Is Asia ready for a game like Overwatch?

Blizzard Entertainment announced its first new IP in 17 years at Blizzcon last weekend. Overwatch is a six-versus-six player-versus-player first-person shooter (FPS) game. It was revealed to an adoring public by means of a trailer that looked more at home in Pixar’s portfolio than Blizzard’s. It has yet to receive a release date, or even a monetization model, but hearts are thumping in anticipation. Everyone is convinced Overwatch will be great, and it probably will be! Still, I have my concerns.

At Blizzcon, two game modes were revealed: Payload and Point Capture. You’ll be able to choose between capturing specific points in game in the latter, or guarding a load of explosives until it reaches its destination in the former. There were a total of 12 heroes available for play in the Blizzcon demo. What really sets Overwatch apart from the similar Team Fortress 2 is the fact that it isn’t a simple run-and-gun, and there isn’t a deathmatch mode where the winner is determined by his or her number of kills.

I’m a huge Blizzard fan, but this is one game series I’m not so sure about. Not just because of personal tastes, but because I’m not sure if Asia is ready for such games yet. Overwatch is a game that relies heavily on cooperative multiplayer, similar to 2K Games’ monster-hunting epic, Evolve, and it currently has no announced monetization model. Whether Asia’s gamers will pick up on it is still a huge question mark.

Can Asia-based FPS gamers work in teams?

This is the biggest deciding factor of all. Although Asia dominates in the MOBA genre, games like Dota 2 and League of Legends inherently rely on teamwork and attract a different sort of player from FPS games. First-person shooters like Counter-Strike, and Team Fortress 2 reward individual skill more than teamwork. Jasper Mah, the Electronic Sports League’s business development director for the Asia-Pacific region, says that first-person shooter players in Asia tend to value their prowess as individuals. This often results in them being poor team players:

At least 80 percent of [players] want to be individual godlike carries. They are going into the games not as a guild, or clan, or team. They just want to prove themselves to the community rather than being more interested in having an actual team to grow into.

With Asians being more dominant as individual players in FPS games, Mah says they don’t do as well in teams compared to gamers from Europe and the US.

“It’s a showcase of firepower and skills,” he says. “That’s why the aggression works in favor against European or US teams who have never played against Asians in competitive games. Yet those teams are great at strategies that Asian gamers are not able to counter with pure firepower,” Mah adds.

Can a premium model work?

A glimpse of the Japan-inspired Hanamura map.

Blizzard has yet to reveal if Overwatch will be sold as a premium game or marketed with the freemium model. The Asia region is notorious for its love for free-to-play, and boxed games rarely do well here due to high price points – developing Asia can’t afford to pay what the US can. There is also the problem of rampant piracy.

Cooperative multiplayer, a go for Asia?