Is Fortnite Overrated? (ft. @lachlan ) | Trash Taste #156
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Hello and welcome to another episode of Trash Taste. I'm your host for today, Gant. Joining me once again are the boys and we are back in the Australia studio with another Aussie guest. Do you want to introduce yourself to the audience? Yeah, what's up guys? It's Lachlan here and yeah, keen to chat with the boys today.

Hell yeah, man. Let's go. Chatting time. So for our audience who might not be familiar with your content, do you want to do a brief introduction about what you do? Yeah. What you do on YouTube and you kind of like... Yeah, no, for sure. So I've been making YouTube content for 10 years now. Yeah. Mainly doing gaming stuff.

Brief summary. Started off doing Minecraft. Actually, first started because I really like Pokemon. And there was a mod that brought Pokemon to Minecraft. So, did that. It's called Pixelmon. Did that for about a couple years. Then moved to just traditional Minecraft. Right.

and then did Pokemon Go for a while and then Fortnite for the last five years. - Right. - So yeah. - Hell yeah. - So now that we've got our first actual Fortnite creator on the- - I'm the first. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. You are the first. - Oh, let's go. - None of us like Fortnite. - Yeah, yeah. - We can actually do the meme now, guys. So. - Is Fortnite overrated? - Is Fortnite overrated?

- Okay, bit loaded, bit loaded. - Have you seen that meme? - No, I haven't seen this meme. - It's like these three little like 10 year old kids on the couch. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - They're like leaned over and they're like, "Is Fortnite over?" - And it's like every podcast has that meme. - Did they actually say that on the podcast or was that just the caption underneath it? - I think it actually is the podcast. - I think that's the original caption and then they just got memed to like- - I think it's 'cause how serious they're like leaned over. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - They're like, "Damn, is it though?" Like, shit.

Let's discuss. Look, I mean, kind of. Back in the day, I think it was properly rated. Now I'd say maybe a bit overrated, yeah? Right, right. We're being serious, which I don't think we are. I think a lot of our audience isn't really familiar with Fortnite in general. Yeah. Is there kind of a way you can encapsulate

how Fortnite worked or kind of had relation to your content and what your relationship to Fortnite was? - Nah, so it's like back when I first started the Fortnite kind of thing, we'd just come off Pokemon Go hype. And did you guys get around Pokemon Go? - Oh yeah. - Like, ugh. - So I played Pokemon Go, but I didn't have a phone. - Every day.

- I didn't have a phone that could run Pokemon Go at the time. When did Pokemon Go come out? - 2016. - 2016, yeah, yeah, yeah. - How old was I then? - You were like 12. - Wait, no, I had a, okay, for some reason I couldn't play it, but I felt really left out 'cause everyone was playing. And I was like, well, I'll just play it on my PC.

Oh, fuck you. No, that's... Hold up, hold up, hold up. So then, you know, because I felt so left out that I wanted to play and it didn't seem fun. So you were doing the spoofing thing? So yeah, I did the spoofing thing. And then, you know, I was farming and I go, I was like, damn, this shit's fucking boring.

Cause I'm like walking around. - Yeah, no shit. - I was like, when do I, I was like also at the time I was living in Wales, right? - Right. - Which is, yeah. - The thing that I realized really quickly about Pokemon Go is that if you don't live in a place that has stuff, Pokemon Go doesn't have a lot to offer. - Yeah, that's true. - There was pretty much like two things within like 10 miles of where I lived. I was like, this is shit.

And so then I went, I spoofed on the map. I clicked London. I walked two feet and I'd gone over 10 poker stops. And I was like, this is bullshit. London privilege once again. So anyway, I got banned pretty quickly. Yeah, okay. I was teleporting. Oh, okay. I was going like India. All right, I'm gonna go to Japan and get the Japan exclusive Pokemon. All right, I'm going back to the UK. Playing Pokemon Go in Japan was like fucking epic. I bet it was. It didn't come out until months after everyone got it. I don't know.

- Australia got it first, by the way. - Australia got it first? - Yeah. - Australia got it first, we got it last. - Yeah. - And I'm like, how does that make sense? We made it. - Yeah. - Well, it's like the Mario movie not coming out in Japan yet, right? - Yeah, right? - No, it's not out in Japan yet. - Actually, it's out tomorrow. - It's coming out tomorrow. - Yeah, it's coming out in a day or so. - That's wild. - Yeah, so for some reason when Japan has an IP that's global now, we get it last in Japan. - And yet for some reason, Detective Pikachu came out first in Japan.

Okay. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, so just make up your fucking mind at that point. Yeah. I kind of missed the Pokemon Go craze and I was like so salty about it because I was living in Thailand at the time. Yeah, right. And I saw these YouTube videos about people like going to parks and having these big Pokemon Go meets. I was that guy.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - I was also that guy. - I probably saw one of your early videos because I had this big phase where I was like, "Oh God, I wish that was me." Came out in Thailand and I remember I was like, "Yes, I'm gonna go out." Walked all these poker stops. I remember going to my first poker stop

It was about like 35 degree weather, with like 100% humidity. And the next stop was like a 20 minute walk. I start walking for about 10 minutes and I'm like, this ain't it man. I can't fucking do this. - Were you local one of the first people to like, I guess make videos on Pokemon?

- Because I was flicking through your channel. - Everyone was making videos. - Yeah, but I was flicking through your channel and I saw that you had a video from, I think six years ago, which was like Pokemon Go Let's Play part one. And it has like 20 million views or something. - Yeah, so that was, 'cause I was following the kind of project that week's leading up being like, okay, now this is gonna go crazy. Surely Pokemon out there on the phone.

And then it came out like on midnight and I literally was like downloading my phone, rang one of my mates up like out in the suburbs. I was like, you got to come over right now. Get the camera. We're going outside in the middle of night to catch a fucking Charmander. Get here. So we were like running around catching caterpillars at 2 a.m. And that's that video. Yeah. Whoa. So you literally like first two hours filmed. Yeah. And then you presumably went home and just edited it

Got it up. Bang. And then I remember going to bed, waking up. I think my average views per video back then were like 100, 200K like over a week. Which you're already fucking good. Yeah. Especially back then. And then like that video, I remember I went to bed after grinding probably like 5, 6 AM, hit post, woke up and it was like on a mil, mil and a half. And I was like,

And I was like, yo, we talking. I'm on to something here. So part two was the next. I woke up. We got to run it back. Round two. Let's go right now. Yeah. No, but it was like the biggest flash in the pan. Like after a month, it was dead. Right. Because you couldn't get your Pokemon. And that's it.

- I know they brought out the raids or boxes, but it still didn't feel that engaging. - But that was also like, I think it was like a year after. - Yeah, it was a year after. - I hung on for a bit 'cause I was a bit hopey and thinking it would come back. - It didn't. - It didn't. But I remember I did a couple things. So we went to Chicago for the raids and they had like the first big Pokemon Go event and then like the servers didn't work 'cause there was too many people. That was fun.

And then we did the Yokohama Pikachu event. Oh, yeah. Which I was talking to you about last night. And then they launched Gen 2 and I was in Japan for that as well. But yeah. And then it was done in a year. Yeah. Right. And then Fortnite came out.

- Perfect timing, perfect timing. - So you're like, come over. We need to film it right now. It's coming up at midnight. - No, actually the first one I filmed was a sponsored video. - Oh really? - I remember when Fortnite came out because I was playing FPS games around that time. And it was kind of like,

it was not super big right away. Like I think everyone remembers Fortnite just blowing up instantly, but it was pretty slow. - Yeah, very slow. Like Pokemon Go was definitely bang.

Yeah. But, like, Fortnite was, like, gradually over time because it was still PUBG, I think, running the game. PUBG was big. Right. And then, yeah, just a couple updates came out. Then Ninja started getting these viewers going. And then it definitely hit the- Yeah, because I was going to ask. I was, like, from someone who, like, I played, like, one Fortnite game. And I was, like, yeah, I think this is not really for me personally. But, like, it's always been kind of an anomaly to see. Because, like, you always hear about, like, games blowing up.

But I feel like the blow up of Fortnite and like the magnitude it grew to eventually was almost like unprecedented. Like it was like at the time, there was not really a game that had blown up that much like overnight. Why do you think it was? Like why was it Fortnite that you think was like the game that just exploded and became what it is today? Yeah, you know what? You try to dissect it. I actually don't know. Because like, yeah, Minecraft was...

would you say Minecraft would- - Minecraft was like a very gradual rise. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And then it just kind of dominated. - Minecraft also had its like ups and downs as well. It was like dead for a little bit and then it kind of came back again. - Everyone thought Minecraft was dead and had a resurgence and it was dead again. Then it's like always, there's always like the loop. - Minecraft's never gonna die. - Yeah, it's never gonna die. It's like Lego, you know what I mean? It's like, yeah.

It will fall off like a month or two and then it will come back because, you know, the kids will always play. There's too many good mods. Yeah. Even I'm thinking about going back and I thought I'd never go back. But yeah, I don't know. It's hard. I don't know how Fortnite like, and even like being a creator at the time, it was just kind of like,

it was pub G, but the graphics looked for me, it was looking on a thumbnail. Like the colors looked good. You know, when you compare it to, like you said, pub G and H1, Z1, like they're, they're all really kind of ugly games. Yeah. Very great. It's like an ugly, I mean, it's just ugly. The,

It's like cod, but somehow it looks worse than cod in one of these games. So yeah, I think it's definitely that as well. It's very more, it's easy to like show a kid Fortnite and be like, ooh. - The saturation. - And then you get a gun and it's a gold gun and a blue and it's like, oh, okay. This is all like kind of like hitting the serotonin points in your head. - Yeah, yeah. - That's true. - It's fun. Like even if you're not good at it, when you find a purple gun, you're like,

"It must be good." And then it's like, it sucks or something. - Yeah. - Well, you know. - I feel like as someone who's like never actually played a single game of Fortnite, yes, I am that person. - I liked Fortnite for a while. - Yeah, really? - Yeah. - What seasons? - Oh, fuck. - Oh, you like Fortnite? - It was right the season before Thanos joined.

- Oh, okay, that was a good one. - Okay, I remember that, 'cause I remember I quit and then Thanos came out and I was like, "Just when I thought I was out, just when I thought I was out, they dragged me right back in." And I remember when that happened, that was insane. - That was wild. - Yeah, it was crazy. - 'Cause at this time they hadn't done any collabs. - No, I think, yeah, the first one. - And it started with a playable Thanos. - Which is mad. But I don't think anybody in gaming had even done anything close to that. - No, no, no. - And even now, Fortnite is getting all of the anime IP,

like collaborations that- - The Attack on Titan one, did you see that? - Yeah. - Attack on Titan, Naruto. - There's so many ads for it in Japan right now. Like every bus stop, there's just like a fucking huge ad for like, oh, Mikasa and Eren are in Fortnite now. I'm just like, what is this timeline? - We're memeing a lot about Fortnite, but I think there is genuinely so much interesting stuff to talk about.

about Fortnite and how it affects the online stuff. - Yeah, yeah, because like I said, like a lot of these IP like Naruto, like My Hero Academia, Dragon Ball is some of like the IPs that the Japanese are so fucking protective over and have never collabed with like an outside kind of like entity in the history of the industry. So the fact that what broke that curse was Fortnite, you know, as much as we meme it up is fucking impressive. - No, absolutely.

- Yeah, I wonder if they'll ever get Nintendo or Pokemon. My answer is no. I don't think they will. Like, I think that's the one that they, you're right, they are very protective. I think there's another level to that. And these boys right here, the Mario boys, I don't think they're gonna- - I just can't imagine Luigi like emoting over a kill, you know? - Nintendo would never let Mario have a gun, man. Are you fucking kidding me?

Just Mario hitting the nae nae. I think a lot of these companies were protective, but, you know, there's definitely a sign that, you know, because when you go to Japan, you can see that, like, you know, Levi's on cleaning products or My Heroic. Wait, is he? Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's so sick. You know, they...

Japan they're not nearly as protective as they are compared to like overseas so like they clearly were open to licensing out the IP and the characters for stuff that doesn't really make sense for the characters I mean with Levi with cleaning it does but no

Yeah, I have a Roomba that the voice is just Levi. No way. Yeah, so when you turn it on, it's just Levi being like, it's time to clean. And it just starts cleaning. That's fucking epic. They obviously have a history of being willing to give out the IP. And I think it was just a case of no one was writing the big enough checks. I think Fortnite must have come along and offered some crazy,

- Must be, yeah, yeah. - Because I think that's what it would take for them to be like, all right, yeah, I guess, yeah, sure. - Did you see the latest One Piece McDonald's collab in Japan? - No. - Yes. - Oh my God. - Or the chicken tartare burger with luffa. - Yeah, chicken tartare. They remade the One Piece opening with like Gold Roger, like having like a chicken burger and reciting the opening monologue where you're like, if you wanna find the chicken burger, you can find it.

