NZXT PODCAST - #061 - Shawn

Episode Date: October 3, 2020

This week on the podcast, we are joined by NZXT’s VP of Design & Brand: Shawn! Shawn and the crew discuss chameleons, paintball video games, and fighting games Follow Shawn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/daborsk Listen live to the NZXT 💜 CLUB CAST on our Discord server at discord.gg/nzxt every Thursday at 10AM PT and submit your questions to [e-mail]! Thanks to several people are typing#3589 for the artwork!

Hello everyone and welcome to episode 61 of the N60 Clubcast, the official podcast of the N60 community. This podcast is recorded live every Thursday at 10 a.m. Pacific Center time with the official N6D Discord server and is available to stream on demand on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and SoundCloud. I realize I'm looking at the wrong file here, but it's okay because you'll be listening to the right file. So get connected. Tell your friends and family. Tell your mom and dad. Tell your dog. Just sit up in front of the speaker with the podcast playing full. blast and uh yeah check it out my name is dennis and with me as always is ivan i'm thoroughly spooked how about you guys i love october man october is the best in it it's my favorite month of the year it's like i live for this month i love it what do you love so much about october uh well i am

an october baby i was born october 28 on the very same day the dodgers won the world series against the Yankees. Okay. And every October, I make it a mission to watch a scary movie every single night of the month. Really? I love scary movies. I love pumpkin pie. I love trick-or-treating.

I love all of it. It's the best month, man. I love it. Are you bummed out there's going to be no trick-or-treaters this year? Not really because my daughter is still too young to go trick-or-treating. So it's fine, yeah. She's only too, man. Yeah.

I feel like she's old enough to, like, go out there and grab some candy for free now? Nah, trying to give her too much candy. She gets a little too hyper. We gave her a boba yesterday, and, like, she was, like, screaming her head off, like, till, like, 9 o'clock. It was pretty bad. I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to give kids' boba to begin with, right? Yeah, I know. Well, speaking to hyper, everyone, we have a very special guest today.

this person is someone who, I would say, if they were to embody one of the N60 core values, it's definitely pursue passion. And I'll tell that story in a little bit why I think that. But give it up everyone, claps in the chat for Sean from our creative team. Hey, how's it going? Great, how be you, Sean? How are you doing?

You're good. Are you excited to be on? Yeah. fun stuff. I'm not known for being a quiet person or not talking a lot, so it's a perfect opportunity. That's great. That means I just have a much easier job today, right? Yeah, from competition. So, Sean, what do you do at NZXT? I am the vice president of design and brand. It's a very long title.

And like, what does that mean? Like, what are you in charge of? Like, what? Who do you run? Like, what's the, what's it look like? So all of the design teams report up into me. So that's the industrial, creative, and interactive, what we often call pillars. So it's common to kind of passively refer to the teams as creative. But for us, that refers to one of our large main design teams. But my responsibility is kind of leading.

setting the vision for all design and NZT. We're a centralized design company where we do all of our design across, you know, one effectively large team, although the pillars and the stalls are their own teams. So, yeah, my job is making sure that our design experience is consistent across everything, that our customer experience is really good, that everything is looking good and sharp and living up to our DNA and our values. And generally speaking, putting the customer first, making sure we're asking if our products and our experiences feel really good overall.

And then just making sure that all our awesome designers have space and room to do their job. So that's kind of what I focus on. Okay. That's actually really, really awesome. What does your daily work routine look like? And let's just say it's like pre-COVID rate. So let's say you're in an office. I didn't remember.

Were you ever in an office or were you always remote? I forget. So actually, since I started consulting at DXT before I joined full time, I have been to the office a number of times. But yes, actually since joining full time, I've not actually been to the office. So if I were to speculate what it would look like pre-COVID, I drink a lot of coffee and a lot of like usually one-on-ones in meetings. I'd say an average day kind of usually starts with double checking what all the creative teams are working on. Usually if we're working on if an event is coming or a product launch is coming, I'm usually, you know, very, very quietly, you know, checking out what's going on through the different design teams and making sure that they have any feedback or they need any help. Otherwise, if I'm not working on that, then I'm starting to work with other leaders and executives to kind of work on.

new strategy or to discuss things that need to get done. Or as a right now, I'm trying to figure out if we need to hire people or getting jobs or interviewing people and that kind of thing. So I know it's not really a day in the life, but I feel like I tend to do a lot of meetings where I'm giving feedback or trying to understand what the design teams need for me. So it's usually taking the blame or getting them more resources or more time to do their work. I would say that kind of does sound like a day-to-day kind of thing, right? And in the sense of like you're not doing the same thing like every single day, right? You're not like, for example, if you're a builder, right? If you're doing anything but building, we kind of would question like what's going on, right?

Because like I feel like since you're charged with like so many teams, there's so many things you have to kind of like be dialed into, right? And the reason why I was saying earlier that I feel like you're, you definitely like embody pursue passion is because I think it was last Friday. It might have been last Friday or maybe the Friday before. I had a question for you. It was a design-related question. And it was definitely something that, like, Jin or Irene or, like, Helen could help me with, right? But I was like, hey, Sean, you know,

since you're probably going to see this in some capacity, I just want to get your thoughts on this one design thing. And you're like, okay, yeah, sure, you know, give me a second. And then, you know, you get back to me, you give me some feedback. And then you go, hey, actually, give me another second. You're back 30 minutes later. And you have, like, two full, like, like,

like full concepted out designs at like 930 at night, like PST. And I was like, dang, this is actually really, really cool. I wasn't that impressed because they had typos in them. Yeah. It is true that I often, so in my role, I don't often do any of the actual design work that you see. That is our massively talented teams. But one of my ways of direction, which any of one of the ones, team will tell you is that I'll often be like, okay, guys, I have a really bad idea,

which I'll always preface that. Because usually what I'm trying to do is thought-provoke our team or to give them a little bit of creative direction. Ultimately, Jin, Chin, respectively are, you know, creative directors on their own right, so they don't necessarily need that. But often I like to kind of stoke the, kind of set the tone or the direction or kind of give the team a little bit of push toward always doing something like the, one of the, one of the values that I love is the relentless pursuit of perfection.

That's one of those things where it's not about the fact that we're not proud of what we do or that we don't do excellent things. It's just kind of always figuring out how we like take it up to 11, how we do something at a very high quality level. So even something like what we were talking about with that concept, it was the question of, I see what you're asking, how do we do this in a way that's going to be delightful, it's going to be of excellent quality. Let's just do it a little better every time. So sometimes as a designer myself, it's easier to think in visual terms and jumping in Photoshop. But I always call it a bad idea because it's always meant for the design team to take it and spend the appropriate amount of time to create a good design without typos, for instance, and then come up with something. So usually they come up with something far better than I actually come up with. But I like kind of poking, poking it with the stick or really like kicking off the idea.

And that's often what I'm doing is usually setting tone or I often. say that part of my job is repeating things. So repeating, like, what things are important to us and what we should prioritize. And yeah, so I often, and also it's like an excuse to go back into Photoshop or sketch and mess around when I ordinarily do not do it. And I actually had a meeting with Sean yesterday about a project I'm working on. And I really appreciate all the questions you ask because it helps keep everyone on track, you know, and they're good questions, because it's like if we don't ask ourselves these questions, it's very easy to, like, lose focus and, you know,

lose sight of what we're trying to accomplish. So thank you for that. Happy to help. I said I'd like to talk. So questions are just one point. For sure, like, I would even say it was, like, a bad idea because, like, what you came back to me with was, like, so, like, not what I was expecting, right? Like, I, my thought was, like, literally text on, like, a card, and you're like, no,

let's do it this way. And I was like, oh, snap. Like, this guy put cursive on it and everything, right? So, like, it's one of those things where, like, it's nice to, even like at like the VP level, I can just come to you and ask you a question. And, like, you'll come back with something that, like, I can actually work with and, like, take back to the rest of the teams. But guys, it's a great idea.

Let's work on this way. You know, let's, let's do it this year. Do it that way. Really early in my career, I forget even where I read this. I mean, I might even be able to mentor that told me this. They said that the brand is not like your logo or your colors or your products. It's the sum of the experiences with your entire company. But, you know, I've obviously said that in presentations, even at NCXT,

but I really take that idea at a heart that it doesn't matter what thing we're doing. If we're not doing that thing to the absolute, excellent level, and those things don't connect together to make a really great experience, then we're not going to be able to deliver the kind of experience. that we want for everybody. So to me, it's like nothing is a, nothing should be treated as a weak link. Nothing, it doesn't get time spent on. Nothing isn't an opportunity for us to do a better job.

So that's part of why I kind of, I'm always, I'm always interested in. It doesn't matter what we're doing. Right. It should be an excellent quality. And, you know, it builds up over time, you know. It's just kind of like when you go to a really nice restaurant. And, like, everything is working together, like, fantastic, like environment, good lighting, waiting staff, the menu's just right, it all works well together.

