With epic20 being held over this weekend, we take a look at the Overwatch tournament and some of the teams taking part in the hopes of securing their portion of the £800-1200 prizepool on offer. So far 5 teams have entered into the competition including the likes of Penguin Overlords and Pale Ginger Cyclones, however it’s likely a number of casual teams will sign up and bring the final count up to around the 8-10 team mark.

The format for the tournament will see two groups of 4-5 teams playing each other in a round robin group stage with the top seed from each group facing the bottom seed and the middle seeds competing in the best of 3 quarter and semi finals. The winners of the semi finals will then play a full best of 5 series to find out who is the best Overwatch team at epicLan.

Interview with Michael Smith of Team Penguin Overlords:

What are your aspirations for this tournament, how far do you feel you can go as a team?

‘We are playing with a stand-in this tournament so realistically we would be happy with second, personally I want to win but you’ve got to think realistically sometimes. Originally we only had four members but another guy got invited after someone dropped out so we are lucky to all be here anyway.’

You have a lot of experience at UK lans before?

‘Yeah I started off in Call of Duty 4 and I had a bit of success there, but yeah I have had a lot of time out in the eSports industry as a competitor and I love doing it, it’s not about the money for me at all, I just love doing it so much.’

You have been involved in competitive gaming for a long time, nearly 11 years now playing various different games along the way. How does Overwatch rank for you amongst those games?

‘Overwatch is obviously a game that has been backed to the hilt by its developer, Blizzard and it is definitely one of the most popular games out there right now, I come from Counter Strike really so seeing this game be so successful is really cool.’

Do you feel that the UK overwatch scene is growing fast enough to keep up with the US or Korea?

I don’t know whether it's a marketing issue or something else but UK eSports as a whole just aren’t on par, I think there are a lot of players here who feel entitled or like they are owed something when they aren’t. That plays a part as to why eSports teams aren’t so prevalent round here I think. Obviously I believe eSports can be something big here in the UK and I feel it needs to grow through passion instead of people hoping for quick money.’

TPO will face Look at this Net in the semi-finals on Saturday to see who will play against Ginger Pale Cyclones (Now known as MnM) in the grand final of epic20.