Right About Now with Ryan Alford - eSports ft. FatalStryke

Episode Date: August 25, 2020

In this episode, Ryan sits down with pro gamer and coach, Joe Iaquinto, aka FatalStryke. Joe is a 31 time local/regional champion, Gears of War champ, and has won tournaments while a coach/team manager.This episode is packed with insights from Joe and on his time as a professional eSports player, coach, and as a team manager. Follow FatalStryke's live stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/fatalstrykeEnjoy the podcast? Like, share, and rate us! Follow along on Instagram @the.rad.cast | @RyanAlford If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. 

You're listening to the Radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, it's Ryan Alford. Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. We're continuing our ongoing series. We're getting towards the final countdown of the eSports series. It's been fun. It's been real and i feel like i'm ready to uh go attack uh some video games and no i i i'll have no chance with our guests today because we've been talking a lot of business with esports and uh and a lot of uh arenas and you

know game developers and all those things but now we've got a player coach and major champion, local champion. But Joe, really great to have you. Joe Aikinto, also known as Fatal Strike. We promised. I told Joe I was going to call him Joe during the episode. But a lot of people listening that might be in esports know you as Fatal Strike. But great to have you, Joe. Yeah, it's an honor to be here.

I'm super excited. Great that we were able to link up and make this happen. So yeah, it's going to be fun to talk my side of the story and just basically educate the Radcast community on esports in general. So it's going to be fun. I love it, man. Well, let's go right at it. Let's start.

I want to give everybody kind of just your background. So let's just start with, I know you've been doing it since you're a kid. And, you know, that's been led up to, you know, being pretty much a career path for you. But let's start with just that background in competitive gaming and, you know, where it all started. I know we talked pre-episode. There was some good stuff. I want to get into that. So let's start there. Sure. I mean, long story short, first system I ever got was a Super Nintendo from my aunt when I was a kid. I probably was about four years old. Donkey Kong Country was the first game I ever played. And I 100%ed it in like a couple of days. And everybody at school was like, wait, Joe, that's not possible.

A couple of friends came over, found out that it was the real deal um it was just a platformer game uh but yeah then when sixth grade uh i won my first tournament ever a couple friends convinced me to you know go to a tournament it was actually on a school day i didn't know it was on a school day though and i actually went to the tournament for diddy kong racing um and it was for n64 and i actually ended up winning the tournament but but I had no nerves because my friends didn't tell me it was actually a tournament. They just made me believe everybody thought they could beat me. And my competitive drive alone was enough to make me want to take it serious enough. And then I luckily ended up actually winning the tournament, made like 300 bucks that day. It was a really good day for somebody in sixth grade. Eventually I had to

explain it all to mom, but it went over well. And then that's kind of how it all started. Uh, high school, a lot of halo too. Um, that was kind of like the big shooter that got me, you know, into e-sports in general, played a lot of online games, but didn't play at a professional level at all in that game. There were players that were absolutely unreal that played that game. And then gears of war kind of started for me when I was 19 years old, I traveled to a lot of local events, competed a ton, and that's kind of where it all started for me when I was 19 years old. I traveled to a lot of local events, competed a ton, and that's kind of where it all started for me. And Gears of War is something that's been a part of my life for 14 years. And it's been a really wild journey in that game. So I'm going to ask some fundamental questions here because I think people will be curious. They come off as basic, but what made you, as a kid and maybe even living up to as an adult, it seems like there's, you know, you have professional athletes and there's like this window of, you know, let's throw out the Michael Jordans and the those things. What makes one kid that's 13, 14, 15, you know,

badass versus the next kid? Is it commitment, will, hand-eye coordination? What is it? I would say, I would say it's a few things. One is definitely like willpower. You got to hate losing. If you want to be great at something, you have to naturally hate losing. And to be honest, a lot of people don't know but my my younger brother actually was three years younger than me his name is john um he goes by the gamer tag captain fire um and he's not like a you know super popular guy or anything he's very low-key i'll be honest growing up he used to kick my butt and he did it consistently he did it in super nintendo he did it in nintendo 64 He did it especially when we played Halo together,

and I thought I was very good at Halo. So when I lost to him often, it was definitely tough for me. So having a really good sibling rivalry that I felt like was really healthy for me and my development and definitely humbled my ego when I was young because when you think you're great at something, you naturally develop an ego at a young age very quickly. And when you get into the bigger ponds and you start to play the bigger competition, you learn very quickly that, you know, you're not really shit and you gotta, you know, get better. You gotta get better and you gotta get better

