NZXT PODCAST - #201 - FlyQuest President & Chief Gaming Officer: PapaSmithy

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

On this week's episode of the #NZXT Podcast We have the President and Chief Gaming Officer, PapaSmithy, joining us to talk about his history from casting to managing to leading during his legendary esports career! Follow PapaSmithy on X: https://x.com/PapaSmithy

Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 201 of the NXC podcast, the official podcast of the NCC community. This podcast scored live on Fridays at 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on the official N6C Twitch is available to stream on demand on Apple Podcast, Spotify and SoundCloud. My name is Mike. And with me as always is Ivan. How are you doing, Ivan? How we do, baby boo?

Happy Friday. Excited for another episode of the NZXD podcast. Before we introduce our special guest for today, I have a couple of announcements. Announcement number one is if you are tuned in live right now to twitch.tv slash nzxt, you are in for a treat. We are giving away a $100 gift card from our good buddies over at FlightQuest. You can use a gift card to buy any swag you want on their shop. So type exclamation giveaway in the chat. You will get a link that will explain.

how to enter. And the other announcement I want to make is if you are tuned in live as well and you are an NCST club member, you are also in for a bonus treat because we are giving away poochie points. And if you don't know what poochie points are or what the NZXT club is, go to nzxti.co slash club and you'll learn all about it. The last announcement I want to make today before we get into it is we, today is the last day of our new stuff giveaway. So last week we announced our new H3, which is right behind me, new H9, some crackins, some fans, et cetera. We're giving them all away. Today is the last day you can enter that giveaway. And to enter that one, go to nzxte.co slash giveaway. Without further ado, I will let Mike introduce who we're talking to today.

Mike, take it away. All righty, everyone. Please give a little warm applause from the man from the land down under to the heart of League of Legends. Today's guest has worn more hats in e-sports than most of us own in our own closets. He's seen the game from just about every angle from behind the desk in the draft. And now at the helm of an entire organization, everyone please welcome, Papa Smithy, Papa Smithy, please, can you introduce yourself and tell to people who you are and what you do? Hello, hello.

Love the round of applause. Not a hat guy, interestingly, but your point is taken. Definitely many vantage points to see esports all the way from playing it before I even understood there was competitive gaming, you know, playing semi-professionally in Australia to casting to general manager to now co-lead of an e-sports org. So I imagine you guys will have questions from all those vantage points. But yeah, currently my title is the president chief gaming officer of FlyQuest. You talk to my better half, someone would argue. He would definitely argue Brian Anderson many months ago back on this podcast.

And he and I are at the front of all things, flight quests. So if there's things you like, if there's things you don't like, if you have a good opinion about French fries, which we were talking about, off air. No bad opinions, please. Yeah, directed all my way. I'm the FlyQuest guy. And I do detect a slight Australian accent, right?

Only a slight one, though, sir, because I will say, if you go back to my early casting, so we'd be talking 2012 to first half of 2015 casting. was casting from Australia, a lot of it for my bedroom, a couple of like, you know, smaller events in the Australian scene, a lot stronger accent. Some more shrimps on the Barbie, as some people would say. But I will say without consciously doing it, when I moved to Korea to cast,

a lot of my co-casters were Americans. I hadn't really had a lot of exposure to Americans outside of, like, TV shows when I was growing up. And without trying to conversexed. form. My accent kind of drifted, I guess I would say. And people could say change. I think it was more of a drift that goes gradual. I think it's one of those. I feel like I drifted towards kind of a broadcaster accent. You know, people talk about radio English and things like that. I guess like some of the the words kind of like conformed more to my cocasters or American viewers. And then now people will

always look at me quizzically when I, when I speak and try to like detect a hint of something. And I feel self-conscious because I'm a nausea at heart for sure. And when I'm back in Australia, like I was for I.M. Melbourne with the Counterstrike Boys a month ago, definitely like it comes out a bit more, but yeah, a little bit muted, which is something I'm self-conscious about, but something you have to embrace. So would you say you were a big gamer when you were young growing up in in Australia? Definitely. Definitely gaming was a central thing for me. If I think about the games that defined me in the early 90s, because one, in 1987 for context.

In the early 90s, we always had a PC. We didn't really have a home console, so I didn't have a Super Nintendo or anything like that. The first console I ever owned was a original Game Boy. So as you can imagine, Pokemon red and blue, I was like eight, nine years old, like definitely like right smack bang in the middle of the Pokemon cartoon and the early first wave of Pokemon games.

Earlier than that, a lot of those kind of like Eastern European Strategy games in the early 90s. I remember Centurion, which was like an ancient Rome kind of like simulator. Like most people these days would know like Rome total war

and those kind of like more sophisticated like ancient times like simulators. So this is very much the progenitor kind of games with a lot more, you know, pixel graphics and stuff like that.

Lots of skullduggery and going to war with different parts of Carthage or the ancient area. And then platformers, you know, like I think of like the Aladdin platformer or Lion King and the other games that were big in the mid-90s. Like those were the formative games. But when it comes to e-sports, that was definitely something that caught me by surprise. I wasn't into the typical e-sports titles of the time. Pre-league Legends, it was StarCraft, StarCraft 2 were the big games of that time.

And I played original StarCraft in the very early days, which means. means that when I wanted to play with my friends, I was dialing up their phone number, because it was before the internet was really fast enough at the time. And you would call them. It would use your kind of like actual dial tone. If your mom picked up the phone to call someone else,

the game would disconnect. That was the vibe that was going on there. But yeah, I wasn't aware that the wonderful wild world of e-sports had already started in Korea at that time. And it definitely came to that a lot later. And in case you didn't know, Mike, phones can do more than social media. They used to make phone calls. I grew up with the whole lot of that young.

Oh, okay. You rattled off a bunch of games there. Shout out Aladdin. I have not heard of that in a long time. Good. Good game. What would you say was your favorite childhood game growing up? It's always hard to pick just one, right?

Definitely there was some games. on my original Game Boy, I enjoyed a lot. The easy, kind of like crowd players is Pokemon, right? Like obviously I was, you know, obsessed with first and second generation Pokemon. You can definitely tell someone's age by like what their favorite Pokemon title was. And for me, it was definitely golden silver, the second generation. I was, at that time, I'd already moved from Australia to the Middle East. I lived in Abu Dhabi, like near Dubai for my high school years.

So I was probably like, I want to say like 13 when gold silver came out. I was so keen to play it that I played through it in Japanese with a game fact, you know, a walkthrough. So obviously I didn't take in a lot of the intricacies of it. And then played through like slightly illegal, like partially translated version back when you could like buy those. It was still the Wild West in those days. And then bought the original English translations. through it, I think three times.

I'm wholesale. I was so keen for it. So I think Pokemon's probably the easiest answer there. And I'm sure it resonates because Pokemon's still a massive thing around the world. Not a bad answer. What would you say is your favorite game now? I will admit that I have recently gotten into this indie title. Not a lot of people know it. I'm kind of outing myself for even talking about it.

But I'm playing League of Legends recently. I've never heard of that. I first picked it up a long time ago. I actually haven't played it in about five years. I've been like more of a viewer. Like I still like ingest like, you know, many, many hours of League of Legends content every day. But, you know, I'm getting older.

So my hands don't do what they used to. So I kind of dropped it. But been on a League Legends kick for the last, I want to say three months. I'm very much like a, you know, solar ranked only kind of guy. Like, I'm not a big community guy, although we did have a fun community A-RAM a few months ago. So ultimately, yeah, been playing some League of Legends. But apart from that, definitely more of a viewer, more of a guy in Twitch chat than a game player these days.

I mean, you're known for casting League of Legends. Like, that's like a legend in the making. But before you became a caster, apparently you worked as a school psychologist in Australia for a bit. Can you explain why you went into that field and then why you left that for gaming? Yeah, sure. Definitely growing up, I kind of, my childhood or at least my like, traditional education was in two parts up till the end of grade eight, which is end of 99. I would have been about 12.

We're just in the Western Australian schooling system, you know, going through things there. And then my dad, just around the turn of the millennium, got a job in the Middle East. So jumped over to the Middle East for high school, obviously very, very culturally different to Australia. and then post that very much wanted to go back to Australia. In terms of what to study, I was always the generic clever kid, but I was kind of the sort of person who knew what they didn't want to study rather than what my calling was going to be. Like, wasn't really into kind of like the hard sciences.

