Game developers Blizzard recently hosted their annual convention, Blizzcon. By far the most noticeable event at the otherwise boring convention was their Overwatch world cup tournament.
I talked about Overwatch in this column a couple of months ago, when the game was first released. In seemingly no time at all, it has fully flourished into an esports giant.
All the players on the world cup teams were picked by an online vote. Players were picked based on regional rankings in the competitive mode of Overwatch. Over 3,000,000 people picked 306 players out of a pool of 1,109.
With the exception of teams from six countries that were invited to play at the tournament (Canada included), teams across the globe took part in an online qualifier tournament to participate. 10 teams were picked to compete at the event in Southern California in hopes of claiming the gold medal, obtaining an appearance bonus, and representing their country on a global stage.
Progressing on to the quarterfinals, Russia, France, Spain, Finland, South Korea, the USA, China, and Sweden all fought in a best-of-three format to see who would progress to the semifinals.
Coming out on top were Russia, Finland, South Korea, and Sweden. These games all went by fairly quickly, and soon enough Finland and Sweden were both knocked out.
Heading into the final match, some big names—Serena Williams and Elon Musk, for example—showed up at the tournament.
The fight for third place was well fought; in the end, Sweden came out on top with a 2-1 win.
The finals, however, were played in a best-of-seven format between Russia and South Korea, with South Korea utterly destroying the Russian squad in a clean 4-0 match.
One thing that has become very clear from this tournament is that South Korea definitely has the skill to compete in first-person shooters.