Cinescussion - Episode 12 - The World of Competitive Gaming

The world of esports has become a staple for gamers everywhere. Competitive gaming is on a path that will reach a level of popularity that can rival most major sporting events. We are both competitive gamers by nature and it's a hobby we have shared for a long time. Join us as we discuss our histories with esports and enjoy this deep dive into the exhilarating world of competitive gaming.

Topics: 
-What esports are.
-Our histories with competitive gaming.
-The games we have played competitively and why.
-What we are currently playing.
-Where we think the world of esports is heading.

Games Discussed:
-Guilty Gear: Strive
-Halo Infinite & Halo Series
-Starcraft: Brood War
-Aliens vs. Predator (1999 PC)
-Mortal Kombat 9
-Marvel Vs Capcom 2 & 3
-Injustice 2
-Street Fighter 4 & 5
-Dota 2 

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Cinescussion. Follow us on our socials for updates and random shenanigans.

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Fortune's Twitter
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Transcript

(This transcript may not be 100% accurate )

Hey everybody, this is Dylan.

And this is fortune, also known as a restless mind on YouTube.

And welcome to episode 12 of Cinescussion and we are talking about the world of competitive gaming.

Yes, I love competitive gaming. I have to be honest, like eSports for me is like, like most like adults, sports, like if there's a huge Halo tournament or, you know, apex or something that I want to watch, you know, back in the day, Starcraft like It's like one of football games on and you're like, Okay, I love you guys, but don't bother me.

Yeah, yeah. So I've been into competitive fighting games for a very long time. Since actually, I think I really got into it around 2009 With the release of a game called Street Fighter four, which is actually a term for people like me, who really got into the competitive scene around that time within the fighting game scene were called Oh, Niners because

that was also MK nine with MK nine as well. Short if not, yeah, after, which was me.

Yeah, fighting games. As a genre, at least within mainstream media had been really dying down for for quite a long time after the release of third strike and Marvel Vs. Capcom, two years later, it was just kind of a dry spell. They existed for sure, but there wasn't any excitement around it. But then came online era, and the Xbox 360. And eventually the release of the new Street Fighter game with Street Fighter four and you can play yeah, across the world. And you know, that neck would never be serviceable today, but back then be able to do that was incredible.

And I remember that I remember at the time of graphically, that was like, amazing to like the it was really cool. It's like, it's a 2d plane, but it's 3d graphics with cartoon textures or whatever, like really cool stuff.

Yeah, yeah, really cool stuff. They called it 2.5. D?

Is that what they called it?

Yeah, that's the end. You know, funny thing about the Street Fighter games is similar, you know, years and years later, Street Fighter five eventually came out. But it's always seems to be the most influential game within the space. It's like a new street fighter launches and kind of sets the tone for kind of what fighting games are going to look like for the next five to 10 years. It's like this is essentially how a meter is going to be like, and this is kind of how it's going to be based on if it's going to be grounded or if it's going to be crazy and jumpy in Air Mobility and all this stuff.

For sure. Yeah. Like, the first finding game I got into competitively was Mortal Kombat nine. And that was like you said shortly later, but if you think about it, you're absolutely right. Because that's a tude. It's to 2d space again. But it's 3d graphics. And there's a meter system and like, yeah, for sure. You're absolutely right. Yeah, very good. Yeah, your your gamertag was back to back country. You Avenged Sevenfold fan you. That was a great album, though. So I can't like say anything negative about it.

My teenage years. My events sevenfold my slipknot, my chemical romance with the best of them.

Oh, I remember I remember with a beanie yet. The beanie. beanie with the curls hanging out? Yep. Yep, I remember.

Are you in a band? No.

Yeah, this is called the Nirvana bro.

Don't be ridiculous. I'm edgy. What are you talking?

I've always been boring. I've just been vastly Well, that's not completely true. But I'll get into that later. But yeah.

Lastly, me.

