Triple Click - What's The Deal With: Overwatch? (with Nico Deyo)

Episode Date: June 2, 2022

How did Overwatch become such a phenomenon? Why have hardcore players stuck with it (or failed to) over the last few years? And what's up with Overwatch 2? The Triple Click gang brings on Overwatch expert Nico Deyo to help guide us through Blizzard's wonderful world of costumed vigilantes and super-intelligent gorillas.One More Thing: Kirk: TangoMaddy: Misery by Stephen KingJason: The Flight AttendantLinks:Nico Deyo and Tyler Colp’s Overwatch feature for Vice Games: https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5gvaj/how-overwatch-lost-then-found-again-iExcerpts from “Alma de Bohemio” by Roberto Firpo, performed by Alex Krebs’ Tango Sextet and “Tango por una Cabeza” by Carlos Gardell, performed by Katica Illényi & Budapest StringsSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy a Triple Click t-shirt: https://topatoco.com/collections/maximum-fun/products/maxf-tc-tclogo-shJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

Today we are pleased to announce Triple Click 2, which is the same podcast, but we're adding a PVE mode where we fight zombies. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. Today we are talking about Overwatch. What is the deal with Blizzard Shooter and how come people are up in arms about Overwatch 2? Let's get to it, shall we? I'm Jason Schreier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers.

Hello. Hey. It's us. Look who it is. We are back for another episode. I hope you guys have continued to dodge COVID, unlike me. Somehow. Somehow we have.

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Maddie, what are we doing today? So we are doing a What's the Deal episode and we are doing one on Overwatch and I didn't think any of the three of us were quite up to explaining what the deal is with Overwatch. Like we would have done okay, but I thought I might bring in a ringer to just help round out our team.

An expert. True Overwatch style. Yeah, yeah. I just thought it would help. So we are going to bring on one of my best friends, Nico Deo, although that's not really her credit. I guess her main credit is being an incredible mercy made in Overwatch and also a freelance writer who's written for Polygon and Kotaku and Pace and a ton of other publications about Overwatch and so many other things. And she's still playing Overwatch all the freaking time. And we're going to talk to her about it.

All right. Let's bring on Nico. Okay. So welcome to our Overwatch therapy session, everybody. Nico, Dea, welcome to the show. Hi. I'm so excited to have you here. More of Maddie's lifelong best friends on the show is really my secret mission here. I can get behind that. Nico, we all played Overwatch when it first came out, right?

All four of us played Overwatch when it first came out. And Nico kept on playing it and still does. He's still at the party after everyone went home. Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Kaplan left. A lot of people left That's who the host of the party left

Yeah, like that's kind of weird, right? Like Jeff is trying to shut the party down And Rico's like still there making it happen Yeah, I'm the person that's on the Out on the front lawn like completely passed out Just like cans around And I just wake up the next day Yeah, and we're here to ask you

What you imbibed the previous night That led to this current status of being passed out Right, all this fabulous team shoot that you've been inviting. Yes, exactly. And the other hook, I guess, is the fact that Overwatch 2 is in beta now, and it's also the competitive version of Overwatch, which is pretty baffling to me as somebody who used to cover Overwatch Esports back in the day. And the timeline to that moment is something that normally Nico just spams in my DMs all day, but I thought maybe other people would like to hear it, too.

Yeah. So, Nico, do you want to explain why you're still so obsessed with Overwatch? Because I think it started from Moment 1 for you, because it's not like any other video game. It's really not. Yeah. So I guess to kind of give like a very short timeline of it for me personally,

it just like, so Overwatch got announced in like 2014 at BlissCon. And I remember thinking, like, oh, this game, at first I didn't think it was a game. I thought, like, Blizzard was maybe getting into, like, the Pixar business or something because they had this, like, very, like, glossy cinematic. It was so bright, it was so colorful, did not feature any orcs or demons. Yeah. Orch-free.

Yeah, arc-free. It was kids, and then there was, like, you know, heroes and villains and things like that. And it was very, like, you know, pretty well scripted and stuff like that. And then as soon as they were like, Overwatch is going to be a team-based objective shooter. And I was like, nope. I don't like PPP games. I don't like it.

They're stressful. And in kind of the intervening years between like 2014 and 2016, I played closed and open beta for Overwatch and like got hooked really fast. because it reminded me a lot of like TF2, which I did enjoy. And then as soon as it, like, it's very funny that we were talking about this because I did look back at my old tweets from that time period where it went very quickly from like, whatever, I guess I'll just like play it for like the ladies or something, the cool lady characters to, I got the collector's edition.

Like two weeks before it went on. Like something happened in the interim. I think something like that happened to a lot of people. Yeah. So just to circle back, Jason, you played this game too. What was your experience of playing it the first time? You dug it, right? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a very Blizzard thing,

which is to take this genre that's out on the market and polish the hell out of your own version of it and really just dominate as a result and bring in players who would never think to you. And Nico, what you said about not being into PVP before is such a common sentiment when it comes to Blizzard games, because people over the years who just like would not normally play multiplayer a lot

are like Starcraft fiends or like are really into world of warcraft. And Lizard has always just been the goat at getting people to try genres that they wouldn't otherwise do, except for Mobos, but that's a whole other podcast. Yeah.

My experiences with Overwatch, yeah. I mean, I've had the trailer. I remember the trailer getting like more concurrent viewers on katako.com dot com than like anything ever. People were so hyped at Blizzard's first new IP in like 16 years at the time

and then yeah I played it I was into it for a bit I wasn't very good at it that was a problem for me I played his tracer and like zipped around and like did a bunch of recordings and myself teleporting off of cliffs and I was like okay that's enough overwatch for me I went back to Starcraft instead. What about you Kirk?

