 Welcome to the wide world of eSports, the show devoted to all things eSports. I'm your host, Catherine Norr. Today, my guest is Johnny Ryan Weaver, the CEO of Click Gaming. Our topic is eSports tournaments and events. Welcome, Johnny. Hey, thank you for the invite. Like I said, sorry, last time I had internet issues and well, here we are now. All right, fantastic. Yeah, we had hoped to have Johnny here last month, but you know, it's interesting in gaming that the internet is so important and you actually didn't even have internet or phone that day. So... Oh, no, it was terrible. I guess they were repairing a line like up the road. The box went down, but I was literally with the internet for nine hours and I'm like, I got work to do. I've got tournaments to host and also play and I don't know what's going on right now. I mean, in today's age, that doesn't happen that much. So tell us about Click Gaming. So Click Gaming has actually been around since around 2001. Everything from grassroots to working with high schools, middle schools, colleges, the AMC, and even on the pro level like DreamHack, UGC, MLG. So pretty much we host online tournaments. We've hosted physical tournaments and we also help nonprofits like Extra Life, Special Olympics. We work with the military a lot, basically bringing the gaming community to young and old from amateur to pro and pretty much everybody just have fun and the passion that we share with it. So you have a really interesting backstory in eSports. Tell us how you got started. Oh man, I'm about to show my age here with this. So back in 1992, Blockbuster Video was of course still around. Donkey Kong Country came out on the Super Nintendo. It was whoever can get the most bananas in five minutes. So I trained for like three weeks. My parents jacked me up on Mountain Dew and Honey Roasted Peanuts until it was time to go. I won, I wanted more. So from there, of course, went to Mario Kart and went to Smash 64. Gold and I all the way up to where we're at now where I spent 13 years playing Halo professionally. I did a little bit of Call of Duty and Overwatch and Rock League and that, but Halo was my bread and butter. And then after I retired in 2015, I started working behind the scenes in 2016 with UGC, DreamHack, MLG, all those guys pretty much helping the gamers compete. So pretty much I'd go to these arenas with other people set up, tear down, run brackets and just pretty much make a giant festival with the people that I care about that I grew up with. And so it was just a blast transitioning from, always stressing about how good you're gonna be compared to, all right now I've just laid back and just let these guys have fun and it's kicking it with them. You know, it sounds like you're kind of in the same generation as Fatality. Did you play with them at all or? I've played against Fatality. So I grew up, I started in Halo one and so like I'm 37 years old, pretty much I played against like the Ogre Twins, I played against Straight Rippin, Karma, all these old school like big wigs that kind of started the dance back then. And so like Ghosty Ami, all this kind of intermingle with each other when we go to events and whether that's playing, hanging out, we honestly just became a big eSports family and that's what I enjoy about this field that we're in is that you might have rivals against each other and then from there, turns into friendship and then it turns into family after that. So pretty much growing up with all these old school professional gamers, whenever Sundance, Giovanni, Credit MLG, like I said, you just build a family out of playing with these, whether it likes there's Ninja I play with them at, I've met Scump off of pretty much optic gaming, all these old school names that you recognize still on these days, they just grind it like the rest of us and like I said, after an event's done, we'll go out and get some food, maybe some drinks and just have fun. That's just, like I said, it's just like a family barbecue except eSports. Well, that's pretty exciting to be one of those kind of almost, I don't even want to say forefathers of eSports. I like to say, I'm an old guy, I started this way back when. But anyway, the fact that internet net speed is a challenge, okay? So I understand you live in the country but tell us your strategy with regard to internet speed. I think this is fascinating, especially for people in Hawaii who have challenges with latency. Right, so most folks, they live in the city, they'll have like one gig up, one gig down, something like that with like 14 ping. I live in the country, I have a 10 down and a 0.9, not a nine, but a 0.9 upload, which you know as good as I do, that is horrendous when it comes to trying to get latency packages and playing. And I'm always on a ping of 75. And so the great thing was growing up playing, the games that I would barely lose would be against teams that I know I'd be taking on land. So I tell them like, look, you might have just beat me on this when your internet was 10 times better, but wait till I come to land, I'm about to smoke you with my team. And it was actually good. It made us fight more for what we wanted just because of just like I said, just barely losing something. So it's just one of those momentum pushers when you actually go to the big dance. Sure, it kind of reminds me like in traditional sports, you're going to train high and compete low. So, and what I mean by that is you're going to go train at high altitude and