First, I need to say thank you to my colleagues, Claire and KDlin, for their help during the interviews. Also, a big thanks to Rio for her great patience when correcting and refining my draft. Image credits: Claire.

Last Sunday, 11th June, the gruelling seven week group stage of the Overwatch Premier Series 2017 Spring came to end with a three day, nine match extravaganza at Zhongchengzhigu, Baoshan, Shanghai sponsored by Blizzard Entertainment and co-sponsored by Banana Culture.

Group standings

Of the ten teams who qualified for the $105,000 Spring main event, only eight would be leaving the group stage. So it is that we say goodbye to JHG.Gold and Team Celestial.

OWPS Spring 2017 Group standings

The top eight have already secured their invitations for the $145,000 Summer season, set to commence on 27th July, but their fight is not over. This weekend marks the start of the playoffs from which two teams will emerge to contest the Grand Final next Saturday.

Playoffs schedule

All fixtures will be best-of-five until the best-of-seven Grand Final.

Friday 16th June

Saturday 17th June

Sunday 18th June

Saturday 24th June

  • 01:00 EDT / 07:00 CEST / 13:00 CST Bronze Final
  • 03:00 EDT / 09:00 CEST / 15:00 CST Grand Final

A journey of discovery

During Week 6, the penultimate weekend of group stage action, we were lucky enough to attend the live event on Saturday 3rd June. We had behind the scenes access at the venue and interviewed pros, casters and the Banana Culture crew to learn more about the Chinese pro scene and discover what it takes run the biggest Overwatch event in China.

Talking with the pros

On the day we attended there were three matches; LF 2 - 0 JHG, OMG 0 - 2 MY and IG.ICE 2- 1 1246. We had the opportunity to talk with some of players back stage, here's what we learned.

OMG (Oh My God)

OMG's devasting Genji and Roadhog player, Nubi, told us that playing with a language barrier on the Korean server, where he is jokingly named "HakU" (Haksal + WhoRU), has trained him to be more independent of the team, allowing him to secure more kills with minimal assistance. This enables him to create space for OMG without the team committing too many resources, but he can still play around them when needed.

Adog, used to be a good Tracer player, but he became an Ana main recently. He offered us advice on how to sleep Genji and deny his Dragonblade. He felt it was important to know the habits of the enemy Genji, but in general that when they dashed to the sky, wait until the moment when he just begins to drop down — this is best opportunity to hit the target. He joked that Nubi's Genji dashes so high to avoid the enemy Ana that he finds it hard to hit him with the Nano Boost.

Time, the former Newbee.Y player, transferred to OMG recently and has attracted great number of fangirls now. When Suannai and Jiaozhu retired before OWPS Spring main event, OMG was quite desperate to find a replacement offtank, but they feel blessed to find such a talented D. Va player to strengthen their dive comp.

MY (Miraculous Youngster)

MY now faces difficulties due to their roster changes, but they are still trying to maintain their level of competitiveness. We wanted to know if they had ever tried running the Pharah comp, which is popular among Chinese teams at the moment. Leave told us that they have not yet trained with this composition and planned to stick with their current strategies. He felt that even team did want to make the change, it would be another DPS player on Pharah and he would insist on sticking with Genji.

1246

Samsara, the 1246 carry and hitscan specialist, was previously the best Reaper in China. He offered his thoughts on the new patch, saying that it has made Reaper more viable but still needs some time to fit him in the meta. When questioned why it seems like in offline games he cannot perform as well as he does in ranked, he admitted that they still need more communication during the match.

Their offtank player, Tian, was unsure if Roadhog was still viable in the new patch, but would have to spend time on developing new strats and comps. They explained that the triple healer comp they're trying (Lucio, Mercy, Zen) is more fault tolerant but hard to carry out successfully. Compared to the Pharmercy comp where they have to protect Mercy at all costs, with triple healers, Zenyatta can deal damage while keeping Mercy healthy at the same time, thus it is a relatively good combination.

Former Genji main, BBcat, is now lining out as Lucio for the team. BBcat is an Overwatch veteran and the most experienced player in the team, so he offered the fans some tips on how to become a Lucio with high KD ratio. Hiding and flanking is the key! Practicing these skills will build anyone in to a diving Lucio god he thinks.

IG.ICE (Invictus Gaming Ice)

IG.ICE still haven't found a way to deal with Pharmercy, but their incredible Sombra defence on assault maps had helped to secure their victory today over 1246 on Anubis and Volskaya. Their flex support player, BUG, told us that they began to practice this comp when it first appeared in APEX Season 3. However, the Sombra and Reaper picks by XiaoJue and JamLee for Point B attacks has only been practiced for two days!

JamLee also believed that the Reaper buffs will increase his pick rate in tournaments, but time is still required to test Roadhog out and determine whether to keep him in their compositions or not since he cannot one-shot most of the heroes anymore.

