If you attended TwitchCon IRL this past weekend, you know it was impossible to miss The Milk Cup’s LAN championship stage and its accompanying activation in the main room of the San Diego Convention Center.
As the main representation for Fortnite at this year’s con, Gonna Need Milk and Raidiant’s duos competition pit 50 pairs of the top female eSports athletes against each other for their share of a $300,000 prize pot — the largest ever for women in gaming.
Ahead of the big games, players Nina, Vader, Fraanticc, Kanary, Daya, Yaz, Moxie and Regs opened up about why gaming and streaming are so popular with their generation and even overtaking broadcast and cable television in the ratings.
“Compared to traditional sports, where it’s typically slower or kind of more linear, a lot of times with eSports, it’s really unpredictable,” Vader explained. “You can’t really predict what’s going to happen, or things can shake up, kind of crazy, and that draws people and keeps people’s attention more.”
“Streaming is more interactive, which a lot of people enjoy these days. Even TikTok, like short attention span. So with Twitch, being able to, like, go live and see somebody and talk to them and interact, I think that’s a great feeling for a lot of people,” Fraanticc added. “And just to meet a lot of people who are doing something similar to you, something that you know and have passion for.”
“I think it’s great for streamers to build a community with their own viewers, because you can interact with your viewers, chatters, anything like that, and you can create a whole community to interact with on computers,” Nina agreed.
Indeed, streaming accounted for nearly half of TV usage this summer, eclipsing traditional narrative television, while younger consumers also prefer to use social media as their main news source.
Elsewhere on Friday, Milk Cup co-founders Heather “sapphiRe” Garozzo and ThePeachCobbler, as well as MilkPEP Senior Marketing Manager Jen Grubb, provided further insight into their tournament, which was live-streamed across multiple channels, including the official Fortnite Competitive account.
“It’s just super relatable,” Gaming Hall of Famer sapphiRe shared. “Like celebrity culture and even movies or TV, I just don’t relate to that, versus, I can watch my favorite gamer and then open the game and try to do that same thing and try to recreate that. Or I can connect with my favorite gamer on a more personal level, because they’re live on Twitch eight hours a day and they’re super responsive in TikTok DMs. It’s just feels like a more relatable culture: You see yourself, you feel like that could be you and it feels more attainable. That’s something really special about this.”
“People are really craving community and connection, especially since Covid and the lockdown,” Grubb echoed. “People have been staying home a lot more lately, so being able to connect and play with IRL friends feels like you’re sitting right next to someone gaming. But then, if you’re not actively gaming, watching a stream is the next best thing. You can chat with the person, chat with the rest of chat. It’s just a unique way of being able to connect and feel like you’re part of something from the comfort of your home. Just as humans, we really crave connection and that’s heightened over the past few years.”
“The setting is completely different than a movie set or a show that you’re watching, because you’re looking at someone in their element. You’re looking at someone in their element, nothing is edited out; everything’s happening in real time, and they’re responsive to chat,” Peach further noted. “I started streaming because I missed my family and I wanted to have a platform for interaction and having connection. I found my people. And you can be a really unique person and still find other people that connect to you, whereas before, you may have felt very isolated in your own thoughts and your own desires.”
In the end, Nina and Vader won the six-game LAN, with Nina also named MVP.