fast. And if you, and if you want to really develop yourself, uh, you know, you have to take it serious. And that's kind of what happened. My brother definitely humbled me at a young age, you know, losing to someone that was younger than me. Um, he held the controller better than me. He held it. It's called claw. It's a different way to hold the controller. Um, and he did that at a very young age. And eventually I adapted and developed that technique to hold the controller as well as I got older, but it wasn't until I was in my twenties that I was doing that. He was doing that when he was a very young age. So his inputs were faster. He buffered inputs better, which means he basically would do a certain amount of sequences in the controller in a row and they would all free flow perfectly in the game and

he did that naturally it's not like he thought about it he didn't think oh i'm buffering when i'm playing the game or i'm you know clawing when i'm playing the game he just naturally did these things it was a natural gift for him so i definitely attest a lot of uh my development to my brother and then the rest of my development i I would say I attest to the Gears of War community in general. It's a very cutthroat community. A lot of people with a lot of talent in that scene. And in Gears of War 1, which I took extremely seriously, I won a lot of tournaments during my time playing that game

that were locals and regionals, though, not major championships. There's a big difference. But the competition I competed at against in, you know, New York land centers, California land centers, all that competition, you know, definitely humbled me and made me always want to get better. So I got to play a lot of, you know, MLG champions often on a weekly basis, sometimes on a monthly basis, you know, in person in New York or, you know, in California. And that experience definitely, uh, helped me get a lot better. And it got to a point to where in my mind, I felt like I could compete with anyone in the world when, you know, 2016 rolled around and years of war one was remastered. And I made another run to compete for, you know, pro after doing commentating for a few years. So it, it definitely, uh, gears of war,

uh, that community, I give a huge testament to, or just how competitive they are for why I got better. And definitely my brother for sure. Did your parents, as you were growing up, you know, obviously you showed that you can make money doing this, um, and support, you know, some type of lifestyle. Did they ever show concern to the the the violence of the games i mean like percent you know like i've all i wonder with that like with my own kids um and we're gonna talk about the you know how much potential they might have down the line we'll finish the show with that but uh but uh you know i do wonder like like they play fortnight they do stuff and like i'm not one

of those i'm really not that overprotective parent. But at the same time, it's like, you know, some of these games, it's just like you're blowing people's brains out, you know? And it's like... Sure, yeah. Gears of War is one of those very violent games. Tons of blood, chainsaws attached to guns, bazookas, bodies being chopped in half, literally, like, beating people up with their own body parts.

It's a very... Gears of War is a very violent violent game there's some countries where it's actually banned because of how violent it is but a lot of people that are gamers i'll be honest the game in my opinion i never felt like i never want not once in my life did i ever feel like i was violent because of the game that's just me now other people might be different i can't speak for everyone i think when you evaluate stuff like that it's a case- by case basis. And I think the way that you're brought up, the way you're educated by your parents has a big influence on how you can, you know, relate to losing. I think if you have, you know, a great, you know, father figure in your life that teaches you at a young age, you know, what it's like to lose and the fact that

you can learn from losing. I think that you would benefit a lot if you have something like that in your life. But when it comes down to it, I mean, when I grew up, my parents were divorced. I grew up mostly with my mom. I have an unbelievable connection with my father, even though I didn't get to live with him growing up. He's been my number one supporter through my entire Gears of War esports career. He even showed up to E-League himself, you know, at that event, which was on live TV last year, which was super cool to see him there and get to see him, you know, experience the event.

And my grandfather, from my father's side, was not even a big supporter. You know, may he rest in peace, but he wasn't a big supporter for a long time until right before he passed away. I had one conversation with him, a final conversation, and that was when he really supported, like, what I was doing. And he was saying, like, hey, you know, times are different, you know, go out there and go chase number one. If you're going to do it, you know, at least make sure that you're number one with what you're doing. So that's not a waste of time, you know, if you're going to compete and if you're not going to compete and you're going to do something else, make sure you're passionate about it and you're consistent with it and you save your money and you're smart with what you're

doing. Don't just, you know, go buy fancy things that waste your money he always taught me it's not how much you make it's how much you save that's what he used to teach me but uh but yeah that's pretty much it yeah it's a smart guy really smart guy trust me so what's been the uh you know it's interesting the the kind of especially someone like you that was e-sports is evolving into this huge thing and you've kind of come up through it, you know, all in, in kind of the whole, I mean, I don't want to say that. I think, I don't even think we've gotten to the glory days. We might be getting to them. I'm not sure. We're not even there yet.

