Theresa Gaffney
| If you’ve ever felt like a fish out of water competing against younger, skilled players, Lowkey.gg is offering you a potential solution. The platform, run by 22-year old CEO and Harvard-grad Jesse Zhang, aims to create a niche that is comfortable for adults gamers who feel like they are “past their prime” when playing in standard competitive tournaments. As their website details, Lowkey.gg is “A lowkey gaming league — high-quality esports for amateurs.” While skill level varies from game to game, the average age of successful players remains in the teens and early 20s. This can make it stressful for older gamers who are more set in their careers with less time to hone their abilities to remain competitive to play against them in tournament settings. Lowkey.gg structures tournaments for like-minded and similarly-skilled adults to play together without additional stress. There are no prize pools, so that already eliminates a tier of players that would normally play in other online tournaments. The platform intends to be a social environment as well. “There are a lot of people who can play these games now who are in the workforce, [during] free time after work, but there’s no infrastructure there and no platform to bring people together,” Zhang said to CNN Business in a recent interview. “We’re not so interested in organizing one-off events one after another, rather than providing a more consistent, almost subscription-like experience for the players.” Y Combinator, one of Silicon Valley’s most notable startup engines, is backing Lowkey’s efforts. This means there are already many Silicon valley organizations aware of what the platform is doing and are using it to play against each other. You can find names like Google, Microsoft, and LinkedIn among the tournaments for games like Smash Brothers, Dota 2, CS:GO, and others. Most of these tournaments run for about eight weeks and allow the winners to brag in their friend circles about being the best in the adult gaming sector. How this will develop remains to be seen; maybe we will see Lowkey at live team-building events in the future. It just might be time to bring your professional connections to the esports world instead of happy hour. |
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