Rogue Company is a bit of a strange title at the moment, seemingly ingrained a bit more heavily with streamers than they are with their own fans that should be making up the heft of the player base.
As on Twitch viewer put it, it seems as though the only time Rogue Company is brought up is when they’re paying a streamer to play it online. If this seems to smell like the ill-fated Amazon title Crucible, there’s probably a good reason for it.
Yet Rogue Company is doing more than just paying streamers to play the title; they’ve also been adding in streamers ideas and thoughts to iterate on development and turn it into something bigger; going so far as to add in an entire level based on Guy ‘Dr. Disrespect’ Beahm.
Admittedly, it’s pretty cool as a theory to get fans into the title, and it plays pretty dang well as well.
One of the Overwatch League teams, the New York Excelsior (colloquially known as NYXL within the scene) is one of the very many organizations that have taken note of the relatively new theory where developers work with internet celebrities and came up with a frankly banging idea of their own to match that would punctuate League-play a bit and make matches more exciting to watch.
Teams tend to have maps that they prefer, where strategies have been worked out to a T and the map seems to play well into the strengths and weaknesses of that team. An arena that, when played upon, is almost considered to be a forfeit from the opposition.
Branding certain maps to match the teams, making it their ‘home map‘ would bring a bit of nuance and punctuate the anticipation and general hype when the teams load into it, perhaps highlighting spectacular plays that have been made seasons prior.
Granted, some color schemes would be simply horrible for visibility of enemies and perhaps stymying the general enjoyment of the broadcast for fans (admittedly no more than the YouTube shift did), but used responsibly it’s a fantastic idea that would offer a bit more weight to victories within certain selections, along with adding new storylines for the casters and analysts to bring up during streams.
It’s an exciting thought if nothing else, but the odds of it actually occurring are unfortunately low based on the track history for Blizzard and their development for Overwatch (if you’re a pessimist).
The question is, presuming that teams can only have one ‘home’ map with their branding based on astounding plays in the past, what teams would own which maps?
