Geo Collins is a British esports broadcast talent who made a name for herself in games like Overwatch, Rainbow Six and Valorant. In 2022, she lost her dream esports job and, in her own words, ‘felt like a failure’.
Now, the 28-year-old from Colchester is responding by reinventing herself as a pop musician. Rather than leaving esports behind, Geo is adding to it, by expanding into movies, modelling and music, where she makes songs under the name aestheno. She’s a performer, a risk-taker, an entertainer who wants to be on camera and dazzle, whether it’s in esports, pop music or beyond. As she releases a new single, Dom Sacco asks Geo about leaving her fears behind, picking herself up again, and going hard in 2025.
At the start of this year, Geo Collins posted a thread on X opening up about something that happened in her esports career which ‘destroyed’ two years of her life.
While she doesn’t say what this was, it clearly hit her hard, and Geo subsequently worked in esports less and less after 2022.
“I can’t really express how bad it was. The darkest time of my entire life and I was completely desperate. I never wanted to show how bad it was bc I was terrified I would be rejected from the industry, which obviously made it worse,” she said in the below thread.
But now, she’s finding happiness again, reimagining herself with ambitions in music, modelling and movies, and the occasional esports broadcast again, after working on the World Series of Warzone in September 2024.
“2025 is the first year I’ve started since then that I’ve felt forward-facing and accepting of the way things are,” Geo added.
“I’ve spent so long rebuilding my image as an artist and personality and putting work in. Some people think it’s cringe and that’s ok. I’m a performer at heart and I feel extremely true to my projects in music and modelling. I think I worked monumentally hard in esports and was a great on camera personality, but I learned not to beg where I wasn’t wanted.
“I’m saying this because sometimes I feel bad for posting about music and hockey and my creative writing, knowing lots of people [following me] didn’t follow me for that. People ask me more about music than esports these days, but I still feel bad sometimes.”
It all raises an important point about having the freedom and courage to branch out, try new creative things, and not feel afraid to express ourselves and our other passions. To not feel trapped solely within esports.
KSI, while not an esports person as such, is also an example of someone who transitioned from being a FIFA/gaming streamer to boxing, music and other entertainment.
Geo isn’t someone who’s afraid to share what she thinks or do what she wants either. But before we get to how she’s reimagining herself, let’s go back to the start and look at how she became a caster.
From the Disney Channel to theoretical physics and the Overwatch Open
“Growing up, I always just desperately wanted to be an actress, or a fashion designer,” Geo says. “I was obsessed with performing arts and was mostly inspired by the Disney Channel, I have to admit (laughs).
“I used to write music and stuff and I would play little imaginary games in the garden, where I thought I was famous! I grew up with a brother who is of an age that we get mistaken as being twins all the time. I didn’t have sisters or anything, so I was like rolling around in the mud as a kid!”
Her interest in performing arts followed through to her teens, with Geo learning how to produce music and make YouTube videos.
“But I was also very academic,” she adds. “I went to an all-girls grammar school, and then I went on to do my bachelor’s degree in theoretical physics. I had this creative side and this crazy mathy side, and I was supposed to go and do my master’s degree in theoretical physics as well, and I had an internship in business and finance at J.P. Morgan. So I was going to be a banker!
“Then I had a really big medical scare in the last year of my bachelor’s degree, so I dropped out of my master’s, I dropped out of my internship, and I was like: ‘Okay, well, I want to go and do something on camera.’
“I had just thought I was going to die at the age of 21, and when I found out I wasn’t going to die at the age of 21, I was like: ‘Well, I’m going to do this stuff.’
“So that’s how I actually ended up in esports broadcasting, because I was a really huge video game fan, and I had friends at uni who would watch League of Legends. I was not interested in League of Legends at the time, but they were, so I was kind of familiar with the broadcast stuff. And I was like: ‘Cool, I could do that, I could get into that.’
“So I did! That was it, I just finished my final exams, I started doing really amateur level broadcasts in Overwatch, and within a couple of months I got signed to my first agency and started doing it professionally.”
Geo’s esports broadcast career began in 2018 as host of the Season 3 of the Overwatch Open Division.
But she soon decided hosting wasn’t for her. As a young esports broadcast talent, where work is competitive and some may feel inclined to accept as many offers as possible, Geo did the opposite.
