Page 54 - BEATS: Secondary School Edition 2020-21

“No one in the history of our school had hosted a “We start CS: GO, and we're about five minutes in
livestream before. We were all on our own, and we when I check the chat, and everybody is yelling
weren’t about to compromise on the final payoff, so ‘POWERPOINT!’, ‘NO FRAMES!’, and other such
a lot of dry runs went into learning how to key the complaints, and I look at our input source and realize,
stream, manage overlays, etc.. There were multiple yikes!, the game is hanging a thousand-times-a-
occasions on which I worked 24-hour days just to get second. We had to go on a five-minute tech break to
our visuals in sync with our stream timing.” figure that out, which was probably the low point of the
stream, but we're glad that the show did eventually go
Getting the livestream up to shape wasn’t the only on.”
challenge, though.
The CS: GO games were just as close as their
"While some of us were working on the production Rocket League counterparts. While top-seed Adhiraj
end of the event, I had to figure out a billion different Sinha swept the series, his challenger Aveeraj Puri
console commands to ensure competitive integrity came within two and one rounds of winning the match
within our games itself; especially since we were each time, leading to an edge-of-the-seat viewing
playing on a custom map, which meant that there experience for everyone following along at home.
had to be extra caution given to the weaponry that
was permitted, respawn timers, etc.. Even things you The eSports event ended with a thundering awards
normally never have to think about—such as disabling ceremony as the players reflected on the novelty of
the forfeit by suicide bug that was caused during our their experience as the inaugural eSports champs and
patch testing—took a fair amount of manpower.” the admin team thanked the teachers for giving them
the free-running support to manage the event.
And in the blink of an eye, February had vanished
and it was D-Day. It was time for the event. It looked "I think that one of the main reasons why the
to have started off on the wrong foot, as the casters tournament and event was so successful from start
accidentally swapped their digital name tags. to finish was that we really had the full trust of the
teachers and the permission to explore our creative
"We're five minutes away from starting the event, vision. I think we showed that there’s a lot students
we've done like 10 run-throughs already, we're already can do when we get the chance.”
in costume, and then we realize, uh-oh, the camera's
mirrored. I'm Soham and Soham is me. And at that The eSports Tournament is currently the fourth-
point the stream countdown has started, the students most watched video of all time on the school’s YouTube
are listening to the warmup music, and the only thing channel, and boasts its highest average views per
the two of us can say to each other is ‘Let's hope that's week. With that kind of commercial success, there’s
the worst hiccup of the day.’” no doubt that we’ll be back for season two sometime
in the future. Until then, GLHF!
But every succeeding thing went smoothly, and the
games got underway. Nishit Sethi, the top-seed of the — Editorial Team
tournament, got off to his trademark blazing fast start
by taking a 4-2 lead in Game One of the RL tournament,
before falling behind to his opponent, the underdog
Aviraj Chaudhary, 5-2 in Game Two. This was the first
time Nishit had been down the entire tournament, but
managed to somehow claw back to a 6-5 win for a
sweep to claim the title of Rocket League Champion.
The live chat, a feature of the stream, was going wild.
They kept up the energy until the CS: GO event, which
was almost catastrophic.

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