Kind of similar I played a little bit longer than Jason I remember because Jason, you and I played Destiny, and then our Destiny crew kind of switched over to Overwatch for a minute. And then there was a kind of a gradual attrition as some of us left the party to continue the metaphor. Yeah, I really liked that trailer as well, that opening trailer. I liked that vibe. And my experience of the game was basically playing it, getting into it, looking at different, like playing different characters. I really like playing diva.

That was kind of my, I would say I was a diva main for a month or two. I wrote about the game a little bit for Kataku. And then, you know, kind of lost interest. There were some changes. They started adding new characters. Things just started, it started to coalesce into a proper competitive game. And I just, you know, I wasn't really that good. I wasn't playing in an extremely dedicated way.

I found myself increasingly turned off by the whole loot chest grind, the feeling like I was compelled to play on certain days and for certain events. And I was just like, I'm already playing destiny. and even that is sort of exhausting at this point. So they kind of lost me. And then I sort of stayed tuned to the Overwatch network because I just liked watching the character reveal trailers because those little movies they made were so great.

And so there was a period of time where I wasn't really playing the game or I wasn't playing the game at all, but I was still watching those movies because they were so good. Oh, it's a hamster. Yeah. And just seeing what Winston was up to.

I mean, those touching scenes of Winston and his, you know, his, like, human friend standing, looking out over the earth. I mean, there was a lot of really nice stuff in those, in those little mini movies. So I kind of watched those. And then I just at some point around, probably when they added Brigitte.

I mean, it was also when I left Bridgett, Bridgett. Brigita? It's not what you think. It was around when I left Kataku, so I was also, like, just fully not, like, I was starting to just unplug from the world of game news. And at this point, I'm like, very... You're fully not a gamer.

You're like, very right. I just turned in my way. my gamer card in. Just full sex. It's on hours now. Yeah. Hercn, not a gamer Hamilton. Yeah, yeah. That's what they call me. That's my nickname. I remember, so I played Reinhardt. I'm glad we're all getting into our man's. This is important. It says a lot about us. I played as Reinhardt. Rinehart. Reinhard is fun. And then I feel like I stopped playing for like a week. Nico, you and I had played together in that very first surge. And then I came back and it was like something had happened to you and everyone else we played with

that I had not been a part of where everyone else had gotten way better and understood a lot more about how to do well at the specific cocktail that Overwatch does. And it's not just a matter of, oh, this weapon's better than that. That's not

even remotely how this game works. Each hero is unique in much the same way that Two Fortress 2 was, but instead of just four heroes and you really get the sense of what every single one of them does, it's more and they've added so many more. Now when I look at Overwatch,

I feel like I don't even recognize half the people on the screen. And I'm like, the ones that I do recognize have totally different abilities that I don't remember, or everything works differently, and the pairings and trios that work together well, I'm like, I don't even know what this means anymore.

And that means that it has gone from being a game that I thought was really accessible when it first launched because it had alternatives to the, like, Twitch, Counter Strike, Quake, whatever DPS kind of play that it's like you have to be good at just this in order to succeed at this shooting team-based shooting game. It had these other kinds of characters, but now I'm like, it's become so overwhelming as a result of all these additions.

So I have a question related to that for Nico. And that is, so Maddie, you have this memory of bringing away from the game for a week and then something changed. Yeah. And I know that feeling because. I've had that feeling with groups of friends who play games as well. And I'm curious, Nico, do you remember that moment and what's your perspective on that change?

Like, what happened if you know? I mean, I think, like, it's very interesting how memories work. I definitely think that Maddie's assessment is pretty correct, though. I don't think it was necessarily a week, but it was definitely probably a period of, like, three to six months or, you know, in between, you know, in between. Of you becoming a phenom that you are. Yeah. Whatever.

Um, it's, it's kind of a combination of a couple of things where as I've sort of tracked the progress, I should say, I, I shouldn't say I, I should say we, me and my kind of co-conspirator, Tyler Culp, who works for PC gamer, were kind of like, Overwatch. And as a fellow Overwatch Stan. Yeah. Yeah. He's, he's, he and I are basically kind of like Overwatch historians at this point. Um, and, like, I, I, played it, you know, in a casual way for a decent chunk of time, but around the time that I would say, Kirk, you started falling off the game in terms of like they started adding heroes and stuff. So we're looking at the, you know, 2016 to 2017 period of the game. That's when it went from that early, early period that I felt like so many game journalists were like super hype on because it was just like TF2 or Quake or whatever,

where you just throw yourself into a match. It's not competitive. It's just fun. It's zany. You just like pick up whatever and you don't have to feel good about it. Like you get to just have this like pure fun experience. You can pick anything that you want. And, you know, just have a great laugh with your friends and stuff like that.

And as I started like adding more heroes early 2017, I felt like the pot started boiling really slowly in terms of like hero design and they started adding heroes very quickly after that because that's kind of when as far as I can tell and this is somewhat speculative that's when they started actually gearing up the game to be a competitive multiplayer e-sport and we didn't know it at the time it was it was not even on the wind yet but like that's kind of when I made the jump from that early sort of heyday period where I didn't know anything about the game to I kind of swapped friend groups I guess I did play with a lot of like Maddie said I played with like her and a lot of other people that we were all like you know filthy casuals yeah yeah no no I mean

like then she abandoned us literally played with like all of the people who like just you know we're all trying it out and that sort of thing and then I sort of swapped from playing with my usual group of people that I met through like idle thumbs to playing kind of by myself. And then I met Tyler. And around that time is when I started sort of trying to figure out the nuts and bolts of the game from like a mechanical perspective and also a cultural perspective. I started doing a lot of like writing about like the fandom and kind of cultural issues within, you know, basically, baby's first taste of what competitive shooter communities are like, which I'm sure Maddie and all you guys both can attest to, a little toxic.

