When the Overwatch League’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) award was handed to Jjonak of the New York Excelsior, nobody was actually stunned. His Zenyatta play has undoubtedly been immensely precious; a key consider New York’s spectacular 34-6 win-loss ratio. The quantity of injury he offers far outstrips each different Zenyatta participant within the League, and sometimes that of DPS gamers, too – all with out neglecting his therapeutic duties.
Nonetheless, the definition of “valuable” is a subjective one, and the accolade is a helpful lens for serious about what elements of the sport and its tradition we think about to be of worth, and what elements we are inclined to dismiss or overlook.
Overwatch isn’t a sport about dealing harm. It’s an goal primarily based crew sport that requires healers and tanks, in addition to positioning, map information, communication, and so forth. But as a result of this stuff are tougher to see and showcase, each the League and the sport itself have had bother demonstrating their worth.
Overwatch’s Play of the Game system is meant to point out off a clip of an excellent second on the finish of every match, however normally defaults to a Junkrat Riptyre or Genji Dragonblade. It’s a lot tougher for an algorithm to recognise nice set ups, like Zarya’s Graviton Surge, or clutch assist performs that maintain these DPS characters alive lengthy sufficient to rake within the kills.
When it involves the League, the identical downside arises in a special kind. Cameras linger for lengthy stretches on Widowmakers staring down their scopes, ready for that satisfying ‘ping!’ of a headshot. In the uncommon occasion that assist gamers are given air time, it’s for the uncommon emergence of a battle Mercy whipping out her pistol – or Jjonak’s lethal orb barrages.
In this context, Jjonak’s crowning is an fascinating one. He is a assist participant, and New York couldn’t have flourished as they did if he had provided that as much as focus solely on Zenyatta’s harm dealing talents. But it’s undoubtedly his excessive DPS that units him other than different assist gamers.
75% of the load of the MVP votes got here from professionals: coaches, broadcasters, and the media, who got a primary, second, and third place nomination. Jjonak evidently featured closely, however few different assist mains acquired a glance in – simply six votes in whole. Though some tanks have been championed, particularly the LA Gladiators’ Fissure, extra votes have been cut up amongst large DPS names just like the Philadelphia Fusion’s Carpe, the Boston Uprising’s Striker, and the New York Excelsior’s Saebyeolbe.
These gamers’ worth to a sport is instantly noticeable. Saebyeolbe’s Tracer or Carpe’s Widowmaker (or, sure, Jjonak’s Zenyatta) tearing by way of the enemy crew may be sport profitable, and is at all times flashy and enjoyable to look at. It’s a lot, a lot tougher to showcase, and subsequently to understand, the delicate – however in the end no much less precious – affect of a therapeutic orb or Mercy beam.
Neither does worth solely have to use to in-game actions. Dot Esports author Nicole Carpenter was one of many skilled voters, and although she selected Jjonak and Fissure as her first and second place candidates, she was additionally one in all solely three individuals to appoint the Shanghai Dragons’ Geguri. She defined that vote in a tweet: “MVP goes beyond gameplay for me – Geguri did a lot for the League and her team beyond her presence in-game. Her place as the first woman in the Overwatch League is worth commending, and she harnessed a HUGE fanbase surrounding the League’s worst team.”
“It feels way too narrow to define a player’s value only by what they bring to each match,” she elaborated to me, “which is why I thought it was important to vote Geguri in my top three. It’s not to say that Jjonak shouldn’t have won the award – there was multiplicity to his value as there was Geguri’s.”
It’s true that many individuals voted for Jjonak for his capacity to stability therapeutic and harm, and for causes outdoors of his gameplay. He had by no means performed in aggressive Overwatch earlier than the League began, and in season one had probably the most stage time of any participant, demonstrating his dedication and centrality to the Excelsior’s roster.
But his significance continues to be very completely different to Geguri’s, and never everybody was proud of Nicole’s reasoning. “I think a lot of the pushback to how I defined value was because a lot of people still don’t realize just how valuable it is to have a woman in the Overwatch League,” she says. “It’s complex because Geguri has stated publicly about not wanting to be known as ‘a woman in the Overwatch League,’ but her impact on female fans can’t be ignored.”
This is one thing I’ve written about at length, however suffice to say that Geguri, and the Dragons at massive, are immensely widespread. In distinction to the three votes she netted from professionals, Geguri was in second place within the fan vote according to the League’s website. Fearless and Ado, two different Dragons gamers, have been in first and fifth respectively, regardless of not getting any skilled votes. (It’s additionally fascinating to notice that the League additionally printed official movies celebrating some potential frontrunners, cut up 5-3-2 between DPS, tanks, and assist gamers – and with no Dragons in sight.)
The disparity right here exhibits this distinction in interpretation of worth clearly. The Dragons weren’t profitable when it comes to wins, however they have been massively profitable when it comes to assist. Games between them and the second “worst” crew, the Florida Mayhem, drew large viewership, greater than many video games between main gamers. Fearless, Geguri, and Ado might not have been as precious as different gamers when it comes to how a lot harm they did, however some mixture of their underdog standing, raking within the Chinese vote as their “local” crew, and, sure, Geguri’s gender, made them immensely precious for galvanizing followers and inspiring interplay with the League.
Jjonak is an distinctive participant and in very many senses he’s immensely precious to the Overwatch League – however even he stated that he had anticipated the award to go to a DPS participant. These flashy opponents have lengthy held our consideration, and Jjonak’s capacity to floor above them as a assist participant is further spectacular. Yet it nonetheless suggests a slim interpretation of worth; one which centralises a participant’s capacity to select off different characters and overlooks different methods of contributing to the crew – or to the tradition at massive.