The acoustics are good. All those little details really build up to have like a great experience. And, you know, it's really easy to have a bad experience, ruin an otherwise good one. Like if you ever been to like, maybe you're at that restaurant, you're having a fantastic time. And then someone like, you know, trips and the entire like food falls all over you. You're probably going to remember the food getting spilled all over you and not so much everything else. So that's kind of why I spend a lot of time. Even the advertising we put out, we don't necessarily improve everything,

but we always make sure that it's really high quality, that it's matching our guidelines, that it feels exciting and creative and stuff like that. That's great. You mentioned a few times some places you worked out previously. What'd you do before in ZXTA? A couple different places. Primarily, before I was at NXT immediately, I was at Blizzard Entertainment for about five years.

I did a large variety of things at Blizzard, but I started there as the design lead for the mobile team. So we worked on, and actually this is where I ultimately with the reason I'm here is because of Justin, our VP of marketing, we worked together at Blizzard and led the mobile team there. And I worked on things like the BlissCon app, the if you use the one button authenticator, the ballot, on that app, BlisCon app. I said that already. Overwatch League app, you know, basically if you use a mobile app that wasn't a game, we worked on that.

And then eventually I was promoted into what Blizzard's titles are all made up. So I was printed what's called a group design manager for the web and mobile organization. So for a while, I was leading all of the web and mobile designers, you know, perhaps not surprisingly, that do all the websites, mobile apps, content management backend systems. And then eventually after a couple of years, I was also leading the big data team for a while. So prior to leaving, I kind of like skewed very heavily from working on a lot of supportive apps to like by the time I was, I was, I ultimately left. I was doing a lot of tech integration and work behind the scenes on all the new games and all the current ones. So prior to that, I've been in the game industry for a while, way, way back at the beginning of my career when I was.

I was like 16. I was working at game battles that then became major league gaming. And then I was working at Activision. I did Greg Hastings tournament paintball. I did a couple of game designs, like one that I'm proud of, not proud of, the deadliest catch game on Xbox 360. That sounds awesome. What's that?

That sounds awesome. Like I said, I was proud of it at the time. I worked with Sig Hansen on it and stuff. And then I worked. on a bunch of other titles like World Series Poker. And then I started my own company in Atlanta after a brief stint working in Germany for BMW. That didn't pan out. I went back to games.

And I started my own company and we worked on all sorts of like mobile things. So we worked for, worked on Guitar Hero for mobile, a lot of stuff for 3D realms. So like Prey and Duke Nukem, all sorts of things. And so you would think that led me to Blizzard, but actually I eventually started doing like websites and doing a lot. more interactive stuff at my company because that's where a lot of the money is. Games, the cycles are long, so you might, you know, get a lot of money, but you have to basically work for six months before you get paid. So to pay all my employees, we were doing websites, applications, anything that came in the door. So we did a large variety of stuff.

And then eventually I moved out to California when Facebook games were all their age. And that was the new hotness to do. So I worked on a couple of Facebook games that you've never heard of because they're Facebook games. And then eventually I left that and I was working in startups. I was kind of like, you know, I'm going to leave gaming behind. And I worked at places like Hotel Tonight. I worked for a seed investment firm first round capital. So I worked kind of as a consultant for a lot of big companies like, you know, Pinterest and Uber and all that kind of stuff. And then I was working for a number of different kind of mobile analytics firms like because of Hotel Tonight, mobile was my new hotness. So that's ultimately what led me to

to work for Blizzard because I was still in the gaming, but I was like, oh, I can do, I can do mobile and side experience for games, my true, true passion, and I can still do it in San Francisco. And then they tricked me a year later and closed the office and me and Justin and a number of our team moved down to Orange County. Because I never wanted to live in Orange County, to be honest, but I'm fine with it now. Now I have a house in Orange County, so they got me down here. Shout out to Hotel Tonight. That's like one of my favorite apps of all time. Seriously, it's so awesome. You know, I actually still have free credit from them.

I had a room that was booked, like, right before COVID hit. And, like, once the news started hitting up, I think it was like in like March or something, I sent an email like, hey, like, can I get my money back? Because I don't think I want to go outside right now. So I still have, I still have a free credit for like a nice hotel wherever I want. So I just like it because it comes in handy whenever, you know, you're just like in a random city and you don't want to drive home and you're like let me just let me see what rooms are available and you get a room for like $60 or something like in a nice hotel they always have like really good

good offers and super easy that was also one of the ones where uh I like the I wasn't sure I was I was I wanted to work there when I was like talking about it but the CEO like had coffee with me and kind of talking about the vision that was the thing where I was like oh I guess I am excited about hotels and end up being a really fantastic company to work for so And I think we won a couple of Apple Design Awards and stuff like that. So I'm still super proud of all the other people there. We used that for our honeymoon. We had our honeymoon in San Francisco and we stayed there for a week.

And every night we just like walked around or every day we walked around San Francisco. And wherever we were at the end of the night, we just like booked the hotel room. It was pretty cool. I'm still at the point where I just, I still use hotel tonight, most everywhere I go. I prefer it. So. Yeah, I think I pretty much choose. This podcast is brought to you by Hotel Tonight.

That'd be no one thing is some sponsor for stuff like that, you know? Use code, Ivan 123, 123, 133, 1 through 37 for 1-3% off your next booking hotel tonight. Actually, I tried using it recently. I was in Huntington Beach and all the rooms are booked up. I was kind of bummed out. Yeah, it seems like a lot of people are like traveling. like around the area but like they're so for example like I'm going to to Lake Arrowhead this weekend and I was looking at the other like surrounding cabins where we're

going to be staying and these things are booked until like months ahead dude it's really crazy I think people are just like they just want to get out but they don't want to like go anywhere like public so they're just like booking a bunch of rooms and just chilling in places there's actually some some dudes down the street who are recording rap music videos on our street because there's like two Airbnb's like literally like like literally it's it's it's a whole gang of dudes and they're holding up like money I'm assuming it's fake money I don't know there's money but they're holding up money there's like a Jeep and like in like a sports car and they're recording awesome dude's phone so it's really really weird it also smells

really funnier around here so that's also cool too um so Sean um you mentioned that you got hired on through Justin, what was that conversation like? Do he be like, hey, come work for me or come work with me at NXT? Or like, did you like hop on right away? Like, how that looked like? No, I'm actually surprised that he kept on it. Because like, no, we, I think he tried for over a year, well over a year. Oh, wow.

So it was a very long conversation. It has more to do with the fact that Blizzard's a fantastic company. that is hard to leave. And it was kind of, you know, whether or not I wanted to do something, something new. You know, like I said, I was working a lot of stuff at Blizzard. So, and that was a thing where I think you all were aware of this. Like I did a little bit of work on the side, kind of like a couple different websites and small kind of consulting for NZXT earlier in the year.

But yeah, like I said, it was a very, very long conversation that I agonized over for quite a while before I eventually made And there was a lot of kind of different factors involved. So I know it's a very non-answer other than it took a long time. Right. But I think it ultimately comes down to Justin and I work very well together. And we have a lot of, we kind of enjoy a lot of the same things. So I think he ultimately got through to me with the similar values that NXT has and kind of the, like I mentioned before, ultimately, I got into the game industry originally because I was one of those kids that I wanted to make video games.

Everyone was like, ha ha, of course you do it, whatever. And then I ended up being like, no, I'm going to make video games. So like, I even went to school for that for interactive design and game development. And I kind of learned over my career as I've worked on, I've kind of like lived that life type of thing. Like I worked on enough games. And I definitely got to the point where I'm more excited about experiences and things that are peripheral around games. And what was happening as I, you know, I started to Blizzard into a place where we were doing things very supportive of the mission. And then, you know, by kind of my end of my time at Blizzard, I slipped back into game development.

And I found that I don't enjoy the act of working on games directly as much as I used to. They're pretty rough schedules. There's a lot of different focus that I don't enjoy as much. I like working out a lot of stuff. I like a lot of kind of these like side experiences. I love all types of games. So you tend to get more laser focused when you're working on that stuff. And especially in the world we were in where I was doing like,

like what are tech integrations? I wasn't really doing design in the most credible sense. I was actually, before I left for a year, I was a product manager. I was a group product manager leader in BattleNet over there. So like I said, I really enjoyed it. The teams are great. But I think Justin kind of hooked me on like, hey, you know, you really, I know what you love doing. And we're doing all of that in ZXT and more.

And then, of course, similar with hotels tonight, I would say that Johnny had a lot to do with it. he's definitely a fantastic leader and we align on a lot of different values and what's important. So I think definitely talking to him kind of helped convince me as well. All right. What is your favorite thing about working, I guess, in the creative department? Hmm. My favorite thing working in the creative department. That is a tough question.

I will say that part of what I like about design, even though I've, I'm constantly like, hey, we're not just visual artists, we're problem solvers. I think the fact that, like, there's a little bit of, a little bit of kind of pride and a little bit of like pangs of really good feelings you get when, like, a design is nailed, like, when it looks really, really good, when it feels, when it feels right. So that's something that I kind of get to vicariously get from everybody on the team. just like really I don't have to do any of any of that work I'm really just kind of helping direct to set the the motion of making sure they have space to do it but I can still really enjoy that and also like especially when an entire campaign across multiple things comes together like when we ship like a product a website you know a marketing campaign it

goes up like so everything that connects something that's that's something that I enjoy quite a bit And like, for instance, like, somewhat guilty pleasure, I watch like basically every unboxing video that's on YouTube just because I'm excited to see people, you know, using our products and like, I'm also trying to learn like what they do with unboxing, but I'm really just like, it's exciting to see people get excited about what you work on. And design gets to do that because we touch almost everything that goes out of the company in some shape or form. So have you seen the videos where people do like the ASMR unboxings of our computers and stuff?