- In McDonald's. - That's gonna sell. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Oh my God, you got McDonald's now. - Yeah, so it's obvious that they are willing to work with IPs. And yeah, it's impressive that Fortnite has had this massive international growth that has like literally like reshaped the industry. Did you know it was gonna like blow up or was it kind of just like-

- A feeling. - A feeling. - Yeah, it was a feeling. It was definitely a feeling. It was like kind of just like, and at the time, like in this part of my career, I'd just gotten off the Pokemon Go hype train. So I was very much just like looking for the new kind of game to set up on.

I don't know about variety, variety for YouTube in the gaming niche is hard. 'Cause like you'll get viewers that come to watch you for a certain game. - Yeah. - You play something else, you have your viewership. And back then I thought the algorithm was very based on like your average viewership. I don't know if it actually was, but that was just in my head. So I'd just like to be on one game and that way I could kind of do different things with the one game.

It being this kind of malleable game where you can use to tell a story or interact with the community. Like it was perfect for me at the time and it still is. It's just... I think a lot of what killed the hype for like content creation on YouTube for Fortnite was just like TikTok, to be honest. Right, right. Like it just like...

sped everything up in it. You know, you'd sit there back then I used to upload like 30 minute videos in Fortnite and it would be great. You could not get away with that today. - Generally, what drew you to Fortnite initially? 'Cause you got addicted to the game for a while. - Yeah, so well, brand deal.

- Right. - Okay, okay. But we've all had brand deals, okay? Not every brand deal that we do, that we get, we're like, okay. I'm probably the worst to say this 'cause I get addicted to every brand deal that I get sent. So I get it. But like, what about the game drew you to it and kept you playing after the brand deal? - 'Cause I'm sure it wasn't the only brand deal you got.

yeah no no for sure yeah it was so i guess did the brand and the video performed well right yeah right so that's definitely gonna fire off that uh that dopamine kick for sure and it's like all right i want another kick give me get let's go again um uh yeah just pretty much getting back in there it was actually challenging to win as well um like very in the early days so it was you know actual fun experience to try and win a game um so like just

recounting that and then like, you know, you throw on these little challenges where it's like, okay, can I use a certain color weapon and like that spicy for a bit and you can do kind of videos with other people in the community. I don't really know what like just kept me there though. I honestly, it was just,

- Was it not overrated? - No, now it wasn't. Is it now is the question, right? Like, I don't know. It's kind of a bit. - You think it's changed or do you think? - Well, it's gone through two massive stages at least. I mean, when I played Fortnite, when I did, it was kind of, I liked it.

And then I didn't play it for like two, three months. And then it was crushing it because all the Thanos stuff. And then I came back to play it like a year later. And everyone was insane at building.

So if you don't know, Fortnite has this mechanic where what made it unique as a battle royale was that you could build structures. When I say structures, you could build vertical walls, floors or ceilings, and then like ramps. And the whole idea is that you should build pretty quickly to move or make a cover, right? And it was a cool system and it made sense. But then what ended up happening was that people started getting insanely good at building.

And I mean like fast. So like, let's say you found someone, someone would just erect like a whole fucking structure. - That was the meme. - Yeah, like 0.1 seconds like this guy. And then I'd be playing against him like, "This fucking sucks." - "I'm logging off." - "I don't wanna fucking play this. This is horrible for beginners." And I think that's when it started to kind of slow down a little bit. And then they had this massive idea where they were like, "Fortnite is falling off. Let's remove building."

So they just removed the entire mechanic and they were like, guys, it's good again.

And that was the like whole kind of pitch trying to get people back into it. Am I correct in saying that? - Yeah, no, got a lot of the casuals back for sure that like reminisce on the old times. Definitely got a few of them back in. - I think the way I found out about it, I just remembered this, was when they did that collab with like Travis Scott. - Yeah. - Oh yeah. - The Travis Scott and Marshmello concert that they did. Like I think that's how I found out about it 'cause I was like, wait. - You didn't find out about Fortnite until then? - I had known about it. But I remember when the Travis Scott concert was happening, that was like all over the internet 'cause it's like,

Fortnite, this fucking game, somehow got a serious...

like mainstream artists to do like a virtual concert in their game. And I'm like, what? How did that happen? And then he did the fucking McDonald's thing. And I'm like, oh, okay. This guy will shop for a check anyway. - Always comes back to McDonald's. - He's getting the bag. - Yeah, he's getting the bag. - Yeah, I think for me, like I always knew about Fortnite, but I think the moment I realized how big it was, was I guess one Ninja who was just overnight. It felt like overnight just became like the biggest streamer and like,

the face of like Twitch and gaming for like a while. And just like the first like e-sports event that they did as well, where they had like the fucking ridiculous prize pool. - Yeah, a hundred mil. - Yeah. - I think it was 30 mil. It was a hundred mil throughout the year they spent on competitive. - Yeah, yeah. - World cup went crazy.

Yeah. I played in the, not the solos and the duos where like all the prize was. I was in like the creative one. So like as a team captain, okay, I'm dead last. Guess how much I got for dead last? 20 bucks. No, this is Fortnite here.

$20,000. $50,000. Are you serious? For the last place? What did first place get? $300,000. I'm pissed about it to be honest. Yeah. It was actually like a clip of me in the last game because it was like a, it was like a, they're like parkour. You guys don't like parkour games where you run around and don't fall off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Essentially like that. Like in Minecraft where they make this map so you have to like not fall in the lava.

- Literally that, right? So it was a lot of like that different type of competitive aspect. And so there are all these like professional parkour runners that we built as a team. - Professional parkour. - Yeah, no, it was like, hey, they bagged out 300K, so like. - Yeah, I guess I'm the clown. - But I remember that was like on the last game, like my team had died.

And I was sitting there and I just literally sat there, emote crying, knowing I can't fucking win. - Did you go to a physical location for that? - Oh, this was at the World Cup. It was a day before. - Where was this? - In New York. - So you flew all the way out to New York from Australia? - Yeah, I was in Toronto at the time. So it was an easy flight. - How did you qualify for that? - Well, that one, I was a captain. So like I was like- - You chose the team. - I chose the team. Yeah, yeah. So it was like kind of, I made a map and people qualified by like,

running my map really fast. - Oh, okay. - And then we took him over and got dead last. - This episode is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Going online without ExpressVPN is like not having a case on your phone. Most of the time you'll probably be fine, but all it takes is one drop and you'll wish you spent those extra few dollars on a case. Did you know that your data is valuable? Yes, even you, your data is valuable. And hackers can make as much as $1,000 selling your personal information on the dark web.

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- Was this because you were already like pre-established? - Yeah. - So they were like, okay, we want you to be a team captain or was there like a natural like qualification process? - No, it was very much that. It was like me, Ninja, Scissors,

and a bunch of other international creators. - So you had to just be a captain of four random people you'd never met before. - Yeah.

- How was that? You met them in person, I assume. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - That must be so bizarre. - Yeah, it's like, oh, well, you guys are goats. You ran my mat really quick. Like, let's try and bag out now. Let's do this. - Did you keep in touch with any of them or was it like, all right, see you guys. We came last, fuck you guys. - Cut from the team. - You guys fucked me. You fucked me. - We want a measly 50K. - It ain't bad, it ain't bad. - Is it 50K between five of you? - No, like 200K, 50K each. I think it might have been- - 50K each? - Yeah, 50K each.

USD by the way. Okay. I was handing out these bags that they never handed out anymore. Like, yo, that's why I said right. No, I mean, they are handing out like, like, I don't know if you guys saw like the, the unreal engine fortnight announcement. Like it took over Twitter for a couple of days. It was like, Oh, this is fortnight now. And it's like,

Essentially, you can like mod for that. Yeah, you would have seen all the timeline. So that's like a big thing where like now 40% of the revenue that comes out of the item shop gets split between playtime on Battle Royale and creative maps that are made. So like they hand out bags there. That's definitely a good place. So you can literally become like, I guess, making it your job. Yeah. That's like the rope.

- Yeah, it is literally the Roblox. - That's why Roblox does so well. They give people who make the most popular maps a lot of money. - Well, they don't even give them the money. They actually just earn. - Yeah, they give them tokens, right? - Well, so they don't have this in Fortnite, but Roblox, you can sell things in the game for Robux. - Yeah, like XP or you can get like a gun in the game. - Yeah, and it's very like kind of pay to win.

kind of paying a gamble. - Roblox is such an anomaly to me. - But Roblox's system is very, very, very questionable. - Yeah, it is. - A lot of like very, they have a whole stock exchange, which they shouldn't have. - What, in game? - Yeah, like a legit functioning exchange. - Oh yeah, no, for the items. Some that are worth like 100,000. - Yeah, and it's like, yeah. And bear in mind, this is for kids. - Youngest demographic in gaming probably. - They should know. - I just got hit.

- I'm becoming my dad now. - No, I was just about to say, I'm like, this is what my dad must feel like when I hear about like, so what are the kids doing today? - I fucking get it. Like, okay, imagine your kid comes along and he's like, "Mom, dad, I'm gonna become a professional Fortnite map builder." And you're just like, "I get it now because I'm like, this is how my dad must have felt when I said I wanted to be a YouTuber." - It's like, why are you sad, son? Roblox went down two points yesterday.

I just sold and it's... - There's been like a lot of stories in Roblox about dudes like basically just getting like kids to make maps for them. - Yeah, that's a whole thing. - What? - Yeah, literally child slave labor. - They'll like get a bunch of kids and they'll make them make stuff for them and then they'll just take all the money. - Yeah. - The dude who like, yeah, it's really fucking weird. - Holy shit. - Yeah, it's such a weird,

but not trying to compare Fortnite to that, 'cause Fortnite actually sounds like it has a pretty good system that will use creators. But like Roblox has gone down the other route where it's like, we will literally give anyone money as long as you make stuff. - Wait, did you do any like Roblox content at all? - No, I actually, I did like, I dabbled a little bit, but like I didn't get into it at all. But yeah, I used to run like Minecraft servers. That was my first kind of experience like running a business, I guess. 'Cause those would run in a way where it's like,

come on and you pay for a rank and then it's like, you know, building content and then filming a series to help promote the server. That was like really fun for me back in the day. Yeah, I saw, I was looking through your channel this morning and I was like, oh, I see you're one of the Minecraft YouTubers who were doing parody songs. Yeah.

- Yeah, that was always fun. I didn't sing them though. I just like produced them. But like, that was fun. Yeah, I think that's actually my most viewed video. - Yeah, it's like 124 million views or something. - Yeah, it's OG one. - Dude, I remember 'cause like back in the day, man, like when Minecraft was at its like first, first peak, there was like all the big Minecraft creators were doing these parody songs. They were getting stupid views. - Yup.

- But I don't think they'd ever really make money 'cause they get claimed. I think that one's claimed. - Oh really? - Yeah. - It was like a parody of a popular song. - Yeah, yeah. - I know Captain Sparkles did a bunch of- - Well, one of them he had to change the song completely. - Oh my God. - One of his OG ones. But like, I think the big ones are like still good. It depends like your relationship with the record. - Diamond Sword from Tobuscus. - Yeah, that was a good one.

- Some OG internet like gold there in that era. - So you got your start in Minecraft, right? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Minecraft was the start. Yeah, I was in- - How do you differentiate yourself in Minecraft?

in Minecraft as well. - Sorry? - When you start out in Minecraft, how do you grow when you, 'cause everyone's doing Minecraft. - Yeah, what was it? I think I went to like kind of a VR content phase for like three months in those early days when like the HTC Vive was picking up. I was doing just random flash games, like after Minecraft, before Pokemon Go. I had like a three, four, five month stint. I like to think I was like building up

a community of people that were there to like just watch me play random games. And then, yeah, just kind of played whatever I felt was fun. And that's probably the overarching theme of like the channel for the last 10 years.

I won't play something if I don't enjoy it. And like, that's pretty much all the rest of the system. - Yeah, because I normally see like a trend in gaming YouTubers, especially some people who start off doing a game like Minecraft is that they find such trouble kind of like doing other content outside when that kind of like content kind of falls off. But you've managed to like switch content and switch games like several times. - Yeah. - How'd you go about like

building an audience around a game around a new game or a new style of content yeah it's tough because a lot of times it's like a gamble it's like all right i've got this and i know i'll keep this yeah but you if you don't change you're just gonna eventually just go lower and lower and lower yeah yeah so yeah it's it's it's taking a gamble and you're it's it's two steps back one step forward because your your first video on a new game is gonna be gonna do worse you just gotta stomach that um but

But yeah, just getting it in there and trying really hard to make that new content for that game better. And I feel like it's even easier these days than it was back then. Right. I feel like almost every YouTube video now these days is kind of like a TikTok and like it could bang or it could not bang. Yeah. And it's like...