Originally, it was just originally was just going to be vastly underrated. Like, and then. And then I realized very quickly that people will always just shorten your name. And I wanted to. So I just went with fastly. And I realized there weren't a lot of people at the time any competitive gamers that their name started with V really. And I kind of liked and I kind of just wanted to invest into it. It was there. And I was like, that's just too long. So I shortened it. My original name. Okay, so this is crazy. My mom was very religious growing up. I never really was but I grew up in the church, right? So to please her when we first got a Pete, we got a PC, single mom, so we didn't have a lot of money. But she got a very good deal on a cheap PC at a at a I think it was a chain called CompUSA. But they went out of business. So she got a PC. And it's years later, so it's fine. They're gone. Well, one of the ways she made the deal is the guy really wanted to make a sale, and she didn't have a lot of money and she knew I was a gamer. So she said, hey, I'll buy this computer. If you could hook me up with a couple of games for my son, right? This was like 9090 I guess it would have been nine or eight somewhere around there. And he was like, I can't do that. But here's what I can do. He goes I actually have two of the newest games at the time. It was Starcraft and Alien VS Predator by rebellion, which is still one of my favorite shooters. Ever like on PC, it was fantastic. And what he did was, he sold the computer and then he burned us copies and then sent us the CD keys and then just trashed his games at home. So I got these do burn copies. And I had never played a top down strategy game. So the first time I touched StarCraft, admittedly, I was like, Oh, this is cool. But I lost interest quickly. I was like, I don't think I'm gonna like this. So I played Alien VS Predator for a while. And if you think about it, um, that actually now that I think about, I wasn't going to talk about that. But that was actually my first foray into competitive gaming. I didn't even know that because because you could be the alien predator Marine. Very few people pick the alien, because the alien was wicked fast, could crawl over the walls, but had a really, really low health. But if you could time ahead by correctly, which is where you had to put them literally, it had to be perfect by the pixel in the center of the screen, these jobs would appear. And if you did that, you get ahead by an instant kill on a predator or, or predators had more health, but it's like almost impossible to get, you know, because they're moving around. I got so good that I got it at least half the time. Like it was crazy, like, so my clan, I was like the only alien player if they wanted an alien, but I was also a really good pred. And I don't remember what it stand for. But remember, the camo is the clan I was part of was calm CRM. And then I went by the name Reaper, originally. And then my tag was BGM. I don't remember what BGM stands for. But it was basically like, I was the right hand man to the head. And that I think that was the origin of my identity on games when there's clans. I don't like being the leader. I like essentially, if you've seen the raid, I like being the mad dog that you let off Thresh like that. That's what I like. And I think it started from that, because that's what I felt like he was like, oh, he'll pick alien and the cleanser like then you're gonna get wrecked. And they're like, you haven't played against Reapers, alien. And the next, you know, I had teams like terrified. Like, it was so funny when they actually hugged into the corner because they're scared. And I got so good that you could talk by doing the alien hiss, and it would do the sound effects in the movie. I would actually hiss before I'd kill them. And then they'd like, look up and I'd like it was great. But yeah, anyway. But yeah, like, so that's how I got into that. And then it led to other things. But I'll go into that later. So

what about you? Yeah, so um, I started playing Street Fighter four. Before that. I remember playing a 3d fighting game called SoulCalibur. Two and a little bit of marvel.com too nice. And all these fighting games growing up, and I remember really loving in those games, the music, the art style, and it always felt really engaging to me not only to be alone, and you know, having a one on one kind of versus competition with one other person, but also, how quickly you had to make decisions offensively and defensively. And this is before I knew anything about frame data, or spacing, or baits or neutral, all these just in terms that you kind of learn over time, I just really knew that the characters were really cool. The combos look really cool. It was difficult. And I felt like no matter how much I learned, there was always more to learn.

By the way, you taught me all that. When I met you at MK nine M cam was the first fighting game that I took seriously. Yeah, and you were so good. You're the one that taught me about, like researching frame data and all that stuff. Like, I didn't know any of that stuff. You would say stuff. And it was like, another link was like, you were like, you were like fuzzy guard, and then like spacing, and then and then you were like, framed out. And then you talked about like, you know, like, and I was just like, I have no idea. You were like wavedash I'm like, what is that? Like, I don't even know what these things are like. So yeah, like you taught me all that just so you know, like,

No, I'm happy to that's another one of my passions is getting people excited about finding yours. I've really enjoyed him for so long. And I've gotten pretty good at them. Yeah, you are. Thank you. I can pick them up pretty quick. And I can understand system mechanics, I get to a point pretty quick that you kind of want to be out of the fighting game where you know most of how the characters work. And now it's really just decision making at a very quick pace. Can you make decisions faster than your opponent or I like to think of it as everything is a problem you can either solve or you can put you can either give a problem to somebody or you spend the game solving problems. It's either you're really proactive, or you're really reactionary, for sure. And I play very reactionary. I'm very like in chess, I like to go second. For example, I really like to follow somebody lead and kind of make decisions based off their decisions. It's very similar in fighting games. There's less decisions to be made in a chess match, you have more kind of things within a chess match that you could do both in a fighting game within the sandbox of options that you have Alex to follow some of these lead and then kind of make decisions based on that. Sure. And it's just it just becomes mind games. It's Can you out think somebody quickly can you think faster than them? Can you solve the problems that they provide to you faster than I couldn't think of a new one. You know what I mean? For sure, just kind of back and forth and back and forth, then you get these big moments where you you play against somebody who is playing as quick as you and they're putting you in situations that you don't understand. And then for sure, a moment where you're like, Alright, I'm pissed off, but like solving this right now. Go do some research and come back and figure this out. You know what I mean? Exactly. So that's kind of what got me into it. But I've really played most things I could get my hands on over the years. My biggest ones growing up or anything Capcom made so Street Fighter, a lot of the vs series. So Street Fighter 2345. Fighter, or barber STATCOM, two, three, the first 1x men vs. Street Fighter. I didn't play much.