“I turned down a lot of work in the early days of hosting, because I really stood my ground on it,” she says. “In some ways that’s a good thing and in some ways that’s a bad thing, I am very convicted in what I want, which can be a blessing and a curse.
“Part of my conviction is, yes I have a strong personality, I know what I want. Another part is the fear that if I don’t do that, then I won’t get to where I want to go. But closing off opportunities early on is a risky move. There was definitely a period of time where I looked back on how I turned down a bunch of work, and I was like, who was I to do that?”
“It’s not that it ever got me to a point where it negatively affected my career and ultimately I ended up where I wanted to end up, but there are people who I admire who are very humble and they take every opportunity with so much grace, and give it their all. Sometimes I look at people like that and I’m like, I could take a leaf out of your book.
“It’s not that I don’t give everything to every opportunity, but it’s that I’ve always been quite selective about what I want to do, and I’ve always tried to curate my path to my goals quite strongly, which is not something I would advise people do.”
Geo says she got into Overwatch at an awkward time, where she was slightly too late to be in the second generation of talent, and slightly too early to be in the third generation of talent. Her career was moving fairly fast, however, and she wanted to be a mainstay on a tier 1 event.
So she picked up more work here and there, including at IEM Katowice, and that eventually led her to Rainbow Six, where she made more of a name for herself.
Highs and lows in Siege and Valorant
Geo worked on Rainbow Six Siege leagues like the ESL Premiership, the EUL (European League), APAC North (part of the APAC League) and then later the BR6 (Brasileirão).
“I think, funnily enough, Rainbow Six is probably still the game that I get asked about the most, even though it’s not the most recent game that I worked in,” Geo says. “It’s funny because I used to have this little smug bragging point, where, because I got hired to do some voice acting for the North American broadcast, there was a period of time where I was the only talent who had signed a contract for all four major regions. I was very proud of that!
“So I was in Rainbow Six for quite some time and that was my first experience with how genuinely stressful it can be, but also some of my highest highs at that point.
“Like, I felt very inducted into that community. While I got a lot of shit early on, because I was an outsider, and that was quite new for Rainbow Six at the time, I grew on people and they came to know me. And I really felt a part of that community.
“I thought the talent group in Siege, the other commentators and hosts, were wonderful, they were extremely unified. So if any hardship befell one member of the group, everyone would rally around them, it was really great.”
“It was fun but it was also frustrating. I had a bit of a frustrating time towards the end of my time on Europe, because I got told about six months in advance that I was not going to be brought back for the following year, which really affected my work in the second half of my contract, or at least I felt like it did in my head, like I mentally wasn’t doing very well.
“I really wanted to go to the North American broadcast, but unfortunately when I was doing Brazil, the part of Ubisoft who ran the Brazilian League changed, and the new team who ran it didn’t want to fund the English language broadcast anymore, so that’s why I was only there for a year and that’s why I ended up leaving at the beginning of 2022.
“And I still get people say to me like “Why did you quit Rainbow Six?” And I’m like: “I didn’t have a job anymore, I was made redundant!” (laughs)
“But I do look back on that time fondly, because after that, I went into Valorant. I was like, ‘oh yeah, this is my game, this is where I’m going to retire, you know, this is awesome’.”
Geo worked a few Valorant events, with Masters Berlin a standout for her.
“That’s probably my favourite event that I’ve ever done,” she beams. “It was a very pivotal time in my life. I was really in awe of the creative freedom and agency that Riot tend to take on their events, because I had never worked for Riot before. To be in that environment where you saw how wonderfully creative the people are, and it helps that they have the budget to pull it off.
“It was really inspiring, because you could say something to someone in production, and have this idea, and they’re like, ‘cool, let’s see how we can do that’. And I hadn’t come across that before in my career, so that was truly eye-opening, and I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. And I was like, ‘oh my god’. So that was really cool.”
Geo made more and more connections at this point, and her profile rose. Her Valorant videos were drawing the community, and she also had a Valorant podcast with esports personality Thorin, titled ‘Daring Minds’, which started in early 2022.
“That was super fun,” she says, “but it eventually came to an end (in July 2023). It was my decision, because I had stopped working in Valorant for some time after that and had kind of come to accept I wasn’t going to be going back to Valorant.
“So due to the time investment of doing that show, we ended up sunsetting that. But I really felt a proper sense of belonging in Valorant, I felt like I had the right personality for the game and I put a lot of work into knowing the game very well. I felt like I was well received by the community as well.”