Whereas in the past it'd be like, oh, your next video is gonna do worse because the last one did worse. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And you get to like kind of that hole. But now it feels like if you just come up with a good video, doesn't matter who you are. - Yeah. - It can bang hard. Like I've seen channels like 10K subscribers get videos like millions of views. - Yeah, and I feel like another good thing about like the new algorithm is that I feel like there's a safety net now because even if a video doesn't bang like immediately, I've noticed even if you change

the thumbnail or title, maybe it wasn't like optimized the best. There's still an opportunity that you can kind of like revive old videos. Whereas before, if you uploaded a video, it was 10 out of 10, you're like, it's done. I can't fucking do anything. - Next video. - I'm irrelevant, I'm dead. - The 10 out of 10s hit different. - Yeah. - Hey, you get enough of them. Next one can't be 10 out of 10. You start building them up. - Can't be 10 out of 10s. - I heard they're gonna get rid of it.

- Really? - Yeah, the whole one out of 10 ranking system for like mental health. - I get it. - I get it. - I remember could not be true. - Yeah. - Fairbible source, I think it was like somewhere in the beast camp I heard it from. - Okay. - Okay. - Yeah, 'cause I know they've been talking about it for a while because a lot of content creators have kind of, you know, been like, this is not helping me in- - What's why you start the day. - Yeah. - You guys like me were like,

- First thing you do in the morning, what do you do? You check your phone? - I actually don't check YouTube analytics at all now. - No, I've stopped doing that. - I think, yeah, just something I just kind of realized like, I actually just like my days when I don't look at it. But I looked today because I uploaded the video, it was nine out of 10, which I'm fine with because 10 out of 10 is when I'm like, 'cause my 10 out of 10 is bad. So if it goes below that, I'm like, oh, this is bad.

- I know what you mean. You upload an absolute stinker and you're like, okay, as long as it's not as bad as that. - Yeah, yeah. - I don't know what you guys are talking about. YouTube killed my depression by removing dislikes. I am no longer depressed now. Thank you, YouTube.

Not that I can still totally see it when I go to my YouTube dashboard or anything. Yeah, right. It's not there publicly, so I'm happy now. Yeah, congratulations, by the way, because I actually first found out about you through a Sunny V2 video.

- Oh, okay. - But it was like, normally when Sonny V2 makes a video, it's about the fall of a YouTuber. It's one of his few like positive kind of like videos. - Hey, shout out my boy Sonny. Oh, I'm probably running out right now. - Yeah, make it all right now. - Little bit controversial right now. - Yeah. No, yeah, that was a weird one. I'm expecting one though to be like,

I don't know, look, we're in different days now. The channels. - Is it weird to have somebody kind of talk about your YouTube journey? - It's cool. - It's cool? - It's cool. I actually really enjoyed watching the video. I remember when that came out. - You're like, "That's me." - I'm like, "Hey, he's saying good things. "No, he says bad things." Yeah, no, nah, that was a trip. It's a trip though. Definitely is like weird, but nah, it was cool. - How accurate do you think it was at like-

it's pretty accurate at the time. Right, right. Yeah. I mean, look, these days and like, like running power and like that whole kind of eSports side of things and everything around that, I've had a lot less time to focus on my own channel. Right. Going through a bit of a break right now.

a Sonny V2 kind of how he fell off. - I actually wanna make an addendum, he fell off. - So you mentioned you started an e-sports agency? - Yeah, well, yeah, e-sports org back in 2020, right when COVID started. - Right, okay. - Yeah. - Where did that idea come from? - So back in the World Cup days of Fortnite, I was actually playing a bit of competitive Fortnite

with a pro player and we were trying to qualify for world cup and I really enjoyed that competitive journey. And I wasn't that good, but the player I was playing with was really good. His name was Fresh. And he low key, high key carried me. - Did you guys qualify? - No, we got like sixth or seventh in our best duos week. You need to get first to qualify. So, cause yeah, not many spots for Australia, but.

- Yeah, I really enjoyed the competitive journey and I just liked being involved in just competitive Fortnite. And so Australia doesn't have much of a scene for e-sports. So I just wanted to get behind it and yeah, really start making content for competitive in Fortnite was yeah, definitely a big drive for me and just bringing people together in Australia. - Right, was it more to like grow the Australian kind of like e-sports scene or because like a big thing

is that starting an eSports organization- - Worst financial thing you can do. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - How the hell's that been, man? - Hey, look, hey, look. What's the meme of like, Boyston Ludwig burning money over a fire? - Yeah. - Yeah, pretty accurate. Yeah, look, it's a challenge. And that's probably why I like it. 'Cause it's like,

it's the first business I've ever done or business adventure that just loses money. And it's like, fundamentally that's like, to me it's like, well, this is a failure, right? Cause it doesn't make money, but it's like, it's not about money. It's about honestly just bringing people together, making content. Cause it's more than just the e-sports. It's a content journey. We do like a lot of IRL stuff, a lot of Fortnite stuff.

we have a Rocket League team as well. So we do try and get those boys involved as well. Sticking in like the Epic Games metaverse, I suppose, as far as like their titles at the moment.

But yeah, it's just, it's fun, it's different. It's really challenging, but I think we're making some good moves. - So tell me like the entire process about how, what goes behind actually just making an e-sports organization from the start. - Okay, so yeah. - Like who do you talk to? - Yeah, yeah. - How do you even like start that? - And like, well, this is the other thing as well. I was like, I think it's just me

and Moist are like the only ones playing with their own money. I think first step for most people is seek investors. - Yeah, get venture capital. - Yeah.

- Oh, toast as well. - Yeah, actually. Yeah. No, that's true. Yeah. But yeah, I think it's just honestly- - So step one, find money. - Find money. Find money. - Find money you wanna burn? - Yeah. - How much, what percentage of what I have can I burn? - Yeah, literally. That's the conversation I had to myself.

And yeah, you just start with the, like I have a really good kind of business partner that I've had from like kind of the start. His name is Billy, like started off in like kind of very professional lawyer services. So he helped me out with getting everything started and brought over kind of my team from like my editing team and stuff that I'd already built from my channel and just try to like scale it a little bit. And then just, yeah, hiring people and contracting players.

How do you go about finding players that you want to contract for your team and your organization? Do you have trials? No, it's very much just like, what are their goals and do they align with ours? So our goals aren't... Our goals...

I mean, we're trying to definitely- - Is winning not the goal? - Yeah. - I'm sorry, I'm sorry. - No. - Don't be shit. - But that's like, I feel like that's kind of a fallacy. It's like winning for teams, I feel like is the highest priority, right? It's like, and I get it, right? You're not going in to lose. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - You're obviously trying to win,

The top orgs at the top level, they got this money glitch coming in from somewhere. I don't know where it is, but they're spending so much on the top players. So to win, it's very expensive. And that's why no one makes any money. Yeah. Because they're just ego bowling each other to try and get the best players. So I actually like...

- For me, it's about picking the best talent in Australia and how we can prop them up to compete at an international level. 'Cause the meme is Australia goes overseas, we don't win. And it's like, you look at league, I don't know if you guys follow any esports? - I follow league. - All my knowledge of esports comes from basically like league. - They dissolved. - Yeah, well they got rid of the league completely. - They were like gone. - Yeah. - Yeah, 'cause they were like, no one's watching.

No one's watching. And then so there's the time zone from like a commercial side. You're only putting it out to people who live in Australia, what, 30 million? Yeah. So that's your viewership. And do they like esports? Well, not really because we don't win. So it's kind of this weird relationship, right? Yeah.

I think that's a big part of it. And yeah, trying to prop up those Australian players so that they can actually compete at the highest level. - Right. One thing I've always been curious about is, okay, you find the players because in the top kind of echelon of whatever game you're playing, there's only a few you can pick from that are like can perform at the top level. How'd you go about finding coaching?

And, you know, that kind of getting that environment to really coach them into a esports kind of like environment. Yeah, I've actually been pretty lucky with that one. The coaches is actually not too hard. Oh, really? I had some really good like people in, you know, Fortnite and Rocket League who have just been from other organizations. Yeah.

just getting them involved. Like, nah, that one's actually a pretty easy one. - Yeah, what do you think makes a good coach? Because I've always found it so interesting because like- - Our coach is doing a panel on this at DreamHack by the way. - Oh really? Okay, okay, awesome. I'll fucking go there, yeah. - I don't know if I'm qualified to speak on it, but like his coaching philosophy, this is Jim, our Rocket League coach, is he doesn't come from much of a gameplay perspective. He comes from more of a mental and like,

psychological perspective. - Right, right. - On like, you know, trying to not tilt and telling the players best for those kinds of... Rocket League is an interesting one. Like it's very tilt heavy.

that kind of specific esport. - I would argue every esport is. - I've seen the smash compilation. - Rocket League doesn't give you much time to breathe. - Yeah. - In League of Legends, if you die, you have 30 seconds to like compose yourself and like, all right, okay, I got to get back in the game. - Yeah. - Rocket League's like, oh, I've just tilted and we've lost four goals. - Yeah. - Yeah. It's a fun one though. I really like Rocket League 'cause I think anybody can understand what's going on. - Oh yeah. - That's why I love it.

- That's what I love about the fighting game community, which is like, obviously fighting games, people will tilt, but that's part of like the community, right? - Oh, of course. - It's the soul, you know? - That's the best part. - They embrace it, you know? That's the best part of it, yeah. - I'm curious from like the esports perspective of like, let's say you have like League of Legends, you have 10 teams, right? Who compete every week or whatever.

where do you have to be on that, like in that top 10 for your team to be kind of breaking even or making money? And I imagine the problem balloons even more so with like Fortnite or Apex when there's like, there's so many people, right? 'Cause at least in league, right? Maybe there's 50 people total. Apex maybe there's 180 people you have to kind of get to that level where somehow everyone can make just enough to survive. - Yeah. - And I find like,

What does it look like? Like if we're in a game of Fortnite, which how many people are in a Fortnite game? - 100. Yeah. - Okay, let's say we're in a pro Fortnite match, right? How many of that 100 are living off of playing it professionally and how many of them have to do other stuff in their spare time? - I saw an article on this, depends on the region. In Australia, I don't...

- Like five percent. - Even then, like the prize pool, they really nerfed it after World Cup. Like it's just gone down ever since. Yeah, and that's why I honestly, I don't think you could alone from a pure competitive standpoint. That's why we try to really get the players involved with content. 'Cause that's what you pitch. I know it's like so kind of like over said at this point of like, oh, orgs aren't profitable 'cause they don't make content. - Yeah, it's like turning, you know,

if you have like a Michael Jordan, right? You're like, hey, you should do Space Jam. You should do, it's like, hey, this is how- - Hey, you should stream. I don't wanna stream. - Yeah, you should do more stuff. - Like diversify while your, like, I guess name value is like at its highest, right? Just to make sure to be like, all right, yeah, you know, you can make money in other revenues just in case you fucking fall off a cliff skill wise and you know, you're not winning these games or whatever, right?

but it's a hard conversation to have with them. Cause like their goal is just win. It's not about like, you know, if I put on a stream, I play worse so I don't stream. And like, that's a hard, you know, chat I've had out of players. Cause I'm like, I'd kill to have your skill and be able to create content and stream. Like I would actually kill for that. But like for them, it's just like,

got third last week and we're looking for first and it's like, you know, that's part of our agenda too. We want to win too. So it's like, I'm just, yeah, more trying to preach that kind of stability because like esports is,

- Very cutthroat. - It is, it is. Okay, in your experience, even if an e-sports organization was consistently winning and that's all they were doing, is that still enough to like, is the prize pool enough to make them a profitable business or something that can break even even? - Yeah, 'cause even that's a weird one.

for me, it's like, do people care about the org? That's my biggest goal. It's like, I don't really care about winning. Like going back to that. I mean, great. We want to win. We want to build a story. Don't get me wrong. And we're working towards that. And just because you can really use that win with a story to create a reason for people to care. But I think that's where like a lot of, you know,

these orgs go for just that winning and it's like, oh, we won. Okay, cool. Yeah. It might get a few partnerships out of that. Like I'm sure everyone loves being with the winning team. Um,