Like, they didn't really appeal to me. The push from my dad was very much, like, go into a field that makes a lot of money, son, was kind of like his generic plea. So he was very disappointed when, from a schooling perspective, we were doing international curriculum. So first did GCSEs for year 9 and 10, which is the British system.

And then for year 11, 12, did, don't know if you guys are familiar with the International Baccalaureate or the IB, which is kind of like generally, at least at the time, considered like the most difficult pre-college kind of like thing to study and that's where you choose your courses and I decided to try psychology and you had to choose different courses at different levels like standard level and higher higher level which is like you just have more a bigger course load and more intricacies if you go higher level and I think my higher levels I chose were economics English and math and then did psychology the standard level because I

was like this could be interesting and I got there on the first day of school when you're 11 and they had like accidentally misassigned me to standard level math and higher level psychology and I was like okay I mean might as well roll with this for a week and see what it's like um and psychology was the first thing that really grabbed me um in terms of like oh I want to like build something with this I didn't really know what that meant but it was like I was into it so did psychology was the first time in my life I had math only four days a week rather than five and I was like kind of like flexing on other people because most people were doing higher level math because obviously that's like the conventional path as we'll get into

i uh have eschewed the um traditional path many many times i think all of us have led us to this lovely podcast uh all those years later um and yeah went into psychology took it seriously at school enjoyed it wanted to study at university parents was still a little bit like could you please study like one of those like traditional vocations. So did a double degree with commerce and arts. At that time, psychology could be viewed as an art or a science. So when it came to the complementary courses, because you couldn't just take full psychology at like a, you know, first year level. I did like introduction to Japanese and kind of like some other like linguistics, like some other like sound level stuff on the art side. And then commerce was to make my dad happy.

And after a year, dropped the commerce side, you know, really focused on the psychology side, did a five and a half year. Honors and graduate diploma in education in psychology with a double major in school psychology and a minor in special needs. I think for me, I've always had a mindset of wanting to give back. Even when I was young, I wanted to do more for people. And even at that age, I thought about school as this time where if you could give people the tools to blossom, you're like making a really big impact on their life. Like it felt like a very important time to set people up for success. And definitely there were days where I felt like I wasn't set up for success. And so I was already like ready to help people.

So yeah, studied that, did that for five and a half years. when it comes to a school council in Australia, it's a government, kind of like a government-supported thing where like every school gets like a certain amount of access to someone like me or to a school counselor provided to them as a state resource, depending on like the size of their school and where it's located and things like that. And from the practitioner's perspective, it's like a kind of like a rural doctor system where like your first posting, everyone wants to stay in the city, right? They want to be in the major city, which would have been Perth for me, but they obviously need people out in the country.

So for the first time, I was living three and a half hours away from Perth in a place called Meriden, which is in the Wheat Belt, so very much like a super rural place compared to what I was used to. And yeah, going around a group of schools there, both primary school and secondary school, trying to help people out for two and a half years while playing this League Legends game that we were talking about,

underground indie title, yeah. And with all that going on in your life, what the heck inspired you do want to do casting? Yeah, so wouldn't it make sense to start with casting? And like I said, when I started playing League of Legends, we were playing on the American server. There was no Australian server. So I was invited to join this group of people, which was like basically the 4chan community on League Legends.

Because at that time, there was like League Legends chat channels. And so slash V, which is the video game kind of subreddit or subpart of 4chan, even though I didn't visit 4chan, was kind of thrust to join that. So I was in my first like gaming community. And from there, you'd queue up. And at that time, ping was public. Like, you know, when you cued up in the loading room, it had ping. And that actually helped you understand, like, where people were from. And definitely people like overgeneralized people's pings as like, oh, he must be, you know, from Brazil.

He must be from Australia. At that time, like South Korea also played on, you know, the American server. It was just there was a U.S. server and a Europe server. There wasn't anywhere. There were no other servers at the time. So eventually queued into people who were like, wait, like, you have two hundred. 20 ping, which is what I was playing on at the time. Like, you must be Australian.

And so I was like one of the highest rated Australian players in season one and preseason one. I was invited to join Australian community. And from there, ended up on the second strongest Australian legal agents team, professional team. Obviously, a lot of inverted comments there was very much the no money mousepad era. And so was doing that while being a school council. I was a lot older than everybody else that was playing. You know, it was like kind of like 16 to 18 kind of people and I was already would have been about 25 at that time.

So veteran veteran status even though I was still too new to the game. And once kind of like that came to light, I wasn't like my ID wasn't Papa Smith at the time. It was like a kind of a Seasmith thing. I can know very much just like my actual name. And I always prized myself on being kind of like aware of the nitty gritty of the game. Again, at that time, there was no like lull fandom or in-client. There was very, very little information.

Like now if you buy a long sword, you get 10 AD, and then your skills that have AD scaling will be like, oh, it does six more damage now. At that time, it was very much like, Sion does his ability. and if you buy AD, it'll do a lot more damage. So that was like the sort of text you would get. There was no specific.

So you kind of went into custom games and hit things and then were like, bought a long sword and were like, okay, I think it does six more. Like all of this was like emergent like stuff that was like way behind from the public consciousness. And so I did a lot of that testing. So like I knew a lot about League of Legends. I was like kind of more like the village elder right before like there was, you know, like, you know, the internet and like, uh, Wikipedia's and things like that. So I knew a lot about league. And so when I played my first pro match, it was, they were like, oh, the commentators will

join. Like, this is going to be streamed. And that was actually my first, um, ever understanding that was really e-sports. Like, I didn't really know about it at the time. It was like, my first game was being brought. Oh, that's so cool. Like, who were these commentators? Like, this is pre-twitch TV. So I think it was on Justin TV at the time. And so loaded that up, wasn't aware there was like personal streaming and things like that. Obviously, it was very, very small at that time. I thought it was cool. And my first thought was like, oh, I know a lot about League of Legends.

Like, maybe I could be like a co-commentator. Because I think at that time, like, when you weren't playing, it was pretty common for, like, current pros to be like the guest analyst at the time. So I fancied myself that I could do it too. So, yeah, took on the mic with Pastry Time, who went on to be an LCS castor in his own right, is now a producer over at the LTA, and got good feedback from doing it once. And so at that time was kind of like, there wasn't really much of a scrim culture again. It's like, you know, very, very much in the early day. So I was playing semi-competitively and casting and a school counselor full time.

so I was doing a lot of different things. Fingers and many pies, that's probably something that stuck with me for a long time. Eventually, it became unsustainable to play and work and commentate, so I kind of had to choose one of them. And I was like, look, I'm going to get outscaled as a player. I was a juggler at the time. I know that's going to make at least one person in the score very happy.

And so went with the commentary route, because I thought I could, like, marry that with my schedules as a school counselor. And yeah, it blossomed from very, very much community casting with 3 to 10 to 20 to 50 viewers to something a lot bigger. And I know you started covering League of Legends in Australia where it was really growing around 2012. And then you had this like seven-year stretch

where you just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger until you officially started casting for Riot in 2019. Was that a difficult journey, or was it something that just came natural to you? Yeah, again, at that time, if people asked me about 2025, I say the world feels a lot smaller, and by that, I mean, you can share friendships and have, like, access to people all around the world,

instant translation, you know, fast internet, all those things. Like at this time, everything was harder. And broadband penetration to like, you know, remote areas and like all parts of the world was was a lot lower. So if you were from Western Australia, the story I always tell I was actually talking to, there's probably only two people from Western Australia who've like gone on to really get out and become kind of like very well known, especially in the casting round, with myself and Sponge, who's one of the biggest kind of strike castes in the world. were both Perth boys. Like when I joined my semi-pro team,

the advantage of playing semi-pro is there will be like lands in the East Coast. So we're talking about Sydney and Melbourne, you know, once every few months. And so, you know, having a sponsor basically meant they would like, you know, pay for your flights to go there. There wasn't really any other compensation. I remember I joined and my, and the captain at the time messaged me and was like, so the first thing that happened when the sponsor found out you were from Western Australia is they asked if we could drop you because like obviously it's it's a it's a very long flight we're talking five

plus hour flight like it's very expensive to go from perth to the east coast as far um the one thing that surprises americans the most about australia is like wait it doesn't look that big i'm like yes they shrink it for the map like that's not actually accurate um so australia's really really huge um and so given that um being in e-sports in western australia like for context so we talked about ping before, right? Like the ping from Sydney, Melbourne to the American server was probably about 110 to 130. New Zealand was about 80. We were on 230. So like, you know, like 210 to 230 ping. So like it's a lot, a lot worse. It's just really far from everything. And so it's very inhospitable to kind of make too much of yourself from Western Australia and e-sports.