Geo’s final Valorant broadcast was the Twitch Rivals Showdown in the summer of 2023. This led to a few years of difficulty, as she mentioned at the start of this article, but ultimately paved the way for exciting new beginnings.
How aestheno is managing her music, movie and modelling ambitions by Finding Something To Believe In
Geo released her first EP, ‘letter to the stars’, in 2022, and has released a handful of singles since, on platforms like Apple Music and Spotify.
Her X bio clearly states what she wants from the next stage of her career: ‘Be hot, make pop.’
But what are her goals?
“At this point I think everyone is aware of my transition into music,” she says, “which was a really interesting thing because when you’ve only been known for doing broadcast and then you’re like, ‘by the way guys, I’m doing music!’ (laughs)
“Some people find that a little weird. But I’m releasing an album later this year. I’ve just released the first single of the year, and then a little later in the year I’ll be releasing my first album.
“I really want to get some more acting opportunities, I actually had something lined up for this year which I’ve had to turn down for logistical/administrative reasons, unfortunately, which is really a bummer. But that’s something I’m really keen to do more of.
“I’m continuing to audition for stuff and hopefully we’ll get some acting opportunities this year. I’m about to start doing dance classes too, because as a performer I feel like this would be so big for me, but I’ve always shied away from it because I’m a terrible dancer! So that’s really fun because I feel like I’m just doing all of these things to really grow this space.
“Then I have continued my interest in the NHL and hockey. I’ve worked with an NHL team, I went and filmed a bunch of stuff with the Anaheim Ducks in 2022, I’ve been on NHL-related podcasts. That’s such a passion project for me and I really want to keep doing that, you know when I’m a famous pop star I’ll just force my way onto the the Sportsnet broadcasts (laughs). That’s the plan.
“So I would love to continue being involved in hockey but I’m really focusing on music, acting and modelling-related stuff, which I all see as very interlinked with each other.”
While Geo has an agent that represents her in broadcast, it’s not something she’s looking for in music right now, until the identity of the projects she’s working on ‘is really set in stone’.
She performs and produces all her own work, promoting it on the likes of Instagram and TikTok, with an independent spirit and daring attitude that’s arguably more akin to punk than pop. And while she’s interested in a few record labels, she feels that her electropop genre is a little outside of the scope of some of those she’s looked at.
“[I’d be open to a label] it depends on who comes along,” she clarifies. “If Interscope get on my line tomorrow and say they want to sign me, I’ll be like, ‘oh, well, if you insist!'”
Obviously, both the esports and music industries are incredibly competitive. Both can be brutal, too, but they have very different routes to progression. Many famous artists have spoken about that one song they wrote, or breakthrough moment they had, or person they met. It comes down to talent, sure, but also chance. How will Geo get to where she wants to be, a famous pop star?
“I love this question because I think that a really big thing I’ve reflected on is that in broadcast, you sort of learn how to do things formulaically,” Geo explains.
“If I want to pitch myself to a different broadcast, what are the key things to hit? The best way of selling yourself to a producer is going to be kind of the same each time, and obviously you can be unique and have your own flair on broadcast, which is what makes you popular. But the actual kind of route of progression is fairly mappable in music. I feel like it’s quite different.
“Everyone who’s trying to sell you something wants to say that there is a formula for making it in music. But I think the real thing is you have to be very obsessed with and truly connected to the art that you’re making, and keep making it how you want to make it. And eventually the people that it resonates with will come along.”
“That can be a record label, it can be a route to virality, whatever it is. As you just mentioned there are so many different ways that people can pop up in music, but I think the real key to it is you are very authentic to what art it is that actually invigorates you to make.
“It’s a really interesting shift in approach. I feel like if you’d have asked me this question at the beginning of my broadcasting career, I probably could have given you a 10-step plan. For music I don’t really have that.
“I’m releasing this album, sure, and if we’re talking like real end-game, I want a Grammy, I want to play at Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits, those are my two dream festivals to play at. I want to star in a movie, a full-budget feature movie. And my absolute goal in modelling is I want to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit. That would be the dream!
“These are great goals. But the first thing is indulging in the art I’m making in the universe that I’m building, and allowing the people who want to be a part of that to be a part of it.”
Geo has also flirted with DJing and house music, but feels she ‘fully belongs’ in pop.
