Overwatch First Person Shooter Game

OVERWATCH

Overwatch is a team-based first person shooter game which was released by Blizzard Entertainment during the year 2016. It was first announced during Blizzcon 2014, an event made by blizzard to showcase its different games to the public, and was made available during the open beta in the early of 2016. Because of its success of attracting millions and millions of players, in just a year it became a competitive sport and was proclaimed as IGN’s (Imagine Games Network) best game of 2016.

The first team-based first person shooter game is Team Fortress 2, and that is where Blizzard got their idea from. There aren’t any other games that are team based first-person shooter games in the market, and maybe that’s why it became an instant hit to the audience. Blizzard was originally supposed to develop a team based game called Titan, but they later on cancelled it midway. They used some concepts they had for that game and developed Overwatch instead. They later on released it to the public. The game has its own heroes, storylines, and diverse gameplay that later on boomed into success which is Overwatch today.

                                                 STORY

The game is set to be 60 years in the future in where humans were at the golden age of technology. Humans and robots who once lived in harmony, 30 years later is now facing an omnic crisis. Omnics are known to be robots who have artificial Intelligence that once was developed by human beings for the betterment of the world. As time passed by these omnics turned against humans and declared war. This led to the world’s formation of heroes called Overwatch in order to rescue humanity from the omnic crisis.

The story line above only focuses on the history of the team but each hero in the team has its own story. These “mini” stories are released every major update that is given to the game which is a good strategy so that the game wouldn’t die out but instead encourage more and more people to play even if time passes by.

GAME

        All the heroes from the story line including the omnics that were against overwatch are part of the hero selection screen. 2 teams of 6 players each, must pick different heroes in which they could use in order to win against the enemy team. In the game currently there are 26 heroes that you could choose from, 8 of which are offense, 6 are defense, 6 are tanks, and the last 6 are support.

The game is composed of 4 different roles. First of the 4 is offense, oftentimes called “dps” which stands for damage per second. These are the heroes that are given the ability to cause large amounts of damage to the opposing team, the downside of this role is that they can easily be killed because they only have a low number of hit-points. The second role would be defense. These heroes take advantage of the map, and stay in specific locations where they could stop the enemy team from passing through the choke points. They give out high amounts of damage as well but are less mobile than that of the offense roles. The third role is known as the “tank” which is are also the “sponges” of the team. These characters are the ones upfront during team fights because they can absorb the most damage, they also have abilities that can deploy shields, and other abilities that can help the team engage during team fights. The Last role of the 4 is support or the “healer” category. This is the most important of the 4 because without this role the team will have a hard time on surviving and they would usually lose team fights if the enemy team has a support of their own.

THE GAME AS A GAME CHANGER IN THE ESPORTS INDUSTRY

With the above mechanics of the game being said, you could immediately compare it to big gaming franchises such as Dota 2, or League of Legends as such roles are present in the game. Overwatch being such a team based game such as the games above, has great potential when it comes to the esports environment. As League of Legends and Dota 2 are already established esport ready games, Overwatch will soon be next in line because of the various approaches Blizzard had made to its players globally.