I think he told me that Capcom is your favorite game developer, right? In general? Yeah,

yeah, they're my favorite game developer, especially when they're on a hot streak. Like I remember a few years ago, like they had done a really great update for Street Fighter five, and made it a much better game than it used to be. And then they released another game series called Monster Hunter. That was wonderful. That's

a great game. That's a great game. Yeah, sure.

Double down five, which is wonderful. And when those developers and creative team are at the top of their game, they really do awesome work. It's probably between them and from software to create the Souls games. Oh, yeah. Which I like, completely different reason.

Me to me souls are the games I can just get lost in like, I could just play. I don't really feel stress, like because I don't. I don't know. I don't find it stressful because it's more about just repetition and learning the patterns and everything. But I like it. And I think the worlds interesting and I like the building. And I like the atmosphere. I also like that it's challenging. I like that. Like, I mean, it's not as challenging as like some of the crazy old games. But it's closer to those style of games, which I miss because I feel like nowadays most developers try to hold your hand most of the way.

Yeah. To get you. It

does, and it does get you very free. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I have friends who've broken controllers, keyboards, things on that game, for sure.

But growing up, where I realized I could be pretty good at it. And maybe I could, you know, really become competitive fighting games was where we started playing together in Mortal Kombat nine. I was good at Street Fighter four. But I was really good. And Mortal Kombat nine. And it was just

fun. Jesus. Yeah.

It's fun, Jesus. It you know, it's funny, I actually talked about that game regularly. Not so much like mechanically, but just kind of the space I was in and compared to how I play games now. And I was good at that game because I had an unlimited amount of time to play. And that was just all I wanted to do was just play that game and everything. So generally, when I talk to my friends, we're still into fighting games. I'm in a completely different place. Now. I've never had more responsibilities. So my time is like, you know, if I can get an hour to two hours on a video game, I'm like, Yes, outside of like, big tournament's which we'll get into later. But

yeah, aha, things like that. Our two is doing work.

Really? Like okay, so if I only one hour, like, how can I effectively spend that hour on improving? It's something you know, for sure. So for sure, it's not so much like I have all the time in the world. And I could just play 200 games straight anymore. And like, learn in the moment, it's like, yeah, okay, how can I like, I just need to know if I can hit this setup or not, like, Is this realistic, I'm gonna try for an hour. That's

honestly a fantastic mindset though. But like, the time you have is limited, suspend it actually learning something new or improving something like that's a very great mindset to have. Honestly,

it makes it less frustrating to lose too. Because losing can, it can be frustrating, especially when you feel that you're really good at something, you know, so if I put my mind state in a kind of learners mind state of I want to attempt to do something that I don't usually do, just to see if it's effective, then like, if you lose, you're like, Oh, that makes sense. Maybe it's not as good as I thought it was. Let me try

something. You know, and yeah, no, for sure. For sure. No, I totally get that one.

Yeah, but that's kind of how I started it's always been I know if you know, within the fighting game community it's it does still seem pretty niche. The fighting game community is pretty large, but not in the way other video game communities are large. You know what I mean?

Yeah, it seems like it's getting there though. Like, it seems like it's what's interesting is there are certain communities that like I'm not a part of, but the Smash community is enormous ly like that one seems to be crazy like I'm even locally at what's it called? GameWorks or whatever down there. Like, right like the tournament's they used to have for that are enormous. I mean, I mean, in one thing I learned about fighting games is it does seem like based on where you live, different games are more popular like a lot of central locations and stuff, especially in Chicago and things like Mortal Kombat is really big right? Street Fighter seems to be fairly big everywhere, probably because it's the Godfather fighting games. But like, with a lot of the other ones, you'll go to different areas and different games are just more popular there, right? Because like, and I've actually found that to be similar to games like Halo, for instance, there are quite a few pros that have come out of like Ohio, there are quite a few that have come out of Washington. But that also makes sense because it was developed here. You know what like, but like, it is interesting how that works. It's not, it's like, it's not always the same, but then there'll be a lot of pros, it'll find that they're within like a state of each other, like, within a four hour drive, you know, like, and I think a big part about that is the best of the best when they go to tournaments, they, you know, they find each other even if they're not pros yet, and they have this, they have these opponents that are really good, and they make each other better. I think over time is what happens and it kind of slowly builds its own community. It's like a natural thing, right?

