This week’s featured gamer is Singapore’s Kyros Koh. Otherwise known to the Twitch community that’s close to him as TechGod, Kyros is a self-described casual gamer and tech avid. That name is no joke however, as Kyros has vast experience in IT.
Whether it’s hardware, software, or tech in general, Kyros is happy to offer help. “I always be there for the ones who have technical difficulties related on Twitch, Discord and/or other tech-related stuff,” Kyros said. “Besides that, I provide consultation advice for recommendation to those (strangers/friends) who are getting new Gaming Rig or any form of IT related hardware/software/technology, etc.”
Not to mention that he has written a few bots himself. His recent bots, GameDevSharer and IndieDevSharer aim to help game developers in promoting and sharing their games.
Currently he is playing a bit of CS:GO, Overwatch, several other indie games as well as the newly released Revelation Online.
Gaming Origins
Kyros started gaming as young as 5, during the early 90’s where Windows 3.11 and 5 1/2 inch diskettes were the mainstay. The sense of wonder of how game mechanics work fascinated Kyros enough to continue gaming. In fact, he mentioned of designing simple RPGs as well!
And the sense of wonder continues to this day as he has made a career related to IT, a field of work that would require one to understand a lot of the inner workings of a system. The sense of wonder and amazement can help drive one to try and understand such complexities.
Kyros believes that gaming is a pretty good way of knowing what kind of person you are- personality and preference wise. For example, the way you play open-ended games, like CRPGs, would explain a lot of how someone thinks.
Aside from that, Kyros also mentioned how FPS games have real-life benefits. ” It helps you to be more proactive when you are playing FPS games and get fast response in reactions when you applied that to real life.”
And age shouldn’t be a barrier to enjoy games. “Gaming is life for every ages, no matter how old or how young you are,” he added.
Twitch Streaming In Singapore, and Gaming Trends
As mentioned earlier, Kyros is known in the local Twitch community. Last week we heard from Raijinshi on how it’s hard to get Malaysian audience over on Amazon’s streaming service, so we asked again the question to Kyros on how are things in Singapore. “In fact, Singapore is smaller in size compared to Malaysia, ” he responded.
It’s an interesting response. Especially when he added that he used to work with a game publishing company which has access to such data. While we can’t delve into that pool of data, there are other publicly available sources. “Well, for a public usage of trends, we can look up on Google Trends (focused in Singapore) to do the comparison with Malaysia.”
Kyros also added about the gaming trends that are on the up and coming in Singapore. “Most of them are focused in MOBA, MMORPG, FPS, RPG as well as other casual games (on PC and Console), not forgetting mobile games which is much higher in usage.”
He then goes on to what’s stopping more gamers to stream: PC specs. “For what I have observed, there’s a lot of gamers than streamers as becoming a streamer, you need a better CPU benchmark management to handle the broadcasting software to upstream to the streaming platform like Twitch and YouTube Gaming.” Indeed, a decent rig, or a secondary PC, is needed to ensure quality streams, and not many have access to such setups just yet, which produce lower quality streams thus inhibit more viewers to stick around.
How e-Sports Is Growing With Brands
With e-sports ever growing over this part of the world, Kyros sees a potential problem. “The biggest problem for gamers is not actually the gamers’ fault. It is due to too many gaming competitors… Too many pro gamers.”
This do pose a problem of highlighting the best players to the brands and teams that require such talents. Though Kyros thinks that the best players should still be able to outshine the competition. ” If you think that you have some unique skills in various games and have an outstanding reputation, you will be under the spotlight at no time.”
One good move in particular is taking part in mini-tournaments. Kyros agrees that the small, grassroots tournaments be the proving ground for any up and coming e-sports stars. “(Aspiring players) can also join those Gaming Industry’s (such Valve, Electronic Arts, etc.) or Local/Asia Developer/Publisher’s (such as Garena, Tencent, Nexon, etc.) Gaming Challenge/Tournament or Community-Event LAN Gaming Session (such as Dota2 SEA Community, CS:GO SEA Community, Overwatch SEA Community, etc) where you can win a range from small prizes to huge prizes too.”
And there’s a lot of incentive nowadays to commit to e-sports. Big brands are more willing to sponsor players. Kyros explains further: “When you are excelled in the games, the big brands will look for you to sponsor you in various gears. You will be part of the source for that brand or even, they will invite you to be in their gaming team, so they can make sort of a marketing scene to increase their branding awareness.”
And it makes sense nowadays for brands to do this. “It is kind of a win-win for both parties. You gain the fame, they gain the viewership and increase of branding reputation to have you as part of their gaming-sponsored team.”
The Dream
As for what’s in store in the future, Kyros longs for the time when he can be at the top- a part of the elite pro players of any kind of game. Jonathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel was one of the first successful Quake pro. In the FGC there are the Five Gods. As he talked a lot about the booming e-sports industry, he believes that if one is to take gaming seriously, it’s enough to make a living via tournament wins and sponsorships.
“I am trying to be trained as one,” Kyros said.
While he is now the Techgod, who knows the next time we see him here he will join the pantheon of the gaming elite? We wish Kyros all the best in his future endeavours.
You can find Kyros Koh anywhere by just searching that name. He can be found over on Twitch, Fundeavour as well as various social media.
This feature was written as part of a partnership with Fundeavour, a site that helps aspiring gamers around the world to get a head start on beginning their journey as content creators, streamers and eSports players. Want to be featured and share your stories with over 50,000 readers? Check out more info here or sign up with Fundeavour.com!