Minor Streamer
It had been a week since I started streaming Battle Sky.
I had only switched games, but viewers had started pouring in. Truthfully, most of them were probably coming out of curiosity because of that absurd clip rather than because of the game itself.
Still, whether they were just poking their heads in or settling down to enjoy my stream, they were my viewers all the same. When I went live, the average viewership that had once hovered around 120, and then around 100 while I was in the middle of playing after chatting for a bit, had shot past 200 and now stayed above 300 for the entire broadcast.
It hadn’t risen gradually, either. It had spiked so suddenly that once, I’d asked the chat where they’d come from in the first place.
"All right, I’ve got a question, so I’m going to run a poll."
"The viewer count has suddenly gone up, so I want to do a survey and find out how you found the stream."
When I asked where they’d come from, they said they’d watched the legendary one-kill chicken victory video and come to check out the stream.
"So that’s how it is. Switching to a trending game really does bring people in."
Trending was one wave; luck was the other. To hold on to the viewers who had arrived, and pull in even more, all I had to do was keep streaming diligently on a regular basis. Of course, I also had to stay entertaining.
"And FPS skill really does improve, too."
The level I had been at on the first day, when I’d played a dozen-odd matches and managed only a single kill, was very different from what it had become after a week.
On the day I played my first Battle Sky match, after the stream ended, I watched lecture videos from famous streamers on NYouTube and slowly started building up my skill. I began with the basics: how to find a posture suited to FPS games, how hand size affected play, how to grip the mouse, and how to choose a mouse based on those things.
It wasn’t easy from the start. When I fixed my posture and tried firing the gun, the bullets hit everything except the person. I adjusted my sensitivity little by little and kept testing, but there wasn’t much noticeable improvement. At least not until the second day.
But once enough knowledge about the game had piled up, along with experience using guns and familiarity with attachments, my aim gradually began to settle in.
By the time two more days had passed, I’d developed preferences for different guns, I could meet people in the early game with no parts attached and still feel confident, and my skill had improved enough that I could spot and shoot enemies from a distance and actually kill them.
What improved the most was combat in the top ten. After watching the YouTubers’ videos and picking up the fundamentals, then layering experience on top of that, my skill had become unrecognizable compared to the first day.
I was still nowhere near the level of the YouTubers whose videos I’d been studying, but honestly, I wasn’t trying to prepare for the pro scene, so there was no real need to be that good.
"This is a huge improvement."
As my skill improved and I started pulling off a few wins, the feeling of winning my first chicken dinner had gone a little dull.
I needed something different to wake me up again. Was I getting addicted to dopamine or something?
Then I suddenly remembered a conversation I’d had with the viewers before ending stream yesterday.
"Before I end stream, do any of you want to put up some missions or challenges?"
"Oh, like that. I just won, so I’ll gladly take it."
"But it succeeded, didn’t it? Thank you!"
"Oh, I was wondering if I’d finally started to get a little better, so I thought maybe I could try some. I’m planning to queue ranked once my skill improves a bit more."
Thinking back on it now, it made me angry. Why had there been people in chat acting as if it was a given that I wouldn’t clear the mission?
I sat down at my computer, swore I’d succeed at every mission I got today, and hit the stream start button.
After greeting the viewers, I spent a little time chatting with them. Maybe you could call it warming up the stream, or perhaps it was consideration for the people who were joining late after getting notified. Come to think of it, those were the same thing.
Then, once I launched the game after chatting, missions suddenly started coming in. Three of them. I’d seen plenty of YouTuber videos where four or five were stacked on at once, but for someone like me, I thought three was already a lot.
That was what I was thinking when I checked the missions.
The amount wasn’t just high. It was huge. For a minor streamer like me, it was absurd.
A total of 227,777 won. That meant roughly 230,000 won was riding on a single win.
"What is going on? This isn’t my last mission ever, is it? Am I going to die tomorrow?"
"All right, today you’re going to get exactly what’s coming to you. I’m not ending stream until I win."
"Yeah, then all I have to do is succeed within 24 hours."
*
Why had I said that? What confidence had my past self been holding onto when I made that decision?
Why had I forgotten that after eating chicken on the first day, I hadn’t managed a single kill? They say a frog forgets the days when it was a tadpole, and I was exactly that kind of fool.
Two hours. Zero wins. The numbers were pathetic.
"Hey! Be honest and come forward if you’re sniping me from here, all right?"
Knowing it wouldn’t work, why had I done it?
"Hey! Who sent that? Get out here!"
Because three win missions had been stacked one after another, none of the other missions had even had a chance to appear.
Still, I kept trying, telling myself I’d at least get one win. But in every match, it felt like there were one or two snipers lurking around, and whenever a round seemed like the perfect chance to win, I’d get turned into a sieve by enemies who suddenly appeared from nowhere.
"Come on, man, let me eat a chicken dinner, okay?"
Right. There wasn’t a single person on my side here. I let out a sigh and went back into the game.
-Ding!
At the sound effect that played when missions were added, I shifted my eyes to the donation window. I already had my hands full because I needed to win, and now it had gone wrong from the very first step, so who was it this time... huh?
"Hey, tell me I’m the only one seeing this wrong."
"But isn’t this basically the attitude of, ‘No way I’m paying this out’?"
Sure, it was nice of them to put up a mission like that... but a zero-kill win was the sort of material only veteran players with a hundred hours of clips on YouTube would use. It depended on skill, yes, but luck played the biggest part.
In other words, this was a mission posted with the mindset of, “There’s no way you’re actually getting the million won.” They were setting my expectations sky-high, just so I’d end up taking only the 100,000.
"Still, when they put something like this up, it does make me stubborn."
Human greed has no end, repeats the same mistake, and then forgets that mistake all over again.
What good is stubbornness when you don’t have the skill?
The skill!!!!
#5th Place / 0 Kills
"Seriously, I can’t even. Hey, this has to be hacks, right?"
"Exactly. See? I told you it’s hacks."
People’s mockery made me tremble as I started the next game. More than anything, looking at my aim today made me worry that I really might not win even once.
But then...
"But you guys..."
...huh?