NZXT PODCAST - #030 - Jin

Episode Date: February 20, 2020

This week on the podcast, Denis and Ivan are joined by NZXT’s Creative Director: Jin Kim. Jin and the crew discuss Mario Kart, finding rats in your freezer, and how to go bald gracefully. Follow Jin wherever you find NZXT. Listen live to the NZXT 💜 CLUB CAST on our Discord server at discord.gg/nzxt every Thursday at 10AM PT! Thanks to Lesser Honk#7132 for the artwork!

and welcome to episode 30 of the NZXT Clubcast, the official podcast of the NZXT community. This podcast is recorded live every Thursday from 10 at 10 AM Pacific Standard Time on the official NXC Discord server and is available to stream wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. My name is Dennis. As always, we have Ivan. Happy Friday, Jr., gamers.

Hi. Hello. It is almost Friday, isn't it? It's Friday, Jr. I feel like this week went by really quick. It did. It's probably because of the... It's a...

was a long weekend. That joke was a little bit of a thinker. I was like, Friday. Friday, oh, okay, Ivan's doing what Ivan does. Or Wednesday, senior. Yeah. Wednesday, senior.

Or Wednesday, too, right? Wednesday, V2. Wouldn't it be Saturday senior? Because it'd be like. Who's talking right now? I don't know. I was going to get to that, but thanks for ruining it. Today's special guest is N60's creative director,

Jin Kim. Hi, Jim. How you doing? Doing good. I think you just call me Jim. It's gin. Gin. Gin.

I said gin. Gin. Jim. My parents. weren't alcoholics it's just a typical Korean name actually at my school there were 27 different gins 26 of them were girls and I was the only guy just FYI 27 jinns yeah really well at art center because it's a lot of Koreans there but can you can you explain the the alcoholic part of the gin Kim is gin rummy right I got a lot of jokes I didn't like that been on gin and juice and all

that I did make that connection use your imagination then I like that I like that I like that How are you guys doing today? How are we feeling? Pretty good. Doing great. Excited? Yeah, I'm always excited. Worried.

I'm always happy to be here. We all hawked up on delicious tea. What are you drinking, gin? I got some green tea. Green tea. I got Earl Grey. Be gray boys today. Thank you for coming in early today, Jen.

I know you, this is a little bit early for you. Way to put me on blast, man. Well, it's not a bad thing, but you actually work really, you know, long, late hours, you know, because you support the entire company, which we'll get into as you go into the podcast, but, you know, usually coming here, I don't know, maybe like around 10-ish, and then you just park your car in the middle of the parking lot, blocking, blocking everyone's exit. Thank you for saying 10.

That's very generous of you. You know, I actually almost hit Johnny the other day. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Because we have this habit of closing one half of the gate. to go into the office. So I was living for lunch. And he just starts rolling through into the parking lot.

And I had to slam on my brakes to not like head on hit the CEO of the company. Yeah. Imagine what happened. It's like who would step up? Yeah, you probably wouldn't be here right now. Yeah. Yeah.

So you killed the CEO. We're going to ask you to leave. Have fun at Corset. So, Jen, what do you do here at NZXT? That's pretty. good question very very broad yeah there's a lot of things that we take care of here as far as me and my team goes a lot of product launches we oversee things that go through when product gets ready to ship out we go through and do packaging to talk to the to the mic itself oh yeah okay

I'm new at this so no worse yeah so we work on product launches and packaging manuals from web to marketing assets social assets poochie art poochie art a lot of illustrators videos, the teasers that go out, just pretty much anything that has any type of art related things in here, even down to things that we post up on the TVs for like the CounterStrike tournament that we're going to have here as far as the staff goes. I saw you painting a conference room yesterday. Oh yeah, the logo. That was a, that was testing. Right now we want to try to liven up the space a bit. So we're going to be putting, we want to paint different types of poochies up on our walls, but we had to test to see if it was doable. So went ahead and painted Danzig C logo on,

one of the conference rooms. Not just one of the conference rooms. The foster community one. Yeah. Yesterday, uh, Dennis, myself and Amanda had a meeting in there and then Jin walks in and he goes, don't mind me. I'm just going to be painting. And then the entire time he's painting, he's talking. He's like, man, this looks good. It did look good. It does. It's like perfectly straight. It's really hard to ignore somebody when they're like, man, I'm really good at what I do. Um, so Jen, Jen, I know that you are in charge of a lot of things. Like, it's not, it's not, just that, is it just like the art or the assets,

like even like things with the pop-up, like you were, you had a really heavy hand in. Don't remind Jin about that. That's where I lost all my hair. Yeah, so for those who don't know, Jin is actually part of the BGC,

bald guy club, you know, it's a very exclusive club only for the top of the top tier members. Just him and Dom. Yeah. The Dom has hair, right? No,

we have Justin too, who shaves his head. Dom just always wears a hat. I don't know if he has hair or not. Oh, he does he? I have no idea. I don't think I've seen. him without a hat in like the longest time.

I've never seen Dom without a hat. I'm trying to think now. I've ever seen him without a head on. Any staffers listening? Can someone pop into the CS room and see if Dom is wearing a hat? Yeah, yeah, they saw him this morning. Yeah, he's hiding something.

He was talking to the, he was talking to us about the CSGO tournament that we have going on tomorrow, which we were informed that we're swapping to Dust 1 and not Dust 2. Can we talk about that for a minute? That's very disappointing. Yeah, what's up with that?

This is pretty much calling out to Ed. We need to change that back. I think we should take a little bit of a vote there. Dust 2 is like the map, right? That's Sony map. I mean, there are other maps in the rotation, but I mean, if we're going to do a one-time tournament for the company, we do Dust 2.

We get bored, then you swap to like all the funky maps like Azteg and Trade and stuff like that. I heard Jin was practicing CSGO yesterday, and he was just getting a P90 and rushing people. All week, man. all week. So they call it the pro 90. Just spray and pray. How long have you been at N60, Jen?

So actually, this is going to be two years and a week. I celebrated my two years like a week ago. Congratulations. What didn't we do like a thing for you then? You guys should have. I was a little disappointed. Did you get on that? Yeah.

I actually have a funny story about that about me getting hired here. I was actually at another agency at the time, wasn't really looking. And then a recruiter reached out to me and said, Hey, there's this company with your background in PC hardware, you know, would you be interested? So I came, interviewed and I interviewed with Ivan. I remember they asked me like, oh, why do you want to work here? And at the time, I loved the job that I had. And I was like, I really don't.

But, you know, hired. All right. I was like, I just, man, we're looking for it. I wanted to check it out and see what it was. And I talked to Johnny and the fundamentals that he believed and what a brand is. It was very on point. And things that you normally have to fight for on the creative side, he had to. believed so right then there I made the decision I was like I want to work here and then I got no

response and then three months went by and I got no response and I reached out to the recruiter and they said you know what if they go silent like that it's probably a good sign that you didn't get the job and in the beginning like it wasn't something that I really wanted but then after all of the meetings by the way it was like a five-hour meeting in a tiny conference room and they wouldn't let me leave and they didn't give me any water or any of that. Wow. It was, I think it was worth it because I got to really kind of talk about what I believed in my values and my principles.

But yeah, I got a no as the answer. Oh, really? Yeah. And then I looked on the website and you guys were still hiring for that position. So I reached out to John and I was like, hey, can we, can we chat? I just want to see, you know, where you thought that I fell short. And long story short, too late. But he said that my design style didn't fit the NZXE aesthetic.

But it's because I worked mainly on X-FX at the time, and that's NVIDIA-AMD board partner, now just AMD. But their style is very, like, rugged, edgy, kind of like brushed aluminum, metal, raw. And ZXT's aesthetic is very clean, right, minimal. And so I told him, hey, just let me do some spot work for you. And he gave me a project, knocked it out in six hours, sent it over, and within the next day he called me and said, all right, let's bring you on. So nice. Yeah. Wow.

I still saved your resume from your interview. Yeah. So one of the nicest looking resumes I've ever seen in my life. Do you have it now? It's in my desk. Yeah. I saved it. You should bring it and show it.

It'd be a little interesting to see it. I'll take a picture of it. Yeah, even the paper it was on. I was like, wow, this is a nice resume. So like when you were saying that you kind of like the way that we handled creative things here, like what does that mean? Well, things like on packaging, one of the things that a lot of people want to do is they just want to plaster the front with everything, right?

Right. Oh, check this out. It has this. It has this feature. It has this. Like 19 different things. But if you try to sell so many things to everybody, no one remembers anything.

If I told you 19 things, you probably wouldn't be able to recite any back to me. But if I told you one or two things, you would be able to do both, right? Yeah. So it's kind of like fundamentally thinking about what are the most important features. What are the things that you want to say?

Even with the design being clean, the front is just our product, right? Right. our design language is so strong and so recognizable that's all you need in the front, right? And then on the back limiting it down to three features versus, you know, let's put everything in the kitchen sink on there. Yeah. And let the consumer try to read this.

And a whole spec sheet with like, you know, DB and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. I get that. Yeah. It's definitely something that like, I think it's funny because like the last N60 product I purchased before I was here was my H440. And like just the way we change our packaging from then until now is just insane. it's it's nuts and it's like uh it's definitely moved in a direction where like

everything we do has a purpose right from the packaging to even like the way we paint the walls to you know how we do like social media assets or or anything has like a very similar design language but i feel like it's always been going that direction it's just we've been very slow careful yeah i can't take credit for any of that because it's definitely my team here that's been most of them been here been here longer than me they've already set a foundation for this things. It's also how everyone here thinks and breathes. Everything has to be done with intent. And it's, and that's just how it goes. We don't do it until it's right, right? Yeah, pretty much. What's the last project you worked on here? The last project I worked on here, I can't talk about.

What's the last public project that you worked on here? It would be the crack in X and Z. Okay. I think that was a pretty interesting product. And one of the questions I know that you'll ask, because you ask everyone else is like, what is your favorite product? And I think right now it's a Crack and Z. Really? A customizable aspect of it. I think it's so unique and the quality is amazing. And yeah, I think that's probably going to be my top for a while.

Really? Yeah. Interesting. And that's taking into consideration stuff that we have in the pipeline. Okay. Okay. I feel that. What's yours, Ivan?

Right now, current favorite products. Yeah. Honestly, I really love them to Z. Yeah, I mean, it's super sick. Every morning I come in, I turn my PC. I just love looking at the little Sonic the Hedgehog right on my computer. Probably the Z, I would say, for sure.

Can't go wrong with it. Yeah, I think I saw today on Reddit, someone posted like a Matrix thing. Yeah, it was like all green. And then the center of the Cracken Z was like the Matrix, like, you know, whatever, lines of code going in. He made a big opportunity to kind of like zoom in and like have it start the movie or something.

But it was really cool. There's a lot of really fun things we can do with that thing. And like I have like so many ideas, like what, like I want to, do with it but we have so many other stuff going on that we have to like start talking about that it's you know there's only so much room for so many ideas yeah i love things that allow people to be creative and i think this is definitely one of those because even things especially in the circle you can do uh the intro for double seven yeah right where people go and put in where he turns and shoots right

into the barrel right i've been showing me the matrix one right now that's that's that's very creative as well blame nda. png pretty much yeah Imagine working at a company can't talk about stuff. So let's just talk about the Crack and Z and what you had to kind of do to kind of get that out the door. Say from like, where does the work start for you on something like Crack and Z? Just products in general, probably from the very beginning. We work with the product teams as it goes into from the concept phase. They talk about what products they want to launch.

what are the details behind it. Right. And the product team here takes care of all of that. And at the very end, they're like, all right, here's kind of what we want to do as far as the announcement date. And then we create a schedule around that. It pretty much ties into getting packaging done, manuals done,

getting renders, photos, video. A lot of work. Yeah, there's a lot of little pieces from social assets and everything. And definitely, again, a big shout out to my team, because they're able to handle all of that and kind of take it from the ground up. If they're listening, Can you please check the creative community Slack chat? I pinged you guys this morning.

