 Welcome to the wide world of eSports, a show devoted to all things eSports. I'm your host, Catherine Norr. Today, we're celebrating the second year anniversary of the show. And my guests are Micah Maderos, owner of Empire Gaming and Nathaniel Davidson and Alex Martin, players for Empire Gaming. Our topic is Empire Gaming, building an eSports team. Welcome, guys. Thank you for allowing us. Micah, you're the person who started this all. Tell us about it. Yeah, sure, no problem. So Empire eSports is right now based only in Warzone. We are going to hopefully go to more titles later, but we started off with Warzone. Warzone is what I grew with, what I kind of started my competing in. And then once I decided, you know what, I'm getting a little older for competing, started to find some young talent, went out and found some talented individuals that are up and coming. Fantastic. So Nathaniel, what's your gamer tag? Reese WZ. All right. And where did that come from? Reese is my middle name. So just kind of easy. Okay. How about you, Alex? What's your gamer tag? My gamer tag is Astro Boy Hero. I'm really into music. And so I derived a little bit from it from a couple of artists that I liked. And I put Hero in it just because I just felt like anybody could be their own hero. And that was kind of what I wanted my message to be, that you could just be your own hero. Okay, fantastic. And of course, Micah, you have a gamer tag. What is it? I do. Mine is Hoi and Tunda. I actually made that when I was really young. I don't even remember. But I've been carrying it ever since, never changed it. So I've been Hoi and Tunda for a long time. So I think that that's kind of normal that people come up with their gamer tag when they're pretty young and then they stick with it. Nathaniel, how old were you when you created yours? I created that one about a year ago. My old ones I just couldn't use anymore. Okay. Really? How about you? I wasn't good for Klitsch. Right, right, right. How about you, Alex? I think I've had mine for a little bit, about two years. Oh, okay. Okay. So you, they are fairly new. It's just Micah, who has the one since he was a kid. So what led you? What was your inspiration for putting this group together, Micah? Yeah, so, you know, when I was growing up, I used to watch a lot of CDL, so Professional Call of Duty. And I was a big fan of Optic Gaming. I watched them. I still watch them to today. And that was like my goal to, even when I was kind of feeling stressed or I needed a break. I've always just watched Optic Gaming things from their content to their competition. And, you know, at the time, I wanted to compete. You know, I had the dreams of like, okay, you know, one day I could join that org, one day I could be something with them. And then I slowly started to realize that I kind of wanted more of the ownership role. I kind of wanted more to create another Optic Gaming, if you will. And in Hawaii, Esports was never really super big. It's never really been a popular thing. I think a lot of people play video games casually. But as far as a professional Esports organization, it wasn't a thing. And I wanted to kind of be one of the first to take a Esports team that I created, and me being from Hawaii, and be able to make it something national or international. And that's kind of where everything began. It was that inspiration from watching Optic Gaming to today being able to have my own team, be fully licensed, and take this journey. Sure. And you guys are in different places in the country. Where are you today, Nathaniel? I'm in Kentucky, far away from the US. I'm in Nevada. So, Alex, how do three people, and I know you have more people on your team, how do you get together from all over the country? That's kind of just the tricky part. You kind of just got to see who's on, maybe even schedule it if we're even that on top of it. But you just kind of got to go with the flow. Whoever's on, you just kind of grab and go. So, Nathaniel, have you ever met any of the guys on the team in person? No, I have not. I've not met any of them. All right. But you know what? Nowadays, it seems like we have met people. Because I mean, even though actually Micah lives pretty much next door to my office, I feel like I've met him. Yeah, or neighbors, or neighbors. Right, exactly. Yeah, I guess Kaneo has a small place. Exactly. So, Micah, what games do you play nowadays? So, I still play Warzone. I'm not nearly as good as these guys. I try and hang with them. I'll hop on. And if any of these guys are playing, I've played a little bit with Astro. I haven't played Reese yet, but just watching them play and then getting in, my mind tells me yes, but my body says no. So, that's kind of what I do. I still try and play Warzone. I like to keep active in the Warzone scene. I like to watch a lot of competition now in the