Overwatch

Overwatch is a squad-based first-person shooter developed by Blizzard Entertainment. It was released for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows on May 24, 2016.

It moves away from Blizzard's mainstay of real-time strategy games such as StarCraft II and WarCraft III. Players choose one of several hero characters, each with their own unique abilities and role classes. The game's overall design encourages players to switch between characters during a match. While the game focuses on team-based shooter gameplay, it was designed to have a "front" to the interaction rather than a deathmatch with a circular-flow, giving players a sense of where attackers or defenders are coming from.

Many of the best Overwatch players transitioned over from other competitive scenes such as Quake Live, Team Fortress 2 and Battlefield 4. Several Overwatch esports tournaments have already occurred before the game's official release, awarding over $30,000 during the beta.

At the 2016 eSports Industry Awards, Overwatch was named "New eSports Game of the Year". At the beginning of 2018, The Overwatch League (OWL) debuted and became the premiere league in Overwatch esports, aiming to follow the model of traditional professional sports with its use of city-based franchise teams and regular season play, instead of relegation and promotion/demotion used frequently in other esports leagues.