I don't even think we're there yet. We're not even there, but it's like, but it's become interesting. I think guys like you that play i don't want to say classical games is probably the wrong statement here in 2020 but like you know you know more traditional games the shooter games the just intensive games that are all about the gaming and all about the playing and we've reached to this world, I feel like with esports, where the content, and we talked about this a little bit pre-episode, and the storytelling and the ability to do a lot of other things are a lot more part of the narrative than just the game playing now. Yeah, everybody wants to know your story at this point it's becoming like in a way it's kind of it might sound a little like i don't know what the best way to say it might sound a little corny but like everybody wants to know like your story like a lot of these characters right these these gamer tags like have

stories behind them that will honestly be told forever there there are memories i have of watching certain players compete that moments in their career that I'll remember for the rest of my life, like just unbelievable moments, super clutch plays that the most difficult of circumstances and they pulled through and, and moments like that, you always remember vividly, like almost like a, like a consistent dream, but it wasn't a dream. It really happened. And these players in these circumstances were able to clutch up in ridiculous situations with lots of money on the line. And, you know, just things you remember for the rest of your life, even moments when I've coached moments, when I've competed, there's some moments you just never forget for the rest of your life. Cause you just know,

in that situation, you made the perfect play and it's, it's super exciting. And these players, you know, they're going to have stories behind them. Some players are going to have books written about them. Some of them are going to write books that people are going to learn from like Ninja wrote a book recently. I think it was pretty educational for people that are coming up in e-sports and stuff like that. You know, there's other people that are doing great jobs with their YouTubes and are blowing up people like Nick Merckx, definitely one of my biggest inspirations. He was a Gears of War pro player that, you know, really took a smart path. He won a Gears of War national championship. And then he, after that, he moved on. He, he Gears Award National Championship. And then after that,

he moved on. He moved on to other games. He grew his channel. Now he's got over 2 million subscribers on YouTube. He's blowing up faster than anything on Twitch. And he's just doing a fantastic job. And guys like that, for me, are a huge inspiration. Because when you coach and you manage and you play as a professional, not at all at the same time, coaching and management at one point in my life, playing at a different point in my life. But when you're doing all these different things, you don't have too much time to really invest it into yourself. There's very few professional players in Call of Duty and Halo or in Gears of War. Even if we go to PC games, there's few and far between where they're able to

do consistent content and be able to stay at the highest level in the world. So people that could do that, they have my utmost respect because in order to compete at the highest level in any game, it requires a lot of dedication, a lot of willpower, a lot of studying footage, self-evaluation, you know, just evaluation of your teammates. You know, you have to have really good leadership qualities. And if you don't have those leadership qualities, you have to have a hunger to make the play when it matters. You got to set the pace. And if you don't set the pace and you're not aggressive, usually you lose. There are, my style has been a heavy focus on the defensive style of play, heavy focus on analysis and

accountability with communication and things like that. That's usually where my main focus is. But then my players have a heavy focus on, you know, being aggressive, my in-game leaders, you know, I'll back them up, but they'll make sure that the rest of the troops are in line type of thing. And there's like a hierarchy between really high level elite teams that win championships and coaching definitely helped me understand that at a way higher level than I understood when I used to play.

What, um, let's, you brought up Twitch, let's kind of go down that path and the impact that's had, um, you know, obviously YouTube's huge and there's other platforms, but, you know, talk about the impact that Twitch and YouTube has had on e-sports and, you know talk about the impact that twitch and youtube has had on esports and you know just the overall business of it yeah it's it's huge i mean twitch basically you can you know stream on there so twitch when you stream it's live just like you know we're live right now um but we're recording right so technically i guess this experience with us with the podcast is more like youtube but the experience for you and i right now, technically, is like Twitch. It's live.

And that's the thing. Twitch is live. YouTube is prerecorded. YouTube can be live as well. They've adapted and made it so that you could stream live on YouTube as well. But Twitch, in my opinion, might be wrong. But I'm pretty confident that Twitch was the first one to be the main live streaming service. They came from just in TV, evolved into Twitch.TV, and then Amazon made a big deal where they paid about $1 to $2 billion to acquire the entire ecosystem.

And then they were able to implement Twitch Prime, which is basically if you're an Amazon Prime member, you can now have a twitch prime membership which allows you to subscribe to one streamer for free per month so you get one subscription that subscription gets you extra things like emotes which are like little uh custom like uh pictures that you could use in the chat that the streamer provides you and the more popular the streamer is the more emotes that they have that you get access to when you subscribe to them per month uh you pay five dollars a month to subscribe to a twitch streamer there's other as well. There's a tier two where you pay more. There's a tier three where you pay like $25 a month if you really, really, really like that streamer and you get extra things. But yeah, Twitch has just been growing massively. You can

get paid quite a lot of money on there. Naturally, if you have a twitch channel and you have subscriptions when someone pays five dollars at first you keep two dollars and fifty cents the more popular you get the more of that five dollars you get to keep that's pretty much how it works um you also can make money through donations you can make money through another uh in-game currency well in twitch currency i should say that's called bits buy Bits and then it fluctuates around the ecosystem. And when you get a lot of Bits into your channel, it's pennies to the dollar, but they add up over time. So people that don't want to subscribe, sometimes they might donate you Bits. And if they don't donate you Bits, then they might donate you actual real currency that

you could have transferred to your PayPal or stuff like that for donation. What's the, you know, are kids or young adults or anyone that's subscribing, you know, some subscribing to someone that has a channel and am I doing that? And I'm sure the answer is all of the above, but maybe give me the most likely reason. Sure. Am I doing it because I enjoy watching them play and I want to learn their moves? Or am I watching because it's why I watch anything else and it's entertainment? Like I watch college football. I'm a college football junkie. Am I watching it because I'm just entertained or am I trying to learn moves? Or am I just doing it because I want my friends to know that I watch Ninja all day?

