Community Spotlight: Destiny
The world of streaming has grown in leaps and bounds over the past few years, as sites like Twitch.tv reach millions of viewers around the globe. Several EVE players have carved their own niche out in the streaming universe, many of them having come together to fly as WeHurt in the recent New Eden Open. There are streamers who focused on other games, however, who draw in tens of thousands of viewers. One of them recently decided to come to EVE and brought along his viewers with him.
Background
The man known as Destiny started his streaming career with Starcraft 2 and League of Legends. He had always known about EVE Online, however, having heard stories about the flexibility in terms of how much of a sandbox it is. But to truly enjoy EVE, he would have to invest a large amount of time into it and didn't have the desire and ability to pursue that until recently.
After the notorious battle of B-R5BR, his curiosity was piqued and he finally decided to give the game a shot. He jumped into EVE and began streaming his experiences as a new player to an audience who had never really played EVE before. There were ups and downs from the very beginning. Most of the community was helpful and excited, as having a relatively-established personality come into the game meant wider exposure for everything everyone else was doing.
Thanks to his popularity, he was able to experience an early bump in ISK and player recruitment that allowed him to skip a lot of the tedious building and jump right into the game. He has been able to play with billions of ISK worth of ships and has made all sorts of awesome (and terrible) experiences in a relatively short time.
Highs and Lows
Destiny describes himself as a hands-on learner. One of the lessons he has found most true in life is that someone who is good at a particular skill is not necessarily a good teacher of said skill. This means he has suffered from bad or misleading advice from people who have claimed to know what they're talking about. Thus he has decided to lead his own learning in EVE, and though this has caused him to receive some flack due to this approach, he has learned that it's the correct approach for him.
This has led to some humbling moments, of course. There are videos of him leading an entire Rupture fleet into a pipe-bomb and a killmail where he lost a 2b ISK cargo expander fit dreadnaught. But he considers these merely parts of the learning experience of finding out how EVE works and has taken the setbacks in stride.
In turn, he has gotten to enjoy some of the many thrills that EVE can bring with it. Already, his fledgling corporation has gotten itself involved in a war with an opposing alliance. When Destiny first started, the alliance ejected them from the system they called home in Syndicate. They've returned several times to brawl, however, and every single fight has been a resounding victory.
He has even delved into the metagame, using a member's rogue API key to read corporation e-mails. One particular member was very vocal with the smack talk in local chat. But he lost a very valuable pirate faction battleship and quit the corporation shortly after, claiming to need to take a break.
Leading from the Front
As mentioned, Destiny has taken charge and formed his own corporation and is commanding fleets. Many of these corp members are active viewers of his stream, many of whom had not tried out EVE until he began. Others, however, are old veterans of EVE Online who wanted to help out or try something new.
He enjoys the leadership position very much. He likes diplomacy, delegating responsibilities, and organizing other people into tasks, but does not like answering to other people. These sort of qualities mean he also enjoys FCing a fleet. He finds it fun to control large numbers of people and maneuver them around while fighting an enemy fleet.
He has no problems giving orders or making mistakes. In fact, he loves correcting those mistakes and improving on future fights. He has not relied on any outside resources to learn the role; rather, he has relied on feedback from experienced corp members during an after operations. Being an experienced RTS/MOBA player, he's quite capable of analyzing fights after they've happened and figure out what he could have done better. Every single ship and fleet lost is another set of invaluable lessons he gets to learn for the next fight.
Final Thoughts
No matter if you love what he's doing or can't stand the guy, Destiny's streams are interesting to watch as a new player emerges onto EVE's scene and tries to carve a legacy for himself and his corporation. Never before has the rise of a player and corporation from nothing been documented in such detail, with video streamed live from the CEO's computer.
Destiny streams for a living and hopes to continue doing that as long as possible. If you're interested in updates on his activities in EVE or other streaming-related stuff, you can follow him on Twitter @steven_bonnell. His corporation is Nanashi no Geemu; look them up in game to either join up with them or help teach him more lessons about being an FC. No matter how experienced you are in game, there's some way you can interact.
