Pre-game vs. Houston Outlaws

On the eve of the start of Stage 3, I’d like to share some reflections on the first half of the season.

I started and stopped writing this post multiple times during the first half of season because I wanted to talk about our emotional roller coaster ride, but found it difficult to put in words the extent of the highs and lows in full technicolor to those outside of the team cocoon. It’s like the Plato cave allegory, where words can only provide a fleeting glimpse of flickering shadows that represent (poorly) the true exposed nerves rubbed raw.

A fellow esports traveler calls it the agony and ecstasy of esports. Kind of like that line from the Wide World of Sports back in the day, “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” — but for those of us involved with the team, it’s that by a factor of 10, where a win means sleepless nights from an excess of euphoria, and yet a loss also means sleepless nights from an excess of misery.

I think the highs are so high, and the lows so low, because we as an organization are so emotionally invested in our young men and we want so much for them to succeed. And we die a little inside when they don’t.

So that’s one of my lasting impressions from the first half of the season, the sheer agony and ecstasy of being part of an esports team.

But you probably came here to find out what I have to say about Stage 2, where we went from fighting for a playoff spot on the last day of Stage 1 to almost breaking the league’s consecutive map loss record in Stage 2. The rest of this post will be my perspective on what happened.

Commentators and fans have focused on our difficult schedule in Stage 2. While true, I think that’s only part of the story because the losses also exposed some core issues that we need to fix.

I think a part of what happened in Stage 2 was that we were slower to adapt viz. other teams in the league. Evolution occurs at an accelerated pace in the Overwatch League primordial soup, where the best minds in competitive Overwatch work on exposing tendencies and weaknesses of their opponents. And when teams started adapting to how we play, I think we were a bit slow to find the counter to their counter.

In my view, this was due to several factors.

First is inexperience. Veteran teams that have lived through multiple cycles of OWL-paced rapid change, with existing systems and processes in place, have inherent advantages over new teams. I believe this played a part in several new teams experiencing dips in Stage 2, while some veteran teams turned around from Stage 1 slumps.

Second is communication. More specifically, we had issues with our communication system. It’s not just about language fluency, but also about having a system that gives our players and coaches the tools to communicate at speed with efficiency and depth in order to achieve optimal coordination under fire.

Third, facing top tier teams in Stage 2 meant that mistakes we might have gotten away with when facing other teams were heavily punished, and we were less able to individually skill our way out of difficulty. And in turn the losses bred doubt and impacted confidence levels, which made us more tentative. With each loss, we looked less and less like the aggressive Team Press W from Stage 1.

All of these issues were magnified in the current meta where communication and coordination are valued at a premium while hesitation is punished.

Identifying the problems was the first step — next comes what we did in response.

Our competitive leadership devoted significant resources to address cracks in our communication system, drilling down to who needs to make what calls, and how, under which specific situations.

We added group English lessons that focused on in-game communication (instead of individual sessions on conversational English).

There were frank (and necessarily uncomfortable) team meetings to address breakdowns between specific players, to hold each other accountable.

Resources were added to bolster our analytics capabilities.

Our support staff spent a lot of time outside of the training room to make sure that team chemistry did not fracture under the stress of mounting losses.

But just as important as what we did was what we did not do: we avoided what has been coined in NBA circles as “culture killers”. From day 1, we prioritized clear roles and responsibilities on the competitive side of the organization, and we respected those lines throughout the toughest moments. There were many ideas and suggestions but at the end of the day, competitive decisions are made by our competitive leadership. (For example, there’s absolutely no place in the coaching room for my bronze strats.) This is important because clarity on who makes what decisions means clarity on who is accountable for the outcome of those decisions.

There will come a time when we look back at our decisions and results to do a full evaluation, but that becomes difficult when accountability is blurred. Moreover, breaching those lines ultimately leads to a breakdown of the culture that we want to build.

In closing, while Stage 2 was pretty rough, one positive outcome was that it shined a light on some core issues that need to be addressed in order for us to find sustained success. Learning from growing pains is part of the journey. While fixes won’t happen overnight, I’m confident that our staff took the right steps to start to address those things. I’m also hopeful the foundational work that the team put in will start to pay off in the second half of the season.

Our road to Philly starts up again this week, and I’m ready for more agony and ecstasy. But my heart could do with a bit less agony, please….

Thanks for reading.