Warzone scene. If there's anything that I can take from it and share with these guys, then why not? And these guys are all really good at listening, hearing me out. If I do have suggestions, maybe play something a little different or go into the game a little bit different. These guys are all open years, so I try and play Warzone as much as I can still. How many people are on the Empire team? So, right now I'm currently at four. The reason I started with four is that Warzone at the most can go quads, which is a format team. So, I wanted to get four individuals who are passionate, who could put in the time and wanted to put in the time to grow. So, I found these four and there's a whole story to finding these four guys. It's not easy, but I was able to find these four guys and hoping to grow eventually. But right now, I want to stick with these four and put everything I can into these four guys. So, Nathaniel, for those people who have never played Warzone, can you explain it to us? Yeah, it's a battle royale game, kind of like a realistic version of Fortnite. That's what I tell people that have never played before with no building. It's just boots on the ground, realistic Fortnite in a way. And, Astro, what is your position with the team? As far as being a player? Yeah, like what is your maybe specialty strength or position? Mostly just like a running gunner. I'll be point man. I'll sniff them out for everybody. And how about you, Nathaniel? I don't even know. That's kind of a tough one to answer in Warzone. I'm pretty aggressive, so I like that teammate that can buy me back because I do a lot of dumb stuff. And I know your team is pretty new. So, Micah, have you played any competitions yet? Yeah, so we are new. We just started in July. So, really, not even a month yet, but we have had a few competitions. Everything is online now with COVID and everything. So, all of the competition is online. As far as bigger tournaments, a lot of those bigger tournaments that are online are slowly kind of dwindling. The State of Warzone right now isn't the best, but there's a lot of hosts that will run small tournaments. So, all these guys have participated in the smaller tournaments. We just had a bigger organization hold a tournament again. And Astro was able to play in that. And Nathaniel here has gone to a LAN. He's one of the few players to say that he has competed in a Warzone LAN and he actually took first place. So, he's the real deal. Fantastic. So, Nathaniel, what it was like to be in a LAN instead of playing remotely? It was different. Definitely different playing from your own setup because I also used to play it on that for a year and a half and then just randomly switching to somebody else's stuff. That was definitely different, but it was really fun. It was cool playing against the people that were right beside me. It was cool. Sure. So, Alex, do you mostly play at home or are you hoping to get out there in real life? Yeah, most definitely. I definitely want to be able to be part of a LAN. I'm on the West Coast. So, most of the LANs that have come up most recently have been on the East Coast, but I would love to go and just experience LAN, get the energy, maybe even have a crowd or whatever it looks like. But I definitely would love to be part of a LAN. Sure. So, Micah, what do you think about the Ping in Hawaii and how that impacts us here? Yeah, Ping has always been a problem. I hate to say it, but for Hawaii gamers, it'll always be difficult with the Ping issue. I mean, you take a game like Warzone and I can go play with Astro who's on the West Coast and he could be playing on something as low as like a 30 or so, sometimes even lower. If you move towards Texas, these guys are playing on less than 10. At minimum, if I'm playing on a West Coast server, I'm playing on 66 or 67. If I'm playing on an East Coast server, I'm playing at about 124. So, it's always a disadvantage, especially with Ping. You know, with Ping, guys who are closer and getting less Ping, they're seeing things a little bit faster. And although it's just really slight, it makes a big difference in a competitive game like Call of Duty. So, does Ping impact you at all, Nathaniel? Yeah, my Ping is not very good either. Because I'm kind of like, Turkey's kind of in the middle of the East. It's kind of like, it's the West of the East. It's kind of in the middle. So, I play on about 60 constantly. How about you, Alex? I have Fiverr, thank God. So, it's not too bad. I think my Ping can get as low, if I get a West Coast server and get as low as like 19. So, it's not too bad. Sure. So, you might be in the better situation. Yeah, just a little bit. I'm lucky. Yeah. Yeah. So, what's the future of Empire gaming, Micah? So, right now, we're really focused on the Warzone scene. There's a lot of things going on. Warzone 2 is coming out. A