Student Overwatch talents gathered to participate in Corsair U Overwatch Game Night, held at Corsair headquarters in Fremont, CA. A total of 11 teams from 8 schools, all the way from Stanford to UC Berkeley, participated in the event, with about 70 students including the players.

The tournament kicked off at the high noon of 12 p.m. The matches were played in randomly chosen maps following double elimination and Bo1 format. Teams were sitting here and there, talking through the game, and often engaged in heated discussion regarding the team’s strategy.

Super Evil Megacorp also participated in the event, bringing along with them its flagship title Vainglory. Vainglory booth was set up where people could enjoy Vainglory whenever they wanted, offering 5 tablets with Corsair headphones hooked on each of them. Corsair's also held a promotion event in which the company offered its mice, keyboards, bags, and certain other products at a cheaper price. There were also free pizza and soda to help everyone focus on gaming.

Something that caught our sights was a player with a BattleTag named Taeyeon; we, as Koreans, could not help but inquire about how he came up with the alias. The student in question was Dave “Taeyeon” Camicia, a student from the Academy of Art University and also the AAU eSports team captain. He was an inspiring talent who was deeply engaged with eSports ever since StarCraft 2. His nickname came from his love of Kpop and his particular fondness of Taeyeon from SNSD. He mainly plays LoL, Overwatch, CS:GO, and HotS. He now participates in a variety of eSports events as his team’s captain. When we asked him who his favorite Overwatch hero was, he immediately chose Genji.

“Of course it’s Genji. A Robotic Ninja is so cool. I also like to push myself to master difficult characters, which is also the reason why I main Zerg in StarCraft 2. I really enjoy the challenge of something difficult.”

The event lasted for about 7 hours until De Anza Community College and UC Berkeley faced each other for the final showdown. The all-Grandmaster team Cal Overwatch from UC Berkeley achieved a decisive victory after two sets in Ilios and Eichenwalde respectively.

Cal Overwatch received Corsair’s K70 gaming keyboards as their prize. VOID gaming headsets were given to De Anza, and K55 RGB gaming keyboards were given to the team that came in third.

Corsair stated that this was the company’s second major event after the LoL event that took place last October. Corsair explained that it decided to host an Overwatch event because it is the game that many students are enjoying right now, and also because the relatively short time spent for each round puts less burden on spectators, players, and event organizers altogether.

The company also expressed its enthusiasm toward college eSports leagues. “Organizing eSports tournament in between schools around the community draws a lot of attention. The players’ competitive mindset exceeds expectations, and they are always eager to win.” Corsair expressed its intent to keep hosting eSports events so that students can better relate with competitive gaming scene.