Yeah. Wonderful, chill places. Yeah, so supportive. Yeah. But as the kind of the pro scene ramped up at like end of 2016, early 2017, you already We had like the first Overwatch World Cup. You had things like OG and Apex in South Korea starting up. And that was like when I started watching e-sports as an e-sport.

And so that's when I started understanding this game could be like on a whole other level tactically, not just about shooting at that time, but really about like kind of the mental game and kind of the like how all these things fit together. it suddenly went from like TF2, you know, playing whatever to like learning about compositions, learning about what kind of power imbalance was happening between certain characters, what things were really good on what maps, like really kind of rocking it on like a pretty deep level. And it was great to watch, you know, South Korean players tackle Overwatch. That's like, you know, watching Picasso paint, you know, like just perfect.

It's funny, though, because the thing that I remember you liking about it even then was that it was so dissimilar to other e-sports at the time. And that's part of why you were so fascinated by it. And you still are. And you still tell me, I'm still playing it because there's no other game like it still. There really isn't. Which is to say, like I made a list of hero shooter competitors because this was a weird. little time period in 2016 onward where it was like every company

was trying to make one of these. And we mainly remember Overwatch. And these days we also maybe would talk about Valorant and Apex Legends. And Nico, we can talk in a second about why those two aren't good enough for you apparently. But there are also

other hero shooters that tried and failed to capture the same magic. Like, I didn't realize until today somehow, because I'd reconded in my memory, that Battleborn from Gearbox came out before Overwatch. Oh, my God. It was just a slaughterhouse.

And Lawbreakers was Cliffy B's attempt that shut down the next year. Yeah. Launched in 2017, and then in 2018, they just shut the doors. Battleborn was kicking for a much longer time. Both of which were in development before Overwatch was even announced. Right. It's worth noting.

So it's like, why do you think, I mean, this is a question. question for any of you. Why? Yeah, it's like an ants bug's life situation or something where it's just like something was in the water and everybody played TF2 and then. Well, you know what was in the water was League of Legends was in water. And so everybody took that and was like, if you're the designer, I mean, if you're a Clip Wasinski or you designed Unreal Tournament and stuff, you're like, hey, man, I want to take this like old school shooter and take classes from MoBas. And it's a pretty, it's not a way out there combination. It's not like, you need to be so, like a lot of people have that same idea.

And since it takes so long to develop games with TF2 in 2007, it kind of makes sense in a sad way. But 10 years later, you would get a lot of games that were influenced not only by that, but also mobas. And MMMO RPGs is one of the other things that you said you see as an influence too. Yeah, absolutely. Which is interesting to me. Jeff Kaplan and also Chris Metzen, who was end of Titan development, which was their failed FPS MMO, which is what led directly into Overwatch because they basically took the bits and pieces from Titan and literally made just kind of like an internal sort of shooter sort of thing with the

heroes, like Tracer was originally in Titan. And it was just an internal thing, but they realized all of their moments. employees were like literally like extending lunch breaks and staying after work to play this thing. So that's kind of where I think they realized like, oh, we got to get ahead of this. So but yeah, no, like I understand where that ground swell came from. And it's very weird because, as you noted, like BattleBorn came out like two weeks before. And definitely it felt very weird. It felt like BattleBorn came out two weeks before Overwatch.

it felt like a very like, who's going to release a game around Eldon Ring right now? You know, like it had that kind of like, who's playing that? And also Paladins came around the same time. Paladins is still going, by the way. Like, that's actually still happening. And there's a very dedicated fan base. And but it's weird that we had this kind of like weird sliding doors moment of because Overwatch ate everybody's lunch,

numbers-wise, it was really poised. It really kind of almost did itself a disservice in that all of the competitors left. And then immediately after, everybody started developing battle royals. And that's what took off because then they also borrowed all of the DNA from Overwatch to make character battle royals, basically.

So that's where you get apex and ballroom. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because PubG was like on the rise at that point or around, I don't know the dates of PubG, but PubG had literally just kind of hit the Twitch scene. And then of course, Fortnite. Yeah, how can we forget the R&RRRonday game? So it's weird that like there's this like sort of dissident evolution of like, um, Overwatch did so well that it cleared out all competitors and then destroyed its own, you know, market. the market just veered right off into it. Okay, so I want to ask you a question, Nico, because that's what made the following sequence

of events so weird. Oh, much dominates the market, and then suddenly Blizzard stops updating it because they're working on a sequel. So as someone who was playing the game regularly, what were the next couple of years like for you, and they just, like, bailed on making new stuff for Overwatch? I have kind of a different take about this than some other people. because the reason that, to kind of go back to what Maddie was asking before, the reason that I stuck with Overwatch is there really is nothing like it.

It had so many things about it that were not replicated in other shooters, you know, characters. Like, like, 2016 Overwatch was so different and so innovative. And I know a lot of people thought it was like really like biting off of TFT. and Quake and this, that, and the other thing. But how bold of it is it to be a shooter that literally has tons of characters that are not using guns at all? Like, not even sci-fi wacky guns.

Literally, like, you know, Mercy's a really great example because she's a healer and she has, like a staff. She looks like she is straight out of World Warcraft. And that's why I kind of made a beeline to her because, again, wasn't a shooter person. And I sort of feel like I represent a lot of people who picked up Overwatch, especially, like, you know, women gamers who had never wanted to play a shooter or they did play competitive mobas or things like that or did PVP in like World of Warcraft, which is what I used to do, and saw a character that didn't have to be like good at aiming like Maddie was talking about.

And so the first couple of years of Overwatch, even as towards the lead up in 2019 when they announced the sequel, sequel, scare quotes. It was, it dominated my life because it was a tactically complex game that I feel like the word shooter kind of does it a little bit of a disservice

but it's true, but it also is tactically very, it's closer to like watching a soccer game and that's why the e-sport was really popular. That's why the game is still so intriguing why people like are suffering massive burnout now in 2022 from this game, but cannot quit it because there is just nothing else.

