 Welcome to the wide world of eSports, a show devoted to all things eSports. I'm your host, Catherine Noor. Today we're talking about the future of eSports and with me today is Ari Fox. Welcome Ari. Thanks for having me again Catherine. I'm very happy to be here aloha to all the people in Hawaii from the East Coast. Terrific. And if we hear a dog barking, well that's just part of the way things work these days. Hey listen, they want to be part of the world you know it's hard to just keep them shut up you know. Right. People bring up people trust me after COVID over people be bringing their dogs to work because they can't stay at home anymore by themselves because they're so used to having their you know their their human companions with them 24 seven it'll be like where are you going no you got to take me with you I'm going to work with you today. Sure well you know it was you know I had so much fun Ari being on a panel at the Casino eSports conference and we did it in a really fun way we couldn't get together so we actually had a 3D conference how did it go Ari? All I got after the event was so much excitement so much happiness so much joy and you know in days like now this that's the best thing to get as feedback from running an event like what we did we took a risk and what we did was we had multiple orientation sessions prior to the actual event where we trained you know sometimes 20 people at once on how to use the platform and really what it was was we worked with a company called GamerGybe and they are game developers and they created avatars where you would call where you drop into an environment and you could meet and talk and network everything that we did in the event we liked when we first saw and everything that happened in the event blended itself to everything you could do in person except for actually being in person and I think that was the most exciting part of it and I think that's why it was such a great hit because I mean if you go to other events today you go to virtual events today it's just a website with some zoom calls and it's just not as engaging. Yeah this was way more fun let's look at the video coming into the welcome center and you can tell us what we're seeing. Sure so this is the welcome center like you would see and if you dropped into like any welcome center that was actually in person there's a next reception desk where you could pick a hat wear a hat you know get a mask so it's a lot of fun and in that welcome center you know you can go up to anybody there and click on their avatar have a private conversation so to the right you'll see that's a list of all the people that were in the welcome center area and the way that this design is it's just so well done there are glitches here and there but I mean the concept behind what it was was that we really wanted to do something different than just have you know a website where you're clicking on links and trying to find somebody in this virtual what they call virtual we didn't even call it virtual but in these virtual conferences and then you are just sitting through a zoom call and what we wanted to do is really engage our audience really engage the attendees as if they were out there and that's exactly what that is you see avatars walking around with the names above their heads so you can identify anybody that you want just by their name if you know who they were or you just click on them and then a whole litany in the up in right hand corner comes up and you know gives them that gives you your linkedin connection and everything like did you have any private chats with anybody Catherine I actually did and that was fantastic and I connected with a few people on linkedin and then looked for them in private chats and had one and let's show the photo of networking table that the they had networking tables where if you entered a little space then you could talk with that person privately right so there you are there's your avatar and I'm not sure who that is next at the at the meeting table but at these tables as well as at the booth spaces you see there's a little green aura around the table and the booth space and as soon as you walk into that space the rest of the room you become silent so it's just you and that person speaking at that table and you can have a multiple of like anywhere from you know two to like 10 people and at that table having a conversation I mean it's kind of hard to have a conversation with 10 people but the same thing happens where you're with these features so let's say you are sitting at that private table you can click on your camera and you can have a face to face with your personal you know like we're talking now we could have a face to face conversation but our avatars are located in in the in the area so it's somewhere between you know actually seeing and having a face to face conversation with the actual person behind the avatar and your avatar is just you know going through the exhibit the whole event center like you would a regular event center exploring going to different booth spaces and just having a great time and you know this is this is the future I we're really excited about this platform and we're working right now with closely with the GamerJive guys because you know I put on the casino e-sport conference but I have a big announcement uh that we're going to be having an international gama con conference that's going to feature a uh an e-sports a big e-sports tournament with prize pools and prizes and everything like that uh president's day weekend 2021 so from from February 12th to the 15th is going to be a gama con conference and that's going to feature indie games it's going to feature um you know talking to the developers of those games you know publishers uh if you're a game developer it's a great place to