By Jeremy Blye:

 

Note: This is a going to be a little bit of a new series where I interview one of our members within the Esports community. I also ask them about their experience within Esports and how this program has affected their personal life. P is Peyton. J is Jeremy.

 

Yesterday, I created the opportunity to speak to Peyton “Tangerine” Gatza for about two hours. It was honestly a great conversation and there was a lot that I was happy to be able to hear from him. I think allowing the community to voice their opinions and their overall feelings towards what goes on is extremely important to keeping a community strong and healthy. Let’s take a look into our little interview.

 

J: Who are you?

P: My name is Peyton Gatza and I am a senior at DePaul who is studying music.

 

(Look at this stunning lad, I definitely didn’t find this pic from his Instagram)

 

J: What is your involvement within Esports?

P: I am a part of Overwatch Varsity, I am a commentator, and I am a part of the Overwatch Board. I also do some solo-production for some events. I enjoy it, but it’s like a double-edged sword.

 

J: When did you start Esports?

P: I started my freshman year. I tried out for Overwatch when the team was extremely good. There were 30 people who tried out and I didn’t make a single team. It took 2 people dropping out to be able to make a team. It was super discouraging since they had 3 teams at the time. There was Varsity, JV 1, and JV 2. After a little bit of time, I got moved to the main tank of JV 2.

 

J: What is the team structure at DePaul?

P: There are 2 coaches. Both are from the organization Kaiju Corp. Cybele is a coach who focuses on the macro play with everything the team does. Cybele will go through VODs and to see what the team needs to do to play against the opponents. InsaneWaya is the other coach who helps micro-manage the team. During scrims and VOD reviews, he takes detailed notes of a single player to give them information about what they are doing. This helps the players improve individually while also improving as a team.

J: I find it quite interesting how the teams function so similarly, yet games like Rocket League and Overwatch are so different. I’ll bring it up later when we talk about discipline within Esports, but I’m not surprised this is how part of the team functions internally. This is a little bit off topic, but with Overwatch competitive, do they enforce certain roles within the game. I remember when I used to play Overwatch, I hated the update where they added the role queue. (Then we start “reminsicing” on previous metas within the game haha).

P: Nowadays, all Overwatch competition forces the 2 Tank, 2 Support, and 2 DPS meta. Since we were talking about the structure of the teams, this is how the roles function together. Tanks are the most important followed by the support players. 1 Tank is in charge of making the calls in the middle of the fight while everyone else echos it and follows around. The other Tank plans the upcoming fight and how they are going to take the fight. The Support player is the ultimate tracker. It is basically how it sounds. Ults are the most important abilities that can swing the tide of the fight in a moment’s notice.

 

J: It seems that you are passionate about Overwatch. You obviously are knowledgeable about the Esport you compete in. One sentence I hear all of the time in Esports is this: “I hate (insert game)”. Why do you think it is?

P: People say this because of these 2 reasons:

One of them affects lower leveled players. This comes down to their mindset. Many people do not approach the game with a growth mindset. When they hit a skill cap from not pointing out their own mistakes, they just rage and get upset. A lot of times people get mad when they get rolled over and over and nothing gets better. These players struggle to move past this skill plateau.

The other side of this affects higher leveled players. Overwatch has not been historically great with the updates they have made. These updates can cause complete changes within the game. This dev team has a solid understanding of how to cater to both the competitive and casual scene, yet they go towards the casual players. Skill plateauing for these higher leveled players is even more frustrating. The players tend to dissect their gameplay at every single point of a game. It is so taxing mentally since they know the instant they make a mistake. Being a perfectionist is what makes you the best.

J: It’s funny that you bring up the raging thing for the lower-leveled players since it is something that I have experienced. My coach and teammates have helped me slowly change that mindset. This is the one thing that I think makes many of these players be unable to change their mindset. When you are gaming, you have complete control of what you are doing. It’s not like a sport where there are external factors that may change what is going on. Yeah, there is lag. That is the least of someone’s worries for competition. Yet, when you think you have control of whatever you are doing, it hurts so much to see everything get stripped away from you. Many of us put hundreds-thousands of hours into the games we love. At different points, I have definitely said, “I hate Rocket League”. For me though, it is much more than just the game itself.

I have definitely contributed to the problem Rocket League has, but the community is the most toxic out of any game I have played. I never thought I would say that this game is more toxic than CSGO, but it is. I think the little rage-inducing comments or the way people can BM you pushes me to a whole different level. I’m primarily talking about when I am playing outside of competition.