No one wants to have, no one wants to kind of risk it all because the people who did risk it went up against Overwatch and failed. And now Overwatch's biggest enemy is itself. Right. And like the other thing that we haven't quite got, to yet is that not only did the game stop updating in favor of Overwatch too, and Blizzard will never admit this. Every reporter has asked them and they will always deny this, but like your articles, Nico, have always pointed to them increasingly focusing on DPS heroes and DPS play and classic shooter mechanics in favor of, you know, the weirder stuff, the tanks, the healers, etc. And the overall outline of how the game has changed has made it look more like a

Valerant, more like a counterstrike even than the weird game that it was before. And so that was happening concurrently with this Overwatch 2 announcement that was also taking people off the board supposedly to work on this other game. Yes and no. Yeah. It's because it's technically not, there's some, yeah, there's some peculiarities. to the development that we just don't really know. And it's really funny because I told Tyler,

I was like, I'm really excited for the documentary that's going to come out in five years about what exactly happened with Overwatch. Because sort of in kind of the arc of Overwatch's history, the 2017 to 2019 period is clearly them ramping up announcing and then trying to roll out a massive e-sports undertaking on what is pretty confirmed. a shoestring budget, very poor management, obvious Blizzard hierarchy problems above that.

Or, you know, that's a whole other thing. First time during of it. Yeah. But like when you seek to make an e-sports enterprise, suddenly the priorities of a goofy, tactical, you know, team-based sort of shooter thing change very rapidly. And looking back now, I definitely can see kind of it was already. in the water as early as 2017. Somebody got big dollar signs in their eyes and was like, well, people want to invest in

esports right now. By the way, Rip Compete. I miss it so much. I wish there was like a long form compete about Overwatch development. But it's you definitely saw the shift in priorities. Hero designs started getting very complex and somewhat homogenous, but also like. trying to shake up like competitive metas. You saw the, then the announcement happened.

And then suddenly, Overwatch League was fully in the world. It killed the South Korean apex scene dead because it was a competitor. And you started noticing how the language around the game really shifted. The sort of like ideology behind the game really shifted. It was very much focused on professional players. and what they were doing and what metacompositions they were playing and how they looked at the game. And a lot of the observation was very like DPS focused. Hit scan because if you want to sell an e-sport on ESPN in the afternoon,

you want to make it look like Call of Duty. And that had like a really observable effect on kind of the community they had attracted and how invested they were in making it a really successful e-sports league. And the balance of the game reflected that. And since 2017 onward, I was always scared that it was going to go this way. And I always, I had a lot of, like, optimism in some ways, but I had a lot of faith in, like, Jeff Kaplan being kind of the top creative mind behind this. So when 2019 rolled around and they announced Overwatch 2,

and it seemed like they were really pumping up like this PVE mode, which I would assume is actually what that development is or was in terms of it being a whole new game. The PVP is not a whole new game. It's a series of balance changes. It's, you know, whatever. But, like, I got the sense that, like, we were moving into kind of this new era. But, yeah, they had to pull up. tons of people off the team, as far as I can tell, and they really didn't give out updates,

but as we kind of know now, there probably was a lot of management shakeups. There was probably a lot of, like, you know, feet being put on next developmentally, not just from internally on the Overwatch team, but from way higher up. Like, Bobby Kodick was rumored to have, like, definitely messed with, you know, the team quite a few times in terms of, like, wanting, like, certain features kind of on a dime. And, and... And that completely throwing off development. And then like this pandemic happened. And like all these teams had to start working.

Suddenly got really weird. Yeah, investing in e-sports, you know, pandemic. Like that killed Overwatch League as a saleable product because right before the pandemic happened, they were announcing like, oh, yeah, every team's going to start to have like a local homestead, like a local arena. They were going to build arenas for every. There are still arenas that are now freshly done being developed that are not going to maybe have an Overwatch League team with them anymore. You know, it's COVID really kind of, I think, through a huge wrench in the works of like, you know, not just Overwatch, but that happening concurrently with Overwatch 2 development being so mysterious, calling it a sequel, people not understanding what that meant.

the Overwatch League kind of hitting the skids on ice, like, you know, not sure where that was going. And so you definitely had this period of like two years where the developers were kind of mum about everything. And that's ongoing, right? Yeah. Well, they've changed that. This year they started actually kind of outlining stuff because then the beta rolled out. And this is where we're kind of at, which is like, um, we've played through a beta period now, an open beta, or I closed beta technically.

Prior to that, there was a closed alpha as well that was press and content creators, I believe. And they started rolling out more frequent updates, which is really good. But yeah, like, the Overwatch community was, like, starving and panicky and, like, frothing at the mouth for anything. And they did a lot of sort of tie-ins with, like, content-corrhizabeth. creators like streamers and YouTubers and stuff like that to kind of I guess keep juicing the community to like stay stay with this game and not go to Valorin or whatever and yeah no it's it's a whole thing and but the thing that always kind of bugged me is that so me and Tyler wrote like a really long piece last year yeah we can link to it yeah for for um waypoint slash vice

games where we were just about to like go to press with it, like literally a day, like a day before we had like our final deadline for it, kind of detailing the history of Overwatch. The dev team announced that they were going 5V5, that the entire like team framework of this game was radically changing. Because it had previously been 6V6.

