Lore of Overwatch: Recall

Overwatch: Recall

“Recall” introduces us to Overwatch, the organization, and Winston (who is not a monkey, but a scientist). Like his bio describes, Winston grew up on a space station under the guidance of Dr. Harold Winston. Forcibly retired by the Petras Act, Winston still monitors the Overwatch database, named Athena (and also seems to enjoy watching Hearthstone).

Athena is an cool aspect of the game. She makes in-game announcements so from a role-playing perspective, Athena is monitoring you as you proceed with a mission. 

The interesting piece of this short is Reaper‘s appearance, since he shows up with a hit squad for the Overwatch agent data. This sets up a larger antagonist for the game’s lore overall: Who is Reaper working for? What does his organization want with the data?

We can also explore the loophole of being able to have Reaper and Winston on the same team, but because there is no story within the game, this can be somewhat brushed aside. I also assume that there will be an overarching short or comic released to explain how the heroes come together once all the individual hero shorts/comics are completed.

Did you see anything of note in this short that I missed? Leave a comment and tell me what you think! Stay tuned for my post on “Alive”; it should be out within the next few days!

 

Discovering the Lore of Overwatch

An examination of multimodal storytelling

Overwatch is an interesting IP from Blizzard. From playing the open beta, it’s clear the Overwatch team created a robust world full of rich characters with diverse backgrounds. There’s only one problem: there’s no campaign, story mode.

From a gameplay perspective, it’s understandable why the development team omitted a campaign mode. FPS games are known for weak single-player content in favor of strong multiplayer PvP content. In fact, modern FPS games like Titanfall and Rainbow Six: Siege both left out the single-player campaign modes. There are valid points made by both of these studios that a minority of people play the campaign, even fewer finish it, and it focuses developer time and money a part of the product that is primarily ignored.

So it makes sense that Blizzard focused only on the multiplayer gameplay, especially since this is their first new IP since Diablo III (Heroes of the Storm (HotS) and Hearthstone don’t count since they borrow characters and lore from other Blizzard games.).

But here’s the issue: Blizzard has always been a storytelling juggernaut. The World of Warcraft lore is rich, deep, and complex, stretching across a multitude of expansions and games, and Diablo and Starcraft both have well crafted stories and lore built with each release and expansion. Even Hearthstone has an “alternate universe lore” approach, and HotS exists to throw all these characters together.

Thus, the lack of a story mode in Overwatch seems odd from a historical context. From listening to friends and podcasts, this seems to affect attitudes towards the game negatively and makes the game seem less interesting.

Stumbling Across the Lore

While I was initially put off by the lack of a campaign mode as well, playing the open beta completely changed my mind.  I played a lot of D.Va and began to notice that she interacted with a few characters. Lúcio asks D.Va for her autograph, and she replies that she loves his new album. Widowmaker chides D.Va as being a child, and D.Va protests “Who are you calling a child?!”

I also began to notice other character interactions, and the subtle environment references and associations with other character. At the same time, the animated shorts Recall and Alive released, and then I learned about the comics. That’s when it hit me:

Blizzard wants to tell the stories of Overwatch. They want to show off the characters, environments, and story they worked hard to build this FPS around. They are just giving it to us in a multimodal way, which makes the lore of Overwatch accessible to everyone.

By putting all of the developers’ efforts towards the gameplay, the core of the game is refined and honed well before the launch. This allows the marketing and creative teams the bandwidth to tell the stories of Overwatch through various mediums that allow the game to be accessible by more than those who play the game.

Instagram, tumblr, Pinterest, and DeviantArt are already full of fan art and memes for Overwatch and the game isn’t released yet. My sister, who follows animation as a hobby, loves the animated shorts and is excited about the comics, but she won’t buy the game. That’s okay, she doesn’t have to.

The Lore of Overwatch is for Everyone

By presenting the lore of Overwatch through multimodal platforms, everyone can enjoy the character’s stories. Those who love FPS, but not storytelling, are able to enjoy the game itself; those uninterested in FPS are able to enjoy the lore; and those who play the game and consume the lore get the full experience. All of these are experiences Blizzard wants their consumers, and potentially future consumers, to enjoy.

In light of this, I will also be starting a Lore of Overwatch series, talking about all the shorts, comics, and in-game interactions with the characters. I hope you keep a watchful eye out for the upcoming series!

This Week in Hearthstone 5/22/16

Discovering Midrange Hunter

This week I didn’t play as much, but my week was crazy good, as evident by my latest rank! Could this be the season I finally hit Rank 5? With Overwatch coming out tomorrow, we’ll see (7pm EST).

This week I also attended a Fireside by the local university. The tournament was casual with a best-of-three format. I brought Pirate Warrior, Evolve Shaman, Miracle Rogue, and Midrange Hunter. The first round I got swept by a guy who made all Yogg decks, and I fell to the losers bracket. In the next match I opened with Midrange Hunter and won, and Garrosh’s Pirates redeemed themselves, so I moved onto the next stage.