Waiting for an update. Who's on that team, by the way? Give them a shout out. I don't remember their names. We got two teams. I have my Taiwan team and I have my LA office team. In my Taiwan team, I have Esther, Alba and Allison. So Esther manages Allison and Alba, our graphic designers.

We have a senior and a junior. and then she's pretty much the design manager over there. And then on our LA team, we have right now our copywriter. We have Irene, our senior graphic designer. And then we have Helen, who's our graphic designer. And I think you've had all three of them on here already as well. We haven't had Helen. Okay.

We're trying to chase something at Helen. She's our white whale right now. Okay. Yeah. She says she's worried about coming out here because she'll see bad words. Yeah. I would doubt that. So we probably have to get like a cough button when we got around here.

Or do one that just has a disclaimer that there's no way that we can avoid profanity in this one. Yeah. So being here two years, you're definitely here before like the huge explosion of like employees. Because like even like when I started, you know, we were to have a lot of people, but I feel like we've already hired on like so many more. Can you just go a little bit into like how you feel the company has changed and like just your feelings about that? that. Well, just like really general question. Well, we definitely, the biggest thing we did was the office move. Yeah. The last office was pretty small compared to what it is now here. And then parking got a lot better. We had literally one toilet for 36 guys. I wish if you're listening, that's not true. And then, I'm pretty sure it was actually like statement. I was right for number of people. That was an exaggeration. Okay.

Okay. It was two toilets. It was two toilets. but still, you know, it was... That's enough. We had one toilet per 50 people. If that's the rule, I don't know. I don't think that's less than what I said. I won't look this up real quick, but keep going. Yeah, and I think definitely watching build grow NZXD build

from what it was to what it is now and the operations that we were able to do. Thank you for not calling it BLD, by the way. Yeah, appreciate that. It's NXD built, right? Yeah, it's BLD. It's not BLD. I remember one time we were at dinner and, And they were all chanting, B-L-D, B-L-D.

And Johnny goes, hey, guys, it's build. Build, build, build. No one chants, C-A-M, C-A-M, C-A-M. No one chance cam either. Oh, Jeff does. So real quick, two toilets for 16 to 35 employees, three toilets for 36 to 55, four toilets for 46 to 80,

five for 81 to 110, six for 111 to 150, and one additional toilet for every 40 employees over 150. Hey, so we met the minimum, but it wasn't enough, especially during lunchtime. Lunchtime was high traffic, man. Yeah, that's like the big rush. I don't go at all during lunch. I wait a couple hours after that because, if not, I'll be stuck there all day.

Yeah, it's pretty good talk. Welcome to Toilet Talk. Today we're going to talk about the minimum requirements in Australia for toilets. They can push the other way, by the way. They do? Yeah. Yeah, they spend, they've been counterclockwise. Yeah, that was a Simpsons episode, right?

Is that a, that's one where they have to go to Australia and then like, bark gets the boot, right? Yeah, because he makes a, he makes a collect call to one of the kids ask about that. And he pulls on his pants and he says, don't tread on me. Good episode. Didn't they also, like, introduce, like, frogs or something and, like, ruin the local ecology? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Remember that being part of the episode? Jen, could you name a situation where you messed up and how you fixed it? Messed up. I'd say maybe agreeing to come on this podcast. Uh-huh. Go on. Fixing it. Just take care of it, right?

No. Continue. I think this is probably one of the hardest questions, especially during interviews. Oh, yeah. Like when you have a job interview and people ask this. It's basically what this is. Yeah. I would say.

She isn't a podcast. Johnny's listening in the other room and is evaluating. So my two-year review is. Based on this. Yeah, pretty much. Okay, got it. I would say I mess up all the time, and I always look for ways to scramble to fix it and then learn from it.

So there's no real example that I can think of. I can think of plenty. All right, give me one. I guess the most recent one I could think of is the poochie calendar with the mess up dates. And not really you messing up, but, you know. Okay, okay. Creative team messed up, but it's not like, pointing the blame at you.

It's because we worked on it together. But after we messed up, I remember you came up to me and you're like, hey, we got to double check these again, like before they go out, you know. So yeah, like every time you do mess up, I have noticed that you'll come to me and you'll just tell me, hey, you know, we did this wrong this time. Going forward, you know, let's make sure it doesn't happen again. And I think we try, but we like you said, we always mess up. We keep messing up, but it's never going to be perfect.

I don't think, right? Yeah, that's, that's just basics of life. right like you it's one of the core values right except accountability yeah and then try to figure out what are things that you can put in place so that those things don't happen again if the same mistakes happen over and over again then you know something's got to change right right yeah that's probably going to be you me why you're looking at me when you say that I mean you know I'm thinking of it for a while he's eyeing your job I don't know I honestly don't know if I want Ivan's job I see him working on too many slides and too many presentations for me to want to do that someone has to do

I know. That's why he brought me in. So you can have more time on doing that. Yeah, because like it's always interesting to hear about like what people do wrong here. Like I remember when we had Abbaon, he told us like he like double ship like an order to some, some, I think it was like a cyber power or something like that where they got like double like the crackens or something. And like he had to coordinate the trucks and everything to get him shipped back. And who else was it? close we have on who we talked about like a time they messed up it's a question they really should ask more but I think it's always interesting because like people they just see like the end product right oh we released you know the crack and z but they don't know what we like what it took to get to that point right and like the steps that we that we took the ways we messed up how we fixed them you know okay so I think I got a better idea of how to answer this question can't answer it based on my latest story because again that's just under NDA but

But when it came to the audio shoot, I know I shared this story before, but when we were getting ready to shoot everything, we have a team out in Seattle that we fly out to with all our stuff. And this is where all the teaser videos are pretty much shot. Yeah. And when we were going, we forgot to pack one of the headsets, right? Kind of important. Yeah. So we have four flavors, right? We have the two open and two black, or two open and too close for the white and black.

Yeah. And we forgot to pack one of the. open once and it was because while everything was being packed, we had somebody here who decided, oh, I need a sample and they took it from there without telling us, right? Name them. Who is it? No names all altogether, but, you know, so ultimately it really wasn't anybody's fault. It's just because so many things were in motion.

And then getting ready to do the shoot. And while we're on the shoot, Irene was on the shoot for me at this time. And she messaged goes, hey, we're missing one of the headsets. I'm thinking, okay, there's no way we can find a solution for this, right? Because sometimes you can do things in post where, you know, maybe take the white one and flip some color on that, maybe take the closed, open one and make it close. But it just, there's no way around it. So we're scrambling, scrambling, scrambling, trying to figure out what we can do.

It's too late to ship one out. So the only thing we can do is we can fly somebody out, right? So we ran into Bill's office and I looked at Harry and I said, hey, man, I need some help. Is there any, anyone that you can help send out? And at that moment, Vivian, you know, you guys know, mommy. Yep. She stands up and goes, hey, where am I going? Right.

And I tell the story the same way. Like, we could have been flying her out to Australia or to, like, New Zealand or Taiwan. It's, don't matter. She just stood up, started packing her bag. Let's go, right? At that moment, everyone jumped in. We're booking flights, booking Uber, booking, finding out how we can get her there. So she literally jumped on a flight within 45 minutes at LAX, flew all the way to Seattle, got off, got

picked up by one of our guys, drove all the way to the studio where the shoot was happening, drove back, got back on the plane, and then went home. Her only demand was that the driving being a Subaru. Should we do some drift real quick before? I heard that's that you want to go Seattle just because it's land of Subaru's. Is really? Yeah. There's more Subaru's up there than anywhere, man.

I did not know that. Is that the sales pitch when you go into the car? No, it's just like in Seattle, it's just like, you know, it rains a lot. And there's like a lot of like outdoor activity. So you need the all-wheel drive. Yeah, there's a lot of superiors up there. Okay. Yeah, but I think definitely in situations where you mess up, it's a test for yourself, right?

Right. It's like, how do you problem solving? I think that's one of the main things that I look for when I'm actually looking for people to be on my team. It's like, how do you think, right? Again, why Crackenzie is one of my favorite products because it allows you to be creative. Like, I like to be surprised by people. Like when they put something up, I like to be like, oh, I would have never thought of that. And it's amazing, right?

In the same way of problem solving, if there is a situation in front of, front of you, how are you going to face that obstacle and what will you do? And I think that really requires a lot of creativity as well. Agreed. Okay. It's about problems, man. I mean, yeah, that's that's literally what like Ivan told me like when he was hiring me and he's like, I need someone to solve problems for me. Yeah, I don't care like where you worked or where you went to school. It's like, can you solve a problem for me? I mean, you should, but, you know, but obviously that stuff matters. That stuff matters for a certain extent. Yeah. You mean, you can have like, uh, you know like the best education in the world and worked at the best companies in the world

and not know how to solve a problem and you're going to be useless to me that's true i think that's why they say like at google they ask some random questions and interviews uh one of the things was like if you were one inch tall and inside a blender how would you get out you love these random questions right because it allows you to be creative right how do you solve that problem you know I run really fast around the edge. I turn the Sonic the Hedgehog. Yeah, then I spin myself out. There we go.

That's how I would get out of a blender if I was one inch tall. Ivan, how would you do it? I would hop on the blade, wait for someone to turn it on, and then hope that the blade shoots me up. Yeah, that's actually one of the correct answers. Well, there's no correct answer. I was going to say, I'm like, how could you test that theory? Let's just build a blender.

Let's just build a blender. You should make it at ZXT blender. That'd be cool. We can throw competitor products in there. That reminds me of that YouTube, will it blend? Yeah, they're still around. They still do videos. It's like the perfect content.

It's like recurring. You can always throw something new in there. New stuff's always coming out. You know, it's like, oh, yeezies. And we know, well, they blend or whatever. Something new comes out. TikTok does it blend or something like that? Yeah.

What would you guys blend? Poochie. I think probably a cracking, right? Because you got that water in there, right? Oh, yeah. But the cooling fluid and... That's interesting. Yeah.

What is it? Like polypropylene glycol or something. Don't tell that secret. It's actually Mountain Dew in there. NZXT. Oh. So it's in there. Just a quick disclaimer.

Please don't open up your crackings and drink the liquid in there. It's not NZXT. Unless. Okay, so since you already named your favorite, what's your least favorite NXC product? Be honest. And why is it the podcast? It's not technically a product, right?

Because you can't sell it. No one would buy it too, so. That's true. I would say probably H-400 was probably my least favorite. Really? Yeah. That's too late for that audio check. I already answered it.

But I think of H-400 because, it's like it's not quite mini ITX and if you're going to go with the micro ATX you might as well go with just mid-tower nowadays because they're so compact yeah like if you look at the size difference between the H-400 and the 510s we have now it's not that much yeah no they're really not right really not so if you're going to go that route

and you really want for some reason you want your micro ATX board just put that in the 510 right and yeah it's the most underrated form factor in my opinion. Yeah, which is funny because the last two PCs I built were in the 400, but I think that's probably why I was putting it on my desk.

