Maddy Myers

What Stops Women From Going Pro In Esports

Cecilia D’Anastasio: So Nintendo invited a bunch of Super Smash Bros. pros to showcase Smash 5 at E3 this year! And among some of my favorites—Armada, Zero and Hungrybox—are exactly no women. I didn’t notice an outcry. Frankly, it was about as surprising as walking outside and noticing the sky, which was very much not…

Overwatch Pocket Healing Explained In Two Minutes

Overwatch League matches move fast, and one key aspect of clutch plays often stays off-screen and unacknowledged: the support players who heal up the pros pulling off those killstreaks. Most of those successful takedowns happen while the damage-dealing player is in the pocket—that is to say, getting healed continuously by a support player. When that…

Turns Out We Have Thoughts On Brooklyn Nine-Nine Getting Canceled

Today, Fox announced that Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s fifth season will also be its last. As it turns out, many of us Kotaku and Compete watch the show, and we have some thoughts. Here’s a lightly edited transcript of how we reacted in our work Slack channel when the news dropped. Also, we found out which of…

Shanghai Dragons just lost their second coach this season. Wang “RUI” Xingrui, who came aboard after Chen Congshan stepped down last March, will exit due to “health issues.” Shanghai remains Overwatch League’s only winless team

Coach Crusty Switches Overwatch League Teams After Ten-Match Winning Streak

Head coach Da-hee “Crusty” Park just left the Boston Uprising for the same job with the San Francisco Shock, one day after the team narrowly missed out on winning every single game in the Overwatch League’s third stage. Yesterday, New York Excelsior won the title and put a stop to Boston’s undefeated streak. Even with…

Dating Sim Monster Prom Rewards Some Pretty Ghoulish Behavior

In most dating sims, it’s obvious how to romance your crush. You just talk to them over and over, selecting the nicest dialogue responses until your persistence is rewarded. Monster Prom flips that script by introducing both character stats and a competitive multiplayer component. In Monster Prom, you’re a monster attending a monster school who…

Geguri Holds No Grudges

In 2016, Jae-mo “Xepher” Koo was part of the Korean Overwatch team that wrongfully accused Kim “Geguri” Se-yeon of cheating. Just two years later, Xepher is a flex tank player for the Overwatch League’s Seoul Dynasty, while Geguri is the league’s first woman According to the manager for the Korean team, Dizziness, the accusing players…

Hearthstone‘s Beloved Game Director Quits

Hearthstone director Ben Brode announced today that he would be departing his job at Blizzard and plans “to help start a new company.” Brode’s departure comes as a shock to Hearthstone fans; the game designer has worked for Blizzard since 2002, starting out as an entry-level game tester and moving up the ranks and becoming…

Evo 2018 will allow Super Smash Bros competitors to play using the Smash Box, a controversial alternative to the aging Gamecube controller. Evo’s decision marks the pinnacle in an ongoing debate among Smash tournament hosts about controller rules.

The Overwatch League’s Dallas Fuel Keep Firing And Suspending People

The Overwatch League’s Dallas Fuel have released both their head coach Kyle “KyKy” Souder and star DPS player Dong-jun “Rascal” Kim. It’s the latest in a long line of roster shifts and struggles for the team, which has underperformed for the past several weeks Their biggest issue initially was the suspension and subsequent firing of…

Five Cool Indie Games To Keep On Your Radar

Last weekend at PAX East, I scoured the show floor for indie game demos great and small. I previously played Omensight, Spearhead Games’ time travel murder mystery, and chatted with the developer last Friday. Here are five more games I can’t wait to play in their entirety. Monster Prom Beautiful Glitch’s Monster Prom is a…

Hearthstone Director Reveals ‘The Craziest Card We’ve Ever Made’

Hearthstone’s upcoming expansion, The Witchwood, will drop on April 12, and game director Ben Brode feels “very worried” about one specific card in the new set. This past weekend at PAX East, I got an advanced look at the set and let Brode get his anxiety off his chest. This card in particular has given…

Cosplayers of League of Legends’ Kindred (Lamb on the left, Wolf on the right) make their slow, spooky way across a skywalk at PAX East 2018.

Adorable Animals Star In A Time-Travel Murder Mystery

On paper, Omensight sounds like a long list of elements that don’t seem to fit together. But it works. It’s a murder mystery that requires you to read every line of dialogue and keep track of subtle clues. It’s a time travel story, with the hero reliving the same day over and over, each evening…

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds stations dominate the Xbox booth at PAX East. Behind that, the PlayStation booth opted to front-load Detroit: Become Human, with a couple of setups for upcoming titles like Soulcalibur VI and Yakuza 6 buried in the middle rows. Nintendo’s big draw is the Wolfenstein II Switch port demo.

The most topiary-packed booth at PAX East hosts Deathgarden, Behavior Interactive’s newly announced multiplayer action blood sport game. The greenery of this garden is not alive. It never was. Plasticgarden

League Of Legends Star’s Brother Charged With Stabbing Their Parents, Murdering Their Mother [UPDATE]

Yihong Peng, older brother of League of Legends superstar Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng, was arrested and charged with the murder of his mother and assault of his father on Saturday in San Juan Capistrano, California. According to a statement by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, Peng’s 59-year-old mother Wei Ping Shen was stabbed to death. His…

Let Geguri Live

This past week, 18-year-old Kim “Geguri” Se-yeon took to Twitter to say that she felt ugly and fat. This is pretty standard for someone in that age bracket; Geguri just is the first female player signed to an Overwatch League team, expected to make her competitive debut as Shanghai Dragons’ new flex tank next week.…

Overwatch League’s Code Of Conduct Got Leaked [UPDATE]

Esports broadcaster Richard Lewis posted a scanned hard copy of what he says is the Overwatch League rulebook today—about two months after commissioner Nate Nanzer said he would but still hasn’t done so. What the 35-page leaked documents show is incredibly sweeping. If these rules are still in place, it means that Blizzard owns the…

How Esports Gambling Works

The first few months of Overwatch League’s inaugural season have already resulted in unexpected upsets, emerging tactics, and drama between players that has resulted in pros getting fined, benched, or released from teams. That stuff isn’t just fun to follow and grist for the content mines: it’s moving betting lines. Overwatch is the newest league…