By Ulises Rodriguez, Staff Reporter
As the world has come to a standstill due to the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic, many CSUDH clubs and organizations have been halted to prevent the spread of the disease; but the eSports association on campus is not allowing the virus to press pause on their gaming.
From increasing its presence on Twitch and competing online against other universities, to one student jumping into the relatively unknown esport of Speedrunning, the association has remained active.
“We stayed active in the sense that we have been meeting more virtually,” Ruben Capato, the eSports association adviser and manager said. “We’ve been able to get even more organized which is great. Getting our structure, refining a couple of things we’ve always wanted to do, and because we’re more at home right now, we’re just more accessible to one another and we’ve been able to just come up with a lot of great ideas.”
At the beginning of April, the association began streaming live on its Twitch platform many video games such as “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare,” “League of Legends,” “Overwatch,” “and Super Smash Bros Ultimate,” along with compete online against CSULB and Marymount, and even hosted a “Call of Duty: Warzone” stream along with Phi Kappa Theta.
This in turn, has allowed the association to increase its viewership on the Twitch platform even though it has only been active for three weeks. Twitch has also reached out to the eSports association showing interest in becoming affiliates.
“We’re over a thousand views and our channel has been active for three weeks,” Caputo said. “That’s considered to be fast-growing…and [Twitch]seems to value the entertainment piece that we’re doing.”
The eSports association has also become possibly the first to adapt speedrunning at an institution with computer science student Riley Fort setting the pace. Speedrunning is a different form of gaming that involves a player completing a level or game in a certain time. Though still under the relative radar, there has been a growing interest among the gaming community.
“I would say it could reach the type of media attention that those games get but differently cause we have to approach speedrunning a different way because it’s not team-based you’re not competing against another team or anybody for a prize,” Fort said. “You’re competing against yourself for a time and what speedrunners currently do is they go to these conventions. There are plenty of them that happen throughout the year.”
