Programming for conventions and events
There’s been a lot of talk about how wide open the OWL Stage 3 playoff is going to be, but I have a chart to prove it. In it is everything you will need to know about this weekend.
Continue reading “The Overwatch League Stage 3 Playoffs in One Chart”
Many sports historians, especially ones who follow baseball, will tell you that one of the many reasons sports are so great is because every day, you’ll see something that’s never happened before in the history of the sport. The final match of the third week of Stage 2 was something we’d never seen before. On of the day before Earth Day, Overwatch League’s first two expansion teams, the Atlanta Reign and Guangzhou Charge, burned about as many CPU’s as a Bitcoin farm in the second and third maps of their match, tallying 28 points between them in an hour-long display that reminded people that are only me of Arena Football or the ABA. It was a match so unreal, I had to figure out how just unreal it was.
Continue reading “It’s Not Called Underwatch: How Atlanta & Guangzhou Broke The Scoreboard”
That script changed in 2017, when the NHL added the Las Vegas Golden Knights. The Knights, thanks to a combination of more lax team-building guidelines and the ability to rally a community behind sports after a tragic incident, went on a tear, setting first-year records for wins and points, and they became the first expansion team in the four North American sports to win their division. Their success carried over to the playoffs, where they were the first first-year team in 50 years to reach the Stanley Cup Finals, losing to the Washington Capitals in 6 games. Despite capturing the hearts and minds of hockey and sports fans everyone, the Golden Knights are still considered a bit of a unicorn.
Until we start talking about the Vancouver Titans. Continue reading “Are The Vancouver Titans The Next Vegas Golden Knights?”
Many things can matter in sports, but few matter more than championships, and what matters to the Overwatch League’s London Spitfire is that they won the inaugural championship, beating the Philadelphia Fusion in what looked like a walkover. The story of the Spitfire’s season seems straightforward: after winning the first of OWL’s four stages and finishing strong in the second, London went a pedestrian 9-11, finishing tied for fifth in a league where only 6 teams make the playoffs. However, once the regular season ended they demolished their opponents, dropping only 5 of the 24 maps they competed in, and finished playing literally their best Overwatch of the season.
Continue reading “The London Spitfire & the Near-Uselessness of Having A Regular Season”
I love math. I regularly post stories from FiveThirtyEight on my Facebook page, and Bill Barnwell was a frequent read back in the days of Grantland. Games and statistics are passions of mine. That’s why even though I find video game culture to be lacking, I get excited for things like e-sports, because it means a wider population can enjoy the fun and thrill of sport while being disassociated from the various stigma surrounding traditional athletics. It’s even more fun to see the concept evolve and embrace old cliches like they’re new.
I’m so glad e-sports is breaking new ground and delivering such new ideas like a reality show where everyone lives in the same house.
— Pop Ramen Comedy (@PopRamenComedy) May 19, 2018
So when I see stuff like the Shanghai Dragons of Overwatch League be so horribly bad, the wheels get turning. I had lamented that I no longer have a platform to be analytical on otaku culture, but then I realized: this is my site. I can do whatever I want. So let’s get dangerous and do the math.
Continue reading “The Shanghai Dragons Are Bad But May Not Be *That* Bad?”