go to learn about new uh game engines to build new new types of games and features uh and then there'll be the e-sports tournament itself which will be a big competition so we're real kind of excited expecting a worldwide presence um at that event and so that's something we're that we're working right now in the works uh we have all of our little excel sheets our google sheets set up and we're designing it and creating it and takes a lot of work getting involved actually that's more work than the cc believe it or not uh because there's a lot of moving parts we're going to have a cosplay contest um at that event so well will that also be on the gamer jive platform yeah we're working we're working in partnership with gamer jive okay so yeah so you should come to it it'll be a lot of fun sure i will yeah it's yeah that will be fine so it's just it's really you know times today are so like you know dark and you know i there have been a lot of other conferences in this this past year and i'm talking consumer conferences like comma cons and stuff like that that have done these virtual conferences but they haven't been uh with the avatar aspect they haven't been like the gamer jive thing where you're you're setting up an avatar you're walking through and experiencing it so what we liked about the gamer jive platform was it's like a game yeah you're like walking through it you know you're you're in an environment just like you would a game just like uh skyrim or or uh you know fallout or any of these games but it's it's you're in a convention space it's great you know my i have to tell you my favorite my highlight of the conference was fishing with u n fatality yeah and also the picture um yeah you know what happened is that we we did our panel and i was telling fatality that he was talking about this area where you could go fish and i said i hadn't found it yet so he said he would show it to me so his avatar was leading my avatar throughout the whole conference space out to that area and then he goes oh yeah you can walk on the water and then you know all of a sudden he gets a fishing pole and he starts fishing and then and then i had to he had to teach me how to fish and then you showed up and then we were all fishing that was good fun well that's you see that's the whole point of it i mean you know when we when you go to an in-person conference um in real life not on a computer you're interacting with people in different ways and what i loved about the gamer jive platform was that okay so you can't go to an actual bar with that with your friends and drink and have a good time and crack jokes but you could go to this virtual fishing hole and catch some fish and just talk about stuff and hang out and socialize and i think that's what i loved so much about the gamer jive platform was that it was and that's why we're going to do the game of concept because this is really going to build this is going to take the the actual conference experience by gamers to come to a conference to explore an exhibit floor just like they would a regular in-person exit you know conference walk the floor talk to merchants buy their merchandise go talk to game developers play different games enter into a tournament play in the game in the video gaming tournament and no one's done this yet this year which is surprising to me but right where we're we're so excited that we're now we're now moving forward with another project that'll be in february so we're very very excited about that and i think that's going to be a lot of fun and i expect that after the event just like i got i'm getting all this extremely positive feedback from everybody that was at the c ec that i'll get that same feedback from all the attendees that come and we're not going to charge a lot of money you know maybe five ten bucks to come in have a good time you know talk to your friend that you haven't seen because of coven that lives you know a few states over that you would normally meet at an actual convention and now you can meet them in an avatar form sure and one of my favorite things aside from fishing was dancing and so we'll throw the dance video and talk about it yeah yeah i i mean i knew that you see there i am wearing that white hat i think that's me if i got the right person there anyway so this was a time when a bunch of us had gone on the dance floor right and everybody had a lot of drink to drink too and you could dance without dropping a drop of your drink look at the moves yeah i know and it was the only time that i could dance that well like my break dancing has improved quite a bit yeah it's extremely a lot of at least your avatar is like an amazing dancer right right yeah but that's that's the thing you know here's another thing that you know you could go we had it we also had a virtual bar obviously that's where everybody got the drinks but the idea is that um you know you could go have fun you know laugh at the moves that your avatar is making you know i think for the for the game of con event we're going to add a few more little things here and there uh that might be a lot more fun i think i think fatality would like that because i mean as a professional gamer uh you know uh he probably enjoyed that kind of thing and that kind of experience i know i know most gamers but but it's almost it's almost like a game within a game because game of con is going to we're setting up this gaming environment convention that's going to have games in it that are that are built by developers yeah and you know fatality is going to be on my show on november 11th and had we not been fishing together i probably wouldn't have had that opportunity to ask him um now i'll show we'll show the picture of the panel that i did um because you know what's interesting is even though we had this 3d environment