Brian Kibler loads a pair of tire-sized rubbery weights to each end of his barbell. In total, he’s looking at a 300-ish pound squat, about the density of a panda bear, and well above the capabilities of the many denizens tittering in his Twitch chat. He hits it with ease, of course. This is Brian Kibler we’re talking about; Magic the Gathering legend, Hearthstone caster, and workout fiend. His gym addiction was always a part of his gamer mystique — evidenced by the protein powders and workout bags occasionally framed on his desk next to his Grand Prix cups and Pop! Dolls. But it took a pandemic for us to see his other big life passion up-close.
Like everyone else in the country, Kibler is under quarantine. In the absence of his social life, Twitch is the next best option. His broadcast winds down with a gauntlet of skullcrushers, forearm curls, and bench presses. We watch because just like Brian, we’re in desperate need of a semblance of normality.
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“I felt like trying to encourage people to stay as active these days is valuable,” he said. “It’s easy to just devolve into sitting on the couch and playing video games all day when you can’t really leave the house.”
Of the many tempestuous institutions of gamer culture, Twitch was always the most difficult to describe. You log on to watch other people play video games out of educational interest in a new release, a parasocial relationship with the person in front of the camera, or a vain attempt to recapture the childlike zen of sitting on your sleeping bag while watching your friend beat the Water Temple during a Friday night sleepover.
To enjoy Twitch, you need to have spent a lot of time soothing your brain chemistry with video games, which is not an instinct that’s won easily. But that’s also the irony of COVID-19. For so many who play games regularly, this is our native state, and the world has finally come around to our thinking. To be clear, Twitch has gradually expanded to pleasures outside of games. People knit on stream, or perform ASMR, or tend to their gardens — all pleasures that don’t require a crash course in Crucible meta. The difference is that now, global events have forced us all to mimic the life we had in the Before Times on the internet. Those Twitch exceptions have become Twitch rules.
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And so, we’ve entered a timeline where every major entertainment organization in the world is forced to grapple with live-streaming as a way to appease the desires of us cloistered fans. Death Cab For Cutie isn’t going to be playing any live shows in the near future, so instead frontman Ben Gibbard is performing a daily acoustic set from his home studio. (Here he is, covering a semi-deep cut from R.E.M.’s Out of Time.) Bleacher Report has started offering gambling lines on Madden matchups for gamblers who have run out of real sports to bet on. Hip-hop producer Kenny Beats won’t be leaving his studio anytime soon. So in the meantime, he’s playing music, answering questions, and taking us deep into his creative process for a chorus of languid fans. We’re all just trying to stay entertained, in lieu of actually living.
The NBA’s Phoenix Suns were among the first institutions to recognize that very human need. When the Association suspended its season on March 11, after a hectic sequence of events that involved one of its own players testing positive for COVID-19, the Suns social team immediately launched into action. The actual basketball team might not see the floor for the rest of the year, but the organization was committed to completing the season in any way they could. For now, that means NBA 2K.
Sure enough, on game night — the ones that used to be shown live on Fox Sports — the Suns Twitch account whirrs into action. A Suns representative, like the franchise’s power forward Tariq Owens, wrests control of his team and faces off against a chosen rival on the other sideline. A ravioli-sized facecam dots the corner of the screen, so you can witness how even on the virtual paint, it still hurts when you miss a wide-open corner-3. The NBA lives on in a bizarre way suitable for these bizarre times; a population that will take any basketball they can get their hands on rejoices.
Allison Harrissis, Senior Social Media Manager at the Suns, explained that the idea was born out of limitations. “We don’t have a gaming team, we didn’t have any gaming resources internally,” she said. “But around 3pm [the day after the season was canceled] we were like, ‘Hey, here’s our idea, here’s our solution,’ and we threw out our first tweet that night. We wanted to tell our fans we were here for them, because social media was a place full of fear and negativity. We wanted to bring hoops to our fans.”
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Harrissis told me that the Suns have been surprised at how many people have tuned into those broadcasts. They’re reaching so many people, she says, even those who haven’t watched a ton of Twitch in the past, and the rest of the NBA is taking notice. Last week, the Association announced a Player’s Only tournament, airing on ESPN, where all-world talents like Kevin Durant and Trae Young will face off in the virtual arena. Yes, it is not the same as watching those two play basketball, but given the circumstances, it’s the next best option.
“I’ve seen comments of people saying, I don’t care if it’s a game from 1976 between two teams that didn’t have a chance of making the playoffs, or a video game, I want basketball,” said Suns Chief Marketing & Communication Officer Dean Stoyer. “It’s satisfying that need for basketball.”
Live-streaming, at its best, is an expression of empathy. The most successful personalities on Twitch usually don’t establish themselves for their raw skill, or excellent curator’s taste in games. Instead, we watch our favorite streamers out of strange, tender solidarity; the feeling that you would’ve connected with them in any other context — co-workers, schoolmates, or just a brief conversation in line for the bathroom. It is weirdly heartwarming to watch these incredible NBA players contend with the tedious perils of quarantine in the same way we are. (Namely, by playing a bunch of video games with your friends, as a way to bring them close no matter where they may be.)
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If there is a silver lining of coronavirus, it is demonstrating how quickly we can pull together some sense of normalcy for beleaguered fans, and how intensely not alone one can feel during the loneliest era in modern memory. Take the Supercars Championship in Australia. That promotion will need to hold off on its races as the country hunkers down for a long pandemic winter, but they’ve still organized an “ESeries” where their drivers will simulate the action the best they can. The show must go on.
“To unlock the opportunity to launch a new series during this enforced break, but with our drivers at the heart of it, was simply a matter of making sure the drivers had the hardware and lining up a TV schedule,” says Supercars CEO Sean Seamer. “Our team has done a great job to turn it around so quickly.”
What will happen in the years ahead? Eventually, coronavirus will taper off. The one good thing about pandemics is that they all have a definitive endpoint. So will we still use live-streaming as a surrogate? Will the NBA fight on with its digital second season after players take the floor again? What of Brian Kibler? He knows full well that for the most part, people use his workout stream as “extra content” during these doldrums, but he still takes pride in the way people find their own motivation in his grind. The Phoenix Suns feel the same way. We are spending so much time and effort creating a cyberspace that can mollify the trauma of the moment. It’d be a shame to let it go to waste.
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“Once the dust settles, some of these new pastimes that people are adopting will seep back into people’s lives,” says Stoyer. “We’re definitely looking at this and the appetite for it. For us as an organization to work our way into. If [the pandemic] hadn’t happened, I don’t think this door would be open.”
The coronavirus will change everything. We already know that. But as this seismic event molds us, I hope we carry this flicker of empathy — the belief that the best of humanity is only a livestream away — long after we flatten the curve.
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Luke Winkie is a writer and former pizza maker in Brooklyn. He’s written for Vox, Vice, The New York Times, Gizmodo, PC Gamer, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, and wherever else good content can be found.
Source: IGN.com How The Coronavirus Changed Twitch Forever