P: You know one thing that has helped me get past all of the negativity within a game is realizing I need to focus on me and not everyone else. That is the best advice I have been given when talking about this subject. I have definitely had to deal with this throughout my experience within Overwatch and gaming as whole. I just try to move away from those toxic individuals to make myself the best player possible.

 

J: While we are on the topic of negativity within gaming, do you feel that the stereotypes that surround Esports held you back when you were joining?

J: The reason I’m bringing all of this up is that I feel it is important for every part of Esports to have some light. I’m sure you know, but I think the pros and cons of anything are important to go over. As far as the question I just asked, I feel that these stereotypes have affected me. My mom hasn’t been extremely accepting of gaming until she has been able to see what I have done with it at school. You can even look at this whole issue in a general sense. Ever since gaming became somewhat mainstream, there have been games like DOOM that have only brought out negativity from the world. The media thought this game was promoting the devil due to where it was taking place in. It seems as if gaming was blamed for many different events throughout our lives.

P: To answer the first part of what you brought up, these stereotypes have affected me at some points. There are definitely times where I have felt that I could be doing something different with my life. I don’t want to. It makes me happy. I have fun. Over time, I have learned that I will do anything that brings me happiness. I will do it even if people are not necessarily fans of it. There are still plenty of people I know and care about that will game with me. In life, you can’t appease everyone. This is a skill that has taken years to develop.

People who try to deny people from feeling happy is wrong. I will never judge someone for liking something because it is unconventional. It is societally wrong and disgusting.

J: As far as unconventional, what makes watching TV or reading any different from gaming. They are different activities, but in the end they are just hobbies.

P: It seems at points people are just using gaming as a scapegoat for the world’s problems.

 

J: Since Esports and gaming is attacked so often, how do you feel it is affected by this?

P: This hinders the community that Esports is trying to branch out to. For example, look at Overwatch League. It is streamed on ESPN 3, which is one of the main ESPN channels. Everyone watches it, and the people who do not like gaming will be up in pitchforks about it being played. People who are not even interested in Esports will see this on social media and will be discouraged to be a part of the community. Hopefully in the future, this mindset will diminish. Everyone feels that they are a critic.

(This next part is my favorite thing Peyton said in our whole call)

As a musician who is going into my fourth year of studying music, it makes me very upset when I hear people try to say a tangible remark about a piece of art. 9.9 times out of 10, they are most likely not qualified to make objective statements about art. I don’t think I am incredibly inclined to say anything objective of any art piece or music. I don’t think it’s right even though I have studied it for 4 years.

This is a mindset that has held Esports from growing even bigger.

J: I have always found it interesting how people can be dead serious in hating on someone for their opinions. Music is a bigger problem for this idea. If you look at an artist like Tyler, the Creator, you will see people bashing one another for liking certain parts of his discography. I joke with people about why they like a certain artist or album, but I would never be so serious about it. I also have never understood people not liking something when they have never participated within whatever activity it is. This is prevalent within gaming during COVID. Gaming has been given a lot of good and bad spotlight because there is not much going on in the world.

P: Communities within gaming have been shown within the light much more. Look at Animal Crossing. During a pandemic, floods of people were trying to buy a Switch and people (gamers and non-gamers) were coming together to play some random game. It was crazy how many people were interested into what gaming posed for people.

J: Hopefully by the time we are back in person, more people will be able to bridge the gap that holds Esports and gaming from the potential it holds and carries every day.

 

J: Before we end off today, I have one more question for you. What is the potential you see out a program like this at DePaul?

P: Looking at what we have now, we are given a tasted of what could happen if we had more. You can take a look at the ranks of our players. You can look at the scoreboards on how teams compete. There are incredible numbers that these teams have without much sustainable coaching. They rely on the communities that they have built off of to get to where they are today. If there were more resources invested into Esports, some of our teams could be some of the best in the world.

 

Thank you so much to Peyton for taking quite a bit of time out of his day to talk to me about these topics. I honestly really enjoyed this conversation we had. It was more of a conversation than an interview to be honest. We were able to go back and forth with ease. I look forward to doing my next interview soon.

Make sure you stay in tune at DePaul Esports to see what we have planned. At 6PM CST today, we will have a DePaul Gaming League event. It is Skribbl.io. On top of that, we have the next DePaul Summer Showdown next Thursday at 7:30PM CST with Valorant!