While I lost the next round, I had really fun crazy moments, and it helped my opponent was relaxed and cracked a lot of jokes. I won the first match with Hunter by responding to the joke, “Do you have a cellphone? Because you really don’t need to ‘Call the Wild.'” Spoilers: I Called the Wild. Oh, ho, ho! I love terrible puns.

In the next match, I picked Shaman against his Yogg druid. I had a major misplay where I didn’t Primal Fusion my Flamewreathed Faceless buffed by Flametongue Totem (Was 9/7, should have made it 10/7), to clear an Ancient of War and another misplay down the line which cost me the game, but I had fun with Evolve! Evolving Tuskarr Totemic into  Flamewreathed Faceless always feels good!

Another fun moment was in the last match where I was loosing with Pirate Warrior against his Yogg Mage. I got Mind Vision off of Spellslinger (Mind Vision: Put a random card from your opponent’s hand into your hand). Well he decided to dump his hand and play a bunch of spells for fun leaving only Yogg in his hand. It was really fun playing Mind Vision and then Yogg the next turn, despite knowing I was going to lose anyway.

Deck of the Week: Midrange Hunter

 

Deck Style: Midrange

Good Against: Aggro, Shaman, Slow decks when you curve out

Bad Against: Zoolock, Slow decks when you don’t curve out, Reno decks

Win Rate: 11-5

This week, Midrange Hunter is my deck of the week. The deck feels good, consistent, and gives you great options for removal. With well placed Freezing Traps and manipulating the board to get the most value out of Deadly Shot, once Call of the Wild hits the board there’s nothing your opponent can do but concede!

I highly recommend this deck for anyone looking for a new midrange deck to ladder with. I hit a good win streak and went from Rank 11-8 in a few hours.

This Week in Hearthstone 5/15/16

 Miracle Rogue is not for the Faint of Heart

I dabbled in my aggro Shield Paladin, Evolve Shaman, and Pirate Warrior decks during my lunch breaks at work, but at home I threw myself at Miracle Rogue.

…it was not a miraculous experience.

I didn’t read any guides in the spirit of being thrown into the fire, and I really struggled with my mulligans. Figuring out what I need against the new meta is difficult because the meta isn’t completely settled yet. Additionally, I’m not too experienced with rogue and Miracle is different than Oil.

Still, Shaman seems to have a somewhat standard list. So in addition to knowing what I need turn 1 (Deadly Poison, Backstab, Thalnos?), taunts just wrecked me. Getting through one Feral Spirit is easy with the right cards in hand but a second immediately after was just painful. Then add on Thing from Below?  Might as well concede.

Oh, and did I mention I didn’t draw Gadgetzan Auctioneer for 3-4 games? That really hurt too.

I also struggled a lot against Zoolock since the early board presence  was difficult to keep up with. Even killing minions each turn and keeping the board clear meant my health was slowly getting chipped away, so in the end I just lost too much health to really bounce back.

So basically, I decided to stop playing Miracle for the week to avoid tilting more, and I switched to this week’s Deck of the Week.

Deck of the Week: Pirate Warrior

 

Deck Style: Aggro

Good Against: Aggro/midrange- Zoolock, Shield Paladin, C’Thun Control Warrior

Bad Against: Priest

Surprisingly, I started playing this Pirate Warrior list that my husband recommended, and it’s a lot of fun! There are multiple win conditions for the deck, whether it’s chipping away at your opponent’s health with weapons, getting bigger weapons from your pirate buffs, or getting a nice big Frothing Berserker.

This deck took me from Rank 14 to Rank 11 quickly, and does well against aggro/midrange decks. Because there are so many weapons in the deck, you can easily swing weapons at face or use them for removal. I recommend this deck for anyone looking for an aggro style deck that isn’t complete SMORC, or a warrior list that doesn’t require an arm, leg, and kidney for legendaries and dust.

 

The Relationship Between Twitch and eSports (How that “Enough is enough”article…pt 2)

My husband graciously pointed out to me that the end of my argument in my previous post discussing the moderator’s article on GosuGamers was fairly weak. Admittedly, I didn’t want a long post, and I didn’t want to overlap with with content of my conference paper so I could share it here later. But he is right, there are things that I should have addressed that I neglected, which mainly pertain to the relationship between Twitch and eSports.

One of the main problems of Twitch chat being so toxic is that Twitch is the main platform for disseminating eSports. Tournaments are advertised and showcased all the time on the home page and companies and event organizers know Twitch is the primary platform for reaching their audience. Conversely, eSports tournaments, organizers, and casters are the public face of the industry—they represent the elite, the best of the best, and will become critical in how non-gamers receive eSports as an entertainment form as eSports rises in popularity  (If you don’t believe me, ESPN has an eSports division.ESPN, the king of sports broadcasting. Think about that.)