Yeah, I think it's really because like of who the person is. Right. So if it's someone that just wants to be entertained, the people they subscribe to will be natural entertainers. You know, there's guys who can compete. Like for example, Tim, the tap man is a, is a guy I really enjoy watching, uh, you know, game in general. I think he's absolutely hilarious. I think he does a great job in general with, you know, game in general. I think he's absolutely hilarious. I think he does a great job in general with, you know, advertising like his community and just being entertaining and being a funny guy. And he's one of the top Twitch streamers in the world right now.

And he's not necessarily the best player in the world. And he knows that, but he can compete for sure. If he, if he's having a good day, he can compete in a lot of games for sure. It's not like he's a scrub or something like he's definitely a good gamer in general but you know he knows his path and he i think in my opinion focuses more on the entertainment side nick merckx however is someone that's a much more competitive you know hungry guy he wants tournament after tournament after tournament and someone like him people might want to learn from someone like nick merckx compared to you know learning from tim the tat man but if they want to go the entertainment route, maybe they watched him.

If they want to go the really hardcore competitive gaming route, well, they probably go to Nick Merckx, you know. And there's tons of other people to watch, you know, Dr. Lupo, Ninja, Dr. Disrespect. There's so many different types of personalities. And then that's just like shooting games. There's tons of other games that there's, you know, great personalities with those as in general um you're gonna see just it really depends on the person me when i watch i like to study people a lot and i like to learn so i study a lot of the top call of duty players top halo players top counter-strike a little bit of valor in here and there you know top gears of

war when i was coaching you know during my entire career or when I was playing usually a lot of Gears of War. But now I'm watching a little bit less of Gears of War and I'm watching more bigger esports, Counter-Strike as well. And that's kind of like the main stuff I watch. The other thing I love to watch on the side actually is the Formula One racing. I think Formula One is super interesting in general. And I always told my parents, if I could have done something that was in gaming, throw me in that go-kart and let's get going. Cause that's what I would have done a hundred percent if I could have. But yeah, I mean, that's pretty much how it, how it all works to me. What, what was a day in the life? Like, I mean, for you as a gamer and then maybe as a coach, maybe we'll do both because I know you've done both i think they're and they're both probably very different paths but like what are those days i mean obviously

a lot in the game uh on both of them um i mean how many hours a day i mean what's just walk us through like that day in the life realistically um a lot of the time when i competed in gears or one which was my main game and definitely my bread and butter and the one game I would say, like, if anyone played me, even if it was the best player in the world at the time, I'm still confident against them. But I would be putting in minimum, probably six to eight hours a night, realistically.

An average of six hours. Weekends are nights when I don't have to have responsibilities in the morning, probably eight. And definitely six of those hours is usually scrim time. Just honestly, just getting online with your team. Back in the morning, probably eight. And definitely six of those hours is usually scrim time. Just honestly, just getting online with your team. Back in the day, during my time, it was getting in an Xbox Live party chat.

Nowadays, it's different. You're joining a TeamSpeak server or you're joining a Discord server. You're using an Astro Gaming headset, which is my personal favorite, or with like a MixAmp. And then it's just much better quality audio so that when you communicate online, it's always heard. But yeah, six to eight hours a day.

I always worked a part-time job when I was in college. My dad always, you know, basically told me like, Hey, you know, you gotta be smart with your money and you gotta make sure that you're saving and you gotta make sure that, you know, you save for a rainy day. So you can't just like, you know, go to school and go home and game and do nothing else. So at a very young age, I always had a job. I started in an amusement park when I was really young. My first job I had was when I was 16, technically. Second I turned 16, boom, I was off to work.

