Players and Pancakes: Spot the 10 differences
Let's start with the good news: Drake's new album is out and businesses are re-opening.
Let's continue with the bad news: not all businesses are reopening with success — cuz... Overwatch League.
The OWL is going through an interesting set of "unfortunate" events. A lot of people, way more intellectual than I am (I had to google how to spell intellectual), already explained the economic reasons behind IP-owned-leagues struggle to serve the entire ecosystem's financial health.
However, I do wanna talk about the second most important aspect:
👀 Viewership Experience
Overwatch was never intended to have a good viewer experience. The introduction of city-based teams, well-known investors, new hyped sponsors and shinny venues camouflaged reality — the game is unwatchable for new fans.
Yes, is exciting for current players. But at the same time, since other publishers (shit, even the same publisher) could come up with a new similar game at any time, they need to constantly create changes in order to keep their players engaged.
🚂 Bandwagon
Meta changes make pro players mad. So now they're f^cking up with both newbies and pros, leaving one "happy" audience: amateur hard-core players, which by the way, has no substantial growth.
OWL's best player, Sinatraa, left the league and SF Shock to play Valorant for Sentinels. Other pros and aspiring players are doing the same thing. I mean... you can tell these people are more bandwagony than 2020 Buccaneers fans since the Valorant's esports scene doesn't even exists yet, but there're some reasons:
- Teams already throwing 20K/m offers at kids to play Valorant.
- Player's frustration with the OWL's lack a competitive environment, turned them into easy well cooked pancakes for other games to eat.
- Riot Games has proof of competitive success.
Some owners must be empathizing with Joe Exotic right now.
But hey, the competitive aspect of the industry is young and it has a long way to go. The NBA, NFL, FIFA, they all had messed up models back then, and still today.
We need to fail in order to learn, but if we don't separate publisher's success from leagues and teams' success, investors will get tired of invisible return, and instead of white, black or grey areas, the only thing that we're gonna get... is shade.
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