5 good minutes with SVB

Anyone who knows me understands how obsessed I am with Overwatch. And certainly anyone who follows my Medium page here is probably confused why this trans writer who has written award winning work on the trans rights movement is always writing about this game.

I came back to Overwatch after fixing my desktop computer at the start of the pandemic and I’ve fallen in love with it all over again. And now, with this month’s release of the game’s sequel, Overwatch 2, I’m watching a bunch of other people fall in love with the game just as I did a few years ago.

This Medium outlet has given me the joy and freedom to write about this game that I love when the editors that I usually work with only want me for trans content and for that I’ll always be thankful.

Last month, I talked with Frankie de la Cretaz about the A League of their Own series on Amazon Prime and this month I’m proud to bring you another interview, this time with Overwatch content creator SVB. This interview has been edited for length and content but please enjoy below.

(Editor’s note: my contract with Medium is ending at the end of this month and I will no longer be producing content for this site. I plan to continue the interview series over on my Patreon page for $5/mo subscribers. Find out more here: patreon.com/katelynburns)

Here’s the interview with SVB:

Katelyn Burns:

Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself?

SVB:

I’m SVB. I’m a content creator for both YouTube, Twitch, and all those other various platforms. I primarily make content for a game called Overwatch, and I like to say I make a mixture of educational and informative content, so edutainment informative content. I like to make guides and help new players learn the game, but also obviously have a bit of fun and get other streamers together and create some wacky and crazy events.

Katelyn Burns:

I like the Secret Thrower Series in particular.

SVB:

Yeah, it’s just nice to give the other streamers and stuff something to mess around with.

Katelyn Burns:

One thing that I particularly like about your educational content that’s helped me as a player is you talk a lot about the mental side of the game. Actually, I randomly had it on my YouTube yesterday where you did your “my experience” as a grandmaster in Gold, Plat, Diamond, and I think Masters, and there was your first Plat video where you talk about the mentality side. And I actually sent it to three of the people that I play with because they were getting frustrated with Overwatch 2. I’m a big fan personally of your content.

SVB:

Thank you very much.

Katelyn Burns:

A lot of people know this even if they’re not particularly gamers, but Overwatch 2 is finally here. Can you just tell me a little bit about what your initial thoughts are on how the launch went and how the game plays and how it might be different for people who are familiar with Overwatch 1?

SVB:

That’s a lot of different things. The launch, I think I’m sure even the devs would say it did not go smoothly, but then again, how many AAA games launch seamlessly? Obviously, there was lots of issues. There’s still lots of bugs. I think by everyone’s conclusion, it’s a rushed finish.

The real Overwatch 2 is potentially the PVE that will come next year, but they wanted to get this out earlier so that the players could play earlier. It is called an early access, [and] it feels raw. It feels like it still needs another three to four months of tinkering and fixing a lot of problems before it’s actually perhaps the polished game that we would normally expect from old Blizzard Entertainment.

That all being said, it still feels like a great game to play. I think almost everyone who loved Overwatch 1 has agreed that the 5v5 changes and all the balance changes that they’ve made with Overwatch 2 have made it a lot more fun to play. I see a lot of people that I know had quit Overwatch or just fell out of love with Overwatch start to play it again, and they just seem to have that addicted feeling again, that feeling of just playing this game all day every day and not feeling bored of it. From a gameplay side it definitely feels really great. It feels like the original Overwatch that everyone fell in love with.

So I think from a gameplay side, it’s a huge hit. I am very confident that as they get these bugs fixed and as they keep releasing content, that it will be a top tier game that will be quite irresistible to a player who’s looking on the market for any sort of shooter game and a free-to-play one at that.

Katelyn Burns:

Yeah, I’ve noticed, at least over the last couple weeks, the Twitch statistics, it seems like more people are watching Overwatch than some of the competitors like Valorant, Apex Legends, things like that. Are you noticing a difference maybe in your own numbers or just the general interest in the game?

SVB:

It definitely feels like there’s a higher interest in Overwatch right now than there has been in years. Personally, my Twitch hasn’t particularly grown, but my YouTube has had some really huge numbers and I’m hoping to continue that. I had a video that I released on summarizing the lore of Overwatch, and that video is already one of my best performing videos ever.

I can see those numbers for everyone across the board. I’ve noticed lots of my colleagues have huge view viewership on YouTube and a lot of people on Twitch, obviously. I think Twitch is starting to come back down to earth a little bit in terms that there were some regular Overwatch streamers who were pulling like 30,000, 50,000 Twitch views. I would say now that they’re more back to a normal level for them, but there is a lot more people streaming Overwatch, people who wouldn’t normally stream Overwatch, who are still streaming Overwatch, and you can see that in the fact that the numbers are 10 times what they were before the launch. Now, whether that can stay and how long that can stay, only time will tell, but I do think that across every platform that I can see people are seeing some huge potential spikes depending on what they’re putting out.

Katelyn Burns:

You mentioned earlier that the game feels, the development itself feels a little bit rushed. Do you feel like maybe Blizzard painted themselves in a corner by their self imposed content drought after Echo was released? I remember Overwatch Two was announced and they were saying, “Oh, it’s going to be PvE.” We saw some gameplay from BlizzCon 2019 that was PvE? And then it seems like maybe eight months ago, they changed course.

