 to the wide world of eSports, a show devoted to all things eSports. I'm your host, Catherine Noor. Today, my guest is Jacob Johnson, the owner of Lager Gaming. Our topic is eSports branding, design, and content creation. And much more today since Jacob knows quite a bit about this industry. So welcome, Jacob. Hey, happy to be here. All right. So you know, I know you have been in the business for a long time. Tell us about how your career in eSports began. Yeah. So basically, I would say back when like Call of Duty Ghost first came out, we had clan wars and little online things we do with our friends. And that's really where I started playing games. Like most people, I play games all the time. I still do play games all the time. So definitely about middle school-ish towards the beginning of high school. I used to play a lot of games with my school friends. We made teams online, started doing little tournaments here and there. Back then, obviously, eSports was still like even newer than it is now. And then we just slowly grew from there, obviously, meeting other gamers. I learned that like, hey, there's eSports or there's gaming for every game, not just Call of Duty at that point. And that's where I met a lot more of my friends and even the people who I hang out with and run my team with now, I met them through early days like that. Certainly after that, I started hosting events myself here in Nashville at the score. Sadly, they're closed down now, but they were event center that catered to pretty much all the middle Tennessee. Through there, I met a lot of the Smash TOs, a lot of the other fighting game TOs and QMI in Tennessee. The people who do a lot of the majors here and not only Tennessee, but also the Southeast. And slowly from there, just been growing, my network meeting new people and going up from there. So tell us about what you were doing for Vanderbilt. Yeah, so Vanderbilt, they do a lot of events, whether it's eSports or other events. I usually loan them my equipment since I have a lot of equipment compared to some of the other organizers in our city and state. Especially when it comes to collegiate eSports, a lot of those guys don't necessarily have the funding from the schools to do programs. So if I come and say, hey, I have six playstations or four Nintendo switches that you can use for a tournament, they're happy to take those. And of course, I'll help out. I'll usually play in the events too. I'm obviously not the best, but I'll usually play hang out for the day and everything and just help grow stuff, whether it's at a local level, collegiate level or even higher. So what is Lager gaming? Yeah, so basically my organization, I have literally ran with that name forever. Even before I really created the team, I was always like my personal name. People always like to ask me where that ain't come from. And I think the best and silly explanation I can give that really is, my internet, you should suck. It still technically sucks. And I would always lag a lot. So people would always call me a Lager. And then I just made the name Lookhole and been running with it for over 10 years at this point. So is that your game tag? More or less, yes. Obviously, I try to like differ from it, especially when I'm talking about the organization as a whole. But yeah, deep down, it was more or less my first like in-game name, you could say. It's definitely still like my staple. Okay. And so what is your company been doing? So definitely like full-on hosting events and everything before COVID shut everything down. Since COVID started shutting things down, we did see a lot of shift in like sports as a whole, especially with like football, basketball, all of this stuff in cancer because COVID, the only thing that was really going on in the clinic space was eSports, thankfully. And at that point, I was already helping a lot of our local colleges by deciding to help our non-local colleges, so to say. So I started getting connections like GeoSport. They worked with the Indiana Sports Corporation, one of the few states departments that properly support eSports, they should. Hopefully more will in the future. Going from there, just getting more connection with colleges, doing everything from there. And since we do partner with those colleges, I have started working on those and getting my players more access to education. For example, we have a Latin America Street Fighter 5 player currently in Panama, and he's looking to come to the United States for education. And through those connections, everything, I'm helping get his visa so he's able to come here and pursue his education. And thankfully, since you already have a big array of schools through that connection, I can help him like pinpoint which schools have what he wants, and we'll let him win the championships basically. So definitely using those connections to pair my players with education if they want to pursue it. Most of my players are that age, some younger, some older, but normally between like college age. So I understand you do content creation as well. Yeah, so my organization, it's kind of, where it comes in like the branding. So I brand it a little different than like mainstream, I would say. So one way we do this is we have multiple partnerships, both through CardiMax, Sector Six, and Control Freak. Those three companies all give us partnerships, obviously more or less than the commission deals that we normally see in these sports. When we work with the partners, we get our players individual affiliate dashboards, individual partnership dashboards, and more or less, I take control of their name, like this image, and basically use that to make them a effective brand image. So like a lot of my players, when