#5 - Legacies and Fall
Lessons From Blizzard's Overwatch and It's Descent From Greatness
Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is? Insanity is doing the exact... same fucking thing... over and over again expecting... shit to change... That. Is. Crazy
The studio that has decades of experience in designing and developing games, also has a track record of repeating the same mistakes over and over. I’m talking about Blizzard Entertainment Inc, the stalwarts who’ve developed bestselling IPs like Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft and Overwatch.
They’ve had a massive impact on the industry as a whole and as a lifelong fan, I can’t help but lament at the vicious cycle of great releases and the death spiral. (Starcraft, Starcraft 2, Heroes of the Storm and now Overwatch)
In this edition of 0xPlay, lets take a look at the oversight and subsequent fall of Overwatch.
The Context:
There’s quite a lot to unpack and explore in this edition. There aren’t many games that have had such a big impact on me personally. While I’ve been grateful for what Overwatch has contributed to my personal and professional life. I can’t help but feel a sense of regret for “what could have been”.
At the time of writing this, Overwatch 1 (for sake of simplicity, I will be calling it Overwatch) has permanently ceased to exist. This move comes on the heels of the upcoming and quite controversial release of Overwatch 2
I still remember the day of the announcement vividly, I was at the Overwatch World Cup Arena during Blizzon 2019 when the cinematic trailer for Overwatch 2 was revealed.
It’s the end of an era, and before I become a bit too sappy about it (I still get teary eyed everytime I see the cinematic trailer), let’s dive in and explore the errors that contributed to this slow and steady decline.
The Problems:
Every game has problems, after all most games are a live-product and you’ll never be able to solve every issue. However, in the case of Overwatch, it’s hard to digest some of these delinquencies.
#1 Accessibility: We live in the age of custom launchers, majority of publishers prefer to have their own distribution platform to incentivise, retain & of course profit from their players. Blizzard has their own launcher (battle.net).
In 2016, Overwatch launched with much fan-fare, however one of the first pain-points as a user was how “bad” or “inaccessible” the game was to a potential player. If you didn’t have an international debit or credit card, you couldn’t purchase the $60 premium title. For MANY potential players, this was a deterrent.
Price point, payment methods & the adage of being a $60 game without a single-player or PVE component, you end up with a perfect recipe to further de-incentivise players. Overwatch 2 decided to go F2P (a little too late, but we’ll explore the problems with that in a subsequent post)
#2 Season Cycle: It’s industry practice to create “seasons” so that you can experiment with different changes while allowing players time to “rank” up through ladders in a competitive environment. Every successful multiplayer game leverages this and uses this time-frame to tweak & experiment with heroes/characters.
For a PvP hero-shooter, the season length (2months+) just doesn’t sit right. I’d rather have shorter seasons so the “meta” remains fresh & allows me to continously explore and experiment with heroes rather than following standard strategies/hero compositions.
#3 Features: It’s not easy to launch a game with ALL features that you’d envision in your roadmap. I get it, there’s always pressure to get your foot out of the door and iterate till you reach the ideal point. However, for a game that launched in 2016, especially from a developer with an impressive pedigree. Overwatch was missing a plethora of features at launch.
Something as simple as “reconnect” was missing. This was a multiplayer-only game in 2016. There were indie titles at Alpha stage that had these basic functions in place.
So if you happen to live in an area with unstable connection, chances are you’ll receive a loss of SR (season-rating/rank points), your team will be down a player & you’ll possibly receive a small ban (further de-incentivise players
For a game that wanted to be an esports powerhouse, you also didn’t have basic functionalities like a dedicated spectator system, replay system (to review and learn from practice & competitive games). These features came to the game much later (by then, most of the players had already moved on to different titles)
#4 Meta: On paper, Overwatch had fantastic array of characters and player subtypes. There’s not a single role which could not be suitable to a player archetype. However, as with MOBA games. The “metagame” or meta ends up dictating the “viable” characters that can be played in a match to ensure optimum chance of victory.