with fishing and dancing and getting drinks and walking around and networking we still had a environment for you know talking just as we are today in a kind of and that was on um twitch right right it was streamed over a platform called streamyard um and which is a production type of much more lens itself to more of a studio production type of software online stream yard and then we broadcasted it live over twitch okay yeah so that picture isn't coming up but um but anyway uh yeah so it was just our panel talking just as if we were talking today right and what i like to there is what i liked about this j moses from take two media uh you know those are guys that behind uh the mba2k and then you have dr leila mintos and the other guys there that were from again one guy was from ea but um you know what what what you really uh what was nice about that was that um because you could network so much and so well in the environment as an avatar have these private conversations it made it a lot more um cozier when we were able to talk and have the panels on the on stream and what i really liked about the stream yard platform was that during the times where you're dancing on a dance floor you're even having a private conversation and you're in the space there was an overlay um that was inside that was live um on the gamer drive platform that was sort of like this like a window in the lower left hand corner where you could actually see the actual talks there too so if you couldn't obviously get into the presentation room didn't matter because the talks were on an overlay over the entire event so no matter where you were in the event space you could see the talks yeah and let's show the picture of the presentation room um yeah this is this is from looking at it um from one angle um but if you entered in you would see it from another angle yeah but how about those doors that you like go through the right right being you in and being you out it was really much like being in star trek but it was fun yeah yeah and it does require a little bit of work to learn how to do it i think if um a lot of people caught on very quickly i needed a little extra help you know i i i got a step one of my business manager he's 76 years old i got him to use the platform i mean he didn't want to actually be at the you know he didn't come to the event i think he dropped in for a minute but you know once you get a hold of of utilizing the keyboard and the arrow keys to move your avatar forward and stuff it really works the same way as it would if you were playing a video game i mean you use the arrow keys if you played pub g or fortnight if you're playing that online um so it you know and then the shift key to run and and the space key to jump and then once you get the commands probably you know and and all of that stuff down it's a lot of fun it's just a lot of fun so much more fun and so like so when i actually took the time and we were doing classes and courses before the actual event um you know i think one time we had about 50 people on uh we would join in google chat that's where we'd start google hangouts everybody connects on google hangouts because everyone just knows how to click a link and go to that link and then i had to teach them on how to finally to register and then finally when they dropped in as the avatar it took a lot of patience but i was i enjoyed it i really did enjoy it it was fun and i loved so one of the things i like to do i'm a very passionate person as you know gathrin and i want to give my you know my experience and how i think this experience bettered our world i mean it bettered our world i mean that's that's the idea behind video gaming i mean when i first started getting involved in the video gaming world um and then esports aside esports is is the competitive side but i see gaming as a way to improve our ability to connect to relate to uh to and that and that also flows over to esports because as esports grows you know you have camaraderie so you know you you now have people who like that same team like the phase who like phase clan or like uh san francisco shock or one of those teams and it's just it's just like anything else oh who who's your favorite team oh i'm a yankee fan oh you're a yankee fan i'm a met fan you know or you know i like the padres so it's like people collectively can can can you know band together and talk about how great the esports tournament was at game agon which is going to be in february so you know and and or or how great the league of legends teams are you know the league of legends league is or anything like that or the overwatch finals or anything so this is where gaming becomes in so many aspects and i see it also in uh you know younger kids younger people take to gaming because it's part of their culture so how you know the biggest fail i think right now in in in pandemic the biggest fail is that they were not ready to teach kids from every level from kindergarten pre-k all the way through uh the end of undergrad in college to be able to teach them through games right if they if they if they could teach through gaming i think we'd have a very different conversation about i mean because you know my kids are taking online courses there for college and they're just series and over series of series of zoom calls right right and these kids as i expressed to so many people before they came to the cc a zoom call conference is like i don't you know i'm gonna date myself but you remember the movie airplane right sure okay so you remember the guy striker and he's on the plane he's telling everybody his life story and anyone that's sitting next to him is like one guy's pouring gasoline on himself and he wants to light himself up everybody's trying to commit suicide next time it's not politically correct today