Overwatch

In my first game of Overwatch, I never died. I played as Winston, a hyperintelligent gorilla from the moon. The match was on the map “Watchpoint: Gibraltar.” I remember this perfectly, for I thought the cliffside was scary and beautiful and hey wasn’t it odd that they made such a small map for a 6v6 video game? I jumped and electrocuted those around the “Payload,” which the game told me to “STOP!”

In orderly waves, enemies came to meet me and my gun, a Tesla-inspired electricity cannon. I fired it. Then I reloaded and fired some more.

The payload never moved.

In matches I’ve played since – notably, against human players – the payload has moved. It has raced across the map as I flung myself helplessly forward, employing superhuman after sentient AI after assassin after climate scientist after internationally-beloved DJ after combat medic. Mei’s ice wall would not stop it. Lucio could not “boop” it back. Reinhardt’s charge did not impede it. Part of video games, especially online ones, is the humility you carve into yourself after acknowledging that you are worse than others.

If you have developed beyond the sentience of an average gorilla, you can reflect. You may feel remorse over your failure; frustration at inept allies; hope for ways to better yourself; gratitude for your improvements, be they mechanical or strategic.

But I carry disappointment and rage, in the aforementioned and more. Overwatch does not teach me how to sharpen the hatchet – it implores me to throw it. At first, I felt guilt over this childish, high schooler’s hobble. Who yells about video games, anyway? It’s just a game, so who cares? How embarrassing. How immature. How small.

But there it is. Overwatch is a potent reminder of my size. Ironically encased as I am, I feel small. This contradicts our Super Hero Culture, as I understand it, and Overwatch is a game of Super Heroes. Yet it offers a crucial subversion of the genre. While I’ve watched Iron Man save us from the aliens, and Batman save us from the radical socialists, and Ant Man save us from the unchecked capitalists, I’ve never watched them fail. We are meant to complete it all, in them through them alongside them; no task, no challenge, too large. In Overwatch, though, you can wield your biotic rifle or invisibility shield or rocket-propelled gauntlet or jetpack and fail – truly, catastrophically fail.

These are the moments Overwatch offers me, an inspiring, insipid Super Hero, that I hope life offers us all. It’s an obvious threshold, best stately simply: Now that I’ve failed, what should I do, and why?

This recalls a reflection about the stars I once had in the dairy aisle. I was staring for too long at milk. We’ve arrived here, from the pyramids of Giza to milk encased by plastic, at such a cosmically insignificant integral. Forget the atoms, elements, and particles. Here I am, and here’s this milk, and who’s meant to drink this much milk, besides? Am I meant to share my world with all the others who can finish this milk? This, what’s here, this milk?

It was one answer to the Super Hero question.

In equal measure, I despise the Super Hero genre’s inability to address the question and hold Overwatch’s answer close. Like most brilliant teachers, this game answers my inquiry by forcing contemplation: Well, with which of these characters am I least likely to die?