they come to me, like, yes, they're good at playing and everything, but they don't necessarily have a brand or something built off of that. So I work with them getting them stuff as, let's say like personal logos, or getting them just a brand image, whether that is a logo, just a face to look at more or less when they make content. I then use that to basically work with through our Sector Six partnership, get them a store up and running, so they have merchandise provided to them through us. And then we do the same with our rest of our partners. So in terms of them just being under organization, they now have three additional sources of revenue on top of physical merch they can sell, and that image and or logo tied to them. And basically by doing this, I am me as organization and branding them through those outlets rather than having them promote and make the organization money through those outlets. So it's a lot of trick or down, more or less me giving more money back to the players in return growing them. And then of course, they're tied to us. So it grows us both in the end. I think that model is more efficient for the players, maybe not the organization, but it's definitely gives back more to the players, which I'm sure they love. Why is branding important for players? Yeah, so I think branding is very important when it comes to players. A lot of players, both new school, old school, they think that they can just play games and that's about it. When it comes to like succeeding me for sure, see almost every single one of the top players, top content creators, anything, they don't just play games. They also produce content, whether it's streaming, doing YouTube videos, anything they do, they're not just playing games. And a lot of these newer players think that like, all you need to do to make it big is be good at video games. It takes a lot more than that. Like, you can be great at video games, you can be winning all of these tournaments, but if you don't have somewhere they can watch you somewhere where they connect with you, it can only go so far. And that definitely holds a lot of people back, whether they know it or not. And hopefully they see it center rather than later, so it doesn't limit them so much. So content creation for you or your players, is that on Twitch or what and what other platforms do you use? So definitely like, I let the players use whatever they prefer. Some of my players obviously love Twitch, been with Twitch since day one. I have other players have decided to lead Twitch for other platforms, whether it's YouTube Gaming, Trovo, just any of these other platforms. A few of my players were also partnered on Mixer before they shut down, unfortunately. So definitely I let the players advertise and promote and basically be on whatever platform they want. I helped them utilize that. So is the content creation that is being done by them and by Lagger, is it only video content creation or are you doing content creation for other platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn? We definitely do things on those other platforms. When it comes to social media, a lot of what we focus on is generating that image so to say. So for example, through our partners, our partners will be like, hey, we're releasing a new product and then we'll make a social media campaign for a month about that new product. And then each player, or each member that's involved in that collaboration will know like, hey, I'm responsible for this many social media posts, whether it's whichever platform they're on. Hey, I'm responsible to post this so that you're talking about this company or I'm responsible for making a post about something. And it's basically my players have full, they're able to participate as much or as little as they want, mostly because they know the more they participate, the more they would make. So definitely I don't hold any of my players who like strict requirements when it comes to that kind of stuff. I like to let them do what they want, do what they're capable of, without ever making them for a rush or ever making them feel like I'm like being strict, so to say. Do you ever have to go in and direct them in a different way, like to tell them that they need to do certain things to improve their brand? I like, obviously, I'll give suggestions, but just coming in saying, hey, change this 100%, no. I don't like doing that, especially every player has their own personality, their own way of doing things. And I think if we're making content, we're doing this stuff as ourselves rather than doing it like by a script, it's definitely a lot better, a lot more personal, and it usually performs better because the people watching it even know themselves like, hey, they mean this, they're not just reading off of a script or something. So it definitely helps. How do you measure success with their brands? So definitely the way I see it is a lot of people in East Forest, they think when you succeed, you have a million followers, you have 10 million on YouTube, something like that. The way I see success is basically, if you achieve what you want to achieve, like for me, like obviously my organization at the biggest, I believe with everything we've done, we have truly succeeded. I feel happy with what I accomplished. So as long as the players reach the goals they set out, I consider that good. I consider that a win. I think that's a lot of people hold themselves down when it comes to that. They say like, oh, we only want big achievements, no small achievements or no small milestones. I think beating any milestone, breaking any achievement is still a win. I think that's what separates a lot of people, whether it's East Forest or not. It's just succeeding