GoKawiilBack in 2016, I sat in the popcorn-stained cushions of a movie theater, consciously ignoring the pretrailer advertisements and diligently scanning my phone. Then the annoying chatter of soda and candy commercials faded into a quiet screen showing the Blizzard Entertainment logo on a dark background.
For the next minute, I watched colorful heroes stand up to protect the people around them, speaking in accents from around the globe about the ideals they clung to. Hope, courage, justice -- each paired with a scene illustrating that concept, until an astronaut-looking bespectacled gorilla proudly declared, "We are Overwatch."
I immediately turned back to my phone to look up what the hell kind of game this was.
I got my first taste a month or two later, when visiting a friend who'd picked up the game. Even though I'd grown up on first-person shooter games like GoldenEye, Perfect Dark and the Halo series, I had never played anything quite like Overwatch.
Everything was colorful and kinetic and, honestly, pretty confusing -- but also satisfying. I stayed up late into the night watching Overwatch guides on YouTube so I could try again in the morning. A few months after that, my sister gave me the game for my birthday, and I've been playing it ever since.
While Overwatch has had its fair share of struggles and stumbles on the way to its 10th anniversary, which was this past May 24, it's remarkable that a game like this -- an online team-shooter without a single-player narrative mode -- is still around. It might not be the biggest title, and the competition has multiplied considerably since 2016, but Overwatch is still in the conversation, particularly after its Reign of Talon season, which brought a surge of players into the game.
Most new shooters struggle to last 10 months, much less 10 whole years, but Overwatch has survived a rollercoaster of a lifecycle that has included everything from Game of the Year awards to calls for boycotts, cries of "Overwatch is dead," and cheers of "Overwatch is back."
While the backing of a large, storied company like Blizzard is a factor, Overwatch has also built its longevity on pillars of character, community and evolution -- three elements that have given the game a meaningful influence on my life. They've helped the game last for 10 years and could very well keep it going for another decade and beyond.
This concept art of Freja communicates the precision and mobility in the hero's gameplay. Blizzard
Overwatch's character design is a great hook for new players
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