Again, easier in 2025, but definitely very difficult in 2012. So at the time as a school counselor, we eventually, it's a funny story, we found out, I found out by accident that the Australian server was going to be started in 2013. I don't know if it was LinkedIn or progenitor of LinkedIn, but there was like this like, I remember being linked something that's like, oh, this like, riot executive just updated there, let's say LinkedIn. And it says that they're going to be the CEO of Riot Games Australia. But there'd been no public announcement about it or anything. And so naturally, I'd DM that person.

His name was Mercosso, has been around the sports industry for a long time, Italian guy. And he confirmed that yes, there's going to be an Australian server. We're going to launch it at Pax Australia 2013. We'll love you and paste your time to be commentators there for like this big event that we're going to do. And so alongside the same time as Basically, I requested some time off from work. I don't know if there were sick days or vacation days, who knows.

Yeah, I went to commentate some community events like Pax Australia, and the commentary stuff started to get a little bit more serious. We had a couple of advantages. The main one was we were willing to work unpaid. I probably commentated over a thousand hours of legal legends before I made a cent from casting. That just wasn't money at that time. I mean, again, it was a different time. There's no, like, there's not advice for someone coming up to cast right now. I'm sure we can talk about that later.

It's very much like sign of the times. So we did B streams and things like that without payment for ESL back when they were doing a lot of the legal agents circuit. And then, yeah, it was paid out to fly out to do a couple of community events, who really, really enjoyed it. Every time I, like, you know, left my office on a Thursday to have, like, a long weekend, like, flying around Australia to commentate legal agents and come back and then sit in my office on a Monday morning, it was just harder and harder each time to

like, kind of like, because it's like three days where you're like doing exactly the thing you love and it's like such a rush. And then you're like in your office being like, wait, like, was that a dream? Like, did that really happen? Yeah. And it just kind of became harder and harder. And then ultimately started to get notoriety because I was doing. So the big break we got from like 10 to 30. viewer Australian games was that Taipei Assassins, TPA, won the season two world championship. And at that time, there was no riot, like, league based out of China, let alone Taiwan.

Like, it was just like cups, online cups and things like that. And so given that, we got the opportunity to cast, like, the first games that Taipei Assassins played after the season two world championships. And so that got a lot of viewership, as you can expect. Because people like, wait, like, when do these guys play? Like, they just came out of nowhere and won the World Championship. Like, who are they?

And so we were trying to get, like, 10,000 to 30,000 viewers in English for those games. And, like, built our brand and then, yeah, doing these community tournaments, growing. It got to a point where there was promised that there could be a full-time thing in casting for me. And I had this sliding doors moment because, like, As you can tell from what I was saying about my dad earlier, I always thought that I was on this kind of like convey about in my life where you know, you go to school, you get a government job. They show you the 10 year pay scale. If you save your money, you can get a mortgage. Like I was very much trapped in like a traditional mindset.

And then I just sat in my office one day and I was like, I couldn't fully commit to costing obviously because I had like limited amounts of days off and things like that. I sat there and wondered, like, what if I, what if I don't give this my all? Like, how much of a regret would it be? And I definitely had like a, I definitely had this resolution that I had to give it my all that I, you know, like I had to like go down the road less traveled. And it was the best decision I ever made. I tried to make it sensibly. Like, I had a plan B and things like that.

But I just gave myself like a year to find a permanent thing in commentary that wasn't just freelance gigs. It took the whole year. Like it was definitely in month 12 where something came together, but got a full-time gig casting out of the riot Sydney studio in 2015. And so that was when I covered the LPL and the Oceanic Pro League for six months. My dream from meeting him was to join Montecristo and Doa over in Korea, working for OGM. That was like what I really wanted to do.

That job came about in the second half of 2015. So I moved Korea in the middle of 2015 and commentated for at the time, OGN, before Riot Korea took over the broadcast for three and a half years and spoke to be in 2018 as well, who were the other rival broadcaster. And then 2019 Riot Korea took over the broadcast and worked with Riot for a year. So, yeah, based in Korea for the better part of four and a half years, working for first a television network and then to Riot Games Korea. and also working the international events with Riot from 2016 onwards. I haven't heard OGN in the longest time. My goodness, that was like, wait, what's what I remember. I don't remember the studios that they were in,

but they were over here by Santa Monica, like before Santa Monica, I don't remember, but we did, I did a bunch of shows early on in my career where OGN owned, not owned, but like we're renting out like, I think it was like Studio 20. And they were doing all like the PubG stuff, a bunch of League of Legends things. I haven't heard that name in a minute.

Oh my goodness. And you're already talking about the US expedition, which was like definitely a side project for them. I mean, most people, like the history of e-sports is lost, but the first ever broadcast network for e-sports was OGM in 2001. So like OGM was around for extremely long time with StarCraft 1 or StarCraft Bood War. Got it. At that time, Costa John, who's known as like Korean hype guy for international events, you know, you would have seen him with his Shiga, Shija, Kagasimida, like getting the game, let the games begin.

Actually, if only enough, I actually have a prop for this, one second. Yeah, while you do that, I think I was wasting my time being 10 years old during that time instead of watching. So, this we have here is something that I requisitioned, which is Casa John's merch. She actually has his own merch that just opened up this year, which says, let the games begin in Korean. He's been a play-by-play commentator for StarCraft 1 into League of Legends for the better part of 25 years now. And he started on those OGM days. So I was working for OGM, which was under CJ ENM, if you ever Google them and look at their market cap.

They're like one of the Cheebo companies or like in Korea, there's like five to seven massive. companies that do everything from like make rice to like make music videos you know what i mean like they're very very differentiated um yeah so um i was working under cj and m and yeah they had they were like mostly like music videos and things like that but they also had this like 24-hour gaming channel of which uh league of legend's coverage was by far the biggest thing they did and that was um that was a rush like they were a dream company to work for for sure and then we will always go voting them to open up an NA office. And I think honestly, they waited too long.

By the time they opened the office, like riot had like removed their broadcast rights. They were kind of like in desperation mode, trying to make anything work. And PubG was the thing they zeroed in on. And it was like, pass, fail, does PubG become as big as League legends in Overwatch League? And it didn't, obviously.

So that ended up being a limiter. But the expert, expertise they had and the people they had on stuff, like they had true wizards of e-sports production. And a lot of them now are riot Korea and like around the world, like the brain drain to a lot of them went back to music videos. So like, you know, there's a chance that you're watching a K-pop music video and the same guy who made like fake look like complete badass 10 years earlier is like now, you know,

doing a new jeans music video. But yeah, it was a great time in my life for sure. So I kind of want to go a little bit into, because you spent a lot of time in like during the LCK. Like do you have like an idea of what makes the LCK so special both the cast and to watch? I think there's like a lot of this. Like as you can imagine as a commentator, everyone would ask the like obvious question of like, you know, why is this era of Korean dominance exists and things like that? I think that in Korea, the unique thing there is just how everything's so hyper-specialized to make being an esports competitor and viewer easy and straightforward. Like, Seoul is such a ubiquitous place.

Like, you don't have a lot of regional disparity. Like, everyone is in Seoul and can get to Seoul fast. The Internet was always extremely fast. And so there were no issues there. There were esports elders. And by that, I mean there were X-StarCrow. one pros who had retired and maybe gone through the army and come back who could like be good mentors around how to be a you know work life balance or lack of you know how to be in

esports watch an esports professional look like like we were already legal legends already like second third generation e sports and so having people to um direct the next generation is always extremely helpful to kind of like increase the floor of what competition can look like So I think the professionalism that the early nascent kind of 2012 Korean e-sports League Legends scene had was always a lot higher than the West when, you know, if you think back to 2012-2015 North America, you're looking at like first wave streaming culture kind of propelling everything, right? Like the biggest players and decision makers were also the biggest streamers.

You know, they were kind of like thinking about their brand when they made roster decisions. Gaming houses were, you know, content factories more than like, you know, this is exactly how we can get peak performance. Like the peak performance era was like 2018 onwards, if you know what I mean from like the franchising kind of like brought that in. But they're like the original data point that kind of like built out a scene. in Korea versus North America and Europe was so, so different. And I think that's like the easiest way you can like organize your thoughts on it. And then in Korea, again, because it was a second third generation thing and because PC gaming was the like by far the most common kind of way to game.