6V6 and with Roll lock, which is something they added later, it was 2-2, 2 tanks, 2-DPS, 2 support. And they just nixed a tank. just get rid of a tank who needs to just get rid of a tank it doesn't matter and me and tyler had to like pretty much scurry to like add a whole like two paragraphs about like what we thought this was going to mean for the game and oh my god this is going to change the many things but in the interim both he and i started to get like really worried and very cynical where is this going well so why does

that change to you indicate that the game is more focused on dPS for example in like the sort of call of duty ESPN broadcast of it all for the person who doesn't understand like me for yeah no to kind of yes to explain it to Maddie and all of her her her friends who don't necessarily understand what that means but like it's so if you kind of still think about overwatch is like a team sport so like you know you watch it Overwatch league and it is really like watching a very fast soccer match with colorful characters um some of of the things that made me realize very quickly that this was going to be very competitively oriented was that very early on Overwatch League players were kind of yelling about wanting to be able to

test this stuff really early. And that's the thing is they announced the like 5B5 thing without telling the professional players about this. Like this was not something they were let in on. it seemed very sudden or like something happened in the like development time through COVID but this is like if the NBA was like there's going to be four players on every basketball team

and they just told everybody all at once that that change was just happening yeah imagine if the like the head of NBA was like guys to put it in context yeah to put it in context guys one less basketball player also like players got fired

that's a whole other piece of it that's the thing is tank players on Overwatch League teams were were were fired en masse yeah like just it was a bloodbath and a lot of people just ended up retiring you know at age 24 veteran veteran Overwatch players at 24 yeah um and yet it felt like going into this 20 you know 20 22 when they started actually ramping up in updates and things like that. I started hearing from pro players again and they all felt very happy

with the kind of turnout. And so I'm like, a little skeptical about that and some of the things that developers mentioned about it still... Being maybe not... I mean, the thing about this that you're always cataloging is like they'll always say

the changes are for everyone in the player base, not just the top players, not just the best players in the world. But it is odd when an update seems to specifically make pro players really happy and doesn't necessarily seem like something that makes the game more accessible or easier to play, easier to understand, or easier to jump into. Yeah, because the game had been sort of going in that direction from the start, but it still felt maybe parsable for even a casual player because the heroes remained mostly the same. But when I actually got my hands on the beta, along with my friend and stuff like that,

we noticed immediately it was so fast, like time to kill. So, you know, the moment from when you try to kill somebody until the time that they actually die was very fast. So it fell a lot more in line with a call of duty or a valerent, not one-shot territory, really, but a lot faster than they were used to, because in addition to taking away a tank, so one basketball players off the court, they also adjusted a lot of heroes in order to kind of accommodate the fact that there wouldn't be a second tank,

a lot of crowd control, so things that heroes use to kind of slow down the action, kind of remove pressure from the other team, were also kind of taken away. Also something that would make the game faster. And because of that other tank being removed, that additional tank usually would provide like pressure, like defensive pressure against the other team. Suddenly playing it just felt onerous. And I understand it's a beta,

but it felt like a very fast game. And then in the wake of that alpha and that beta period, now we're kind of waiting for the next beta to happen. Pro players are all talking about, yeah, this like feels so good. I think there was something in the watch. All these 19-year-olds, they love this. The 19-year-olds, they love this because, and a lot of coaches have been talking about, well, it's more mechanically focused. It's more skill-based. There's less emphasis on abilities, which is something that if you have spent any time in the shooter community, especially paying attention like Valorne in particular, or even Apex, there is constantly a struggle between people who always want shooter. to be pure mechanical shooting crosshair on head all the time.

And Overwatch was never that kind of game from its inception. And so if we're steadily moving in that direction, where pro players who are arguably, you know, inarguably the best of the game are like, yeah, now it's more about like cross hair on head when there's still all of these heroes that are not cross hair on head and the game's gotten faster, it definitely feels like they're kind of throwing all of, like they're throwing their entire weight behind

really solidifying this as, as an e-sport. And then the PVE is kind of often like development hell. And I have a feeling that that was kind of going to be a concession to a lot more of casual players because it would have like more like left for dead RPG level up kind of, you know, talent-based sort of systems behind it. So it really feels. like Overwatch 2 feels like it's taking the game and sort of like pulling the Velcro part in that

respect where the competitive stuff is getting even more competitive and we don't know about the rest of it right now but it's very alarming. So if I could just reflect on something that I've watched as this game has developed over the years and a change

that I at least sense when I look at Overwatch and I'm curious what you think, Nico. Maybe just to put a bow on this whole thing. My sense is that Overwatch, just listening to the way that you're talking about it now versus the way that people were talking about it when it was first announced,

that the magic has been sort of steadily drained away from this game. Because what made Overwatch so special, or a big part of what made it so special, was the MMO-ness of it, the world-building, the characters, the fact that it did come out of this failed MMO and Titaner, this canceled project, that then was turned into this thing,

Whereas you played it, you know, people would always say there's a common refrain. Oh, man, I wish I could play the MMO version of this. I just want to live in this world. I want to play Tracer as she goes on adventures. Yeah. And it was also a really good team-based game with great tactics and a great, great strategy, and you could really build a whole strategy and, you know, spend a lot of time with that. So it had that going for it as well.

So it pulled people in and you were in this really enchanting, exciting world, and then you were playing this game that it turned out to be really deep and exciting and allowed different people to play in different ways. And then over time, it's like it's been put through this crucible and just turned into this extremely focused thing. And then the way you're talking about, right, the shift in the design of the game, the removal of a tank, the focus on DPS,

so you're just getting like really quick time to kill as soon as just becoming a shooter. And also all anyone's really talking about is these really high-level tactical gameplay adjustments because it's now a professional sport that so many people are playing. and that's what pro athletes tend to care about. They don't really care about that we learned about Tracer's girlfriend or whatever.

