Esports are coming. If you’re a Millennial, especially a male Millennial, they are already here. The Young Guns of the title are not just the gaming players but also the Silicon Valley titans starting and financing an entirely different type of esport league in 2016.

Traditional sports like the NFL are losing fans rapidly as they age and are not being replaced by cord-cutting twenty-somethings. Esport fans are an average of only twenty-four. While they may not have much disposable income now, they will in the future. The new Overwatch League (OWL) will have city-based franchise teams—just like the NFL. Once you buy a franchise, its owner is guaranteed not to be relegated, or forced down to the minors. With apologies to their fans, think of the perpetually losing Cleveland Browns. Its owners are still mad rich thanks to network television deals.

Once the OWL is established in the first half of the book, it describes the first season from both the owner and players’ perspective. There is also a summary of season two so the reader will be caught up to the present. Reading the book’s blurb and even my summary above makes Young Guns sound like an exciting book. Unfortunately, it is not. Endless characters and their backstories are introduced but then never heard from again. The author appears to worship the owners of Blizzard, who makes Overwatch. It feels like watching paint dry as I never felt there was an underlying point like there is in most non-fiction histories.

Bottom-line? It was something I never would have expected from a history of esports. It was boring. And sometimes, I read textbooks for fun. I have a high threshold for boring and staid works.

Ultimately, Young Guns is not recommended for anyone but hard-core OWL fans and the families of the players mentioned within the book. A disappointed 2 stars.

Thanks to Hachette Books and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

Do you remember when you were growing up in the 80's and 90's and you told your parents that you wanted to be a professional video game player and they informed you that you cannot make a living that way ? Well they were wrong . The focus of this story is the video game "OverWatch" and Esports or for those that may not know Electronic sports. Activision-Blizzard corporation decides to set up a Esports League and sell franchisees in various cities . The cast of individuals that jump into this early are some big names that see the potential. People like Robert Kraft, Stan Kroenke, and Peter Guber. As you will see in this book the team owner ship is not cheap. A Overwatch team If they win the championship they get a payday of a million dollars not bad for groups of guys who the oldest maybe an old man at the age of 24.

If I come across a book that sounds interesting I will read as I did with this. But I do believe that individuals who are gamers will probably get more out of this story and the excitement involved. Have not played video games for a while I was a little lost. This is why I gave this only three stars. I received an ARC from Netgalley for a fair an honest review

This book tells the interesting story of Overwatch and the people behind it. Even Patriots owner Robert Kraft is a player in the tale of the Activision-Blizzard title. So many people make up this cast of characters that sometimes it is hard to keep track of. I do think you need to be really familiar with Overwatch specifically not just video gaming to get the most out of this book. I enjoyed the text so much but I am a very active gamer. I would recommend this title to any and all Overwatch fans.

For those who are curious about esports, legitimate careers 'playing video games' for big money, and Overwatch League (OWL) in particular (specifically, why a whole book is being published about it), we now have Young Guns. The first half of the book talks about the how/whys of the league and esports, the personalities involved, and the huge amounts of money invested into an unknown. The second half of the book follows the inaugural season of the League from start to finish.

For perspective for those who aren't familiar with the subject: OWL is the first major attempt to create a localized (city-based teams) league rather than the usual big competitions or tournaments as has been the norm for esports in the past. There have been attempts previously to create leagues out of video games (e.g., The Championship Gaming Series in 2007) but OWL is the first esports League to be localized (teams have their own cities) and truly worldwide. It comes at a time when viewership numbers for traditional sports are declining (especially among the millenials) and so traditional sports owners are looking to invest where the future appears to be going for sports teams. The book has many figures to explain why the billionaire owners invested in OWL (though it fails to mention or glosses over why big names such as Mark Cuban have vocally chosen not to invest there). OWL is not a small venture: team owners paid anywhere from $10-25 million for a franchise and a Twitch deal was reported to be around $25 million dollars. So this is a huge investment.

Author Moorhead was given inside access to the Overwatch League's inaugural season in order to write this book. Since he did not seem to be an Overwatch player or devotee based on how he described the game, I was curious as to why he would be given such access. With a little research I found that he works for a public relations company that lists Blizzard (the owner of the Overwatch League) as a client and that Blizzard's head of marketing worked as an advisor there for many years. So go into this book with an understanding that this is likely a large PR piece meant to give legitimacy to the fledgling endeavor and rather one-sided. There is no disclosure that Moorhead was paid directly or indirectly by Blizzard to promote the league within the book nor of the connection to the OWL owner to the author's firm.