lot of people are putting their hopes into Warzone 2, saving the Warzone scene. When I say that, because everything is online, Warzone has a lot of problems with cheating, with hacking. So, with Warzone 2, we're hoping that anti-cheat will work. And then we're also hoping with COVID and protocols, we'll be able to get to LANs. LANs will be a big one. So, that's kind of my plan with Empire is to get these guys to LANs. Let them show their talent online where we don't have these hackers or these cheaters. We have these guys all playing there. We can see it firsthand. And I want to get these guys so that they can show their talent. And like I said, with Nathaniel, he's been there. So, he's already proved himself that, hey, I can play on a LAN. And I have no doubt that the other guys can as well. Astral is super talented. Some of our other guys, Draco, Johnny, they're all very talented Warzone players. So, to get all these guys out to a LAN will be my main priority for Empire. After that, I do want to expand the roster a little bit. I do want to pick up more Warzone players. And then I kind of want to head into Challengers, which is like the one division under being professional in the CDL, the Call of Duty League. So, that's where multiplayer Call of Duty. So, I kind of want to pick up a Challengers squad and have them play out. And then from there, maybe a content team and then slowly we'll work into other titles. I have been keeping my eye out on Rocket League, League of Legends. Those are the kind of bigger venues, bigger tournaments, but that's hopefully on the horizon. Sure. So, Nathaniel, how do you think gaming impacts you in other areas of your life? Well, I'm a super competitive person. I've played sports my whole life. I played football in college. So, I just had to have something that I could do that was competitive in my life. If I'm not competing, I don't know. I couldn't live without competing. I got to do something. Well, that's great for your teammates to know how competitive you are that you just want to win at no cost, right? Yes. I love winning. Fantastic. All right. So, how about you, Alex? Do you feel that gaming gives you skills for other areas in your life? Yeah, most definitely. I think that being a team and understanding even yourself, like being able to diagnose what you need to get better, a lot of self-reflection, I feel like comes with competitive gaming, being honest with yourself, and others. Even with your teammate having to be honest with other people is huge. Sure. Sure. That makes sense. I mean, communication with your team that would definitely help you in any kind of area of your life. Micah, what kind of skills do you think are transferable in gaming to other areas? I think one of the biggest ones, especially for me when I learned from gaming and these guys as well, is that social skills. More like how to talk to people, how to network. When you play this game and you play these tournaments, you're constantly joining lobbies with other people. You have to talk to these strangers who you've never met. And sometimes you have to discuss something that happened in the game. Hey, there's a hacker in that game. We've got to reset this or whatever it may be. And you're dealing with a lot of personalities. Sometimes you have people that aren't very nice. Sometimes you have people that don't want to do something. And being able to learn how to approach these people, how to talk to these people. You learn a lot of social skills, believe it or not, from gaming. So, Nathaniel, you're the competitive guy. Do you want your teammates to be equally as competitive? Or do you have particular skills that you're looking for in teammates? Yeah, I would say just I just want somebody that is as competitive as me and wants to win. If they want to win as bad as I do, then I'm perfectly fine. I'm playing with them. That sounds fantastic. So, have you guys, and I'll let whoever has had this experience kind of answer, have any of you had problems with like when you were younger with parents or relatives not appreciating your gaming? Have you guys want to take that one? I mean, yeah, I'll take it. I kind of grew up in a little bit more of a traditional household. They wanted me to get a job and just work. Construction is really what it was. I was always competitive. I just wanted to compete into something, whether it was sports when I was younger and Call of Duty just really had me at a young, young age and they just never understood like why would yell so loud. They never understood any of it. So, they would just always get on me and I'm like, well, it's like life or death right here. Like my ego is on the line guys, you don't get it. But no, I mean, they didn't really understand like why I was competing. Now when, because obviously you got your Nick Merks, you got your Swags, now