It's like, just something doesn't feel right about it. So now I have a 200 now. Yeah, I haven't upgraded to 210, but I have a 200 now. Most people get an ATX case and then they'll have like just unused expansion slots. Yep. And then they'll get a mini ITX case

and then they'll complain that they don't have enough expansion slots. But the micro ATX form factor that has like the perfect amount of expansion slots for people that basically just want to play video games you know not necessarily like be a content creator or whatever and add like a bunch of stuff but um I think the market is super small it's like a lot smaller than mini ITX mm-hmm so yeah rip rip the 400 I've always been really bad when it comes like mini micro ITX ATX it's just like I don't know why I've never learned it I just I just go with the standard right so like if I if I

If I didn't really know anything, I would just would have gone for like a 510, a regular board, like whatever really cards the hot thing and whatever chips the hot thing. Like I don't like messing with stuff. I'm too lazy. Like I know Ryzen's super hot right now, but I've had multiple friends who made Risen builds or put together Risen builds and they're always tweaking something in their bios or like their Risenmaster doesn't report correct temperatures compared to other programs. It's like, it sounds like such a mess.

I can't do it, man. I'm basic. Yes, you are. I'm a basic bro here. I don't like to try. Okay. If we could venture into any other product that's not computer hardware, you want to see NCC take its design crack at it.

What would it be? Why is it a switch? Really quick. I just noticed you have a chicken on the fire. Oh, yeah. I put that there just there right there. When PSUG came out and saw it, he just started cracking up. He was like, why is that up there?

I'm like, I forgot why we put it up there, but it's. Well, because I was clean on my, I cleaned out. all the, not junk, all the gifts I had at my desk, which is all the stuff back here. Yeah, yeah. And I wanted to put it in here, and that was just one of the things that, I forgot who gave it to me.

But I just put it up there so I can stare at Dennis. I'm taking a picture over right now. I'm going to upload it so you guys can see what I'm looking at because that I had, it was a lot of effort to not crack up just now too. Feel free to laugh. I mean, what is that?

You're loud. You know, I mean, humor is a lot in the office. It makes a really loud noise, too. Yeah, No, just super loud. I'm going to grab it.

I don't want to knock it off. Also, quick reminder for those who are listening on SoundCloud and Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts and Google Podcasts. And I'm always forgetting one. What's the other one? Google and Spotify. I always forget Spotify. We're on Google, Apple, Spotify and SoundCloud. SoundCloud.

We do respond to chat every now and then. We do post pictures and refer to things in our Discord server. So if you want to join on live, Discord.g.g. SvG.mZ. Quick plug for that. Yeah, so what would it be? I forgot the question.

Rubber chickens? You won't see NXC make rubber chickens? Oh, okay. Products. What product if we weren't making things for PC gamers? Yeah. And why is it Nerf guns?

Ooh. Jin has the ultimate collection of Nerf weaponry. He has an armory of Nerf in his creative office. And then HR had a talk with us so we actually removed a bunch of them. Oh, really? Yeah.

You literally had like 50 guns, man. Are you allowed to talk about that? 50 Nerf guns. No, we had a situation where one person did not appreciate me amount of Nerf darts that were being shot around this person's vicinity. And therefore, we had to remove said Nerf guns from the office. I thought you were going to say we had to remove said employee. We had to remove said employee via Nerf guns.

Are they aware that snitches get stitches? Snitches get nerved. You have a fascination with nerve, huh? No, not so much. I think just anything that, because I grew up playing first-person shooters, too, anything that has projectiles, right? Seems pretty cool, yeah. That's not like dangerous and can't murder somebody.

I mean, you can technically kill someone with the Nerf gun, I guess. I know what Jim would want to make off-road equipment. Yeah, that would actually be pretty good. But going back to the Nerf gun thing, I remember when I was a kid, I used to play around with the darts too. I used to put like pins on the tips of them. And one time I made one where you guys remember stink bombs? I don't know if they still make them, but they're like these little glass files.

And I just smelled like poop. Getting from the ice cream truck. Yeah, but I would actually take the Nerf dart and take the plastic tip off and shove it in there. And you would shoot in it and it would shatter on impact. No. I imagine like a 10 year old gin. Stink bullets. Yeah.

10 year old gin walking around with the slingshot in his back pocket. Oh, dude. I used to do all kinds of crazy things. Like the church that I went to at the time, there was like this weird garden in the back where they're these bamboo shoots. Yeah. So I would break the little branches off

and make little darts with the bodies. So I'd put like hot glue and then put a needle in there. And by the way, don't replicate any of these guys. And then cut up a straw. And then I would use them as like blow darts, you know? But one of the things was the nerf, the story about the Nerf dart was,

I thought this was like the coolest idea. and then I had cocked the Nerf gun and it was ready to shoot. I was like, oh, I don't need it. So I shot it on my bed thinking the pillow would just not crack the vial, but it just shattered all over my bed. Oh, my God. And yeah, that was that was not fun. Well, for my mom at the time, but, you know, it's just, it's just fun.

Your mom at the time? It was not, it was not fun for my mom at that time. Okay. I was like, did you like swap out? It was not fun. It was not fun. Listen, mom, it's not working out. At the time for my mom.

That's the proper way to. say sorry rena yeah she's just just had like a like a brain aneurysm right now it's like english words um yeah so what would you like to see us make is that your fun answer off-roading equipment uh no i think just because that's just one of my hobbies that i'm i'm in right now really yeah um i mean i don't know exactly what we would do this is where you would cue the music You know, if you were good at emceeing this, you would put that, you know, Jeopardy music on for me. No, I'm not going to let you hang. He's not good, though.

That's the problem. We'll just all sit here in awkward silence for a bit. I'm okay with that. Glasses? Head shaving equipment, like clippers? No, I've actually found the perfect razor for myself, so. Really? Yeah.

What's your, like, strategy for, for head shaving? You just got to get in a hot shower and let it soak for a bit and then go for it, you know? Yeah. Do you like just like real quick strokes or do you like long like slow methodical? Quick. Really? Yeah. You ever seen those hand shavers?

Yeah, those things scare me. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like I'm going to like fillet. Like I clence up as I go. It's like a shaver that you put it on your palm and basically just like you're sticking your hair back. You know the combs that they used to have where you know you put it through your middle fingers? Yeah. It's like that but there's razors on it.

It's pretty scary actually. Yeah. That sounds. Yeah, it doesn't sound. N6X. Harry's. You know what I actually. Dollar Poochee Club?

I think NZXC should get into apparel. If we were doing something outside for PC gamers, I think apparel would be good. I think we would design like full systems, right? Because we're always designing things around an ecosystem, right? It's not just one-off products. So it wouldn't just be, hey, here's a hoodie. You know, it would be full out, like decked out from head to toe, right?

I mean, we did that for the pop-up. Yeah. But I think like we would have multiple lines, you know, different variations. I think it would be very interesting to see that. sports line formal line right we do a athletic line there's just different things for the pop-up merch ski gear jinn had me actually pulled the community on different designs like oh really yeah so before my time i think yeah so cuddle actually gave i think the most feedback of what he wanted to see

really yeah like the hats and everything what did abenay say he's like our resident eyed beast no that's fire I cop that. I buy that on stockax. So you mentioned off-roading. Is that where you're so good at, Mario Kart? Is that like where that comes from? No, actually, I got into off-roading probably this year. Really?

Not that this year. It's been a couple months. Last year. Really? Yeah, because my family has always had forerunners in our lives, and that's probably one of the things that I miss. I used to be part of the Subi Club. an outback and then

I got rid of it for a foreign Yeah And then as I can get The forer And then as soon as I got it I had a buddy Who was really into

Off-riding And he wanted me to come out And tried it And loved it And then started fixing up My car To be able to take those I should have

Didness buy my old car Yeah That would have It's like a Mammobile though Dude Like Yeah

It's supero man If it was like a coop Maybe You know Or like a sedan But like It's a wagon Yeah

I'm not Not really It was a crossover. Yeah, I don't really need a machine that big. It has a street license plate, though. That's true. But yeah, getting back to Mario Kart. I used to play a lot on the Nintendo Wii,

and this is when it was completely unfair for you to have a bike versus a cart. And I used to play two, three hours a day at my old job. And then, I don't know, I went on hiatus for a couple years, And then when people were playing here, it just all the same stuff transferred over. And then... Not in our new office, though. Our old office. Our old office, we used to play pretty often.

We had like a 12 o'clock and 4 o'clock game that we... Always on the dot, yeah. Everyone would come to creative room and sit on the beam bags and we would run one or two races every 12, every four. I remember the first time I played with Jen, he said, do you know how to Apex? I was like, what the heck are you talking about? I see where you guys are trying to lead me in this conversation is the Apex. It's following, it's the racing line, right? I call it the apex.

I always scream at everyone, follow the apex. Apex? Yeah, I never, I still don't get it. It's the racing line. You got to make sure that you have the best optimal distance. Like, if you take a turn too sharp, you lose too much speed. Uh-huh. Right?

And it's just trying to go in as straight of a line as possible around every curve. And, yeah, I think when I first started working, I was not good with my money. And the first thing I bought was a Porsche. And I went auto-crossing with it. Ooh. And that's where I learned about the apex, right? And applied that to Mario Kart. And I was pretty good.

Like, I was top tier for a while. And then Jeff came about and dethrone me. And then now, you know, I made a small attempt to try to get back. But it just everyone was very supportive. Everyone would pretty much try to shoot everything at Jeff to slow him down for me. But just not working out. Why do you think we stopped playing Mario Kart at the office? Things got really busy during the pop-up season.

And the move, right? And then the move, and then I think overall just everything started snowballing. But I think we can get back into it. We tried. Every time we try to bump back in, only four or five people jump in before it was close to 12. I feel like that's the game we should be playing on Game Night this Friday instead of CSGO. Yeah, this is going to be one of them. Because Ed took a poll and a lot of people wanted to play that game.

Well, he took a pull but only asked three games. This is true. And they're all the same. The CSGO, Rainbow Six Siege, or Call of Duty? Well, because he was organizing it And he's also a first person shooter That's probably why But I think once this one goes through

We're probably gonna incorporate different games for sure I feel like they should be Simpler games with the lower skill ceiling Like Tetris Like a game that anyone can play What are you trying to say about Mario Kart? Well, it's like Mario Kart You know

You can go hard in that game You can set Mario Kart so it has like The auto You know the stereo whatever Things called I feel better about myself. You're saying that Jeff is only winning because it's all done automatically, right? Pretty much.

No skill involved. Okay. You hear that, Jeff? He needs the handicaps for the game to kind of work with him. You know, it's actually kind of an interesting idea because, like, I like playing games on console, but I prefer playing on a PC. And I feel like, personally, my opinion, IMO, if you're going to be doing a game night, we should be playing it on PC. For a PC gaming company.

Even though we love all gamers, our main demographic is PC. Hook up a mouse and keyboard to that switch. I don't think you can do that. Can you actually do that? You can't. I know you can stick like a fight stick on that thing. There's like converters you can use that will like accept it.

They use computers to make console games. Okay. So there you go. So technically they're all PC games. I would argue. No, that's not how that works. I agree that, yeah, we should definitely play more PC games as far as a tournament goes, but I think we embrace all forms of gaming, right?

For sure. We do. But I'll tell you why I prefer not to play on PC because I'm on a computer all day long. So when it comes down to gaming, I don't want to play games on the same machine I'm using to make, you know, presentations and all that stuff. I feel like I need to disconnect from my PC. to play. That's just me though. That's how I feel.