But I think if you're not able to tell the story as well, then it gets a bit rough. And I think G2 would be a good example of a team that does that. Yeah. Like really tells the story and wins. They have a huge content focus. Yeah. Even if the players aren't doing it, they're like, well, we'll always have a crew. Yeah. And we'll always film stuff. But also, at least for their league team, they have quite a lot of characters who are pretty engaging. Yeah. Always doing some fun stuff. I think from like a spectator, like kind of like,

Obviously like winning is the easiest way to get someone invested in your team because obviously there are a lot of people who just like cheering for a team that wins. But saying this as like...

saying this as an Arsenal fan who got in back in the good old days and now is like a kind of like a G2 fan for League. - I'm a G2 fan too. - Yeah, really? Oh yeah, nice. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I'm an EU. - Yeah, yeah, EU baby. But one thing that really drew me towards both of these teams

before the winning was just having this really exciting play style or just like having, being like excited every time to see them play because they had like a really kind of different play style as well. So even if you're just doing something exciting in the game, aside from just making content as well, because from my perspective,

I started watching that content after I saw the exciting things that they were doing in-game. So I was like, shit, I want to check these guys out. And then after that was, did I become a fan? Do you have like a kind of like a...

let's say like a strategy to try and get people invested in your organization? - Yeah, and I mean, it definitely is mainly around that content focus. Like, I mean, for our channel on Power, we definitely try to involve as much around the community and the content creators within Australia to try and very much get people on board so that when they see us in a Rocket League game or when they see us in a Fortnite, it's like, oh, these guys create great content and that's why I wanna get behind them. - Yeah.

that, that, that is the strategy for us at the moment. I would say, do you guys have a content house or like a powerhouse? That's literally what it was called. It was called a powerhouse. We did it for like one month in Sydney and we had our pro players come play on zero ping, compete in the finals. Yeah. Um, and then we just filmed a bunch of content. It was a great, uh,

kind of test to see if it would work and the videos did really well. Competitive players, I think we got a top five in there and that was a good test. So now we're actually building a studio in Melbourne which hopefully opens up in like a couple months and that'll be the next big kind of investment from us to really have

creative people there. It won't be more so for the players, it'll be more so for the team and the content to really flourish. - Yeah, I mean, a lot of the orgs are focusing on, you know, like merchandise and apparel, like building kind of some form of like- - Turning it into a brand. - Yeah, and loyalty in the brand, which makes sense, right? Because YouTubers, one of the biggest ways they make money is merch. It's one of the best margins in terms of,

the viewer gets something and they get to support you. So it's a good way of going about it, but I wonder how long it'll keep being like that. I wonder. - Yeah, like how involved are you in terms of like bringing your own personal branding of like your, you know,

content creator youtube kind of side of things into this esports organization because i feel like you guys like you and moist and ludwig and toast have a inherent advantage in that you already have a lot of people invested in you as a person uh so bringing that kind of like brand power to your organization means it's an easy way to kind of like create people who are invested in

in your uh yeah team 100 and it's like kind of like the story already started 10 years ago and like this is like the the end of it like or i suppose the current stage of it in the organization um yeah it's definitely bringing a lot of that branding like i came from a full content creator perspective i was like the only way we're even going to get close to profitable is just making content so let's just start there and yeah work off players who have

I suppose like kind of you were saying with G2, like more of a personality. And if they win, that's great too. Like love that. And we've got a few of those guys that are great characters and just really want to get involved in content, but also put in hard work at being the best at their game. - Is it ever a question of, can the e-sports agency that's like you mentioned like Moist or whatever,

Can that org ever eclipse your own kind of influence and following? Or is it something where it's always in the shadow of?

- I would say it's probably above mine right now. - Really? - To be honest. - Yeah, well, and that's nice. - Well, it's not even because that's because many of my numbers have dropped off. - No. - I'm based on playing at our age. - Sonny, I'm waiting, trade offer. - No, but that's the thing is that like, I run power. I don't have like a CEO. I looked at it and they were all like, hey, 400K a year. And I was like, hey.

I'll do it myself. And then that was probably dumb in hindsight, 'cause like I've definitely sacrificed a lot of time on my own channel because this has been my main priority. - But also I think it's whatever you enjoy doing. If that's something that is more rewarding for you in your current stage of life, then like, yeah, like you know how to make videos. If you want to go back, you could easily start that grind and then get back into it, I think.

Yeah, and I get tempted a lot. And I'm like, I'm taking a few months off. Like, I think I was talking to you guys about traveling, like gonna travel the next two months and just focus on power and just kind of put my channel to the back for a bit and then maybe come back to the studio in Melbourne and maybe rejig up my channel again. But at the moment, yeah, it's my number one priority is power because I think winning with a team is way cooler than winning by yourself. And that's what the channel was for 10 years, just doing well, but it's like,

you know, you, you, you know, party with the other content creators, but it's like, imagine partying with the team. To me, that's just so much cooler and so much more rewarding. Did you just say it's the friends we made along the way? We're Nakama. It's not about winning. We're a family. It's about the

- We take care of each other. - We sound some anime shit right here, yeah. - This is very anime. I didn't ask and I should have asked this. What games do you use or compete in? - Yeah, so it's Fortnite. We started there. And then Rocket League.

which we actually, we were the first Australian team to ever sweep an NA team in Rocket League earlier this year. So I consider that a huge W for us, it was G2 as well, by the way. Yeah, we loved that one, we loved that. And then yeah, Fortnite, we've got six players, one of which got top five at DreamHack San Diego. And he's gone to GamersAid for that big $2 million tournament later this year.

- Yeah, no. - I think you bring home some money. - No, I mean, I think similar orgs have it, but we don't take any prize money. Like that's kind of theirs and we just help build everything else around it. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Which I think is definitely probably the better way of doing it. - Makes more sense. How's it feel seeing your team compete?

- So good. Okay, so here's the thing. Have you guys watched like moist Rocket League watch parties? - Yeah, I love them. - Yeah, it was so good. So good. So like I watch him, right? And like I was back in the spring major last year, we were competing and I was streaming ours on YouTube, but we only made it past one round and it was depressing 'cause it was like 0-3, 0-3 we're out. And I was like, fuck.

And then I'm sitting there living through Charlie watching his team win. I'm like, fuck man, I want that so bad. And they won it. And then they won it. And I was like, fuck man, I feel so good for him right now. I've done the opposite spectrum of like stream my team just getting absolutely rinsed by FaZe Clan and just another team. And it's just...

I think I've watched Charlie, his team lose. It's like- - It's depressing. - It's depressing as fuck. - But also it's the journey. - And it's also the content. - Yeah, you're getting depressed. - Viewers, they're loving watching your pain. - I saw a lot of just fucking like looking so defeated when his team lost. It was kind of fun to watch. 'Cause it's like you said, like you see the highs, you get the lows and that's what makes it great. 'Cause you see a man who's invested like 100%.

money and emotion. It's like if you watched your Arsenal, but every time Arsenal lost, you'd lose 50K. It's so much more fun to watch. It's like a deeper...

- Yeah, I was gonna say it's a deeper level in the game. It's like higher stakes 'cause not only just money, it's also time. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, no. - It's like the next level of sports betting. It's like, I don't sports bet. I make my own e-sports team and then I bet on them. - But also it's kind of five head 'cause,

- They're buying essentially just guaranteed content for themselves as well. - Yeah. - 'Cause you get that every single week or whatever they're playing, you get to stream it and you get to then make money off of those streams. - Yeah, it's good in the content calendar wheel. Like for streamers specifically as well. Like I am not much of a streamer. Like I started making YouTube content, but I did do like a two year YouTube deal streaming a while back. And that was where I really got into streaming.

- It was interesting to learn. - Not into the streaming? 'Cause you got the YouTube deal as like the first wave. - Yeah, we were on the first wave of it back in the day that when Mixer was really starting to pipe up and Mixer signed Ninja and then it first stream of war started and it cool. And that's actually kind of back now kick.

- Yeah. - I've heard a couple rumblings going on. - Just signed my deal, damn it. I love Twitch. - One thing I wanted to ask actually is like, are you planning to like kind of extend to other games as well with power? - Yeah, definitely, definitely. I think that's in the books for yeah, 2023 this year.

And that's like kind of part of it is like surveying which game to go next. Would you be interested in like, because you know, you obviously like massive Pokemon fan, right? Like, have you ever thought about like going into like the competitive Pokemon scene or? That's interesting. That started really hitting my like for you page on YouTube. Yeah. It's like really blown up recently, I feel. Is it Wolfie?

- Yeah, Wolfie. - Yeah, he's making some great content. Like really good storytelling. - He's been innovating. But also when you're playing with a Nintendo property- - Nah, you wait, I didn't say yeah, the answer is no. - Yeah, I was gonna say. - There's always that looming thought of like, when are they gonna decide they don't like this? - Yeah, when are they gonna shut down? - I mean, I've seen all the Smash like shitstorm going on. - Yeah. - It's crazy that they just don't want any esports. They just, they actively, where other games like- - Embrace. - Embrace it, yeah. - Will pay,

hundreds of millions of dollars to get something. Nintendo will actively be like, fuck this, fuck you. Don't play our games longer than we tell you to. - I just don't think they really like understand the scene enough. - I feel like it's gone way too long. We can't use that as an excuse anymore. I think they understand it. They just don't want it. I feel like that is not their goal as a company. - They are that fucking granddad who's just like, what is e-sports? I don't understand this. - Apparently watch real sports. - That's not real sports.

- Yeah, because it feels like, especially in Japan, I don't know how big the esports scene is in Japan, but I know it's like almost non-existent in terms of like league. - Is it Valorant or is it? - Valorant's pretty big in Japan. - Yeah, I was gonna say, I think Valorant might be the normal one for Japan.

Yeah. Yeah. No, Apex won the battle royale war in Japan. Oh yeah. It's not even close. Yeah. And like they're getting Aaron Yeagers and they're still not winning. Like how's that? How's that? No wonder you got posters everywhere. They're trying to win a war over there. I think it's like kids, kids love Fortnite in Japan.

But like the moment they kind of get older, it's Apex. Everyone plays Apex. But Valorant has also massively taken off. Yeah. Thank all the VTubers for that. Yeah. A lot of VTubers actually. Yeah. Push Apex. Yeah, right. I think it was actually the VTubers that originally, especially with Apex, blew it up in Japan. Because there was like a bunch of like pretty top level Japanese VTubers who got really fucking good at Apex. Well, they also have like...

I think it's not maybe bi-weekly or monthly VTuber Apex tournaments. - Oh yeah, yeah. - They're pretty big. - Yeah. - Basically VTubers control the Japanese meta about what games gets played, right? - Mobus they do not like in Japan. - No. - Yeah, okay. That's Korea. - Yeah, Korea loves Mobus. - Yeah, yeah. - Japan does not want Mobus.

- Are you playing any games outside of like Fortnite and your content? - What games do you play personally? - You know what's crazy? It's gonna sound cringe, but it's actually Fortnite. - It's okay, I played TFT and that's like the most cringe game of all. - Oh, actually, you know what? I've started playing a bit, Super Auto Pets actually casually. - That is kind of like TFT. - Yeah, it is. It's like it's a chess, right? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Auto chess, yeah. I love chess games. - That one's, yeah, surprisingly fun to play.

yeah, with friends as well. We used to play the Dota one, the Dota chess. And then I just- - That was the first order of chess. - Yeah, that was. Yeah, yeah. And then they'd be like, yoink. And then, yeah. It's always funny how those happen. But yeah, no, honestly, it's like, I'll probably wake up and still like get in at least a game of Fortnite. Like I'm probably addicted to Fortnite.

right like and i don't even make much content on anymore it's just like some habitually ingrained in me for five years of making content on the game because a lot of times in that journey of like making content when i was daily uploading and stuff it would be let's just play to figure out what to record and like what can i like let's let's on the fly here make something up while playing a game yeah and then that just become a habit to just play a game every day and it's like

- Well, I think the big thing about getting into a new competitive game is that when you put so much time into learning the mechanics of one game, it's really hard to just jump into another game casually and be like, I wanna spend time

learning this game now, right? Because that's why I will never play another MOBA outside of League. 'Cause like, there was a time when I enjoyed League of Legends. I spent God knows how many hours just learning the basic fucking, like just how to play the game and how the game works and-

I do not have that time in my life anymore. - Yeah. - You know? - Sure, sure. - Yeah. Is there any, like if you could pick any games that you would want power to like, kind of like be represented in like- - Yeah, regardless of like logistics. - Yeah, regardless of logistics. I mean, we wanted to do, we wanted to do Valorant. We were looking into that pretty heavily. Then they went franchised. - Right. - Which, yeah.

- What does that mean when they get franchised? - Essentially it was like kind of like invite only and we weren't in it yet. So it kind of made sense. Like, but they didn't pick any Australian teams in the franchise model. There's none. There was gonna be one and then they went bankrupt.