And then when I wasn't working, I was in school. And when I wasn't in school, I was gaming. And then that's kind of like what I was doing all the time. And I even actually played in a lot of bands as well in middle school and high school, played a lot of saxophone. But when 19 years old hit and I was out of high school and my responsibility was college, work, and I had one other thing to do, that other thing to do was always Gears of War. I was always focused on that game, competing in tournaments and just trying to, you know, develop myself to, you know, get better. And, you know, yeah, just always wanted to find better teammates and eventually win championships. So fascinating. I mean, I, you know, just like anything else, like if you're playing basketball, you're in the gym shooting all night, all day,

whatever, it's not much different. If you want to get better, you got to play, right? night all day whatever it's not much different if you want to get better you got to play right yeah so now you know once you get into the coaching side of it you know where does is it like watching film I mean obviously yeah I mean I certainly speak to game day slash tournament day you know day in the life but maybe leading up to I mean like what what what were the differences there yeah it's a difference. So when I used to compete as a player, it was very different because I never had a support system behind me, right? Like the organizations I worked for when I was a player were nowhere near as developed as some of the bigger organizations today had nowhere near as much capital as the organizations that are around

today. So I never really had a coach, to be honest. I never had a great coach in my career as a player ever. The very few times I did, it was just usually a weapon timer, which means somebody has like a clock behind you to tell you when the weapons are going to spawn. And that's honestly pretty much it. And even when it came to weapon timers, I wouldn't even say I had a great coach when it came to that. But when I competed as a coach, I learned basically to be the coach that I never had. That was my goal was, okay, I know what it's like to be an in-game leader when I played. I know what it's like to, you know, manage the troops and help them and try to hold them accountable. But I got to take this to a whole new level. I knew that there was coaches that

were like Ashes, for example, or Ryan Fools, or Demise, who coached Ghost Gaming, all these great coaches that were coaching before I was. And these guys were all very good at their jobs. So if I wanted to compete with these guys, my philosophy was, okay, I have to outwork them. So the main way I did that was, like you said, watching a lot of film, a religious amount of film film to a point where you're just i did all my data basically on my own when i first started i created like scrimmage logs which are basically when we were in scrimmages as the game is going on and as i'm controlling the controller to navigate around the map because there's a coach slot that you could use like a

spectator slot and you have to be careful because you could kind of cheat if you want when you're using that slot during practice but when you're in a tournament online or you're in a tournament online you don't have access to that feature so you would have to use it to navigate around the map and see the initial strategy that the opponent is using and then you could kind of either mirror their strategy or figure out how you want to counter their strategy so basically the point is is to have the camera in situations where you can use the footage to have accountability for the team. Call them out for their positioning. Call them out for their decision making.

Maybe their communication. I always tell people if you want to play good, you've got to have good status updates, which means you have to know the numbers on the map, the amount of players, exactly where they are, and you need to make sure that you're communicating either an objective to help your teammates you know be with you or to make sure that your teammates are rotating around the map and focusing on the actual hills which is the objective in gears of war you play a game type called escalation there's three hills on the map you either cap all three hills to win a round or you kill all the people on the map to win the round and if they're all dead at the same time basically long story short you know that's when you win the round.

Interesting. How aware as a player and then now as a coach, and I know those worlds are still intertwining as you continue to play new games and expanding your network. But how aware were you of the business side of e-sports? And when I say business, I'm talking, you know, as a marketing and business podcast, you know, I'm talking the sponsorship level and those kinds of things. How, you know, are the gamers just gaming and like, they know it's there, they're there, they know that it's business now, but how aware and involved were you as both a, you know, a gamer and a coach on the business aspects of either sponsorship or marketing? I think when I first started and when I was like, let's say when I won the tournament, when I was young back then, it was just fun, right? It was just fun. It was something I genuinely love to do. Um, I always liked problem

solving. Like I always like felt proud. Like proud when I would solve difficult problems and things like that. And gaming to me was a problem solving constant thing. It was a science aspect to me. The science, the math side of it, I found it all extremely intriguing. Learning frame data and things like that was all intriguing to me. But when I got older, I think right about probably 18 or 19 years old, I remember that the MLG had the first 250 000 contracts go out and walshie and p squared and like the ogre brothers and all these superstar halo players

they got their first contracts with mlg where they had a 250 grand contract i think it was for three years i could be mistaken um they're going to be probably disappointed in me if i'm wrong but it's somewhere it's somewhere it's somewhere around there and when i heard that they were making that kind of money and yeah it's 250 grand divided by three still it's it's it's it's a working it's real money wage it's real money and and that happened when i was around 18 or 19 years old i would say around like 2004 2005 is when i first heard of it and when i heard of that i was like well what the hell is mlg and then i kind of just like, I watched the tournaments, but when Gears of War eventually got into it, Gears of War didn't have that much money when it first started. It was a lower e-sport

than Halo. It was a lower e-sport than Call of Duty, in my opinion. And it wasn't until around 2017 where real money started to come into Gears. And now we're talking million dollar pro circuits and $2 million pro circuits and much more money up for grabs. If you win a championship, you're taking home $80,000 to $120,000 for the team. We're talking real money now. Now it's a big difference. But I would say in recent years, it started to really blow up for console. For PC gaming, however, the big deals have been going on for a long time fatality was my main inspiration when i started uh as a gamer uh when i created the game the gamer tag fatal strike uh luckily i'm friends with fatality now which is kind of crazy to me because

