The first major Overwatch League announcement since its introduction at Blizzcon last year came last week, when Blizzard finally introduced the first seven Overwatch League teams. Reactions have been very positive for the most part. Immortals, NRG and Misfits all took to Twitter in celebratory fashion shortly after the announcement, taking a moment to introduce themselves as the Overwatch League team for their respective cities.
Owners, players and fans are excited to see what the future holds for Blizzard’s ambitious esports league.Perhaps the most important change that Overwatch League brings to the industry is localization for teams. Everything else stems from here; the revenue sharing, the sponsors, no relegation, all of it. Immortals CEO, Noah Whinston, has been very vocal about the importance of localization and owning the Los Angeles team. In a video that
Another aspect of esports that Whinston touched on in the video was the development of player narratives.
Creating stories for players is an invaluable aspect in every sport. For example, Verbo, a support player for Immortals, struggled with balancing schoolwork and practice time while trying to convince his parents that his esports dreams could become a reality. These narratives give players a deeper personality that fans can identify with, and now that Immortals is the Los Angeles team in Overwatch League, they plan on creating more content around their star players.Kent Wakeford, former COO of mobile game developer, Kabam, and board member at mobile esports platform, Skillz, is the co-owner of the Seoul Overwatch League team. I recently caught up with Kent to ask him about why he chose to invest in the…
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