Overwatch – The Double-edged Sword
I really like what Blizzard have done with Overwatch. They’ve made a really awesome game. It’s genuinely a blast to play, with lots of variation, despite its little flaws. But I feel that Overwatch has been a double-edged sword in quite a few ways.
The first way is in the TF2 community. Overwatch has completely split the community in two. You either hate Overwatch and its existence and want it to go away or you love Overwatch and wish that TF2 would just die already. Of course not everyone is like that, but an annoyingly large number of people seem to swing too close to either extreme and it’s really annoying. Why can’t we just appreciate that both games exist in harmony? Yes, TF2 has a lot of faults and is an old, tired game. Yes, Overwatch is completely designed to steal TF2’s playerbase and more with its mostly simple gameplay. Both games have flaws. Accept them both.
Of course a lot of TF2 players’ hatred is because of jealousy. Blizzard have a new game and they’re treating it like a newborn child. It’s being showered with attention and because it’s all bright and shiny, it’s attracting a lot of new players from all over the place, not just TF2. Overwatch really does seem like the Next Big Thing when it comes to multiplayer games. Even if Dota 2 peaked at 1 million concurrent players around the time of writing this article. TF2 still managed to have about 60,000 players, but that’s nothing compared to Overwatch’s eye-catching new-ness. The exact same feeling of jealousy has been going on ever since Valve decided that Dota 2 and CS:GO were more important than the game that had allowed them to monetize those two games so well.
On top of all that, Overwatch’s existence originally brought some hope to TF2 players. People, me included, hoped that maybe Overwatch’s quickly gathering popularity would spur Valve into doing something, anything for TF2. Matchmaking was a start, but a few months in and already it’s forgotten about. Have there been ANY changes? I should know, I’m with the 174k other people in the Official TF2 Competitive Beta group and it’s all dead. There’s always the promise of the big summer update, but that is always disappointing in some way or another.
As for me, my disappointment is because I’m unable to play Overwatch. I’ve mentioned it a lot, but Overwatch gives me headaches, even when playing for short amounts of time, something no other (good) game has ever done to me. I spent the entire weekend of the beta trying to find a solution but found none. Only thing to help a little is colorblind mode. But in the meantime, all I can do is sit here as TF2 rots away to itself, collapsing from in-fighting, being ignored and people fleeing to a place I can’t follow.
It’s not like Overwatch is perfect though. I’ve got a big list of things I really dislike about Overwatch, from characters to gameplay to their external media. That though is best saved for another article.
But really, I’m just fucking sick of hearing about Overwatch. It’s everywhere. Not just SPUF, but all over Reddit and all over LoL GD as well. Even half the Minecraft server I regularly visit is talking about it. Keep Overwatch in one fucking thread already.