UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Wish you good luck, brother. Ukraine time, bombs started to fall all around Bobi as he was live on Twitch playing Tarkov.īOBI: I love you, guys. LOEWINGER: On February 24, just before 6 a.m. LOTTIE: Bobi takes everybody in who's kind and genuine, and he makes them a part of his family. KEEFY: Everybody says the same, he's infectious. Keefy and a Canadian woman named Charlotte Wallans (ph), who goes by Lottie (ph), became his biggest fans. LOEWINGER: This is Keith Bodinnar (ph), a 41-year-old operations manager living in the U.K. LOEWINGER: He began streaming on Twitch as a full-time job in early 2020, averaging about 40 regular viewers, a tiny but devoted following. In Tarkov, majority of your outcome depends on you. But this sounds like you were just escaping into a gamified version of the world directly around you.īOBI: In real life, majority of things are usually taken away from your hands if you like it or not. LOEWINGER: When I think of an escape, I think of going to some fantasy land that's so unlike real life that it gets your mind off of it. That's two years of game time inside Tarkov.īOBI: I was like a zombie using Tarkov as the only drug to keep me out from having any contact with reality. Over five years, he racked up 18,000 hours. LOEWINGER: For instance, in the game, you can play as one of two private military groups just like the early days of the war in Donbas, which was fought by militias formed by Ukrainian oligarchs. And the story was matching place I was living. If you let your guard down for a moment, you're dead.īOBI: It clicked with me because buildings are looking like - I'm used to seeing this Eastern Europe in real life. Bobi became obsessed with Escape From Tarkov for a couple reasons. LOEWINGER: It's a first-person shooter set in a fictional Russian war zone, kind of like Call Of Duty but way more hardcore. He started playing several years ago to get his mind off the war in Donbas, just 70 miles from his home, where Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists have been fighting since 2014.īOBI: No, PMC (ph). MICAH LOEWINGER, BYLINE: Bobi is an expert at Escape From Tarkov. Here's Micah Loewinger from WNYC's On The Media. When the bombing started in eastern Ukraine, his online community helped him to escape a real war. And he grew his fan base on a popular Russian war simulation game called Escape From Tarkov. The livestreaming platform Twitch is where you can find a Polish Ukrainian influencer who's raising money for refugees fleeing the Russian assault on Ukraine.
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