Like obviously North America is a console country by heart, even though we're all PC gamers here, PC power gamers at that. Whereas in Korea, it was go to the land cafe or the PC bung, as they call it, and play with your friends was like what everyone did. Like I grew up in arcades, which is like, you know, now like a completely lost start, but probably a bit closer to the standard kind of like North American experience of someone my age. Yeah, PC gaming is so ubiquitous there that third generation, you know, e-sports has already been a normalized thing. it's not like encouraged. You know, it's still like, I wish you would go and join Samsung and do something with your life. It's still the way it is.

But it's like, I appreciate it. It's been glorified on television for 20 years. It's just like such a different setting to come up in. And I think the moment you like can understand how something began, it helps you to look back and understand why things developed the way they did in different regions of the world. Absolutely. I still remember I started around 2000. like in actual like doing gaming and e-sports stuff specifically in collegiate.

And I still remember everybody that had any opinion about anything in gaming and e-sports, both professionally and just like watching. All the feedback was like the Koreans and just all of Asia is doing it. So it's so like they're like 10 years ahead. So anything that anything that we have here in the U.S. that we're building here in the U.S. has already been created 10 years ago overseas. And I still remember, like, people kind of going out of their way completely to try and catch these matches, whether it was like, this isn't tied to Rye game specifically.

I think in all of e-sports that existed, StarCraft being super prominent back then, too. Same thing. The feedback was everyone overseas is just doing it so much better than the U.S. We're like five to ten years behind at minimum. So we modeled a lot of everything around content that we used to like be able to scrape together on forums from whatever we saw competitions overseas. So it's really like you touched me on that. I'm like, wow, dude, it's bringing up so much nostalgia from like the early days, at least my early days.

Yeah, I think that's been a source of improvement, but also what works in Korea and what works in like a really dense city like Seoul. It doesn't necessarily map to, you know, more regional parts of North America and things like that. Like, there's a reason things like normalize the way they are. And I think a lot of good learnings were taken from what works in career. A lot of bad learnings were taken from it. I think that's like there's always a cautionary tale. There's always a, okay, I have this information. Now let's like reapply it to my setting.

Does it fit there? And, you know, whether it's roster choices or how to practice. and things like that. I think people try to import strategies from winners and just say, like, if we just do that, we'll win too. Yeah. Without kind of like appreciating that there's so much more nuanced to regional differences. So totally understand how you came up.

And I think a lot of people were inspired to follow the Koreans and mostly to good outcomes from that. And after you went through all that, you transitioned into team leadership roles in e-sports. So what made you decide, you know what? I think I want to transition from broadcasting to actually something else. What was the inspiration behind that? Yeah, it wasn't a transition I ever intended to make.

And to be honest, like, I was a shy kid who, you know, had plenty of imposter syndrome. So even becoming a commentator was a surreal journey for me, you know? I wasn't the guy who wanted to perform in front of the class or put up my hand and ask questions, you know. I was a quiet, clever kid. And so commentary ended up being something that pushed me to, like, evolve past my comfort zone and something I really, really enjoyed. I was very successful at it. And honestly, if I had had it, my way, I would have continued to evolve in the commentary. space. There's a lot of things I wanted to do. I was really driven by, one of the things I was

really impacted by was that there was a news article, an interview with Captain Jack, who now a very, very forgotten player, but he was a very famous player on early Korean League legends. You think of like Azuba Blaze, for example, and CJ Entus, like he was a big player. Nowadays, if someone's familiar with him, who's not, you know, back from my dad, and he's, day, they know about the Captain Jack cleanse, which is like instantly cleansing a stun ability or CC ability in League of Legends comes from him. Obviously, his name or reference to Pirates to Caribbean for other people who are wondering. And he gave an interview and it was like with an English publication.

And they asked him, hey, what does it mean for you that like the English fans call it a Captain Jack cleanse when someone pulls off an amazing cleanse? And this was like in 20, towards the end of his screen. So I want to say it was like 2015. It's like, you know, he was the best, one of the best 80 characters in all in 2012. So it's like, you know, towards the end of his career. And he responded, oh, they call it that? I didn't know.

And I was like, wait, like, every broadcasts around the world uses this term that he's never even heard. And like, how can that be? You know, it was like, kind of my first thought. And for context, League Legends was unique in Korea because it was the first title where on stage, on the one hand, was the Korean castors. On the other hand was the English castors. And there was English casting in person from day one of competition, which is like, you know, January 2020, January 2012. So, you know, a year before the LCS started for context. So the fact that there had been visible English commentary and thus memes and like discussion from day one and three and a half years

into that, the Korean, a Korean star had never even heard that they were like a global health asshole name, like, kind of caused me like, go into a flurry of like, how is this possible? And what I really wanted to do at the time in Korea, it was very popular to, I think it's probably still to this day, but I'm a little bit finger off the pulse, is they love to have these shows where people from around the world who spoke Korean would talk about like their perspectives and things like that, you know, like that you would have like an American who speaks Korean, you know, like someone from Africa who speaks Korean and they would do like a, global summit of like, let's talk about the world in Korean so that obviously can be understood by the local audience. And so I really wanted to do

double subtitled content with, you know, the famous Korean people. At the time, Cloud Templar was retired pro, was very respected analyst a little bit by myself. He's still around to this day. And I wanted to kind of like do things that like highlighted how two cultures or or communities around e-sports had grown in parallel, but not really intersected as much as you would think. Obviously, both of them knew faker was amazing, but the fact that this meme could exist that didn't, and there was little, no awareness.

Like, let's highlight the cool things that the Koreans think about trending and historical topics. Let's highlight the cool things that the English fans have about trending topics. And like comparing contrast, I knew it would be a banger. Like, I knew that people would want it. But because you were a second language broadcast, there never was like the re-examined.

resources for that. I'm sure you guys are aware of this in like all of these sports. Like for the thing that you're like focused on, there's resources for like emerging thing that could be cool that isn't really like there's not really a proof of concept of. It doesn't really get off the ground. And so. Um, by 2019, when I signed my contract with Ryan career, I was like, look, I really want to do, I really think we need to do content. I understand you guys still in like, your formative phase and like, get. getting a sea legs under you. In my contract, I needed that we're going to have a podcast because I'd always wanted to do like a League of Legends podcast for the Korean scene. There wasn't one at that time. And obviously podcasts were more of a radio thing. And just like there was like a lot lesser than nowadays, everyone has a podcast, right? But in 2018, 2019, there was less.

And so given that, I had it written into my contract, there will be an English language podcast, which didn't happen. They couldn't get it off the ground. And I was, I still enjoyed casting, but at that time, I came into casting with very limited goals. I was like, I just want a casting career. Wouldn't that be awesome? And then I was like, it's my dream to cast a Korean final. And by then I had cast every final in a row from 2015 summer.

I never even dreamed. I thought it would be cool to do a riot international event, but I didn't like have high expectations that I'd be able to earn that. And then I had cast worlds from 2016 onwards and cast three world finals in a row from 2017 onwards. And so I really wanted to grow in the high production value content side. And Riot wasn't able to like accommodate that. And I have a very, very strong growth mindset. I always want to know about where I'm going next and how I'm going to get there. If I'm not the best, I want to know where I am, what I can do to improve.

and get there. I'm never going to step over anyone, but I'm going to work tirelessly because I only want to be the best. And I felt like I was stuck. And while I was appreciated where I was, I wanted more. And I wanted the ability to invest more

to grow something. And so I was doing Vod Reviews. This is before co-streaming. There was no ability to go over the live games. So I was doing Vod Reviews of different games. and I've already reviewed 100 Thieves game. I think it was the game where Bang really popped off. Like they had at a rough start to spring 2019.

And then Bang had a big game. And I got a DM from Melk who's now one of the leaders of 100 Thieves. And he said, hey, saw your Vard Review. Like, would you be interested in a Java 100 Thieves? And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like, what kind of job are we talking about? And he was like, well, what about general manager? And like, I was aware enough to know that general manager is a very senior kind of position in an esports.

I wasn't coming in as the water boy, right? This is a very senior position. And it's like, only in a nascent field can you go from like broadcast talent to general manager? Like, it's quite a crazy kind of jump. You know, I talk to people who came from traditional sports and they're told like, you can start as an analyst and within 30 years you might be able to become. I'm a general manager. So I just looked at that and it seemed like a place where I could like author a lot of the sort of things I wanted to author about. Like, what kind of place is we sign?

