Across Overwatch League and Contenders, many Australian players, coaches and talent are gearing up for what is looking to be a stacked year of competitive Overwatch.

Flying high with the World Cup

For Akraken, Ckm and Punk, competing in the World Cup for the Australian team was a massive highlight. “Getting to play at BlizzCon on that stage against OWL players and [being] given the opportunity to play Korea” was the highlight of the year forDPS player and Australian World Cup representative Felix “ Ckm ” Murray. “Thailand was sick as well.”

The moment when he walked up onto the BlizzCon stage was the absolute high point of the year for Team Australia and Sydney Drop Bears support player Dario “ Akraken ” Falcao-Rassokha. “That was super sick obviously. That was probably the largest stage I’ve played on and hopefully I want to play on a stage that big in the future. It was pretty nuts.”

Although BlizzCon was an incredible experience, just making the team in the first place was important for others. “[Getting on the World Cup roster] was the first big thing that’s happened to me while playing Overwatch,” said flex tank player Leyton “ Punk ” Gilchrist, who was recently signed to Boston Academy in North America. “And then probably the next biggest thing was getting through the Thailand Group Stage, [playing] against China. That was absolutely incredible because we put in so much work to try and get over there. Beating Sweden, a team of four or five OWL players, was pretty insane. That showed us that most of the Australian players can play at the top level.”

Looking Forward

Each of the former Aussie World Cup reps have different goals for the year ahead. Punk is looking to make the most of the opportunities afforded to him by the Overwatch League Academy team structure and living in North America. “[With] the connections to Overwatch League, being an academy team, you can sort of talk to some of the coaches sometimes and get their input. So I think [I’ll try] implementing a lot of what they say and also just playing ranked and trying to get the highest rank you can. It actually does mean something – being like top 10 consistently – so I want to aim for that also.”

While Punk battles it out in NA, Ckm is still looking for an Academy team to join himself. “OWL is probably not going to happen this year for me, or for many people, because it’s already locked in and stuff. I think this year I just want to try and make it to an Academy team and win all the Contenders [seasons]. Short term would be to get to China in the next Contenders Showdown.”

International Showdowns

The Contenders Showdown are a series of new live events being introduced this year to the Contenders ecosystem. The Showdowns see the top teams from each region to travel internationally and compete in a two-day, inter-region tournament. The victorious team from the upcoming season of Contenders Australia will travel to China in may to compete against teams from the Korean, Pacific and Chinese Contenders regions.

For Akraken, that’s the current goal. “My hope, personally, is that we win the next season of Contenders, then we go and participate in China, we do well there – as well as we can – then hopefully some of our players can get into NA.”

After facing the best of the best from South Korea at the Overwatch World Cup, you might think that Contenders teams from across Asia would be a much easier feat. However, Akraken isn’t necessarily convinced that’s the case.

“I think it would be worse, in that it would be harder. The World Cup is a much looser format, so every single team doesn’t start with any history or knowing each other. Most of the teams are sort of formed together,” he said. “Whereas, going to into something like a Contenders Gauntlet, everyone is on the same playing field. Everyone has been playing for ages, everyone has a good grasp of the meta… so I think it’ll be harder than a hypothetical World Cup.”

Andrew “ Rqt ” Haws, coach of Contenders Australia team ORDER and the Australian World Cup General Manager, provided a counterpoint. “I guess his point goes both ways, because in theory it means you’ve also been working together more. So I don’t know if I necessarily agree with that stuff.”

“The showdown potentially could be [harder], I’m not sure yet. It depends on the level of players coming into the next cycle of Contenders, now that Overwatch League has solidified their rosters for the upcoming season. It’s more of a wait and see, but either way it’s a huge opportunity. It’s not just to get international experience – I think that’s the kind of place where Overwatch League teams will put more effort into scouting for some of these more unknown regions.”

Contending for a title

With the next season of Contenders Australia coming up and a position at the showdown on the line, Rqt is hoping to help coach the team to secure a Contenders championship after their recent Grand Finals loss to the Sydney Drop Bears.

“The team’s really good with feedback for the most part. We’re not looking to drastically change anything with the roster and that’s not really my philosophy,” he says. “We have a group of players who, for the most part, we can just really work with each one and develop them. So, for me and my priorities with the team, one of the things we need to work on is calming players down in more high tense situations. I think if you look at our result in the finals at the LAN, that’s literally what cost us and we should have won. If we had played that online there was a likely chance we just took that series.”

And for the time being, Rqt is committed to the Australian scene. “Right now, I’ve got some real life stuff on that I’m focusing on. I’m still coaching with ORDER just as much as I was before, but I’m not really pursuing anything international,” he said. “I’ve had offers to do things but it’s just not something I want to do at the moment … So I’m just sticking with coaching an Australian team and helping develop players so the ones that do want the opportunity to go overseas can kind of realise their potential.”