Yeah. You're totally right on that. I think what slows fighting games down that aspect, though, is we the fighting game community really prides itself in its kind of grassroots ability to build offline events and kind of bring people together and get them interested in person. And it's the only kind of gaming scene that I still think holds on to that identity. Really firmly, everything else has made the transition online reasonably. So I think the couple things that are different for fighting games are a net codes work very differently for fighting games input base, so it's not like a shooting game. Also, when it comes to fighting games, you are you're alone, and you're testing your ability against somebody else who is also alone. And having that kind of head to head environment where there's a crowd, and you're essentially doing competitive speed math with difficult execution. You know what I mean? 100% seeing something really cool in the moment in person, there's nothing like it, people are popping off and, you know, hollering and all of these, like, really exciting things where it's not the same. You know what I mean? Yeah, for sure. It's like, a shooting game, or somebody like has a play and you understand, like, why they stayed in that corner and why they hit you from that area to find you. Somebody could do something to you. And you're like, What the fuck just happened? Yeah, what's going on? You have to ask the person just leaned over be like, What do you just do? How do I deal with that? Yeah, what I mean?

Yeah, I think some of the great moments and games like you said they do happen on land. That was one thing I appreciate about Halo two back in the game day. And this will lead into the other segment about because we're talking about what competitive gaming is. And it for those of you that don't know, competitive gaming is, it's huge now. And essentially, it's Think of it like NFL NBA, it's just called, it's called eSports, which stands for Electronic Sports. And essentially, you have in games that are solo play, you have sponsored players by different game organizations like fighting games, like Dylan here, who's a part of STG that there are also and then team based games, you have sponsored companies that sponsor whole teams, I mean, they pay for your hotel rooms, fly you out to tournament pay entry fees, and then you split like you when there's a percentage of your contract, you split with them, you know, etc. Like that. They also a lot of times, maybe they'll have people that do your branding on your Twitch streams, things like that. And now things exist that I wish existed when I was 17. Because like, we saw this stuff coming but God I wish it was there when I was younger, because like now they're even colleges now that have scholarships, like people for like NBA and football, they have eSports scholarships, and they're forming like pro Call of Duty teams or League of Legends teams, or maybe maybe soon Halo infinite or whatever, but they'll like have these leagues. And you know, they'll form these teams in the college and you can actually get a scholarship if you're like a top level gamer, like that stuff I wish existed when I was young. I like that would have been the dream right there. So it's really taking off and I mean, it's not something where it's just people, you know, making a few bucks. Like it's it's huge money. I like to put in perspective. Most games aren't even, like the biggest game in the world prize pool was I think the last 10 years in a row is actually Dota two, League of Legends. Technically, League of Legends technically has more players to play, and it is a great game It has like, I think it's like 100 I don't know 80 million people that play it a month or something Dota has like 15 or something, which is still insanely high. But But Dota just for its championship alone, it started with like a $20 million dollar prize pot. And then with people buying battle passes, and half of that contributes to the pool by the championships this year about the battle the the final was $50 million. And that's just for the championships. That's the fourth of the of four majors. I think the other ones had like a $10 million prize pool. And then there's like another I don't know, when it's not quarantine, there's like another I don't know 120 250 tournaments all around the world if your sponsors want to fly to him that might have anywhere from a 200 to like $600,000 prize pool. So so like these guys are making millions upon millions of dollars if you're in one of those top like you know six eight teams especially you're racking up so much money so it's a legitimate thing. So for parents out there depending on how good your kid is, it might actually be a legitimate lifestyle. It just depends. And then if you're really good and you're not sponsored you could get really big on like Twitch and don't get don't get me wrong, don't get me started. If you get big on Twitch, it's even bigger than that half the time because, I mean, you can make crazy money. But there there are legitimate careers now. And I think what's interesting about it is you have personalities that are really good on stream. And then there's pro people that do both. Sometimes streamers just get really good from streaming and then get picked up by teams. It's cool how they interconnect now, and it makes sense, right? Like, there are some Dota pros that are on top teams now that we knew about for years. They were pub stampers. But they did insane things and pubs but they weren't pros. And like, after i i played Dota for like maybe two years, like a couple years after I quit, one of them got picked up. And the first year he got picked up, they got like, third at the International or something. And I was like, good for you like and then and then basically there were two I think there was a guy named whee ha and there's another guy named miracle. I think miracle still on one of the top teams now. So like, it's it's really cool how it works like and how the streaming and like just maybe YouTuber world connects with actual programming now because you actually have a free platform to show off what you got, you know, before it used to just be word of mouth. And unless you want stuff on like, I'm old, I'm dating myself unless you want something on like game battles, or something back in the day and you had like a crazy history of all of your wins or whatever, verse top people, it didn't really matter. But now you actually have documented footage of you playing and people can study it and be like, Hey, we should call this guy maybe we should pick up or, or this girl, you know, like and that's the other cool thing. You're gonna see a lot more female streamers and female pro gamers too, which is cool. Because like for a long time, it was like, oh, like they used to say things like, oh, a lot of girls don't play. They just don't prefer like, fps and stuff like that. I'm like, Oh, that's not true. I like not now they're proven. It's like one of the best killer players and Dead by Daylight. Her name's umbra. She's a huntress. She could throw a hatchet at you across the map. Just guess where you are down here. She's, she's the coolest thing. So like, Yeah, but like, yeah, it's pretty cool. So it's cool. Just to see the diversity. It's cool to see just this entire industry like explode. And because I'm someone that loves to watch it the way you know, people love to watch the Superbowl. I'm so excited, especially on weekends when they have these tournaments. Like I have weekends. I'll spend the whole day because like, unlike the football game, they don't have a tournament like every Friday, right? So they might have it once every three weeks. So it tends to be like an all day Saturday all day Sunday thing. So for me like a lot of the day, I'm just like, chillin veg out. Watch it.

