"THE DUNK TANK IS BACK", Twitch streamer KeatDawg announced on Twitter earlier this week, as part of a stunt that saw him suspended precariously above a tank of water.
Originally spotted by Kotaku, KeatDawg has gone live with his wet gamer setup a couple of times this week. His gear includes a water-proof mouse that allegedly cost "like fifty dollars" and a collapsing chair suspended over a tank. Whenever he misses a jump in "Only Up!"—a bizarre platforming sensation that may or may not be an NFT advertisement—KeatDawg goes into the drink.
Describing himself as a "20 year old 6 foot 120 pound gaming powerhouse" in his Twitch bio, KeatDawg makes it less than ten minutes into his latest stream before a key part of his contraption fails: While his mouse is waterproof, his headset isn't, and it joins him for a dive when the wire keeping it suspended snaps. After a moment to mourn his lost hardware, KeatDawg returns to his throne by rerouting the sound through his TV.
KeatDawg explained the method behind his machine—which I am so certain can't be OSHA compliant: "Originally the idea came from a game I played last year called Jump King (similar genre to Only Up!) where I would dunk for every fall." He then goes on to explain that it got him his start streaming back in August.
The game itself, Only Up!, has landed in hot water recently due to allegedly stealing assets without permission. Despite that, its popularity skyrocketed on Twitch earlier this month, hitting over 150,000 viewers. At the time of me writing this, it's sitting cosy at 20,000, nearly twice as much as Diablo 4, and around 10,000 viewers shy of Fortnite.
I'm not intending to play it myself after my brief dip into my only other touchstone for this kind of thing, 2017's Getting Over It with Bennet Foddy, left me steeped in gamer rage. I can't help but feel entranced watching KeatDawg tumbling into his tank time after time though, a fate he has to manually trigger with the self-flagellating flip of a switch.
KeatDawg remains surprisingly calm, chatting away with his fans, and seems to have achieved a zen acceptance for the moments when he's forced to plummet into the depths. Life throws us curve balls sometimes, but I think we can all learn a lesson from Twitch's wettest gamer and take those falls in stride.
