Be careful that climbing in Overwatch isn't a placeholder for something else.

Clearly, Overwatch requires a ton of time, commitment, and energy to rank up (whether this process is intentionally designed to be as human-resource-expensive as it is, is an open question). And although many people don't enjoy this process and many are even frustrated by it, they keep at it anyway. At some point, I think it's important, especially considering the heavy investments involved, to ask oneself 'Why am I doing this?'

Be sure that you're going into this very substantial commitment of time and effort with your eyes open about its opportunity costs (a fancy term for "trade-offs" -- every time you say 'yes' to something, you're saying 'no' to every other alternative). If you've spent hundreds or thousands of hours playing Overwatch, at some point you probably have the responsibility to yourself to consider what might've been different had you invested that same level of commitment and time into something else that repaid potentially (much) higher dividends.

The Twitch/YouTube celebrity culture created around gaming creates a landscape (or perhaps just an industry-driven perception) wherein excelling at a game means oodles of respect, popularity, financial rewards, and (something like) rock star status. I wonder how many people are (sub)consciously working toward that kind of payoff despite the odds? And if most people are not working towards that sort of gamer-turned-rockstar lifestyle, how many are instead working towards a scaled-down version of that sort of status among friends, peers, or smaller related communities.

I think gaming in reasonable amounts can be a great past time, but I have also seen all too often that people are choosing gaming as a potential vehicle for boosting their self-confidence or trying to increase their sense of self-worth. Whether or not this is a worthy pursuit given the opportunity costs of potentially higher-return activities is an individual question for each person, but I think at some point the question needs to be asked and dealt with in lieu of a default or automatic choice to dump in more hours, days, weeks, months, and years.

None of this is meant to be finger-wagging, but rather an invitation to question your motives, and if you arrive at the same healthy conclusions, hey, that's great. But if Overwatch is being played as a pathway to external validation or perceived status (especially if the process seems more like an ego-driven compulsion rather a fun process), I think that merits serious consideration.

edit: spelling