but i mean it's it's like that's what you calls are like yeah yeah so they're so zoomed out you know right right and it was different like to do to actually be at an event where we actually got to physically be there with an avatar we got to do things like jump and run around this conference and dance and fish and do fun things with people and we hadn't gotten to do that and even though it was our avatar it was still doing it yeah you know and so anyway well what besides this excitement in this new environment for a um conference what other um what else do you see as a future of well that's how that is i think we see that future i mean right now let's look at let's look at what's happening and you know you recently posted that article about riot and how they're letting go those people in australia um because of the you know the league of legends uh league there um just didn't have enough you know didn't have enough they couldn't do events they couldn't have in-person events in auditoriums now imagine for a second now what is the what is the what is the overall concept behind that and why does that work but now during covid people can't really go to the stadiums to see vz sport tournaments because it's too it's too dangerous people could get sick so think of it for a second if we took the platform that i used for the casino e-sport conference set everyone up as an avatar form and they went together they met in in the virtual space as an avatar where they could have private conversations they can have group conversations with their friends and they could be watching a league of legends tournament at the same time that's the future and you know you know our minds are very complicated but if we can if you gather the same type of sociability as we experienced during the gamer jive casino e-sport conference there so could gamers if you could think for a second that you created a tournament within that platform so and and this should really be used for colleges so there's not that that kind of thing i mean think about it for a moment i mean you know i think the teacher who's ever teaching the class obviously should make sure that they're not students having private conversations so they should have some kind of like network on their screen that they could see who's having a private conversation or not yeah but but i think that you know there's a lot of ways to adapt this platform and us being the experimental guinea pigs for this i think that it went off without a hitch i was very excited about it i see so many more applications that this couldn't be utilized for e-sports and everything else that what we have right now and and let's say we do have start having it um you know e-sport tournaments in person and covid's not such an issue pandemic has then become you know something of the past why not be able to let people come in you know in this platform as well as come in person right so so yeah so i think there's there's a lot to it that um i mean as i saw this this is the first step before we get to ready player one the move right right right exactly well you know what we are what we're doing is we're expanding opportunities for doing business and connecting with people all over the world i mean certainly not everyone can travel to vegas or travel to new york or or hawaii or wherever anyone's putting on a conference and this does bring those opportunities to life and it also i you know i see what you're saying arie in terms of how how um kind of two-dimensional the education process is in um you know and that bringing this 3d concept would make it make people more engaged right more engaged in learning so because your socialization is still there outside the actual zoom talks you're now going to the fishing hole you're now going to the dance floor you're now getting a hat you're now having private conversations you're now going to uh you know a virtual bar you know and we can add other things besides this i don't know uh you know some kind of like a basketball game pick up a basketball game right right something where there is disability to socialize now what it what is that at the at its core that at its core is the socialization of video gaming i mean this is why video gaming with younger adults has become such a cultural phenomenon and the reason is because they have been able because of the internet now to actually connect with one another and socialize over this medium over the video gaming medium so think for a moment if you said that you're now you watch these streamers like dr disrespect and guys like fatality who have their own shows and stuff will be on your show in november but i mean they go into a game and they find their friends within that game and they have a commonality of connecting with one another for a certain goal and they're having fun and that's that's the thing they're they're doing something social which is you know they're they're finding another team in fatality's situation or you know they're trying to win a game together and that's something i think that they're doing and and you know you know aging myself again this is something that you and i would have done if we said let's grab a bunch of our friends we'll get 10 friends or 12 friends and let's go down to the local high school and play football on the football field right but it's that connection that you're getting now on a digital platform absolutely yeah and you know aria i'm really looking forward to game icon next year and i'm sure you'll be busy putting something fantastic together we're excited about it yeah yeah and thank you so much for being here today um and thank you everyone for joining us today next week my guest will be hawaii state senator glenn waikai we'll discuss how hawaii can capitalize on the growing esports economy see you then take care