i always looked up to him growing up but he was the first real professional gamer ever first person to probably ever you know win a hundred thousand dollars in a year. You know, he had his own company, his own PC company, got tons of big, you know, endorsement deals and stuff like that. So PC gaming is where the big endorsement deals are, in my opinion. However, console gaming is now starting to grow and Call of Duty, for example, if you want to own a franchise at Call of Duty, it costs approximately $25 million to own one. Very expensive. So the players also get very good pay in that scene as well. So Call of Duty, for example, is starting to really grow. I'm assuming Halo Infinite will probably do really well as well, depending on the backing that Microsoft chooses to give the franchise, well, the game itself.

So that game's going to start really growing too. So there's a lot of, if you want to survive in esports, you have to adapt and you can't be necessarily with the same game forever. Games do have life, you know, cycles, they have a life expectancy and is basically based off of the amount of funds going into the game from either sponsorships or the developer itself. So those are the two main ways that money is coming into the game. And then obviously the brands that people build themselves, like we were talking earlier about, you know, YouTube and stuff like that, the brands people build on their own are also a big factor to why a game succeeds. For example, Skump, who works for NRG and previously worked for Optic Gaming in Call

of Duty, he has a very big fan base. And he's one of the most consistent people I've seen when it comes to content over his career. Nadeshot being another person. Octane being someone more recent. These are all people that played professionally for a long period of time. And they got those big endorsement deals. Nadeshot was with Red Bull. Walshy from Halo was with Red Bull.

There's plenty of other opportunities and deals that went on as well. But those are just some good examples. And I'm assuming all of these guys did really well when it came to those deals. What, where do you see all this going, you know, with these sports and, and kind of two part question, these, you know, where you see it going, what's been the impact of COVID, you know, I mean, I'm sure it's that impact. The irony for me in this has been,

you know, at least watching my kids, all of it's online, but yet I know there's been a huge impact because a lot of these tournaments are in person and these LAN things and all that. So I don't know, maybe talk on, you know, maybe holistically on e-sports and then, you know, maybe starting with just kind of the impact COVID's have. Yeah, sure. I mean, in general, when it comes to esports in general, like COVID has had a big impact on the esports industry, right? Like you said, LAN events are the most popular events. Online events, the competitive integrity is never going to be the same. The team with a lower ping and better internet connection

is always going to have somewhat of an advantage in the game. Maybe it's a 55-45 in favor of the person with better ping. Sometimes it could be as big as a 70-30 advantage or even an 80-20, depending how big the ping difference is. And there's other things that come into play as well, the equipment that you use, etc. But when you're at a LAN tournament, everything is even. They're on the same equipment as you. The only difference is maybe your controller or your mouse or your keyboard if you're at a land tournament everything is even they're on the same equipment as you the only difference is maybe your controller or your mouse or your keyboard if you're playing competitively on pc compared to you know uh console but the main thing is you're on the same playing field there's same ping you know there's technically no ping really on land it's

very very low so that's the difference is the better competitive environment is land. But when COVID hit, it was huge for the industry and took a huge hit on it because a lot of companies lost tons of funding. So many organizations dropped out of esports because of that. For example, I'll use myself as an example. I actually made history with my reciprocity roster and we won back-to-back championships. In Gears of War, it was very difficult to do that if you weren't on the Optic Gaming roster because the Optic Gaming roster, which was also known as NRG and also known as UIU nowadays, that roster was the most dominant roster in the last four years of Gears Esports without a question. Nobody can argue it. They've won 22 championships. The main

players and their head coach and now general manager, all of those guys have won a very large amount of times. And the only other coach that's won since I started coaching at the end of 2017 was my rosters, the Ghost Gaming roster with the legendary 3-2-1 run in 2018 during my first six months of coaching. And then on top of that, also the reciprocity roster, which won back-2-1 run in 2018 during my first six months of coaching. And then on top of that, also the reciprocity roster, which won back-to-back events. And in December of 2019, we won the San Diego major, which was the first major event for Gears 5. And then in Mexico City, we had an insane run. We played all the best Latin American teams in the world in their home turf, which has the biggest fan base for Gears of War. It's actually wildica and you go to mexico and you compete there it is an environment

that is absolutely electric and just unreal you literally feel like a celebrity you can't walk a half a block without people asking you for autographs and a big reason for that is because one of the main characters was a latin american descent and it was one of the first times a main character of latin american descent was in a video game for xbox 360 so that's why it got so popular but when covet hit and those land events were over and we won those two championships reciprocity lost a lot of funds and many other organizations lost a lot of funds the um i don't want to get into the whole reasoning behind it, but basically that's what happened. And many organizations that survived were organizations that either had very large capital or organizations that were funded by athletes or organizations that were funded by huge