During the 2-1 victory 5KING had contested and stalled for an incredible amount of time on Anubis Point B with his Lucio play. He commented after that the Lucio changes had definitely benefited him, with higher mobility and survivability now, especially when facing death ball comps.

Interestingly, when asked which foreign team they most wanted to face at APAC in November, three of the teams picked Lunatic-Hai while 1246 chose LW Blue.

Talking with XiaoYao

We asked the caster, IG.Ice coach and China World Cup committee member, XiaoYao, was what he thought made a good caster? "First, you have to be passionate about the game you cast." XiaoYao shared. "You need to simplify the game play on a whole but magnify the remarkable plays in matches, so that everyone can understand and enjoy it. As a caster, you definitely can't stop learning. Even if you have formed your own casting style, you still need to learn from the good qualities of others."

As he observed, casters in NA and EU are often duos with division of labour, one focusing more on delivering the context of team fights while the other talk about things outside of team fights, for example, ult management. While casters in China usually go by a group of three with a more casual, chatty style, Korean casters seem to be more energetic in general, casting with a lot exclamations and can easily pump up the atmosphere.

On the topic of the Overwatch League and the potential for huge investments, XiaoYao thinks it is good that Blizzard is trying to create a new paradigm and differentiate Overwatch esports from the others, as other games like Dota2 and League of Legends have already saturated the current market and viewership. If they play by the rules and follow the structure of similar esports events, it will be hard to develop and promote the professional scene of Overwatch in the long run. Overwatch is the major project for Blizzard at the moment, so they must take the chance. Their approach is both bold and risky, but if it succeeds, Blizzard and investors can monopolize this sector of the market.

Behind the scenes

Have you ever wondered how many people are needed to run Overwatch event? There are many jobs that need to be done which are unbeknownst to the average viewer. This myriad of tasks is handled by the Banana Culture crew, silently working behind the scenes.

Team Coordinators

In China, Team Coordinators from Banana Culture are responsible to organizing team schedules during the tournament period. Team Coordinator Ling Ling sees the role as a bridge between various esports organizations, pro players and the commercial organizations. All applications for interviews and commercial activities have to go through them first, and they are duty-bound to protect the interests of every team. They also coordinate player transfers between orgs, and govern over the teams to prevent destructive competition, as well as maintaining order in the games.

Referees

"Esports referees are like extensions of the digital rules," said Referee Zhang. "We cannot simply run the tournament on computers. Especially when it comes to disconnection, players' peripherals not working or even power outages. When things like this happens, referees are the ones directly communicating with the players and making timely judgments, sometimes we need to calm the players down and make them comply with our decisions."

The referees walking behind the players during matches, are in fact observing whether the player's computers have any problem and would report the situation to the backstage, if any. The referee would also listen to communication between players, and penalize them if any violation of the regulations were discovered. These experienced referees, having a profound understanding of the game, will also provide valuable feedback on improving tournament rules.

Observers

Five or more OBs (in-game observers/spectators) are required to work at the same time, with at least two operating first person POV and two operating third person POV in a game. OB Chen told us, being a good OB is not just about one's understanding of the game itself, but also knowing the latest meta, impacts of key characters and pro players in a match up and analytic skills for team strats and comps. Good visual sense and camera technique are vital to give the audience a clear picture when team fights happen, and of course a rigorous working attitude.

Directors

Often surprising to foreigners, esports like Overwatch have attracted a lot of fangirls in Asia. They are not satisfied with watching VOD reviews or tactical analysis videos, but rather want to know more about the pro players themselves.

Thus Banana Culture has produced a series of variety show videos starring Chinese pro players from OWPS. Director Jin Jing told us that with more online media exposure and participation in sponsored commercial activities, China esports will gradually merge with the traditional entertainment industry. Pro players are gaining recognition at the same time. So directors like him are now focusing on producing videos for fangirls. His show "Troublemaker Qianlan" staring OWPS pros, has proven very popular with the female audience.

Conversely, Korean director Jin Zewan insists on making videos about the history of esports and tactical analysis, such as the tactical talk show in OWPS preseason, staring famous casters.

Director Jin Zewan felt that that OGN's success was based on a strong consumer base. Former gamers who are now at their thirties and still have a passion for gaming but with more disposable income. The Korean esports media, now better funded than ever have grown tremendously, with an esports cable television broadcasting channel which has strong influence in the esports scene and in the country at large. They can even invite celebrities and artists to their shows. In Asian countries, professional gaming was never regarded as a proper career by parents, but thanks to the rapid growth of esports industry in Korea, more and more people are noticing the potential in it.

But Director Jin still believes that the development of Korean esports is nowhere near perfection. He believes that gap between esports development in China and South Korea isn't very large. In recent years, the South Korean government has been suppressing the development of esports industry, resulting in a large number of Korean game companies moving to Japan. He told us that he is excited by the development of Chinese esports, since there are a lot of potentially undeveloped markets and strong government support.