Overwatch League’s AI power rankings, and my other stories from the past week(ish)
And a bunch of tweets with some nice art and whatnot.
So much for my plan to publish one of these recap newsletters weekly. Those good intentions were derailed after, uh, one entire week, but at least it was for a good reason.
The 2021 Overwatch League season started on Friday, meaning I can wave goodbye to a chunk of my weekends for the foreseeable future. I still love OWL very much, and I’m thrilled it’s back. On that note…
Things I wrote
IBM Watson AI Will Calculate The Overwatch League’s Data-Driven Power Rankings In 2021 — I had the scoop on this Overwatch League story. Blizzard is working with IBM to create Power Rankings by using Watson AI to crunch in-game performance data.
The piece took up much of my free time last weekend, hence no newsletter. I enjoyed working on it very much. I’m looking forward to seeing what fans have to think about the the first batch of Power Rankings on Monday (expect Viol2t to rank very highly once again).
Overwatch Archives 2021 Event: Here Are All Eight New Skins — Just one more Overwatch post I want to flag. I love Overwatch events, because it’s always a treat to see the new character skins and try to earn them while they’re available. There’s a historical theme to this batch that I’m digging. There are still a couple of days left to earn that rad Zenyatta skin before it goes into Davy Jones’ Locker forever.
Twitch Will Ban Users For Serious Offline Misconduct — This move from Twitch received some criticism, but it’s only taking into account major cases of misconduct here: threats of violence, harassment, assault and so on. Users who engage in the kinds of offline activity for which Twitch will boot them will probably have more significant consequences to deal with, but sending the message that those people are not welcome on Twitch sends a positive message to the rest of the community.
Arcade Fire Release A 45-minute Song Through Headspace's Mindfulness App — Probably my best kicker in a while. :)
Urbanista Says Its Solar-powered Headphones Can Basically Play Endlessly — Headphones that I never need to charge again? Sign me up (as long as these work as promised).
SpaceX Wins NASA's Artemis Lunar Lander Contract — Between this, mainlining RuPaul’s Drag Race and Dogecoin on its way to you know where, I have had the Moon on my mind a lot lately.
Things other people created
I… completely forgot to save some Good Tabs to include here, so instead, I’m just gonna share some cool concept art and game dev stuff I’ve seen recently, along with a good old dumb tweet or two.
Oops, how even did that get in there?
Still can’t stop thinking about the tall vampire lady and the immeasurable thirst people have for her even before Resident Evil: Village comes out. I haven’t played a Resident Evil game in a long time, but I checked out both demos so far and they’re real good, so I’ll maybe pick this one up.
Loot River caught my attention at the recent Xbox showcase. I don’t play many roguelikes, but the Tetrisy aspect might have sold me on this one.
I spent 10 minutes or so playing this game until I got a score of over 100. It’s fun!
Also WrestleMania happened and two incredibly talented Black women had a killer main event match on night one. That’s great. Sasha Banks forever.