- Welcome to Esports. - Welcome to Esports, baby. - Everybody's going bankrupt. - Yeah, there's a couple, there's a couple. - Well, CLG recently announced that, dialing back and then Guard fired all of their employees. - Yeah, and then I think V1 was talking about looking for a merger. I think I saw TSM dialing back or something like that. - If TSM is dialing back, that's pretty scary for the whole industry 'cause that's like one of the biggest brand name orgs. - Yeah, yeah, exactly.

- So I'm guessing being an Australian e-sports team, you guys are always seen as the underdogs. - Yeah, and actually I love it 'cause when we win, it's gonna feel so fucking good. And that's why you gotta get behind us because when we go to a tournament, we are fundamentally not meant to win, right? And that's like the whole Aussie spirit, it's underdog. That is it. - How much do you think,

crappy Australian internet has played a role in that weekend sports show. Yeah, because I was going to ask. It's definitely part of it. Like, we'll still get Rocket League games and it's like, guys drop down. It's like, oh yeah, you know, like, give them a bit. Like, there's like a literal, like, I think we have a higher, I could be wrong, but I think there's like a,

We take more referee pauses like in any other region in RLCS because it's like, yeah, internet. Like it's just a common thing, especially when people are playing out rural. It's like, yeah, okay, he's internet's out. Like, will he come back? Coin flip? We don't know. Yeah. Definitely, definitely a part. And I would say even YouTube as well, like early on,

I had to get my video done by 8:00 p.m. So that I could upload it overnight. - Yeah, I was there as well. - Yeah. - Yeah, 'cause when I was living in Australia making content, I was also uploading daily. - Yeah. - And there'd be like an off peak and then there'll be an on peak. And if you didn't upload during the, or if you uploaded during the on peak, then by the end of the month, your internet was just fucked.

'cause there's always a cap to it. So you had to do it. - What? - Yeah, so how it works. - What? - Yeah. - Oh, we were brokies for sure. - Yeah, yeah. - And that's so bad. - So basically how it- - That was notoriously bad. - Yeah, so basically how it worked was that I think it was like between like 12:00 AM and when was it? It was like- - For me, I think it started at 10:00 PM. - Yeah, it was like, it was basically, it was like 10:00 PM ish, there would be an off peak.

Which is basically, it's basically like you're separating the data cap into two halves. One during the day and one during the night. And if you exhausted it during one of the peaks, then the other peak would be affected. So basically your internet would just go down to dial-up speed until it would refresh the next month.

And so when I was uploading daily, I had to basically upload it overnight because not only was the internet so incredibly fucking slow that it took all night to upload, but also if I did it during the day, then I would exhaust the peak and then my dad would come into my room pissed off as fuck being like, why is my internet at dial-up speed?

because you uploaded all this shit and basically capped out our data limit. - And you lived in Sydney. So you weren't like in the middle of fucking nowhere. - Dude, I had 0.3 upload. - Were you in the city? - I was just outside of the city. I was in Northern Beach. - 'Cause apparently for like the way they like refresh the internet is for some places they started outside then in the city. Like they didn't start from the city and then go out. They went out from the suburbs into the city. I think Melbourne's like that from what I've heard. Where like people in Melbourne still in the city kind of have shit in that.

- Yeah, no, I don't think it was like that for us. I think it was just kind of in Sydney, it was just like a like overnight everyone would just like get a refreshed. - Yeah. - But either way, like I had to basically like really downscale my videos to make the files as small as possible. One, because it would take a billion years to upload so that I wouldn't be able to make the daily upload schedule. But two, if I was uploading like a gigabyte video files every single day, dude, my internet would be out in like the first 10 days.

And then I'd have dialogue for the next 20 days, which is just like- - When I first got an editor- - Horrendous. - I started uploading the raw footage.

And that's when I realized, oh shit, my internet is so slow. Yeah. Because YouTube video, you know, you render it and it would come out. Yeah. And it's 1080p and it would maybe come out to like 700 megabytes. Yeah. Maybe a gigabyte tops, right? Right. But then when you start uploading raw footage and then, you know, this raw footage is three hours long and there's two camera angles. You're like, oh, this is going to take four days. Yeah. So I couldn't upload 1080p videos while I was living in Australia because the files were too big. Yeah.

So, the first two and a half years, I was uploading 720p at most. And I was using like a program to like basically scale it down. Yeah. And to sacrifice like graphical quality or like audio quality just so I could upload it without going over my cap. That's crazy. Yeah. And that was fun. And then, you know, by the time I moved out to Australia because my PC was basically on 24 hours for two and a half years straight, it exploded one day. And it like actually burst into flames. And I was like, well...

- Guess I'm moving to Japan now. - Wow, that's the catalyst. - You take it for granted in Japan, how lucky you are to have insane speeds everywhere. - 'Cause you have insane speeds even through like mobile connections. - Yeah. - And there's no cap either. - Yeah, there's no cap. - Yeah, I upload like a terabyte of files. I'm like, all right, I'll be done by dinnertime. - Yeah, that's crazy.

- Is the Australian, isn't that still bad? - It's not bad now. There's like a couple of good providers now and like they've got ambient infrastructure most places. - The National Broadband Network, yeah. - Yeah, which was hairy for a while there, but it's good now. It's good. Not terabytes, but like, you know, we do a couple of gigabytes. - Nice, nice, hell yeah. - How's the ping in Australian like,

- It's like a meme in the league community where everyone's trying to figure out why NA, like North America sucks so bad. And there's like a million different like fucking excuses. And one of them is just like, oh, it's 'cause of the ping. - 'Cause the servers are like in the middle of America. - Yeah, the servers are in the middle of America and they're all like all in California, LA. So it's like, yeah, the pro players can't get like good practice. And so what happens- - It's 'cause they're playing like 60 ping, right? 60 MS.

- That's kind of a lot. - Yeah, I think a lot of people do play on like 60. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think in Korea it's like three or something, right? - It's like 10 or below 10 in Korea. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I think I get like 15 in Tokyo. - Dude, when I was in Australia and like before the National Board Band Network came out and I was playing like G-Mod with like a bunch of my friends in America, like I had like 300 on a good day. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well that was like, yeah, 'cause during my early days doing Minecraft, like 2014, like I was recording with,

I was the only Aussie and I was like, it was the meme of like me being like flying around the screen. Like, yeah, they call me like the blur. Cause I would be blurring all the spots. But yeah, I mean, it was good fun waking up at bad hours. It's good. It was the grind days for sure. - Yeah. But like how bad is like the ping now when it comes to kind of like a competitive scene here in Australia? - Yeah, so it's not bad. So all the servers based in Sydney,

Yeah, so we might... Like we did that one thing where we flew our players down to Sydney and played some games out there to have zero ping. Because in Fortnite, ping is essential for taking their roles. So you'd pickaxe the wall and it would be like...

who places it first next and it's who's ever closest to the server. - Right. - Yeah. - They said they added- - You're spamming it, right? - Yeah, you're both spamming it. And it's like, they say it's a coin flip on like a 50/50 chance, but if your ping is good enough, it doesn't do the coin flip and you just get it. - Yeah, that's nice.

And like, that's a big key mechanic for like fighting because if you take their wall, you can edit and then get a free shot. - Yeah. - Right. - So that's like the big part. - If you build the wall in Fortnite, you can actually like, this is a three by three. You can actually like press a button that allows you to remove parts of the wall. So you can imagine it, right? If you've boxed someone in and you're the one who built the wall, you can quickly, you know exactly when you're gonna remove a section of this wall, then you can just shoot through it. So like I could just remove a portion to shoot them and then put it back.

- Oh wow. - Yeah. - Yeah. - So that's- - They can't do anything. - Oh. - Yeah, they just sit there and take it. - Yeah. So that's why, yeah. So I guess ping is a big factor. I didn't know that was a big deal. - Yeah. So that's like in America right now, they even just did it with Fortnite where they had the East servers and the West servers and they just randomly like,

it's all gone to central. So like all these guys had set up boot camps on east coast. Cause that was the biggest dominant competitive scene. And they've all just moved to Texas. - Jesus Christ. It's crazy to think that like so much infrastructure that's already built could just be overturned by weather like, yeah, we're gonna move the server. It's kind of insane to think. - No, it's wild. It's wild. - Yeah, I mean, like, I don't know how,

big kind of like eSports plays a factor into business decisions they make. I can't imagine it plays like the biggest factor, you know. For America, I think it definitely would be. We think about it for our logistics. It's kind of like the Apex teams in Australia are actually, I know I said before that, you know, Australian teams go internationally, don't win. The Apex teams, and I actually got to meet Jen Burton, I think his name is, in a tournament I did last week.

So he's actually a part of the elusive Australians that go overseas and win. They won a couple of the international Apex tournaments last year. And so they will qualify through Asia, play against...

and actually win on like 160 ping. - Oh wow. - 'Cause the games got good enough net code that like, and I experienced this myself. - It's really not hard to play on bad ping. - Yeah, it's actually very good for it. Like I played the whole tournament on 200 ping and felt fine. - So Overwatch is like that. Overwatch when I played it, I noticed that the ping didn't feel that bad, but like other games like,

you're like, I die now. - Yeah, I thought that's horrible for a high ping as well. - Right, right. - But yeah, no. So like they'll play on 160 and win, which I think is insane. - That's pretty cool. - Before what you mentioned before, have you ever competed yourself in any other tournaments?

- Just the Fortnite stuff I think was it. I was gonna do a Pokemon Go tournament earlier this year just for a meme, for a little throwback meme. 'Cause I've actually got like a competitive aspect to that now too. - How would you be competitive in Pokemon Go? - Oh, 'cause you can battle each other. - Yeah, do you guys play? I actually unironically play. - I stopped playing I think about a year

or so ago. - Yeah, like in the middle of the pandemic. Like, yeah, when the pandemic started, I was like, well, I can't go outside, so I can't really play it. - The pandemic must have murdered Pokemon. - Yeah, I don't know what they did. I wasn't playing back then. - They did something that allowed you to go to Pokestops without physically being there. - Yeah, I think so. - Doesn't that remove the whole point of Pokemon?

Yeah, but no one could go outside. Yeah. So they had to do something. The game just died. But I remember when I was still playing it, they introduced like, yeah, basically like a battle system where like you could pick like three Pokemon. Right. And then based on your, was it...

What was the power scaling called in Pokemon Go again? It was like the points or whatever. CP, right? That's it, yeah. Yeah, which is the worst game ever. Yeah, so it's like you're taking three Pokemon and then your CP would actually just account, I think, for like the HP or something. And then you basically just like battle it out, see who gets knocked out. Tap the screen. Tap the screen, you know, like, yeah, do all that. It has competitive...

It's like the VGC game. It's like kind of random, but kind of skill like, you know, this could work or what moves are they running is like the biggest competitive depth. There's not much competitive depth to it at all, which is why I thought I could actually walk in there and maybe do something. - Yeah, yeah. I can flick a win. - Yeah, I think you could, 'cause you could just,

- Yeah, you just look up your kind of what the tier lists are online and just go with something like that. - That makes sense. - But no, I didn't manage to get that done, but no, not really involved in anything else outside of Fortnite. That's just been- - You must've traveled quite a lot during like your Pokemon Go content phase then. - Yes.

- Yeah, we caught all the regionals. Caught all the ones you had to go like America and Japan for. - Oh my God. - Did you make content doing that? Being like, I'm gonna go on a flight now to go and get a Pokemon Go from Japan. - 100%. That's what's taking me. - What was it as like far fetched you could only catch in Japan? - That's it, yeah. - Which one was the European one? Was it Taurus or Mr. Mime? - Mr. Mime. - And Kangaskhan was Australia, right? - Yeah, yeah. - Of course it was. - We were Kangaskhan.

- Yeah, so did a bit of traveling there. Yeah, did all of them, did Europe. - Fuck. - Must've been nice. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Basically just got a vacation, right? - Yeah, around the world in 80 days funded by Pokemon Go, right? - Well, it was actually even better 'cause I think I was like Gamescom. So it was like, and I was with there with the EA playing Battlefield. So it was like, I was doing that and then doing this as well. - Right. - 'Cause they're still running a second channel playing other games and stuff.

But yeah, no, lots of traveling. - How many countries did you end up hitting up purely for Pokemon Go? Can you even remember? - I can't honestly. It's gotta be at least six, I reckon. 'Cause yeah, America, Canada, Japan. I mean, do we count Australia? Not really, I'm already there. Germany, UK. And then there was some, I think Dubai as well. - What'd you think of the UK?

