Gadgetory

over watch League is about to kick off the second stage of its inaugural season I've been attending lots of games and keeping a close eye on the goings-on here but are they making the grade here's my report card thus far quality one of the biggest complaints about eSports is always that unless you're a hardcore super fan it's a nightmare keeping tabs on things like tournaments teams and players on top of that the quality of those events can vary wildly those aren't issues at all in overwatch league the polish here is next level with broadcast standards made to look like you're watching any other professional sports league like the NFL or the NBA the casters sometimes get buried a hair too deep in jargon and concepts that new viewers might find foreign but overall they do a really great job between the ridiculously cool blizzard arena high-quality broadcasts and professional presentation this is where overwatch league gets a big fat a clarity I'll try to explain overwatch league's inaugural season quickly it's split into four stages each stage lasts 5 weeks and ends with a kind of mini championship where the winning team gets a cash bonus when the regular season ends in mid-june teams have a month to prep for the playoffs which start July 11th and in July 28th with two teams duking it out for the title of overwatch League champion and a 1 million dollar bonus stages make the season a little bit confusing but overall it's an OK structure it also feels a little bit weird to wait a month between the regular season and the playoffs particularly because fans should be at their most excited at that point so I'll give this one a b-minus consistency one of the things overwatch League Commissioner Nate Nance or insist upon is consistency the idea being that if it's a certain day during a certain time of year you know there's overwatch League happening they've done a nice job of this with free matches every day Wednesday through Saturday I ran into a couple of instances during stage 1 where I tuned in at the wrong time of day but the league has already addressed this issue going forward all week days will start at 4 p.m. Pacific time and Saturdays at 1 p.m. Pacific that's much easier for fans to follow a - engagement watch League does have one key thing going for it it's really fun to watch the arena is a blast to attend but since there's currently only one in existence it makes it tough for anyone not local to LA to check out watching the game itself can be a little fast-paced for a non gamer to follow but the observer teams and the spectator tools Blizzard added late last year have helped solve some of those issues fans of the league are already deeply invested from water cooler chats in-game about the previous day's matches to showing up in full cosplay to root for their favorite teams I've yet to see someone get into overwatch League who wasn't already a huge fan of the game though so I'll give this one a be accessibility twitch reportedly paid over ninety million bucks to snag the exclusive rights to stream overwatch leagues first two seasons that's a lot of cash for something so unproven and the exclusivity is kind of a double-edged sword much like spending Sunday's watching NFL games I want to watch overwatch League all day long on the biggest screen possible my television unfortunately twitch doesn't have official apps on either Roku or Apple TV yeah I know I can access twitch on my PlayStation 4 and if you have an Amazon fire TV this isn't a problem at all but when you consider there's a huge potential group of casual viewers who may find this to be one step too far to check out something they're only mildly curious about it's worth serious criticism also it's super Reb the game tells you when overwatch league is live but accessing the stream on ps4 Xbox one opens a console browser window which is terrible lots to improve here I know but ultimately not a total disaster so see - I think overwatch League is in pretty good shape but if it wants to get eyeballs that aren't already fans of the game there are a couple of areas they could definitely improve upon stage 2 starts on February 21st but only time will tell if a wall you can achieve it's a very ambitious goals overall I give them a solid b-plus now where can I stick this report card yes let's leave it right here some someone will find it