Life as a Streamer
Life as a Streamer
Hey everyone!
coffeebark and jbyrd here. Who are we and why are we taking over this week’s blog? Great question! We are two members of the Washington Justice staff who recently started steaming Serving Justice, a show where we play Overwatch and a variety of other games every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday starting at 11:00 AM ET on the Washington Justice YouTube page.
Are we good at Overwatch? Almost certainly not (although we’re definitely improving!) Are we having fun? Absolutely (especially when we’re interacting with fans in chat). At any rate, we wanted to give everyone a peek behind the curtain as to how this all began, what we’ve been doing, and where we hope this goes moving forward.
How did this all begin? Neither of us had ever streamed before and to be honest we are both still pretty new to Overwatch. When the season began in early February, all efforts were on the five Overwatch League homestands we were set to host, and dealing with those direct business-facing responsibilities: whether it be selling tickets, finding potential partners, or dealing with logistics. But sadly after our second homestand things changed for everyone with the introduction of COVID-19. No longer able to focus on our final three homestands of the year, we needed to find a new way to continue to connect and engage with our fans.
As the famous saying goes “The best ideas come from playing Overwatch” (**this is not an actual saying as far as we can tell**) and one evening in May when a few of us were playing Overwatch together, in the midst of a decisive showing on Junkertown, the idea to start streaming came up. For the two of us, this was a fantastic idea. Get paid to stream games, goof off, and generally have a good time, what’s not to like? Sign us up!
And overall, it’s been a blast. Whether it's been Overwatch, Sea of Thieves, Fall Guys, or Golf with your Friends, the community of people watching us has been very welcoming and accepting of our Overwatch abilities (or lack thereof), and we’ve enjoyed getting to know and interact with the community. Plus, we’ve learned a lot. For example, we’ve learned that though jbyrd’s a Reinhart main, he plays a mean D.Va.
We’ve also learned that in a 1v1, coffeebark’s Soldier 76 cleans up against jbyrd :joy:. But perhaps most importantly, we’ve learned not to take ourselves too seriously. We’ve found being able to laugh at ourselves, particularly when we’re struggling, can help the mood of both the stream and ourselves.
Of course, there are still frustrating moments, particularly when it comes to technology (yes we work in esports, but everyone gets flummoxed by tech from time to time). Despite having the proper hardware and spending literally hours troubleshooting within various game and Streamlabs settings, we are convinced there is a conspiracy afoot to see coffeebark lose his mind getting a stream to work sometimes (not really, but also??🤔🤔🤔🤔)
Nevertheless, despite these occasional technical problems, we’re excited for the future of Serving Justice. While we still have a small but dedicated group of followers, we of course hope to grow our following in the next few months. So by all means stop on by to laugh at/with us, give us tips and tricks, and generally escape the monotony of quarantine life.
Let’s go play some Overwatch!