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Overwatch

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Average Sentiment

0.86

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Average Monthly Article Count

61.35

First Article Date: April 2014

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Highest Monthly Average Sentiment

0.99

Month: December 2020

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Lowest Monthly Average Sentiment

0.41

Month: January 2024

Total Articles Count

7,178

Most Active Authors

  • Richard Warren - Game Rant (447 articles)
  • Nathan Grayson - Kotaku (417 articles)
  • Dalton Cooper - Game Rant (383 articles)

Article Source Distribution

Game Rant: 47.97%

Kotaku: 20.53%

Gamespot: 12.47%

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Article Count Frequency Trend

Increasing

EA Logo

Historical Trends of Overwatch

Game Image

Overwatch

Genre: FPS

Mode: Multiplayer

Release Date: May 24, 2016

Description:Overwatch is a team-based first-person shooter set in a vibrant, near-future Earth, featuring a diverse cast of heroes each with unique abilities and roles. Players work together in six-person teams to secure and defend control points or escort payloads across the map. The game emphasizes strategic team compositions, fast-paced combat, and objective-oriented gameplay. Renowned for its colorful art style and inclusive character design, Overwatch has garnered a large, dedicated community and a prominent position in esports.

Historical Trends Summary

Overwatch has had a wild ride since its launch, quickly bursting onto the scene with memorable characters such Winston, Tracer, and Genji. Rumors of an Overwatch titled game were first heard more than two years before its release, when Journalist Lucy O'Brien from Kotaku published an article discussing Blizzards new trademark and job openings for an "Unannounced Game Title". Upon release it was an immediate hit, and quickly founded one of the most watched esport leagues.

Additional Observations

After journalists uncovered a possible new game title by Blizzard called "Overwatch", gaming news outlets slowly began to pick up on the story until it was officially announced in November of 2014. The game's open beta attracted nearly 9.7 million players and was heavily covered by media outlets. Upon release, the game quickly gained traction within the gaming community, hitting its first peak of 147 articles just a month after launch. The month of Overwatch's launch, the game recorded a sentiment of 0.88 amongst news articles which would define the title for the rest of its release, as it has held an average sentiment of 0.96 historically. After nearly two years of high coverage, with never less than 60 articles in a month across our five covered sources, Overwatch began to decline in popularity as content slowed down in preparation for the launch of Overwatch 2. The last character to be released was in April of 2020.

It was not until November of 2020 when coverage began to pick up again, as hype for the upcoming launch of Overwatch 2 began and interest in video games began to pick up in reponse to the COVID-19 lockdowns. Overwatch hit its greatest peak in news articles when Overwatch 2 was released in October of 2022, with a total of 539 articles being published that month. Interest quickly settled however, and interest in the title will most likely follow the same pattern as its predecessor over time.

Historically, Overwatches sentiment has remained somewhat consistent, never falling below 0.70 since its launch. Over watch hit its peak of 0.99 sentiment with a total of 32 articles in December of 2020, the same month that interest in the title began to increase.

Count of Articles by Authors

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Source Rankings

1
Game Rant
0.87
2
IGN
0.87
3
Kotaku
0.85
4
Gamespot
0.84
5
PCGamer
0.82
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Average sentiment historically

Highest Average Sentiment Authors

  • 1 Anastasia Maillot (Source: Game Rant, 13 articles)
    1.00
  • 2 Michael Siegle (Source: Game Rant, 13 articles)
    1.00
  • 3 IGN Staff (Source: IGN, 12 articles)
    1.00

Lowest Average Sentiment Authors

  • 1 Phil Savage (Source: PCGamer, 13 articles)
    0.48
  • 2 James Carr (Source: Gamespot, 42 articles)
    0.58
  • 3 Parth Bagaria (Source: Game Rant, 17 articles)
    0.63
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Must have 10+ articles of the game

% of Total Articles by Source

Authors & Source Summary

A majority of Overwatch's coverage has been sourced from Game Rant which has published nearly half of all articles on the title. The rest of the sources have not split the articles so equitably. Sentiment in the title is relatively steady across all video game media outlets, suggesting a consensus on the attitude towards Overwatch. Somewhat surprisingly, only one journalists with more than 10 articles recorded a sentiment below 0.50 according to the data. Conversely, all three of the most positive journalists with more than 10 articles recorded a perfectly positive score according to the data.

Additional Observations

Game Rant with 48% of the articles or 3,443 of the 7,178 articles was by far the most published video game news outlet covering Overwatch. The second largest outlet, Kotaku only published 20.5% or 1,474 of the total articles according to the data. IGN was the smallest video game news outlet, with just 7.4% or 529 articles.

The diversity of journalists shared the same proportion across outlets, although Game Rant and IGN both saw their share marginally increase to 49.8% and 19.70%, respectively. Of the top five most published journalists, three of them are affiliated with Game Rant: Richard Warren (447 articles), Dalton Cooper (383 articles), and the Game Rant Staff (312 articles). Kotaku has the second most published journalist for Overwatch, Nathan Grayson (417 articles), while PCGamer has the fifth most published, Andy Chalk (330 articles).

Although only two media outlets reported sentiments above the historical average of 0.86, Game Rant and IGN at 0.87, the data is heavily skewed by Game Rant which has published the majority. It either case, the other three outlets are within 0.04 points of the average, suggesting a consensus on attitudes toward Overwatch. Of all the journalists with more than 10 articles, only Phil Savage (13 articles) from PCGamer reported a negative score of 0.48 according to the data.