Overwatch Yule Log Featuring Jeff Kaplan

Overview

Overwatch Yule Log Featuring Jeff Kaplan refers to a 10-hour Twitch stream of Overwatch creative director Jeff Kaplan sitting in front of a fireplace on December 24th.

Background

On December 24th, 2017, Overwatch creative director Jeff Kaplan began a stream on Twitch of him sitting in front of a yule log. A yule log is a television broadcast of a fire in a fireplace which lasts for several hours. During the stream, Kaplan did next to nothing. He rarely talked and most often sat quietly and adjusted his position (entire stream shown below).

Developments

According to Dotesports,^[1] at a certain point the stream amassed over 40,000 viewers. Viewers suspected that the video may have been a loop, but the stream featured several moments in which Kaplan broke the pattern of silence and blinking. For example, at a certain point, he is hit with a boom mic (shown below, left). At another, the fire goes out, and Kaplan claps to turn the fire back on (shown below, right).

The video lasted for nearly ten hours. At the end of the stream, Kaplan thanks the Overwatch players for watching, then proceeds to troll viewers by beginning to introduce the next Overwatch character, when the video glitches and the audio is lost (shown below). The clip was uploaded to YouTube by user Twitch Is My City and gained over 1.1 million views in 72 hours.^[4] The stream was covered by Polygon^[2] and Kotaku.^[3]

Fans began dissecting the stream for clues as to the next Overwatch hero. YouTuber KINGmikyl uploaded a dissection of the stream that gained over 18,000 views. Unit Lost – Great British Gaming did the same and gained over 122,000 views (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References