What's kind of content do we want to do? Like, I wanted to be a one-stop shop. And that was what drew me to it. I knew there was no way to get the same level of authorship around the broadcast. I had tried, you know, in every way I could. And so it was a little bit of the, if you have to, if you love something, you have to let it go. kind of thing. Like, if I could have found growth opportunities and commentary, I would definitely have taken

them because I love to tell the story of Korean League Legends. To be honest, I felt a lot of, what word do I want to use here? Ownership's not the right word, but I definitely, because I had, at that time, Korean League Legends was seven years old. It started in 2012. This is end of 2019. And I had watched every game of the first three and a half years. And I had commentated almost every game of the next one.

So I felt a lot of ownership around like, I have more knowledge than Wikipedia does about legal edges in English. Like probably no one in the world knows more than me. And I want to share that. And I want to bring more people in rather than kind of like, it wasn't like a point of pride. It was like a point of like, if I don't make this content, if I don't share this, like, it'll be lost kind of thing, if you know what I mean.

So I kind of had to let that go free and build something on the team side. And so the 100thieves opportunity. and very much a blank slate, they had just come off a really poor year, and they were like, you got the keys to the castle. I was ready to have the keys to the castle, and, yeah, didn't know that would be the opportunity that brought me in,

but it ended up being the one I took. And did you also get a similar phone call or DM from FlightQuest? So it was different times, right? So in 2020, I went to be a general manager, and first year was rough, We rebuilt, found success, won the LCS at the end of 2021, made three finals in a row, first second, second over the course of 2021 summer until the end of 2022. And then the project kind of reached a natural end. And to be honest, I was having a lot of conversations with orcs in Europe because I thought, okay, my extended family is in Europe.

You know, North America is just me. this is like a natural time for me to like take my go to the next chapter right i've kind of like lived all around the world so i was going to go to the next thing and then was connected with the new ownership of fly quest so i wasn't even aware that they were under new ownership and when i had the first call i thought i was just giving like kind of like free consulting you know what i mean like i didn't go into it with any mindset of getting a job it was just like hey these people just got in they're new they don't really know the space, like, can you just like talk to them about this investment they've made? And I was like, sure, of course. Like, why wouldn't I help people?

And chatted with them and the call went well. And they said, like, hey, would you want to have a call with, you know, the owner of FlyQuest the next time? And I was like, yeah, I mean, if he has questions to ask, like, why not, right? And yeah, there was there was not a cynical bone in my body at that point. It was just a chat. I had a really, really positive conversation. And to your question, kind of the thing that it evolved to was basically like, hey, like, do you want to like be the business leader of FlyQuest? Like, do you want to just be in charge of an entire organization was what was put to me by the owner? And for context, at my time, 100 Thieves, definitely there were a lot of moments when you're

at a really, really big multi-game organization and I'm just in charge. of the legal legends program, right? Where you sit there and talk to people and you're like, damn, man, I would have, I would have done that differently about things like way outside your purview. And we've all done this, right? Yeah, of course. It's like, come on, what are the leaders doing over there? Like, why this? Why are that? Or like, what about us? Like, we're winning over here.

Like, surely we can like do more content or like draw more attention to us. Like, I had a lot of those moments. And then, you know, someone with ultimate power was just like, well, what about you then? And I sat there and I was like, wait, like, I wasn't intending to stay in North America, but it was a put up or shut up moment, right? It's like you can't you can't be the guy who like slags off the players when you're watching like traditional sports and then they offer you the power. And then you're like, actually, no, I don't want to do that. You know what I mean? Exactly.

I thought about it. Yeah. Now I've been given the the opportunity to do it myself. And so as has been tradition, I took the put up rather than shut up approach. And yeah, ended up accepting a role of FlightQuest as a co-lead. So that was, I want to say, September 2020 when we were having that conversation. So we're 2.5 years into the rain. But it wasn't quite a DM to your question, but it wasn't that different either.

This was back in a days when in, sorry, this was back in days when everybody was getting dropped for, yeah, Twitter DMs. I disappointed a lot of people. I was at an award ceremony in the last week. And they're like, can you give me a LinkedIn? I'm like, I still don't have a LinkedIn, bro. I'm telling you, man, e-sports operates so differently. Like, there's a version of it on LinkedIn.

There's a version of it on Twitter. And I think up until like maybe last year or like year and a half, because I feel like Twitter's been kind of like degrading a little bit in, in like just conversation value and stuff like that. But like, I've met a lot of people that I've got to work with and do cool stuff within gaming and e-sports, or people have, like, come up to me at events, like, hey, are you Rootsow? Simply because Twitter, just our online presence there.

Now, I've, you know, obviously, like, I've kind of made it a point because on a more professional scale and level, I think some career paths are more so driven about who knows you at a professional scale. So I think that's where LinkedIn is starting to become a lot more valuable for folks, especially in gaming as we're, like, you know, building more, I suppose. or just reframing what we built, building on what we believe is going to be better for the ecosystem.

LinkedIn has started to serve a bigger purpose. But back then, it was like the Wild West. You commented on someone and you had an opinion. Like, all right, come on board, let's do the thing, show us how to get it down. And you had like one chance or one opportunity. And then like, it was crazy the way, like the amount of cool stuff I've gone to do in my lifetime

simply because of the way that e-sports operates. Yeah, and like this, I'm not saying either is right or wrong, you know, like, Again, again, from the no gatekeeping perspective, like, I think that I was given a lot of opportunities that, you know, required a leap of faith from the person that was giving them. And if they misjudged that, then I would have been exactly the wrong person for the position. I'd like to think that I've risen to those opportunities. But I've just tried my best to kind of just offer, offer who I am and kind of like pass myself off for judgment and bet on myself. And I love that, by the way.

Yeah. And like, hats off to you because, and I've been speaking to people on the NSXC chat because I'm like, I think me and Papa Smith, you share the same brain. There's a lot of stuff that you've been saying that I just kind of like, oh my gosh, like this is awesome. Like, you've been hitting points that I just totally agree with. It's a beard thing, right? We've got beard, stay down. That's exactly. I'll, I'll catch up up here.

And then, but in the meantime, we'll, yeah, we'll bond over the beard. I mean, e-sports also takes away from up here. here too, I'll tell you that much. It's not a weird thing. I think it's a brain thing. Mike and I don't have brains. That's probably why. I could argue the same. No, but yeah, thank you for sharing all that, by the way. Before we move on to the next point, I just want to highlight that. There's a lot of stuff that you're saying that I kind of admire strictly because those are things that I also kind of go by. There's concepts that I consider like selfishly selfless, and I feel like being selfishly

selfless and that is the more you have, the more you get, the more you're able to offer. and provide to people. And I feel like a lot of the opportunities that you've taken so far, it's kind of you've recognized, especially because, you know, you've had a little, you've had a lot,

you kind of see the spectrum of how often those opportunities come to you and you recognize the opportunity isn't always going to be there when someone offers you to be a general manager, to be, you know, an executive. And like you said, going from a casters perspective

where you're like, hey, I thought my life was going to go in this direction. I thought I could scale it in this way. And then life is like, actually hold on a second right there. Let me get you something else. And the fact that you're able to recognize it. Change is scary, right?

That's the truth is like I'm very reticent to change. Like a lot of this has been getting out of my comfort zone. But I think an early example that you'd probably appreciate because it's like a community podcast example is we, page time and I wanted to start an Australian esports talk show, like mostly around League of Legends. And it was really tricky to get guests because the guests would be like, oh, like how many viewers do you get and like, does it pay? And I'm like, bro, like, this is the early days, you know, like, hopefully we're going to get 20 viewers. If we get to 100, that'd be great. But, and they were just like, well, why would I do it? You know, like, I could be practicing and going to school or

whatever. And it's like, I was basically like one thing that I, and again, I was older at the time. I'm 25, 26. These are really young kids. The way I explained it to them was if we grow the pie for everyone, we grow it for ourselves. You know, like if we bring more people into the bucket, we bring more people into how cool Australian legal agency is or what great personnel we have here, when those people come in, they're going to see us and they're going to respect us and we're going to get more opportunities from that. And I think the people that took those opportunities have gone on to have great careers. Some of them are coaches in North America to this day, which again, from an Australian community podcast in 2012 to being like an LTA

head coach in 2020 is quite the journey, you know, the road less traveled. I do think it's important to have those mindsets of put yourself out there, put yourself out of your comfort zone. Think a lot because there's still mistakes to be made, but mistakes are learning opportunities rather than things to feel bad about. Exactly. Love that. I did want to kind of go a little bit into just FlyQuest in general.

ever since you came into this role, has there been like an ultimate goal that you want to do during your time here? Or is there like a higher up goal that like it's going to be kind of hard to do, but you really want for Flaquess? So the kind of like mission statement we have as a company now that we've only really codified, like make the gaming landscape better than we found it is very much where. where my brain and Bryan's and a lot of people at FireQuest kind of intersect because I didn't come in with like outcomes I wanted. Like you know like win the LTA again kind of outcomes. Like I was very kind of like happy with where I'm at. I think I have a lot of process things that I'm very, very particular on. How to build a roster the right way, how to set up a culture.