“I actually do get paid to DJ, but that’s not like what I see myself as,” she says. “When I was producing music throughout my teens and early 20s, I was always like, ‘yeah I make EDM, I make electro house music, that’s my thing, I’m a house producer’. And so when I started doing music more seriously from 2022, in my head I was thinking I’m going to make house music.
“Except, everything I have made is pop music. It took me a really long time to realise that the thing I had fallen in love with was pop music. So I don’t see myself as a DJ because now I fully belong in pop music, this is clearly what makes me really happy.”
“I love electronic music, it’s always been a really, really big part of my life, and I love house music and pretty much any genre of electronic music, I’m crazy in love with it.
“Every now and then, for fun, I’ll do a little dancy remix of something cos you know, you can take the girl out of dance music but you can’t take the dance music out of the girl!”
Geo has even remixed some K/DA League of Legends songs.
“When I decided I was going to start working on this album last summer, I knew that meant I wasn’t going to be releasing anything for a long time,” she adds. “And so every now and then I would just go on stream and make a random flip of a song on the stream. And this K/DA remix was one of them.”
That was fun. It was a very like 2012 style complextro/glitch hop sort of vibe. I find doing stuff like that can be creatively challenging and fun, and I think that when you’re like working on an actual project like an album or an EP or whatever, you can start to take yourself really seriously.
“The process can become very daunting, and so having those little moments of reprieve, where it’s like, ‘okay, today I’m just going to work on a remix and it just doesn’t matter how it turns out’. That can be like a breath of fresh air.”
K/DA is a popular choice in cosplay circles, too. So when it comes to modelling, and given Geo’s background in esports, has cosplay crossed her mind? What’s her modelling ethos?
“I’m not interested in cosplaying,” she states. “My interest in modelling never came from gaming.
“A few years ago I was quite seriously trying to apply for a lot of big modelling agencies, and then a load of stressful stuff happened in my life and my skin broke out and whatever, and I was like, I can’t be sending photos to modelling agencies where I’m like covered in acne!
“So I ended up putting a pause on that, unfortunately, and I would love to do that again. I would love to try and do it properly, but the way I see it now is that I see it as like an appendage to the stuff I do in music and acting and broadcast and everything on camera. So if you envision any female actress or pop star or whatever, who you see modelling for a brand or something, you kind of don’t see them as just a blank face or just a just a model. They are still very much attached to their brand or persona that they get from their other work, and I think that’s more kind of how I envision modelling now. That it is still inherently attached to the other things I do.
“So that means a lot of the kind of projects that I plan in modelling or I get involved in have my music or the rest of my persona in mind. But I do want to get to a point where I can do bigger and bigger projects there.
“So no, I’m not really interested in cosplaying or anything. My interest in modelling never came from gaming.
“I would never want to be a runway model either, but as we’ve established I love being on camera and I love the relationship between a photographer and a model. I really like working with photographers who are very vocal and very directive, because I like that collaborative feeling.
“I don’t really love it when I get into a studio and a photographer doesn’t talk to me, you know. Like, this is our baby, this is not just me driving this ship.”
‘I love women, but I’ve never really gone through my career being like, “I’m here to be a champion for women”
The topic of women and marginalised genders in esports has had a bigger focus in recent years. We now have more women’s leagues, from ESL Impact to Valorant Game Changers, the Equal Esports Cup and more.
What does Geo think of this, and being a woman in esports and the entertainment space right now?
“This is actually a topic I could go quite into depth in – it’s something I’ve reflected on a lot. I’ve never really gone through my career being like, ‘I’m here to be a champion for women,’ she states.
“I love women, I love meeting women who do the same thing as me. I want more women in my social circle. In recent years I’ve felt such a desire to be surrounded by more women, because I’ve always done very male dominated things. I have a degree in physics and then I worked in video game broadcast right, so I’m surrounded by a lot of men. But I was never doing things specifically for women, I kind of always just saw what I did as neutral. And I think a lot of that comes from going to an all-girls school for seven years.
“This may perhaps seem a little contradictory to someone who hasn’t been through that before, but when you go to an all-girls school, your womanhood is the least interesting thing about you, because everyone’s a woman. So it’s just a trait that goes unnoticed, and so having that background means that I’ve never really taken stock of my womanhood as being an interesting thing, or like a notable or interesting trait. And so everything I’ve ever done has had that in its blind spot. I just don’t even think about it, really.”
“There have been a couple of points in my career where it’s been made my problem, but not to an extent that I feel deserving of some kind of pedestal to talk about issues with sexism. We’re talking about one-off things that you would experience in real life.