Yeah, oh, exactly. At least seems to me, and I know you kind of were just changing, like you were shifting topics as you were talking, so I'm sure some of that stuff is still going on, but my sense is that that stuff has really receded into the background, and this has kind of just become a less remarkable game as a result, and Blizzard doesn't seem to realize that. I think that that really kind of hits the nail on the head,

making it less remarkable is absolutely kind of the name of the game. And I think that for a lot of people, the shift to Overwatch 2 is like a return to a form that Overwatch has never been in previously, but it's familiar to them. So those kind of people are being courted. But more importantly, that's a little bit of like a veil, I think, because largely I think a lot of these are interests behind the money,

which is the e-sports league, and making that come to fruition in so much of the fact that, like, Overwatch League is currently playing on a beta patch. I don't think that has ever happened in the history of e-sports. As far as I know, I'm very limited, so, you know, all three of you can probably correct me if I'm wrong. I have never seen a professional player play on an unfinished, unfinished patch of a game. Like, we're talking UI assets are not finished, hero reworks are not finished, nothing is finished.

And these are competitive players who only get to like scrim on it because it's way different than live. So they don't have any like one-to-one comparison. They only get scrim time on it and they have to just now. they've been playing consecutive weekends for, like, you know, the last, like, three weeks, basically since the beta ended. So it looks very calculated that they ended the beta period, took all that feedback, and then shoehorned everybody straight into Overwatch, too, that you can only watch via Overwatch League.

And that's definitely, like, soured me quite a bit, but, you know, the writing was on the wall for me. I have seen this coming since 2017. I'm, you know, like, this has been very, slow going, but it is, I guess the kind of thing that definitely told me that something was really kind of fundamentally changed within like the body of Overwatch where it was just less whimsical and less like goofy and cartoony was they changed a lot of the gun noises to sound more bassy and realistic. Yeah. And they added a scoreboard to the game. Like a KDA.

Interesting. You know, no impact score all of Valorant, thank God. But they have like a kill-death ratio scoreboard. Yes. That's right, because that was a thing. When the game first came out, you just got play of the game, but there wasn't a big scoreboard so you could see how terribly you did. Or how well you did if you weren't me.

Yeah, and now it's in the game, like it was in the beta. And they, and that said so many things to me about where this team's kind of ideologies has headed. And it makes sense to me because a lot of the remaining developers or new developers that were brought on are people who have done, you know, production for Fortnite. They are old CSGO and Call of Duty pros and stuff like that. There is definitely more of that DNA in the water versus like Jeff Kaplan's sort of grand vision for, you know, imagine the world as you dream it to be versus like, you know, shooting. your bros or whatever. You know, like that was the vision from early on, and I suspect with him, you know, finally leaving the team

shortly after the announce of Overwatch 2, it definitely felt like that fundamental promise of this sort of innovative, very accessible, very like non-shooter-friendly game that also promised a lot of story, I might add. Just that game is, I won't say it's dead because that's really like too overbearing, too reductive. Nothing's ever dead in video games.

Yeah, like I don't like things. But it's changed a lot. It's changed to something that is not as much of an eco game. And it's part of why at this point rather than being the friend who's like, I hope Overwatch 2 does a great job and impresses my friend Rico, I'm more just hear all of this. And I'm like, I hope other developers make games that are risky and unusual and do something really different that are still competitive.

Yeah. But not in the way that we've seen in CSGO and Call of Duty and so many other shooters. I mean, even Valerant, I can't play that game. I'm not 19 years old anymore. Yeah. But yeah, that's what I hope for you. Oh, thanks. I kind of hope for that too.

And unfortunately, no matter what changes, Overwatch, it goes through, it's still Overwatch. And there's still really nothing like it, which is hurting me. it's painting me on the inside because it means that I'm playing a game that I knew in a much better form and it hurts me every single day, like every single day. Are we really leaving it here? And on that note. Hopefully someone will make the better version, right, in the future. Hopefully someone will make a better game.

We can dare to dream. No, I have optimism that somebody who was, kind of coming into development when Overwatch really just got put onto the market took some inspiration from that. We're going to probably see something happen with Overwatch kind of fundamentally or so many, you know, so many people have left Blizzard. They've all found in their own studios. Somebody is going to come up with the next like Overwatch or the next like more fun competitive game that, you know, isn't a Valerant or an Apex or whatever. It isn't Battle Royale. And I have a feeling that we're going to get that kind of revival because still so many people love TF2 and they love

League of Legends. They love MMOs. Those things are still very potent. There's a lot of people who still play those games. They're still a niche in that market. Like as Overwatch 2 definitely solidifies as a more like competitive arena, like closer to like an arena shooter versus like a goofy character shooter. Like somebody's going to pick up that torch and run with it.

I have no doubt in my mind, and the second that that gets announced, I will jump ship and go play that. Or, you know, most cynical take, Overwatch's, e-sports is going to bottom out at some point, and they'll have a redemption arc. It'll have a redemption arc because then it will go the way of Heroes of the Storm where they rip the esports out of it, and now it just has a dedicated community of people that just love playing it for what it is, and don't have to worry about it. about the professional aspect of it. Well, I don't have much hope of that, but I hope for something else for you, Nico. Anyway, it was great to have you on.

Thank you. Thanks so much for explaining what the deal is with Overwatch to us. And we are going to take a break and we'll be back for one more thing. Hi, I'm Jesse Thorne America's Radio Sweetheart. And I'm Jordan Morris' boy detective. Our comedy podcast, Jordan Jesse Go, just celebrated its 15th anniversary.

It was a couple months ago, but we forgot. Yeah, completely. Our silly show is 15 years old. That makes it old enough to get its learners permit. And almost old enough to get the talk. Wow, I hope you got the talk before then. A lot of things have changed in 15 years. Our show's not one of them.

We're never changing and you can't make us. Jordan Jesse go the same forever at maximum fun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm going first. It's me, Jackie Cachian. Man, she's always this bossy. I'm Lori Kilmartin. We're a bunch of stand-up comics, and we've been doing comedy like 60 years total with both of us, but we look amazing. We drop every Monday on Max Fun, and it's called The Jackie and Laurie Show,

and you could listen to it and learn about comedy and learn about anger management and all the things. And Jackie is married but childless. I'm unmarried but childful. So together, we make one complete woman. Is that just what's going to end? Yeah. And we try to make Kyle laugh just like that and say, oh my God, every episode. It's a good job.

