Putting an Octopus to Bed (Episode 50)

Media Mavens

Maddy Myers joins us this episode to talk about the Overwatch League! She writes at Compete (which is affiliated with Kotaku and Deadspin) and covers competitive video games (aka esports). She also cohosts two podcasts - Let's Watch Two Movies, and an X-Men podcast called The Mutant Ages.

What we've been up to

(00:03:14) Dragonball FighterZ (Maddy)

(00:04:46) Cloverfield Paradox (Riley) some minor spoilers in here

(00:08:50) Zumbo's Dessert's (Pam)

(00:11:41) Riverdale/How to Get Away with Murder/Star Trek TNG (Maddy)

(00:16:42) The Mummy/ Queer Eye (Riley)

(00:19:45) Call of Duty Black Ops 3 (Pam)

(00:22:16) Flame in the Flood & Dropsy (Pam)

(00:25:10) X-Men comics - Gambit and Wolverine; All-New Wolverine (Maddy)

(00:27:18) Olympic Figure Skating The Chinese skater is actually named Jin Boyang, not Bo Jinyoung - Riley goofed

Overwatch League

(00:30:28) What is Overwatch League?

(00:31:14) Do you like OWL?

(00:33:09) Spectator tools

(00:36:44) What strategy or technique have you learned from watching the Overwatch League that’s helped you play better? I’m working on retreating and that I don’t always have to be on the payload? @Orkchop

(00:42:38) Is this league structure new or has it been done? How complicated is it for the average person to watch?

(00:48:29) Investments from team owners, now and in the future

(00:53:19) OWL tokens

(00:53:54) League structure - City teams

(00:56:18) Atlantic v Pacific divisions - they don't actually matter right now? Home and away games, arenas

(01:00:22) So Many Games - huge time commitment - Nate Nanzer's (the OWL CEO) ideal amount of teams (28?!)

(01:02:27) New schedule for Stage 2

(01:03:34) Where are all the women? (There's one now, there are a few in Contenders - the "minor" leagues - and the top 500)

(01:10:46) Diversifying the casting desk

(01:12:30) Weak excuses for not drafting women players

(01:15:11) Player punishment and behaviour, codes of conduct

(01:19:00) Rascal moving to Dallas, worrying about xQc and the rest of the players

(01:22:30) Media/PR training and sensitivity training?

(01:25:01) With bans and fines coming to the more egregious actions taken by players, what should the league do about some of the more subtle bigotry in various players’ stream? @BrothaDom

(01:28:53) Are mirror teams a common thing? Is this an Overwatch problem?

(01:31:20) Balancing so many different heroes

(01:35:18) With the changes to Mercy and Junkrat, which heroes do you think will appear more in Stage 2? Do you think any teams will try to stick with Mercy and/or Junkrat? @K_song

(01:41:22) Which team are you most looking forward to watching and see change in Stage 2 of the Overwatch League? @Orkchop

Listener Questions

(01:43:23) What’s more fun, a marathon of binge watching OWL or binge-podcast-recording about Mad Max? @alatinolawyer

(01:45:18) Who's your favourite team and player?

(01:46:18) Which team has the best colours?

Contact information

Riley

Pam

Maddy

If you’ve got any feedback, questions, people or topics you’d like to hear on future episodes of the show, you can reach out at [e-mail] or on Twitter @_MediaMavens. We've also got a forum to discuss episode at CartridgeClub.org. If you like the show, please give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher.

Music: Vivacity by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/