- Yeah, actually we like the UK. - That's a hot take. - Is that my trash take? - That is a hot take. - I like the people there. - What are you talking about? - Okay, if we're talking people ranking, I would say, and I think it's because- - People, right? Let's rank people. - Okay, that's fine. - People on your list. - Let's do this, let's do this. People on your list. - So I feel like because like, bless up the queen,

- Australia, Canada and UK people like just gel the most. Like I get on with everybody. Like I lived in Canada for like about a year. Everyone there super friendly, super nice. - Yeah. - UK feels like Sydney in some aspects. - Yeah, it feels like Sydney but worse, like more depressing. - Yes, so very gray. That's what I would use. - It's Sydney if it was just perpetually shit weather. - Yes. - That's what I like about it. - Yeah. - It humbles you.

But like people that are great, I don't know. Like obviously I've collaborated a lot with the Sidemen and then like they're always up to some crazy mad shit. Like they've been on a run for a long time. So it's always good hanging out with those guys. I honestly just have a lot of fun when I go to the UK, I guess. - Yeah, yeah. I mean, the UK and Australia is very close culturally, I would say, especially like the people. And I'm just like, every time I meet an Australian and go to Australia, I was like, oh, this is what the UK could be like if we were happy.

I'm like to me like Australia, British people are like a step, like if we're tearing the tier list. It's like British people step down from Australians 'cause they're just less happy. - Okay, but who's S tier in this? - Who's S tier?

S-tiering people. Yeah. S-tiering in nationality. Oh, God. Is that racist? I'm white, so I can only do white countries. Well, amongst the white countries.

- It's like to me as a Southeast Asian, I'm like my, like I've seen so much like similarities where hang out with like Latin America people. It's like, you know, Aussies, UK, New Zealand, Canada, they all gel well. I feel like Southeast Asian and Latin America people, you know, it's just like, yeah, yeah. Also fits like a glove as well.

- Yeah, I don't know what else though. - Yeah. - What about your Japanese side? Who'd you get along the most with as a, from like your Japanese side? - Well, considering how xenophobic we are, we only really hang out with Japanese people. 'Cause like everybody else is F tier. According to Japan.

- Yeah. - Yeah. - You've actually been to Japan, right? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I lived in, now here's the thing. I think I was talking to you last night about it. I say Osaka, but you say it. - I thought he said Osaka. - Yeah. I was like, I think it might've just been the accent of the way I say it. - And I'm like, wait, you used to be where our old studio was?

- In Saitama? And then the local was like, "What's Saitama?" - I'm like, "What is that?" - I've completely misconstrued what you said. - No, yeah, so I was in Osaka for- - It does sound like you're saying Osaka. - Yeah. - Yeah. - So wait, so why Osaka? - So at the time, like the girl I was dating, she got a job out there and I was like, "I can do this anywhere. I can make content anywhere." And I love Japan. The few times I went for Pokemon, I was like,

absolutely just loved it. So I was like, yeah, I can do this. So got one of those visas that allowed me to like a working holiday for a year and then just moved over, got an Airbnb and off we go. Set up a computer upstairs in this little concrete castle and then...

- Off we go. - How was it recording YouTube videos with presumably a small Japanese apartment with neighbors and stuff? How was that? - Yeah, I didn't get any noise complaints. - You didn't? - I didn't. I like to think it was very soundproof, like concrete. - I don't know. - This is it though, you're right. 'Cause I was very conscious of that. I did not wanna be that guy coming in, just shouting, playing Fortnite at 2:00 AM. 'Cause that's what I was doing. I was doing the streaming thing at the time as well. So it was kind of just get hours in.

But nah man, that was like, that was so much fun. And then that got cut short because of COVID. I was like, I gotta get back home. - So how long were you there for? - I was only there for, I think two and a half, three months. - Oh wow. - Yeah. - You really weren't there long. - Yeah, and I was meant to be there for a full year and it got cut short and now I can't get that visa again. - How was your experience in Japan? - I loved it, man. It was so much fun. Like just getting to like explore different towns, like every weekend, like.

Even just running around Osaka and just finding all these new different places. I feel Osaka is great as well because unlike people in Tokyo, I feel just like people in Osaka are just a lot more stranger friendly. Yeah. They're a lot more comfortable, I think, not just with foreigners, but just with people they don't know. Yeah, for sure. And just a lot more open. If you go up to someone in Osaka and just start chatting with them, more times than in Tokyo, they're just like, yeah, okay, I'll engage in this conversation. You know, fucking have a bit of banter.

Yeah, a lot less English though. And for me, I really still don't really speak Japanese. Did you end up picking up any Japanese at all? Like just enough to get by, you know. We ran Google Translate for the most. But like, you know, like...

- I love hearing Australian accent. - That's all you need to know. - Yeah, pretty much. - is the thing you say the most. - Yes, it really is. - Say for God damn everything.

I heard you had a favorite ramen joint as well. Okay, so we were talking about this in the break. This is the trash take, I guess, is that Ichiran is actually good. Yeah, it's actually good. These guys are... People in Japan love it.

- They go crazy for the cheese. - No, it's like the most mid-Roman. - It's the most five out of 10 ramen, dude. - It's good. Why do you think it's so popular in Japan? It's not just tourists. It's really, really popular amongst Japanese people. - Because Japanese people will fucking form a line on any mediocrity if it's sold well enough. - Wow. - They will. There's so many places where it's like,

why is there a line forming in front of this thing that the common understanding is that it's kind of mid as hell. Like at our old office, right? We had a Burger King like right near our station. There was a line forming at the fucking Burger King because there was a new burger that was coming out. And I'm like, what?

Will Japanese people just like line up for anything that's new? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember seeing like several lines outside of McDonald's as well. Several times. - I would line up for McDonald's. - I was gonna say, I really liked Japanese McDonald's. - Japanese McDonald's is good. - Japanese McDonald's is good, but it's not something I'd be like, boys, I gotta drop everything. - If I'm like eight beers in, I'm lining up for McDonald's. - There are very few things I would like line up for because I don't know, like maybe it's like when I've been getting older, but if I'm hungry, I,

I just want food like now. - Yeah, I don't like lining up either. - Yeah, I don't like lining up. - It's like, have you seen those TikToks? Whatever they're like, this is the best onigiri place in Japan. And it's like a two hour line for a fucking onigiri. - But that's what I'm saying. - What is an onigiri? - It's just a rice bowl. - Rice bowl. - People will line up two hours just to get a fucking rice bowl. - Yeah, like recently there's been this boom in Japan of like,

onigiri-specific places. And they're supposedly, it's like, oh, it's a different type of rice bowl. We specialize in rice bowls. I'm like, how much can you change a rice bowl? It's full cap. There's no way it's good. But that's the thing. I feel Japan has this common idea where it's like, they see a line or they see a crowd and the first instinct is,

"Oh, I should probably join in on it because it's probably something that A, I don't want to miss out on or B, is something really good." Because it's like, it must be good if there's a line in front of it. But then there's this kind of self-fulfilling prophecy of like, well, even the people are just lining up because the line is there. Like they're not actually thinking about, well, is it actually good? Or is the product even worth lining up for? And I feel each year on is a big,

because each run and a lot of these like big chains do this thing where they just like make the outside look flashy as fuck. To be like, hey, we have great ramen, just, you know, blasting it out into the stratosphere. And the Japanese people look at it and be like,

that looks kind of sick. Start lining up and then the line forms. I think one of the things that Ichiran has done, if you, I mean, you can Google pictures of it. You know, ramen places are traditionally very like dingy. Yeah. Kind of like, they're old, they're musky. Yeah. It's due to smell of smoke. You know, it's not like the, you know, when you walk in and you look white as fuck, it's just like, they're like, they all just like,

- Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. - There's a few things that Ichiran does well, especially if you're a tourist, which is why I think it's so popular. It's one, like you can, it's so easy to order. There's no kind of like barrier to be like, oh, I'm going to this- - But that's also like made for Japanese people. They don't want to talk. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. - Well, most ramen places, they just have, you know, a little vending machine where you get tickets and then you just give it to the dude.

- But even like trying to, I guess trying to figure out the tick machine is kind of like daunting if you've never been to Japan before or you don't know how it works. - The one, I feel the one thing that Ichiran did really, really well was that like they're the one of the best when it comes to like customizing. - Yeah. - Your ramen. - I always wanna add like 10 more cloves of garlic and Ichiran you can just add a fuck ton

- Yeah, yeah. Like they give you that option. So that's like the big selling point of ramen. But I'm like, just because the options for customizability is there, doesn't mean it's good. - I love it. I think it tastes fucking bomb. - Yeah, I tried to hit it like at least once a week when I was in Japan. - I'm not saying, I'm not saying dude, I remember like I would finish a stream, 'cause 24 hours as well, at least one mine was 24 hours. I don't know if yours are. But it was like hit like a four or five hour stream. It was like, and it was winter too when I was there,

early in the year. Yeah, I mean in winters. Oh, hundred percent. I was like just just bang like a five hour stream

it's 2:00 AM, I'm going out to Itch. And I get my bike, bike down to Itch. And I think it was in a bit of a interesting place 'cause there's a lot of guys in suits. - Oh, it's in Shinjuku, right? - No, Osaka. - Oh, Osaka. - But it was like, I should probably not be here. I don't know. It was a bit sassy. 'Cause it was in this district where I think also like the strip clubs were as well. And it was like just a lot of guys in suits.

like on the, what are they? They were like in on the corner of the intersection. - They're like the touts. They're like, they'll try and get you into places. - Yeah, but it was just weird. - Also, I think I know the area you're talking about and I guarantee the majority of those dudes in suits were probably Yakuza members. - Hey, there we go. And I'm just walking through white guy on a bike 2:00 AM going to get some Ichiran. Yeah, I was thinking maybe it might be something going on here, but like, you know, I just,

- But God damn, I want those 10 extra clovers. I want that extra garlic. - Go straight to each run, get a great bowl, go home, bike home. - Okay, granted, I'm not saying each run is bad.

- It's not bad, but it's five out of 10. It's the most meat ramen you can have. - My equivalent of, I guess, going to Japan and going to like Ichiran for me would be like going to America and going to McDonald's. You know, it's kind of like you go to a country where there's so much great choice of fucking burgers and fast food and you choose McDonald's. - So in Japan, this is kind of anomaly where like,

reviews of places are pretty consistently around the same score, but for ramen, they're always lower, like consistently. A four-star ramen place is quite uncommon on Google Maps, but they'll always be four-star like other restaurants. And so-

And I realized I'm like, yeah, because a lot of ramen places in Japan just fucking suck. Like sometimes they'll give you the chashu, the pork. And it's just the worst piece of meat I've ever had in my life. It's gross. It's fatty. It doesn't taste of anything. And I'm like, dude, Ichiran never fucks this up.

- Yeah, because they've been around for so long that they've like able to engineer it perfectly. - This is how chains come around. - Ramen shops in Japan are like some of the fastest moving. - Some of them are good. - I like the fatty chashu though. - I like the ones where they're like really fatty. - Some of them, man, I don't know what they've done to that pork. It's like they abused it before they killed it. - Ramen shops in general in Japan are like the most competitive scene.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Like a ramen shop could be there and then like a month later it'd be gone. - Well, it's 'cause the margins are so low. Like you're selling a bowl of ramen for like, you know, you can't sell a bowl of ramen for more than 1200, 1300, 1300 yen. - Yeah. - 'Cause no one does that. So that doesn't give you a lot of time to make money. - All right, important question though. What's the best konbini? What is your convenience store of choice?

- Okay, I started with 7-Eleven, but I think I got converted to Lawson's- - Yes, okay, okay. - I feel like all the normies, they start 7-Eleven and it's like, okay, yeah, the fried chicken's good. And I was right next to the 7-Eleven as well. Like I had walk out my door,

two minute walk, 7-Eleven. - Yeah. - So like I definitely still go there for like the easy ones, but if I could make it to Lawson's, it was an extra like five minute walk. - I always walk the extra distance or drive the extra mile for the Lawson's 'cause it's just so much better. - Yeah. - The coffee's decent, the food they have. - The sandwiches as well.

hot bento things with the katsu things. They're so good. They don't mess. Lawson's really up the game. And they're snacks. They're like own brand snacks. - Yeah, they're so much better. - They're so good. - Lawson branded stuff. - They're so good. - It's really good. - The thing I noticed is that 7-Eleven has like one or two like good food pieces, I think. And just that's it. And everything else is just overshadowed. - Family Mart is sadness.

All my homies hate Family Mart. - And they're everywhere in Tokyo. - Only the real ones. - They run Tokyo as well. - I think I ever went to a Family Mart. Just in my area, there was none. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know, it's so weird. It pains me whenever someone goes to Japan and they were like, "I got some Family Mart chicken and I fucking loved it." - Family Mart chicken's dog shit, dude. - Oh no, it's dog shit.

