Esports grows audience on Twitch

Springfield resident Trevor Haworth begins his videogaming routing with a “nice biscotti.”

“It’s part of my lucky gaming routine,” Haworth said.

Haworth plays the game Overwatch, and he’s put in the time and effort to reach the level of being a Twitch Affiliate.

The video game streaming platform Twitch allows players to reach the goal of becoming what is called a Twitch Affiliate. To become an affiliate, one has to have an average of three viewers over the course of 30 days, stream for 500 minutes and have at least 50 online followers.

In order to quickly meet these milestones, streamers will often focus on a particular style or type of game often gaining viewers with a mixture of skill and charisma.

As many sports shut down or operate under rigorous guidelines, Lincoln Land Community College has added an Esports team, which continues to practice and compete against other schools in games such as Overwatch, Rocket League and Super Smash Brothers Ultimate.  The Esports team’s games are streamed live on the Loggers Twitch page, and each game has color commentary.

“We’d like to use camera’s and are exploring ways to avoid six active cameras ruining the stream quality,” said Coach Dalton McGhiey.

For those wanting to watch gamers online, Twitch makes it easy to search through thousands of games to find their favorite genre or specific title being played by another player in real-time.

An online player that goes by the Twitch username Rolz73 said he has been gaming since just before 1980. When asked what his favorite games to play were, Rolz73 admitted, “I can tell you what kind of games I DON’T like to play – that would probably be easier haha.”

For now, it is just a hobby. When asked if streaming online is something just for fun or done with a career in online gaming, he wanted to get paid but doesn’t want it to feel like a job.

“If that makes any sense,” said Rolz73, adding later to the same thought. “I just don’t want to get burned out. Right now, it’s just something I like to do and I’m lucky enough to have people who like to watch me play new titles. It’s been fun to hang out with people during the shutdown – even if they are thousands of miles away.”

From living room hangouts to the LAN parties of yesteryear and now accessible with any device capable of video streaming – online gaming seems only to be getting bigger.

Coach McGhiey is also the Esports coach for a hybrid team of players from Springfield High School, Springfield Southeast High School and Lanphier High School that play under the name “Springfield Capitols.” Over 400 players tried out to play on the team, with many heading home to play pick-up games while honing their craft where they themselves can later review the post-game footage.