Jackie and Laurie Show, Mondays only on Maximum Fun. Okay, it's time for one more thing. Kirk, why don't you go first? Because I really hope this is a cool new dance move. you're going to tell us that you're learning. It's not just a cool new dance move. It's actually a very old style of dance, and that is what I'm going to be talking about.

Yeah. My one more thing is tango. Argentine tango dancing, which I wanted to talk about because... Sarah Amala, if you're out there, I hope you'll listen. Yes, our friend, voice actor, voice director, Sarah Amala, very into tango. I have also taken ballroom dance lessons. Kirk, I did not know that we have this in common now. I love ballroom.

Well, so I have done some ballroom dance, but I've never done tango. It's pretty cool. It is pretty cool. So, yes, I took a tango class and am working on an episode of Strong Songs that's all about Argentine tango, where I spoke with a guy named Alex Krebs who runs a tango studio here in Portland called Tango Barreton and is a really big deal. I didn't know this, but a buddy of mine plays piano with Alex's tango group. and I was like, I really want to talk about tango on the show, but I don't know much about it. So this kind of led me to have this whole conversation with them, and that led me to go take a class just to go to a Melanga on a Saturday night and just do the thing.

So I just kind of wanted to recommend tango to everybody. I obviously talk about it a lot on Strongsong, so this is kind of a plug, I guess. But also, it's just such a fascinating style of dance. It's not like any kind of ballroom dancing I've ever done because there aren't. set steps. There are moves that you do, but the whole dance is totally, I mean, it's improvised. You and your partner just feel it out along with the music, and the music itself is also extremely loose in the way that it's performed, depending on which tango orchestra, the band is emulating, or which tango orchestra is being played. So I've learned so much more about

tango and how complex it is, all of the social dynamics at play, which are really interesting. and just I have a way deeper appreciation for it now than I did a couple of weeks ago. And that's been really cool because I always thought of tango as the way that it's depicted in popular culture. You know, in true lies or son of a woman, as Alex puts it, the rose in the teeth and the fishnet stockings and the whole thing. Which is kind of not, that's an incomplete portrayal of what tango is. There are all these structures. There's this whole way that it works. You dance with different partners over the course of the night.

so you do one set of dances with one partner, then there's a whole like choreographed thing. This is at a Milanga anyways, at a social dance, where you kind of make eye contact with a new person in the room, and if you kind of hold eye contact, then it's like, okay, we're going to dance together, and you just go dance. There's all of these sort of protocols and understandings where you make a little bit of small talk,

but then you don't talk while you're dancing. And it's just, it's so cool. It's so cool that this thing exists that you can just go do. And a lot of cities in particular, really a lot of communities now have tango classes, that you can just go. You sign up, someone will DJ, they'll play their favorite orchestras. People come out. They're usually really welcoming communities. People are really nice. And it's such a fun sort of vulnerable thing to do with people, like to just go and meet people.

It has this kind of summer camp energy almost. But it's a very specific thing. There's a lot more going on with tango than I realized it was super cool. And I've been thinking about it a lot. And I think it's just so fascinating. And I know a lot of people hear the word tango and they picture certain things. but there's so much more to it than that. It's really just a whole rich cultural tradition that goes back decades and decades and decades. So I just wanted to recommend people look into tango, listen to some tango, and maybe even go take a tango class because there's totally beginners classes all over the place, and it's a really cool thing to do.

That's awesome. Yeah, social dancing is really, really cool and a little bit game-like at times. There are a lot of rules. There are a lot of rules. There's a magic circle, I guess, something like that. There is a magic circle. It's true. Yeah.

Jason, how about you? My one more thing is a TV show that I just watched called The Flight Attendant on HBO. I'm curious about this show. Me too. So this is a show. So I have only watched season one. Season two just came out, but I've only watched season one so far. So that's all I can talk about.

But here's the premise. So Kaylee Cooco, who is, I hope I'm pronouncing that right, who is, I think she's best known from the Big Bang Theory, even though I've never seen that. But she has a very familiar face. If you see her, you'll know where she is. She stars as this kind of drunken, alcoholic mess of a flight attendant who goes on these trips and one day goes on a trip to Bangkok meets this cute guy in first class that she's serving, goes up to dinner and drinks

with him, sleep together, have a drunken blackout night, she wakes up and he is dead in the bed next to her. And what kind of unfolds from there is this eight episode thriller slash kind of comedy, although it's not really a comedy. It's more of just a thriller, mystery show where she's trying to figure out. Occasional jokes. With occasional jokes. Where she's trying to figure out, I mean, a lot of the humor is just her being kind of a hot mess.

So it's her trying to figure out what the deal is, what happened, how to kind of defend herself against the, like, because people obviously think she did this crime and she killed him. And so how to prove that she didn't do it. And she winds up entangled in this big conspiracy, yada, yada. And I liked it.

I didn't think it was the best thing ever in part because it kind of drags and it goes on a lot of silly tangents. For example, a lot of it is spent just like living inside of her head with hallucinations where she sees the guy who's dead and he talks to her the whole time. So he's like a main character too. And there's just drag on and on and on. There are all these scenes that are like flashbacks to her youth and it'll just repeat the same imagery over and over and over again. It's really just like to a padding extent. But the twist and turns are kind of fun. The cast of characters is fun.

