Pro gaming tools are helping streamers get paid - The Verge

Software like Aimlab and KovaaK’s help players improve their skills in games like Valorant and Counter-Strike, but they’re also an increasingly large part of the overall esports and streaming ecosystem.

A grid of blue, balloon-like blobs are pinned against a checkerboard shooting range. The goal, says Aim Lab, is to pop all of the targets as fast as you can with a pistol that’s been tuned to the precise kinetic feedback of Riot’s wildly popular shooter Valorant. Whenever you connect with a target, another one will materialize somewhere else on the grid, meaning that players will be graded on a variety of different vectors including speed, efficiency, and precision. All of the gruesome flourishes we’ve come to expect in a modern FPS — the sanguine blood splatters, the ragdoll corpses, the frilly reload animations — are missing. Aim Lab is about raw, fundamental precision; the basic task of clicking targets on the screen reduced to its bedrock.

At the end of my first trial, I learned that my accuracy was hovering around a piddly, amateurish 50 percent. My most obvious weak spot? Apparently, I struggled landing shots to my right, and Aim Lab suggested clearing out any clutter on my desk that might be blocking my wrist. I moved some papers to the floor and booted up the module again, determined to get those numbers up.

Aim Lab, which was released into Early Access in 2017 and is free to play on Steam, is one of the many platforms attempting to solve a problem that’s vexed the video game community for generations. To excel at a shooter — particularly twitchy, tactical PC shooters like Counter-Strike and Valorant — you are expected to grind away in the matchmaking crucible, throwing up putrid KDAs, as you gradually grow more deft with your mouse. There is a lot of humiliation and disgrace baked into that process. But Aim Lab offers a kinder path toward Diamond-rank immortality. What if you could instead train in relative privacy and receive constructive feedback based on your own analytics? What if every one of your Rainbow Six Siege matches didn’t end with an early, inglorious death, forcing you to wait five minutes for another bite at the apple? What if your bad performances weren’t punctuated by a 12-year-old kid disparaging your personhood in the general chat?

It’s an enticing proposition. And that’s what has made Aim Lab, and other aim-training services, one of the true commercial forces in professional gaming, plastered across esports jerseys and Twitch broadcasts.

Earlier this year, Aim Lab brokered a sponsorship with Activision’s Call of Duty League, joining it with previously established deals with Riot Games and Ubisoft for Valorant and Rainbow Six Siege, respectively. The company has partnered with a number of high-profile Twitch streamers, like LuluLuvely and Ethos, as well as promoting full-fledged esports teams that use the service. (ScreaM, a Valorant player for Team Liquid, has proudly showcased his Aim Lab routine on his YouTube channel — his click fidelity is simultaneously inspiring and terrifying.)

https://www.theverge.com/23150208/pro-gaming-tools-aimlab-kovaaks-streamers-esports

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