Yeah, but you're weird, so I don't know if I really... I am old. Yeah, you're old weird and you're very picky, so I don't think that like... No. I'm just going to just, like, just vomit everything I dislike about Ivan. So, first off,

you don't need lunch with me every... I'm on a diet. Yeah. Are you guys excited for the CSGO tournament? Are you guys all competing? I... Are you in a gym? Yep.

Okay. I'm excited because... I know I'm going to win because I have the biggest hacker on my team, Dom. But yes, I haven't played the game since before my daughter was born and she just earned two. So I haven't played like in two and a half years. That's a team to beat. I installed it yesterday and I opened it and it looks nothing like I remember. It looked like, it looked like Fortnite.

And I was like, what the heck game is this? It's actually does going to look like Fortnite. So I'm probably going to have to camp and then just have Dom carry me. I think. Which I'm totally cool. I think I can take out Dom. And I'm not saying it as like, you know, oh, I'm like talking smack. I think if I can outplay him, I think like skill-wise, shooting-wise, he probably has me.

But I think if I can bamboozle him a couple times, I might have it. I might have it. Well, me and my team, right? It's a team effort. Me and my team will have it. Who's on your team? Good save there, by the way. Of course, yeah.

I mean, you know, we got a foster community in and outside the company. on my team I don't have a little bit of a thing I have here I have Peter actually which I don't know what he plays or how he plays

so I'm kind of hoping he's like he's like just secret right and then Jonathan Chee and I don't know I don't really know him personally personally like I don't want to talk to him very much but his picture on Slack is of him in a made outfit so I think

you lost I think he has it I think you're good to go on that one. No, it's because he can clean up, you know. Oh, he's a sweeper. Yeah. He comes in. Janitor.

I like that. Mm-hmm. Who's a new team again? Jin with an N? I got Abney, who was on here. James Abney. Yeah. Yeah.

He's supposedly, he says he can hold his own. And then I have Sergio, who is on our customer service. CS. CS. It's just. Swupio. It was just made, right? And I think, yeah.

We're trying to get on to play a bit. I'm kind of like in Ivan shoes. I haven't played in a really long time. I've played for a right over there. I'm more into siege right now. And so when I was playing, I'm like trying to lean left and right. It's not working. I'm trying to like reinforce walls.

Like to throw a grenade. Yeah. Throw a grenade is different too. And it's just, yeah, I did okay last night, though. I got two aces. So I'm good. It's actually pretty crazy how little Kind of Strike has changed like fundamentally

In like so many years You think they would have added like Like more things but it's so It's so solid right And I feel like It's very unique too Right And the way that you play that game compared to like other shooters

Right Yeah there's a heritage to it too as well Yeah Yeah I've been playing since like beta 5 5.2 5.1 One of those Yeah I remember the old days where there used to be PC bangs or like land centers.

Yeah, land centers. Yeah, and we would go down there and try to make sure that cops didn't come by for check curfew because we'd be there to like two-three good morning. Fun fact, everyone that was playing those PC bongs was named gin. 30 jinns. Yeah, and it would be like $2, $3 an hour. And we would prepay because the guy that worked there would always be playing himself. And so he would forget.

So we would play for, oh, we'll take two hours, pay for it. bucks and then six hours later he'd be like oh yeah your time's up you know that's nice uh did did you grow up on here like uh so cow or i grew up in mona bello okay yeah east la area yeah ishish yeah so there was there was this one um land center it was like this random shop with like 12 computers that was on like garfield it was uh yeah somewhere on like Atlantic boulevard around there i'm not sure if anyone knows that if that's from the area but yeah that was like the it's spot we'd be there to way late. Some Saturdays we would go and they had like a day special where it's $12 all you can play. So we would go as soon as they opened it eight and then be there to like six

in the morning. It was rough. It would be hard to walk after that. I always felt like they charged way too little for those like like a couple bucks an hour to me seems like super cheap. Like I never understood how they made money because like they had to have like really good internet right. That's why they're getting all more PC bang. Yeah. Well, we probably didn't make any money. Well think that and it's like the internet. It's like the availability of stuff like the reason why I stopped going to the PC bong is because I didn't know how to update my games. To me,

it was such a foreign concept. And, like, when Steam came out, it just made it super easy. So it was like, oh, I can just download Steam and play this game. And then that's just what I did.

And it just so happened to have, I had a computer that's fast enough to run it. I just didn't know it because I knew very little about computer hardware and I was like that young. And you still don't know anything about computer. So why did you hire him? I'm still trying to think of that.

Because we got the news. Because we were both from Anaheim and went to the same high school. I actually lived in Anaheim. I did you? Yeah, State College and Kitella, you know, the stadium lofts. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was up in that corner. Wow, fancy. Yeah, it was nice.

I got that during right when real estate crashed, so I got it for a pretty penny. 2007? Yeah, 2008 is actually when I closed. Nice. Yeah. Very smart. Yeah, don't have it anymore, but yeah. Just coming and sweep up, right?

Yeah, oh my gosh. So in the lofts, I had an upstairs neighbor who the owner of that building did a lot of renovations without telling the HOA. Oh. So they put hardwood without putting insulation. So I heard everything that happened upstairs. Like from as soon as the guy got home, walking into, it would literally be like, I'm not sure if you can hear this on the mic.

Can you hear that? Yeah, we can hear. I see the waveform. It would literally just like, like nonstopping. I was just like, I can't. Rip headphone users. I can't, I can't take this. It's just, oh, it was insane.

insane and so I ended up posting it up for sale to get out of there but yeah it was good because as as soon as I sold it supposedly he had clogged the drain in his kitchen which had made my kitchen like everything came through the pipe and flooded the kitchen this is after I got out so that would have been a pain and then he flooded his washing machine that was the guy doing yeah and then so pretty much flooded into the second bathroom so as soon as I left like that place got destroyed man yeah I mean insurance covered everything so it's not like yeah but still and then I heard it a month later he moved out yeah interesting I thought it was interesting I'm just I'm just listening you know I was listening um so no transition at all when did you join the BGC

when you decide I was gonna go straight shave I think because I feel like it's it's it's it's a hard decision right no I think uh or just go straight in so So, dive in. When I was younger, man, I had like thick, thick, thick full hair, right? I've seen pictures of you with hair. Yeah, it was thick, big, full hair. Like, my sister has the same genetics. Like, when she does a ponytail, the ponytail is probably like three inches thick in diameter.

Like, that's how much hair we had. And then Art Center destroyed me. Nibbler, you're listening? Art Center destroyed me. I literally did not sleep on Mondays because on Tuesdays I had three. studio classes that I had to prepare for. So literally Monday did not sleep. The stress level was insane. And like little by little I'm showering and I realized like hair is falling out. I was like what the hell? What is like seriously? And then I went to I remember talking to my parents like oh my

hair's falling out. They're like oh no it's not. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. And then little by little it just started going away. I was like, oh, okay. You know what? I'm just going to cut it before you know, I get a chance to show that I'm balding because both. Both my grandparents are bald, like completely, but I had no chance. I heard it's a generation, right? No, there's like all these things that they say, like, oh, it's from the mother's side. Yeah, yeah. It's a generation, blah, blah, blah.

Should get your grandfather and your mom's side, right? And like, that's how you'll know. Yeah, but that's all myth. It's all genetic toss up because both my grandparents, completely bald, like shiny, shiny bowling ball status, bald. Both grandparents, like your mom and your dad. Yeah, the grandmother and your grandfather. No, no, grandfather's on both sides.

Okay, okay. I mean, hey, you know, and then, and then, actually, it's not fair because my dad has a full head of hair. But yeah, right in college, right when I saw it going, I was like, screw it. So I started shaving it since then. Really? You're very lucky that you actually have a good head shape for a bald head. So that's what people say.

They always, when you first say, like, oh, my hair is falling out, they always say, like, oh, no, it's not. And then the second thing, once they realize it is, they go, well, at least you have a good shaped head. Dude, your head shape is, like, just perfectly shaped. Mine, I have, like, lumps in my head. Like, if I shave my head, I'd look really weird. You should do it one day.

We should try it. Just go full flu. Should take the vote. I'll shave my head. Yeah. Would you shave your head? I don't care. All right.

Let's do it. We sheet a whole group of people together. I didn't say it. Everyone has a shaved head in the office for like, well, I don't say a month, but it would take longer than the month to grow up back. Jeff says his hair went gray when he went through a breakup. He used to think it was a baloney than it happened to him. Yeah, I haven't had that bad before. I don't think so.

And my, my hair would probably be a little bit. on the gray side right now too if I let it grow up because I was getting grayed since I was junior in high school really yeah I was trying to get a lot of gray hair I was gonna I was about to ask like when did you start getting grays I started getting gray hair you started playing kind of straight now I was like 30 when I turned 35 I didn't know just like starting getting a lot of gray hair but it was like weird because it was at first it was like one gray hair right here and then little by little just like it's like on the side it's like it's like it's like everywhere now.

And now it's in his nose hairs and all that. Basically, yeah. It's everywhere, yeah. I'm pretty sure that my, whatever I want to call this, you know, poor excuse of a beard is going to be going great before it met the, the head on my. I thought that was just some dirt. No, it's a beard. It's a little bit.

Yeah, you know, sometimes, you know, it just depends on the week. Yeah, when I grow out my beard, it's like, especially my chin. It's just white. Yeah. Yeah. You should, you should grow your beard. See, show the, show my wife. I should grow out my beard.

I have the Asian jeans. Ah. So it's like. It's more like speckles here and there. It's like a food man chew. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And just get the whole like, what's it, the kill bill, right? Where he has like whips it back every now and that.

That would be cool. Like a long foo man chew. Yeah. We should do something crazy with like our hair, facial stuff. It's like one month. It's like one month. We should set some sort of goal for our community, right? If something by this happens or this or this amount of engagement or something,

then we'll do something like that. I think that'll work. We should just have Andy shave his mustache. I'm cool with that. That's pretty good too. Yeah. You got a good beard. Nah.

It's not bad. It's pretty good. Something compared to my dad. Dude, I think I've only, I don't think I know what it looked like with a beard until this year from like the day I was born. Like I've never, I don't have that image in my head. And then he grows a beard once. He's like, yeah, I was going to try it. And he has like within three days, it's this really nice, thick full beard.

And I'm like just ends in the air. like really do like this is like literally like I I don't shave I just trim a little bit and that's it well that's how you and they say you you get your beard that's what they say but I don't think so I think it's true I think so because like I used to shave like every day pretty much and like nothing so I was like I want to have you know have the ability to grow a beard and you know I still you know still still still really patchy especially look around like you know these areas right here you guys can't see it's really great right more of a strap in a beard the shaving thing is a myth because your hair doesn't grow any thicker it's just you're

making it stubby right you're cutting off like the fine points at the end so it makes it feel like it's like a thicker beard but it's not yeah it's a myth i haven't believes every uh every urban legend says uh jeff massacist is for everyone andy august i like that you should grow a beard like um like jeff royal that guy's beard is like probably closing it on 14 inches that's the longest beard i've ever seen a person man i first sent a reckonancy was i literally thought he was like a he was like a dev from blizzard or something he was like all the blizzard devs have these like these really crazy beards like a viking yeah they're all like just super nerdy like like like a fantasy dude so they all have like you know the the big the big beards and stuff i've always wanted actually

to go about that uh do you have like any like inspirations for like art and stuff like are they like any like any like artists for many like game dev houses or like anything like that like just like admire and like just really like their style or like maybe even like you like emulate uh no i actually I love all forms of art, I think. Just looking at what is produced and just thinking about like kind of dismantling it to see like where they came up with that idea. What is art, Jane? Art is anything, right? Literally art is anything from even the products that we look at.