then compete at sea level and you'll have like this great advantage. And so you essentially train or compete with latency challenges. That's restrictions. Yeah, I remember growing up whenever I played like actual sports. I remember my middle school football coach, he put us against, you know, five, eight, six, eight division teams and we were only like a one air two way here. We got our butts kicked all the way, but when it come to like playoffs and championships, we steamrolled everybody because we barely lost those games. So it's the same thing. You train extra hard just to prepare for whenever it comes out of the normal. So, you know, you have a better mindset advantage of what's to come because like I said, you took on the hard areas. Now you've got the easy route. All right, this is going to be fun. So I think that this is a good lesson for those people who are sort of feeling they're at a great disadvantage because of their poor internet connection. And, but, you know, it's no excuse. I mean, what you're saying is it isn't an excuse. You just have to be better, right? Oh yeah. I mean, there'll be times like right now I'm playing Halo Infinite and sometimes my shots will be on point. And then sometimes it's like I'm shooting marshmallows at somebody because the latency and ping just goes crazy. And so instead of, you know, getting mad, turning your stuff off, just, all right, just wash it off, go the next game. But if you barely lose, or like I said, barely have a KD that's lower than what it should be, just wash it off. You know, don't get me wrong, there is times that you're going to get beat by somebody. You're going to get beat bad. But again, you just learn from your mistakes, figure out what happened and get better. And if it isn't internet, just wash that off and ain't no big deal. Fantastic. So, okay. What we're here to talk about our tournament and events. Tell us what's going on right now. So currently, especially with the 2022 season, I mean, I freelance for about 10 different companies. Right now I have a big road schedule with unified eSports. They are based out of Wichita, Kansas. We will actually be in Drury, Missouri, which is kind of right on the outskirts of Springfield. We will be doing a 10 event from FGC titles like Tech and Street Fighter, but then we'll also have Halo. We'll have Valorant League Legends and a couple more. But basically right now we have a, I believe it's a sixth college road tour, maybe eight. And basically it's part of a collegiate LOL, League of Legends, pretty much round robin action to where the winner of all these colleges going at each other will, I think, receive 20 grand for their school and also scholarships. So the great thing is, is we're doing this to help represent these colleges and bring them traffic towards their scouts and whatnot. But then we're also giving back to the public with these smaller, you know, $100,000 prize pool events. So there's that. I myself have a couple with the military coming up in California, Florida and a couple other areas. And then also with Clip Gaming, we have local ones out here in Oklahoma. So pretty much we, I have probably so far lined up 40 events and it's not even close to summer just yet. Wow, that's fantastic. So it sounds like the pandemic is far behind you in a lot of ways. It is. I mean, so our first event was in April of 2021, whenever the curve started coming down. So out here in Oklahoma, our cases have always been low. It was like 0.26%. We had 32 teams come out for a free to enter $1,000 prize pool because we wanted to, you know, give back to the community. We've all been stuck indoors. And so instead of charging gamers to come out, we just say, here's a thousand bucks in the line. We had players from Massachusetts come out. We had it from Virginia, Indiana, all around the US just to come out and have fun. And, you know, just to give back. And since then, I mean, we've been rocking. Usually I do between 70 to 100 online and physical events combined a year. And so I'm always on the go somewhere. Well, that's terrific. So how did the pandemic impact you? Were you able to pivot? Oh yeah. So my last event, my last two events was I did Anaheim DreamHack in 2020. And then I did one with the Oklahoma City Thunder here in Oklahoma City. And as soon as the pandemic came out, we honestly pivoted, switched to online tournaments and leagues. And after that too, I was on Hitmarker and I believe indeed, and I found a couple of different companies looking to try to like teach different kids lessons. I was like, well, why don't you combine tournaments with these lessons? And so now these companies I've worked with are having the same thing to where they did online events. They got a lot of great traffic, a lot of great sponsors. And now they're turning it back into physical events with these online stuff and helping out, like I said, the younger generations. Cause we need those gamers to take over my position one day running these tournaments and whatnot. So it's a great stepping stone to help high schools, colleges and like I said, the younger, you know, seven to 14 year olds get engaged with what eSports truly is. Yeah, I think we need some tournament organizers in Hawaii because I feel like we don't have as much going on in terms of tournaments here. How, what advice would you give to someone who wants to be an event organizer? Honestly, start small. Like you mentioned, start online. And what you can do is you can, you can