How to, you know, when it comes to players and how to scout the right ones and what we want there and the size of that and kind of like, I'm a very big believer. And to begin with, this was with competitive stuff. Obviously, hiring business stuff was a new thing for me given I hadn't done that before. I came to FlyQuest. I'm a big believer in, you know, obviously you do your first pass of people. You find the people that are qualified and then you speak to them and you try to understand kind of like,

where are they coming from? And I have the advantage of like, you know, living all around the world around multiple different cultures and beliefs and things like that. So I can usually build a rapport. I would say as a school counselor, my biggest strength of this rapport building, which you need as a school counselor,

right? Because it's like, hello little Johnny. You've never met me before. But like your deepest dark of secrets in your brain, could you please share those as fast as possible is like, you know, kind of what counseling is, right?

You know, obviously. So rapport building was important. And once you build rapport, I always wanted to hire people who the exact fit, the exact place they wanted to go to in their career was exactly what I was looking for from them at my opportunity. I didn't, I don't want to hire people who are overqualified and like they have to compromise to come to FlyQuest. I want to like basically co-author with them in a call, why like wouldn't it just wouldn't, wouldn't, Wouldn't us coming together just lead to us both getting what we want next is like kind of spoilers the way I want to lead all these calls. And so I think that's like what I've tried to

imbue into FlyQuest is it's a lot of people who have the right qualifications and experience who kind of like want to grow within FlyQuest to become more and growth is not always like youth or It's just like, I've got something I want to give that I haven't been able to give elsewhere. That's exactly what FlyQuest needs is kind of how I think about it. And that's rookie players who are trying to build their star who are talented. That's veterans who want to mentor rookies. That's leaders who, just like me, kind of like our second generation e-sports. One thing I'm really proud of is our leadership group is a lot of second generation

ESports people who did a great role at another e-sports org and then, you know, unfortunately, as is too often the story on ESports, like whether that role went away or the company went away or whatever left with misgivings, but the right kind of misgivings, like things they wanted to show and prove. And they're doing that at FlyQuest.

And we get to skip over the like goodness in that coming kind of approach that sometimes you get with traditional people coming into esports, where they just try to copy a sports model without really understanding what East Sports is and isn't. I think we were able to skip that step, and I think that lets us do things a little bit quicker. Like, I'm really proud of what we've done

in the three years that we've been going so far. Hey, you've done amazing, and I'm curious what your leadership philosophy is when it comes to building a winning culture. And when I say winning culture, I'm not talking about winning League of Legends and Matches per se, but just, you know, when the business side of things, the company, FlyQuest as an org.

Yeah, like I said, I think the, I really do think it's a lot about setting expectations well from the advertising a role phase, like what role do we need? What does an ideal candidate look like to the hiring phase to the culture phase of like integrating that person into a project? And those are the sort of things that are uniform across competitive to business staff and things like that. I love people coming in who have things they want to do, who feel like they will get growth within FlyQuest. I think those things are what I feel really passionate about.

And that's why we just do have a lot of new leaders and a lot of self-starters. I think that I'm always, as a self-starter myself, I'm at least not imbiased towards self-starters. And I try to like hold myself in that. But I think it's just, yeah, it's really like understanding. why it's like a perfect kind of fit. And we think about that a lot. And I will say this is true of business staff hiring, but also kind of like what e-sports were in

and things like that is I never want to be too fast to hire, too fast to move on from someone. I think that's like a, that's kind of been the e-sports mantra. Like, we've got to get on this trend, blind. Oh, it didn't work. No, mind. I'm really proud that since I've joined FlyQuest,

we've never dropped the title. We've added many titles, not like all of them instantly, but we've been very thoughtful about what games we've added to FlyQuest, and we've never moved on from a game. Like, oh, we love Counterstrike. Wait, we don't love CounterStrike Now kind of vibe. Like, we've stuck with the things we've done. And I think that that's important.

Like, we're still a relatively small to medium-sized e-sports org. We really kind of think through, like, when is it the right time to make a full-time higher? and, you know, okay, why don't we start this as a part-time thing? And if it grows to full-time, that's assigned to everybody that this is an awesome thing. We also have promoted a lot of our leadership team from kind of like lower roles up. And I think a promotion track is a really, really important thing. I've always been a big believer in academy teams and third teams as well.

Unfortunately, we don't have one now as a result of kind of some of the changes in the right ecosystem. but kind of bringing someone in and showing that they can grow within FlyQuest and that it kind of has a cascading effect, whether it is competitive or business, because it's like it should be a reaffirming thing that if you work hard here and put your vest foot forward, the sky's the limit. What would you say are the biggest misconceptions people have

about running an e-sports org? I think just having an itchy trigger finger is like probably the thing that, gets people in strife is that you'll get a win. Sometimes it's very difficult to tell where the wind comes from. And maybe that's an amazing partner like NCXT joining. Maybe that's a surprise victory in the LTA. A windfall will come your way and you instantly like pivot everything to getting like five more of those because you think you've got to read on how e-sports works.

And e-sports is always changing. You know, you were talking before, but so about, like, Twitter and like how social media is, how, like, even metrics are calculated in games. I remember our games patch changes time and time again. Like, the best decision yesterday isn't always the best decision today. And I think trying to be thoughtful and measured goes a long way in e-sports, but to be thoughtful and measured, you need to be patient. And patience is something that has to be earned.

in e-sports a little bit. And it's not what a lot of people have, really at any level, you know, whether it's like Twitch streamers who look at other people who have more viewers than them and really wish that. Why don't I have those viewers or smaller esports orgs who can't work out why they're not winning now, like why do we have to win later, like funding models, depending on whether it was venture capital back in the day. We're lucky to have a family office where we are able to take a long-term view.

I think having patience and like collecting data and then making a data informed decision that fits you is the right way to go in e-sports. But it is a privilege that I'm able to take that I know other people can't. And so I definitely don't want to point and say that that's like a fit for everyone. But if you can take your time, if you can really choose your battles, I think that's one of the ways to kind of last because. you know, the thinning of the herd has happened. A lot of ESports orcs have gone under in the last five years. And sadly, that's probably going to still be the case five years from now. And I think I kind of want to go a little bit into that, like, especially, you know, being

patient and understanding. There's also that kind of other side of, like, being into the future, trying to see, like, try to predict what's happening in the future, what you can kind of do today. I mean, you've gone through so many years of e-sports and seeing different players come in and out, different teams and the e-sports in general. But as you've seen throughout these major changes, what's like the biggest challenge esports is like facing today? Yeah, it's interesting. I think how to reinvigorate a e-sport is probably the thing I think about the most. I remember when I was commentating League of Legends in 2015-16, the game was already seven years old.

And so as a multi-game caster, like when I moved to OGM as a multi-game e-sports broadcaster, like you couldn't just be a League of Legends guy. So I did League Legends in Hartstone, for example, at that time, did some Overwatch in the pre-overwatch League days. And everyone was as a freelance commentator, you kind of had to be ready to jump on the next game, right? So a lot of people already at the time were like, the prophecy was like, okay, well, League of Legends, like, how much longer does it have? You know, like, 2016, 2017, like, it's got one or two years. And like, obviously, we're 10 years later from those original conversations in the game, every international event is hitting new viewership records. So already it's a bit unprecedented.

And so you might say, well, why did League of Legends persist? And the thing to remember that's, like, going to be lost to a lot of the people joining us for the podcast today is. that League of Legends was a free game. Like, that is not a platform game that doesn't release sequels every year. Like, when League of Legends was coming out in 2009, maybe someone here can Google it, but think about which Call of Duty we were on in 2009 and which Call of Duty were on in 2025.

