As an adult, video games have largely fallen by the wayside for me during the past twenty years. A few exceptions involved playing through an older Mario and Zelda game with my oldest son a few years ago. Another came with the long-awaited release of Starcraft II back in 2010. It felt strange to actually go purchase a game and then play it in the evenings. It was fun, for a few weeks, but then I discovered something new – that watching other people play it along with colorful commentary was even MORE fun. Of course, millions of other people discovered that as well during the same decade. Twitch.tv, the video streaming site dominated by this genre, was recently purchase by Amazon for $970 million.
When I think of “husky”, I can’t help but smile and think of “Husky Starcraft”, the show name of Mike Lamond, a young fellow Oregonian who daily recorded video commentary of Starcraft II eSports games and uploaded them to YouTube. I barely watched YouTube (still don’t), but my kids do and it’s use is ubiquitous by everyone in the next generation down. For a few months though in 2011, I DID watch it. Every single day. It was fabulous.
Throughout hundreds of “episodes”, who can forget the myriad of inside jokes Husky developed along the way like “Pylo” the Protoss Pylon or the “Drop the Double Forge” dubstep. Then there was the Hero Marine, “Don’t worry guys, I’ve got this…. AHHHHH!!!!!!!!” Who could forget this stuff? Well none of the half a million fans that followed his channel at it’s peak. Sadly, Husky began having serious medical problems with his voice and had to effectively retire from public yelling, errr, speaking rather abruptly. As the game waned in popularity, his star was on the decline as well. In more recent years, he’s been helping his girlfriend (Rosana Pansino) with her own YouTube channel and career. She has ended up being more successful in the long run, judging by the fact that I saw her cookbook for nerds on sale at Walmart not too long ago.
The world is a strange place. I don’t claim to understand much about the latest media trends and youth fads, but I think I would understand them EVEN LESS if I hadn’t (however briefly) indulged and been a devoted fan of an eSports commentator on YouTube. Thanks for the fun times Husky! (P.S. Why did you delete your channel archive!?)