“I would say I have not systemically experienced sexism from the people above me. I haven’t had that issue from my co-workers or like my bosses or anything, and yeah, there’s the odd arsehole online, but I meet the odd arsehold in person as well! (laughs)
“I know that people have [experienced systemic sexism], which is why I tend to avoid the subject, because I don’t want me saying I haven’t experienced it to be taken to mean that other people don’t. It is just a neutral fact that for the most part, no, I haven’t.
“I think it’s been really cool how the presence of women in esports has really grown, because I came into esports in 2018, where it was like this cusp of people starting to want more women on their broadcasts. That was back when broadcast would specifically hire a woman because they wanted a woman on the broadcast. By 2020 there were kind of enough women coming through organically that that sort of went away.”
“Nowadays, if you don’t see a woman on a broadcast, it’s not like a political thing, it’s just a bit weird because there is so much diversity in the workforce that you’re unlikely to organically find that.
“There is a natural fandom to Valorant Game Changers that comprises both men and women and gender non-conforming people, and that’s really cool. I like that it’s just there. That’s what’s really cool to me – I love that there are more women around because I love being around women. But I love that it’s just an organic thing. That makes me really happy.
“It is so fascinating because I would describe myself as a very feminine person, yes I’ve done some male-dominated activities and I grew up with a brother who is of an age that we get mistaken as being twins all the time. We talk to each other like twins and we have a very twin-like relationship. I didn’t have sisters or anything, so I was like rolling around in the mud as a kid!
“I feel like in my whole life I’ve had a very balanced experience of “male and female activities and interests”, so for me that means I love embracing both of those things, but I don’t think very much about my place within them as a woman. Which is perhaps a result of luck on my end, but it does make me happy to see things becoming more balanced.”
The pen, the puck and performing arts
Aside from her esports work, Geo is also interested in one physical sport in particular: ice hockey.
As she said earlier in this interview, she’s filmed work with the Anaheim Ducks, has been on various NHL podcasts, and produces her own ‘Puck-cific’ videos about hockey on her Geo Collins YouTube channel.
On top of this, she enjoys writing, and has a Substack called ‘The Aesthenoverse’.
“I’ve been running a side YouTube channel talking about stuff in ice hockey and NHL stuff, and I’ve been talking to a couple publications about various work that I can do for them in the NHL medium,” Geo says.
“There are a couple places online where I write. I have a Substack and I also write on my aestheno Tumblr a lot. I’m sat at my desk right now and I can see four different journals that I write in, you know like, I write a lot.” (laughs)
Is writing something she you would consider going into as a career?
“I mean I’ve written for publications before and I really enjoy creative non-fiction writing,” she answers. “For me that is my best writing. So if you actually read one of my articles, whether it’s an editorial piece or an opinion piece, you’ll find it’s got a lot of creative flair to it, because that’s just how I enjoy writing.
“I absolutely love writing. I don’t think I would do it instead of doing some kind of performance, because I just enjoy being in front of people so much. But I love writing and it’s one of the few things I think I’m very naturally good at, so I will always intend to continue writing alongside whatever I’m doing.”
Our discussion also meandered into UK esports, the rise of co-streamers like Caedrel, the monopoly of the Esports World Cup, the idea that the internet is becoming unfashionable, and IRL and community-focused initiatives likely becoming more prevalent in the future.
And while Geo is clearly a versatile being, all these new ambitions don’t mean she’s turning her back on esports, either.
“There will still be some exciting stuff in broadcasting, I had some amazing broadcasting opportunities last year,” she remarks. “I worked on the World Series of Warzone, which is like the biggest Warzone tournament in the whole world, so that was extremely cool and I would love to get to do that again this year. I hope to continue working on broadcasts this year, I’ll be going hard on everything.
“If someone offers me something [in esports] and it’s cool, I’m not gonna be like, ‘no!’ (laughs)
“I’m just building on everything I’ve done and expanding into new areas.”
As mentioned earlier, Geo has big goals in music, movies and more. But right now she’s clearly enjoying in “indulging in the art I’m making in the universe that I’m building, and allowing the people who want to be a part of that to be a part of it”.
That’s more than being hot and making pop. That’s a statement, a reminder to live in the moment, and a push to anyone with a dream to chase it.
Follow Geo Collins on her Linktree here
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