That is a form of art, right? It's Twitter art. Twitter is art too, right? Not our tweets. The artistic post that you do would be. But yeah, I think just in general, anything that gives you inspiration is art. And like everything from like graffiti style with Banksy to even even shin on our product team, right? Like our main ID designer.

Like that's that in itself is art, right? Problem solving again, right? He does a product. He wants to solve something and he comes up with an idea and then, you know, it's art. Everything's art. I think I said art like 20 times, but art. Art 21? Art.

Art. Art. Art. 21, 21, art. Art. Um, is there any art style you see there or like any, trying to figure, I'll go to ask this question. Have you,

have you ever seen anything that could be considered art and you just look at it and go, this sucks? Like it's trash. Like it's not real art. I don't like it. Do you have any like any, any pretentious like thoughts at all? I would say in the beginning I did. I really did because I actually went to UCI for a year and I was a fine art major.

So I did a lot of those things where, It was kind of like slash performance pieces. I had to do one thing where it was like, oh, any kind of emotion. So I made a rose out of aluminum foil. Right. And I literally duct taped it to a wall. And in my youth, in my youth, I mocked it. Right.

But if you think about it now, it's all about interpretation, right? Those that banana that was duct taped to the wall, right? Right. You can call it whatever you want, but it's sold. somebody found value in it, right? Therefore, you know, who's to say, what is art and what isn't? It's to the people that right. I am to say. Yeah.

I feel like that's too diplomatic of an answer. I want a hot take, Jen. Give me a hot take. No, I'm neutral. I'm Switzerland. Yeah. That's what I like, Jen. He's very neutral like me. Yeah.

The only reason I would consider, like, a banana tape to a wall, art, be just for the meme. Just for the joke of it, to me is the art. Memes are art. Have you seen some of the My memes are art Yeah memes are art right There's an interpretation to that right Yeah they can be yeah they they they

They elicit a reaction from from someone right Yeah I think definitely also just being on the creative side When we do design we do get a lot of questions about art Yeah But yeah there's so many different avenues I think art boils down to being creative right Like putting a banana with duct tape on the wall And someone by that that's that's pretty creative

Yeah, yeah. Who would have thought of that? And no one did. If you did that right now, you put a papaya up there. No one's going to spend the money like that, right? Right. But that person did it first. Did it first?

They had the ability to do it, right? There was also the one on Instagram, the egg, right? Yeah. The guy that had one post, the person that had one post, that's art, right? Yeah, so. Yeah, when the banana thing came out, I did put poochie on the wall with the tape. And then when that egg thing came out, I'm ready, I posted a purple egg. I do think it's like you said it's kind of how you anything can be art

it doesn't mean it's good it doesn't mean it's good or bad it just is what it is it's your ability to be creative that's it we should probably just like retweet that right now to see if it if it'll hit again how do you feel about the community artwork that we have going on like just the the wallpapers and the the contest art we got going on yeah I love it keep it coming I think definitely especially being on the creative team here, we have a specific set things on how we do things. And it's always refreshing to see how other people think, right? How other people would kind of execute or go

into this direction with our brand and things that they do. There's a lot of things that like it kind of pulls at my insides because it's off brand. But you know, again, it's art. It's up to interpretation, right? How much does that trigger you and see someone like warp the logo or like mess of stuff? Especially in the wallpapers? Because the wallpaper's channel is like all, is literally our logo, but in like weird configurations. I have to constantly whisper to myself in my brain. Like, it's okay. It's community art.

It's community art. It's not something that's coming out from the brand. Well, even with like the podcast, when we decided we were going to use community artwork for the podcast artwork, Jin did say, I know, I know the community did this. So it's okay to use like, you know, distorted logos and whatnot. But I feel like when he was saying that, he was kind of like trying to convince himself. I know his community artwork. Because like you said,

It's like an interpretation, right? It's like this is how the community is interpreting NZT and they put out this artwork out there. And that's the beauty about being part of that community is you guys have the license to do that, right? Like we on our teams here can't do that. Right? Because that would break brand. So our hands are tied in that, but you guys have all the freedom in the world. So you guys are literally getting to do what we literally cannot do.

What's important about protecting the brand like that? I think it's just continual awareness, especially. especially like there are bigger brands like I would say Nike out there that can do whatever they want with their logo now because they have such recognition for their mark right ours we're still kind of getting our name out there right we're not a small brand right but we're not Coca-Cola we're not right you know Nike we're not Apple therefore we still need to protect it so that there is an association to that brand and that's that's one of the main reasons to protect it it's also just for consistency wise and also if

break it, then as we go to other partners out there, then they're going to have license to break it as well. So we have to kind of do what we say. Yeah. Interesting. How did you come up with like the brand guidelines? Is that you? No. No. The brand guidelines existed before I came in. And I think that was a collective effort from everyone. You know, Johnny does things where he'll bring in majority of people and just kind of talk through what he feels is the essence and core values and then build up on, on that so it's not usually like a dictatorship where you know here's what we have said you know go with it it's more of a collective what do we feel that this company is and where it's going and how should

we get that down yeah the year before jing got here that was the year where we changed the logo we made our colors purple all that stuff and you had that green that awful oh yeah the cam green yeah the awful green that was part of the brand our colors were like joker colors yeah it was Really? Purple and green. Yeah, it was. You see that clappy hand right there? It was about that green.

Like a lime green. That's really gross. I don't like that at all. I didn't mind it, but I prefer not having it. Yeah, that was the first thing. I asked to remove when I came in. I was like, let's get rid of this. You don't need this as a secondary color.

I think you brought in the orchid, right? No, there was already talks about adding the orchid in. So it was kind of like the least common denominator. Just remove it, have to replace it. Let's throw in the orchid for now. Jeff says the purple's hard to work with. Yes, our current purple does not go well on dark mode slash dark tones. But Orchid does.

Orchid does, but then it is also not our primary brand color. So there are tweaks that we're making right now. The brand does overall evolve, but stays true to the core. Spoiler alert. Uh-oh. Yeah, so we'll see. Even like on Discord. NDA, we, we, even on Discord, you know, the roll colors, I can't use the official N60 purple because they don't show up good.

So it's like we use the, like the orchid colors, but a little, like, brighter. Yeah, I found it's hard to use that color, too, and I'm trying to make memes and stuff. So the primary color for us is, even though purple is one of the main colors, is actually black and white. Yeah. So white always works with black, right? Old school. Yeah. OG colors.

Black always works with white. Vice versa. Purple's supposed to be like an accent color, so. 51700A? Correct. Yeah. Correct. I type it in Photoshop so many times

and I can not remember it. You can't find it. It's hard to use that whole color picker thing. If we change the hue of purple, are you going to have to repaint all these walls? No, because these walls are not the perfect hue of purple. Oh, really? They're not.

If you hold up our brand purple next to it, it doesn't match identically so. Will you at least make Ed paint the edges straight? Oh, this room triggers. triggers me as well. Do you want to repaint it? We're good. I think it gives a character.

Sure. I feel like you can't tell it to the creative director. It gives the characters like, no. I mean, I was in that conference room with a small paintbrush, like getting rid of all the little burrs in the logo, which would have probably been fine and no one would have noticed. It's probably hard because the walls aren't like just straight, right? They're like bumpy.

Just that texture? Yeah. I think this was the first wall. we painted purple in the office, right? Yeah. I think maybe that's why Ed was kind of like this purple thing you'll never stick. So maybe you'd rush down, no. It's also because he's not a contractor.

True. And so it was a learning. Like if you look at all the other walls out there, there's so much better now. They're all perfect now. Yeah. Took this one. And it was a first one. It was a learning process.

Except for like when people bang like their foot on the wall or like they hit a chair on the wall. Like I think like the first week that we put the, um, in the foster community room where the whiteboard is, I was pushing myself off away from the wall with my foot. And I'm like, oh no, put some dirt. I don't wipe it off for a second. It felt so bad. Just, yeah, sorry, Jen, I had to admit that to you

that I ruined one of your walls for a second. That would be too. I've ruined walls too. So you mentioned that you're, sorry? Speaking of ruining walls. Oh, I was just curious, like, how do you keep track of all these different projects that you're doing? you know, apart from the product design and then, you know, the poochy art,

manuals, social media assets, manuals, game nights and stuff. What sort of project management tools or whatever are you using to keep track of everything? To get you from going nuts. The beauty of all this is we have project management people, right? Oh. So they understand what the deliverables are, and without them, we would be missing deadlines left and right. There's different teams.

We have Irma, who's on the product team, that pretty much sets the schedule for anything that has to do with the product itself, again, for the images, the videos, the packaging, the manuals. And then we have on the digital side, we have Jenick and Snow who handle NZXC.com and Let's Build.com. And they're the ones that pretty much keep track of everything, and they come in and pepper, hey, hey, where is this? Hey, hey, where is this? Hey, just making sure you're working on this.

And so without them, nothing would probably see the light of day. Yeah, so no software people. How do I get in touch with these people? Yeah, because we're using Trello. We're adding lists every other day, man. Oh, like, internally, we use Trello. I have cards where I have every member of my team, and we have cards of those specific projects

because we still have to keep track of, you know, where the deliverables are going. Trello check. Yep, and then they, once they finish your project, they'll upload it onto Dropbox, put on Trello, slide the card over to mine. go review and then slide it back once it's reviewed. If it's approved, archive it.

Yeah. Trello is probably the main one for projects itself, but as far as like the overall project management stuff, that's on teams. Yeah. I think Amanda's or project manager. She makes so many Trello cards. And she's like,

she's like told me like, I love using Trello. He's like, I love seeing, you know, like clicking Archive and watching the card go away. I'm like. She just Slack does something about Trello right now. I know.

Who is the most organized person that you work with? Who is the most. organized person any department. Any department. Melody. Oh yeah. Yeah, guaranteed. I said that when she was on the podcast.

She's the most organized person I've ever met, right? Yeah. When we have launches with her products, it's a breeze because she has everything down. She has... Call everybody out. She gives me versions of what she wants. She's like, I have an idea for... It should kind of be like this.

She doesn't dictate it. She kind of lets it be... loose in the general direction but everything's set up and the roadmap is there so it's literally play by numbers at that point everything's color coordinated yeah who's the least organized person i was about to ask who who who you think's the least organized person and why is it jeff why is it andy's probably the least organized person that i know like in the office like i thought is chaos man i i thought it was really bad right you are really bad yeah i like no like i'm very disorganized but you know I try my best to use the tools that we have you know even put you

skip on things but like seeing the way Andy works it like it makes my head hurt it makes me sad inside he flies by the seat of his pants for sure yeah yeah thrives in chaos so he says yeah what I thrive in chaos totally how he talks all right we got some community questions here people want to talk to gin ask Jin questions for the first time ever we're not going to have a million questions from from Jen which is a kind of a yeah how do you come with those crazy questions that you ask on the podcast Google you just Google no there's just things sometimes I think of questions of trying to spice things up you know things that again require creativity but for the most part Google I look I look

through a bunch of questions on Google because I have a bunch of lists I have a list of questions that I ask when I interview people so I refer to that and that list was created by some Googles and some some some Google searches and some that I just came up with so I must like interviewing with Jen it's like you're on a boat and trying to get an elephant off the boat or whatever yeah how do you weigh an elephant on the like what no excuse there is no wrong answer I just want to see how you think right you have to be a problem solver if you're not a problem solver then you kind of like everyone else and I want like stars that know how to you know come up with different ways right

because what happens in a situation where you're in a crunch right like some mistake happened and you need to solve that right you have to use all like a good example is at the pop-up we had these cable bar things built up on the wall behind our displays and we didn't account the fact that there's pipes up there that block the design that we have ooh so we have two of them that are long and then one of them has to be cut short that's a problem what what do we do so sat there looked at it for a bit and I said cut the middle one in half so it looks like it's intentional short medium long instead of having the two long so

that's the problem solved right so it's kind of like that like some might say just created another problem yeah we we didn't want to cut them all short because then it just loses the dynamic effect of just having built that out so yeah just how to solve problems there was a table that we had that had no edges and we had to mount a mic arm on there oh yeah yeah remember that how do you solve that it was like okay let's cut a two by two by two and mount that on there and then mount that on the two by two problem solve. Vivian stab yourself in the leg.