I'm calling you out, Chris. - No, Chris just converted to Lawson's. - Has he? Okay, okay. That's how you know. - He only took him 10 years. - He was telling me that apparently like 10 years ago, like Lawson's just wasn't that good and it was pretty bad. And then they had like a massive revamp like five, six years ago. - Yeah, right. - Kind of just like, we're redoing everything.

Yo, season two Lawson. Yeah. Fucking slap. They just like, they just like up the game. And then like now, like they collaborate with like Muji, which is a Japanese kind of like kind of Ikea, but more minimalist. Yeah. They just have all of like their really nice stuff in their stores. Like it's really nice. Like Lawson's great. Muji food also slap.

- Yeah, everything they have there is so good. - Yeah. - Yeah. What else did you enjoy about Japan when you were living there? - Oh, geez. I mean, we did a stint in Kyoto for like a couple of weeks. Well, actually not a week, but that was like beautiful.

- Was there a lot of tourists back when you were living there? - I did not see many in Osaka. I did not see many at all. - Oh wow. - I went the other week and it was so goddamn- - Well, I've heard now like post COVID all of Japan is just like, it's fucked, I'm crazy right now. Which makes sense, like couldn't go for so long. And everybody I felt like had this kind of like, I wanna travel and I think Japan is it for everyone. Myself included. - What was your biggest culture shock when you got there?

Like what was the one thing where you're like, whoa, Japan is epic. - That's a good question. - It was the vending machines. - Honestly, it was just how good the trains were. - Oh my God. - Our public transport is dog shit. - Oh my God, yeah. - Yeah. - Holy shit. - Nah, like they so efficient. - Yeah. - And I think I remember once I was in there in the morning, like 6:00 AM and it was like everybody going to work

and it was like a stampede of like workers. It was actually like dystopian. It was like in unison, they were walking almost like an army, like just into these train stations. Like that was crazy. 'Cause that was my first kind of experience with trains and then like figuring out how it works. And once you work it out, you're like, wow, this is so efficient and so great. - You're like color go here. - Yeah, literally. - This color, yeah. It makes sense.

I'm curious 'cause you mentioned that your trip got cut short and obviously you were only there for two and a half months, but you must've moved there maybe when COVID murmurs were kind of already beginning. - Yeah. - So what was that kind of like that two months of like monitoring here? - You probably lived there the same time that we moved there actually. - Yeah, that's fine. - We moved there like three months before COVID hit. - Actually, no, we moved in October.

and then COVID lockdown officially kind of started late April. - Yeah, it was like March, April-ish. - I think I left February, late February. - Oh, shit. - Okay. - So it must've been roughly the same time. - Yeah, roughly the same time. - 'Cause I traveled to America in February of COVID

And that was when they started asking, like, it wasn't everywhere yet. There was a few cases dotted around, but they were like, "Oh, have you been to China in the past 14 days?" - Yeah. - You're like, "No, no, why?" And they'd be like, "No reason." - No reason. Yeah, no, like I was definitely like every day, like I think everybody was, right? Like, especially like being in Asia when it originated in China, it was like, kind of like, you know, my family were like,

- People didn't know anything. - Yeah, we didn't know all the dark. - And you've seen all these articles and it's like, what I know to believe this guy, that guy's account on a sheet somewhere going up every day. Like what's the count today? Yeah, I don't know. I was just kind of like, I felt like I could have got stuck there forever. And maybe like, I mean, for you guys, it sounded like it was all right. - If you'd have stayed, you probably would have been stuck there

- Yeah, 100%. Yeah, a full year. And I didn't know if I was keen to do that. 'Cause I liked where I lived, but I lost all the luxuries. - Oh, different. Yeah, no, 'cause it was winter and I was in this, I'm not kidding, concrete castle. So it was cold as shit. - Did you have AC or heating? - It had heating, but then you get super dry. So I tried not to use it and I tried to have all these, I'd use it in combination with an air or,

- Humidifier? - Yeah, humidifier. - I thought humidifiers were stupid until I moved to Japan. - Yeah, same, never had one before. Yeah, yeah, seriously. But yeah, like I missed my space 'cause yeah, you don't get a lot of space. - You don't get the space in Japan. - And I was pretty central to Osaka as well. So like I was really not getting a lot of space. But yeah, I was just like, "Oh, I don't know if I could do this." - Right, right. - Eight, 10 months plus like,

I wasn't trying to be in a pandemic in a country where I don't speak the language. Yeah, that makes sense. How did you find the nightlife there? Because Osaka has a pretty...

- Good nightlife scene. - Yeah, no, we went out pretty like, not too often, but like we definitely had like good connections. So like where my girlfriend was working at the time, she had like connections with some of the nightclubs running there. And so we'd go out and I actually became really good friends with one of the promoters at a couple of clubs. - Oh wow. - Show us all these different clubs and no, it was a good time. It was a really good time. I'm gonna hit them up when I go back for sure. - Oh yeah. - Yeah, no.

Yeah. Shout out my boy, Mike. Um, but yeah, no, I don't know. Do you, what did you guys like experience going out? Like I know I've heard a couple of bits of you talking about like getting rejected at certain places and stuff. Some places don't want you. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing like insane. Uh,

I mean, we normally just go to bars. We're not big into clubs. - Initially when we moved there, we tried to go to like the local Izakayas and stuff like that. And then eventually we were just like, I think I just like bars now. - Yeah, I'm definitely in that bar scene now. - If I have to shout to talk to you- - It's not fun for anyone. - I don't know. - Yeah, no. - It just like every time I have to shout out Samima Sen, like I feel like as a Brit, part of my lifespan just like,

'Cause I know I have to do it, but I haven't gotten used to it yet. - Yeah. - So did you get to try a lot of like new Japanese foods like that? - Okay, so there's like normal, like mainstream kind of like ramen, sushi. Did you manage to try like any other like cuisines that aren't as like popular? - So I tried one of those like expensive Kobe beef experiences. - Oh yeah, of course.

- All right, now where are they? So they overrated, underrated, where are we doing? - Okay, is Kobe beef overrated? - Yes, 100%. - Okay. - I can tell you that. I think it is. - I think it is. - It's great, but it's like, it's kind of a one-off thing. It's super fatty. - Yeah, yeah. - It's really rich and really heavy. - It's like a once or twice a year thing. - Yeah, I still prefer a normal steak. Like a great normal steak for me is still better than great Wagyu beef. 'Cause like Wagyu beef is, I mean, it doesn't even taste the same as steak. - No, it doesn't. - Yeah, nah. - It's fat.

- Yeah. - It's fat with a bit of meat in it. - But like I had one of those ones where it's like you sit down and they've got the plate. - Oh, teppanyaki? - Yeah, yeah. And they do that with the Kobe and it was like, okay, this is kind of a vibe. - Yeah, I did that in Kobe recently and it was, I mean, it was pretty fucking good. - Yeah, you guys would have done a few, like surely, 'cause you guys do like the Japanese travel video, like type of thing. Like surely you've done a few stints of like Kobe. - Yeah, I mean, not even just,

filming it, just trying out the experience. 'Cause of course you have to, you know? And I remember when I did it, they had like the option of just like, you know, the amount of beef that, but you could order an extra large portion as well. And I'm like,

I'm getting like the top tier beef, man. I gotta get the extra large portion. And I remember having like half of it and that half was like the perfect amount. That was like, every bite was like godly. You see the fat. And then we got to the extra portion and it just, it was just too much, man.

- Yeah. - Like it started going from tasting like godly to like, this is, I actually feel sick now. - Yeah, I had, I made that mistake when the first time I had the olive Wagyu. - Oh. - That's crazy. It's more white than pink. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I've seen that. - And it's like the first like two or three bites, it was just like, oh my God, I'm about to nut. And then, and then the second half, I'm just like, I'm just like drinking olive Wagyu.

I could feel my like pores just clogging up. - This is why like teppanyaki, like a traditional teppanyaki is the best way to do it. 'Cause you'll have like a full course meal of like,

other stuff like veg, fish, all done on this thing. And then you'll have one course of like, all right, we'll give you a little bit of like maybe fatty beef or whatever. - Like I understand why the portions are so small now. That is the optimal amount. - The only problem is that it's like fucking two to $300. - Also, yeah. - It's so expensive. But if you have a little bit of money, definitely recommend doing it. - Yeah. - It's definitely worth. - What did you think of it? - No, it was awesome. But my question to you guys, have you guys done the,

the puffer fish, what's it called? - Fugu. - Fugu, that's it. - Oh, that's it. - Yeah, that's overrated. - Okay, no, but like, what's about, I've heard that you like a little sensation in your mouth, like, obviously you can die, right? - This is pretty fucking bland when I had it. - Yeah. - I felt like it tasted like nothing. - The problem is, is that like, because one, there's no flavor and two, like, unlike a lot of other sushi where, you know, it's, you can like chew it through it and it's fine. For some reason, puffer fish is like, it's really incredibly chewy, so they have to cut

this thing like paper thin. - Yeah, right. - Because any thicker and you'll just be, it's like chewing gum. - Yeah. - Wow, that's not what you want. - And it's like prohibitively expensive. There's like a one in like 10,000 chance you can die from eating it as well. And I'm just like, is it worth it? - That just sounds awful. - It's all just for the prestige. - You've given my humans for just hearing it's poisonous and just being like, we can fight away.

- Why did we even get here? - Like surely people had to die multiple times before they were like, come on. - There must be something in here. - It's like, we could just stick to, no, we're doing this. We've decided. - If I had to pick the most overrated Japanese food, it would actually be puffer fish because it tastes like shit.

The only taste you get is the taste of like the soy sauce. And you basically just eat it for the danger. - Maybe a controversial opinion here. I think ramen in Japan is,

it's good, but I also think it's pretty good outside of Japan now. Like, I don't think it's necessarily much better in Japan compared to like some nice places. - You getting some good ramen in Wales? - Not Wales. - Yeah, what was that? - Not Wales. - I think if you pay enough money, like the more, like, I guess like not luxury, but like expensive ramen places outside of Japan, I think have gotten to the point where it's pretty difficult to differentiate between like

one made in Japan, one made outside of Japan. But the advantage that Japanese ramen has is that is the price factor. Because it's like, if you buy like a $10 ramen in Japan, nine times out of 10, it's pretty fucking good. But if you buy a $10 ramen outside of Japan, one time out of 10, it's good. - It was like a bunch, like when I was in Vancouver, they have so many actual just Japanese like,

sorry, like a Japanese, like a Vancouver counterpart to a Japanese restaurant that exists. - Yeah, yeah. - So I had like Hokkaido ramen in Vancouver that tasted just like it would in Japan. - Well, I think it definitely helps as well that like Vancouver has such a high Asian population. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I think that's less to do with Japan and more to do with just Vancouver being like having an amazing food culture. - Yeah, yeah. - I think that,

- The point I was trying to get at is that like, I don't think if you're coming to Japan, you only got like a week. I don't think you need to get ramen. I think there's a lot of other stuff that you just cannot get outside of Japan. Like Unagi, I've never seen outside of Japan. - What's Unagi? - It's eel. - Oh yeah, I had it. - It's like smoked and then grilled and then coated with this really nice like sauce. - Yeah. - Kind of like barbecue kind of sauce.

I had it and I was freaking out. I was like, fuck man, I don't wanna eat eel. - No, it's so good. - It was better than I thought it would be. Yeah, I feel outside of Japan, eel just has this like weird thing. I'm not fucking eating an eel. - Dead set though, that's it. - I would not eat. I think Japan eats like half of the world's eels or something crazy. I might've been, I made that the fuck up.

- I'd say it's definitely the highest. - It's like an insane amount that Japan eats like a good chunk of the world's percentage of eels. It's like almost impressive. - It's because it's the only country that actually managed to make it good. - And they're 100% of the food. - The British tried it and we were just like, let's just put in fucking jelly in it. - Jelly eels. - That's so disgusting. - I still wanna try that. - Oh no, no you don't. - I just wanna see how bad it is. - Here comes the fucking pie.

- They just put your pie on the side. Like it can't be good if it comes with a pie on the side. - If I had to say one Japanese food that I think you shouldn't need to try if you come to Japan, Japanese curry. - Oh yeah, I've had so many outside of Japan. - Yeah, I think Japanese curry tastes like the same everywhere. - I think so. - It's pretty easy to replicate. - Yeah, yeah, it is. Like it's one that is of like, it's a nice comfort food. There is a place,

there's a place where I'm like, fuck yes, give me some Japanese curry. But holy shit, if I, I've said some outrageous things about things tasting the same over my years in Trash Taste, but I do genuinely think that Japanese curry does taste the same no matter where you are in the world. - Yeah, 'cause it's so easy, right? Like it's the simplest one to make. Like it's like just, you know, just straight up just the most standardized

that you can get out of all the different types of curry. And it's like- You can buy those home blocks where you just snap a block. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, you know, Coco Ichi as well, especially is like almost everywhere now at this point. And it really does just like taste the same everywhere. Yeah. Their cauliflower rice is pretty good.