I have I'm not quite as into ASMR but I'll enjoy it for for what it is must be very difficult to phone this yeah because like you have to be really quiet right the service has to be like

it's always white and super clean like heaven forbid you have like a sneeze in the middle like is like the whole video we're in do you have to like box everything back up like there's so many questions when it comes to ASMR especially with computers right because there's so many parts that go into them

well you also have to be like good enough to like slide your hand and fingers in such a way that you're creating all the sounds just like I don't know about you but that's that's not at all how I unbox things so like yeah I wonder to your point yeah if you like get halfway in and you mess it up or like you tear it the wrong way like do you only have one shot to get something out of a portion of the packaging um I mean I don't but like I just got my uh I just got my Elgada wave three right and when I was opening the box I was tapping every corner I was sliding my hands up and down it right that's just this just is how been trained to do now. Like I don't I don't open boxes anymore the same way ever since

since I started watching ASMR. It's it's always aesthetic now. Everything's about the aesthetic. All right. Sean, what's your what's your least favorite thing about working and creative? Oh my least favorite thing about working and creative. And you could be honest. Let's see. I don't know like these are our questions. It's designing creative work is pretty fun. I would say that it probably has more to do. Like if we, like very honestly, if we have too much stuff to do and we have to just get something out the door, that tends to be, it feels pretty bad for me.

Like, you know, we do a good, we know, we do a solid enough job, but we're just kind of getting out because we have to hit a deadline. To me, like, I want, I want the creative team to have, like, all the time in the world to iterate and explore and that kind of thing. And my least favorite thing is when we're,

we're like we have a million things to do. and we we only have enough time to really bust stuff out so we're good at it but you know it just means that it's not going to be quite as quite as cool or quite as creative as we wanted it to be but that's the reality of our business sometimes i don't know if that's a non-answer like one of the ones where someone's like what's your weakness and it's like that i'm too confident or something go we're too good at getting stuff out that's definitely my weakness for sure i i work too hard yeah i'm too much of a team player exactly but i mean i asked dennis on his interview he just said that he's dumb and i said

Perfect. You're hired. I need a dumb guy. Oh, actually, I have a secondary answer, too, for this as well. It's not really something at NZXT, but it's true of the game industry sometimes. It's like, sometimes you'll deal with people that are really, really flexible. I'm not going to call any names out or anything, but they'll deal with companies that are really, really flexible with, like, brand and stuff, and you can do a lot of really fun and creative stuff.

And there's other companies that are just like, no, it must be white and black, have a nice day. And to me, that is one of my least favorite things is when, like, we could be doing insane, stuff, but you know, we happen to be working with a company that has very stringent brand guidelines. And not that we don't, but to me, the part of the fun is the kind of creative aspect. Like, we're in the game industry. We can have a lot of fun with these things. So that might be my least favorite thing is when we're put into a situation where we're just like not allowed to be creative or not allowed to do something delightful. We just have to kind of do the white, do the white and black thing. I almost make like, oh, put it in white and black is like a

synonymous thing with, we can't, we can't have fun with it. Right. Yeah, I don't want to name names either, but that is really annoying. Like when we have to do something and it's just like, we can't really we can't experiment with they, we don't have to like be very serious. This is not something that happened at NZXT

but my classic example of this is like way, way back when I worked for, even though I just came from working at Air Quotes Activision, I used to work at Activision proper like back in 2007. And I was working on the cover, cover art for

Greg Hastings, which was, at the time, Activision had a publishing label called Activision Value, which I'm sure you can guess, like, what kind of games they had. So it was kind of like more of their lower tier label. I remember working at something, and I did something where I took the logo, the Activision logo, and I put it in orange or something, and I thought it looked really good. And it looked really good on the cover. And they were like, no, no, the Activision logo is only white or black. Oh, my God. You only put it in white or black. You can only do this. And it really, like, It bummed me out so much that I still remember it. So I think that we kind of got away with some of the stuff for Greg Hastings,

term paintball maxed, where like I kind of nudged it into some of the advertising. So like I, you know, I did like the, what's the wolf, the baby wolf meme? I kind of still, still won. But that's kind of my classic example of like Activision proper was never any fun with their branding. Like they're not like EA or Blizzard where like they'll, they'll, they have. have brand guidelines, but you know, they'll let you mess with the logo and have fun and put texture around it and change it based on the game. So that's my, that's my really old example of, yeah, you can. It's on the chat. You someone put a picture of that of that game.

That's me. Yeah, yeah. Logo in white, just imagine if that was nice and orange and bold. I thought it was cool. Yeah, there was a situation, I think a few weeks back, and I remember, and I'm definitely not going to name any names, but like there is a page that went up and I, and I, and I saw the logo and I, and I, I think the first thing I did is I ran to the creative team. Like, guys, like, this looks really bad. Like, does someone screw up on, like, adding this logo? And like, no, like, that's how the logo looks. This is what they wanted to look like.

I'm like, are you serious? Like, yep, like, they're not going to budge on it. We already asked, like, 20 times. They don't want to change. I'm like, okay. I'm like, it doesn't look good on the page, but, you know, this is what they want. It's what they want. Right.

And I always find it interesting because, like, we're, we're pretty strict on our branding as well, but I feel like we have like enough of like a wiggle room to kind of make it look interesting, right? Or like make it look fun. Definitely. All right. Here are the big important questions, Sean. Get ready for this one. Okay.

Johnny's listening. He's always listening. What is your favorite? What is your favorite NZXT product? My favorite NZXT product is probably the H510 elite, which is what I have on my desk. It just, it brings me a lot of joy. It's a very beautiful computer. and like, I don't usually change my RGB lights like when I'm working, but I have many, many cam themes.

And for me, like, doing, like, especially like if I'm playing a game, like, I have a Jarvis theme for playing Marvel's Avengers. I have like a get-to-grandmaster heroes theme for playing heroes and so on. And there's something about like the H-510 elite that those, that kind of front panel just gives it that kind of full 360. So obviously not a 360. I'm very exaggerating. But for me, like, it's a, it sparks a lot of joy when I come into the room where I look at it and stuff like that. I would say that the crack in Z is a close second. Putting gifts on your AIO is pretty fun.

But I think from a pure, like, clean design aesthetic perspective, like the elites, pretty good. No, it's great. I love mine. Like, it's not very often. where like I'll look at a case and say I wanted to buy that like on launch like on release like the first day that like ever comes out and I definitely did that with the elite like it was like it was the one case that really made me go all right time to ditch my H440 right I'm going for this case I mean it's basically the one that's basically the reason that I don't have a craft case because every time like oh I want that craft case I'm like but then I can't can't have my H510 elite we should have a craft elite case it'll be like $500 or something right It's so ridiculous. I don't talk to Jeff about it. All right, let's do it.

Okay. What is your least favorite NXT product? Least favorite. I mean, I'm sure everybody dodges around that question, but honestly, I don't know if this even like really counts. So my least favorite is actually, I don't think we make it anymore,

but we had a chair that's NZXD, and it's a really good looking chair, but it is a very uncomfortable chair. So that's probably my least favorite. It's funny to say that. Because I think the opposite. I think it's a very ugly chair, but super comfortable. Like, I hate the, I hate the fact that the logo on the back is sideways,

and I hate that it looks like a race car chair. Like, it looks really hideous to me. But it's, for some reason, it's, like, super comfortable on my back. I mean, I'm, I wouldn't say famously, but I'm definitely, like, not a big fan of gaming chairs in general. And actually, like, a side story, like, And then recently, I have a lot of like mid-century design at my home, which probably won't surprise everybody. But I had like a mid-century chair that my wife got me that is not designed to sit on like, you know, pandemic-wise.

And it broke. And then I went to, you know, everyone in NZXT and I was like, hey, what gaming chair should I get? I can get a gaming chair now. And basically no one told me to get a gaming chair. Everyone was like, oh, get a steel case or get a Herman Miller or blah, blah, blah. So I ended up getting a steel case. But I still kind of just thought, you know, with the NZXT chair, like, hey, maybe that's just the gaming chair thing. It just looks like a racer chair, but it's not comfortable.

Yeah, I don't know why that's the thing. I don't know who decided that gamers had to sit in a race car seat to play video games. Our speculation has always been that, like, it's because very comfortable chairs are not visible on camera. And after streaming, you got to have your sweet looking chair on camera, right? You got to be in the race seat. But, yeah, I don't know. Like, I think, like, for me that chairs, especially office or gaming chairs, like, should ultimately be comfortable. first and uh anyway so that being said i'll still like i'll still take a free chair it's just uh

yeah for sure no i think um who was it was it uh i think it was mike like first day he was in the office this is in mike newton right and he sits in the in the gaming chair and the first thing he complains about is that he's too tall sitting in the chair because he's like he's like six five or something something like something really nuts Okay, Sean, what product would you like to see NXT make? Maybe anything in the world, but what would you like us to put our NXT magic on? The NZXC spices, yeah. Hmm.