How do you solve that problem? Traver to the hospital. So scared. I felt, ah, I was like sick to my stomach. But yeah, it was a whole dude.

She chunked yourself. I think the questions that are asked are mainly just so that I can see how you think. All right. Okay. So that's why. So ask me some question, guys.

Ask me questions that make me think and see what I can come up with. Here's a really good first question to make you think. What's NZXT? What is NZXT? Pass. No. NZXT. Got them.

No, it's just like a loaded question because there's so many things that NZXT is. I think NZXT is a place that is dedicated to producing products that are for gamers, right? We don't do things just for the sake of doing things. We do things because there's a need in the market. There's something that we feel that is lacking or we want to provide something for the community that would kind of help them. So it's, yeah, it's, it's community, right? Wrong, it's a drink.

That's, sorry, click the wrong button here. Have you ever sold the Rubik's Q before? Yes. Oh, he's like, he can solve a Rubik's super fast. The algorithms that I use, it's roughly about a, the algorithms are a robot? A minute and a half. A minute and a half is probably right.

I've seen him in action. I've never seen anyone saw a Rubik's cube that fast, like ever. It's crazy. I remember once we were in a meeting and like we stop in the middle and it's like, hey, mess this Ruby scoop up for me so I can fix so I can solve it. I'm like, uh, okay, sure. All right? Get to be really smart to do that, right?

Nope, you just have to memorize six patterns. That's pretty smart. Yeah. So I can't do that. Oh, so it's, so there's like a preset way to do it then. Yeah, okay, you only need like anything special. Mm-mm. So, uh, you set it up in a certain way and there's an algorithm to move a cube to a certain position.

And so you just need to remember that motion. So it's muscle memory. I can't, I can't say it to you. have to do it. Yeah. Jen is a good problem solver. I remember he asked me, what's your favorite Nintendo games so I can beat it?

And I said, Mario Brothers 3. I've never, I've never beat that game in my life. I haven't played that. I haven't beat that game since I was 10 years old and I'm almost 40. And Jen comes back the next day and he's like, I beat it.

And you give me a screenshot. I'm like, all right. Reflex, this guy's hacking or something. Do you know any programming languages? A dabble a little bit. I'm not going to pretend to say I know, but if you give me code, I can edit it.

Yeah. But I can't build it from scratch. Give them the cam code, please. All right. It's actually really funny because like code really isn't that hard. Like it's all logical, right? And like if you can just look at it and read it with like intent, you can figure out most, most code. Right.

I'm sure there's like you know, really complex types of code. But like just in general, it's like regular, regular code. Like I remember I had to edit like a CSS and like HTML file, which really is like super low bar, just like what like code is. But there are people who look at it and go, I can't do it. And I'm up in the air. And like when I was editing these particular files, I was like, okay, like I see where these things link.

There's like dot IM. I know what that is. That's an image or dot pNG, right? And then you have to be very specific in like make sure the capitals are there. The underscores are identical. This links to this folder. Yeah. This calls to this.

Make sure that you close it when you open it. Yeah. Just things like that. So I can manipulate code. I cannot write my own. How many languages do you speak? Three. Which ones?

Speak. English, Korean, and gibberish. What's gibberish? Say something in gibberish. Oh, nice. Cool. What does that mean? You would have to speak to understand.

Oh, that's one of those. Okay. Jorgon, one strangle wants to know. What keyboard do you use in switches if mechanical and prefer type? So I love blue, but the only time, I can actually game is when my wife is sleeping and that makes it a little difficult because my office is right next to the bedroom

so click click click click click click click click but I have a Wooting 1 keyboard that I got as a demo and I love that thing the RGB controls are super easy I know I'm talking about RGB when it comes of mechanical switches and all that but just everything is very intuitive it's

65% I think and it's I love it size wise and everything it's a TKL yeah okay what kind of switches Blues. I love blues. Those are super loud. I just love how it feels. Yeah, no, they feel good. The bounce back, the feedback.

Yeah. Just, yeah. There's like a distinct, like almost like intentional click on them, right? Yeah. When you hit it. But it's just too loud. They're loud. Imagine the old, the old IBM keyboards.

Yeah. So sometimes. Nice big, quickie ones. Are you the loudest ones? I think they are. I don't know. There might be another class of like loud just for the sake of being loud keyboards. Yeah, I like red too.

But I have both. So it depends on what time of day I switch them out. Yeah. Oh, okay. What was your first game? First game that I ever played. I'm assuming. That would have to be he's just Super Mario, right?

My dad bought a Nintendo for us, and I think this was back in 89. That's when they came out, yeah. Yeah, and. At least in the U.S. He brought it home, set it up, and I didn't get to play on it for two months because he kept playing on it.

And then when I finally got to play on it, It was just Super Mario. Duck Hunt was another one that was on there. Is your dad a gamer? I would say to a certain extent. Okay. Yeah, but... Did they like not like you playing games when you were younger?

They... Yeah, that was confusing. They really didn't, but they bought me the Nintendo, and then they bought me a PC. Yeah, my parents always complained I was on the computer too much, but then they bought me new computers or computer parts. So, like, I don't know, like, it was very confusing. Yeah, and then they bought me...

They felt that it was a way for me to be a problem solver, right? That's how they raised me. And so they bought me this game called Kubert. I'm not sure if a lot of people were. That thing was, that's kind of fun. But, yeah, it's probably my first game. Favorite song right now from Detective Brad? Favorite song right now from Detective Brad?

Oh, I thought Detective Brad was like the artist, and I was like, who? Yeah, sorry. From user Detective Brad, what is your favorite song, Jen? I don't know. I think I just, I'm not a big music person. I have some like back in high school and college days. There's some bands that I really listen to fall to like Google Dolls, Lifehouse, The Calling.

So I still still tend to as far as artists go go in that direction. But then I'm also aligned to EDM right now too. Like really just listen to a lot of Zed. Have you met Zed? I designed a. PC rap that we did for a computer we gave him. I got a funny story about music and involving Jin actually. Okay.

Let's go. I'm ready. A couple of weeks ago, someone on the Discord server, I forget their name, but they message me on Discord and said, hey, what is the name of the song featured in the Cracken video? And I said, I don't know. And then he said, can you find out, please? So I said, sure, I'll find out. So I messaged Jin.

And then Jin says me a screenshot of the, or the PDF of the, of the, of the, of the, music license with the name of the artist and the song. So I told him the name of the artist and the song and he said, I can't find this online. And I said, well, I'm not sure if it's online. You just asked me what the name of the song is and who made it. He's like, can I use this for a project I'm working on? I said, I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. But I know I know we paid for it so we can use it in this video, so I'm assuming not. And then he got really mad at me. He's like, how dare you? I just want he's for my project and then I told him well I don't know man I don't know what to tell you and then he said I'm gonna I'm gonna message Johnny and WhatsApp and complain to him about you and I

said why don't you just email him just email him just email him just email him Johnny's email and he emailed Johnny in the first sentence in that letter he sent Johnny said I was talking to this bonehead named Ivan who's a real sloth of a slug or something like that like just calling me all these names grumpy sloth or yeah who wouldn't give me the name of this song yada yada and then and then yeah like a minute later

he goes on the Discord general chat and he said due to unforeseen circumstances I can no longer be in this server but yeah

that's my funny my funny gin music song or music story I like how Jim is like one part of this story where he's like

I ask gin and then that's like well it means he stands about how far this goes to gin he gave me the name of the artist

and I don't know I guess it wasn't the answer that that person was looking for They got really mad at me. Jin. Magamosity wants to know.

What's your favorite tree in the world? Favorite tree. Favorite tree? I'm not sure he was asking what's your favorite type of tree or if you have a particular specific tree that you like to visit from time to time. So my neighbor has this avocado tree. Ooh. That is giant. It's supposed to be a dwarf tree, but it came out to be close to 35, 40 feet.

Wow. And we love it because we just go out and pick. Fresh avocados all we want. So expensive. Yeah, because it's like $1.50 to $3 each one. So pick those. It's a dollar at Chipotle. Yeah.

And then sometimes they fall in our dogs eat them. Is that good for dogs? Yeah, they can eat avocados. Okay. I don't know. Yeah. Dogs can't eat a lot of things. They're very particular.

Yeah, you can't eat green onion, grapes, chocolate. Things like that. Wait, they can eat grapes? I don't think they can eat grapes. I think the grape peel is almost as bad as chocolate for them. Oh. Shoot. That's just that's a rip Mexican dogs and these guys will eat anything.

I think dogs can eat anything to be honest. I don't know, but you're looking at me like I'm the expert. Vivian give your dog, Vivian give your dog chocolate tonight. See what happens. Report back. Apparently, Unagi's a fighter and know that she's been run over once. Yeah. Yeah, she's made a full recovery.

Crazy, dude. It's nuts. Tanish wants to know. What is the future plan of developing NZC Discord server? I would have to defund. for that over to Ivan. Ivan, what is the future plans? Right now we're actually going through

a lot of changes on the server, both internally. Internally and externally. Some of you and the server might have noticed that there's a lot of new roles primarily given to the moderators. Actually, only given to the moderators. Only given to the moderators.

But yeah, we're about to kick off a bunch of new stuff on the server, and then on the backend side of things, we're also internally going through a lot of planning on big changes we want to do with not just a server but just the community in general and making everything more fun for everyone and hopefully people like it especially if you haven't how you like this background music I like it's good I like it Jen how you like it it's soothing we can also put on the samurai champlu lofi hip-hop mix Japanese type beat that's the whole title all right um I actually found

my set of Samurai Champlu DVDs the other day. For some reason, I have only the first one and all the other cases are empty. Yikes. Someone jacked you for your or I thought I'd be smart and put them in like some sort of organizer and I forgot. I don't know.

It's organizers. I never, didn't really help anything to be honest. I can't label them. I have the Bluways actually for for Samajampleu. I can't watch it because I don't have a blue replay. Do you just sit there in my use just things that don't have for a hundred Alex. Bob Pashon wants to know

What is your favorite part About working at NST I think definitely the people You look we should have asked that question You write that one down Right come on guys I think definitely the people Like it's definitely a family environment

Here you come in And it's not Like there's some offices where it feels like A little bit sterile And two buttoned up This place is pretty much like Going to hang out every day Oh man

That new policy Kind of making me think the other way now What policy? The drug policy That you can't be drunk at work policy? Drinking policy. How dare you?