and being that number one person doesn't always mean you have all these followers. Sometimes it just means you're committing and achieving the goals you set out for, big or small. Do you think number of followers is more important or do you think engagement or a combination of those? I think it can be a healthy combination, especially like for me. Some of my bigger players in terms of following our viewers are not always the ones that can make the most when it comes to like our partnerships, so to say. Like for me, one of my best players in terms of like selling volume and pushing through paid promotions, he's barely a Twitch affiliate where I have members or partners on Twitch who can't perform as well as him. I think that's where like the the RNG aspect comes into it, where it's like sometimes you just have that following that can help push you back to step. Sometimes you haven't earned that following yet. So it does vary, but I think a healthy combination of both work, especially once one does good, the other one would do good most of the time, and they kind of teeter-totter, but still improve themselves both equally. So what games are your players playing? Yeah, so we're primarily right now in the fighting game community, whether it's Street Fighter 5, Tekken, Smash Brothers, that's where we're at right now, mostly. We do work with the Rogue Company team. We also work with the Pug G team. I definitely try to be as like, as like involved the most people as possible without like clouding up a lot, especially when it comes to fighting games. Usually you have like the pro circuit season and then off season for about four or five months, and that's where those other games come in and really like keep us active while we're waiting for the next competition to start or the next season to again kind of think. You're one of those business people in esports who have been around a long time, and you really do come from grassroots. Do you have any advice to those who are newer to the industry? Definitely like, like I was talking about with the success, like don't think you're a fairer until you have all these followers. Don't think you're not going to make it anywhere unless if you become like a Twitch partner. Just let yourself know that success comes in all shapes and sizes. I thankfully, I learned that earlier in my career than most, especially like for me right now. I'm barely 23. I have not only hosted events. I have not only won events. I'm not only won collegiate events. Not only even now, I teach esports management on humidity and other platforms. Like I have dipped my toes necessarily in every field of this, and I feel like I have succeeded everywhere I have tried, solely because esports and like other sports, you don't necessarily need tons of money to even try it. You can more or less do anything in esports free, whether it's playing in tournaments, whether it's using amateur graphic design of software, whether you're casting or broadcasting events. You don't even need a webcam for that kind of stuff. More or less all you need is a mic and everyone has a mic if they're playing games already. So people don't realize that esports is essentially the cheapest thing to try out, meaning you have nothing to lose in everything to gain. So I'm curious about your teaching endeavors. I've been teaching an introduction to esports class on the OLLI program for University of Hawaii and show a lot of videos in my in my class and talk about just things about the metaverse, about NFTs, about each game and about what esports is in the business of esports. Tell us what what you're teaching and how you teach it. Yeah, so right now I'm working on six total courses. I only have one out currently. My focus on these obviously like the first one's gonna be more or less overview. The first topic I want to really dive in is just hosting events. A lot of people don't realize a lot of like the niche and little things that go into organizing events, whether it's online tournament or in-person tournament. There's just a lot of little things that go into it and like for me I hosted my first in-person event at the age of 14. By all means if the land center people didn't give me a chance I wouldn't have been able to do it. For more of my time I haven't been able to sign leases myself. I couldn't even rent the equipment from Renton Center by myself just because I was too young to sign anything and a lot of people don't realize that when it comes to signing for these things it's not always just being 18 it's just being 21. I mean especially if you're renting a venue or renting a car or anything like that a lot of those places even require you to be 25 so 21 just so you're you're off of like state-funded stuff so they can trust you whether it's supered or anything. So like I'm talking about like how I got over those challenges like hey I wasn't old enough to rent a venue so this is what I did or I wasn't old enough to rent from Renton Center so this is what I did and basically overcame a lot of those challenges that someone younger wanting to do it would face and basically going from there I want my other courses to just be like branding and one big thing is like there's so many curves and esports outside of just playing games a lot of people would just think oh you're a gamer you play games like no I'm a gamer I own a team I make graphics I edit videos like there's a lot more two than just playing games and a lot of people both in and out of esports don't realize that. Sure you know the eco the esports ecosystem is huge and it's impressive to hear about you starting at such a young age now let me ask you was it even called esports when you started. Definitely not back then there wasn't really