corporations. Those are the three main ones to me that survived COVID. And when it came to reciprocity, the organization fell apart and technically we went back to back world championships and we still lost our job it's just how it is life happens you know you have to adapt so when that happened we adapted uh the net we had two online events after that and my team's placed uh second and then they play which would suck because we really should have won that event the online one but then after that we placed, like, I think it was top six. So, but that's it. Like there's a lot of change in the rosters. The more developed your e-sport is, the more consistency usually you will have.

If you do a really good job because you have all the resources, you have player contracts that are very in-depth, really good lawyers holding these things into place. And, you know, it's, it's a lot better when you're in the bigger e-sports, when you're in the lower tier e-sports it's tough to, it's tough to survive. Honestly, it's a very cutthroat world. And when you're a competitor, you have to work very, very hard. If you want to stay at the top, they always say the wolf at the bottom of the mountain is hungrier than the wolf that's at the top. That's usually a common thing that I've heard,

you know, in e-sports. And it's very true. And defending that mountain when you win is extremely difficult to do, but to be the second coach in history to for gears award or win back-to-back events. Yeah. That was definitely greatest moment of my career other than winning the first championship I won back in 2018. Any guilty pleasure games that you, uh, so walking back maybe away from esports and maybe just gaming in general any uh guilty pleasure i think i see a nintendo 64 back there i recognize that for from uh playing uh 007 uh for hours on end in college yeah yeah there's a nintendo 64 back there and then right next to it you can't see it but there's a hori controller it's a custom japan controller

for nintendo 64 it was a prototype for the gamecube controller so yeah i'm a huge n64 advocate there's a ps4 over there sega genesis little mini super nintendo we got a bunch of stuff on the setup right here that i'm sitting on right now but my guilty pleasures star fox 64 100 one of my favorite games of all time midnight club street racing burnout street burnout racing uh like burnout three burnout four revenge like all those games super fun uh love super smash brothers the game in general just a ton of fun a lot of my friends always played it growing up uh and there's tons of other games halo definitely one of my favorites of all time if i had to pick one game and i could only play that game for the rest of my life it probably would be halo 2 and my gears of war fans are gonna hate me for it but you know

it's just it's just a fact halo 2 to me was one of the greatest just well-meaned games like ever i've always enjoyed it it's always going to be a childhood favorite of mine you're the second guest we've had is brought up uh very fond memories of halo 2 it is literally unbelievable it was a revolutionary uh game it had clan matches it had tons of other game types. It was one of the first games ever where you could get online with your friends and not have to do it in a bootleg way, but you could do it in the official way with an Xbox Live membership. And that game was just so well made and very consistent. And even though there was cheaters and things like that you had to deal with the competition was so high so many great players from so many different genres of games all played that game and it was so competitive even just playing simply matchmaking was

unbelievably competitive and yeah i just really enjoyed it and it also had a great story the story mode for the game was really good the halo one the halo three story modes were all very very well made really good so yeah a lot of people are hoping that halo infinite which comes out later this year is going to live up to the hype so hopefully it's able to bring back that legendary greatness the first three games had you know as we close out here i mean my biggest takeaway you know and i think for people listening, you know, they want to maybe put gamers and gaming and e-sports, they kind of put it in this bucket. But what, what I've kind of gleaned more than anything from talking with you, Joe, is that it's like anything else in life, how much time you put in, how much commitment you put in, how much your will to win is, how much you care about the quality of your gameplay.

Like it's no different than any other characteristic that makes people successful in other fields, whether it's business, whether it's basketball, whether it's golf, whether it's marketing agencies, uh, you know, that, and I think that gets lost sometimes with just the, oh, video games are a waste of time. You know, well, no, it's a different way to pass your leisure time or to make a career. And if you want to be great at it, whether it's a coach, whether it's a player, you got to put in the time and you got to be committed to it. And so I think that's been my biggest takeaway in like hearing you talk and your intelligence and like your, you know, commitment to it, I think is no different than successful people that I've seen in any other type of space. Yeah, I really appreciate that. It means a lot to hear that. I mean, gaming is something that like growing up, like I had teachers, you know, tell me like, you know, Joe, you're wasting your time.