- Cauliflower rice is dope. - They do like, if you don't want the carbs, you can just get shredded cauliflower as rice. It's pretty good. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Don't feel as guilty. - Yeah. - I was gonna say, have you guys seen the, I saw it on TikTok the other week. It was like these frozen ramen packs you can get. And apparently it's meant to be like restaurant quality. And I'm like, that's what I'm saying. I'm saying. - If you go to Lawson's or anything and you have ramen, it's frozen.

Yeah. And so that when you put it in the microwave for like five minutes, when you're heating up the oil again, it like dissolves and then boils again. Yeah, yeah. And it is decent. It's fine. It's better than cup ramen, but it's nowhere near. I honestly kind of prefer cup ramens.

to those ramen. - Yeah, really? I've never tried them. I was wondering if you guys have, but yeah, you have. - I used to live off them for like two weeks when I moved to Japan. - Yeah, I kind of like- - That's a weeb diet, right? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's funny 'cause I kind of like got off ramen after I moved to Japan. - It was super bad for you. - Yeah. - It's horrible for you. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - It's so much- - 'Cause I'd realized after every time I'd have like a big ramen, it would just like kind of like knock me out for a few hours. 'Cause it's not one of those meals where you can just have a nice ramen and just like move on. It's just like,

After you have a ramen, you need to sit down for a second. - You feel bloated. - And just digest. So I actually like have not had much ramen since I've moved to Japan. I've actually like sushi. I have sushi quite a lot though. Sushi has not gone down. - Oh yeah, of course. - What would you guys think is like traditional for like Australian? Like what's the Australian cuisine soul food kind of here?

- Chicken palm maybe? - Yeah, chicken palmy. - I was gonna ask, how the hell did chicken palmy become a staple of Australian cuisine? - I think it's just, it's really hard to hate chicken, cheese and marinara. It's just like that classic pub feed and that's, yeah, culture. - I like how you laugh at beans and toast about us and you have just fucking chicken with cheese and marinara.

- Well, I mean, you know, there's a lot of Aussies who eat, you know, like beans and toast. - Do you? - Yeah, I used to have that for breakfast all the time. - Yeah, it's a staple like breakfast food here as well. - Yeah, beans on toast goes hard as fuck. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Absolutely. - Do you like egg or cheese on it too? - Egg and fancy. That's way too fancy. The thing with Australian cuisine is that it's like,

three ingredients max. - Yeah. - You know, it's like, oh, we could have, you know, like we could get really fancy with avo on toast, but why not just have avo and toast and that's it. - Maybe a little cracked salt and pepper, maybe. - Yeah, maybe if you're feeling fancy, you know. - Yeah, you're getting crazy and that's getting crazy. - This sounds like British cooking. You're like, what the fuck? - I guess like, like,

What's the fish that we have here? That barramundi. - Yeah, barramundi. - Yeah, that's like a pretty staple pub feed here. - Oh, shit. - Yeah, it's pretty good. - I've not tried that. - Yeah, barramundi, like a barramundi burger or even just like, you can get all sorts of barramundi in pubs and stuff like that. It's pretty fucking good. - Coffee culture here is my favorite.

- Yeah, no coffee banks here. We make coffee coffee. - Coffee's so- - Especially here in Melbourne. - Especially in Melbourne. - It goes so hard. It goes so hard here. - I remember the first time going to America getting coffee and being like, "What the fuck is this?" I met like Starbucks is this massive conglomerate company. I'm just like, they're just serving the worst coffee ever. - Oh, you don't wanna have coffee in Japan

- I actually, wait, I thought it was right. I think Starbucks in Japan was actually all right. - Yeah, Starbucks is the only one. - Only Starbucks. - Which is like, yeah. - Anywhere outside of Starbucks is shit. - Well, no, there's some like, 'cause what is it? Coffee's on the waves, right? So coffee's on wave, like the wave three, which is like the- - Season three.

- Well, it's like the minimalist coffee, right? You go in, it's all concrete, wood, and then those kinds of places are normally pretty decent 'cause they're all espresso based. - I feel it's a gamble though. 'Cause like I've been to some like really fancy looking coffee shops in Tokyo where it's like the outside looks pristine. Like you'd think it's been there for like hundreds of years and it's just like the guy's just like professional about it all. And then you pay fucking, you know, 15 bucks for a cup of coffee. And I'm like, this is just dirt water.

I got really annoyed one time because I went to one that was kind of like similar. And it was like, again, it was all minimalist concrete. And he had an espresso machine there. And I was like, okay, let's go. And so I asked for a coffee and I'm like, can I have a coffee? And so he just whips out like a pour over kit and starts pouring over. And I'm like,

- Dude, right behind me, right behind me. That machine- - That's a full looks. - Yeah, I'm like, dude, I thought it was gonna be espresso. I wanted espresso. Such a first world problem. Such a first world problem, but I was just like so sad. I was like, no. - Did you ever, one like very common thing with anyone who like goes to Japan for the first time and lives there for a period is the vending machine coffees. Were you ever on that or?

- We dabbled in the boss a little bit. - Boss knows. - Boss man knows, man. - The boss don't miss. - I mean, what was the one I really liked? The one that had like the milk in it. - Rainbow one? - Oh, that one was good too. But it was like a creamy caramelly color on the outside. - It's crazy how many variations there are of canned coffee. And a lot of them are very, very sweet.

- But like, again, I was in the winter as well and it was like hot. - Oh, the hot one. - Oh yeah. - They're coming out hot, so it's like, hit Diffy. - I do like the stabbing ones from the conbini, you know, the cartons. - Yeah. - Oh yeah. - The non-sweetened ones. Or they just call it espresso, even though it has milk. - Yeah, right. - Yeah, those are good. - Sometimes in the winter, I would not even like,

I would just go to a vending machine and just buy the whole coffee and just use it as a hand warmer. - Yeah. - I remember when we went camping once, we went camping like near Mount Fuji. It was fucking freezing. - It was in January.

and we didn't have any hand warmers. So what I did is just, I went to the vending machine, fucking brought like six coffees and just like dipped my coat in like all like, put all the coffees like in my coat and just slept with like a blanket of like boss coffee. - Shout out to boss man. - Yo, made sure I didn't freeze at night yo.

- You got it all man, you got it all. So what do you think is the future? Like the next two, three years for yourself? - That was crazy, that was a good transition. I went from like, what's your coffee to what are you doing? - What are we doing? - What's the five year plan? - So I reckon here's the plan, right? Okay, I got like the next six months, that's best I give you. 'Cause yeah, I never was thinking six months ahead of time. Six months, so next couple months, do some traveling, enjoy life.

- Vacation a little bit? - Coming to Japan? - Coming to Japan as well. - Hell yeah, man. - Late July, August. So this is a little after that, but yeah, we'll keep it going. Yeah, just gonna see a lot of my friends overseas. They got a couple of bucks stags and weddings going on. So just gonna enjoy that. Come back, studio's ready, grind. Like I'm gonna hit, so I've hit like a couple hard grinds in my career. So like starting off in Minecraft,

- Like grind. - Grind. - Grind. - Biggest grind going. You know how they have that thing where it's like, you know, you can pick work, friends and then like family or something. And it's like pick two, I think. - Isn't it rest? It's like work, family and rest. - I think that one's the one too. - Is it that one? Fuck, I don't know. - Anyway, well, the thing was I picked work and then I picked work again. So it doesn't matter. - That's just YouTubers. - Yeah, that's it, right? But that was like, yeah, first four years was biggest grind ever. Took a little bit of break.

Pokemon Go came out, big grind. Fortnite came out, massive like four year long grind. I've tapered off last year. And I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna hit one last grind.

- The last grind. - The last grind, season four finale. - Season four grind. - What does Attack on Titan do? Like the part two of the season four ending, like, I don't know how they're streaming that. - The grind, the final grind. - It's like the last grind that lasts like 10 years or something, you know? It's like, okay, this is the last grind, season six. - The final grind part one. - Tune in, tune in, all right? This is the final boss.

- In your career, have you had a point where you're like, this is the last year, this is the last grind and I'm gonna chill and take it easy? - Well, I think even this is like kind of very bold as fuck to say this is the last grind at the age of 28. - You're gonna grind again. - Yeah, I might grind again. - We might. - Hey, what are they doing like recent? - But it sounds cool to say the last grind. - Yeah, it does sound cooler. But I think that's like the last grind before like you start looking at like the more serious type of- - What's the next 10 years looking like?

- Well, you know, you gotta have like, oh, I don't know, you don't have to, right? But like in my head, I would like to, you know, one day have a, you know, a wife and kids. You know, I don't think you can do that with that level of grind. So I think this is the season finale of grind before the serious era. You know what I mean? So yeah.

- But I feel like there's a fat, as a married man here guys, I guess, I guess. - It's been zero days. - You're married? - Yeah, yeah, I'm married. - Do you have kids though? - No, I don't. - Yes, I feel like that's the big thing. - Okay, that is the big thing. - Yeah, I feel like that's the big one. - 'Cause right now, I guess both me and my wife are grinding. - Yeah, love that. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I feel like the big turning point is when kids come. But like, I feel,

even though you have kids, even though you get married or something, I feel like there's a fallacy to be like, I have to give up this part of my life. 'Cause I feel like there is, there's been YouTubers who have had kids and built families and not made content around it.

a toxic kind of way, you know? So I feel like there is a way to adjust your lifestyle to, I guess, grow up a bit. - No, definitely. - Yeah. - Definitely. But like this level of grind doesn't- - Oh no, like the daily uploads, the fucking working every day, 16 hours, that's gonna stop.

- Yeah, yeah, no, 100%. So yeah, definitely looking to not do that again. And even then, like with this one I'm coming back on, it's like, I'm definitely looking to outsource a lot more of team and like trying to build, spending these two months to build that team. - Yeah, how many people are you working with right now? How big is your team? - Between myself and power and contractors, including like players, I'd say, I think we're at like 30.

- 30 and a half, 35. - Gotta make some Fortnite videos. - But this is the thing with the orgs, right? Like there's just so many people that's where it comes out at. And I'm like, I think we're doing well. Like outside of myself, we're not profitable yet, but we're like very close. - That's great. - When do you think you'll be profitable? - Probably not bleeding money is. - Yeah, no, I hate losing money. - Me too, me too. - How long do you think you'll need before you get profitable? - I reckon if I'm not profitable next year,

that would be amazing. Like we're close. Like I think like our investment in this studio office is the, I think if we didn't do that, I think we actually would be profitable. - Okay. - So it's like a reinvestment. - Okay. - So we were like, we're close. - Okay, all right. - Awesome. Well dude, thank you so much for coming on the show and telling us all about it and educating us a bit on the Fortnite and- - It's not that overrated.

- It's a little bit, it's not. - No, it's not. - But yeah, if you'd like to check out Lachlan's stuff, then obviously I left it in the description below. So make sure to check it out. Hey, look at all these patrons though. - Look at them all. - Yeah, look at them all. - You see all these patrons on screen right now? There's so many. - These guys are epic. - Yeah. - Who do you think is a Fortnite player out of these guys? - This guy.

He's like, fuck, how do you know? I was like, fuck, where are they? Is there anything you want to shout out yourself? No, but I mean, hey, if you guys could get behind power whenever you see us playing any games, we very much appreciate it. We are the underdogs. Three new fans. Appreciate it, boys. Get a bit of Aussie pride in

- That's it, that's it. And even if you're not Aussie and you just wanna support the Aussie boys, get behind us on the next land and yeah, make sure to stay tuned for the final season. - The final grind. - The final grind. - Thank you so much for coming on. - Hey, if you'd like to support the show, then go to our Patreon, patreon.com/trashtaste. Also follow us on Twitter, send us some memes on the subreddit. And if you hate our face, listen to us on Spotify. And yeah, thanks so much. - Thank you very much, man. - See you guys next week. - Cheers. - Bye.

Buenos dias world from the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. I'm Marco Wendt. And I'm Rick Schwartz.

And we're your hosts for season three of Amazing Wildlife, a show from iHeartRadio Ruby Studio and the global conservation organization behind the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. Listen as we dive into the efforts here in San Diego and spotlight the heroes working worldwide to care for the species you know and love. Listen to Amazing Wildlife on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.