A guide to loving competitive Overwatch in 2022
Close to midnight on the last day of the Overwatch League Summer Showdown in Toronto, I found myself in an Uber heading to a Chinatown bar. It was the capper to a frenzied weekend during which Overwatch League personnel and devotees from around North America all made the pilgrimage to the Mattamy Athletic Centre in downtown Toronto, a venue previously known to me as “that building next to the big Loblaws.”
I had not been to a live esports event since 2019. A lot happened in those intervening three years, both to me and to pro Overwatch. Much of that can be chalked up to one particular global event, the nature of which I will leave up to the reader to infer.
I won’t bore you with the play-by-play, but my investment in Overwatch — and esports as a whole — hasn’t been what it was in 2019 for a while. Despite this, I did go to the Summer Showdown for most of the weekend, and I had a great time. During the aforementioned post-event Uber ride, I was with some Overwatch League team staff members. The conversation turned to how certain people in the esports industry are only there because they want to leverage their position for clout. I asked if there was anyone in the Overwatch League like that and one of my ride companions fully laughed at me.
“Anyone who’s still here is here because they fucking love it,” they said.
Well, all of us were still here. It felt surreal at times.
Loving competitive Overwatch in the year 2022 isn’t easy. But don’t worry. I learned a couple of things about it over Summer Showdown weekend and I’m here to tell you all about it, so you can head into the final stretch of 2022 and whatever lies beyond armed with all the tools you need.
How to love Overwatch: tips and tricks
Reject comparison. For some reason or other, you might wind up comparing Overwatch to other esportses. You might even find yourself comparing it to itself from four or five years ago. But what use is any of that now? You’re reading this, which means you want to love pro Overwatch, even past its failings and faults. Why is that? Could it be that somewhere, at some time, it made you feel something you had never felt anywhere else, before or since?
Work with what you have. Maybe you feel the beating heart of this thing you loved has been ripped out. Maybe the part of Overwatch that left its indelible mark on you no longer exists. In this case, seek out the stray sparks your lost catalyst left behind and find a way to stoke them back into a flame. They’re there, if you look hard enough.
Bring a jacket. Live esports venues get really fucking cold sometimes, especially if they’re built on top of an ice rink, so prepare accordingly. Bring your jacket that’s branded with the logo of a now-dormant team to show the world you haven’t forgotten. Find a player who used to belong to this team and show your jacket to him. He doesn’t look much older to you than he did five years ago, but you suppose your eyes are five years older now, too.
Live in the moment. Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, especially in esports, so make sure to feel every moment while you still can. Place yourself in a sea of people who are simultaneously breathless with excitement and expecting nothing. Watch the home team make a miracle run in front of their home crowd. Cry a little every time they snatch an improbable victory and the room’s atmosphere blooms into disbelieving joy.
When in doubt, listen to those around you. There’s something strangely uplifting about knowing that anyone who’s still left, at this point, is in this until the end. That you all need each other, if only to reassure yourselves that you’re not alone or delusional. Everyone has taken a different path to get here but you’ve all ended up in the same place. Sometimes that place is a bar in Chinatown where a losing team’s coach pours you a shot and toasts, “to the losers.”
Remember something you sometimes forget. Loving the thing that makes you happy is the easiest thing in the world.