That's an interesting question because, like, my mind goes back and forth between if they're their PC things or if they're, like, entirely other products. Right. But like, so like how realistic does this answer have to be? As realistic as you want it to be. Because like there's part of me that like wants to design a car. I don't think we should do that by any stretch of the imagination. That'd be awesome.

But like having seen like Dyson design a car, which like I'm kind of sad is never going to happen. I'm a really big fan. And I think from an industrial design perspective, we often talk about car design and stuff like that in terms of that. So that seems like a crazy thing that I would enjoy seeing. Let's see, I think for a more realistic product that I'd like to see us make, hmm, it's like so there's part of me that would say like a like a very like specialized type of like hard wrap monitor or something. But I also feel like that's, you know, that's a very specialized thing. Like, you know, the kinds of monitors that you need to make the massive, like, elite dangerous gaming chairs?

Yeah, yeah. That'd be pretty cool. But I think there's a pretty small market. And, you know, that's not exactly realistic either. But I'm very into monitors being a designer, obviously. I'm recently very into 34-inch monitors. So now I've been enjoying all the different insane stuff that they're doing with these, like, monitors that have no business existing. So, but I feel like the amount of things that I want out of that is not something that we

would really design just because of the it's not simple at all it's actually quite complicated but yeah all right that's definitely um i to be honest i think a car is more feasible than like a rap monitor to be under sound to you because i think like once the electric like overlords take over then like this is pretty much free rate for anyone to make a car now i don't think they're going to have cars. You think so? No. All right.

All right. So that's it for my questions. Ivan, I feel like you got a couple questions for Sean, don't you? Oh, yes, I do, Dennis.

Thank you for that great segue there. I guess my first question for you, Sean, is why the heck does everyone call you by your last name? That's actually a good question. So I think it's just fun to say. And I've I've worked in many places where there are many Shons. So like the and of course, there's all, they're often spelled differently.

I spell it the correct way, S-H-A-W-N. But I don't know. I think that honestly even goes back to high school to be like, you know, I was I was well-known as an artist in high school. And I didn't, like, but I also. played football and baseball and tennis and stuff. And people would just walk by and just be like, hey, Borski. And I'd be like, hey, and I'd be like, I don't know that guy at all. I don't know who it is.

So I feel like it just must be fun to say. And so I really just embrace that. That's why a lot of my current gamer tags are de Borsk. My freelance identity is like the Borski. Like, I just kind of embraced that it's easy to say. And people are saying it. It's definitely a fun name like Borski, Borski, Borski. I remember when, like when, when, when, when,

Justin first started working here and you would always talk about Borski Borski. I was like, who the heck is this Borski guy? I thought it was like your first name for like the longest time. But I love that your Twitter handles the Borsk. It is a fun name for, I don't know what it is, but it's a real fun name to say. I don't know. I call you Borski. I always call you Sean.

I don't know, maybe I'll just start calling you Borski. I mean, you're welcome to do both. Part of it is also, I mean, that wasn't my gamer tag for a while, but now especially if you play like wow with me it's also like pretty easy to riff on so like all of my my wow characters are like uh like i have a wargen warrior that's named borscarar which works pretty well uh where there's like uh you know i have like borscaracanist or you know uh it's just it's just like pretty easy like borscrow you can just really you can just run with it so like i have 40 characters that i i really never play except for the top three so it's just it's just got legs you know

Speaking of legs, and everything that has legs that I've noticed is every once in a while, when I'm in a meeting with you, I'll see like a random reptile like in the background or like walking around. Like, what's up with the reptiles, man? Like, how many reptiles do you own? Yes, I have many lizards.

So since I've, I'm in a different house now, so they're no longer visible, but I used to have my office, for everyone that's listening, my office and the reptile room was the same room. room because we were in a much smaller house. So my wife works at like, she's into, she's into animals. She worked at the aquarium with the Pacific.

She worked at Petco. So we kind of just acquire animals, but we got into reptiles early on. So what we, so we're actually like pretty low right now in terms of our peak lizard that we have. But right now we have a panther chameleon named Fibonacci Bon on. There's a whole story behind that name that we don't have time for. Sorry. I'm panther chameleon. He's a, he's a panther chameleon. Actually, if you look at my profile picture, he's visible in it. He's, he's teal white and red. His father was named AquaFresh.

You can kind of tell why. Yeah, I dropped a picture in the podcast channel of that lizard. Okay, cool. So he's probably, I don't, I want to say we have favorites, but he's definitely like a prized animal. We've had a number. of camellions before. We've had Panthers. We've had Jackson's. So right now he's our only chameleon. The other ones have recently passed away. We've had a number of veiled camellions as well. They have very creative names like pinchy, because if you're familiar with camillians, they have little like... Hey, hey, no bad words. Not bad words.

So we also have three bearded dragons. So we have Squishy, Liz Bearden, and Ubaba. Then we also recently passed away, we had a Savannah monitor named Grumpus Jr. He had a metabolic bone disease that he was a very short Savannah monitor. But pretty sweet. We also have a three tarantulas. They're all rose hairs. My wife would like hate to be inside your house, dude.

You know, honestly, tarantulas are basically, like all of them are super chill. Like we, we, so it's basically because like lizards really don't take that much as long as you craft their environment properly. But yeah, so we have three rose hairs, Blanche, Tarantina, and, well, Blankin on the third name. I'm a terrible spider parent. Charlotte?

Charlotte? We know we did not name a spider, Charlotte. Anyway, we also have a cat named, we call her cat, but her name is Chexnix. So she's the most normal animal we have. Yeah, so you just hit the nail on the head right there, like, quote unquote, normal animal. Like, reptiles, you know, lizards and spiders and snakes and all these.

He's like... Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. We don't know of a snake, I forgot. We have a, we have a hog nose named Turrup. He's a very short snake. He looks like a chariot. What made you get into these animals, man? I think Rachel, my wife definitely got into them before I did, but they're, like I said,

we're kind of lazy. Like, we work really hard, and then we're lazy the rest of the time. So I think we find that they're kind of they're very enjoyable animals to have like crafting the environment for animals pretty nice but also like you can go on vacation you know have to like really get a pet center that's there for more than one day. So it's a thing where they're really good pets if you want to be like lazy. And is that kind of thing?

I don't know that there to me there's a lot of interesting like I listen to the Chameleon Camelian podcast and stuff and they talk a lot of about crafting the environment and understanding animals. So I don't know, just we were always into animals in general. We actually in high school, both of us worked as vet techs at the same vet. So I think it's just an extension of that. It's like, well, it's hard to have like a lot of cats or a lot of dogs. We've actually struggled to get other ones because like, you know, the cat we have,

we got her at the Humane Society in Atlanta. She's been all over the country with us. So like, every time we try to add like a new cat or a new dog, she has to like that her dog, which doesn't really work well, usually. But she doesn't care about the lizards. We can get as many as we want. Cats are also good, lazy people, pets, because they can take care of themselves.

I don't think they need owners. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we have a lot of, all of our pets are lazy. We're kind of like, we might get a dog at some point, but, you know, it doesn't fit the lazy criteria. The dogs definitely require a lot of, a lot of, like, time and attention. My sister just got a dog, and that thing is so needy. Like, she's like, he's like the saddest little dog in the world,

because she's a rescue, so we have no idea what her old life was, but she'll sit there staring at you, like, the most sad face and we're not even doing anything. All right, my next question for you, Borski, is for, you know, you claim to be a designer and creative, but my question is then why the heck is your wallpaper on your setup off-brand? I just dropped a picture of it here in the podcast. podcast channel. You don't know what I'm talking about. I noticed this picture or this video on your

Twitter feed. It has the old NZXT logo, man. Now, to be fair, to be fair to me, I have multiple images that rotate on my, my desktop. I happen to really like that shot. You're talking about there's one where it's basically a top-down, like photographic shot of a crackin, or an older crackin that I really like. But everyone, everything else is a community wallpaper with the exception of my main wallpaper is actually our high-beast, high-resolution one, which I really like. So, and also, I love all of our past branding. It's part of our history, sir. I'll let it slide, Ben. So, but yeah, like I said, it rotates. It goes through about 15 different NZXT wallpapers.