So when a highly public, massive tournament has viewers publicly spouting racist remarks against someone who made it to the finals in a major tournament series, it just looks  unprofessional and juvenile for everyone involved.

Point 1: eSports will never be taken seriously while these people are allowed to spew obscene hate at major professional tournament events. My suggestion: turn off chat! No sporting event has people commenting in real time, and Tweets are vetted, like they are now at eSports events.

You may think that this is blasphemous, and that chat is an integral part of Twitch and professional eSports, but consider this: what about minorities sitting at home, seeing people they relate to make it onto the “big screen” only to be torn apart by chat because they are minorities? They may think it’s not worth the harassment and decide not to follow their aspirations. In fact, I’ve read Reddit posts by women stating they wanted to stream on Twitch but didn’t because they were worried about harassment.

Point 2: Current Twitch culture pushes minorities away from the eSports industry, and eSports industry leaders need to step up and take charge. Despite the want for diversity in eSports, organizers and teams must become leaders in this culture change. In this case, Dreamhack’s negligence enables toxicity and promotes harassment as a mainstay of Twitch culture.

My point with both of these posts, is that eSports will never be diverse as long as Twitch chat is allowed to verbally abuse players. In this age, where women make up half of the gaming market, and in an industry where basically anyone can participate and succeed, this abuse is simply unacceptable.

Pat 1: How that “Enough is enough” article on GosuGamers Showcases Toxicity Against Minorities in eSports

How that “Enough is enough” article on GosuGamers Showcases Toxicity Against Minorities in eSports

This past weekend, Dreamhack made its debut in the United States in Austin, Texas. While I thoroughly enjoyed the Hearthstone tournament (while playing the Overwatch open Beta), I was blissfully unaware of what was going on behind my full screen view of the match: Twitch chat.

Usually I don’t read or pay attention to Twitch chat because I full screen the stream or I’m watching it on my TV via Chromecast through my phone. But I know enough about the issues Twitch chat possesses, having recently researched and recorded a conference presentation for graduate school on why Twitch is toxic for women—and in this case minorities.

So I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Twitch chat was over the top obscenely racist towards TerrenceM. GosuGamers posted an article titled “Enough is enough”: Confessions of a Twitch chat moderator with one of the moderators calling out the issue that Twitch chat should not be a place where blatant and rampant sexism and racism exists.

The first comment on this article completely bashes the author, stating, “Nawh f@ck that. It’s NO surprise that the author of this enlightening, eye-opening piece comes from North America and is a female. It’s pretty obvious that this is a spillover from the creeping PC culture that seems to be taking root in almost every aspect of our lives. Now, apparently, it’s come to Twitch chat.”

Here’s the issue. It’s not Twitch trolling or harassment—all streamers are harassed in chat.

It’s the fact that these people are being targeted specifically because they are women, or because they are black, and not because they are first, and foremost, a gamer.

That’s why there is so little diversity in esports, even though esports organizers want diversity and are trying to fight the toxicity present in the community. If you want a female perspective, check out the Dropped Frames Special Edition (Part 2)—Streaming as a Female.  These women do an exceptional job at describing the issue and why Twitch harassment is a problem for women and minorities.

In sum, that commenter is the exact reason why sexist and racist harassment is validated on Twitch, why it’s preventing minorities from entry into the esports/Twitch scene, and why the community needs to change. As stated in the words of Tomas Hermansson, esports organizer of Dreamhack AB, “…attitudes towards women in e-sport has to change, where guys get their act together and act like they do in real life.”

Part 2: The Relationship Between Twitch and eSports (How that “Enough is enough”article…pt 2)

 

Vira’s History in Hearthstone

Normally this series will be, “This Week in Hearthstone,” but since this is the first entry, I think a history is more appropriate.

I started playing Hearthstone a month before The Grand Tournament arrived to the tavern. I had a fantastic run with Mech Mage, and a not-so-secret-terrible love affair with Rogue (i.e., I was terrible but loved the class anyway). Once TGT arrived I switched to Tempo Mage and trolled up the ladder with Secret Paladin, finally reaching Rank 10. I focused primarily on those two classes, dabbled in Oil Rogue, and consistently hit Rank 10 each season (The highest rank I’ve achieved is 7.).

When the League of Explorers entered the tavern, Secret Paladin got stronger and I dabbled in Face Shaman, but due to loathsome feelings for Reno Jackson, I stopped playing as much. During the same time, all of Hearthstone entered the Triumvirate of Stale Meta with Zoolock, Combo Druid, and Secret Paladin (with appearances from Control Warrior).

When the Old Gods took over the tavern, I rejoined the game with a lot of enthusiasm. After securing 500 ranked wins on my Mage, I now look forward to playing a lot of Miracle Rogue.