The Overwatch League Wants To Reinvent Esports

I'm a bit worried Blizzard's going to fuck up the Overwatch League. Trying to create an esports dynasty from the ground up, without the proper planning, can completely destroy the perception outsiders have about “proffesional video games.” The League can potentially be the MLB of esports, an experience that anyone can be a part of, even if they don’t understand why a gorilla with a tesla cannon is punching a quadruped robot into a purple black hole. If handled poorly, there’s potential for players to be mismanaged by team owners who don’t care about the game, just about finding an audience and making a quick buck.

The Overwatch League has the potential to be a major turning point in the history of esports. Currently, there are two different ways to develop a professional gaming scene: have a season long, interconnected, company- run tournament, like League Of Legends and the LCS. Or, have different singular events around the world showcasing your game’s talent, like CS:GO and DOTA II. The Overwatch League, Blizzard’s most demanding project yet, wants to subvert the norm and combine those two ideologies into a massive esports enterprise.

“It was a chance for us to rethink esports from the beginning of the life cycle of a new IP, which is a rare opportunity around here,” Nate Nanzer, the commissioner of The Overwatch League told Player.One. “It was a chance to look at, from our nearly twenty-years of experience in esports, what do we want to keep and what do we want to evolve? Then, what from traditional sports do we want to bring?”

“These players are going to be well compensated and have retirement plans, it’s going to be a real job”

Blizzard’s organized events for Overwatch before, like the World Cup and Contenders, but has never committed to an experience of this magnitude. These are international teams that pay monthly salaries and treat Overwatch with a level of professionalism you’d expect at a full-time job. Players earn a minimum salary of $50,000, have health insurance and are entitled to 50 percent of the team’s winnings. Esports is big business, the Overwatch League has $3.5 million in bonuses up for grabs for season one. Big brands, like HP and T-Mobile, sponsor the Overwatch World Cup and bring a whole new level of legitimacy. It all translates to a better deal for the pros involved.

“These players are going to be well compensated and have retirement plans, it’s going to be a real job,” Nanzer said. “That I think is a big step in professionalizing the entire esports ecosystem. The history of esports is littered with terrible tales of players not getting paid and other issues along the way.” Stories like the League Of Legends Tainted Minds team, which had to practice and live in a gaming house without working internet or air conditioning in the Australian heat because they were stuck under contract, aren’t rare in the esports scene.

To make sure these players won’t be getting screwed over, the Overwatch League has a strict charter Nanzer designed alongside “best-in-class law firms from traditional sports.” Governance in the Overwatch League will be done “in a professional manner like in other traditional sports leagues.” Though no official statement has been released about the charter, Nanzer assures me that player protection and career longevity are high priorities.

“This content is very valuable, millions of people tune in to watch and it’s important part of their lives,” Nanzer said. “It’s time for the media companies and brands recognize this, resulting in sponsorships, media rights, licensing and all the things you see in traditional sports.”

The Overwatch League has already announced nine teams in places like New York, Shanghai and Los Angeles, with more coming before the League officially starts. “The vision for Overwatch esports is to bring live competition to more cities around the world, anchor teams in those cities so we can build generational fandoms, like you see in traditional sports,” Nanzer said. The first season will run matches out of an arena in Los Angeles, but eventually the League will hold games in a “home and away format,” meaning teams will travel to different cities, playing in as many locales as possible. Bringing live esports to audiences that would never experience the manic cheering, booing and hysterity that comes from watching a Genji getting a team kill live or a Widowmaker snipe a Tracer about to move the Payload, is tied into the identity of the League.

“Consistency and stability are key,” Nanzer said. “You used to have to work at being an esports fan, information is in a lot of different places and it’s not that easy to follow everything, there’s no central governing bodies.”

As a League Of Legends fan in 2011, I had to track down a VOD of a game of a tournament I found in a forum, streamed in a grainy resolution with fan commentary. Though things have gotten better, the average person with no knowledge of the esports scene is going to struggle finding a game they’d enjoy, looking up its stream on Twitch and understanding what the hell is happening on screen.

Now that the first team owners have been officially announced, more information will start to come out regarding the Overwatch League. “We wanted to make sure that when we started announcing things, we had meaningful things to share,” Nanzer laughed. Team rosters, the schedule, when you can start watching and more information will start to trickle out in the coming months. There’s still no official launch date for the League, but it’s on track to start before the end of 2017.

Rewriting the rules of an established industry isn’t easy, but if anyone can do it, it’s Blizzard. I asked Nanzer at the end of our interview to please not fuck this up. “I’ll do my best,” he said. I actually believe him.