This is something that each developer slowly shapes & improves over the course of the game’s lifecycle. It’s necessary to have an evolving meta so you can create variety in gameplay and allow players to continously strive to find out new strategies and implementations.
For me, DotA 2 has a very interesting design and learning curve. (I’ll do an exploration of DotA 2 in a subsequent post)
Overwatch on the other hand was quite limited, some characters would start off way too strong at launch but then be subsequently put in purgatory. Similarly, some meta compositions became too overbearing and it took developers multiple seasons (4-6 months) to bring the changes. By then, you’d already lost a decent chunk of the audience to other titles.
It becomes harder to stay active in a game, if its abandoned by your network of friends. It goes without saying, but network effects have an important place in video games and it’s crucial for developers to aim to create an ecosystem that can leverage this principle.
I still dread the idea of the tank-meta & having to play it EVERY game. The tank-meta possibly cost them more players than their jaded idea of growing an NFL style esports ecosystem. Role-queue was absolutely terrible for the game, you had limited strategy element & the system promoted longer wait-times for players who enjoyed certain roles.
#5 Ecosystem: In 2016, it was hard not to be bullish on Overwatch. The game had the perfect blend of action, shooting & strategic gameplay. This blend of mechanics from traditional shooters and MOBA made it an ideal game for esports.
I’ve had both the honor and the pain of being embedded in the Overwatch Esports ecosystem. I’ve been a player, a manager and also acted as the coach for India’s Overwatch World Cup team in 2019.
For any esport title to thrive, you need a strong grassroots ecosystem. As a publisher you can grow this by conducting weekly, monthly, bi-monthly tournaments with prizepools that allow players/teams to “make” a living.
On top of this, you create in-roads with third party organisers. These third-parties would conduct tournaments for a wider variety of players (T1, T2 & T3), the events would be a stepping stone for players to “make” a living, it also provides sustainable revenue model for organisations and create the necessary infrastructure to grow and develop players by regular exposure to competition.
Games such as Counter Strike, DotA 2, League of Legends & many more have been able to create a strong community & revenue opportunities for organisations. This enables the game to stay “alive” longer and evade the death-spiral effect of players abandoning ship once a newer title comes to the market.
At the start of its product cycle, Overwatch had great prospects. The game had great popularity & esports organisations were picking up rosters in Overwatch to make their mark.
However, this era was short-lived as Blizzard decided to opt for a more centralised approach. Their vision was to create an NFL-style esports ecosystem where locally franchised teams across United States, Europe, China and South Korea would compete in a televised setting to generate revenue and visibility.
On paper, this seems like a great idea. Blizzard was able to sell the franchise spots at an initial price of $20 million which was later on increased to $27-35m+ for spots in Season 2 of the Overwatch League. The franchise system alone generated over $200m for Blizzard Entertainment over the last five years.
To add to this, you had the induction of endemic as well as non-endemic brands entering the fray for advertising and media activations. Coca Cola, IBM, Intel, Toyota, Spotify, Cheez-It, Comcast, HyperX and many more were on-boarded as partners for various campaigns during the course of the Overwatch League.
So what went wrong?
The structure itself, geo-affiliated leagues are great in traditional sports. They allow fans to connect and be a part of the local community. However, esports is different. You need personalities, great organisations, community figures & great rivalries between organisations.
This requires an ecosystem where viewers & players engage with each other over a bigger event-calendar. When you have a centralised league structure, where sponsorship slots are sold to major brands. It becomes difficult to “manufacture drama”. There’s limited game-days, limited air-time & not a lot to offer.
There’s also the added baggage of not having enough talent emerging into the scene. In games like Counter Strike, DotA 2, League of Legends, there’s a thriving third-party tournament ecosystem.
This system allows smaller organisations to sign players and sustain themselves by participating in smaller, amateur, semi-pro tournaments. This creates a great platform for players to hone their skills while being able to support themselves. The system also allows raw talent to be scouted and be brought onto the T1 scene when the time is right.
However, Overwatch wanted to do things differently. They decided to inadvertently ban/discourage organisers from creating their own events without a long-vetting and approval process from Blizzard. This acted as a great deterrent for organisers and eventually most of them exited the scene, leaving no real revenue generating opportunities for organisations and players.