Don't I know it, man? Yeah, in the fighting game tournament. So this is an all day thing. Yeah,

for sure. I know, like your tournaments. Horrible. Yeah, like your tournaments, what I watch him like I watch all of your matches that I watch some other ones, but I might play games and like, wait for you to have your next match. You know?

What I'm waiting. And I'm like, oh, I want another one.

I've had people I have had people say that, like they don't mean it because they want the money. But like, it'll go on so long. They're like, Man, I keep winning. If I lost, I can at least go home. It's like a long ass day and your brains just on overdrive all day long. So you're just so exhausted, like I remember. I flew over I flew down to Cpl. Dallas, which was a halo three. It was the first Halo three tournament Halo came out and MLG famously had halo on the bag. It was their game. Cpl was a computer game league that decided to try to get some of the action. They had this secret sponsorship, which was like a $1 million prize pool was the biggest in history. So we flew down to Dallas and it was essentially a free for all tournament. I got top 32 which is still which is a I think that's still pro brackets paid I should have won $5,000 for that. They folded after that weekend. And none of us got paid. Yeah. And then after everyone bought their tickets, it had changed to $100,000 tournament and people are like, wait, what that you can't do that. It turned like Okay, so I'm gonna say this allegedly because I don't know and I'm not going to try to get sued or anything right. But I found out from another pro player that I used to play with at the time. He He claimed that he had heard he had heard that allegedly, the secret sponsor was spearmint gum, and matronly gaming allegedly found out and behind the scenes possibly snaked the sponsorship on purpose after people signed up. Because then once they won, they used to feel couldn't pay it out. And then they killed their own their own competition overnight. That is the rumor like I don't know if it's true, but it's kind of brilliant. Like, it's like you tried to go in on, you tried to go in on our turf. We were fine. leaving you alone with your PC gives you tried to take Halo, and like I don't know if that's true. That's just what I heard it is a rumor, but when I heard it, I couldn't help smiling because I was like, damn if that's true, I don't know. But like, yeah, it was still a great experience met a lot of people but uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that world is crazy.

World is crazy. That's something I've thought about getting into the content creation space within fighting games. We're not at the point where our prize pools are in the millions of big prize pool for a fighting game is that 1000s Like it could get up to 20 30,000 would be like the best. Yeah, for the most part, it's still pretty low. That's why when people like have said, like, I'm a sponsored player, and I've heard like, Oh, so you play professionally, it's like, this is not a profession.

No, no, no. Yeah, it's true in fighting games, unless you're getting like top two, like, every time. Yeah, it's hard to

like, you still got to travel all over the world. You got every major, you know what I'm talking about, like, if you really want to make like, yeah, a successful like way of life living the amount of money like you can get by like,

Well, yeah, cuz, yeah, I'd say with fighting game players like the price was aren't as big. So you kind of have to bank on flying to everything having a sponsor that does that for you. Also, you need to stream because you need other revenue sources coming in. And like a huge, like, if you look at like Sonic Fox, he's the biggest fighting game player in the world. But like, Yes, he does win tournaments. But he also has a YouTube channel. And he releases videos, like a few a week that I'll get like, like 100,000 200,000 views, you know, he does have a stream, which, you know, like he has multiple sources of revenue. I imagine if he was just playing for playing he probably wouldn't he probably still be living paycheck to paycheck, you know, but with everything. I'm very sure he's doing great. But like, yeah, you kind of diversify. Right with your.

