In the grand tradition of celebrities playing Overwatch badly, electro house musician Steve Aoki and Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance played for almost two whole hours on Twitch last week. As of right now, the VOD has been viewed less than 8,000 times, which means we absolutely dropped the ball, team.
While the intention was to build up to a showdown between the two, Aoki and Way played Quick Match for most of the stream in an effort to familiarize themselves with the game. Success was, well, mixed; highlights of the video include Aoki point-blank rocket barraging a wall, and Way boosting himself into the well at the center of Ilios in a hole-in-one worthy of Tiger Woods. Of course, it’s not really fair to expect our musical icons to also excel at highly competitive, skill-based games, but sometimes they can surprise you.
Over the course of their play, you could see the two getting more comfortable with the game. Early on, Way found that D.Va let him stay a safe distance away without instantly dying; he would remain on the tank for nearly the rest of the video, though he also showed an affinity for Bastion. Aoki took some more time to discover his comfort pick, swapping between offense heroes like Reaper and Soldier 76, until he realized that Pharah’s rocket launcher didn’t require him to aim so much as suggest a general direction. Way seemed more comfortable in the game earlier on, but in their final match-up, Aoki’s ascetic play-style (entirely excluding abilities) got the better of him, and the electro artist took the final map in a closely contested king of the hill series.
The event was partially to promote the release of Steve Aoki’s remixed version of The Black Parade, with tracks from the album acting as soundtrack for the stream. They were also competing for a sizable charity donation, though: the winner of their final best-of-three would choose which charity got the $10,000 they were playing over. Since Aoki won, he donated the money to Best Buddies, an organization “dedicated to ending the social, physical and economic isolation of the 200 million people with intellectual and developmental disabilities,” according to their website.
Who will be next to throw down Overwatch‘s celebrity gauntlet? Could we see the Kardashian-Beyonce feud end on the steps of Eichenwalde some time soon? One can only dream.