like teams and organizations everyone was just called like plans that's definitely where like people like phase plans started or like even a team caliber a lot of teams back then weren't necessarily organization they were more or less teams whether it's they were like sniping teams that call the duty or just plans on other team-based games like there's war halo that kind of thing. Esports is definitely a newer term or at least a more used properly term I would say but back then yeah that it was still very young at that point. Sure one of my early guests was fatality and I don't know if you're familiar with him but he was doing winning a lot in the early days and you know I'm sure you've seen a lot of change what are some of the changes that you've seen as in the past I mean 10 plus years since you've been in the business. Definitely like the the tolerance of esports has definitely changed especially when I host events especially with me being younger if I'm at event hosting event or just being there and I see a parent dropping off their kid who was either my age or younger any kid I always make it a point to go to that parent and like ask them like hey what's your opinion of this like do you have any questions I can answer and a lot of times they're asking me like questions like is this a real thing is gaming even real that kind of thing like like the questions that someone who has no idea would ask of course and I always make sure to go up to them say hey this is a real thing there's plenty of people even like me who had education paid through esports someone like me being a team owner and I even tell them like hey like back then I was 16 hosting tournament you're bringing your 16 old son to I'm here he's there you can do anything basically and I feel I have helped many parents either understand or accept that esports is a real thing especially when I bring education in it I think anytime I say hey you can get a scholarship for esports and the parents go like whoa that's a real thing and then I can basically use as a selling point to let them either like approve of their child playing in esports or at least like be tolerant of it so to say depending on the parent of course. Sure how do you think the pandemic has changed esports if it has or how has it impacted it? I think it has definitely helped it yeah it has definitely helped esports I think the biggest boost especially when it shut down all traditional sports and the only thing being played was games just because you have the ability to do it online so definitely that kickstarted it and I feel without the pandemic shutting everything down collegiate esports would not have gotten the big boost it did colleges wouldn't have thrown money into it wouldn't have got staff for it wouldn't have open clubs and programs for it so I believe that it helped the collegiate esports scene greatly and definitely impacted everything attached to it so I think it did help a lot sadly the pandemic sucks anyways but there are some bright sides to it like helping esports both at collegiate and non-collegiate. Terrific it so what is what are your next steps in your career? Yeah so my next steps personally is definitely I want to get into a college as a esports director or a head coach depending on college they name those positions very differently I do have a few offers still considering a lot of those just because of time distance that sort of thing but definitely I personally want to get into a position where I can be like hey I have helped my organization now I can also help a college whether it's a college or even another organization I want to be able to basically use that as my next steps like hey I ran my organization now I'm gonna run a college program and help them both succeed whether they're tied in together I run them both separately I want to be able to make them both succeed as for the team definitely I'm working on getting one or two more partners for the next year just so we can compete more we can get more people under the team a lot of my fighting game players have been with us four plus years so definitely getting some of their friends getting some of the other players they know underneath the team or help everyone in the end and just basically grow from there and then use all of my connections to just grow I'm I think for the next while it's just primarily growing I'm eventually once things are more safe I do want to go back to hosting events um whether it's in Nashville whether it's in Tennessee or even outside of Tennessee I definitely want to be able to host events which I can it's definitely the funnest time sure well that's fantastic so how can people find you if they want to contact you especially if they want to contact you about one of your hopes and dreams for your future yeah so definitely you can follow the organization on all the major platforms just lag or gaming me personally you can follow me lag or underscore vx3x on all platforms I am also on both ethues and geo which are more collegiate based platforms I am also on discord basically follow me anywhere since I am the owner of the team I'm on any of the social media accounts so I'm pretty easy to reach out to if you need to about anything well big of it has been such a pleasure to have you on the show you are such an inspiration to so many people having started doing this at such a young age and having progressed your company um and still growing and and moving into the future yeah thank you it was definitely fun drawing you talked about this all right so anyway thank you to our viewers for joining us today and next week my guest will be Carl Gammez Gomez excuse me head coach and team manager of an eSports team in the Philippines see you then