Yeah, but no, overall, it's definitely the environment, the community. Everyone here lives and breathes things that have to do with gaming in general. Like whenever we have anything that we want to test, we run focus groups with people here. Yeah, I just pop, we were, oh, I almost leaked something that we were working on. Oh, that was close. That was a good catch. I was afraid because just so many things going on. but maybe I'll be back and I'll talk about that one.

It's okay, just do it. Yeah. You won't tell anybody. It's just you and me here. Okay. Anti-T Nerf gun confirmed. No, but I think definitely when we want to run focus groups, we literally just pop our heads out and grab people or we say,

hey, we're doing for this and this. Who knows about this? Let's bring you in and then we talk to people about it. So I just love the, everyone's also very willing to help each other. Yeah. Right? It could be the simplest task of, hey, I just need to move these like 13 chairs over to the warehouse. And then everyone, it doesn't matter who it is, right?

They'll just come, grab it and go with you. And that's it. Patrick came up to me yesterday and it's like, hey, I want to ask some questions to the community. I'm like, sure. And I'm more than willing to help you. Just do me one favor. Set a meeting because I'm going to forget. I haven't gotten a meeting invite yet.

So Patrick, I know you're not listening. But if someone happens to run into Patrick today, tell him I'm still waiting for that meeting. You know, I would say it's probably my favorite part too. This is working. I was it, well, it's a two-parter. It's the people, but then also the culture, right? and how the people cultivate the culture and the company. And I, it's going to sound weird to say, but I feel safe and happy here, right?

Like, I enjoy going into the office, even with the drive just kind of suck a little bit. I do enjoy being here, and I don't mind coming to the office. There are jobs that work were like, I couldn't wait for like the next day. I'd be like looking at like our HR calendar. When is the next day off, right? I want to have another extra day where I'll have to come into the office. You still do that. Yeah, but only because it's fun to, you know, be in my PJs.

That's a different, different reason, though. You definitely wear your pajamas to work. Pretty much. Magnumosity also wants to know, is poppy skin F107A? Yes. Hold on, I got to research it. Okay, wait, hold on. Actually, it is because I told Dennis this yesterday, we went to lunch with Amanda, and I said,

I didn't want to show you guys, but I have this really disgusting bruise right now. So yesterday I woke up really early, as usual, lately. And, you know, I'm in the shower brushing my teeth. and I noticed like, what the heck? I had a giant bruise on the side of my stomach. And it's because I got a mosquito bite that I was, I guess, scratching in my sleep or something, and I must have, like, popped a blood vessel

or something like that. So I was going to go to urgent care yesterday morning, but when I looked up our insurance, I saw that we could do, like, these virtual office visits. So I just went on my phone, and then I talked to a doctor, I showed him my bruise, and he said, yeah, It looks like you must have scratched that in your sleep and you're having like some sort of like allergic reaction to the mosquito or something.

But yeah, my my my skin is actually purple right now. Nice. You should put a picture on the discord. No, thank you. Joseph wants to know what is are the weirdest skills you have? Weirdest skills I have. I have a lot of very pointless skills actually. Rubik's Cube is one of them, right?

Mario Part Epex theory. Yeah, Mario Car Apexeri I used to breed snakes when I was in college. What's the coolest kind of snake? It would probably be the piebald ball python. That's probably one of the trippiest one. It looks like you got a ball python and you kind of poured bleach on it. Ball or bald?

B-A-L-L. Okay. Yeah. But it's pie bald, P-I-E, B-A-L-D, ball B-A-L-L, and then Python. Oh, yeah, this thing looks funky. Yeah. What the heck? So when I was actually, like the dog, like the fur spotches.

Can you draw a picture in the chat, please? Sure. But when they first came out, they were going for about $15,000 each. And you had one? Yeah, so I had one. It was like in a business investment, right? I had one and I had three of them that were hit because it's a recessive trait. You would breed them and the babies, you get like three to six eggs per clutch sometimes.

Incubate those. And then the babies that are het, you would sell for like $600. And then the pides that actually came out, you probably get about anywhere. from like seven to ten for them based on how much white they had yeah this some this look really really crazy yeah but i started with corn snakes um oh okay because corn snakes uh they're relatively cheap they eat anything ball pythons they're kind of finicky as babies i actually got into herpetology in college because i went hiking one time and uh one of my buddies that i went with he was he he loved snakes and so we would go out there and we would catch snakes and my very first pet was actually

a king snake that i caught while hiking so he flipped over this board and there was a king's day I was like, what am I supposed to do? He's like, just grab it. I was like, okay, I grabbed it. I never grabbed it. He's picked it up. Yeah, it musked all over me, which is kind of like poop. It just expels its bowels with all this foul-smelling things.

And then I kept it in my dorm room at UCI as a pet. And it got out like four times. I had to find it. Like, it was like finding its way into the heater. All my all my roommates were like freaking out all the time. But that got me into it. And then I found out, oh, there's one's some crazier colors, right? Like the corner snakes come in from all, all colors.

There's a purple one too, by the way. Reptals are crazy like that. There's like a lot of customization when it comes to like... It's all genetic breeding, right? It's like recessive trait. Ball pythons have this thing called co-dominant traits where if you have like this, again, bad example, but if it was like a purple snake and it was a codominant trait, and you've read it to a normal, then half the babies would be purple.

So you don't have to wait two generations to prove out a recessive trait. But yeah. I would love a podcast just about like reptiles and snakes. It sounds super interesting because like I've always wanted to have like geckos, right? Leopard geckos are probably the best. ones to do. They have a bunch of morphs of that too. You got like the raptors, the carrot tails. Caratails was hot when I was into it. But yeah, this is my wife really did not like the fact that I had snakes because I feed my snakes frozen, frozen wraps and mice. I don't

like live because it smells too bad. So what I have is I buy pre-killed once, right? And then I put them in the freezer. You have snakes now? No. Okay, okay. You had them. I did up until about three months ago because my wife made me get rid of every last one of them. So you would put dead mice and rats in your freezer along with your food? Yep. But they would be in vacuum sealed bags, you know? Yeah, that makes it better. And then I would pull it out, defrosted and feed the snakes.

And then my wife one time was looking for something in the freezer and she opened one of those bags, freaked out and said, snakes have to go. And I was like, okay, honey. I can imagine just like the fear when you open up, we see like a dead rat. So in college, too. I came home for one of the weekends And I had to hold on to one of my snakes Because it was gravid

Which means it had babies And or had eggs And then I remember for some reason I had some rats in my car And I was like oh shit I got to or mice And I had to put them in the freezer So I put them in my freezer

3 o'clock in the morning I hear my dad screaming And it's because he came out to get like a midnight snack Open the freezer I saw this thing in aluminum foil Opened it and saw a rat And just like slipped out Oh my God man

Yeah I think the only thing I hate more than snakes is rats. So I probably couldn't, yeah, then both of them freak me out. Apparently rats make really, really good pets. Just live for like a really short amount of time. It was really. Yeah, they're trainable, very smart.

That's why I didn't, I didn't like feeding live ones to my snakes. I always bought the pre-killed ones, so I didn't have to take care of it. And then, yeah, put them in the freezer. So we're about to come up on time. Do you have extra time or do you have to go? Because then you're a very busy man. I got time because I'd just be checking my phone while we're doing things up.

How far behind are you right now in your work? Exactly an hour and a half. Three hours behind. Who's the guest this week? Who's the guest this week? Yeah, who's a guest this week? It's a question from N60 Jen. Oh, I don't know.

There was no Instagram story about that that you guys on my house. I didn't know. We're doing it after the fact now. Yeah, we do them on Saturdays. Fun fact. It helps. Baby wants to know, when will be playing tennis? Whatever.

However, I was, I'm not as good as I used to be, and I have a torn Achilles tendon that was repaired that I never peteed properly. How do you tear your achilles? Spring basketball. And then. You're snakes, you fell. It was like a four-hour session. And right around midnight, it just, I felt something tear. And then, yeah.

Ball so hard. It wasn't fun, but I'm down to play tennis. I played tennis in high school. I was by default, the captain of my varsity team. Why default? Because we had a captain and a co-captain in front of me, so I was seat probably number three. And then we got a new coach who was really heavy into conditioning. And the two said that they couldn't do it and they dropped out.

And by default, I became the third, which was funny because I was 5'8 and 230 pounds. Wow. And I was the fastest runner on the team. Seriously? Ran the mile under six. That eight-pix theory. Yeah, exactly. I know the lines.

Jeff wants to know who's going to come paint the San Francisco office. I volunteer Jeff I think Jeff could do it Yeah that's a good one Yeah Flex wants to know How long have you all been at NZXT Well if you were here for the podcast

Two years and one week for myself And I think this is probably a better suited question For you two here I haven't been here like forever He's like five years He's always been here He's always part of the company You just didn't know yet

I'm been here five years I'm almost out of year In May I believe Well, time flies. I know, it does fly. It's weird. Time flies when you...

Update Trello. When you sit next to Andy. It actually kind of does. Alan wants to know, what's the best investment you made in getting to where you are today? The best investment I made to get where I am today is to network. You need a network. I think definitely... as far as from a career standpoint and professional standpoint,

knowing the right people is very key. Yes. Also, having a personality that's able to reach out to others, I think works as well because pretty much every job that I've gotten, I've always known somebody that has got me in, in that they vouched for me, and it's through my networking that was able to do that.

And also, networking allows you to meet people in different skill sets, and it gives you a repertoire, especially in the creative field, if I need to get something done, I have to think of like, oh, who do I know first that I can trust that can help me get this done? Yeah. And you could reach out to them. So networking, I think, is number one.

I got in a lot of trouble with my aunt because my little cousin was in school. And I told them, don't worry about your grades. Worry about networking. Right? Because when you come out of college, ain't no one going to be looking at your GPA unless you're trying to get into different programs after that. Yeah. I said network, meet the right people. right don't i i personally wouldn't do like fraternities and all that even though that is another

great place to network but you know meet people talk to them get to know them um and yeah she she ripped on me because he took that literally and didn't study at all and just started going out but he's doing really well because yeah yeah mine was dropping out of college because i already had like a semi-internship uh doing fighting game events and i knew that if i worked that hard and i I've met enough people, you're saying, networking, and worked, right? I actually put the work in because that's a big part to you, right? You know, like, when people vouch for you, they're vouching for you because they know you can do the work and they also like you, right? So it's like two part.

Yeah. Yeah. And you're just sticking to my guns and, you know, doing what I can to keep on that same quote unquote grind. I don't like really using that word too much, to be honest because I feel like people kind of like. Grind don't stop, bro. Yeah, you're right, right? They like use it as like a filler. But like, you know, it's probably the best thing I've ever done.

Yeah. And I say as you network to work on your character and your personality. Yeah. Right? Because good people and hard workers go a long way. I think when I interviewed with Johnny, one of the feedback he gave me was he said on a personality standpoint, 100% he would hire me. But it was my portfolio that didn't kind of tailor to what he felt was for the brand. So it's just kind of like that.

You got to make sure that you're a person of good character and that you meet people not, again, to be disingenuous. Like, oh, I just want to get to know you because I want to use you later down in the line. But, you know, genuinely get to know people. Yeah. My best investment is just myself. Take care of myself. Like, just making sure that, you know, I, I'm happy, I guess, so I can help others. If I'm not happy, I can't help others.

So I'm taking care of myself. It's got really deep real quick. Thanks for the question, Alan. Dan, how are you feeling about 3D Akari? I'm excited to see you finish it up. Oh, yeah. What's up with that? Yeah.

It's looking really good. Yeah. So all community stuff. Jeff wants to know. Would you rather rub Alex, gin, or Justin's head? That's not to me because my name's in there. I mean, you can have your own head. You can reach up.