Got you. For at least the lock screen. So. All right. My next question for you is, why the heck do you like candy corn? That's like the most disgusting candy in the world. I noticed you posted this picture of candy corn on your Twitter. And I had this one point about earlier, I love Halloween. And to me, like, Halloween is the best time of year. And the one thing I hate about Halloween is candy corn. Like, I get better. We did have a complicated conversation about candy corn right now. Okay. So I don't, I don't think I like candy corn. But I don't, not like it. What? I kind of subscribe to the Lewis Black joke that all the candy corn ever made was made in

like 1955 and they just keep collecting it and cleaning it every year and then rep Putting it back out into the into the workforce of candy corn. So the thing I posted specifically is like a sour worm brand like candy corn that Rachel got. And I feel like you must experience them not because they're good, but you also keep eating them. Like, it's like they, they achieve this combination of, like, pretty not great candy corn flavor and pretty interesting sour gummy worm flavor. And it comes together in this cacophony of flavor that just doesn't quite work, but it also does. Like, you kind of like, whoa. Oh, no, man. You just keep eating it. But so for me, like, candy corns are like one of those

things where they're just good enough to keep munching on them. And, like, your body's like, well, this is sugar, but you're also not like, you're never like, man, I'm glad I ate that. So that's kind of where I am. I'm like I'm kind of not on Team Candycorn, but I also am. Like I said, the sour one, you all should totally get it, just so you can experience what it's like for your mouth to have no idea what to do. It's just like doesn't know what to do with these flavors. So it creates a new experience in and of itself that's like kind of weirdly addictive.

And I feel like they must have engineered it at the trolley factory. Like must have been like testing all the warm. lens. Everyone was like, I just, this one's just, it's, it's got the sour, the sour addiction something, like the addiction sprinkle that kind of makes you keep eating it. So that's my, my feel about candy corn. All right. I'll have to give it a try, only because I am a Halloween fan. I'll, I'll give it a shot, but I don't expect I'm going to like it. But another, you definitely, you definitely won't like it, but you'll keep eating it. Another thing I noticed that I do like is

apparently you recently learned how to make pasta from scratch and I love pasta. Like I, goodness will tell you I had pasta last night and I actually cut a meeting with him short because I wanted to eat pasta. So, yeah, like how do you get into making pasta, man?

That's pretty awesome. So, yes, thank you for, I'm actually very proud of my pasta. Looks delicious. Not because like, I've always been into to cooking quite a bit. And recently, especially during the pandemic,

we've kind of gone up and down between ordering like tons of takeout and being like, wow, this is really unhealthy, we should cook. So perhaps everyone's heard of it. I've always been a really big fan of the cooking show on YouTube, Binging with Babish. And he basically has a number of episodes

where he makes a bunch of stuff, he always makes things for scratch. And whenever they're making pasta, we would always be like, wow, it looks like so much work. Why would you do so much work? And then he did a couple episodes. And then when he moved into a new house recently, my mother, like, I'm kind of one of those people where I don't need a whole lot. I'm giving my coffee and some games and I'm fine. So she's always excited if she can find stuff she can buy for me that will actually use.

So she was like, oh, I'm getting you a kitchen aid mixer. What are you going to do with it? And I was like, I don't know. I saw on Babbage that he uses these like pasta extensions. So her and my grandmother sent me this kitchen aid with pasta extension. So I was like, well, now I got to do it. And I'm kind of curious. And I also love the idea of the real food diet, which is like basically a, I don't know that I'm doing it right now.

But it's kind of a diet where it posits that you can eat anything as long as you make it from scratch. So I was so I'm definitely a pasta fiends. So to me, this was an idea of like, okay, the rule should be that we can't just like dump an entire box of and be like, well, that's reasonable. I'll have to make it myself. So I gave it a shot. You know, we got some flour. I got pulled up the Babbage video.

And it's like surprisingly easy to do in terms of like, you get like a pretty good workout because you do a lot of like dough eating, but it's just like eggs, flour and oil. And I also like how unlike other types of like bakingish things, there's not really a formula. Like you can like pretty much you can't mess it up. There's just like you can put more egg in there. You can put like more olive oil. Like it'll get worse on the calories. But there is something definitely very satisfying about getting it to stick together.

And since you beat the crap out of all this gluten, you have to let it recover from its trauma for a while so that it's ready to cut. And then you basically, you said I'm cheating a little bit because I ran it through, you know, I'm using a pasta machine to do the cutting of the spaghetti and of the fetuccini. But I will say that something about making it fresh is very, very delicious. It just kind of, it registers differently. Like, we haven't even been doing that much to it, just putting, like, regular rabbiata or tomato sauce on it, but it's very, very satisfying. And it is a lot of work.

It's, like, a lot of kneading and hitting it in dough. So, also, if you want to get, like, your anger out on something, you can definitely do it with dough. It'll take a lot of effort. So, yeah. You ever heard of pasta lung? No. What the hell?

Yeah, like, it's like the pasta chefs that are, like, you know, making pasta all day long. Like they developed this thing called pasta lung from inhaling all the, seriously, like, look into it. Wow. Yeah. But there's a, I'm going to, I don't know if you ever heard of this restaurant, but I'm going to recommend it to you. You should definitely take your wife there. It's super fancy.

It's called Felix. I'll drop the link in the podcast chat. But this guy, he makes the pasta from scratch, like right in front of you, and it's amazing. Evan. Evan Funk is his name. He's like a pretty famous chef. But if you ever get a chance to you, man, check out this restaurant in L.A. It's really good. I too love pasta.

Once we can go out to society, I will eat it all the places. My next question for you is, this one actually Dennis wrote down, so I don't know the context behind it, but he wanted me to ask you if you prefer Star Trek or Star Wars. That answer has changed over time, but currently I prefer Star Trek. Why?

Although I am a Star Wars fan. I am slightly less of a fan of the newer stuff, although I don't hate it or anything like most people do. I also worked on a Star Trek game, so I'm real big fan of the original series. The TNG is fun as well. Although I'm a bad Star Trek fan because I still haven't watched the Picard thing, but it's more because I don't want to get the CBS ad, not because I don't want to watch it. but uh definitely star trek i think i too dislike apps from major conglomerates they're never good uh speaking of video games uh that you worked on i don't know if

you worked on this for or not but apparently um you like a marvel game that everyone hates uh uh if we're talking about marvel's avengers i definitely didn't work on it i know people that worked on it but uh uh i just uh i just enjoy i've just been enjoying i mean i do enjoy uh i'm like one of those people where i think you can be a connoisseur of something and go in it too hard like you can try too hard to try you too hard to analyze something like uh like i'm one of those people that likes you know taco bell and del taco uh as a thing where it's like oh you can you can you can be like you know gatekeeping about like really like proper like Mexican-style food, or you can also like that.

It's like, there's just a spectrum of things, and I just like, I really enjoyed Marvel's Avengers. I've been playing it a lot with friends. It's got a ton of flaws. It's, you know, it's one of those things where, uh, and also like the discourse around, like, games like Last of Us Part 2 and Ghost of Shushima, it's just one of those things where I've just been enjoying how I can enjoy it because it's like a beat-em-up game with heroes. And I think for all the flaws, the team that worked on it really, um, clearly had put a lot of

effort into it. And it always, you know, I kind of also understand the idea of working on a game and having, like, the studio try to help you with a put a business model in the game that doesn't necessarily jive with what you're building. So I feel like I can see through a lot of the flaws to a game that I've really been enjoying playing. And also, like, I'm a total chill for like Marvel stuff. I enjoy Marvel and DC Comics. I just replayed through Injustice 2, even though I've beaten it twice, just because I, like, want to play a superhero thing. So I don't know, I go up and down with it. But I just like a game that's got a good sense of fun to it. It doesn't have to be art, you know, if that makes sense. It makes sense. But you just reminded me of something. You mentioned

that you like Taco Bell. And that reminded me about this conversation I had with you yesterday where I told you that I didn't like Olive Garden. And you're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, or no, Chili's. We're talking about Chili's. But then we're talking about Olive Garden. I was telling you all the restaurants I hate. And then apparently you like him. So, I guess, yeah, like, are you really a pasta fiend if you like Olive Garden, Sean? It's, you know, it's part of the same conversation of, like, do you love something holy? And you don't really worry about, like, the connoisseur-enthusiest aspect of it. Because I'm not here to tell you that, like, Taco Bell Chili's and Olive Garden are good in the traditional sense.

I'm not going to defend it against, like, better examples of that food. but like it I don't know also are you guys familiar with a chain on the west coast called chevies i think it was called rio obrero bravo i've heard of it yeah So Chevies is like another example to me of like a type of text max that is like not objectively good, but its badness kind of makes it enjoyable. And like, so their margaritas are kind of like neon looking. Like they don't look good and they're very cheap. But there's something about that. So to me there's kind of like an element of Algarden and Chili's. Like I said, I wouldn't call them like certainly high quality, but there's something about them that I find, you know, very like guilty pleasure and enjoyable.

So I definitely am more into the breadsticks and the salad. Like actually, me and Rachel, using the Olive Garden branded salad dressing, have really replicated the salad. Fortunately, it's not a very complicated salad. But I think there's a lot to like about Alvgar. And I actually have not as into the pasta there as I am into the breadsticks and the salad. In the same way, I love the breadstick and salad, but just the pasta that I don't only like that much. I mean, I have to say, though, it's pretty hard to like mess up pasta.

Like, it's kind of like pizza where, like, you have to go really out of your way to make pizza that's unedible. Like, obviously, you know, you can do really, really good versions of it, but their pasta is functional. And to me, just the... And Chili's is also one of the ones where I just like... Their chips and sauce is really good. Their happy hours are really fun.