Aussies Abroad

Rqt is not the only coach trying to help Australian players get recognised. Jordan “ Gunba ” Graham – a former teammate of Rqt’s in their time on the Blank Esports roster – has been gearing up for the 2019 season of the Overwatch League with the Boston Uprising as an assistant coach.

Talking about the Australian scene, Gunba highlighted some of the innate problems that the region faces. “I personally do a lot of work to try and enable Australian players. That’s both for empathy related reasons and also because naturally the players and talent I’m aware of, that isn’t from scouting, are Australians.”

“I’ve done a lot of work to bring them up, and you saw that with Punk. I helped Trill find a team as well. The problem is, the more I succeed in that role of trying to help Australians get to America and get the top, the worse the Australian scene gets, because we’re exporting talent, effectively. It’s great for those players and it’s what they deserve but it’s not helping Australia.”

Having spent the inaugural season of the Overwatch League as an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Valiant, Gunba has started the new 2019 season with the Boston Uprising.

“To be clear, I like Valiant, I like the org, I liked working there. I’m still friends with all the people who work there now and all the players,” he said. “There were a few big issues I had working there. One of those that the practice conditions weren’t as good as I would have liked, and Boston is good about that so that’s helped a lot. I also felt like Valiant was heading in a direction that was more typical of Korean coaching, more hands-off, more player-focused. As a coach, I’m a lot more hands-on, I’m a lot more involved. I prefer the top-down structure, so Boston just felt like more of a better fit with my coaching style.”

Preparation for the season with Boston has gone well. “Externally, of course, if you ask anyone’s opinion we’re like one of the worst teams in the world, we’re awful, we’re gonna lose… Realistically, I think we expect to do similarly well to last year, but those expectations aren’t based on anything from last year. We just think we have a good team here, a good roster, and scrims have been going well so we’re pretty happy so far.”

Overall, the move to Boston has been a net positive for Gunba so far. “I think there’s also a lot of value in seeing different teams and how different teams work early on into an esport. There was a lot of knowledge when I came here that the team didn’t have, how to deal with certain things, how think about certain things, and that goes both ways. You learn a lot from other people just by virtue of them being different people.”

The Aussie Motormouth

Gunba isn’t the only Aussie working behind the scenes at OWL. Our favourite Aussie motormouth Mitch “ Uber ” Leslie has returned to the casting booth for the 2019 season. “The [2018] season was pretty long. I recall trying to just fight out burnout at multiple points through it, just because it was a lot of stuff going on. But I have to say, it was a good year for me.”

Among his best moments from the last year, Uber cited the Stage Two finals between Philly and New York, and casting the Grand Finals between Philly and London at the Barclays centre in New York. “It’s pretty hard to match the atmosphere we had out there in New York and the commentary area was set up so it was open air, in the arena,” he said. “You were really very subject to the atmosphere there, as a commentator. That made it all quite an incredible experience to be honest.”

Talking about his casting the 2019 season, Uber is always reminding himself to be mindful of the Overwatch League demographic. “It’s pretty easy if you spend a lot of time on r/competitiveoverwatch… You can get a little bit of a different perspective of how people see the product than how it actually is. [The subreddit] counts for 2 or 3% of the overall viewership. Something I think about all the time is that obviously it’s more self-serving to please the hardcore pundits because they’re the guys who are just gonna jerk me off on reddit and that’s always great, but – and I don’t think they realise this – they account for the vast minority of the demographic that we’re serving this content to.”

“If I was a Contenders caster, it would be fucking great because we’re not on TV and our entire viewership has at least a fundamental understanding of the game, which ultimately means I could pander to hardcore fans and we could discuss much more in-depth concepts. Unfortunately, that’s not what the Overwatch League is like.”

“That’s what we’re going to be doing for most of the time this year – really making sure that someone who flicks onto this broadcast on Disney or ESPN and doesn’t know about the game is going to come away knowing exactly what we’re about. That’s a huge area for improvement. What I’m trying to do is build a marriage of the two styles, I guess.”

Getting back into casting after a long break is always difficult, and Uber says that to some extent there’s always the fear of losing your touch after a long break. But at the end of the day, casting is not something that Uber wants to over-think. “It’s just sort of real. It’s just something that’s pretty intrinsic to who I am as a person. With that in mind, I just have to go like, “well I guess I just have to go out there and know what I’m doing.” And I need to the prep, but at the end of the day I can’t make fire, I can’t just wish for it to appear and it to be there. I just have to forget about it and do my job, and then those nice moments or those things that I’m really happy with just sort of find their way in the less I think about them.”

Overall, it’s looking to be a big year for both the local Australian Overwatch scene and for Aussies working in the Overwatch scene abroad.

Each Contenders region will return later in the year for two seasons. Season One of Contenders 2019 will align with Stage One and Two of the Overwatch League, while Season Two of Contenders 2019 will align with Stage Three and Four.