maybe do a couple of free to enters with maybe like a $5 gift card or $10 or let's just say if you have reached out to a company and they had some free swag and you wanted to ship it to somebody, you know, as good as I do, it costs money to make money or to at least learn stuff about it. And so I would start small. I would host an online event. I would go on a platform like maybe challenge, battlefire smash, Gigi create what you want and advertise it like on Facebook groups, advertise on Instagram, Twitter, because that's where your traffic's gonna lead to you. And as you expand from there, you can start adding possible production to it. Maybe you can get a bigger sponsor that wants to throw more money in it to where you can charge small amounts to get money back in your pocket as you grow. And the great thing is too, is starting with grassroots, it can actually build a great gaming resume for you to find maybe a job at DreamHack, maybe a job at UGC, et cetera. And so trying these different angles is a great way to like say, just build yourself as a person and understand the environment you're in. And I could see someone doing that just as, you know, kind of something they do in the evening or whatever it on weekends and, you know, building it, building their resume, like you say. So what are you playing these days? So these days I play a little variety of things. Anything from first person shooters like Halo, Call of Duty, Rocket League. One of my favorites though has actually been role-playing games. I grew up loving RPGs, like grinding on the Nintendo 64 days and like sitting even on Xbox, like playing Destiny and stuff like that. So it really just depends. I try to compete as much as I can, but with my busy schedule at Esports, I barely have time to even turn the Xbox on just to update a game on it nowadays. So, you know, yesterday I actually was on a podcast about demographics. It was sponsored by Esports Trade Association and there were three of us from the Education Committee on it. And we talked about one issue we talked about was age. And the fact that one thing as you know is the top players are young. And so when you compete, how is it being older than them? Are you still competitive? Well, I am very competitive. I mean, even whenever I go to my own lands, I'm hosting, if there's like an open station, I'll challenge other teams, like, hey, come get beat by the dad squad. You know, the dad bot squad. We'll just go out there and have fun. And sometimes we'll beat them and sometimes we won't. What's great, too, is like I said, with us working with these high schools, there's a high school that's down in Altus, Oklahoma, and they are undefeated in their high school area. And their head coach reached out to us at Click Gaming with all our guys. Like, hey, can you play these guys and just beat the crap out of them? They got too much momentum in their head thinking they're great. And so the dad bot squad went and played them and we beat them, but they're like, we're like, hey, do you guys want to learn rotations? Do you want to learn these call outs? And because of that, they were actually able to advance their gameplay to be even more indestructible and undefeated within their circuits. And so having that reality check to lead to a confident booster is amazing when it comes to this type of field. Now, do you do any coaching? I have actually. So like I said, with the different backgrounds I play, I've helped coach some of these high school kids. My daughter, she's 14, she's been to events. I've been there coaching her throughout stuff. And even if I'm at a high school event and I see a team that doesn't have a coach, I'm like, hey, do you guys want me to be your coach? I know the rotations. I can help you with call outs times. And they're like, yeah. And so I try to help these gamers understand more of like, so what it is, because anybody can pick up a troll or anybody can shoot a gun, but to learn like to the times or rotations, the variables of all the different angles to throw a grenade off a wall. I try teaching them that as much as I can. What is your advice to players who are interested in becoming pro? So my advice to helping these gamers and whatnot try to learn pro is honestly take it step by step. It's like learning how to walk to run. You're not going to become pro overnight. Some people don't, but that's the thing is even if you are great at it and you're able to demolish competition, but never go pro, I always say, look, you love eSports, figure out another route, whether that is owning a team or learning how to be a TO or production or whatever. There are so many atmospheres and angles in eSports that you can do. It doesn't need to just be, like I said, just a pro gamer, because that's a hard route to come around. And the eSports ecosystem is huge. So I could see that it would be advantageous for someone that wants to be a competitive player, get on a good team or whatever, that they need to be thinking about their play, but also about what position they will have in the ecosystem. Does that make sense? Well, that does make sense. It's like you said, you might wanna come into a game where it's like you're gonna be the star football player, but then all of a sudden the quarterback is great and so you're gonna be a running back or a tight end or a wide receiver. So learning to adjust to your role helps out so much. There's been times where I'd have a teammate that was a better slayer than I was. I'm