Bluefield teen wins video game world championship

BLUEFIELD, W.Va. (WVVA) – Braden Farley may just be a sophomore at Bluefield High School but he’s already successful in one aspect of his life and that happens to be playing video games.

Farley and his team, called ‘Jackpot’ recently competed in the Splatoon 3 world championship in Kyoto, Japan and took home gold.

Farley’s team consists of four members as well as a coach.

“There’s a lot of different modes. There’s turf war which is where you shoot ink and paint all over the floor. It’s just whoever has the most paint on the ground wins. The most prominent mode is splat zones where there’s a rectangle area in the middle that you have to keep turf over to win the game,” said Farley.

Farley says he started off playing the game casually when he was just seven years old. He says over the years he met his teammates online and they decided to start playing competitively.

Farley says it wasn’t smooth sailing at first as the team went their separate ways before winning it all.

“Everybody was just kind of not on the team at the same time. So we kind of remade the idea and we just clicked again and figured out our problems we had before and have just excelled ever since,” said Farley.

Farley says lots of practice went into the championship effort. He says his team played the game between two and three hours a day, nearly every day. Although he says he’s been taking a break from the game since Jackpot won the championship.

He reflected on his time in Japan and what it meant to finally win.

“I looked at all of my team and was like we did it. We’ve been working for months and months and months. We had been waking up at six in the morning before school to practice against overseas teams and it was like alright this all paid off,” said Farley. “I’m glad we can put this behind us now. We did it, we accomplished the dream we had.”

Farley says his team has plans to try and go back to back as world champions but he says that aspiration depends on the future of the game.

Farley says don’t let the amount of time he’s spent playing the game fool you. He says school always comes first and he’s even a member of the Bluefield High School band.

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