Do you know that you can't pat your head and rub your belly at the exact same time? I can't actually. It's impossible. I can. You also can't smile and breathe in and out at the same time. I'm patting my head and rubbing my belly. I can also rotate my hands in opposite directions. Another thing with the random skill sets, right?

Can you do that? Okay, so you do forward. Forward with your fists one way, right? And then backwards with your fist the other way. So it's this. And now I'm not doing it. Right, see? That's another.

And here's another thing, all right, is recording for it? Snap two times, three times with your right hand. Okay. And then two times with your left hand, right? Okay. And do it in sequence. Oh. Nope.

Yep. This is great radio, by the way. No, but I haven's getting that on camera, so we're going to share that. Yeah, no, I can't do that's weird. Yeah. Last question from Alan. If you had to become an inanimate object for a year, what object would it be? That is a great, great question.

I would be Mount Rushmore. What? I think just because, okay, so technically, if you think about it, you've got four pairs of eyes that you can kind of see through. You can watch all the different people from all around the country, right, coming to see you, right? You got a good high vantage point so you can see all around. There's a lot of great nature, right?

I know rocks don't breathe, right? but you know, great fresh air out there. How do you know Rockstone Bree? That's a secret. But, yeah, you know, I think that that'd probably be a good inanimate object. But yeah, I like that question. That was a really good question. Evan, what would you be?

Well, define inanimate. Doesn't move. It's not alive. Google it. Okay, inanimate. Be a poochie doll. Ooh. That'd be another good one?

I don't know. The way some people talk about poochie, I might not want to be a poochie, to be honest. Definition of inanimate object. A thing that is not alive, such as a rock, a chair, a book, etc. Then probably a cringy weeb. Ha ha ha ha. I get it because they're

have souls. I would say a car. It's like a nice, regular, like regular, like sedan, like a Honda or like a Toyota. You see like where it goes. Because people take those cars everywhere, right? It's not like,

I want to be a Hummer, right? And then you never get used for like your intended purpose. Oh, Alan just linked a kit from Knight Rider. Oh, yeah. Technically, it's inanimate, right? No, I think it'd be cool to be, um, but it thinks. A pen, a pen that belonged to like a great writer or something like that. But are you alive because you think?

Pen is a good one like that. Hmm. I guess we're... A computer, I guess, I guess we're getting into the what it means to be alive, right? Mm-hmm. non-sentient true I'm having such a poet he's wasted on these discord animals

I am I am that's why he passed the mantle on me I'm the one that's supposed to care now yeah I do my time keep asking I'm open as long as you guys have time we got no more questions here who's your favorite N6T mod

moderator that's a good question to say cuddle cuddle we are all cuddle everybody's cuddle um if we're out of questions

I have a question for gin okay do you have any questions for us or the community oh so that's another so that's like another good interview question

where they always say ask a question about the questions right um not really because I think we we chat okay podcast over all right

because we chat every week right we have our community meetings It's not on my schedule this week. This is true. We're going to take care of that, right? I have no idea what's going on with those meetings. Yeah, but I think also you guys are not sharing the community as well. So when I'm in there and I pop questions, like the amount of answers that I get to,

I think I got a good vibe of everything already. You're vibing? Yeah, I'm vibing. Let's get the vibes. I like vibes. Vives are good. I don't think I have really any questions for you, Jim. Other than, like, what do you think about my performance so far?

So far, so good. Yeah, you're still here, so that's a good sign, right? Yeah. I would have put you on my 360 reviews, but I don't think you'll, like, know what I do on a daily basis enough. I'm going to put you on there. And I also don't want you to take the time to, like, look in everything I do, and then, you know, just for a review, because I feel like,

I feel like, you know, you were to have so much in your plate. The 360 reviews, I think, very important for the company, but, man, do they take a lot of time? They do. And people never do them on time either. Yeah, and I want to put some people on blast here, not specific people, but I think it's very important that you put very constructive information in there instead of, okay, dot, dot space, you know?

I think it really, it's for the individual to better themselves, right? So be critical, but do it in a loving way where it helps that person grow, you know? Yeah, that's why. I think they should all be things that you can improve. Yeah. Not just like the good stuff. Because it's not going to be like, oh, if someone writes you a bad one that you're going to get fired, right? We're not a company that does that.

It's more about what are ways that you can improve as a person as an employee. Yeah. Yeah. When I write mine, it's always like what they do and what I would like to see them do and what they could do. Right. Because you don't, there's things that you can do that you don't have to do, but it could benefit you. But then there's things that are like, you should probably be doing this, right? Because I do them in the same way that would do mine, right?

I would want mine to look like is I want to know how I'm doing so I can be better because I don't want to suck at my job, right? It's there's nothing worse than like sucking and not knowing it. Speaking of jobs, who do you think is your unsung hero at NDXT? So that's a good question. I'm not going to pick from my team because I don't want to, you know, create any of that. But definitely one of the unsung heroes here, I would definitely do a call out to Harry. Second time you had Harry. Yeah.

Super Harry. Mainly because I have a lot of interactions with them because there are situations that happen. For instance, when we do those teaser videos that go out and we need builds, a lot of times products might come in a little bit late or there was a delay in shipping and I need to get this out within a day or two or even that day. And I will run to Harry and I'll say, hey, I need this for the shoot. Do you think you can have this built with these parts? He doesn't question. He goes, when do you need it? Okay.

Let's go. My favorite thing by Harry, too, is after you give him the details, he always says, understood. I just walked away. Understood. You know? Just understood, not his head, walks away and he helps a lot. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Just in general, too. It's not just specifically for those things, but things around anytime you need help with anything. He doesn't have to be specifically to build. He's ready, so. He also has a really cool scooter. Yes.

Well, we have the electric ones. Yeah. But your, your scooter, I don't think, counts because you have a seat on it. Not the one in the office. What happened in the scooters, by the way? Like, we were like scooter crazy for. for a minute like now no one's like riding scooters. I had a couple of close calls right into the office,

so I decided not to ride it to the office anymore. Oh, can you share? What close call? There's just too many big rules around here, man. Almost getting hit? Yeah, like especially when Eunice was next door. They were just like three or four times where these big rigs just nearly clip me and while you're riding next to the big rigs.

I wasn't. That's a thing. It's like they just don't see me and they make a turn or something. And I just said, you know what? If I keep this up enough, I'm eventually going to get hit. So I just decided not to write my scooter anymore. It is a little dangerous because I had to get my brakes done and I dropped off my car, but it's like a mile away from my house.

So I took the scooter. And then as I was going home, man, these cars passing by at full speed. And it's a little scary. And I got a flat on the front halfway home. So that kind of sucked. I still ride my scooter, but I ride it just around the neighborhood. Yeah. Not like before.

Yeah, it's kind of scary in general. It is. It's why actually I don't like walking to go grab lunch. because some of these people, they did, like, I'd rather jaywalk across the street because, like, I can see cars coming from other way. There's, like, no blind spots. But if you're, like, on the corner, I've had it where people were, like, the light's not green, right?

It's my time to walk. And then they're, like, rolling straight through that corner. Yeah, people don't see, people who are driving and aren't really paying attention. There's a dude yesterday who was driving, and he was, like, going insanely slow. And I got frustrated because he's, like, going, like, 20 miles, an hour and, like, a 50-mile road. And fools on his phone. typing up a storm chatting up his homies or something

get him good night kisses That's the other thing I noticed too When I was riding my scooter a lot To work Everyone is on their phone Like literally every When I say everyone I'm not exaggerating It's like everyone that's driving

It's just looking at their phone And I just knew sooner or later I was gonna get hit So it's just career I'm not gonna ride my scooter to work at it Yeah there's a lot of bad drivers out there Subaru has the eyesight That thing has saved me like

three times. I'll be honest before in my younger days I was not the most conscious about those things. So I'd be doing work on my phone while I'd be driving and that eyesight thing has stopped me from getting into accidents before. Oh, really cool. The superiors are really safe for that. Yeah, but now my car doesn't have it. So I just don't do it. It's not worth it. It's not worth it at all. Yeah, the other day I was at the grocery store and I was backing out and then my car stopped on its own because there was someone in part or walking behind me. I did not see them. I was like, wow. Like I probably It wasn't any other car would have hit him. Cannot wait for self-driving cars to be like just ubiquitous.

Like, just make sense, you know? Just have everything be a uniform, right? Yeah, Hyundai has smart park. Oh, yeah. The Super Bowl commercial? I remember that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, with the Boston accent.

Sorry, I didn't catch the Boston accent. I thought it was something different. I'm like, I'm just going to ignore that. I don't want to get in trouble. HR might be listening. All right. I think we should call it here because it's almost lunchtime, and we got to get some work done eventually.

Someone has to work around here. Somebody. Might as well be us. Yeah. Yeah. I would say next time, you know, I have like little pastries for the guests, you know. You guys got me the tea.

That was good. You got your own tea, though. I was just trying to make you guys look good. Yeah. No, but it was great. Thanks for having me. Yeah, we don't need it. Thank you, Jen.

So with that, thank you for joining us today. Jen, really appreciate it for taking time on your busy schedule. And thank you to everyone, everyone who tuned in. I can't do this anymore. Just read. Remember to tune in next week at 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time of the official NXT Discord server and follow at NZXT on all relevant social media.

And don't forget to listen to previous episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and SoundCloud. Also, for the community, don't forget to submit your setups in the Setups channel on Discord, on the NXC Discord because we do weekly giveaways for some neat swag, gear, whatever you want to call it. I know Evan doesn't like me using the word swag. Reddit as well. We do Build of the Week on Reddit because people don't post setups on our subreddit. Art contest is still going. Please vote.

It's super, super close between, I think, Annie and System 32. Shoutouts to him for participating. It's really cool to see, you know, like someone who makes money with their art to just, you know, participate in a free contest. I know we get some hate on that sometimes. Oh, you guys are getting free art. It's not, you know. Yeah, it's all one big scam. Yeah, it's all for free wallpapers, right?

And I think, and don't forget to share your club stuff. You know, if you get your stickers and hoodies and shirts, you know, wear it around town, take some neat selfies, you know, you might get something. You never know, right? You never know. Just, you know, wink, wink, nudge, do it. Do it or else.

The song is about to loop over again. Rip. We'll just restart that. and if you guys would be so kind, please leave us a review on whatever platform to listen to the podcast. As long as it's a positive one.

Yes. Even if you hate it. If you say something negative, we're going to come and get you like a Jerry and Stout and Bob. All right. Don't forget to feed your snakes. Feed your snakes.

They're preferred frozen rats. Sometimes you've got to train them to take the frozen ones because sometimes they won't eat those at all. Yeah. Would you say a snake is a good pet for a two-year-old? Snake is an awesome pet for two-year-old. Really?

They are the most hardiest of animals. Oh, really? You feed them once a week. You make sure they just have plain water. They poop like herd poop. Where it comes out with white with like a chunk in there. And then you have it in the bed and clean it relatively safe. Corn snakes, best for two-year-olds.

I kind of want like a hamster. It's like a whole hamster, like giant cage. You give like a giant like. They smell. Oh, they do smell. I can't do the smell. Yeah. I've always wanted chamber nautilus.

Those are really cool. I'm going to have to look at the snakes now. You should. Let me know. I still have contacts with a bunch of old breeders. Purple snake. Yeah. All right. Yeah.

It's called the Opal Cornish make. We're actually going this time. Bye. See you guys.