That's exactly right. So he's like the top 1% of people who can 100% Yeah, for sure. Both of the finding of me. Yeah, it all comes down to being able to create content, there are so many incredible players who, like, unlike my position, like I am, I'm very career focused. And this is something that I love doing on the side, there are players Yeah, really want to like, do this for a living like, this is what they want to do. They want to travel, they want to play fighting games. And that's, that's really what they want. But they don't have any social media presence. They don't strain. They don't do any of that those things. And I'm like, this is a genre that, you know, there are some big things coming very short, well, not very shortly, but that we're we got a little more information about just a couple days ago, that will increase the prize pots and kind of the community. growth for fighting games. I'll kind of get into that in a second to talk about riot Riot Games. Yeah, project. Oh, yeah. A lot into it. But in the meantime, right now, like if you want, if you want to be serious, and you want to do this competitively, and you want that to be your quote nine to five, even though you'll be paying more than nine to five,

for Yeah, you have to, you have

to be able to create some sort of following on social media and you need to be able to monetize it. Yeah, exactly. Simple as that. I've, that's something I've been talking about doing for six weeks, eight weeks. And it's just something where, clearly, it's not a priority for me, because I haven't started it. But I was

even saying like you want I can, I can try to make you some logos and stuff if you want to let me know. Like,

yeah, and I'll probably take you up on that. It's really one of those things where I was having a conversation with somebody and we're talking about life currencies, and I'll tell you what, and he was saying, You know what, my currency right now, the most important currency to me is my stress. So he's like, all the decisions I make I weigh how much stress this is gonna cause me in my life. Yep. And I was like, that's awesome. My biggest currency right now is time, like, yeah, decisions I make, how much of my time is this going to take? And will I enjoy doing it?

Mine is an extra of the two, basically, as what I'd say. And it's one of those

things where I think, I'm not sure. What I need to do is I need to give it a shot. I'm just not sure if I'd enjoy. You know what I mean? And I know I'd have to give it a lot of time. And that just you haven't started yet.

Did you have fun recently at the big one that you flew to? Because I know you got top eight? Like what's that?

Fo Yeah, that was blessed. I don't mean playing fighting games. I mean, content creation and streaming. Oh, gotcha. Okay, got it. Got it. Buddy games. I love fighting games. I'm sure I'll always play fighting games in some capacity. But yeah, I'm going to LA was great. There's another opportunity that I'm budgeting for. That the team is helping out pretty significantly with in Chicago, at the end of Oh, nice. Very cool, which I'm doing my best to figure out how to go to. But yeah, being able to travel to different cities, and have fun doing something you love around a whole lot of other people who love doing the same thing that you love. Yeah, it's great. Yeah,

it's 100% there's actually no feeling like it. Like, I guess that's not true. The closest thing would be like if you go to a basketball game or something, but I guess the difference that that's like an added level is it's not like you're watching these star players on the thing. It's like the star players come and sit with you. They're one of you, and they're going up there and you know what I mean? It's like the crowd is everyone there in the crowd is participating in the tournament. It's not just you know what I mean? Like, the players are the crowd. You know?

Men really love this stuff. A major feels like a combination of like a cookout, the Super Bowl, and like, a pickup football game. You know what I mean? Like, it's all of those things. I'm assuming you love like, what's going on there. If you don't like video games, it'll just feel like noise.

And you'll be like, I don't know what's happening. Everyone's excited and I don't know

Tell me my neutrals off? I don't know.

I keep saying, I'm a sick no scope or what's it no scope? What am I doing is that the spinning thing like?

I've always said that I can't speak for other gaming communities. But I imagine it's the same for all communities. But within fighting games, you know, I understand video games can be a very solitary hobby, you know, it's very, it can be very much I do this by myself, and I enjoy it. Maybe I talk to people online. And because of that, the communities probably get a stereotypical rap of being antisocial and weird. And all of these things they do, which is annoying, you know, but when you I have made so many friends who are so well off, and just love this hobby, you know, what I mean, and still have goals and aspirations and all of these things. It's just everyday people like having a great time. You know what I mean? It's, it's a shame that people still feel that way when they Yeah.