Like people that like I, you know, some of my band teachers, I played saxophone for 13 years. I was really good at it. And my private teacher really wanted me to take it serious in college. Some of my sports coaches, even though I was only 5'10 when I graduated high school, I ended up being 6'4 and 230 to 220 pounds, whatever I weigh right now. So some of those guys are like, well, why didn't you continue with sports? You didn't have to go the e-sports route. Like, but to me, it's all about like, what makes you feel alive. Right. And as a gamer, like it might sound a little ridiculous, but to me, if the best way to describe it, like we're not gladiators in real life, obviously, but mentally,

in my opinion, when you go out there and you go on that main stage and you play in front of all those people, the best thing I could relate it to is being like a gladiator in the Roman times. The difference is we get to respawn. That's the only difference. We get to come back to life. So we don't have to worry about the fact that we lose our life if we lose in real life, but we have the opportunity to be out you know, out there, go to war against other human beings who are trying to perfect their craft just as well as you. And when you get involved in a community and an environment with many, many people that are as passionate as you to be number one in the world, it's very few people that get to achieve that greatness. And when you achieve

that greatness, it is a level of just pure bliss and peace that is really difficult to explain. Like the moment when we won our first championship for real, like the first major, and I coached those five guys and they did their greatest job that they could. And we won the happiness for all of us. And after all that hard work, working in bootcamps, when we were in gaming, we actually lived in a multimillion-dollar mansion. We were living in Mark Zuckerberg's old house and Justin Bieber's old house when we were working there in Hollywood Hills, like all the way at the top

of like those mountains over there, over in Hollywood. We were working there with Ghost Gaming. They gave a huge foundation for us and an unbelievable experience. That's once in a lifetime. And I remember day in and day out you know you asked about the coaching schedule it was rigorous literally 10 hours a day of film you know of course that counts the scrim time too so six hours a day let's say scrim time maybe five

hours on a slow day but a lot of film time and just working with these guys one-on-one showing them their weaknesses, holding them accountable for, we're talking about milliseconds to seconds of language and literally dissecting their language. Danny, who was from Mexico, he spoke mainly Spanish. He wasn't even majorly fluent in English. And myself and Yadi, also known as Sleepy Time, we had to work with him constantly all the time, you know, holding his English accountable, showing him more efficient words to use, how to say things faster, you know, and just that experience of just working with people

at such a, like a sports type of level. It's not a sport. I don't call esports a sport, but there's a level of dedication it takes to be successful that reminds me of just like, you know, being a roman gladiator or being like one of those guys that just you know really has to work hard like a bodybuilder whether they take steroids or not they still have to put in the work to gain that physique

well if you want to be one of the best players in the world in gaming it's near impossible if you don't put in the time you don't hold yourself to a ridiculously high standard if you want to to be the best people in the world, whether it's a manager, a coach, a player, a streamer, whatever it is, you got to be consistent. You got to work hard. And I think that a lot of people can learn a lot from video games. Joe, man, it's been awesome. Uh, where can everybody keep up with fatal strike, uh, online and everything you're up to. Yeah, sure. So twitter.com, you can reach me at fatal strike. It's just F A T A L S T R Y K E. Um, Instagram is instagram.com, uh, slash fatal strike. It's not that big yet. I got, you know, get more on the Instagram, but it's okay. It's there though. If you want to follow my personal one is there. You'll see some of my friends,

my, my family, girlfriend, all that good stuff. out to diana lover and then uh and then also on top of that uh i have a instagram for uh like pokemon cards i do that on the side i have a little bit of a pokemon business i've been running a big fan of that game that's definitely one of the games i would play forever too by the way i can't believe i didn't mention it but uh yeah i i uh collect cards uh resell them and just i'm a big fan of the card business that's going on with that. And that business is actually doing really well during COVID, which is exciting. So you can reach me there at Johto underscore trainer. It's J-O-E-H-T-O underscore trainer. And then for Twitch, you can reach me at twitch.tv slash FatalStrike, F-A-T-A-L-S-T-R-Y-K-E.

And then the YouTube, I don't have an official url for it i only came out my first video recently but if you go to my uh twitter.com slash fatal strike for my twitter um it's the most recent post my my first video for youtube is there and i've actually got a a new series coming out for some pokemon stuff and then some more gameplay stuff related coming soon so you guys can all reach me at all of those places. And then if you ever need to reach me via email, it's just joe.fatalstrike at gmail.com. Sweet.

Joe, really appreciate it. Great having you on. Hey guys, that's it for today's episode of the Radcast. Really appreciate Joe Fatal Strike. I'm just going to call you fatal strike. I love it. I don't know. Like I was going to not call you that,

but I like fatal strike better. This makes me sound cooler, I think, or makes you sound cooler. So I'll take it, but really appreciate fatal strike coming on today. And we will continue with our e-sports series. We've got a couple episodes still coming up,

really excited for those. And we'll see you next time on the Radcast. To listen to full episodes or to contact us, visit us on the web at theradcast.com. Or follow our host at Ryan Alford on Instagram. Thanks for tuning in.