On Nov. 16, 2017, NBC tried something new with its Thursday night broadcast of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Tennessee Titans football game. It brought in the SkyCam -- a camera suspended by wire that hovered behind the quarterback -- creating a Madden-like view to test in the televised broadcast. It was a rare instance of a network trying to show a new angle on a sport that's had a specific standard of broadcast for nearly 80 years. While the SkyCam received a mixed response from fans, NBC has continued to work with and improve the vantage point in an ongoing production experiment.
Unlike the NFL, the Overwatch League doesn't have decades of televised history to fall back on, giving Blizzard producers the ability to experiment in order to create the best broadcast possible. That freedom has helped the league production team -- alongside dozens of commentators -- build a league that's both entertaining and easy to digest.
"If you follow the ball in basketball, you'll never miss a point. We don't have anything like that in Overwatch. We have 12 players using unique heroes with very different roles," Frank LaSpina, senior producer for Overwatch broadcast, told ESPN. "We have to do our best at constantly prioritizing what could happen without creating a disjointed viewing experience."
Outside of a few rule adjustments each season, most traditional sports don't see a lot of drastic change over time. Overwatch League and esports in general are completely different beasts in that regard-- patches and new content can completely change how the game is played. That's why LaSpina and others believe that Overwatch may never have a set standard but instead a broadcast with styles that change constantly with the game itself.
"With Widowmaker, for example, we tried to always contextualize what shootouts with her were going to look like before they happened," LaSpina said. "We tried to give viewers some groundwork for what they were about to see. Widowmakers can be perched in odd corners of the map, so you may not always be prepared for what's about to happen."
During an early-season showdown between the London Spitfire and New York Excelsior on the map Junkertown (where the objective is to move the payload from Point A to Point B), New York's Kim "Pine" Do-hyeon's Widowmaker dominated London's entire team several times. During some of those instances, the camera cut between his first-person point of view and a wider shot of the area to give context to what his scope was aiming at.
"We want to contextualize the whole area before we jump to the first-person view," LaSpina added. "It's basically predictive positioning, and when we get it right, it turns into a great moment."
LaSpina and his team have examples like this for most heroes that dominate the meta since team compositions can easily change between league stages. Other examples include getting more verticality in camera angles to accommodate players who use Pharah -- a hero that unleashes bombs from the sky -- and finding better ways to display status ailments for players who have their abilities hacked by Sombra.
"The game drives the production, so the production should drive the game," LaSpina said. "We have to always deliver the best experience, based on the narrative where the game takes us. If we see more heroes getting more play time, we have to find the best way to convey that."
There is only so much that camera angles and UI can show during a broadcast. Oftentimes, something will be missed or something won't be easily understood by what's shown on-screen. That's where commentators come in to add an extra bit of context.
"A lot of Overwatch casting has been analytical, and not like WWE, early on," said Overwatch commentator Mitch "Uber" Leslie. "I feel like we're starting to become more like WWE, highlighting those human storylines and moving away from simply explaining what happened. We just need to be careful not to editorialize our commentary."
While plenty of people watch traditional sports for the high level of play alone, a lot of viewers tune in to experience the unique player-focused stories each week. Take the Philadelphia Fusion, a team with players from nine countries who came together to propel into the grand finals. The casters want to get to a point where they can move away from educating the audience about the game and focus on highlighting those narratives.
"San Francisco's Grant 'moth' Espe has been a shotcaller on three different teams that have three different playstyles. I've spoken with him at length about how he has to think about who his teammates are as people so he can manage his own communication with them," Leslie said. "That's not a story that will become readily evident to most viewers."
Rivalries, like the battle for Los Angeles between the Valiant and the Gladiators, have already started to build during the first season, giving fans who may not be the biggest gamers something to latch on to.
"We're going to see more narratives build over time. Once we're three years in, especially with all the expansions, you'll see more teams and players that resonate with fans because of their story," Overwatch League commentator Erik Lonnquist said. "Emotional attachment to a team is stronger than Overwatch simply being something entertaining to watch."
Leslie, LaSpina and Lonnquist all echoed the sentiment that they wanted to tell timely, reactive stories during each week of the season. But now that they have an established audience and cadence, talking about a player's background and history may not be enough anymore.
"We want to do things like talk about the last match, which could be an overnight interview that we turn around quickly or something else entirely," LaSpina said. "But for that to happen we need access to the players without taking away from their main goal of being awesome at Overwatch."
Leslie told ESPN that competitors have actually pushed back on the number of interviews that would lead to the preproduced segments we see during broadcast. That's not to say the players don't have a case -- they've had to handle a stacked practice schedule, regular interviews with the media and broadcasters, and direct engagement with their fans through social media.
"A sustainable league stands on the backs of its players interacting with their viewers," Leslie said. "The truth is that we're taking way too much of their time right now."
A key goal heading into Season 2 is finding the right balance between giving the audience more of what they want while relieving some of the stress that those commitments put on the players. Efforts to find that balance are even more important now with eight new teams joining the league.
Luckily, at least for some of the changes that Blizzard & Co. are trying to make, we won't have to wait until early next year to see a new and improved Overwatch broadcast.
"We don't really have an offseason," LaSpina said. "We're always working with [Overwatch] Contenders, the World Cup and whatnot. We're experimenting there as well, so you can get a taste of what's to come by watching what we try there."