Those who do not play Overwatch or have watched the league may find the whole thing confusing. There are a LOT of personalities here and a lot of names mentioned that can be hard to follow. As well, since the author really doesn't appear to have been involved in or a fan of Overwatch before writing the book, the characterizations and points feel very shallow. E.g., the phenom of the league, who goes by the name Sinatraa, is built up as a paragon of goodness and good natured competitive spirit throughout the book (you could say he is the main character here). And likely Sinatraa is very nice to the guy following the league around in order to write a book. But this player also has a very serious past of being ugly and nasty in game to other players (called 'toxic' in the community). The author makes several points that the past of toxicity was overrated and likely due to sore losers who misunderstood Sinatraa's competitive joie de vivre. That felt either disingenuous or just really one-sided journalism. Toxicity remains one of the biggest issues with esports today - even more so than hooligans at football/soccer games. In contrast, other players, such as South Korean player and team captain of the New York Excelsior Overwatch team, Saebyeolbe, exemplify that competitive spirit and fun grandstanding that can be enjoyed by all. But he gets little attention as do so many of the other Eastern players in favor of the western players. That sells the book short in a League that is nearly 65% South Korean players (it was an all-South Korean player team that won the Championship as well but I don't recall any interviews with them in the book other than following their American team owner, Jack Etienne).

The author neatly sidesteps the big issues of the OWL and esports. Burnout and injuries, the lack of structure with the little leagues (tier 2 and tier 3 of OWL), an OWL player found to be a pedophile and grooming underage female fans, a team owner involved in a sex trafficking scandal, LGBQT censorship in the countries that have the largest OWL fanbases and players, and especially issues within Activision/Blizzard itself: where many of the founders and key players have left the company and even the commissioner of the league abruptly left. If anything, Blizzard comes out very rosy in this book.

One thing the book does give is perspective on esports vs. traditional sports. While the book makes esports sound like a great adventure into predicting the future, it also points out that esports leagues are fundamentally different from traditional sports in one key aspect: while no one owns football or baseball, Blizzard wholly owns its IP, Overwatch. What this means is that players don't have as much leverage in esports - they can't just threaten to walk away and create their own league if they don't like what the teams are offering in payment. I can't help but feel that this will be huge in defining professional sports in the future. The days of players having some control in the sport are gone and we will see the gaming company and the owners have full control over how much is paid and what benefits the players and staff will receive.

So, with the huge author bias/conflict of interest taken into consideration, is this worth reading? Yes...and no. E.g., parents wanting to know more about esports career dreams of their kids will gain some interesting information but, again, not a balanced picture or useful information (injuries, short time period in which they will play before considered too old, etc.). Those curious about esports and this burgeoning field will get an idea of the scope of the league but not about the shakier foundations that could bring it all toppling down. Those who follow OWL and want some inside information will get that here - but purely anecdotally and only of humorous and innocuous things. There is no real 'juice' and very few things you can't already find on the internet if you follow any social media about OWL or its teams. As well, if you watched league games and especially each match of the Championship, you'll be bored by the play by play, which felt more like filler. I have to commend the author for making OWL sound a lot more interesting to watch than it usually is, though. But the book does give you a few more behind-the-scenes views, though they do sound too much like they are from someone who doesn't have a big-picture view from having been invested in esports over several years or especially competitive Overwatch since the beginning.

I truly hope that someone very invested in OWL but not linked to Activision-Blizzard will write a book in the near future on the topic. One that feels more authentic and not like a marketing piece with an agenda to promote the League. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

I really enjoyed this book. I was already interested in the subject-- I've followed overwatch league vaguely and was recently in a course about the video game industry. This book follows the creation of the Overwatch League, which is a professional esports league focused on Overwatch, a videogame developed and published by Blizzard entertainment.

This was a really fascinating description and analysis of the Overwatch League as a whole. The first half, which follows the creation of the league, had some really valuable information about the business side of esports leagues. The book jumps between a couple of people who were structurally important in the league, though it was sometimes hard to keep track of who was who. I had to use the search function on my kindle to remind myself of the roles of certain people. This analysis included information on the changing viewing habits of Millenials and Gen Z, and how businessmen were rushing to find anything to occupy them that would make a profit. As someone who is interested in the video game industry, the business side was really engaging. However, I would say even someone who is already interested would become interested. It was just that good. The writing style is casual, but it deals with complex topics with ease.

The second half followed the first season of the Overwatch League and mainly focused on behind-the-scenes info of certain teams. None of them were teams I was invested in at the start, but I certainly became invested in them afterward. The main two teams they followed were the San Francisco Shock and London Spitfire. The tone towards the players was mainly really sweet and tried to show them in a realistic, but positive light. I enjoyed hearing about their personalities and struggles and triumphs, but it was definitely a departure from the style of the first half.

Onto what I didn't like: It was gendered in a really specific way. Though the league is mostly male, the framing of how female players and casters were discussed was very gendered. The author emphasized the attractiveness of most women, and even had a throwaway line about a character in the game named Tracer, where he adds "according to Blizzard, she's a lesbian." Not only is this unnecessary, but Blizzard is also the maker of the game. If they say she's a lesbian, she's a lesbian. There was also some heavy speculation that seemed unfounded compared to what the author had already included. Moments where he would analyze the players' emotions, which felt like an overstep. These were really only a couple of lines, and the majority of the book provides important information clearly and analyzes it well.

This book balanced business and human interest content well, and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing about both. Would 100% recommend, but probably to people who are already interested in videogames.