like, hey, let me sit back as a sub. I'm gonna coach it because I want my team to do well. I'm not trying to do well as myself. I want my team and the org representing me to do as best they can. And so if this player is better than me on this map or rotation, that's fine. I'm gonna let him go shine on that and then we'll switch sides if we need to. That's just how it should be in eSports too. So what about choking? Do you ever choke? There has been times, now myself, no, but there has been times I've had teammates that they were great online, like we had mentioned. And then when it came to LAN, they didn't do so well. I'll be polite about the words, choice, but I had a friend and he's still a good guy, but we went to LAN. He went nine and 29 on a hard point rotation and then went 0-23 in two search and destroys. Even online, he went like 31 and nine. So the pressure of being at a physical event or even online one can break the pressure, especially when all eyes are on you if the rest of your teammates are struggling. And so either A, you're gonna shine and pull through or you're gonna go down in flames. So it really just depends on your mindset. So I always tell people, even if you get beat on the first rotation of maps compared to like the second, just treat it as zero zero because if you have that negative mindset in your head, you're not gonna communicate. You're not gonna focus. You're like, well, we're already screwed. We can't do anything else. And so always keep your head clear of no matter what you're doing. Basically what you wanna do in this situation is luckily I have never. And so I'm not gonna wood, which I don't have any around me, but if you are like said struggling or your team's doing bad, after the first set of games, just rewipe yourself mentally and be like, hey, we might have lost this, just come back with a fresh mindset at zero zero, keep your columns up, keep talking and you will be able to excel. And even if you lose, just know you tried your best instead of just giving up after the first map, you know. You know, it's a mental game, right? Oh, it's a big time mental gap or pretty much mental game when it comes to all this stuff. Sure, sure. So going back to click gaming, let's talk about what services you offer. So we do a little bit of everything. We offer everything from full production, bells and whistles, tournament brackets, tournament organizing, all the way to like you mentioned, just coaching and helping out nonprofits, helping out these high school teams. There'll be times that me and the guys will spend our own money on our own hotels and food because some schools might not have it, but we bring the gear that these schools are needing and also the TO assistance, et cetera, just to make sure that they have the best experience, because it's mainly for the kids. And the great thing about that is the production that we do for these, they're able to then create a pitch deck and send it to other sponsors to maybe get better gear for their schools or get better production stuff. And so doing like I said, everything from small pen and paper all the way to the likes of the big flashy lights and the gear and like sit traveling around the world. As long as you're helping somebody out, it's gonna pretty much bring a world of joy to anybody that's in the sport. And you're all about giving back too. You are involved with a lot of nonprofits, right? Yes, ma'am. Like I said, with Oklahoma City Thunder, Extra Life was one of the partners in it. And over the weekend, Click Gaming and up to here, Oklahoma City University and the Thunder ended up, I think raising close to about $3,000 doesn't sound like a lot, but for just a single day tournament, it was a lot for the Extra Life Foundation. The most that I have or me and some companies have ever raised during a one-time event was in Michigan. It was for gamers for giving and we ended up raising over 677,000 in a 48 hour period. That's amazing. I bet they were pretty excited. Oh, they were. And the great thing about it is it helps create what we call gaming go-kart. So it's like a mobile gaming station to like the sick kids that can't get out of bed. So pretty much it creates these cards that you get to will and bring into their room. And so now that they can have the fun and joy instead of just being stuck there and just watching SpongeBob on TV or something. Oh, that's amazing. So I also note that you also rent equipment. Yes. So let's just say yourself, if you're in Hawaii and you're like, hey, I have a Smash Bros. to turn them up, what do you have for gear? I'd be like, well, I have 10, pretty much Nintendo Switches with Smash all unlocked and like, you know, I'll charge you 20 bucks a unit and just cover shipping and I'll ship it to you. You have your fun and you ship it back to me and you're good, same as monitors, same as PC. So if someone can't afford pretty much, like I said, production, can't afford a plane ticket to get me out, I'll do the best thing that I can to save that company as much money if they're able to make more money in return. You know, because that's just how it should be. If I have the equipment that's not being used, it's literally sitting in my garage. Sure, sure. Well, so what do you, okay. So have you noticed that the needs of schools and organizations have changed over time because it seems like there are more programs, more money is going into this, what have you seen? So I know with a bunch of these eSports arenas that high