There's kind of an interesting story behind #Tezos and @PlayOverwatch - I've been playing the game for over 6 years now (and really the only game I play regularly) - but what actually got me hooked was because Tezos actually sponsored the e-sports team @FLMayhem (Florida Mayhem, 2023)- who started as an underdog team but went onto become the world champions - it was like straight out of a movie, honestly. 😅
Now that was all and well but by then the markets were already in turmoil and neither the foundation nor the official channels even bothered recognizing it happened. Not even a single "grats" tweet - uhh, if you're going to give them a bunch of money what's the point if you're not even going to acknowledge it even happened? It was mindblowing how out of sync everything was...
But those sort of issues wasn't just happening on Web3. At the time, the game itself was receiving a lot of backlash from the players themselves - the community wasn't happy with a lot of the proposed changes and failed projects (like the PvE mode that was highly anticipated but turned into a huge flop) and basically felt like they were being ignored.
I know lots of friends and vTubers who left the game out of frustration and never came back. A lot of the randos you played with online often got very toxic, too - and the platform just let them run around unhinged because it didn't seem like anyone cared. Sound familiar? The NFT world wasn't the only ones going through this at the time.
Skip over today - the game is in a much better shape now and player counts are up - and many older players/streamers are coming back too. A few months ago they released a huge update (5 new characters in one update, unheard of!) with a lot of tweaks that were based on community feedback.
@aaronkellerOW was kind of the face of this when it all went down, and for the most part, the players seem to be happy because they feel like their voices are being heard. Way - way - better than what it was, either way, and the game is a lot more fun to play now, gotta say. (And the people are nicer, too, overall.)
Anyway, thought it was an interesting story to bring up, especially now when there seems to be similar things happening on $XTZ itself. But a reminder that reform is possible, if the will to do so is there. Maybe it's not as fast as we'd like, but at least there are still some wings of the community outreach parts of the ecosystem left - maybe one day it'll actually turn around. 👀