When me and Rachel were learning to do... We were doing scuba diving. It became like a thing for us to go scuba diving in the morning and then go to Chili's after. And there's something like really fun about doing something very healthy and then doing something very destructive. You know what I mean? So scuba diving is healthy?

Yeah, it's pretty good for you, actually, because you have to really be in shape, and you know, you work a lot, you burn a lot of calories. You enjoy nature. You get like a very kind of enjoyable aspect, and then you really tire yourself out, and you're like, man, I really need something that's like salty.

And even though, like, I think maybe some people will be like, no, don't drink an entire margarita after you in scuba diving, but we did it anyway. I've always been scared to go scuba diving because I don't want my eyeballs to, like, pop out of my head. I actually had to, not that this is exactly the same thing, but I actually had to get prescription goggles because I wear glasses and I don't wear contacts.

I haven't wore contacts for like 10 years or something. And I was like, oh, surely I can just like not wear my glasses underwater except that I'm blind as a bat, which is hilarious for a designer. So like I couldn't see like my dive computer or I couldn't see all the pretty fish in front of me. So I ended up getting prescription goggles, which is an interesting experience. Today I learned that they make prescription goggles for scuba divers. It's pretty impressive.

You actually do a test online. You look at different dots and you put different things in. It's also one of those things where it's very obviously a prescription. There's a portion of the goggle that's very clearly this giant thick glass. But it definitely made it more enjoyable. All right, Borsi, last question for you. So yesterday was International Podcast Day, and we learned that you also have a podcast. So I guess my question to you is, what is your podcast called?

Where can people listen to it? What's it all about? Yeah. So it's a podcast I do with my old business partner, Richmond Lee. I think his Twitter is actually Richmond underscore Lee. So something that he started when we were in college. So I know we went to college together. And my company aforementioned that we worked on.

We were partners and we did a lot of game design development together. So anyway, he's from Thailand. He lived in America for a lot. He moved back to Thailand. So he has a game studio there called Bit Egg, which is pretty cool. So y'all should definitely look that up. But we basically the name of this kind of magazine, thing we did is called Art Eater. you know, because we were always into, like, food and art and talking about that stuff.

So he had written, like, an article, I think it was about dark stalkers and animation. It really, like, blew up, you know, got a Kotaku, got shared online and stuff like that. And then he just has, like, a kind of a Twitter where he just shares, like, random nuggets. Like, he's one of these guys that knows freaking everything about everything. And really kind of interesting, is really able to deep dive into that kind of stuff. And we love very similar types of games that I found we were talking. we would often kind of reconnect and talk and we talk for like four hours

and we often would say like you know maybe we should just like record this because like a lot of gaming podcast nowadays are very like news focused you know like they're like oh what's going on in the industry what's coming out next which I think is fun but we're like hey no one talks about like all these games that we love all these like older ones

and sometimes they're not as positive so we wanted to be very positive about it we wanted to talk about like just the craft of it So he's worked on games. His brother is a professor, a game design professor at a university in Bangkok. Like, obviously I've worked on a number of games. So we were like, oh, let's bring the game design, the art animation, and like the UI kind of experience angle in to just talk about how well-crafted games are. So we don't really have like an agenda for it.

Like right now we're actually in the middle of a series of talking about Darkstockers. And we're just going into like the just like everything about like to like to design. gushing about the character design and the art and the music and the mechanics. We brought on a number of friends or people we know from the industry that are like experts or artists and stuff like that. And we, so we often bring a guest on to just talk about. So we tend to talk a lot about older games, a lot of like square Konami games. We will talk about new ones, but I'd say if you're, you're someone that's like really into older games, just wants to hear people kind of really deep dive into the influences and how they were crafted and like,

what artists worked on them. Like, that's just the kind of thing we get into. So it's called The Art Deater podcast. And it's part of this Art Deeder magazine. I also write really unnecessarily in-depth articles about, about, like, UI and games and stuff like that on Art Deater as well. So it's art-eater.com. But, yeah, it's mostly just more just talking about games.

I'll warn everybody. Our episodes are like three hours long because we go off on arbitrary tangents all the time. But I guarantee they're interesting. because it's like one of those things where usually Richmond and his brother are better at this than I am, but they'll just know some random thing. They'll be like, you know, this is an influence of this thing that happened to Japan in the 19th century. And then they'll go off for like 20 minutes talking about how those things relate and what it means from a historical context. So like if you like that kind of stuff, that's basically what is.

So we record weekly, but like I also edit the podcast and I'm not the least busy person in the world. So they tend to come out more like two weeks apart and stuff like that. But yeah, that's what I kind of do for fun other than playing games. Yeah, I just dropped a link into the podcast channel so people can check it out. Our ear. I'm going to listen. Our audio and production quality is not like that great. We basically just don't want a Skype call and talk for three hours.

And then I put the music in the front and the back of the episode. Well, you came to the right podcast, my friend, because neither is ours. That was my last question. So I guess now we'll get to the community question. So if anyone has any questions they'd like to ask Deborsk over here about his job or previous jobs or his reptiles or his pasta making or anything else, feel free to drop him in the chat

and we'll try to get through as many as possible. And Dennis, I think, is going to start setting up the Nitro giveaway now. So we'll get that going as well. Yeah, it's real quick though. I did want to mention to Sean, because I'm looking through his podcast stuff now. I know this is a lot of fighting game talking here. Very interesting because I'm actually a really big fighting game fan and I got my start in gaming in the fighting game community.

So it's really cool to see other people can continue that. I can actually give you a little bit of history real quick. One of the reasons why that is, so a lot of my really good friends that I have from college that I still stay connected to. So we actually met each other. A lot of my friends I met at a fighting game club at where I went to college, Savannah College of Art and Design. So we were very original.

The Fighting Game Club was called QCF, which I'm sure you will pick up on, you know, not the most nuanced reference. So a lot of the friends that I have that ended up going out and becoming successful artists for working in the industry, most of us bonded over like Third Strike and Jojo's Bazaar Adventure and like just meeting up and playing fighting games.

So like for me, fighting games is a very important. special place in my heart. So. Yeah, same here. I'm actually, like, I think one of the things I miss the most due to the pandemic is the lack of fighting game events. It's like, it doesn't feel the same, right?

Like, it's that genre of games needs to have either really, really good net code, which doesn't exist apparently, unless it's like, you know, Mortal Kombat or, like, live events and, like, not being able to just to watch Evo or something or watch, like, you know, first attack or, like, any of these events has been, like, a real big bummer. And like, it's really kind of just, that's really hammered into me, just like how different this year's been for myself and for like a lot of other people too. What, what specific like finding games scene have you been most into? So like I got started working under Alex Valle, actually, on the West Coast here. So I was helping set up like pretty much every event.

So I got to know a lot of people from like the street fighter community, the Marvel community, which is like hilarious. I love the Marvel dudes. They're awesome. And then, you know, the anime players, because they all play like 20 different games, right? The NRS players, I was involved in the arms scene for a bit, ripped that community. You know, I think it was just too, too ahead of its time. But I was like my main funny game is definitely Street Fighter. You know, it's just like, it's just the game that I grew up on.

It's the game like my dad played and, you know, my uncle's played. That sounds awesome. I'm super, I'm like a huge chill and fan for Third Strike. but I'm really terrible at it, unless I'm playing a boogie. That's trick is hard, dude. Okay, but this is so hard. Such a beautiful game, that, so. Okay.

Good many questions. Alan wants to know, Sox shoe, sock, shoe, or sock, sock, shoe, or sock, sock, shoe. So I think it's referring to how do you put on your socks and shoes. Do you go sock shoe than sock shoe or do sock sock sock and then shoe shoe? This answer is really changed since the pandemic, but, And in normal days, I go, I go sock, sock, shoe, shoe. Although recently, I've been doing no shoes and sandals. And I recently got, like, the Alburns loafers, just because I wanted them.

And that one I've been doing foot foot, which is different. For normally, like I said, I do, I do one at a time. So it's changed over time. It evolves with your lifestyle, I suppose. Okay. Yeah, I don't think of worn shoes. I only wear shoes when I go out now. Like, I think I've worn, I don't know what shoes I have anymore.

I just grab whatever I have. Like, it's just so weird. I have a funny pandemic shoe story. Go for it. My wife, like, she's like, why are you always wearing shoes around the house? Because I'm like, I'm very like an old man when it comes to, like, the way I dress. Like, I don't like wearing shorts. I always wear, like, you know, socks and boots.

And, you know, I don't dress like a t-a-old. teenager. I can't imagine you in shorts, dude. So, so, uh, she, she was complaining about that because she's like, you don't have to like, you know, dress up now. You can just, you know, wear shorts all day and sandals. And like, I didn't have any shorts or sandals. So I basically just ripped up some old jeans as jorts. I mean, she bought me, um, these sandals, but they're like the sandals like that are like the fong sandals where like your, your toes go like, you know, it goes like in between your big toe and your your, your next toe. And.

I hated it. It felt really weird to me. Like, I didn't like it at all. And I ended up getting blisters in between my toes right there. So then I switched in now. So now I'm rocking, like, the Adidas slides. But yeah, anyway, so now my outfit is basically every day I'm wearing jorts and Adidas slides around the house.

That's my pandemic fit. I don't know what to say, dude. I can't imagine you in like First off sandals to start But also shorts the shorts and sandals Yeah trust me neither can I Like it's not like my vibe at all But I figured you know what

She's right like why why am I wearing pants Why am I wearing socks? I got nowhere to go Yeah I'm wearing a lot of like Like basketball shorts or like Pajama shorts And then like usually a lot of like Just barefoot no shoes

because like, does someone here who cares, right? All right. Dude, George is so weird. Jesus. I think it's Neals, Niles. Okay, so real quick, by the way, guys, in the Pins is the giveaway. So this one's going a little bit longer. Two winners.

Please check out the Pins and react to that bot for the free Nitro. Next question is, believe is Niels or Niles? I don't know how to read. What's the best keyboard switch in your opinion? Um, that I have a very specific answer to, but I think it would have to be going to pull my board here, my like testing switchboard just to remind myself. I'm between the Cal Navy or the Cal Jade. I'm real into Cal Jades because like the up and down switch response to them. Like there's something like I'll, I have actually one of the switch boards right here.

Like can you hear it? Is it near the microphone? It's just set down and up switch. It's so nice. It's so good. I want to do like the, the Allie's ones, like the heavier weight switches,

but I've been told by many, many people that if I switch to those, that my hands are going to get tired. So, but I'm a big fan of KAL switches in general, to be honest with you. I'm rocking KL Box whites and everyone in the house has them. I think the keyboard I'm using right now,

this drop ball has Kiel whites on it. These are super, watch here. I'll show you what's up. You guys can hear that or not. Hold on some true ASMR. There you go. That's my super clicky keyboard.

It gets louder because I type it a little out, so it's, it's most like this. And then there's a space bar because, you know, there's always some space slap in there in the middle. Oh, yeah. My wife will sometimes take my, my, like, switch tester, and she'll, like, she'll, like, kind of just play with it for a minute. She's like, oh, the ASMR. She's like, I can't. I can only do it for a little bit. It just, it gets too overwhelming.

It's too stimulating. But it's too fun to. It's too good. You guys are both wrong. The correct answer is, uh, cherry. That's no, no. Yes. I am not a cherry fan at all.

I don't know if that sacrilege or something, but. I think people should put some more respect on cherry because like before all these kale's and everything else, all we had was cherry, right? And they served us well. And I think we need to remember where we came from and stop hating so much. Cherry still. You know what?

I'll attract a little bit. I like Cherry Blues a lot, actually. I think those are my first. first ones because I think I got like the first version of the Razor Black Widow when they had the blues in there and man didn't everyone of my family hate them yeah those are like really loud ones yeah there's super loud ones yeah I think the blues are the or the lattice ones yeah okay next question is from sweet what do you think about the future of nzxtee's cases What do I think about the future of them?

I think it's going to be cool. I'm not sure what the interest is in that question. Something at Blizzard, we used to say whenever someone would ask us if something else was coming out. We always just respond with it's going to be cool. So, I mean, I definitely think that we're going to continue evolving our cases as we have. But like I said, I know it's going to be cool. Otherwise, I don't know where else I can go with the question. Is that more kind of like asking like what kind of things we're going to prioritize?

I'm not sure. Some people are asking also like, is the future mesh for NZXT? And I think as the design. I never want to say like we're never going to do something because things change and you never do that. But I would say that in general, the circular geometric pattern that we use is one of our motifs is meant to be. be very functional and you could argue it's always meant to be functional it's never aesthetic but you could argue that having like mesh holes is functional for for airflow and stuff like that for thermals but a lot of our design is very restrained and the the kind of circular dot patterns

that would make up a mesh panel can be very distracting so we're very careful about where we put them So I would say that like that's one of the reasons why we're not, you know, jumping to put mesh on everything. It's a very careful pattern that we apply to a number of our products. And the, there's a lot of thoughtfulness that goes into where we put them. And sometimes it's the decision is where we don't put it. So I've definitely seen some fan, fan updates to the cases that I like. But I definitely, this is very intangible, but sometimes I look at them and it doesn't feel,

like something that we would do, it doesn't feel us. The other thing about it is, is that we get a lot of attention to clean geometric shapes and silhouettes, and mesh is not very, if you use too much, mesh or you use too much of the circular pattern, especially when we're doing cutouts and stuff like that. It's a little busy. So like I said, I never want to say, like, we'll never do it ever or something, but I would say that it's not a priority for us to make mesh things right. right.

You heard it here you hear first folks. He's the he's the boss. One of the bosses, so he's told him. What do I like to say, Dennis? We don't mesh around. Exactly. Don't mesh with me, right? All right.

Death Rage wants to know when are you going to make a game with Poochie? Should you make a Pucci game? That is a fantastic question. And I'm going to be real with you. I had not thought until this exact moment that we could make a game with Pucci, but we should make everything like we need to. I know exactly what the game should be if you want to hear it. It should be a platformer where Pucci is actually inside a computer and he's jumping over like

the computer parts. So like each computer part is a different level. And then at the end, you know, the final boss, I guess, if you beat him, uh, you. you'll have a computer that you can play video games on. A million dollar idea. Sounds good to me. I'm actually totally, totally interested in us doing that eventually, like what Adultswem used to do,

or we could do like a Pepsi Man style game or something. That game was awesome, Pepsie Man. So I don't know. Maybe not soon, but I'm definitely not against that idea. That sounds fun. Oh, and he can like shape shift into so many different things. Because I could definitely see us pulling off like a Mario Galaxy style thing with Fuji and yeah, in the world of computers. So I'm not against it.

I'm thinking it should be the game like, you know how Google Chrome has that game when you don't have internet and you just hit the space bar to make the little dinosaur jump? It should be that. That should be the look of style. And instead of jumping over cacti, it should be jumping over like the crack in radiators or something. Or like sticks of RAM or something like that. Jumping over airflow. That's pretty good. Avoid the airflow with Pucci, quick.

All right. Next one is that one we're going to answer. Opinions on Cod Cold War zombies. I haven't really been paying attention to Cod, to be honest. Those are going to blend like the same thing. Yeah, you know, so that was actually one of the last things that I worked on before I left a Blizzard, even though it's not, you know, from the battle on its side. And I played it a little early on.

And I got to say, like, I'm a bit burned out on Cod, at least personally. I'm one of those ones that I, like, always love to play through the campaign. And then I'm kind of, like, done with it for, you know, until they busted out again. So it looks really fun. I think it's fun to watch. It's just, like, not landing with me to play. The zombie modes really never have for me. Like I said, and I'm also, like, especially from a multiplayer perspective,

I know it's got kind of, you know, it's not the same multiplayer type thing, but I don't really play those kind of like style games. So I don't know, it's just a... I feel like they got to do something a little bit more creative, to be honest with you, in order for me to jump into the zombie modes. Yeah, I got burnt out with Call of Duty after Modern Warfare,

like the first one, like the one back in like 2000, whatever, whatever. The OG one. Yeah, yeah. I really enjoyed a war, like, I enjoyed Warzone for a little bit when we launched it. It was cool. Activision Blizzard and stuff, and I played the new modern warfare campaign. But I'm like, and I kind of geeked out when they did a lot of like the references to the old one. But like, yeah, I feel like, yeah, call of duty is, you know, I'm starting to get a little,

I'm starting to feel like Spider-Man to me. Like, there's just a little too much. Although Miles Morales is going to be awesome looking game. That's different. But I mean, like, other stuff. That's kind of where. So whenever I hear a call of duty, I'm just like, yep, looks cool.

I'll probably watch someone play it and peace out. Looks like a Call of Duty. Don't be wrong. Don't be wrong. The guys over at like Sledgehammer and Infinity War and Traiark are like doing nonsensically cool things with their engines,

which is why the download size is like 4,000 gigs. So I'm super impressed by what they're doing. It's just like, I feel like the focus has been on just making it like look good and smooth and stuff like that. And the gameplay is still you know, pretty similar.

Like, what else can they really do with like a military shooter, right? It's almost like a Madden at this point where like, if you change too much about it, then like people get really angry, right? Like, I feel like the folks who are buying these games every year don't want that much change, right? They want little small incremental changes throughout like multiple years. So that's, you know, it feels like quote unquote fresh enough, but not so that it doesn't change their entire experience, right? I think that's going to like the whole lot you're in right now. So here on, I want to play through all the campaigns that are about white and like the Ghosts campaign, which I think is a pretty controversial thing to say.

But yeah, that's kind of me. I'm a campaign called Duty Player. I wish you can just buy the campaign for like $10. Because, like, you know, they're not, they're not really making money off of that. You know, they're really all about that multiplayer, right? But then people get mad and you separate them. But I feel like the industry has learned that people demand. demand single-player campaign experiences with set pieces and stuff.

