The voting for the all-star team deathmatch (TDM) between North America and Europe, after the finals of Contenders S1 on Sunday, has now officially begun. Everyone with an Overwatch account can login and vote the players that will represent each region in this glorious team deathmatch. Voting ends at 11:59pm Saturday, October 7th (probably PDT, because it’s … Continue reading “The All-Star TDM is good! A second “Atlantic Showdown” would be better!”

The latest video of Thorin’s concerning the Overwatch scene highlighted an anomaly in the universe of esports as far as OWL team building and tryouts are concerned. However, the problem runs deeper and it has been many people’s worry, after the announcement of the OWL back in November of 2016, that problems will arise in the … Continue reading “The Tier 2 landscape in Overwatch and its future”

Finding the optimal match format in any esport is not an easy task, especially during its first years, where developers and community are on their honey moon and everything looks shiny and on roses. However, the time of realization comes sooner or later and for professional play, choices need to be made that promote a … Continue reading “Has Blizzard figured out the optimal match format?”

Every season of APEX features some changes in the tournament format and OGN is trying to find the sweet spot in order to make their scene as competitive and fair as possible. However, in season 3 they did some things wrong in their attempt which I hope they fix in the future, unless these changes … Continue reading “Three things OGN did wrong in APEX S3”

Burnout can be defined as ‘physical or mental collapse caused by overwork or stress’ and has long been a problem in esports as well as other professions. More recently it has become apparent in Overwatch, with players like Taimou and the controversial Dafran. However, unlike other esport titles, Overwatch has only been around for a … Continue reading “Why is Overwatch experiencing burnout after only a year?”

The idea of midgame substitutes is uncommon across most esports titles, however, the idea is steadily creeping into competitive Overwatch. Their first major implementation has been at OGN APEX, where season 3 rules allow teams to use a timeout to substitute a player. Although it hasn’t been heavily utilised, it has opened the door to … Continue reading “Substitutes, do they have a future in Overwatch?”

In the last Season of APEX, Season 2, I identified an inherent flaw of the map selection process that could give an unfair advantage to some teams over others, although the process was probably designed so as to provide a fair battleground for the two teams participating in a match. After addressing it, understanding some … Continue reading “The Optimal Format for APEX Seasons”

ESL has just announced that their previous rules regarding map selection at IEM Gyeonggi, in specific the process of banning and picking maps at the start of each match while having a limited map pool was not in compliance with Blizzard’s tournament specifications and thus has been readjusted. That readjustment, however, only led to ESL predetermining … Continue reading “Compromises Between Map Drafts And the Predetermination of Maps”