The Overwatch League had a structure known as “Path To Pro” which meant players could form their own teams, compete in their local regions for a chance to be one of the emerging teams in their region through the Overwatch Open Division. The top-teams in the division would participate in the playoffs and compete for a spot at being promoted to the Overwatch Contenders. (There were further problems with the execution of Contenders & the importance Blizzard gave to their “Foundation For Greatness” tournament).
Overwatch Contenders was intended to be the feeding ground for Overwatch League, a place to spot upcoming talent that could be signed directly or with a two-way contract (two-way contracts were even worse). Bottom-placed teams would be relegated to Open Division (similar to other sports with a promotion & relegation system).
The reality was that major organisations abandoned the game, it didn’t make a lot of business sense to operate in Overwatch and bear the cost of creating & running a team (salaries, bootcamps, equipment, training etc). There was no major up-side, since teams couldn’t be promoted to Overwatch League.
So as a business/esports organisation you’d have a structure where you compete & qualify from the ground (Open Division). You reach Overwatch Contenders only to have your star players being sold, transferred or just leaving your team to sign-up with an Overwatch League team.
As an organisation, this doesn’t play out well, because you never get a fair-return in place for the expenses you’ve incurred in creating & supporting local talent. The economics of Overwatch Contenders didn’t make much sense either as the season prize-pool wouldn’t even cover the expenses of the orgs competing in the tournament.
There’s also no guarantees in competition, while the top 3 teams in Overwatch Contenders could possibly break-even, the remaining teams would often have to fend for themselves. So, why would they be incentivised to grow the local ecosystem?
The problem also multiplied when the system allowed franchise teams from Overwatch League to create and operate their own “academy” teams in Overwatch Contenders (essentially taking more slots in the tournament and not allowing additional number of teams to be promoted from the lower division).
The structural delinquencies had a spiralling effect on Overwatch as a whole.
$60 game, harder to obtain for majority of players - lower player-base which meant dwindling network effects
Slow updates, missing features, stale meta - lower retention and player interest
Centralised Ecosystem, no sustainable opportunities - no real grassroots
The perfect recipe for slowly & methodically derailing a competitive title. When retention and player interest takes a hit, your viewership numbers decrease. When your viewership numbers drop, organisations move on to other games (no one wants to be part of a sinking ship).
Organisations move on, players have limited avenues to sustain themselves in the scene. When you don’t have newer players emerging onto the scene, the audiences lose further interest. The entire ecosystem cascades and when you add a global pandemic to the mix, the “geo-affiliated” esports league idea crumbles.
The same partners who purchased franchise spots in your League, end up in arrears with red on their balance sheets. Debt restructuring? Writing off losses? Pulling out of the league? Selling/merging their businesses to stay afloat? The Overwatch League had it all.
The Lessons:
Overwatch is a fantastic title with its own set of limitations. However, when I look back at the last 7+ year journey, as a player & as a product nerd. I can’t help lament at some of the glaring misses. For me, the major lessons were:
Don’t rush & miss key-features at launch (players deserve better)
Faster updates & changes (avoid drawn out stale meta)
Design to enhance network effects (players are social)
Incentivise viewers (generate content, stories, media pieces to connect with emerging players)
Be accessible ($60 multiplayer-only game is a tough-sell)
Be sustainable (first party & third-party ecosystem to generate revenue opportunities for players, teams & organisers)
Be open (embrace the changing landscape)
Build with your community (feedback, sharing development roadmap & thought process, allowing more accountability)
Refine content cycle (heroes, maps, item skins etc)
Overwatch has had a tremendous impact on me as an individual, I’ve met 1000s of great players across different nationalities. We’ve bonded over a shared experience and love for this game. We’ve created many pleasant memories and while that journey has now ended. I do hope that Overwatch 2 will be able to pick up the mantle and leave a lasting legacy.
#SeeYouOnTheOtherSide
with the global championship of overwatch 2 around the corner, how will you tryout new players for global event and how can one apply ?