There's some really bad performances. Rosie Perez is in it. I don't know how you guys feel about Rosie Perez, but her performance. I don't know if she's known as like the best actress on the planet. And she has an extremely silly plot where she like for some reason decides to, she's another one of the flight attendants. She's for some reason decides to sell her husband's, her husband works for a computer company. and she decides to sell her husband's computer secrets to Koreans for some reason,

and it's never really made clear why or what she's up to. But yeah, it's a fun show. I mean, I wouldn't say don't watch it. It's not, I wouldn't say, like, you need to bump it up to the top of your list right now because they're way better thriller shows. But I enjoyed what I watched, and it's got some cool style. It's got some cool aesthetics. It's got some cool stylistic choices.

They do a lot of, like, split screen stuff, kind of 24-ish split-screen stuff, that I really enjoyed watching. There's a lot of cool shots of cities as she travels around to like Rome and Bangkok and stuff. And she's pretty good. Haley Quoco is pretty good. Or not Haley, Kewokoho is pretty good in the starring role.

And yeah, if you're not sick of the kind of cliche of the drunken mess, who has to pick up the pieces and recover herself and confront her past trauma before she can really heal and put the liquor down. If you're not sick of that, it's a fun show.

Thanks. Interesting. Okay. Well, I actually read a... The flight attendant. Yeah, the flight attendant. I think it's on HBO Max. Yeah.

Yes. I read a book about a drunken mess who has to pick up the pieces. It is Misery by Stephen King. Are either you too familiar with this book and or film? Yes. I've seen the movie and I haven't read the book, but I kind of want to read the book. I'm waiting for Just King things to say whether they liked it or not. See, that's why I've,

I read the book because I've always wanted to read it, and I try to not bias myself with the Just King Things podcast episode. Believe it or not, not sponsored by us in any way. Simply a podcast we enjoy where they read the works of Stephen King in publication order. And they're going to get to misery in, I want to say July. So I'm really early. But I was so excited because I've always wanted to read misery. So I read it. Loved it. And I really recommend it. It's so weird. I don't know if my Michael and Cameron are going to like it because it's super slow and introspective and it feels, okay, I'll describe the premise of misery in case the listener is unfamiliar with how much of a self-insert character, the main character of misery is for Stephen King. I don't know if he's ever denied this, but come on, Steve. So it is about a writer, a best-selling author, incredibly famous best-selling author. Stephen King book about a writer? What?

I know. And get this. He's got significant drug problems and significant issues with his life with drugs. And that's a really big problem for him. So he gets in a car accident and gets kidnapped slash rescued by Annie Wilkes. Which, by the way, worth noting this is written before Stephen King got in his serious car accident. True, true. And Annie Wilkes is this, it's funny that I can't remember the name of the writer at all,

but I can absolutely remember Annie Wilkes because she's freaking terrifying, one of the most terrifying female villains, maybe of all time. I think I'm willing to say that. It's a fair argument. She is just a nightmare fan girl and also sort of a parody,

I would say, of the kind of person who read Stephen King books, which is to say middle-aged white woman. That's a huge amount of his audience. I don't think I'm speaking out of turn by saying so. Kathy Bates, of course. I iconic performance. Absolutely incredible.

Yeah. And Annie, And so this entire book, there are a few other characters who show up in the periphery, and there's a book that the writer character is writing and you get to read excerpts of the book, which is really fun and just kind of helps break it up. Because this is a two-hander. He is stuck in her house, severely injured and addicted to drugs, which she keeps him on to sort of keep him a victim forever. And like she is a former nurse who has horrifically reset his injuries. And so he's bedridden. And her. he's her captive and she's completely obsessed with him and he learns more and more about her. I don't know. It's wild to read a book where it's really just two characters and you just get to know the two of them extremely well and almost nothing actually happens. It's really just a terrifying body horror story for the entirety and just awful descriptions of being addicted to drugs and the withdrawal when she's torturing him and the physical symptoms of everything that she does to him. I don't know. I was really

into it. I enjoyed it. I liked the horror of it all. I do want to say something about the ending of the book, which I'm not going to spoil what happens, but I will describe the structure of it. So if you don't want to know anything about it, you can just stop the podcast here and not hear anything and just go check out the book. But the ending is super weird. IMO bad. It is like, IMO bad. It is like, well, not the first bad Stephen King ending. Yeah. So like the ending is like if you're a writer who's trying to get really meta about the fact that you wrote a book, what if you do like a clue thing where you're like, just kidding, that's not really what happened. That was just a sample chapter that I, the writer, wrote. And let me give you another sample chapter. He does that like, I want to say three or four times. Like, I was getting so turned around, like, reading it at the end where I was like, I literally don't know what's happening anymore. Like, you keep like zooming back out and being like, that didn't happen. But what if this did? And I was like, what? That's. the heck is going on. So like, that was so bizarre to me. But I still recommend the book. I kind of found

the ending funny. If you listened this far and you wanted to know about the structure of the ending, at least now you have a warning that I almost wish I had that like it was going to be so weird and that I would, I don't know if I want to say I need to pay attention to it because it super doesn't matter. It's more just like be aware that this is a really fun horror two-hander and that the ending is like, who cares? It doesn't actually matter, you know? Yeah, I never knew that about I never knew it had a weird ending like that, but now I'm... Bizarre. I'm probably happy that I know, because I do think I'll read that book at some point.

Yeah, and I feel like I don't remember the movie super well, so I'm going to watch that too and see which of the endings they choose for the movie and whether or not I agree with the one they choose. Or perhaps they'll write an entirely new one that isn't in the book at all. So, yeah, Just King Things. Pretty cool podcast. Just kidding. Misery by Stephen King.

That is my one word thing. Great book. Nice. So this has been another podcast, folks. We did it again. It has been. We did. Here we are. We made it. We made it. All right. Well, I'll see you both next week then.

Yep. See you next week. See you guys next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximumfun.org slash join.

Find us on Twitter at triple clickpod. Send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfun.org. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned. Audience-supported.