloft for the cheering…

Esports Is A Mansion Of Butts, According To This Bizarre Ad

It’s a cliche at this point: Every esports experience starts with you sitting in your DXRacer gaming chair, watching some Dota 2 footage in Windows Media Player, with a half-eaten pizza and several print magazines on either side. Then, a redheaded babe wearing a peaked cap and stiletto pumps rings your doorbell to deliver your…

Moira, Overwatch’s new healer, has just gone live. The game’s latest update also includes some nerfs to Mercy’s resurrection skills, which means she’ll probably stop being every team’s number-one pick for support players.