Hey, its the guy that doesn't know who "panker" is. I hope you enjoy this article, I wanted to try and bring some new points to the conversation about OWL Season 2. This is just me being an armchair commissioner, let me know what you think and what you would do differently or add if you we're given the role of commissioner. All the contact info for us is at the end of the article.
A spectator sport lives and dies by the casual fan base. 10 000 hardcore fans are good to have but the 90 000 casual fans are the ones that increase your ad revenue and shows sponsors that your league has legs. If Overwatch League wants to bring in more casual fans then they need to improve in a lot of ways. The challenge OWL has going against it at its core is how complicated the game is. It is fairly easy to watch a hockey or basketball game and figure out what is going on, you have to go past the other team and score more then they go past you and score. The simplicity of these sports is why they are played in the background at bars and talked about at water coolers - if that is still a thing people do at offices. Casual fans need to be able to figure out the narrative of a sport as soon as they start watching or else they will tune out. So when I look at the suggestions on reddit about how OWL can improve they don't usually take into account how casual fan interest evolves.
First, the casual fan sees intriguing movement on a screen or sees an interesting highlight which leads them to start watching, assuming that they like what they see they'll begin to ask questions about how the game works. So the second step of hooking a casual fan is to have narratives that peak fan interest either statistical or gossip based. The third step to have content for fans to dig into once they get hooked. So how can OWL do this effectively?
Having a nice looking product is important for any consumer good and OWL is no different. Right now Overwatch League is a very cluttered spectator sport and that leads to confusion when viewing it for the first time, but that clutter is a part of why we love the game, its fast and action packed so how do we keep that while making it more understandable.
The best way to see the scope of any game is to have wide angles and support player POVs for the routine parts of a fight those being initial engages, when a team is being finished off on point and when the attacking team takes an aggressive stance so they can take the next fight off point. Then, when there is a skirmish you go to the POV of a tank or DPS player to get into the action and get viewers hearts pumping.
Lastly, they need to add or use the mini map more so you can keep track of where all the players are. An example of when to use it is before team fights to explain how teams may engage each other. Unlike other spectator sports the field is complex, there are different rooms, high grounds, low grounds and corridors on every map. A mini map would make it easy for casual or first-time watchers to digest the strategies of professional Overwatch leaving them feeling empowered and wanting more.
After the spectator aspect of OWL is sorted out you need to be able to turn casual fans attention to story lines whether that be "This player is doing really well this season, they get 16 final blows per map!!" or "these two players are beefing right now because the other said this game would be an ez clap." Humans love stories, we have a natural affinity for telling and listening to them. Not to play to that part of human DNA is a mistake.
I'm not saying Blizzard should manufacture stories or doctor stats, what I am saying is they need to fertilize the ground that stories can grow in. What that entails is loosening their grip on players to let them trash talk a little bit and to bolstering the stats page of the OWL website to make it hold more weight among fans.
Yes, if a player does something or says something terrible punish them, but don't strike fear into players hearts by giving out suspensions like they are candy, Exhibit A being Felix "xQc" Lengyel getting suspended for 4 matches after directing homophobic comments towards Austin "Muma" Wilmot of the Houston Outlaws who in the end really didn't care after xQc apologized. That suspension is equivalent to an 8 game suspension in the NHL or NBA and a 16 game suspension in the MLB. To compare, Kevin Pillar of the Toronto Blue Jays called Jason Motte a homophobic slur which got him a 2 game suspension, and he actually used a specific word. I am not denying saying homophobic things is bad because it definitely is, but you can't ruin careers over it. xQc's OWL career was ruined because of suspensions not because of his skill level. Letting people get into and out of drama is just as important as having star players. Story lines propel interest in sports.
To drastically switch speeds, the stats page of the OWL website is not good at all. They don't have the most basic things on it like breakdowns by map type or most played hero so that fans can see who is the best Pharah on control maps statistically instead of having to try and find it on Winstons Lab. They don't even have player accuracy for heaven sake. The stats page is basically useless.
When the stats page was grayed out for 3 stages we were told it was because they wanted to figure out what meaningful stats to show but the problem with that is they didn't. In the NBA they have meaningful stats, James Harden won the regular season MVP award, he also finished first in points per game, 3 point field goals attempted and made, free throws attempted and made and in several advanced metrics. He also finished top 3 in assists per game. Sung-hyeon "Jjonak" Bang, the inaugural season OWL MVP on the other hand, only finished first in time played. If you looked at the stats there is no reason for you to pick Jjonak out of the group, he just looks like an average player statistically which is the opposite of what you see on screen. The difference in narratives leaves casual fans confused, a completely unavoidable feeling if there are meaningful stats.
The other thing that NBA stats have going for them is you can still debate who the best players are. In the MLB that has been lost to sabermetrics, but the NBA strikes that perfect balance of having player debate and meaningful stats.
This combination of lacking player storylines and unhelpful statistics leaves content producers - like us here at Broverwatch - looking for news to make long form content about. There is also not a place people can go to get all the long form content they want - which is what we are trying to be. My favorite part about following the NBA is how much there is to read, the perfect example being The Ringer. There is enough news and speculation and stats for them to post multiple NBA pieces a day.
There is no place for people to get daily content like that about Overwatch League because there is no real infrastructure for it. We want to produce content everyday but it is fairly hard when every piece of news is a leak, or a stream highlight and stats are time consuming to compile. I know this sounds like complaining but this does hurt the league and they need to realize that sooner rather than later.
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