Drew Brown may be new to Ohio State and its premier Overwatch team, but he brings an extensive level of experience with him. Credit: Courtesy of Sara Seib
Drew Brown may be new to Ohio State and its premier Overwatch team, but he brings an extensive level of experience with him.
Brown — also known as “Eskimo” — is one of the top esports premier Overwatch players for the Buckeyes and is also a nationally ranked player who has garnered respect within the competitive Overwatch scene.
The Ohio State Overwatch team has been assembled for over a month and consists of 12 players on the full roster. With a roster full of raw talent, Brown sticks out from the pack with experience gathered from higher levels of competitive play.
“He’s basically our primary shot caller on the scarlet team,” Lucas Lumbra, an analyst for the premier team, said. “He’s also our ultimate tracker and he plays support so those are his big roles.”
Brown is a first-year transfer to Ohio State from Shawnee State University but is in his fifth year of studying computer science and engineering. He said he hopes of getting into a career in cyber security, but his career aspirations don’t end there.
Brown has been playing Overwatch since the game was in beta back in 2016 and began to play competitively in 2017.
Since then, Overwatch has taken the esports world by storm since 2018 with the creation of the Overwatch League, a professional league for the video game. Although Brown has not reached that level yet, he has competed with a European semi-pro team before joining the Buckeyes and has his sights set on the OWL.
“I played with a team in Europe called team Ultimates about six months ago and we made it to the playoffs and we were one game off of our trial spot,” Brown said. “I do think that I do have potential to get to OWL level.”
With this season being his rookie year in terms of collegiate Overwatch, Brown said that there are some differences in semi-pro and collegiate play.
“It’s a little bit different because in the collegiate scene we’re a little bit more fluid with our comms so we kind of see a little bit more give and take when it comes to what we want to play and what we decide to play,” Brown said. “Whereas in semi-professional, it’s really tight with what we need to do, we usually stick to hard metas or what we see works, whereas in collegiate, what we’re doing there is a little bit more flow of what we can do.”
With the difference in play amongst levels, Brown has managed to translate his play and knowledge to help those of his teammates that may not have as much experience or skill compared to the semipro.
Abhishek Goyal, a fourth-year in computer science and engineering and support player on the premier team, has been one of the main beneficiaries of Brown’s presence. Goyal is Brown’s running mate as the scarlet team’s additional support player on the six-man team.
Goyal said that having Brown as his counterpart has paid dividends to his development as a support player.
“Well, he’s been one of the coaches for me, especially because I am the second support character,” Goyal said. “The synergy between these two people is really important. I always go to him for advice, I do vod reviews with him outside of scrims to make sure what can we do right, what did we do wrong, what we can do better, so he’s always been there.”