And they still have that, like, they just assume that a programmer is like some, you know, heavyset, you know, young person, it's like, dude, half the people are in their 20s, somewhere in the 30s. Now, most of them go to the gym everyday, most of like, a majority of the programs are actually in good shape, because they care about keeping their brain, you know, in great shape, so that they can play you know, like, a lot of them eat healthy, like, like, even when we fluted tournaments and stuff, like everyone was eating like granola bars and fruit and oatmeal and stuff those days, because they wanted to have clear heads, you know, like taking fish oil pills, like all those things are normal, like, you know, yeah, I mean, I'm not gonna go into the fact that Adderall is very widely used in most competitive games, but you know, that that's something you can't really get away from, unfortunately. So but it is what it is. But um,

but yeah, like mainlining coffee and tea. Yeah, I

do coffee for sure. Yeah. Cuz I guess for me, like when it came to competitive like, like I said, I was in the clan with Alien VS Predator. And then, when I finally started to play Starcraft, I just knew about clans. I didn't know anything about competitive gaming. But I got into StarCraft, and I got really good at Starcraft and expansion, Broodwar. But I got good. But then I got into this kind of Starcraft had this map editor where you could make you interesting things. And there was a version called Zero cutter, or fastest map possible, which is essentially it's the same game. But they kind of cheated the map and found a way to stack minerals on top of each other and put them right next to the base. So what it essentially did is it's still the game, but you're getting minerals faster. So suddenly, you're building speed and your micro skills are like at four times the speed because like before in the game might take 2025 minutes, or 21 minutes or something to max out your units, you couldn't have more than 200 a really good fastest map possible player me and friends can max out in seven minutes and 10 seconds, like so suddenly, it creates a much faster paced game. It's like the same game, but it's much faster paced, but because all of your minerals aren't spread out like they're on a regular map. It also makes your base very vulnerable to attacks on your workers that gather currency, because if you do any AOE attacks, you blow them all up. And next thing you know, you're out of money and you lose, right. So, but I got into that. And it's kinda interesting how this works, because I just fell into a group of friends. I just met them and they were really nice and just let me play with them. I added all of them and then they weren't a clan, they just hang out in this channel called Evan law. And the guy I played with his name was Ryan underscore Tirith. Oh my god and then crazy dash Goku. And then there were the was showdown Pro. And then Van Helsing were like the ones that I played with the most. And we were just a group of friends. But we had gotten so good originally Ryan and Goku and showed it but then I started joining in in fights too. They got so good that clans used to have bots that would have the stats of their ranks against all the other clans. You know, and that was really fun. You want it to be you want it to be up on all the clans. That meant you were the best right? Slayer was one of the best. But what's funny is that the channel Evan Lowe was on those Bots as if we were a clan, we were just a group of friends. But we were so good that like you know, it was really cool. So like that, that started the whole like having a little bit of an ego and like liking winning like I liked. Like I looked forward to two V twos and stuff with like an actual clan and keeping stats and you know, I like that stuff. Um, and then the first thing and then the crazy thing is the exact same thing happened with Halo two because and StarCraft I met these guys that were insanely good. And they were just really nice. And they took me under their wing, right? They just taught me everything they knew. And I got better like way faster. And Halo two, like Halo one I beat all my friends but let's be fair, my friends are they don't play Halo a lot, right? And then Halo two, I was decent. But I went my mom surprised me because we didn't have a lot of money. We always had dial up so we can't afford cable internet which you needed to play Halo two. So when my mom got remarried and we got a house and everything Christmas present for me, which was like because we didn't really get expensive gifts like I didn't have anything so this was a huge deal. I got an Xbox with Halo two and she said by the way I got Comcast Internet so I was like oh my god she was gonna get Comcast anyway for the house. So she was like I got you an Xbox with Halo. So you can now play that with people. Yeah, and it was the first and the crazy thing was the irony was I played a lot of Halo two I loved it. But I never got to play Halo one because you could play on Xbox can But if you had dial up, it was like not happening. Right, right. So I signed up for Xbox connect, because I wanted to play Halo one. And I couldn't find anybody. But I was in this room with this guy. And he was like, oh, we can't find anybody. Hey, do you want to go play some Halo two? And I said, Okay, sure. He added me. His name on his gamertag was, it was luck. didn't think anything? I don't know anything. He, he was like, Oh, you're pretty good. And I was like, Are you joking with me? Because he's picking up the sniper in the whole team's dead. I've never seen anything like that. Yeah, he also then invited me to some customs over the next month. And I felt like I was just awful. And you started with a battle rifle. And there was no radar and all this stuff, you know, and I always hated radar. So I was fine with that. But I had no idea what I was doing. Like, I just would grab flags and grab balls and things like that. I know that that can be a clip. Anyway, yeah. But yeah, like, like, grab all those things. And I thought I was just getting wrecked. And then by the end of the month, I noticed when I wouldn't play with them, though, when I wanted to custom. Suddenly, I was destroying people. So I was getting better. It just didn't feel like it. Like with them. But at the end of the month, I wasn't dying all the time. I can at least hold my own a little bit, you know? Yeah. And then the craziest thing happened was there was a website back in the day. For those of you who played Halo, you'll know this. It was called Halo. What was it? Halo formed calm or Halo two forum calm. It was the main Halo hub websites, everyone posted montages. gameplays there was a front page thing. So saying, the first ranked team, I believe it was 3d at the time, they were formerly STK verse, the fourth ranked team exit wounds. And when I watched the gameplay, I was like, oh, there's pro Halo players. That's cool. The POV I was watching was it was Lux. And I remember going, his name's Tyler. I was like, Tyler, you're a halo player. And I remember a professional Halo fan who,