There's been, what, probably 14 new releases since then? I know they didn't do it every year, but like 14 to 16 new Call of Duty games would come out in that time. I used to be, like, by the $60 to $80 game every year, And that would like reset the player base, right? You know, you'd have to like, you know, demand money from your parents. League of Legends was the first forever game, I think, about, in one of those cases where they've never asked you to pony up money to get access to the game.

And that was a very, very new business model at the time that has allowed the game to persist. And obviously, it's breakout success meant there could be media entities like Arcane and things like that. So I think that's already something that you have to think about when you're thinking about like how titles move and how things go is like the variables that they're constructed in and just how taste change. And I look at CounterStrike 2 where, you know, our SCS team proudly wearing NCXT sponsorship is like playing on D underscore Dust 2. Bro, when I was 13 years old, just moved to Dubai, how did I get to know my friends? We went to the Land Cafe and we played CounterStrike 1.5 and it was on D-Dust 2. And so it's the same map 24 years ago. And at the same time, Counter Strike 2, which is obviously an evolution of CSGO rather than a new game,

it's still the same map that I played many versions ago, is hitting viewership records every time. They've found a way to renew their audience. And I think that's the thing that I'm always waiting on is like, What's the latest tactic to capture a new audience? There's obviously new titles, you know, like Marvel rivals does really well on TikTok. Not a big surprise. Marvel games are big. The game is new and free.

And TikTok is the best place to share clips. So I think that definitely like renewing yourself and keeping yourself young. When I was a, I'm 38 now, which is obviously like e-sports, ancient territory when it comes to competitive stuff. Hey, you guys aren't competitive stuff. Don't worry about it. You were a siege to us. But when I think about being a school counselor, I would have been, you know, 25 when I graduated. One of the ways I built rapport was to ask the kids what they were into.

And at that time, Minecraft, it just came out. And they were like, oh, I'd be playing Minecraft. And I was like, oh, Minecraft, I'm playing that too. And they're like, wait, like, I've never met an adult that's ever played Minecraft before, you know? Like, I stayed current. And even though the thinning hair and beard, with Gray chose it, I've always tried to keep my finger on the pulse. Like I'll never gatekeep, you know, back in my day kind of thoughts on it because at the end of the day, we have an audience

that some of them came in yesterday and some of them are still around for 15 years ago and we appreciate them equally. And so helping give resources to new person and helping reinvent yourself and kind of back in my day story for the older, for the older fan is really important. And I think I'm excited to see how legal legends will continue to tackle that problem. Obviously, the arcane has been helpful. One of the things I've been the most critical of on arcane is it should have been, like, my impression from what I've heard behind the scenes is they didn't realize how much of a hit arcane would be until very close to release.

I think it went through a very, very long development cycle. And it was like two years before, if you had asked the people working on it, they'd like, I don't know if we'll come together. And then two months before, they're like, wait, this is going to be amazing. If they had had the insight earlier, a new player experience being created that like bought those two worlds together,

you know, rather than just like play Garron with thornmail kind of vibe that it is. That would have been the accelerating event that would have brought a lot of people onto League of Legends. I was very disheartened kind of the vibe of like, I just watched Arcane. It was amazing. Like, should I play Legal Legends?

No. No, don't do it. Yeah. Like, that's like one of the most hurtful things that can happen to your game coming back into and extending its lifetime. And that's an unlucky one. I think of it as a mistake rather than a curse. Like league is still relevant enough that it will get many more goes at that. And I hope one of them sticks, kind of like CS2 has proven stick as a way to refresh the player base.

Because the game is still great. Like I said, I'm back into it after five years, having a great time. obviously the same frustrations that grind in my gears 10 years ago still grind my gears to this day, but like it's a really playable game. But advertising it to the Zoom Roosuits today who are like,

isn't that the old game? Yeah, it is. And it's on Riot to kind of like burst through that door. And I don't think just saying two is going to be enough. Like it needs to be multiple factors, but there's many smart people at Riot that get paid a lot of money

that can look into that. So, yeah, a little bit of a side story, but I hope it still answers your question. It did. And I can sit here and talk about dust two all day. I love that map. Hell yeah, brother. I do have one final question for you before we get into a fun little game, Mike put together here for you. It's probably the hardest question of the day, so I hope you're ready to answer it.

My question to you, Papa Smithy, is, why do you? you love esports? I think that the thing I love the most about esports is the fact that whatever brought you to e-sports is a badge of honor and an awesome thing to embrace rather than something to gatekeep you about or hold you back from success in. Like, I love the fact that I walk into our LTA room and our LTA team will be practicing today. And we have a top planner from Belgium, a jungler from Poland, a midlainer from Korea, an 80-carry from Canada by way of Iraq, and a support who's a true blue North American boy. There's so many different cultures.

Coaches are from Norway, Spain, and Korea. It's such a multicultural existence, which obviously, like, given the fact that I've lived over the world, I kind of like resonate with everybody at a different pace or in a different way. And what brings them together is this amazing game that they have dedicated so much of their life to. And they can solve problems and create opportunities and laugh and cry and feud and be bonded together by computer games. And I'll never forget what my dad said, you know, when I was growing up, you know, again, no view of or like thinking there was going to be a vocation game. Like I wasn't going to be like a coder or something like that.

You know, it just was a player. My dad was always like super discouraging of playing games, you know, like, hey, like he was very much from the, because he's, you know, baby boomers. Like, you know, an older gentleman, 78 now. I hope you're doing well dead. Good old John Smith very much sort of name that gets you in trouble with some of those like online name generators. He was always like, you should be doing scholarly things with your time, you know?

Like you should be doing things that will like help you get a job or help you improve and things like that. But I enjoyed video games. And then finally got my first opportunity to get like, you know, and then I was doing all this unpaid casting and things. And that's like a distraction from work kind of thing. And then finally got the opportunity to get like a, you know, salaried, you know, full-time casting thing. I'm like, well, what do you have to say now, dad? You know what he said? He said, shut up, son.

And but it was from the right. It was from the heart, you know, like, I was able to, like, self-build this career, all these, like, yin-yang or left-right moments where I made a decision. I built all of this to where it is now. And to see people, you know, second, third generation compared to me, obviously the generation is a lot shorter in gaming, right? It's like a shorter timeline. able to pop up from that and kind of like get paid well and looked after and like take competitive

game as a full-time pursuit like I know how far we've come to get there and I and I love setting those people up for success and very proud of what they're able to do under the flight west banner so ultimately it's like it just hits all the pleasure centers in the right way it doesn't mean there's not hard days doesn't mean that it's straightforward every times and there's like existential threats abound, but if I can bring in a group of people who want to take video games seriously and try to build an empire out of that, obviously some amazing business stuff and community people and things around that and just try to sell. I just really love video games, especially League of Legends and wouldn't it be awesome to win from North America in them? I don't know.

It resonates with me and I hope it resonates with a lot of people out there. That's an amazing and beautiful answer. And now Mike is going to ruin it with a really dumb game. So, my brother. I'll let you take it away, Mike. All righty. So you have dual citizenship, correct? At Osharend, UK?

Yeah. I mean, on the British, the British side is, you know, familiar rather than, like, identifying what I definitely identify on the LZ side. Oh, you do. So I'm very curious, though, to see if you tend to favor. for the Australian truly or you tend to actually like a lot of the British like stuff. So I got to give you honest answers. I would tell you that I would describe myself as always going the Australian way, but who knows?

Maybe I'll betray myself with my answers. That's what I'm wondering because sometimes there will be something with food or cultures or like that. So I'm going to ask you two different things and I want you decide which one between the two you would decide on choosing basically. So first one, Vegemite or Marmite. Both terrible. If you had to choose one, which one, though?

I guess cheese and vegamite is okay, so I would go with that, but they're both terrible. Tim Tams or Jaffa Cakes? Tim Tams. Oh, wow. Okay, so another Australian one. Meat pie or cornish pasty? Meat pie, baby. Oh, again, another Australian one.

Okay. A hot one, too. None of those. There's British ones that are cold. No, no, no. chicken parmi or bangers and mash i'm not a big palmy man and that is kind of the australian food so we'll go with the bangers and mash on that oh there we go would you rather do an ossie brecki or a full english breakfast Australian breakfast is by far the best in the world

Aussie breakfast every time and that's like avocado toast and like eggs and stuff right yeah avocado toast a bit of hulumi like in general it's just kind of like uh you know high brow breakfast, but it's always yummy. Lammington or sticky toffee pudding? Again, I'm kind of in the need of camp, but I guess if I had to choose, I'd probably go British again, so maybe the sticky toffee.

