It has been awhile since I have updated my page, had more than a few things going on recently, some good while some bad. I did say this would be a year to get some work done and while I have mostly managed to stay on track, something’s have had to take a backseat. Luckily the things that have taken a back seat aren’t as crucial to achieve my goals as I look towards the next few years, in saying that, they are still things that I need to get back into my life.
Our team of free agents is slowly starting to come together in the 3rd season of the AAOL. In round 2 we managed to get 5 of our players to turn up and ended up having a very good game against Infinity. Only a strong DPS carry performance from their Masters player kept us in check at crucial moments. A high level DPS player can really make the difference in a team and it is why esp in comp, everyone wants to play DPS. Everyone thinks they are a DPS master and can carry their team, in reality thou, only a few actually can.
After finishing the Pacific Open Division I managed to join up in time for the AAOL. An amateur Overwatch tournament run in Australia and NZ. Even thou I am over in Korea, being an online tournament with a small time zone difference, I am able to participate without problems. I was wanting to join the KTV league but their game times are on a Friday night and I wouldn’t quite make it back in time from work to play. But since the AAOL is on Saturday, it works out perfectly for me with games being played at 5pm Korean time.
Continue reading “AAOL – Australian Amateur Overwatch League Season 3”
Well, it is over, done and dusted. Our first venture into the competitive arena of video games. We had some ups and downs but hopefully throughout it all, the team learned something along the way. And that is what this was all about, learning something new. Learning more about the game and how it is played on a more cohesive and professional level. To see just how much time and effort teams and players put in to the game and seeing first hand how much of a difference it makes. To learn just how detailed the game can be and how intricate the strategies are which make the game that much more impressive and also shows just where the differences lie between regular and pro players.
This week finally had us up against a team who was ranked below us in terms of SR (yes, I was given a spreadsheet with every teams Highest and Team average SR, it is nice to know we aren’t the lowest team in the division lol) so we were looking forward to a positive match up on the Saturday night. However, once again our opponents were a no show, giving us our 3rd win by default. While we don’t mind taking the default win, we want to play, we need to play, we need that game time against other teams if we want to improve. Each team only gets 10 games before the play offs start so every game is important. It is even harder for us since we are a new team and have really low ranks. Finding teams to scrim against at our level is really hard, the majority of teams looking to scrim in our league are all looking for Master teams or above. The lack of game time with each other is really starting to show esp with our Sunday night game albeit against a team whose record doesn’t reflect their ability. Continue reading “Overwatch Open Pacific Division Week 4”
We are past the halfway point in this season of the open division and our performance continues to improve. Unfortunately our second game this week resulted in a no show from our opposition. Even though we get the win 3-0, we really wanted to play them and see how we would match up as this was a team of similar ranking to us. However with their team only contacting us 10 mins after the start time and then no further communication, we had no choice but to contact the tournament admins and register our opponents as no shows. That aside, our first match up this weekend ended up being an epic affair with us going down 3-1.
In our second week of competition we managed to get 2 games in as most of the teams in the division have now been finalized. While we still lost both games, after a week of soul searching and deciding just what direction to take our team, we have shown a marked improvement in our game play. While we are still far from perfect and where we need to be as a team, we are making great headway moving forward.
So for our second game during the first week in the Overwatch Open League, we were matched up against one of the best if not the best team in the Pacific Division, Cyclops Athlete Gaming. A team boasting 3 players from the Japanese World Cup team. While our first game was a win by default (our opponents forfeited due to being in the wrong division), this second game was always going to be a one sided affair and a good eye opener for some of our players.
The esport industry has been steadily growing over the last decade alongside an already booming video game industry. The industry is said to have produced an estimated $493 million dollars in Revenue during 2016 which is up 50% from 2015. The video game industry as a whole is estimated to break over $100 Billion in 2017. For some perspective, the total box office ticket sales in 2016 was around $38.6 billion. The North American Sports market in 2015 was sitting at $63.9 billion. So while esports doesn’t have the big numbers yet, nearly half a billion dollars in revenue in an industry that is exploding ahead is nothing to sneeze at. Esports is also excelling in viewership numbers of it’s major events. League of Legends has been one of the biggest esports in the world both with popularity and revenue. In 2016 43 million people tuned in to watch the world championship, 2nd only to the Intel Extreme Masters topping out at 46 million. With more and more people turning away from TV and focusing more on social media and live streaming platforms like twitch where esports thrives, the popularity of esports will continue to rise.
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