SVB:

The exact nature of what happened between BlizzCon announcement 2019 and today will forever remain a thing of mystery and speculation because no one outside of the actual Overwatch team really knows exactly what went down. Everyone has their theories. I think that whatever aspersions Jeff Kaplan had about going free-to-play or this new model, I think that he fundamentally didn’t see the game the way we have it now in the sense that I don’t think he fundamentally saw it as a live service game. By 2019, I think he felt like they had done mostly all the updating they needed to for Overwatch 1 and I think he was at peace with not updating it for a while.

Now, obviously, from what I gather, no one in the dev team had anticipated exactly how long it would take them to develop Overwatch 2. Obviously, a pandemic hit. But even just beyond that, I just think they severely underestimated the size of the project that they had hoped to put out. There’s that anecdote of the hero talent tree, which, if every hero has to have one in the PvE going forwards, then that takes them longer than it would take to design a new hero. So to do that for an existing 30 heroes already is, as you can tell, already a lot of work to be doing just for the PvE, just for the talent section, let alone designing all the missions and the opponents and the maps themselves. I think they severely underestimated how long it would take them, and couple that with the fact that Jeff probably, I wouldn’t say didn’t care, but didn’t mind that the Overwatch 1 base game was failing.

I think that obviously must have caused some conflict somewhere, and within all of that, he decides to leave or is asked to leave and Aaron takes over. Pretty much since Aaron [Keller] took over, I don’t know how long it’s been, 10 months or something, what we’re seeing in Overwatch 2 is the product of what has been achieved in those last nine to 10 months, which I think is remarkable that most of what we’re seeing in terms of the 5v5, the balancing, anything to do with the PVE really, has come within a very short space of time. [This] is why I’m a lot more soft on the bugs than perhaps some other people are, because I can tell that it’s been done very quickly for the sake of getting the players back and having something for them to keep playing.

Katelyn Burns:

If you were a new player to Overwatch, the Overwatch world, let’s say maybe you played other shooters or other MMOs or just were a gamer in general, if somebody wanted to jump into Overwatch, what would you suggest they do to learn about the game outside of just grinding out hours on it?

SVB:

There’s a lot of resources. I’m obviously biased because I’m a content creator, so I know that there’s a lot of great YouTube videos. There’s a lot of good guides out there. There’s a few sub-Reddits, although I wouldn’t put too much stock in them. And there’s, obviously, Twitch streams. The first step is always to fall in love with the game. I think that if you’re new or you’re looking at Overwatch as, is this a game for me, I think the first thing is just explore the characters and see which one grabs you. Because I think that, unlike many games I think where you’re relying on the core experience to sell you, Overwatch has a great core experience, but I also think that you really fall in love with Overwatch when you find a hero that just does it for you.

So finding that hero that does it for you and then from there maybe you look for a guide for your hero in particular. Okay, so I feel like I’ve got fairly good at Genji or whoever it is, or Mercy, and, okay, from this point, how do I actually get really good with this hero? And there is so much good guide content out there, and I know there’ll be more coming as new things are learned in Overwatch 2 and as we all adapt to the game ourselves. There will be lots of content I think to help people go from just casually being interested to potentially being addicted like the rest of us.

Katelyn Burns:

God help them. The Blizzard accusations, the sexual harassment stuff that happened, there weren’t any allegations that I know of that came from Team Four, the Overwatch team, but Overwatch was impacted because of the Cassidy name change that became the face ofBlizzard’s response in a lot of ways, I think unfairly sometimes. But how was navigating that has an Overwatch content creator and do you think that there’s still a residue that comes with Blizzard Games from that?

SVB:

Yeah, there absolutely is. I think that the internet can be very snowball-y when the tide changes in opinion one way. The internet likes to homogenize very quickly and it likes to figure out what it thinks about a certain thing, and I think that there was a time 15 years ago or something when I was growing up and getting first encountered with Blizzard Games where Blizzard was the gold standard of gaming and just the gaming industry and everything they made was loved and cherished, and they had and have made perhaps some of the most important video games ever. There was a lot of love and a lot of affection and there was just a pedestal and there was a lot of leeway that was given to them. But, obviously, with Activision coming in and then with the lawsuit, it’s soured that entirely.

I think Blizzard themselves have made poor decisions and their games have suffered. World of Warcraft had a lot of gripes with people. They’ve had various failures in the form of Heroes of the Storm. Then Overwatch, obviously, eventually falling by the wayside meant that a lot of people took that relationship that they had with Blizzard of fondness and it became one of resentment, it became one of residual anger. And so when the sexual harassment stuff came out alongside that, I think it became very easy for people to pile on and just paint Blizzard as an evil company, as one that’s uniquely ill intentioned, uniquely dystopian almost in the gaming industry when that’s not really true. We know that various game studios have had sexual harassment issues, and unfortunately it’s not a singular problem to any one company or any one industry. That’s a cultural issue that we have to tackle and we have to deal with.

But, obviously, a lot of special hatred is reserved for Blizzard because of those factors. You compare to Riot, who also recently had a sexual harassment scandal, but because their games are popular, the vitriol isn’t quite there for them. They get a lot of free passes on, stuff is brushed under the rug even though they’ve had plenty of bad things and employees sharing similar stories to what was shared with the Activision lawsuit. But because their games are popular, people aren’t so fussed. It’s a bit tragic that often these things are weaponized simply to attack companies that people don’t like the games of or just aren’t happy with. It would be great if we could keep this energy universally for all misconduct, but it often gets bandied about as a justification for why people hate a game they already hated as opposed to attempts to change the industry to be more inclusive and more safe for marginalized people.

Katelyn Burns:

How can people find your stuff?

SVB:

Fairly straightforward, the YouTube is SVB. I actually just [recently] changed my Twitch handle, so it’s SVB_.