On Saturday, January 21, college Overwatch teams from across the state will gather at DigiPen’s Redmond campus to duke it out in the first-ever DigiPen Dragon’s Cup Invitational. It’s a four-way brawl between the Central Washington University Wildcats, the DigiPen Institute of Technology Dragons, the University of Washington Huskies, and the Western Washington University Vikings, with the winner taking home custom-made team jerseys from DigitalVibrance.com. They’ll also, of course, take home the satisfaction of being Washington’s top college-level team.
“The Shoutcasting Club at DigiPen is hosting and organizing the entire tournament, and we are thrilled as this is the largest intercollegiate event ever run within DigiPen!” says Christopher ‘ChrisCrossed’ Christensen, a senior in the Bachelor of Arts in Game Design program. “As this is our inaugural event, we hope to see this event grow and become just as big of a staple at DigiPen as Outbreak or the LAN parties.”
That might not be such a pipe dream, given that the tournament (and DigiPen!) got a big shout out on Twitch Weekly.
The tournament starts at 1:30 p.m. PST, with the first two teams facing off in a best-of-three match-up at 2 p.m. The next best-of-three heat will begin at 3 p.m., followed by a break until 4 p.m., when the winners of the first two heats face off in a best-of-five final.
Christopher elected not to include Overwatch’s latest map, Oasis, as he figured contestants wouldn’t have had enough time to learn it yet. Prior to each match, team captains will get to pick two maps from the remaining 13 to eliminate from rotation, lock in one map in to the rotation (or two for the final), and then ban one more map. The rest of the rotation is selected at random from whatever maps remain. So teams will have some ability to train for their best maps and can make sure they play at least one or two of those maps. Still, teams will ultimately have to be ready for anything.
Christopher said the teams are all pretty well-matched, though UW was the first area college to field an organized team and has historically been pretty dominant. The UW team’s founding member, Brian “iShiny” McCarthy, recently went on to play for Counter Logic Gaming’s professional Overwatch squad. That said, this is the first year they’re competing without him, so it remains to be seen how they’ll fare without their breakout player.
“It’s going to be professional-level play,” says Christopher, promising viewers some exciting matches.
Those matches will be shoutcasted by alumnus Justin ‘Otia’ Jacox (analyst) and students Michael ‘AgentTwister’ Baughman, Jonah ‘CapCrow’, Shinault, and Joshua ‘Devilsora’ Marlowe.
You can watch the competition on DigiPen’s Twitch channel or, if you’re in the area and want to see the action in person, here on campus. The event is open to the public and there will even be free pizza until it runs out. It’ll be held in DigiPen’s Plato auditorium. See you there!
For more info and access to the event Discord channel, check out the event page.