if I'm correct, he said something like, Yeah, you didn't know that. And I was like, they're a pro Halo played. And they were really nice. And the cool thing was that one of the MLG events because those were alive, you know, they had them all around the country. MLG did this thing where they really took the risk. And they had a halo circuit, you know? Yeah. And there was one in oh, five, it was in Seattle. And it was like, and then we're coming because they're one of the top 14. So I had my mom, she took me and dropped me off just so I could meet them and hang out. And then I met like other people. And it was so weird seeing it no five because everyone had all these CRTs flat people brought their own Xbox. It was so different than even just a year later, when they had bigger sponsorships. It was it's so funny. Like talking about grassroots man. That's great. But I remember meeting them I met a guy named ino many potrai, who was still one of my friends to this day, Jeff, but he was a really good Halo player. Flank stir came on the scene back then. I think IAGS just showed up which became for those of you that play Halo, they became carbon later. And if I remember correctly, Gandhi was there, Shockwave. And those of you who know strong side, he's a huge name now. I believe that was one of his first tournaments with a protein because a lot of people were saying there's this new guy named strong said everyone's watching his POV watch him. Like he just never dies. And he invented what they called strong siding where you I don't know if he invented it, but he got famous for it, because he was the best at it, where you, you look at the ground and put your back to them so that you're hiding your head. So it's hard to get that last headshot. And he like get away all the time. And it was the most annoying thing. Yeah, but it was it was it was one of the coolest experience of my life. I didn't even play just meeting them. Talking Halo. Seeing like watching the POV is of people play on this level. Like I got like a, like I got this like just fire that I never had before it was it was the I'd never been more excited in my life. And you know, till this day, I'm 35. And even though I'm not competing, when I decide I want to get good at something I'm really good into, I get that same feeling. And it actually, I feel like it actually trumps everything in my life when I love a game to the point where I have to actually maintain my like, I'll always work and pay bills, but I have to like maintain the other stuff I'm supposed to do like my plans. You know, it's like, yeah, no, you need to make time for this. And this because like even right now I'm so obsessed with Halo infinite. It's my favorite Halo since Halo two. All I want to do is play like legitimately like, and I haven't felt that way since Halo two cuz I liked Halo three, but not as much as Halo two or one. And then Halo five I thought was good but again didn't like as much as two or one. This one is everything I wanted, I guess Halo three to be for me. So it was made in modern time so and I'll get into that in a bit because Infinite Jest came out but yeah, but yeah, like it's uh yeah, and then with fighting games. I played them a lot as a kid but I never played them competitively like I didn't know what I was doing. I was genuinely just button mashing you know, Mortal Kombat had cool fatalities and blood you know? And then so calibers yeah and so caliber the first I got really into so caliber because I had a Dreamcast and there was a I think the first or second character on Mach two thing was Hoying he was like my boy like and then and then No, just playing it was playing HW Yeah, playing I played playing and then Collete and then, but the first time I had gotten into a game competitively was MK nine. And I think I I was really liking the game, but I met you like you were the one that I met. And it was the first time you were talking about stuff and it reminded me of when I started learning stuff in Halo And then StarCraft like, I was like, oh, there's all this tech I don't know. And I think that's when it clicked for me that every genre of game has tech. It just comes down to if you get into it or not. And then I did it with MK nine and then I think I went to Pacific Northwest majors my first tournament I tied for ninth. But then after that all the local tournaments I went to, I think all of them but one I think I got first or second, like the ones that I showed up to I got first or second, I played a lot. I matched up a lot against like hangnail at the time. And Kevin seven where a lot of the ones I matched up against shrinky dink came down for a few of them, which was awesome. And then one of the ones I got like six, the guy who won the tournament is the guy who lost too, and I was actually beating him. But I was learning a new character named Molly Molina for me was a new character because I made Lukang. And because of the way I used my fingers, I kept accidentally pausing to the combo. So I paused and then I disqualify myself because I did it a second time. And I was ahead I was winning. But it was so community like you go, you go, you guys.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai