NZXT PODCAST - #081 - Zach Wigel

Episode Date: March 19, 2021

This week on the podcast, we are joined by Zach Wigel, CEO of Gamers Outreach! Zach and the crew discuss Gamers for Giving, breaking up LAN parties, and farming. Follow GamersOutreach on Twitter (twitter.com/GamersOutreach) 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 The Suess#0001 for the artwork!

I hate this so much. Back at it again, everybody. Back at it again. Hello and welcome to episode 82 of the N60 Clubcast, the official podcast of the NXT community. This podcast was recorded live every Thursday at 10A and Pacific Center time. The official NXT Discord server and is available to stream on demand on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, Spotify, and SoundCloud.

So log on, squad up, and let's get these number one victory royals, everybody. buddy how's it going how's it going are you doing good my name is Dennis with me as always is my good buddy Ivan hello hi Ivan I thought you I thought you said you didn't want to be buddies no I do want to be buddies it just changes from my day to day you know like sometimes I like you sometimes I don't it just depends on like how you treat me in slack pretty much yeah do you think I treat you bad Dennis no you do bully me sometimes but you know sometimes I can take it Sometimes I can't. I definitely feel like I used to be a lot meaner to you and I used to see you in person

every day. Oh, yeah. I think so. I'm not meaner, but, you know, just give you a lot more tough love. I think I'm not as, I'm not as, I'm not as mean to you as I used to be on Slack or or Zoom or anything. You think so? I think so.

Do you truly believe that? I don't know. People have told me that I've made you cry. I don't know if they're lying or not. I don't think of ever cried. in my life once, Ivan. That's not something that I do. I don't cry. Whenever I'm sad, I just go lift weights and I work out the frustration that way. That's why I'm so cut. Today's special guest is the CEO of Gamer's Outreach, Zach, oh my God, I should have asked for your last name,

when I pronounce it before. I was totally guilty too. Is it Zach Wigel? Wow. Good job. Yeah, that's right. That wow, that was really bad or wow, that was really good. No, I talk it honestly, it gets mispronounced all the time. And I don't really mind. So Zach Weigel, that's me. Awesome. How's it going, guys? Good, good.

How are you feeling this morning? Are you excited? I'm pretty amped. Yeah, we have a big fundraising event coming up this weekend. I don't know if you've heard about it. It's called Gamer's For Giving. Never heard of it. Never heard of it?

Well, I'm glad we're chatting here today, everyone. Oh, man. It's almost as if like you're here on purpose. Who would have thought? Yeah, you know, some people just assume that like, like, folks just like walk in and there's like, oh, hey, there's a podcast, you want to be on? Yeah, sure. And then that's just how we do it around here, you know? Obviously.

That's how I do it pretty much. Yeah, no, for sure. Even this morning, it was just like, oh, yeah, it's podcast day. Time to do it. Especially, well, it's only during pandemic time, I feel like, I don't know what day it is anymore. It feels weird. Every day, it's just like Sunday to me now. Yeah, day doesn't really mean anything.

whatever is on my calendar for that day is just what I go do. Yeah. I hate it, man. Yeah. Actually, we were just talking about this in the pre-show, right? The pre-view, I guess you want to call it that. Talking about the pandemic time and how everyone's just kind of, you know, more or less working wherever they want, figuring out the future of work looks like.

And me personally, I can't wait to go back to the office. I'm tired of being in this room all day. I got to say, after seeing Starlink deploy all their internet satellites, I'm thinking about getting a farm. Really? We're about in Michigan? Yeah, well, I grew up in Michigan and moved to Los Angeles five, five or six years ago, about five years ago. I've been flying out there quite a bit. Before gamers, I reached my full-time job. I was working for, well, I was working in video games to help do marketing activities. I was producing events and worked at a PC hardware company for a period of time. So I was flying back and forth a lot and really love Los Angeles,

love that it's the hub of the entertainment industry. And for gamers outreach, it made a lot of sense to be out there to help foster this larger presence we were starting to have. But yeah, I got to say, as far as the pandemic goes, you know, the idea of like having some land and a place that's quiet, have some animals, like some. some crops you can grow. I think I'm saying this because I literally was in the heart of like all the craziness

that you saw in the news like during the middle of the summer. And it was just a little hectic being like right in the middle of it. So I'm kind of like, I think the pandemic has us thinking all sorts of crazy things. Do you have any experience working on a farm or anything like that? Oh, here we go. Oh, wow. Well, you know, I only really have like observational experience. I grew up.

there was a farm behind me growing up. I will say in seriousness, my granddad actually had a small farm, and then my dad actually did inherit some tribal knowledge around, like, he worked in some tomato fields when he was growing up. So he actually does know a lot about it.

So I have like vague ideas of how farms are managed very broadly, but nothing really beyond like what the normal person would probably enjoy and like farms. simulator. So I've never like gotten my hands dirty driving the tractor, uh, you know, throwing things around. So I don't know, I don't know that I actually want to be the farmer, though. I want to like have the farm and enjoy it. But like, maybe you can lease the farm out. This is a thing. You can actually like find farmers in the community that will, they've got all the equipment. They grow all the food and they will lease the land from you. And it helps prevent

them from like taking on liability. So anyway, not to get into a topic about farming, but I think, You know, it's an opportunity for everyone to kind of rethink about, to rethink the things in their lives and what their priorities might be. So you mentioned, Ray, farm and animals. What animals did you have on your farm? I'm really curious. You got to have chickens. Chickens for sure. Okay.

Eggs. Dennis, you, dude, you know this, man. You're bulking up in the gym. Oh, yeah. You got to have those eggs every morning. Oh, yeah. The raw egg. Yes, Rocky style.

Get your blender out and make the shakes. So chickens. I mean, you could literally grow all of your. macronutrients from your farm. To be fair, Dennis is bulking everywhere, not just in the gym. Dude. Well, I mean, in the farm, Dennis, you've got to have the farm. You got.

It's a lifestyle. Everything. Yes. I mean, not only could you make all of the food you need to bulk up, you also could probably have space to build your own gym. So I agree with you, Zach. I'm a huge proponent of having land. I don't have a husky like you do, but I have a,

toddler and my only requirement for the same thing right same thing that was the same thing I guess feed him and bathe one up my yeah my only requirement for the place I live now is I just wanted a big yard because I wanted well first of all I wanted space for my kid to run around but I also wanted you know I want to place to barbecue I want to I want a place for me to you know hit a wiffle ball off a tea t ball or something you know like just I just want it like room but the the one thing I don't think I could ever do is be a farmer. Only because I'm really lazy. I don't think I could be the type of person that could be like,

well, today I'm going to harvest my crops and count how many eggs the chickens laid last night and bring in the sheep and all that. It seems like it's something that, I don't know. I don't know how hard it is, but it just seems like it's something that would be really, really hard for me personally. But I think it's cool, man. If you do, if you do end up buying a farm, please, please invite me and Dennis on there so we can work for you or something.

It'd be cool. Yeah, we can do like a little like a petting zoo day. You guys can come by check out the animals. I actually do have my idea. I was going to call it forward slash farm. Is the name of it.

I can make it sort of like this high tech modern farm thing. So I literally have on like Twitter Instagram squatting on forward slash farm and yeah. I think we'll end up having honey for sure, honeybees, very important. Ooh, yeah. So that's going to be a thing.

And sheep, maybe a couple sheep, some chickens, and we'll grow hay and alfalfa. I feel like those are low-maintenance crops and they look really cool when you harvest them, you know, kind of like this romantic scene, like a big field with hay bales. Yeah, I think that'd be cool. Awesome. Anyway, but you've got to have the satellite internet for gaming. We have to, you can't do the farm if you can't play games at the same time. I heard the latency on like satellite internet like isn't that good though, right?

Like I feel like the most you could do is like StarCraft or something, right? Like what else could you really play with like really like laggy internet? Have you seen the speed test from the Starlink? I have not. I'm just talking about my butt. No, it's all right. Well, it's mind blowing. I got to look it up your hand.

It's like 100 big down. Yeah. I'm actually a huge proponent of internet. What aren't you? for streaming gaming, whatever you want to call it. Oh, my God. I play video games on my, on my stadia, because I have really fast internet at home myself.

And for me, like, after working on the computer all day long, the last thing I want to do is sit there for another four hours and play video games. Like, I'd rather just go on my couch and play something. And as long as you have fast internet, you honestly have no latency or no issue. It's literally the same thing as, playing on a PC.

I honestly don't notice the difference. Can we start like an NSIC Club Casabingo and one of the entries is Ivan talks about Stadia? Yeah. I think that has to be one of the little squares because I feel like there's not a show you don't mention it. Everyone by Google.

Were you a Stia fan? I am actually. I play a video game on Stadia still. Is it still operational? Like can you, if you have one, can you still plug it in and play everything? Yeah, it's playing Red Dead Red Dead Redemption two a couple days ago.

It's really funny that he asked that because I think a lot of people don't know anything about City anymore. Like you just, it was there and like no one's talking about it. Yeah. But I think eventually once like the Starlink thing, Starlink thing is like global and more and more people are getting, you know, fast internet speeds. I think it'll be the norm to play video games like that.

Right now it's a little weird, right? because not everyone has fast internet. But I think it's going to change one day for sure. People on farms can even play video games. I know. I'm looking at those Starlink Internet. Well, that's kind of why. I know I keep coming back to the farm topic,

but that is why I thought it was so fascinating, like this idea that you could have a satellite connection that is arguably as fast as what you might get in an urban environment. I mean, I'm just Googling Starlink Internet speeds. people are posting 160 download 23, 25 up, 30 ping, 22 ping. Okay, okay. Not too bad. I know.

I'm like, that's kind of, that's pretty close. I mean, my apartment in LA, I think, had like 300 down. Yeah. Something like maybe 25 up or something like that. So, I mean, that's definitely, I mean, that's definitely speed the game on for sure, stream on as well, you know. So I think it's going to open a world. Well, first off, it's going to change people's financial situations entirely, right? I mean, you imagine being somebody in any sort of rural area.

I mean, United States aside, right? Like worldwide, suddenly you have access to this connection to the outside world. And the good or service you provide to the 30 people that might be immediately around you in your community is now available. If you have access to mail, now available. to the world. And so I just think there's going to be this, it's just going to be a massive boost to everybody who's a creator or can provide some sort of good or service to the world. You have this incredible audience to tap into with the internet. So yeah, gaming is going to benefit from it for sure. And I don't think you're far off, man. I mean, it did people playing games through a streaming service.

I mean, hard to say that it wouldn't be inevitably accepted at some point. If you look at the way other media has gone, right? I mean, movies, we all stream Netflix or shows, you know, I actually still do buy things on iTunes, to be honest, though. I still buy, I'll buy movies. Well, I'll rent movies, actually. I'll rent them through iTunes. So I'm not really even downloading them going to think of it. I'm just streaming them on my PC. But yeah, I think it'll be accepted as people less, people notice the lag less. So you can have mentioned something regarding like the satellite internet and like having access to just like more information, just being able to to just have internet service.

And I feel like it's kind of very similar to what you guys do with like gamers outreach. So for those who don't know, can you kind of explain what gamers outreach is, how you started it, what inspired you to do it? Yeah. I mean, that is actually a good segue. Gamer's outreach is an organization. Well, it's not a segue. It is.

No, I mean, truly, it is. I actually, it's funny enough that similar at the top I, I realize I could talk about farms all day and I realize the viewers are like, did we come here for a farm podcast? What's going on? I'm super done to talk about farms all day if you want. No problem with that. We can definitely save it for the end. Yeah, I mean, to bring it to Gamer's Outreach, though, I mean, this is actually true.

Because you might ask, like, well, why do hospitals need access to games? Why aren't kids able to play games in hospitals? And let me tell you why. So Gamer's Outreach, we are an organization that is focused on making play readily available to kids in hospitals. And we're doing that through video games. And the reason we're doing it through video games is because gaming is a tool that enables kids to have access to activities, as we've been discussing, at scale. And it's unique in hospitals, particularly because if you think about your standard hospital these days, right?

So for most people, if you're not familiar, if you've not had to go to a hospital yourself, let me explain it's kind of like sitting on an airplane where you sit in your seat and you in some places you know in a plane you have access to Wi-Fi there might be a TV in front of you that has some media content somebody comes by and gives you snacks and whatnot you sit for four hours and you get to your destination being in a hospital is kind of like being in that plane except every hospital around the country is sort of different in terms of the infrastructure they provide. Some hospitals have Wi-Fi. Some hospitals have some sort of media content you have access to. Some hospitals won't let people bring in

their devices at all. Sometimes people are in the hospital by surprise. Most people don't expect to go to a hospital, unless they're going for some sort of treatment on a recurring basis. So when you're there suddenly, you might be there for a week. And it's sort of inconvenient to have somebody like go to your apartment and bring your Xbox from home, bring your devices from home. And then in these buildings, if you think of it's similar to a plane, your cell phone might not work for a variety of reasons. I have gone into, I mean, multiple hospitals around the country at this point, and the cell phone service, you know, place to place really varies for a number of reasons. So basically, what happens in hospitals is that you have all these people that are stuck in this environment for a period of time.

They're basically on this airplane, except in a lot of cases they don't have access to that Wi-Fi. They don't have access to the fun entertainment. They're sick. And by the way, there's all this stuff going on that's really unfamiliar and quite scary. Not to mention these sort of emotional toll that some people are dealing with while they're in these places. So we're trying to bring games into these facilities. And gamers outreach builds tools that help make video game content accessible and easy to manage in hospitals. So a playroom might exist in a hospital, and that's super great if kids can get to the

playroom and socialize with other kids. But usually even the playroom is sort of limited in terms of the number of kids that it can support at a given time, as well as just the kids who may or may not have access to the room given their health circumstances. So playrooms are great, but they're sort of limited by the accessibility and number of people who can be in the room at the same time. You also have like toys in a hospital, right? If a hospital has a bunch of toys they've been doing it to their facility,

action figures, you know, Legos, whatnot, those are all great, but those are also sort of limited by supply as well as age relevance. You know, in most cases, a 17-year-old might not want to play with the same things, a 9-year-old would, right? So it's through video games that we can enable recreation, simultaneously for all kids in a hospital, regardless of their age. And it's really an amazing tool to think about hospitals, for a variety of reasons, just haven't, and we'll maybe talk more about this as the podcast goes on,

but hospitals are in a position where they're not, they see buying video games and more broadly quality of life experiences as, like, discretionary spends. And if you think about it, as a hospital, you're usually prioritizing research and treatment, right? Like if people are in the hospital, the goal is to get out of the hospital. That's the whole point. Because of that, quality of life often takes a back seat. And so our role as a nonprofit is to come in and say, hey, you have all these people in the hospital. Sometimes they're here for extended periods of time. Let us reinforce what your priorities are. Let us help you make

video games and activity readily available for all these kids and all these families that are stuck in this place. And we're going to, as gamers, deploy. our knowledge in your facility in a way that helps inspire and reinforce the healing process. So kids can be happier as they heal and ultimately go home, feeling accomplished and well again. And that's what we do at Gamer's Outreach. That's kind of a long-winded explanation, actually. But we're basically trying to build a world where every kid in hospitals has access to play. And our whole belief is that video games and the gaming community have the power to help.

That is awesome. So how do you actually provide this access to those in need? Well, right now we have two main programs. We're actually, excuse me, we're going to be announcing two more this weekend. The first is called Project GoCard. And through GoCarts, I should actually say, GoCards are basically these portable video game kiosk that we construct. Each unit is equipped with a monitor, a gaming console, controllers.

We install a bunch of games on the device, and then it can be wheeled room to room throughout a hospital facility so that kids can have access to games, particularly if they're stuck in their room for long periods of time. This is sort of the main project we've been known for. Today, we've deployed over 1,000 units. So gamers outreach has a presence in about 230 health care facilities, primarily. in the United States. And at the moment, we estimate all the devices we've deployed over the years are helping to enable summer routine 2 to 2.5 million play sessions each year.

And GoCarts are the main sort of driving force behind that. We have all these kiosks that are kind of floating around literally right now as we speak that kids are gaming on. And they're really meant to be a hardware tool for hospitals where, you know, gaming infrastructure might not exist at all. right? So if you think about like, okay, well, how do you really make video games available to hospital? Well, first thing is you have to provide the hospital with the equipment, right, to like make gaming content available in the first place, whether that's, in some cases that might be, I think in the long run, that's going to be, you know, sort of be more robust policies around internet access or practically. just the infrastructure to support

hundreds of gaming experiences at the same time in a single facility like a hospital. So there's an infrastructure piece of it as well. But you just kind of start breaking it down, right? Internet is one way to allow people to play games on a mobile device. Hardware is a way. If you need monitors in a hospital

or gaming devices in a hospital, like, okay, we need to make sure content can exist in this environment. So that's why we build GoCarts. It really has a way to say, hey, we can to give you this device to make video games at least available and easy to manage in your facility.

And then we have a second program called Player 2, which addresses this other piece of the equation, and that is the knowledge to manage entertainment once it does exist. So if you were to donate, say, 100 Xbox consoles to a hospital, that's great, right? As gamers, we all can sort of imagine

the ways those could be beneficial in a health care environment. But if you don't have someone in the hospital who knows how to deploy those devices, actively apply updates, manage patient accounts, manage content, it's very easy for those devices to just kind of sit in a room and collect dust. And it's not because they're not useful. It's just because the hospital might not, either A, have the time to manage that equipment on top of the other priorities they have around providing care, right?

And then secondly, even if they do have the time, I mean, having somebody who can actively go room to room day to day to help oversee the tech takes time. It takes time and it's an investment to some degree. So that's why we create a player two. And player two is a way for gamers to volunteer in hospitals as what we call digital activity managers. So video game enthusiasts come to the hospital. It's basically kind of like working at GameStop, except now you're taking all the knowledge you have. And normally, I guess I say this as a former GameStop employee

in my high school days. You know, I would sit a GameStop and I would talk to customers all day about video games. I would stock the shelves. I would reset consoles when people wanted to trade to use games in. Unfortunately, I had to be the guy who was like, okay, I'll give you a dollar for your Xbox on occasion, you know, or push like Game Informer subscriptions. but, you know, it's essentially, you know, you're going into these hospitals and you're providing

kind of a similar level of help to hospital staff. But it's, that's crazy useful in health care environments because you've got all these nurses, all these doctors, all these various folks who provide care. Yeah. Ideally, they're worrying about helping people get better, right? And we as gamers can apply our knowledge in these environments and suddenly we're like, we're, basically a support team to everything else that's going on in the hospital. So yeah, we, I see video games as like, it's so obvious to me that games have a place in hospitals because you have all these kids, all these families, they don't have access to the same physical experiences we have in day-to-day life. And then on top of that, even when it

comes to, you know, digital experiences, they're limited by the infrastructure that exists in these buildings or even sometimes just policies that exist around like patient privacy. And so as gamers, we have access to one of the few tools probably that can be deployed in hospitals in a way that provides people with access to recreation. And that's why we exist totally. So we have two other programs that will be announcing over the weekend. I will just talk about them now, but it's kind of harder to explain it so you can like see some pictures and we've got some fun videos we made about it. So stay tuned to under our

Twitter, Saturday and Sunday you'll get to learn more. I'm actually pretty excited to see what those are to be honest. He's really cool. Yeah. Those go carts are that's like one of the coolest ideas I ever heard for real. Like just the idea that you can wheel in a little go cart for a kid who's sick and just let them forget about being sick for a little while and just play video games that's that's awesome man someone in the chat said uh they give off those tv on the cart in school vibes but cooler yeah oh no actually that's a good i mean that's that's funny to that but you're right we actually i think we even made a tweet at one point like uh it was like how it started versus how it's going sort of thing you know that's good that's really good

the concept is it's definitely like not a new it's not a new concept right like and at the end of the day, like, you know, anybody could take like a meal tray and pop an Xbox on it, pop a monitor on top of it and like put it next to a kid and be like, here you go play games, right? Of course. The point is that when you are a healthcare worker, literally every minute of your day is somebody's life. Like if you're responsible, if you're a nurse and you're responsible for like 20 patient rooms on the floor or 10, let's just say 10 patient rooms on the floor, right? You can only spend so much time with each patient day to day. So you spend 30 minutes with this kid, 30 minutes of the next, 30 minutes of the next, then you start over, right, your cycle. If you're spending 30 minutes of

your time, I mean, all of us, any of us who've been to a land party who if we've unplugged our PC, think how much time it takes. I mean, heck, think how much time it takes just to like update a game, right? To like play, you know, and enjoy some game you want on Steam with your buddies. You know, you have to like almost do all this prep work just to get into games. If you are going to a land, Same thing. You have to unplug your PC. It takes, you know, a good number of minutes to, like, get your setup going. Okay, imagine you're now a health care worker. You have to set up an Xbox and monitor for a child. Maybe you're not super familiar with games. So it takes you a little bit of extra time to get all this stuff, you know, functional. And then the kid in the next room is like, hey, I'd like to play an Xbox too.

Okay, well, now you've got to break it all down for kid number one. Right. Settle up again for kid number two. And, but, you know, maybe by the time you set it up, the kid alone wants to play for an hour, maybe actually something happens, they get really sick and they, they, like, suddenly don't have use for the devices anymore. So it just becomes, like, a huge time suck. So even if it's, like, you know, tech aside, like, is it easy to set up a meal tray, or, you know, is that sort of like the low tech solution?

Yeah, of course. Like, anybody can put a meal tray again. What we're trying to do is create a tool that secures all that stuff and makes it so that you don't have to touch anything. like just wheel the cart into the room, plug it in, and everything works. So in some ways, it's like the VCR cart that you might have had in high school, right? So definitely the same idea for sure. Roll our thing around, let people watch movies, let people play games, 100%.

The reason we build our carts the way we do is because there are a handful of like specific bells and whistles that we've considered that are particular to hospitals, like security, accessibility. like there's actually a lift mechanism in the cart that moves it up and down for kids that are in different like positions. Yeah. So, so we're basically kind of like taking the VCR cart from high school and like shoving steroids into it and be like, all right, we need to like build one of these that is hyper specific to the needs hospitals have so that nurses have an easy time making games available to kids. That's awesome. So I want to kind of go back a little bit. And so I wouldn't have been working at NZXT since mid-2019, but from what I would understand, we've had a pretty long relationship, right, with gamers outreach.

Can you kind of go into that little bit? Yeah, well, gamers outreach in NZT have been working together now. I want to say maybe six or seven years almost, quite a while. And actually, I had the chance to meet Johnny, the founder, another years ago. Yeah, I mean, dude, I'm kidding, I'm a great guy. I'm like, I'm guessing him up here on his own sort of podcast, but like,

really, I mean, you think about NCXT, like Johnny, I DM'd him on Twitter. He's like, hey, I'm a fan of the work you guys do at GAM was Irish. I'm like, well, that's crazy because I'm a fan of NSXT. I literally, all my, my, my, my PC cases since I started building my own cases, cases have always been NST cases.

It'd be cool to meet up if you're, he's like, oh, where do you, where are you from? I'm in L.A., dude, I'm in L.A., let's get together. So we ended up grabbing breakfast. And, like, that's amazing for, like, a CEO of a company like NZXT to, like, reach out to somebody in the gaming community like that and, like, have a sincere interest of, like, wanting to be supportive and help. That's pretty dope. So him and I started talking, and this is, you know, gamers I reached, even the vision of what we were doing was still similar, but a lot of our programs and the way we think about our work had to matured quite to the extent of the now.

But Johnny was super supportive. He's like, hey, man, NST, this is, like, philosophically really aligned with where we want to go as a company. And I'd love to support what you're doing. Can we help? How can we help? And so we've worked together on a bunch of projects now. Gamers for Giving is like our annual fundraising event that we host. And NSXC has been a sponsor of that over the years.

Obviously, we have our virtual marathon coming up this weekend. We're going to be streaming live to help support the work we're doing in hospitals. Anyone can kind of follow us on Twitter and check that out. gamers for giving.org is our website for the event. And then in addition to that, we've done some cool one-off project. We actually, I don't know, this might have been a little bit before your time, Dennis, but we made a case in partnership with PubG. The Craft Zero One PubG case, yes.

Yes, yes, yes. So we had this like simultaneously when Johnny and I kind of started chatting, I think it was maybe a year two after actually, PubG came out and their team, their founding team were really big fans of gamers outreach. And they'd reached out and said, hey, like, games blowing up. It's crazy successful. We'd love to give back to the community and support the work you guys are doing. So they actually signed up to sponsor games for giving one year. And then at the same time, NSXT come aboard and we had been talking about doing some sort

of like gamers outreach theme PC. And I was like, you know, it'd be kind of cool. Like what if we like reached out to PubG and try to do some sort of like combination, right? Like there are a lot of people who enjoy playing PubG, obviously a lot of folks who enjoy NCXT cases. Let's combine worlds here and make something happen. And we ended up creating like the loopbox case from the game. And that's actually my work. I'm literally looking at it right now. That's my work PC now.

My work PC is built inside that computer case. That's awesome. It's been pretty cool. We've got a really great relationship with NST. It's been cool to like watch NST grow as a brand. I mean, you and Ivan have been crushing it on social media. I love the tweets you guys put out. and it's just cool to see the brand coming to life,

and it's awesome that Johnny's been like taking such an authentic approach towards wanting to see NST have a positive impact in the gaming community. So it's been really cool, and we're really glad to have a team up. It's awesome. So my next question is, when is the next gamers outreach craft case coming out? You know, that's a good question.

We need to hit up to, what is it, Jeff, Jeff Royal? Does he still receive these projects these days? Yeah, Johnny. Is he? Yeah, we need to, that is a great question. We should. Yeah, Jeff, come on. Is he listening? I saw him that he tweeted he was going to be listening today. He better be listening. Yeah.

The next craft case will be a farming simulator. 10% of sales go to Zach's arm. I have thought about, it's funny because people, I have thought about, like, I don't stream on Twitch myself really, at all. But sometimes I'll power it on for gamers you're giving, obviously. But like, I've thought about like, okay, whatever ways I can save a money to like get this farm? And I was like, you know, I should just start the Go fund me on Twitch. You'd be like, listen, guys, I'm going to stream a few times a week. Please donate to my campaign. And yes, if we could have Farm Simulator sponsor this effort,

I would be more than happy to donate a percentage of the monies back to gamers outreach and also to raise money for the said farm I'd like to do. It's funny. I've been jokes, but I actually believe a farming simulator case what's so ridiculously well. I think people go nuts and great. It's super popular. A lot of people play that. Do you know that just my dad actually is a big farm simulator player?

They actually have farming simulator e-sports. I don't know if you guys know this or not. It's pretty hype. They do. That is true. They do, actually. I'm hyper aware. My dad loves farm simulator.

He plays it all the time. Because I remember going to E3 and I'd see the farm simulator booth. And I don't mean to hate on farm simulator, but like, as someone who grew up in the Midwest, I was like, oh, I would, what would, is, Would someone actually play a farm simulator game? Like, that seems really. And it's crazy popular. And actually, in fairness, I downloaded it.

I also own farming simulator now. And I've been playing it. I've been converted because I was like a sincerely interest in getting a farm. I was like, oh, I need to learn about this stuff. I'm going to download farm simulator to teach myself about farming. And sure enough, it's actually like pretty accurate. They've got, uh, they've got a lot of stuff picked in that game. I was impressed.

All right, Jeff, you heard it. It's gamers outreach, farming simulator case, make it happen. renouncing it here alive A puck that looks like an egg That'd be good It's really funny I was just thinking about this Like as we're talking about the farming stuff

Chickens lay eggs every single day Isn't that kind of like a word concept Because aren't eggs supposed to be like baby chicks Right? Like assuming that the egg is fertilized No No they're not No because an egg requires

To be fertilized right? right, a rooster to be fertilized. But a chicken will lay an egg every single day without a rooster. Yeah, but if a rooster is there to fertilize the egg, then that's how the chicks are. Okay, so, so what I'm saying? I am aware of the fact that regardless of whether the egg is fertilized or not, a chicken will lay an egg. But the question to have is, can a chicken lay a fertilized egg every single day? Is that possible?

Only one way to find out, Dennis. All right. Let's go get a farm. For science. Actually, I tripped out on that when I first discovered that, like, I think like 20 years ago. That's when I was like in my vegetarian phase and trying to go vegan and all that. And I was looking up, you know, eggs and, you know, whether they're vegan. And I was actually shocked that chickens lay eggs like every single day.

It's kind of cool. It's weird, right? You can just have one chicken and then like just every day that chicken is going to lay eggs for you. you don't need to have anything else other than that one chicken someone just said in shot have you guys been playing Valheim at all I play a little bit

I put a little bit it kind of reminds me like in Valheim you can you can essentially like herd animals like they're wild boars and you can like put them in a pen and they all they'll actually start making babies and you can have like

you can essentially like create a farm in and it's pretty remarkable I mean, it's pretty remarkable to just think that nature works that way, you know? You've got the chicken coop, chickens laid the eggs, put a head in there. Suddenly there are more chickens. Yep. It's like Minecraft. Crafting guys, crafting IRL.

Oh, man, I want to play Minecraft. Dang it. All right. Zach, Game is for Giving, right? That's kind of what we're here to really talk about for the most part. Game is for Giving. It's your guys's yearly fundraising event. How does it work?

How do people get involved? what is gamers for giving? Yeah, typically we host a land party every year, gamers for giving. And the way I describe it is it's kind of like QuakeCon meets the Jerry Lewis Telephon. So we will rent out this basketball stadium. We invite a couple thousand people to come to our event. They bring their computers. They bring their gaming devices.

We laid out all this network infrastructure and people just play games for two days straight. And then while all that's happening, we'll invite a handful of streamers and friends from the gaming industry to also attend the event and broadcast in support of raising money for the programs we have across these 230 hospitals I mentioned earlier. Now, obviously, with the pandemic happening right now, you know, we don't really want to gather everybody in a stadium. It wouldn't probably be the best idea. So gamers for giving is a virtual marathon this year. We're going to be streaming over the course of this Saturday and Sunday. We've got over 100 streamers that are going to be participating, probably maybe even a bit. I mean, there's a long list of people.

It's actually pretty awesome. If you go to our website, gamersforgiving.org, we've got a list of some of the confirmed streamers that are participating this year. And then additionally, on top of those, on Tiltify, anybody can make a campaign at any moment and fundraise on their own if they'd like to join in. And so you can see on the Tiltify page, there are actually even more campaigns displayed. So we're going to be raising money. Our goal is to raise $500,000 to help bring entertainment devices into hospitals.

And actually, as of right now, I think we're almost, we're over $400,000 raised. Already. Wow. Yeah, thanks to. So we have some partners. Obviously, NZXT is a sponsor of the event. We have a handful of other partners who are making contributions to help. us achieve this $500,000 goal.

And so the good news is like we're looking really great. Like going into the weekend, things are looking really strong. Last year we ended up raising, I think it was like $670,000, 690,000. We got pretty close to $700,000 during last year's event. This year we were quite sure with like the pandemic and just the way everything's going lately, like how fundraising might be impacted. but we're excited. I mean, our work has been in more demand than ever.

You know, COVID has created a situation in children's hospitals where now every single kid is being isolated in their rooms regardless of, you know, whatever might be going on. The good news is that pediatric hospitals aren't seeing, you know, kids really come into a hospital for COVID, thankfully, but they're still enforcing all the social distancing measures. So kids who maybe were once well enough to go to the playroom are now being. forced to isolate in their rooms. Kids who maybe were participating in some form of physical therapy are now being forced to do that in their rooms.

Also, volunteers are not really allowed to come into the hospitals at the moment. So a lot of the like recreation type programs that maybe normally are offered in children's hospitals, like you think about therapy dogs or magicians or music therapists, people come in and provide those activities, pretty much all that stuff is like on hold right now. now because of the pandemic. And so hospitals have been reaching out to us requesting more games because it's it's one of the ways, one of the only ways they can provide kids with something to do while all this is happening. So we've been super committed to trying to play our role amidst all this. And that's why fundraising, especially now, is so important with everything going on. And we're seeing

an increased demand from hospitals that are asking for help. And then thankfully, so far, our community has been able to support along the way. So games you're giving is a Essentially, we host the event every year. It's our annual fundraiser. There is an opportunity for us to come together, celebrate everything that's been done the previous year, but also look forward to the year ahead and start generating resources to support the work we're doing going forward.

That's awesome. So kind of a side question, how do you guys decide what games and consoles that you put in there? And as kind of a dumb, silly question, has like any kid ever been like, oh Xbox, like I really want to play like on a PlayStation. Like I'm a real big Sony fan. Yeah, I mean, both of those questions.

They're actually sort of related, funny enough. I mean, so in terms of like what devices we decide to get to a hospital, actually we really let the hospitals inform us. Oh, really? Okay. That's cool. Yeah, I mean, so by default, we'll typically deploy Xbox consoles with our Go-Carts. So, I mean, when it comes to Go-Carts,

usually we'll equip those carts with Xbox consoles. And the main reason is that it's just a little easier for our team. Xbox is like a big partner of ours, and they are really generous when it comes to, like, providing game codes and content that allows us to just offer more gaming experiences to kids on Xbox. So if somebody donates to build a go card, if we're able to put an Xbox on it from a budget standpoint, it's a lot easier for us to, like, add additional games without having to, you know, like, continue to fundraise and add more content. So Xbox is kind of a bit more convenient for us. And also practically, well, I guess the other reason is practical as well. But the other reason we do that is because really in hospitals, like when you think children's hospitals,

a lot of times donors will show up with items that are intended for younger kids. So like a lot of people, when you say children's hospitals, the normal person who maybe hasn't had a lot of experience interacting with a pediatric hospital, immediately thinks, oh, eight-year-olds, five-year-olds, like younger. It's all babies, yeah. You forget there are 16, 17, I mean, young adults in these facilities. Sometimes there are people, there are 20s in these environments, and they're being treated there for various reasons.

So, you know, and frankly, too, sometimes, like, those kids are playing mature-rated games. I mean, we have instances where kids are like, I want to play Call of Duty or Halo or or Grand Tata. I mean, HAL is maybe not in the same category to start, but like, we have kids that Literally like, I mean, sometimes people joke like, oh, I bet you don't give grandfather thought out of the hospitals. I'm like, honestly, sometimes there are kids in the hospitals that are like old enough and or, you know,

the parents are okay with them playing, you know, mature rate of games. So we, that's not really our position as gamers outreach. We don't like police the content necessarily. What we do is we'll deliver the go carts. We do install like family friendly content on the go carts. So unquestionably, like, hey, you've got this Xbox. It's got Minecraft and, you know, Lego games and Rocket League and like games.

and like games that are pretty, you know, family friendly generally. And then great. If the hospital has like an 18 year old, 19 year old that like wants to play call duty sign on with his friends, awesome, like let them play. And then if they, you know, want to give the content back to somebody else, you know, great. Obviously everything we install by default is still there. So yeah, we have a hospital sometimes that say, hey, we've got a patient that like

wants to play on a PlayStation or we've got kids that are a bit older. And, you know, for that reason, that's kind of, I got a little. track, but that's why we deliver, like, Xboxes or PlayStation's primarily is because we're trying to, the games on those consoles tend to skew a little bit more towards the teenage demographic, which is a population in the hospitals that are sometimes not as supported as, you know, younger kids might be. That makes sense. I thought, I thought you're going to say you just use Xbox because you bought, like,

a thousand of them for a dollar when your GameStop days. Yeah, I wish we could get a thousand for a dollar. That would really help things out a lot. I will say that the Xbox team has been really generous. In fact, funny enough, they're a sponsor this year of Gamerish for giving, and we just did this really cool partnership with them where we got to be a part of the Xbox Series X launch, and they did this promotion with The Rock,

and we delivered some of our very first new go-carts that were equipped with their consoles. We're donated by Dwayne Johnson, so that was pretty epic. And then we did another thing with Wonder Woman and Galgado. So, yeah, in all respect, I mean, the Xbox team is like crazy supportive of our efforts. And they do make it super easy for us to help ensure kids have access to gaming experiences in hospitals to our go-car program.

But we generally also, you know, buy our devices and have to budget for that stuff. So, yeah, when the hospital requests a PlayStation or if there's a specific patient request for a PlayStation or a Nintendo as well, a Nintendo device as well, you know, we definitely honor those requests. So it's really just dependent on like what the hospital, what their patient population is and like what the kids are requesting that they support. It's actually really, really cool. I know that I know that Microsoft has been leading really hard on like charity and like accessibility stuff. So it really kind of makes sense that they're like really willing to help stuff out like this.

I know with like that new controller that they have, they're really kind of like leading the charge and just like allowing more people to to play video games a matter where they're at or like, you know, what they may be able to do, right? It's really great. Yeah, I mean, no, I can't like necessarily speak for Xbox, but I, as a fan and onlooker, I can definitely agree with you. I mean, I think, and really just having obviously been involved in this space, right, like video games offer people an opportunity to have access to social opportunity,

to have access to socializing and play. Um, when a little bit of hook up here, folks, quick second. We'll join back in in a minute. Not only kind of driving awareness for all this, uh, and helping developers understand how they can be making gaming more accessible, um, but also just generally from a, uh, you know, a public awareness standpoint. I mean, um, knowing that games are this tool and have this potential, um, I think is also like an eye opening to healthcare workers as well, uh, because, you know, even from the work

we do, I mean, we're, I would say gamers, We're generally focused on just making games available in hospitals. It's kind of another layer down when you start working at the individual level and start getting into accessibility directly. But 10 years ago, the idea of a doctor telling a child to play video games was sort of absurd culturally because, you know, you think about like the Jack Thompson era of video games. That's kind of why, I mean, Dennis, we were talking about Mortal Kombat pre-stream or three podcasts. Like, gamers average basically got started because there was a police officer who thought video games

were corrupting the minds of America's youth. It led to a video game tournament I plan being canceled and started our whole organization. And simultaneously at that time, you know, if you were a doctor who had said, hey, I think it's fine for a kid to play video games while they're in the hospital, you might have probably taken flack from that culturally

because, like, oh, aren't games corrupting kids' minds? You know, that was a whole thing that was being discussed. Whereas now, I think as technology is more prevalent and as more studies have been produced, demonstrating, you know, the benefits of gaming and the benefits of healthy screen time. And then, of course, you think about professionally how so many of us probably learned how to work on computers, thanks to playing games, there's obviously benefit to some healthy balance in our lives of using technology as a form of play and interaction.

And so it's cool to see brands like Xbox are actually building tools that help make games more accessible in that way. So anyway, kind of a long-winded response there. But I do think it's amazing what Xbox is doing. It's incredible for gamers who benefit from that level of accessibility. And then I think it's just cool culturally to see this shift in discussion happening. That's what the coolest thing for me in all this is like that last thing you just said there, like what's happening culturally. Because similar to you, you know, when I was a kid growing up, like adults thought I was just, you know, wasting my life. playing video games and my dad legit thought it was making me stupid playing Mario brothers.

I sure it hasn't happened. For him like you know the solution to get me to stop playing Vita games was to buy me a computer but little did he know what would end up happening with that right. And then now that I'm a now that I'm actually a dad you know I I still I'm not like you know anti-tech or anti-screen time like I want my daughter to play video games I wanted to use an iPad, I I wanted to do all that stuff. But the other aspect of that, too, is I'm also very conscious of the fact that it could also be harmful. It could be detrimental.

But that's just like anything, right? You know, you can get sick from drinking too much water. So it's just, I think it just comes down to making sure that kids, you know, are playing video games having fun, benefiting from them, but also at the same time, you know, not becoming addicted or, you know, you know, ruining their lives because of it too, right? But it's not just video games. This is everything. But I just think it's cool, though, that the stigma is, is slowly being erased from video games because they don't make you stupid, you know.

Or at least, I don't know, they probably made me a little bit stupid, but. I'm originally made me stupid, too. I think I was just going to get stupid anyway, to be honest. Well, no, I didn't. I mean, you made a number of good points there. And let me tell you the story. You know, we work with kids on a daily basis. basis, right, who don't have access to traditional sports.

And when I think about the value of someone participating in normal sports, and I say normal quote, right, like football, track, basketball, things you like maybe grew up with in high school that are like really obviously accessible to most kids in public schools, when I think about the value of those activities, to me, you know, if you participate in like, if you play high school football, you've probably got to work out, go to two a days, you know, go through summer practice, right? And then you kind of derive these, hopefully if it's a healthy experience, you derive these sense of values from playing the sport, a sense of teamwork, perseverance, a sense of community,

you know, work ethic. There are these things that you can learn through physical sports. We're working with kids, as I mentioned, who don't have access to those same opportunities. I don't feel like they should miss out on those values that are derived from sports. So we have to figure out in the hospital is, okay, well, how do I interact with a child in a way that's going to be relevant to them and still communicate this sense of value, these sense of values that they would be able to learn as a young person if they were in a normal sort of environment where those things would be accessible. And so suddenly, it's through video games.

If, you know, Bobby, little Bobby, like, gets mad because he loses a game of a Fortnite, instead of chucking his headset and his controller and being frustrated, that's an opportunity for me as a caregiver to step in and say, hey, Bobby, actually, put your headset back on. Let's say good game to the other player. You know, let's evaluate why you lost that last match. Let's play the next game and do better next time. And suddenly, instead of a kid, like, rage quitting, which all of us have been guilty of.

clearly, and I still do as an adult. That's an opportunity for me as a caregiver to step in and say, hey, actually, let me teach you about sportsmanship right here in this moment. And now video games are a conduit to help teach and learn about all these things that maybe otherwise would have been taught through some other means that kids would have had access to, had they not been in the hospital. Now, I'll make one additional point. It's very obvious for me to give that example in the circumstances.

of a child being in the hospital. But I would go further and say, if that is true within the walls of a hospital, it's also true outside the walls of a hospital. And it speaks to your point, Ivan, about how there is this discussion, or perhaps maybe a more needed discussion, around parental engagement and how to teach kids to be healthy digital citizens. Like when I was growing up, I mean, I don't know if,

so I'm 31 years old. Like when I'm trying to remember when like my family, I remember when my family had 56K dial up in the house, right? And like I would want to play Warcraft 2 Bounden addition. If my mom got a phone call it kept me off the line. I'd get really upset. Right. Do you remember these days?

Dude, I would yell my mom because I'd be like, I would be on on a Starcraft ums, right? And he'd be like, mom, I'm trying to play some Hydro Rancher. Don't pick up the phone of my uncle calls. Right. Exactly. So I mean, so you, it was, the struggle was real. Like,

Bandwidth did not exist. Like broadband internet connection did not exist. You didn't have like multiple phone lines into a house yet. So I remember those those like early struggles of like getting gaming onto the internet as a gamer. And you know, I also remember though with that my parents, and I don't know this is true for everyone, but my, you know, this was new to my parents as well, right? Like they didn't really necessarily know like what's Napster? What's LAM? You know, what are all these like chat?

What's AOL? It's the messenger. Like what is all this stuff that like suddenly, young. people have access to. Suddenly the world has access to you. I had to kind of navigate that world on my own, like probably most of us. And I realize now my, when I have kids one day, you know, in the same way my parents, you know, try to encourage me to be friendly to others, have good manners, and like, you know, get along with people in normal, you know, day-to-day life, those discussions never really took place around, well, what does it mean to have an identity on the internet? And so I think

there's actually this larger discussion. You know, video games get a lot of flack for like, you know, we could just a little maybe off topic, but we talk about like toxicity in gaming and obviously the topic of like diversity inclusion is super important in gaming. I would go as far though to say that there's this kind of larger humans are now connected through the internet, period. Like gaming happens to be on the forefront of it because we all engage through games and it's a form of play.

But more broadly, we have people that can suddenly follow each other on Twitter. make random comments to each other on YouTube, you know, randomly friend people on Facebook, find you on Discord. Like there's all these ways to like connect with people through the world that didn't exist even 20 years ago, right? So I think there's something to be said about the idea of as a parent, how do you help your child navigate this new sort of digital frontier?

And I think, you know, we were the first group to grow up there. We're definitely the first group to go through it. And I think we're figuring it out. And I actually brought up this, uh, on last week's podcast episode, because I recently, uh,

discovered this term called the hyperactive hive mind, which is, here we go again. Gary guys. I swear, like, you think I'm crazy, Dennis,

but I swear this is exactly how we're going to be able to. This is how we're living right now. Like, it's not just video games. It's just the constant stream of digital information that is being thrown our way. Like, as I'm recording this podcast, I'm getting Slack messages, I'm getting Discord messages, I'm getting emails, I'm getting meeting requests.

You know, it's just like it's nonstop endless like digital inputs coming our way and kids especially, you know, they're growing up like this. They don't know what it's like to not have that input. And for, you know, Zach's 31. I think Dennis is 30. 31 and I'm 31 as well Dennis yeah wait Zach's 31 yeah and I'm oh my god you what have I know in my life I'm older than both you guys I'm 39 I want to be 40 in October and for me like I vividly I have very very vivid memories of what my life was like before I had a cell phone you know before I had an email

address before I had discord you know all these things even before I was a gamer, to be honest. And for me, like, it's pretty much impossible to concentrate nowadays if I don't just disconnect from everything and focus on one thing at a time. Because if I let all these different inputs get into my life, it's very easy for me to lose focus, become distracted, get demotivated, all those things. and, you know, as someone who not only, you know, has to use all these different tools for their job, I also like using them, you know, like I like playing video games.

I like using Discord. I like all these things. So I have to be very conscious of how I'm actually using them because it's very easy to just say, oh, I'm going to just leave it all the time and I'm constantly just going to be living like this. And that's definitely not how I want to raise my daughter, especially if I'm going to like let her play video games, I want to kind of set those boundaries a little bit and make sure that, yeah, like if you're going to be playing video games or whatever, using your iPad, whatever it is, we have to do it in a way that's responsible and that's going to actually help you as opposed to

just taking control of your life, which is what unfortunately I think happens to a lot of people nowadays because I think a lot of people, the younger you are, the less you think this way. and I'm probably honestly one of the last human beings that's going to ever know what life was like before the way we're living now you know

so it's cool that I remember I better know yeah but it's just cool that like that gamers outreach is also thinking like that you know because it is important and I don't think many people do think like that

no I mean you know you touched on a topic like that we I do think about quite frequently which is this this idea of of digital wellness and a healthy balance. And I think that's been our story from the get-go, really. I mean, I started gamers outreach because I had a video game tournament that got shut down by a police officer

who believed video games were corrupting the minds. What a jerk. It's a long story. I had mono one summer and got really good of Mortal Kombat. And like I was, this is Mortal Kombat deception. This is like my one brag. in the East sports landscape. And the leaderboard, I was in the top,

I was pretty consistently in the top 40 leaderboard out of like 30,000 some players on Mortal Kombat Deception on PS2. I was like logging thousands of games. I had this like journal next to me. I'd like memorize all the moves for other characters. Dennis, I know you're not like, for someone else who's in the fighting game community, I know you know how to like master one of these titles. So I had like the journal

where I was like, I knew what to look out for and fighting games for people who don't know, it's when you get good at a fighting game, it's like you're basically playing rock, paper, scissors, but really fast. And you kind of have to know to anticipate, like, what are the things that this character I'm facing could do? So I had, like, really poured myself into this over the summer.

And selfishly got to a point where, like, once I was back and well enough, I wanted to host a video game tournament to kind of brag to my friends about how much time I'd spent playing this game. And this is, like, during the era of, like, Halo 2, you know, people would have land parties, right? and like I think MLG was like just kind of starting to become a thing at the same time. They just run their like MTV True Life. I'm a gamer episode. And so I wanted to organize an event because I had developed this interest in competitive

video game tournaments. But at the same time, like gaming for me was always the consistent past, like pastime and passion. But I also was like in school, had okay grades, had a social group of friends, was playing sports, was doing and was playing musical instruments, like had other hobbies in addition to gaming. And so it just so happened like when I organized my very first tournament, there was a police officer in my community who had sort of been, you know, he had a belief that gaming was something that straight up was, you know, corrupting the minds of the youth. I mean, he literally

called our school district superintendent. He left a voicemail saying, hey, I don't know if you're aware of this, but there's this kid, Zach. he's organizing this Halo tournament. I believe kids are trained themselves to kill, playing these violent video games like Halo. This event is a hazard of public safety. You know, like, I don't believe this sort of tournament is appropriate to happen in a high school.

And I was really frustrated when that happened because my school superintendent at the time ended, like, she had no idea what was going on. She got this voicemail from a police officer in our community basically saying you need to like not let these kids ran out of your school building. So she sort of had a knee-jerk reaction. action to, you know, this phone call from a public safety officer.

But meanwhile, I had like 300 people signed up for a video game tournament who were, like, ready to go and compete. And they got all upset because, like, I had to turn around to them and say, hey, guys, I'm really sorry. That event that's supposed to happen this weekend, I have to shut it down because there's a cop who thinks video games are corrupting the minds of youth. What? Like, what are you talking about, Zach?

What in the heck are people smoking? And that's kind of what led to the formation of gamers outreach. I was frustrated and I wanted to demonstrate, hey, you know what? This is ridiculous. Like, I've been playing games my whole life. I feel that when I get together and play games with my friends, it's additive to my life. Like some people will describe games as a source of like escapism. And I think most people mean well when they say that, I hesitate to use the word because I

think of games as being additive to my life. Like when I play games, they're not trying to escape from anything. I'm trying to enrich my life. Like, if I am in LA and my younger brother is in Michigan and we hop into PubG together for a couple hours of an evening, that's a way for us to connect when we're socially, we're physically distant from each other. So suddenly, you know, I see games as like, wow, this is a form of enrichment. Like, I can go out into the world. I can, like, go to the gym. I can eat healthy.

Sometimes I can order pizza, right? You know, it's all about balance in your lives and trying to maintain a sense of, you know, how. health while we're kind of managing all these things that can grasp our attention. So, yeah, Ivan, I think you pull on, you touch on this really good point. I mean, for us, philosophically, gamers outreach, really the work we're trying to do is about how do we empower kids and hospitals of access to play? Culturally, it all really started from me as a gamer wanting to demonstrate, hey, actually, here are the positive things that happen when gamers get together around what we're excited about.

And here's when I think games in the gaming community is capable of as aspiring towards. Like, let's, we as gamers can sit around and talk about how games are great and just, you know, keep chattering until we're blue in the face. But until we actually, like, put actions behind those words, those values are empty until we're demonstrating them. And I think gamers outreach is a conduit for that. We're able, we're obviously, we're not just doing this to make a better name for gamers, obviously. Like, there's sincere intent across the board. We're making this impact for kids in hospitals. We as gamers are applying our knowledge in a way that is.

healthy and helpful to others. And it's just awesome to be a part of. That's kind of why I've been so excited to work on this all these years. I've been doing this now for 14 years since I was in high school. I reluctantly, it sort of reluctantly became my full-time job. I actually think we'd be probably further along if I had like dedicated myself more to it in the beginning. But at the time, I never saw gamers I was just being my full-time gig. I started the org.

We hosted some of our very first video game tournaments. You know, I discovered my local hospital was having a hard time providing kids with activities. And that's how gamers I always. just sort of organically started up. In the first five or six years, it's pretty slow. Like, we would just run one event, and then we would donate money to, you know, our local hospital.

And then we slowly start buying games for other hospitals. And at the time, I was working in the industry, you know, helping to produce events and, you know, esports competitions. Oh, nice. So, yeah, I worked on, like, the very first Red Bull. Like, it was the Red Bull land. Basically worked on the very first iteration of, like,

Red Bull e Sports back in the day. I worked on the very first Call Duty XP. very first college duty championship events. I actually ran for a couple years through the, now it's DSL America, but at the time we were an agency and we produced some of the World Cyber Games events for America and then we would take Team USA over to China to compete

and I was like the team manager for a couple years. And that's what I wanted to do. My career was like going in that direction until gamers outreach kept like interrupting my life and my job. Like there was one day we had somebody donate 900 Xbox consoles to us and the semi-truck showed up in my parents' house

and we had already like a mass probably 5,000 video games that were being stored in my parents' basement. So like over the years people have been like donating items to kind of support the work we were doing right in these various hospitals. And I didn't really, the games actually didn't have any money at the time.

So I was just, my parents, thankfully, were very supportive and they let me like just put everything in the basement. But it was getting to the point where it looked like a Best Buy. Like if you were to go into like the storage room at a Best Buy, It's like pretty much, or like the storage room of GameStop. My parents' room was turning.

We had thousands of games. And the day the semi-truck showed up was the day my parents were like, all right, Zach, look, we've got to, this has got to, like, you've got to go find space for this. And so that's when I kind of had to make a decision. Like, all right, is this like a thing? Should I really focus on this more? Or should it just be like a passion project?

And I really felt compelled. Like, this is what I enjoy working on. I think as a gamer, it's very fulfilling to do this. I think it's bringing our passion as gamers to life, and it's making a difference in the world. It's very purposeful. And then, of course, you can see very clearly, like the impact that's having for people in hospitals.

I mean, we're literally changing the world. I mean, we're going into these healthcare facilities. These people are very competent when it comes to, like, providing health care. But because of all the priorities and the various, you know, infrastructure challenges that they have with how the hospitals are built, it's really difficult to make video games available. But as a gamer, super obvious we can help. So, yeah, I just get, I'll have to come myself off here because I get so excited talking about the project.

I'm so enthusiastic about gaming. I am so genuinely excited about seeing the impact gamers can make in these hospitals. And I just think it's kind of like, it's everything that is great about games and what games can be and what this community is capable of doing, I think is expressed through the work gamers I was doing. And then there are other groups as well in recent years at a forum that are also doing amazing things, too. So we're not the only ones in the block, but it's awesome to be a part of it all and be helping to make this difference. So anyway, long-winded tangent to Ivan's talk about, you know, games and the balance and sort of thinking about healthy screen time in that way. But it's definitely something we're mindful of. I don't even remember what I said.

That's awesome, though. I think it's like really like nothing else really more to say, right? I feel like that's such a perfect way to kind of like and capture it like where you guys came from, what your mission is. and like just hire so mindful of everything. It's, it's really awesome. Thank you so much, man. I really, really appreciate it. So we're coming up a little bit past on the agreed upon time.

We got a couple things left. You guys, a couple of, if you're still free, community questions, are you still available to chat, Zach, or do you have to bounce? And you're a busy guy. Yeah, I got a little bit of time. Yeah, people have questions. All right, cool, cool. Let's get to some community questions from our Discord.

By the way, guys, if you want to ask questions off the air, you can on Clubcast at nzicc.com. That email, again, is C, B-C-A-S-T-T-com. Send us an email, ask us a question, and we might answer it on the air. Well, probably will.

Okay, so first question, okay, is it for you, Zach, best farm animal. Oh, best farm animal? Wow. Best farm animal, alpaca. Oh, I like that. What?

Alpacas. Oh, the alpaca? Alpaca. Alpaca? I've always said alpaca. I don't know. I don't know. What does an apaca even do?

They're like sheep mixed with giraffes. I would never in a billion years pick an alpaca. They're like llamas. What would they do on the farm? They're like llamas. They're wool. They are friendly. Apaka farming is a thing, dude.

Like, it's a literal thing. Watch here. I'll send you a photo in the podcast channel on the Discord. They're like llamas. They're like llamas. I think they're like close. cousins or something, but they're like a little bit fluffier. Yeah.

But they're like, they're a lot fluffier. Yeah. See, I would have guessed you would have said like something that gives you food. Like, I don't know. A cow house. Yeah, like I'm definitely pro steak, but yeah, I mean, chickens. I think there's like, there's probably ways to like break down the question, right? Like, what is the most practical farming animal?

Like, okay, there's probably like some economic answer, you know, that would be kind of boring. But yeah. I think alpacas are cool. I mean, like, they're like giraffes mixed with the sheep. Like, look at it. Yeah, they're super cute, dude. That's literally what it looks like.

Don't hate it. They make wool. They're cuddly. They always seem happy. Yeah. They eat the grass. They like keep your lawn short. There you go.

You can't go wrong. Axerin from Discord wants to know. Y'all are based in Michigan question mark. How can I help you? I live in the area. So how can people get involved with the game's outreach? Yeah. So we were founded in Michigan, but really our programs exist.

all across the country and in a small way different parts of the world as well. So I mean, I was living in Los Angeles, you know, the last five years are actually most of our board members are on the West Coast. Our team is spread throughout the country. But yeah, some of our core staff members are based in Michigan. So yeah, to the person who asked the question, you can get involved gamers outreach.org. If you click the, it's funny, we're actually literally launching a new website probably, maybe the tonight or tomorrow it's part of like the new stuff we're rolling out so so that is like spoiler alert we've got a new website coming out but basically uh there's going to be a there's a big

button if you go to our website that just says get involved um and that'll take you to a page that has some ways to volunteer um and that'll be true as well when our new site launches uh probably tomorrow um if i can get around to like loading all the content in time so um yeah super awesome would love to have you come out we also have a fundraising event gamers for giving and there are some more physical volunteer opportunities around that. Like, obviously we have the virtual event this weekend, but next year when we bring our land party back, we're going to be needing people to help set up the event, help moderate tournaments and all that good stuff.

So that's always a fun time. And then we also have volunteer opportunities within hospitals as well. Right now that's, while that is on pause just due to the pandemic, but if you send in a volunteer application, you can mention that you would like to be a part of some of our in-hospital activities. And if there are opportunities or the hospital has capacity, we'll put people in. and if they've got a resume that seems like a fit. There you go.

Next question from H22, can the go carts run crisis? Can the go carts run crisis? I mean, yeah, the game news is like, we're not really responsible for like what the game, what games can run or can't. So yeah, the answer is by default, yes. I mean, that's what would sound more awesome, right?

We could definitely put a PC in there that is capable of running crisis. Do a lot of people... Like, how many people think the go carts are actually like real, go-karts like that you drive you know i it's funny i meant to bring that up earlier there it's go-kart that does come up quite a bit like when we initially will email people um go-kart in our case is it's an acronym gamer's outreach cart and it seemed it's i know right it seemed clever at the time we don't

put it's also less obvious because we don't put the little like periods between the tvs to like to note that it's obviously like an abbreviations and and to be honest i think that's just like an aesthetic thing. I was just like, oh, it looks better without the dots. Let's, like, leave it. And then it would be cool. It'll be like a conversation like, wait, are you actually building go carts for the hospital? Like, do the kids drive this thing around? And we actually did have a kid who like, like, jumped on the car. It was like holding the handball. He was like holding the handlebar and like trying to like use it as a skateboard in the hospital, which was like not encouraged at all, obviously. But like, yeah, so they are not, uh, not to be confused with

actual go carts, uh, in hospitals. But it does happen sometimes. And it's kind of fun it's kind of a fun topic to talk there. Yeah, I think the first meet we had around the Game is For Gaming stuff that we're doing, I was like, Go cards. That sounds like super fun. Like, I don't know, it's safe for these kids, but it's super cool. That's actually the reason I asked that question is I know Dennis thought it was an actual go-kart. And I literally did.

I purposely didn't want to tell him that it was not a go-carry drive until he figured it out. That's awesome. It gets to figure it out. Yeah, you know, it probably happens a little more often than we're even aware of because by the time people are really talking to us, they've probably figured out that it's not a real go-kart. So in fairness, I'm actually not really aware of, like, how much confusion we've really created by labeling it the way we have. But we're sticking with it.

I think it's fun. And honestly, it actually does sometimes lead to, like, plenty of conversations like this where, you know, you get to think about, well, what if we did put actual go-carts in the hospital? what would happen? Yeah, imagine, imagine a go-cart you can drive and then play video games on it. It sounds like a texting and driving situation. I don't think that's a good idea. Sounds like you're describing a Tesla, which brings us back to SpaceX and Starlink.

Wow. There we go. It's all connected. It's all connected. It's all powered by Stadia. All right. Let's see here. Some of other questions.

Here's a good one from Kerbinog, I think that's how you're pronounced that. How many inner city hospitals does gamers outreach work with? So that's actually kind of a good question. Like, how do you guys decide which hospitals to help?

Oh, that's good. That is a good question. Well, I mean, I can tell you that we work with about we work with over 230 hospitals across the United States. And then of those, how many of them are inner city versus more rural? I actually don't have that number offhand. But in terms of how we determine, like, which ones get supported, you know, actually a lot of that is determined by our donors, particularly with go-car builds.

And it's kind of one of the fun things about what we do. Our work is so tangible, right? Like if you donate, people can donate enough to build a go-kart. So, for example, sometimes people will start a streaming marathon to actually raise money to place a go-kart in a hospital. So we'll set the donor commitment to do that is $3,500 per GoCart. And that includes an assortment of things. So it's not just like the cart, right? That helps us build the cart, helps us install the gaming console, the monitor, the controllers.

Also helps us buy a bunch of video games for the devices. And then that also includes freight shipping to the hospital. So we put the thing on a pallet. It's already assembled. We ship it over the hospital. We provide setup support. And then we provide indefinite help to the hospital. So three years from now, if you build a go-kart today and three years from now,

the hospital calls us and says, hey, our Xbox is broken. We'll just give them a new Xbox. So we try to budget so that we can provide help to hospitals or if they have questions. We actually literally employ people who essentially sit around and are like customer support tax. They'll respond to tickets that hospitals provide to us that need help. You know, they'll prep the consoles that get sent out to the hospitals. So all that to say, if someone raises money to build a go cart, that's what that's everything they're raising money to help accomplish. we'll donate the

we'll donate the go cart to a hospital to a hospital with their choice and then we'll actually leave like a little placard to top the go cart

that says oh congratulations this go cart was built by NST. Oh that's awesome. So it's really neat like I yeah

I think I'm pretty sure we've built some with NSXT funny enough I mean the the PC sales that we've had and some of the stuff

we've done with Johnny I mean there's some some stuff we're working on now that I think we'll be really cool later but yeah I mean we're we're you know if you donate to build a go-kart, we will try to deliver that unit to a hospital of your preference.

So if you see hospitals that are being more supported, some of that is actually just a byproduct of donors coming forward saying, hey, I have a really close connection with Children's Hospital of Los Angeles or Children's Hospital of Colorado, right? And we'll say, okay, great. Well, if you want to donate to that hospital, that's awesome. We can help facilitate that. We do have a wish list, though, that said, of hospitals that have been seeking support that maybe people haven't come from. forward to support yet. So that is something as well. I think that's on our that should be on our website and on our new website there's there's a link as well. Sorry guys, I'm getting over a little bit of a cough here, but for my occasional copter. On our new website, there's going to be a link as well

that shows like the wish list of hospitals that are that reached out requesting support. So I have one thing from Jeff, your home of Jeff Royal. He said that the Kraft PubG case supported building the go Cards. Do you do you happen to know just like off top how many go carts we were able to get from that the sales of that case? I'm just curious. That's a good question. I'd have to go back and check. I know that we let me think how much going to do you know. It's like a million or something. We made if I recall correctly 1,337 of those cases. Is that correct? That does. Yeah, that does sound accurate. Is that what it was? Is she said 1-537? Yeah, it might have been the number. Well, I think, I also think, too, we may have, like, when we did the PubG case, I think we intentionally, like, use those funds to, like, generally support gamers outreach and, like, help us hire staff at the time because we, like, said example earlier, like, we had our warehouse when I mentioned, like, the 500 Xbox consoles being donated.

Like, we have, like, general expenses as well to, like, keep the ship afloat. And I'm pretty sure we ended up, like, allocating the money towards, like, supporting some of our infrastructure. But I feel like we've also built some of NZE. X-T go-karts as well. And if we have not yet, we should. I think in years past when Game Restoregiving has come around, NZXD has usually signed up to sponsor our event, which then enables us to, like, raise more money. So, like, when we do our sponsorship for GFG as an example, like, typically when we

produce the in-person event, we'll recruit sponsorship to cover the costs of doing the event, but then that event allows us to raise, like, five to 10x more money, you know, through all the streaming marathon and the donations were able to recruit. And usually, like, if sponsor, the event, we, like, provide an assortment of, like, sort of marketing benefits. But we're not able to, like, build go cards directly with the sponsorship. We end up building go cards with the money that, like, the streamers raise.

Right. So then the streamers get to dictate, like, which hospitals get go cards. So in a backhanded way, NZXT has, like, funded go carts, but I don't know if we've built ones that have, like, the N16 name on them quite yet. So we should make that happen. There you go, Jeff. I know you're listening, dude. is make it happen.

All right, let's see here. What other questions you got? I think that's like the last one. Oh, here we're going from Jeff. I like to know why Zach didn't grow a beard so he could shave it off this weekend. Dude, you know, that's a great question. I did have a long hair phase going.

I was growing it on the, I guess I was growing hair in the other direction. I just kind of like a couple, about a month ago. I had done to my shoulders. I could do full ponytail. And, it was neat. I liked it.

But just kind of had a day where I was like, all right, I'm kind of over it and decided to let it out. But I should have, I was kind of dumb. I should have, I should have waited until our stream. I did choke. I should, should have waited for gamers for giving to the, I'm done during a broadcast. The only solution now is just to have

Jeff shave his beard for the, for the event. Yes, I mean, and actually, and to his credit, Jeff did do that. I think one year he, I think it was just, like, I think it was the year before. is either, I think it's 2019, Jeff would correct me if I'm wrong, but Jeff, like, launched a campaign

and he basically had people donate to one campaign if they wanted him to keep his beard and he had people donate to another campaign if they wanted him to shave his beard. And I'm pretty sure to shave the beard and winning. To his dismay, maybe. Yeah, he's, I don't know if I ever talked to how he felt about that.

I don't remember what his thoughts were, did he want one or the other to win? Was he sort of neutral ballot at all? I can't remember. I think he did end up shaving it I think I'm pretty sure that campaign is the one that ended up winning out because he's just never growing it right? Yeah

Jeff's beard is he shaved recently but it's still like super long I mean the man looks like a Viking and it's just like You know it's kind of funny when I first saw him and this isn't like to like to like

comment on like his like physical appearance or height or anything but when I first saw him how long his beard was I was like, the guy looks like a dwarf, you know, like, I feel like you should have an axe in his hand. It should be fighting or something, you know, just like leaping, you know, with like full fist beaten up monsters or something. When you first met him, Dennis, his beard was legit, like at his belly button. That's how long his beard was when you first met him. So, yeah, I kind of get the, I kind of see the dwarf vibe. Yeah, yeah.

But he's not short though. No, no. No, yeah. Yeah. And that's one saying, like, it's not. not a comment on like on his height at all. I just like that beard is like not even like biking level. It's like it's like fantasy dwarf level beard.

Right. Yeah, I will say. I mean, yeah, Jeff's got a real majestic beard. And now it's it's kind of why I just realized I'm like, man, when was the last time I've seen Jeff in person? I mean, pre-pendemic. So now I'm like, I'm like, did, did Jeff regrow his beard? I actually don't know if I know because I've not.

I'm like, when was the last time I've even seen him? Jeff will have to. We can add Jeff to the call if you want to see his beard. I just had an advisor We just had a call a few weeks ago And Jeff hopped on video for a little bit But then his power sort of went out And now I'm trying to remember

I'm like I feel like I remember him having a beard In that video And then it kind of made me wonder Like wait did Jeff even shave his beard at all I thought he did And he'd be really That fast Yeah it's in our

It's in our it's in our discord On our podcast channel Yeah there's the pre and post Gamer's outreach beard And he's wearing the jersey as well He definitely looks better with the beard Now that I see him without one Yeah

I don't like that I don't like Jeff without the beard Exactly Grow it back, grow it back All right So that's the last of our questions For you, Zach Thanks a lot man

Appreciate it Let's move on Quickly to Community Roundup And then announcements And then we're all good So number one, community roundup thing, I guess, is our ex-moderator, longtime supporter, long-time friend of the server and all-round amazing person, Aiden, is the first person in our community to hit level 100 on our Discord server. So let's go Aiden. And he also gets the new role, the Legends role.

So Champions is no longer the last one. It's now legends and Aden stands on top as the sole legend. So get the chatting folks. Don't spam. Yeah, GGs. We got some stuff for you, so don't worry. Second of all, we still have our emotes and our emot contests going on. It's on the server, believe in the top in the emot contest category.

So submit your cool emotes. And, you know, we're trying to get some more poochy themed emotes that aren't, you know, random, you know, pepacas and cacks or something. So, you know, another reason to join the server. We also launched Pucci's Pals this weekend. If you have questions about Pucci's Pals, please use a mod mail and ask for B. And she'll kind of give you an explanation. But the TLDR of the Pucci's Pals program on our Discord server is a way to reward people who are just friendly and welcoming and want to help foster a very friendly community.

After that, setup of the week. Who won't set up of the week last? This is time. I'll do setup in wallpapers of last week. That way I just have a full list. So setup of the week for last week was generic gummies. Congratulations to him. And the wallpaper of the week was Sijid.

So congratulations to both of y'all. And your prizes should be in the mail, I believe, unless you got nitro, in which case, never mind. I have one more community roundup tidbit that we forgot to put in the document here. What is it, Ivan? Yeah. The introductions channel is now open. Oh, yeah. So let's go in there and introduce yourself to the rest of the server.

Not only if you're new, even if you've been here for a while, because I was actually scrolling through the other day and I was like, man, I've chatted with this person for like two years now. And I had no idea that like this. Like I'm learning about a lot of people. So please do it. It's cool. You know, it's awesome.

I'm glad to have a channel where people can kind of like talk about themselves and like a nice friendly space right without having to be like, Hey, I'm going to join this giant chat that's moving like Emilio Miles a minute and say hi, you know. It's a little bit easier if you can kind of like put like a message out there. I also really like reading how people discovered the server. Yeah. Because it kind of will, it makes me happy that, you know, some of the things that we've done in the past to get people to find out about the server are actually working. You know, like people saying things like, I wanted to build a computer and I found the server or I came in for the stickers and I stayed for the for the home.

these, you know, I love hearing those stories. So thank you. Awesome. Thank B for that, dude. Thank you, B. So cool announcements. So these are games for giving announcements. So we are doing, okay, technical difficulties.

I really don't know what we can do to fix it right away. So I'm going to let this go. And let's just continue on the podcast here so we can finish up with all of our announcements and whatnot. So you guys get all the important information that you got to get. Sorry about that. For those of you listening in post, enjoy whatever I can salvage. Okay, so we have Maximilian Dude on Saturday at 8 p.m. And on Sunday for games for giving through our campaign, we have Ann Munition joining us.

We're not joining us. She's going to be streaming on her channel with our link. Here you. Yeah, so donate to them, donate to our campaign. our goal is $15,000, which will fund a good number of go-karts, I believe. So, you know, give what you can. If you can't give, let your friends and family know. And, yeah, help support NZXT, help support games for giving.

Support us by supporting our partners. We're not asking you to spend any money on us. We're asking you to donate what you can to help people in need so they can enjoy the love of gaming wherever they're at, you know, where they're receiving care. And other than that, please, please, please learn about gamers outreach. You can check them out at gamersforgiving.org, gamersoutreach.org, Twitter.com slash gamers outreach, Facebook.com slash gamers outreach and Instagram.com slash gamers outreach, all one word. Let me try one more time to see if I can rejoin.

Let's see here. In a little bit. Yes. Yeah, no, it's not work. That's so, oh, it's so broken. Oh, well, sorry, guys. Rip. So anyway, thank you again for joining us.

Here, let me, let me do one of these real quick before we do anything crazy. And what a shame. Right, right at the end too. Right at the end. You know what it is? I know exactly what it is. I think I know exactly what it is. Let us.

But we don't see it right now, I think. No. Okay, yeah, something wrong in the Jarvis. They might do we start the computer. Oh, well, anyway. Yeah, thanks for joining us, guys. Thank you for joining us, Zach. Really appreciate it from Gamma's Outreach.

Check them out and see everything they're doing. Thank you to everybody who tuned in. Remember to tune in next week at 10 a.m Pacific Standard Time, the official N-Z-Z-C-D-D-S-T-Rever and follow at N-Z-X-T on all relevant and irrelevant social media. And send an email if you'd like to ask a question off the air to Clubcast. That is, C-L-U-B-C-A-S-T-com. And don't forget to listen to previous episodes on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, and SoundCloud.

And if you could do us a super big favor, don't leave was a positive review, unless you like what you hear, or you don't like what you hear. So Lee was a positive review, no matter what you do. TLDR. On that, guys, thanks a lot.

We'll see you next week. No outro music because I think is broken right now. It's definitely Google Chrome thing. We'll figure it out. And we will see you next week. That's it. All right, guys. See you next week. Bye.