You can't just not do your campaign. It's kind of like a checkbox you got to hit. Yeah, it's really weird. Because I know, like, they'll, like, they tried in the past to make, like, lower-price games with no single-player campaign and then people complain. And then, like, I forget who it was, who showed numbers. And like, yeah, you know, only, like, 5% of the players who bought the game played the campaign. But like, people still want it in there, I guess, for like the, like, thought that you're getting, like, a value for your money or something, right?

It must be that. Like, like I said, I'm one of those people where I'm very happy to pay, like, $60 and play, like, the eight-hour campaign. Yeah. And I just, like, you know, be done with it until the next time they come out with it. But I think you're right. There's some perception aspect to what you get when you pay a game because you kind of inherently know that an online game is eventually not going to work, like 10 years into the future, 20 years into the future. So giving you something that you can hold on to that you can come back to and play is, you know, I think it's makes a lot of sense. For sure.

Death rage wants to know, what cake did Denny get for his birthday? So, funny story. My girlfriend was like, hey, I got you a cake. You know, I'm really excited to give it to you. And it was a carry cake from Portos. And then my sister comes home from work. And she's like, hey, who got that cake from Portland? I'm like, oh, my girlfriend did.

She goes, okay, because I'm but the head out to go grab your cake from Portos right now. So I have two carrot cakes for Porto's sitting in the kitchen right now, which I'm super cool with because those carrot cakes like slap super hard. They're really good. Shout out to Portos, by the way. Sweet wants to know, best holiday. What's the best holiday folks? Sean, you go first.

Oh, the best holiday? You know, I used to I used to say Christmas just because not because of the presents or anything, I just kind of like, I like kind of how like there's the no pressure to do work things.

You kind of just chill ideally with snow or some sort of weather. I'm also, I'm kind of into the Thanksgiving vibe, like eat way too much food and now we have an excuse to put pumpkin spice and everything. So I'm not like crazy. into holidays, I just kind of like different, you know, I'm a simple man, like, so. I'm just a simp.

I'll say Halloween's a little holiday. Mine's Halloween, man. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I talked about it for like 10 minutes already on this podcast. You guys know why. It's awesome. I love scary movies. I'm going to make my list later today of all the movies I'm going to be watching this this month.

Oh, you should. You should do like a. like a Halloween movie list and then throw it on the server so people can watch along with you. Every day we'll have a chat. I usually start off with the Freddie Kruger series and I watch them through because that was my start into scary movies. I think I was like six years old and I snuck into the living room after my parents went to sleep so I can watch it on TV. Scared the heck out of me, man. And I also scared my sisters with it.

I forced my little sister to watch it with me. And then I told her that Freddy Kruger was going to scratch her butt if she ever flushed the toilet. So she literally went like five years ago to get on the toilet. Scratch her butt. But I'll make my list. I'll share it. I just recently watched, rewatched Leprechaun in the Hood. So, I mean, not really scary movie, but you guys know how that goes. That movie is such a trip.

Yeah. I don't know who decided that was a thing, but yeah, it's really funky. All right, we got a couple I'm gonna do like one more question and then we gotta bounce soon but like on the topic of like Halloween and horror stuff I seem like Halloween is like one of the best holidays

because it's like the one holiday where like you're literally allowed to scare people and like be weird and like kind of celebrate like all the all the creepy stuff my girlfriend's making me watch her play scary games I don't like playing scary games I like him from afar but I literally cannot watch him and she's like I think we just recently

played through Soma. Do that game, I was not a fan watching that game. Are you aware that? Video games are not real, Dennis? You say that,

but then my heart's all racing after I finish a game in Street Fighter, so something has to be happening. I have to agree. Video games are real. That's a tweet, by the way. Video games are real?

Write that down. Yeah, I'm done doing it right now. Okay. Actually, I think we might be done for the question. might stick around afterwards I'll let you guys know to answer some of these

but I would say let's see if you're asking about temps in like cases don't go through us look at reviewers they'll give you a better idea of what temps are don't listen to us, never trust us trust your trusted reviewers and they'll give the info you want not that we lie but you know

why would you listen to us and you can listen to someone who like isn't paid all right but we will never lie to you So all the airflow in our cases is adequate for whatever hard you want. Just don't be like the silly goose is on Reddit and stick a 3090 or whatever inside of an H1. That's not going to end well for anybody. I cannot tell a lie. I am lying right now.

Oh, snap. All right. Community round up real quick. So setup of the week. Congratulations to, and you scroll up a little bit to that test bench. for your really neat setup, really simple, looks super nice. It's easy, easy winner, right? Every now and then you'll see setups and you're like this, this one won for obvious reasons.

It's very good. Oh, there you go. Thanks, I haven't. I was doing post the whole image. And then wallpaper the week winner TBD, so keep an eye out on that. Other cool news is the October wallpaper has been announced slash launched. So check out the announcements channel and check out our Twitter. We also have started posting and uploading the wallpapers onto Imger.

And I'm going to try to set aside time to put the other ones on for this year on that same account. So check it out. And it's also, as always, we have a Twitter contest for the wallpaper. So head on to that tweet, click on it, sit it as your wallpaper, post it. and yeah, you know, participate. It's a cool white paper we do for free every year. Lovely Nibler actually designs all these. So if someone can exclusive for podcast listeners,

and I'll have this going until next podcast. Someone can tell me, right? If you can DM me what the Easter eggs are in this wallpaper, I'll give you Nitro. The first two people to do it. I have a natural budget now, so I'm going to use it. I haven't told me you have to use all of it. And also another really cool announcement.

So this was actually not my idea. It wasn't I was the idea. It was actually B's idea. So B, be still lurking in the shadows feeding us neat ideas that we almost take credit for. But we are doing a Pucci costume contest for our champions. So long story short, what it basically is, is if you have a Pucci plus and a Pucci plush and you are a champion in our server. We are challenging you to make a costume for him or her, them.

Poochee's just Pucci. And it could be whatever you want, right? It could be like a little, like a little ghost rag. It could be a little pirate hat, whatever you want to be. You want what I'm going to do? What? I'm going to rip up my wampus and put Poochie inside that. Oh, Jesus, Chris.

It'd be so creepy. Yeah, that would be awesome. The concert is going to be going all the way through the month of October and it'll end on spooky day on the 31st. It is limited to champions because we want to give the champion some love. You know, they've been around for a long time.

And also, they're the only ones who really should be having Pucci unless you bought it from eBay, in which case you're a rude person and ripped for that person. Have you been on eBay? Some people do. And I think it goes for like 20, 30 bucks sometimes. So, I know, right?

Imagine it's getting rid of spending all that time in the server just to, throw them out, right? If you see a Pucci with like a single tier, that's why. In my culture, a single tier means something completely different. That Pucci's an OG. And the way they were going to judge the winner, so there's going to be three winners. First place will be $100 team gift card plus a special role for the month, for that following

month. Second place will be $50 team gift card plus the role. And third place is going to be $20 team gift card plus the role. And we're going to be judging. them based on effort, creativity, and quality. We're being kind of vague on that because we just want to see what you guys do. But obviously, like, if you, I don't know, if you, like, throw a rag on them, you know, like a ghost, it's a little different than, like, someone who makes, like, a whole costume

for him, right? So, you know, be clever, have fun with it, you know, let your creativity run wild. We will be opening up a channel that the champions will be able to submit their creations, but it will be open for the whole channel to view. And that's really pretty much it. Also, every entry, regardless of effort, quality, creativity, you will also get one month of Discord natural as well. So no reason not to participate if you have a poochie.

Now is your time champions to show what you got. If you guys have any questions, ask B. DMB, ask her. This is her idea. I have no part in the planning. I'm just facilitating it. Other than that, I think that's really pretty much it. I haven't got any special announcements?

Just the announcements that I got it down for you to follow Sean on Twitter and to drop the link there. Yay. And to listen to his Art Eater podcast, which I will drop the link right then. All right. And I think that's pretty much it. Sean, do you have any special announcements for us? I do not. I think we're working on a lot of exciting stuff.

It's going to be cool. I know. I can't wait. It's going to be cool. That's my default answer when someone to ask you anything. Hey, what's this or what's that? I don't know, but it's going to be cool. You can't lose.

Yeah, exactly. You really can't. Thank you for joining us, Sean. I really appreciate it, man. Yeah, no problem. Happy to be on. Yep. And thank you to everyone else who tuned in.

Remember to tune in next week at 10am Pacific. standard time on the official nzxc discord server and follow at nzxt on all relevant social media and irrelevant social media both of them doesn't matter which one if you want to follow us in neopets and there's an account there named nz60 follow them they're probably really cool um and don't forget to listen to previous episodes on apple podcast google podcast spotify and sound cloud uh oh and forgot to mention uh community questions guys send an emails if you if you're listening not live and you want to ask us a question no matter what it is send us an email and that's that email is clubcast at nzxc.com c l u b c a s t at nzxt.com promise we will answer them because we get so little

that there's no reason not to answer them so this is literally your chance to ask me ivan or our future guests whatever you want to ask take this opportunity you will not be disappointed and if you are then i can't really help you about that um also if you guys would be some kind leave us a positive review if you like what you hear but especially if you don't thank you very much guys and we'll see you next time

bye alright