that I'm like, look, look, look, look, this is what I'm talking about. You need to pick your head up. They kind of come around now and they've definitely become more accepting about all of it. But at first they really didn't get the young gamer in me. Anyone else want to tackle that question? No, I think he covered it. I think that's a lot of parents. Nowadays it's a little bit easier like Astra said to show them, you know, look at these people who are successful. But I mean, I mean, growing up was the same way. I used to have bad internet. So I'd have to wait into the middle of the night on a school night and plug in the internet. And it's like, what are you doing up? Why are you gaming? You know, it's not going to get you anywhere. And it's like, well, if you look at today's world, it will get you somewhere. Oh, fantastic. So Nathaniel, did COVID impact your gaming at all? Um, not really, because I still worked during the pandemic. So I really didn't didn't affect Mon. I'm still going to play the same amount. Sure. Sure. How about you, Micah? Oh, it was kind of the same for me. We had to work. So my gaming was still the same amount. But I think at the same time it opened the door for gaming. So I mean, I can appreciate it for that. Sure. Absolutely. And how about you, Alex? So originally, when the, when I first, the pandemic had first hit, I had two weeks off. And that was the first two weeks of Warzone. It definitely impacted into where I just, I got back into gaming because I had Fortnite was kind of falling off and I wasn't really gaming anymore at the time. So I think it affected it into the path where I am today. Okay. Sure. So Nathaniel, what do you think the biggest challenges for esports athletes are? Biggest challenge. Sleep, honestly. I'm not kidding. Because I mean, to play at the level of some of these people play at, especially guys like us that some of us do have to work and play like it, it's hard. It's hard to have a life outside of gaming and still play at the level that you want to play at. Like there's some weeks where I'll sleep five, six hours a week. Sure. Yeah, that's, that is pretty rough and you're trying to be healthy. So you can Exactly. Sharp, right? So, Alex, what do you think? What do you, Yeah, I think, I think that time management would just probably be the biggest thing. Because with becoming like a competitor in any sense, I mean, you got to practice, you got to put in the time, you got to play the tournaments. And on top of that, especially in this kind of scene, you need to be able to like maybe do content creation or something like that. So there's a lot of different ways that just time management is probably the biggest key and all that is the biggest challenge. Well, you actually read my mind. The next question I had was content creation and streaming. So are you doing a lot of that, Alex? I'm a little bit, a little bit. I have the TikTok, I have the YouTube. I used to have an Instagram and all that stuff, but it's, it's, I think it's TikTok and YouTube mainly for me right now is just be a short form of content and then maybe a little bit more of a longer form. How about you, Nathaniel, are you streaming your play? Yep, I got a TikTok and stream. I do both. Sure. And so, Micah, are you doing any streaming or is that something you're not doing as the owner? I stopped. I used to stream a lot. I stopped. I try and go in these guys streams and support. I can kind of tell when they're going to be on. Well, Nathaniel lives on stream. So Nathaniel is always on. Nathaniel will stream and when he says he sees five to six hours a week, he's not joking. I see him at stream at 40 hours and, and just still going. Astro, I know he streams twice a day. I'll see him in the morning and at night for me. So I try and just support the guys in stream though. All right, fantastic. So how about practice? Are you guys able to practice together, Nathaniel? Kind of like he said, if we get on and one of us is on, we'll play. It's just, I mean, it's hard. Sure. Sure. So what advice would you give to young people who are interested in being players? How about you, Alex? I would just say, just have fun with it. You know, listen to yourself. You know what you need. I felt like when I was younger, I just kind of, if you're trying to take it seriously, I didn't take myself seriously. So my opponents that I surrounded myself was always just kind of my friends. I felt like the more when I took myself seriously and like, you know, the group you hang out with is who you're going to be. If you start hanging out with other people that want to be challengers, like you got to see yourself as those kind of people. Right. Right. So how about you, Nathaniel? What advice would you give? Kind of like he said, have fun, just be yourself. When you find a game that you love, then you'll know. Right. That