Jake (video game player)

Player

Prior to the release of Overwatch, Lyon was a Team Fortress 2 player under the alias "sneakypolarbear". He began playing at 11 and competing at age 14, first in the Highlander and later in the 6v6 competitive formats. Two years later he had become skilled enough to receive an ESEA League invitation. When he decided to compete in Overwatch, he changed his alias to "Jake" (sometimes stylized as "JAKE") to avoid being mistaken as the League of Legends player Sneaky.^{[1]2:10, 4:10[2]1:30}

Lyon did not receive an invitation to participate in Overwatch's pre-release open beta, and began playing the game only upon its public release. At the time, Lyon was a college student and was studying abroad in the Netherlands. He was able to distinguish himself as one of the game's best players, achieving a top-500 rank in the game's competitive mode, despite playing on sub-optimal equipment.^[1]3:00 Lyon credits his time playing Team Fortress 2 for giving him a strong starting point for Overwatch, noting that as a TF2 Soldier player, he had experience with both hitscan and projectle weapons, and that the in-game communication style transferred over well, since both games were fast-paced and required a large amount of in-game communication.^{[2]6:20, 7:50}

Jake and five other former Team Fortress 2 players founded the team -bird noises-, reusing a team name that two of the other players had used in TF2. Although they all came from the same game, most had not played with each other before Overwatch. -bird noises- was eventually signed by Hammers Esports. In an interview, Jake described Hammers as the first organization to give them a reasonable offer, mentioning that they had received other offers before Hammers', but that they weren't for living wages, and one even offered to pay them in mouse pads.^{[2]4:30, 18:00} Hammers sold the roster to Luminosity Gaming a few months later, and since Luminosity already had an Overwatch roster, the former-Hammers roster competed under the name Luminosity Gaming Evil.^[1]4:25[3] During one online competition as part of LG Evil, Lyon attempted to play through a tornado warning, and at one point the match had to be delayed because he needed to evacuate to the basement of his college dorm until the warning passed.^[2]28:00

In addition to playing for LG Evil, Jake was selected as the captain of the 2017 United States Overwatch World Cup team. The team qualified for the tournament finals at BlizzCon 2017 through their participation in a qualification tournament in Santa Monica, California. This event was Lyon's first offline tournament in front of a live audience; his previous competitions were online-only.^[4]1:30[5] At the main event, the team lost in the quarterfinals in an unexpectedly close series to favorites and eventual tournament-winners South Korea.^[6]

In the months between the World Cup qualifiers and the finals, Lyon was signed to the OpTic Gaming-owned Houston Outlaws, one of the teams in the newly formed Overwatch League. Three of Lyon's World Cup teammates would also go on to be part of the team; Matt "coolmatt69" Iorio had already been signed, and Shane "Rawkus" Flaherty and Russell "FCTFCTN" were signed after Lyon. Partway through the year, Kyle "KyKy" Souder, the 2017 World Cup team coach, also joined Outlaws as an assistant coach.^[5][7] In their inaugural season, the Outlaws would finish with a 22-18 match record, and end the season in 7th place, one spot short of making the end-of-year playoffs.^[8]

In Overwatch, Jake is projectile DPS specialist and in-game leader. Extremely proficient with hero Junkrat, he became so closely associated with the character that fans began calling him "Jakerat".^{[1]6:15[9][10]} Lyon credits his success with the character on being willing to take aggressive, one-on-one engagements with opponents, and on having devised ways to maximize the hero's impact that other players had not yet discovered.^[11] In addition to Junkrat, Jake is known for his play on the heroes Soldier:76 and Pharah, and for being an in-game shot caller (a player that communicates strategy to teammates during the game).^{[1]7:30[4]2:00}

Caster

Lyon declined tryouts for the 2018 Overwatch World Cup, announcing on Twitter that he had "bigger plans this year". This fueled rumors that Jake would be retiring as a player, either to join a team's coaching staff or to become an in-game broadcaster or "caster". He would later be announced as a caster for the Incheon, South Korea stage of the World Cup qualifiers, paired with veteran caster Andrew "ZP" Rush. As a caster duo, Rush would handle play-by-play casting, and Lyon would handle analysis.^[12][13]

eSports ambassador

Charismatic and outspoken, Lyon has developed a reputation as a "leading personality amongst players",^[1]4:50 and is seen as an ambassador to Overwatch and to eSports. Financial Review called him "the perfect poster-boy for the sport as it tries to dispel the prejudice that computer-gaming is a lonely pursuit of wastrels and slobs".^[14] In July 2018, Lyons was selected as one of two Overwatch League players to attend a summit between the International Olympic Committee and the eSports community. The Times-Standard praised the selection, saying that Lyon was "likely one of the best players that could have been selected to publicly represent professional eSports on a global scale".^[15] A few months prior to the meeting with the IOC, Lyon and Outlaws teammate Shane "Rawkus" Flaherty spoke with Megyn Kelly about the Overwatch League in a segment on The Today Show.^[16]