schools are creating, same as colleges, they're getting that STEM money. The great thing is, yes, it's helping get equipment, it's helping build their structure, their foundation. The downfall is eventually that STEM might dry up for said areas, but the great thing is if they're able to pivot it right, they're able to get sponsors by like say major gas station brands or major electric or like say different kind of companies that are able to pretty much write it as a tax write-off. And so by getting your bones and structures in gear, you're able to create an atmosphere of all right, well, let's say if the school down the road doesn't have eSports, well, we can help the kids come here and practice. And so it's giving them a chance to now pitch to their superintendent like, look, they have X amount, you've seen how great this was, we need the same thing here. Plus you can use it as computer lab, science labs, et cetera. So it helps its way out more than just how eSports normally is. Fantastic. So when you were playing professionally, there probably weren't that many women in women and girls in eSports. Are you seeing that there's more women and girls in eSports these days? Oh yeah, so yeah, back when I played, it was honestly like maybe 95% of guys. There was Sniper Wolf and a couple other females that did play, but as things have grown, there is a lot more, there's female commentators, there's the welcome desk folks that help out stuff. And then like I said, there is competitive, there's actually all women's competitive Call of Duty and Valorant leagues. And so it is helping transition cause we need that, we need more females in there. That's why I bring my daughter to events, let her play because I need someone to help represent the different sex than what we are. Cause I hate to say it is dominated by males and I wanna see a neutral barrier of people that are great. It doesn't matter if you're male or female, if you're good on the sticks, you're good on the sticks, you know? Sure. Now, do you think that we just finished with the Winter Olympics? Do you think that eSports will have a place in the upcoming Paris and LA Olympics? So they actually have talked about it because it's getting more mainstream as a sport. The only difference is we're just digital. We've been at X games. Like I said, we've been at, like I said, major basketball arenas, football arenas, even in the European and like Asian district, those things are massive out there. And so for them not to put it in the Olympics, honestly, it's missing a lot of talent and it would bring in a lot of viewership. I mean, right now eSports alone brings in more viewership than the NFL and MLB combined. Sure, and it's interesting because it's widely been reported that the Winter Olympic Games had the lowest viewership of any Olympics in history. So that's unfortunate. And I watched it like crazy. I was watching everything, but you know, it would be interesting to have eSports. And now I realize you can't have eSports in the Winter Olympics because the rule is it has to be on snow or ice. So I guess, I don't know, arguably, if there was a game that was in winter or something, maybe you could- There is on Rocky League. Rocky League has a winter map and it also has a hockey puck if you wanna play it with that. I mean, it's not traditional map or the ball type, but I mean, it is a winter game. So why not try it? Yeah, why not? I mean, that sounds fantastic. So now as a final topic, I'm kind of curious, what do you think about this focus on the metaverse and NFTs? It seems like that's the newest biggest topic that sort of relates to eSports. So I know a lot of companies are trying to create NFTs with like team passes you can buy or memorabilia of this great event that you went to. And don't get me wrong. I mean, it can be a good selling point. It can get good sponsors involved. Honestly, I haven't done much research on NFTs to understand it. I know you're like owning some kind of digital thing, but as far as the metaverse goes, I know Facebook gaming itself has definitely tried getting eSports involved more and more on their platform. So creating a virtual reality, like say type tournament, it could be something cool because there hasn't really been much virtual reality tournaments just yet. Sure. So I'm gonna give you the last word and tell us how they can find you and just tell us about kind of last words about click gaming. So to find click gaming, you can actually visit our website, www.clickgaming.gg. You can also find me on Twitter at icchiller54. But as far as click gaming goes, like I said, whether it's a mom and pop all the way to majors or if you even just have ideas or questions, don't hesitate to shoot a message our way. We love to interact with those who enjoy the same passion as we do. Fantastic. Well, Johnny, thank you so much. Great job. We learned a lot and I hope a lot of viewers were inspired about your experience as a pro player and moving into work in the ecosystem and be as busy as you are. Alex, I appreciate the invite. I'm sorry to try to get us on here because of internet stuff, as you could tell from what we talked about. But like I said, it's just a blast. And I hope anybody that loves this sport always continues to grow some way or another. Fantastic. And thank you to our viewers for joining us today. Next week, my guest will be Ryan Harbison of Clearbridge Blank Branding Agency. See you then. 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.