makes sense. And Micah? I think the biggest advice, especially for people in Hawaii, I would say don't give up. It's going to get challenging, especially with, and I say especially Hawaii only because of what we deal with with ping issues and stuff like that. Don't give up. It'll be hard. I promise it'll be hard. But if you just put in the time and you put in the work, you'll get there. You'll get there for sure. So Micah, a little word about Hawaii. We've seen some changes lately. I mean, there was a e-sports tournament at Waipahu Library where the governor attended. That was a tournament between HPU and UH athletes. And you know, that made a lot of news. That was a couple of weeks ago. And we had Overwatch here at UH. Are you with those kind of things? Are you seeing their changes in Hawaii where it's getting a little bit bigger? I see those. I see a lot of the collegiate e-sports. I think that's a big help. It's really opening the door for e-sports competitions here in the islands, especially because of our ping issues. I think land tournaments will be our biggest positive here in Hawaii. We have Hawaii to offer. So a lot of people are going to want to play land tournaments here. And I think that will be our biggest opening into the e-sports scene, as far as getting there. I think it's a long road. One good example is in the war zone scene with online tournaments for a while, it was Hawaii lobbies. They used to call them Hawaii lobbies. And what that meant was when people had Hawaii lobbies or they played somebody from Hawaii, they believed that it was less skilled lobbies. And when I first got into the war zone scene, even these bigger tournament hosts were like, oh, no Hawaii hosts. That's not a thing. You can't play these Hawaii lobbies. And I had to actually teach them and tell them that there's no such thing. There's no servers in Hawaii. We don't host here. We connect to a West server. We connect to an East server. We don't connect to our own server. And it took a few competitions. It actually played with one of the tournament organizers. And just to show him that, hey, this is not a Hawaii lobby that you're thinking. I'm playing on a West Coast lobby right now. And that's your connection as well. And it worked. They removed the rule. Hawaii players can host now in war zone. So it was a big accomplishment. But I think that's just a small step. We got a lot of work to do to get lands here. Once we get out of COVID and the protocols, I think they'd be really good to try and get Call of Duty here and maybe a little bias because I'm a Call of Duty guy, but Call of Duty has a big scene and it's growing. And I think it'd be great for us to get a Call of Duty event here for sure. Sure. So Alex, have you been able to play with or against people from other countries as well as the U.S.? Oh yeah. A lot of Europe people are or wherever they're from in the EU. I played quite a bit of them. The Pings are, I think I get like 150 Pings when I'm over in their lobby. It's doable. It's not ideal. It's not my favorite. But yeah, I have. Sure. How about you, Nathaniel? Yeah. I've played against a lot of EU people too. It's not that bad for me. I play on 110 Pings when I'm on their lobbies. I'm more towards the east side. So it's not that bad, but I do like to host when EU are in my games. Sure. Absolutely. Well, you know what? I'm going to give Micah the last word in terms of telling us about where to find your team, Empire, and kind of where you're going in the near future. Okay, cool. Yeah. So right now we are on social media, so you can find us on Instagram. We don't use the Instagram too much, but we are on Instagram as Empire Gaming. If you go onto Twitter, that is our main form, twitter.com, and it is gaming underscore empire. And then if you go to YouTube, I host a podcast on YouTube for the empire team. It's called the Empress podcast. So on YouTube, if you go on to Empire Gaming on YouTube, we're also there. What was the other half about the question? Sorry. Oh, okay. So yeah, that's fine. And let me just ask each of you the next tournament that you're playing, and then we'll wrap it up. Nathaniel, what's your next tournament? I think there's one tomorrow. Am I correct on that? Yes. Yes, he's playing in the Empire tournament tomorrow. Okay. And you're playing to Alex? I'm actually not. I will actually be visiting one of your lovely islands in Hawaii. I will be actually, yeah, over there. I'm leaving tomorrow morning. Oh, fantastic. So you're getting on a plane? Yes, I will be on a plane. Well, Aloha. Aloha. Well, thank you, gentlemen. I really appreciate you being my guest today. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. Yes, thank you. All right. So thank you to our viewers for joining us today. See you in two weeks. Mahal. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.