Esports

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…

My First Night As A Philadelphia Fusion Fan

I’m too old for this. “This” is the official viewing party of the first match of the Philadelphia Fusion, the Overwatch League team owned by Comcast. I’m 34, and I’m at a college bar in West Philadelphia on a Thursday night. It’s crowded. I’m surrounded by cosplayers, cheerleaders, college kids and actual kids. I did…

Last Night’s Dallas-Seoul Game Showed How Fun Overwatch League Can Be

The Overwatch League’s first night of competition kicked off with hundreds of thousands tuning in on Twitch to watch a slightly tuned up broadcast, OWL’s experienced commentating crew, and two boring, lopsided opening games. Both the Los Angeles Valiant and the Los Angeles Gladiators steamrolled their opponents (San Francisco and Shanghai, respectively) without much resistance…

Overwatch Pros Showed Us Their Best Snipes, Dunks, And Hogs On Opening Night

The inaugural day of the Overwatch League was, overall, pretty cool. Several players rose to the occasion, showcasing the stark contrast in skill between a professional Overwatch player and your average Hanzo main. From hooks and headshots to an old sniper dunking an explosive tire, here were some of the best plays that I can’t…

A couple audience members at the Overwatch League season one debut just got their Pepe sign taken away. They’d been using Pepe, a meme commonly associated with alt-right movements, to cheer on Dallas Fuel. Oddly, the video feed in the arena briefly zoomed in on it at one point. Eventually, the two audience members were…

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.

No Overwatch League Team Signed The Game’s Most Notable Female Pro To Their Roster

LOS ANGELES, Calif.—During yesterday’s Overwatch League media day in Los Angeles, one of the most mentioned names belonged to a player who’s not even on an OWL team. Kim “Geguri” Se-yeon, a top-level Zarya player who overcame a rash of cheating accusations and threats in 2016, was on the tip of everybody’s tongues, but nowhere…

Fighting Game Legend Plays Street Fighter And Vampire Savior At His Wedding

The people who actually get married at a wedding have so much to do—write the vows, master the cadence of the walk to the altar, personally greet everyone in attendance—that it leaves a miniscule amount of time to really take in the whole affair. One iconic fighting game competitor, however, felt it was important to…

No One Knows How To Run An Overwatch League Team Yet

When it launches tonight, Overwatch League will become the biggest undertaking in the history of esports. Backed by massive investments from sports billionaires and tech companies, esports, if you choose to believe the hype, has finally grown up. And yet, despite the fact that Overwatch League is ostensibly a global undertaking with teams “based” on…

Report: Twitch Signs Two-Year Deal With Overwatch League Worth At Least $90 Million 

Overwatch League’s two-year deal to stream its matches on Twitch is the biggest such contract in esports history, worth at least $90 million, according to a new report from Sports Business Journal Twitch will stream all regular season and postseason contests and serve as the sole broadcaster for half of the league’s 12 weekly matches,…

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…

A Split Keyboard Built For Esports

Split mechanical keyboards are a great way to reduce the arm and joint strain often caused by typing on a traditional keyboard. New gaming hardware maker Dygma wants to bring those benefits to the esports scene with the Raise, which they’re calling “the world’s most advanced gaming keyboard.” Split keyboards have been around for years,…

Tyler1 Takes Over Twitch In His Return To League of Legends

After his indefinite ban from League of Legends was lifted last week, Tyler1 made his return to streaming the MOBA game on his Twitch channel today, decked out in full Draven cosplay. The virtual seats filled pretty quick. In his first game back, the opposing team recognized Tyler and banned his signature Draven. As he…

There’s an official Overwatch League app now. It gives you quick access to match streams, VODs, a season schedule, team standings, results (with or without spoilers), alerts that matches are happening, and a few other odds and ends. Seems useful! You can grab it for free on the App Store or Google Play

StarCraft Players Forced To Re-Do Matches After Tournament Gets Seeded Wrong

The 2018 StarCraft II season got off to an early start today with the European qualifiers for WCS Leipzig. Early might have been too early though, as 30 minutes into the matches, admins had to rebuild the tournament’s bracket. While matches were taking place, one player noted in the lobby chat that seeding for the…

Genji On The Roof

Liam “Mangachu” Campbell is a Canadian Overwatch player who’s quite good, as shown in his use of Eichenwalde’s rooftops to strike with Genji’s ultimate. Campbell is still a free agent, if any teams are still looking to fill out their roster.

Green Bay Linebacker Played Dota 2 For Months Under Ridiculous Name

Blake Martinez of the Green Bay Packers not only tied for leading the NFL in tackles this season, but also finds some time to play Dota 2 on the side. Though he currently plays under “Packernation50,” Martinez told the story of his induction to the cult of Dota at yesterday’s Captains Draft 4.0 tournament—including his…

Overwatch APEX Tournament Series Is Over

Ahead of the kickoff week of Blizzard’s Overwatch League, South Korean cable network OGN announced that its long-running Overwatch APEX league is over. A statement from OGN went into the specifics: We did our best and agreed to most of Blizzard’s conditions on continuing the competition, but we were notified that Blizzard was preparing a…

3rd Strike Is Alive And Well This Weekend At Cooperation Cup

While the biggest events host the latest games, it’s always nice to revisit classics. In Japan, love for Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike never waned, thanks to a vibrant arcade scene. This weekend’s Cooperation Cup highlights the best of the best, in a game almost 20 years old. Cooperation Cup pits teams of Street Fighter…

Dota 2 Escape Plan Fails, Thanks To One Push

In yesterday’s Captains Draft 4.0 match, Evil Geniuses were pushing high ground when the fight started to go the wrong way. Clinton “Fear” Loomis hit the escape button, but thanks to a tiny, very Dota interaction, the rest of his teammates didn’t come with him. Loomis was playing Underlord, a beefy fella who can root…