Okay. So it looks like a lot of the sweets. Okay. Oh, an Aussie barbecue or a Sunday roast. Ooh, this is one where, again, I'm going to be naughty, but I love me a Sunday roast. Yeah, always tasty. Do you prefer, would you watch tennis at the Australian Open or Wimbledon?

Wimbledon's more prestigious for sure. Probably just default to Aussie Open because I grew up with it in my time zone. But, you know, if there was a power ranking, Wimbledon would be above the Oseo Open. Are you, sorry, separately, but are you familiar with what's his name? Sidney Ball? No. Ah, he used to be one of like the top ranked tennis players. coming from Australia.

Yeah. I'm definitely on the boomer side with tennis. Like if you ask me like name an Australian tennis player, it'd be like Leighton Heuer or Mark Phillipoosa. Like the like 90s kind of like tennis players. But the newer generation, I'm well out of practice on. Oh,

would you rather have the deadly animals in Australia or the rain and more rain in the UK? I take the animals every time, baby. Oh. What? I'm not capable, man. I can get past the deadly animals. I'm not scared of spiders.

Can you, can you, like, show with your hands the biggest spider you've seen? See, this is where you guys get it wrong. I know Americans come in, and they're like, but if I go to Australia, there's going to be massive spiders and drop bears. Like, that's the things you guys are scared of. A, the drop bears are just urban legends, and B, the venomous spiders are the small ones.

not the big ones. If they're a big spider, they're chill. Go pet them. But if it's a small spider with a bit of color on them, stay well away. Oh, well,

there you. Oh, how about the spider? Since you said that there's like the size that, do you care more about the spiders in like Britain? Or do you care more about spiders in Australia then? Oh, the Australia ones are more deadly. Again,

this is like a bigger variety of them. And the temperature is like hotter. So like they're not getting washed away. by the rain. So for sure, spider-wise, you've got to be more aware, but the misnomer is, oh, it's a huge big spider. It'll get me. And look, we all play Diablo and like, you know, the massive spiders, the creepy crawlies. But, um, you'll learn that the colorful small spiders, those are the ones, like the redbacks, for example, if you look those up, those are extremely deadly.

Ooh, big chills. Uh, weather in Australia or weather in the UK. Easy Australia every day of the week. Ooh, okay. Wait, really? I doesn't get like blistering hot, though. Yeah, that's what air conditioning is for, bro. I relate. I really, I really, I just moved to Vegas.

How do I turn the rain off? An umbrella is not an appropriate answer. You stay inside a game. What do you mean? Yeah, but sometimes you've got to go places, brother. That's fair. Yeah. And these answers might be evolving, because again, like,

I'm thinking about times when you can't just like door it out. or bring everything to you, right? Like, usually you kind of have to go out to do things. But the sedentary gamer lifestyle does allow you to bring everything to you in 2025. So if there's no air conditioning, then we can be British. But like, let's just assume we're obviously for this one. And then the final one, the Capitals, which one do you prefer London or Canberra? You take London over Canberra for sure.

Camberra's kind of like, if you guys don't know Camberra's like, equidistant from Melbourne and Sydney and basically is the capital because Melbourne and Sydney couldn't decide which one to be the capital. So they went with this other like kind of like sleepy kind of place. Whereas, you know, London is, um, it's not the city for me, but it's like, you know, it's one of the iconic, you know, world destinations and has an amazing history. So Canberra's sleepy political town. London's London. Easy choice London. Nice. Well, actually, I'm actually surprised that. He actually chose kind of like a, not a full even split, but you I actually... A hodge, budge.

Hodge, yeah, there you go. I'm going to... Before I go to announcements, Papa Smithy, do you have anything you want to say to the audience or any sort of events going on or announcements? Yeah, I mean, there's always a lot going on. I would appreciate if you guys are interested to have enjoyed this conversation to follow up

Twitter.tv slash FlyQuest. We have a lot of sub accounts from there, and obviously I have my own account, Papa Smith, but I think on the FlyQuest account, you'll get little cross sections of all the things we're up to. June is a pretty crazy month. We have an unannounced event coming up that we're excited about, but even when it comes to like public things, you know,

the LTA finals are coming up. We're already locked into the winners bracket. We play against Cloud 9 next Saturday, so not tomorrow, but the Saturday coming to lock in a place at EWC and also the grand final and potentially get a trophy lift and go to MSI if we're able to win that grand final. So that's excitement coming up. I'm actually jetting off on Monday to join our Aussie boys

and their beautiful NCXT Aussie jerseys over at the major. The Counterstrike 2 major starts on Tuesday this coming week. So very much it's like the tent pole esports events are all coming up. We're not far away from MSI itself starting. So I think there's like a lot of excitement when it comes to this is like this is the part that you're ready for, you know, it feels like the first five, four or five months are like the rising energy to the payoff and the payoff is starting to come. So very, very exciting stuff going on there.

So yeah, if you're interested in anything to do with FlightQuest, please, please come on board. Also, drop bears are very real. I've seen one in real life. Don't lie to the people. It's a myth. I don't even know drop bears are koalas? They're just koalas, bro. Coala bears that drop from the trees.

Aw. rip your throats out. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, totally. I saw that movie as well, don't worry about it. All righty. I'll go into a little bit of announcements, and then I'll give the secret word that give 500 extra entries into the giveaway.

First, we just launched a bunch of new stuff. We launched a new micro-ATX case, the H-3-Flow, our newly updated H-9 flow, a cracking lead 420, and a line of cracking plus coolers, available to 240, 2-80, and 360 millimeters. So you can take a look at nz60.co slash new stuff

or explanation point new stuff in chat. You can take a look on our website n60.com. We have stuff going on for our club, the nzzyc club. You can see right there to chat harbor quest to claim poochie points. You can basically do some fun quests and you get these things called poochie points,

which is our mascot. And you can use those points to get free stuff. We literally do monthly giveaways for peripherals and cases and stuff like that. So take a look at nzc.com slash club or exclamation point club in the chat. Let's see. Oh, follow Papa Smithy on Twitter or X and YouTube. I have Esclamation point Papa Smithy in chat. You guys can take a look at his link tree.

Please follow him because honestly, this guy has been through like pretty much anything you think of. and he is one of the most knowledgeable people into the e-sports community. So if you guys want to see some really dope stuff that he and Flagwester Cookin, please follow them. I think that is it.

Ivan Rui, do you have anything before I give the secret code word out? I just want to thank Papa Smithy for his time. I appreciate his spending a couple of hours with us here, as we really like to say, on the horn. So thank you, Papa Smithy, for joining us today. Yeah, much appreciated and shout out to NZT. You guys have come on board and supported us in our journey in accepting an award for e-sports leader of the year last week.

I haven't talked about on socials yet, but we'll get it out there. One of the things I called out was that our partners have taken a leap of faith with us. Obviously, there's other more statured e-sports orgs who've been around for a long time that have the big numbers, whether those numbers are current or their legacy. And coming on to join the FlightQuest journey when we've been this kind of like rising arc for the last couple of years and supporting us to it has been much, much appreciated. The things that we do, the trophy lift we had last year wouldn't have been possible without NCXT. So big shout out to you guys. You make the magic happen over here.

Making us blush. All righty. So for those that are here, there is a little entry part for a secret code war. That gives 500 extra entries into the $100 gift card for FlyQuest store. I'm sorry, Papa Suthi. I had to do it to you. The code word is light mode. Light mode because of that infamous Vod review.

Do you still use light mode or did you switch back to dark? I'm a light mode man. I had a screen filter when I was a kid. No screen filter. Light mode. Doing just fine. I still work. I thought we had a lot of common.

Not enough for that. I wish I would have known that before the podcast started. I'm sorry. Never meet your heroes. All right. Thank you guys for joining us. We're tuned to live on Fridays at 10 a Pacific Center time on the official NCC Twitch.

And don't forget to listen to previous episodes of Apple Podcast, Spotify, and SoundCloud. You got any questions for us, send an email to podcast at ncc.com or tag at NCC on social media platforms. Thank you, Papa Smithy, for joining us today. Follow him on Twitter and YouTube. Follow FlyQuest on all socials. And we'll see you guys soon. Thank you so much. And thank you, Papa Smithy.

Take care.