Blue light is part of the detectable spectrum of light that the human eye can see. It is part of the light spectrum produced by the sun, as well as artificial sources like screens, light bulbs, etc. But what does it mean for us as humans who’ve been plugged into screens and devices now more than ever before?

Bryan Reedy reasons that too much blue light after the sun sets could be inhibiting your sleep–especially for gamers who tend to be more on the nocturnal side of the sleep schedule. In order to learn about blue light and to understand Reedy’s point of view on the subject, we used the Leaguefeed.net podcast as a platform to educate readers about his unique perspective. Listen and watch the podcast video on Youtube, Spotify, or Apple. Or readers can dissect the Q&A interview below!

Leaguefeed Interviews Bryan Reedy

Ryan Gallagher:

My name is Ryan Gallagher, and we’re here on the LeagueFeed.net podcast. Today with us is Bryan Reedy of Gamer Advantage. And, thanks so much for coming Brian. I guess just to start off, tell me a little bit about, you know, your personal and professional background and kind of how you got to where you are today with Gamer Advantage.

Bryan Reedy:

Well, thanks for having me, Ryan, I appreciate it. Wow. There’s so many, so many different ways to talk about it. I mean, it all really starts as being a gamer since I was, like, three years old. You know, I got my first Nintendo when I was three. I’m 37 now. So to put it in perspective, you know, I’ve lived through all the generations or most generations of consoles and the beginning of PC gaming and just forever a gamer. I was diagnosed as a type one diabetic when I was ten. I was in the ICU and they wheeled in, uh, Mario Kart. Like a CRT TV. I think that’s when gaming became kind of special. So I always stayed a little closer to it than like the average person my age, because it was still like it was really getting big when we were in high school and college.

I actually had the opportunity to be a co-host on one of the first ever FM video game radio shows in Detroit. This was like 2007 on CBS. It was pretty cool, but it turned to a sports station and they said video games on a sports station doesn’t make any sense, which is funny because if you fast forward to today, it makes perfect sense. Um, so that was like my career in gaming. I went on to pursue a normal like post-grad, post-college, uh, 9 to 5. I ended up at Fifth Third Bank. I worked as a banker, as a branch manager. I worked with the marketing department.

That was fun. Uh, but I didn’t really enjoy working for the man. I was hitting a ceiling a little bit, so I joined a family-owned optical distribution company, and I was in business development there. And one of the things I kept getting asked just inbound inquiries, was to make blue light glasses for other brands like Instagram, pop up shops and stores on Facebook and such… And I did it a couple times. You know, I’m sourcing these $5, $6 frames, selling them for $10, $11. And then they’re selling them for like $40, $50. And I’m like, man, we’re on the wrong side of this equation as a business. But second of all, I really don’t want my career to be making glasses for somebody like, yeah, this will help you sleep and cure migraines. And what I thought was just really a bunch of BS. Like, I didn’t want to be like a snake oil salesman guy.

So, uh, but at the time, I just had my first child with my wife, and, you know, I wasn’t sleeping very well. And, you know, being type one diabetic, I was finding it harder to take care of myself and with this new family and everything. And, uh, so I decided to give it the respect I felt it deserved and started researching blue light lenses. Like how just the whole conversation of light and sleep. And I was going to all the optical shows, so I was able to talk to a tremendous amount of doctors and talk to a few neurologists and opticians, ophthalmologists, that kind of thing. And after trying hundreds of lenses, there was one lens that I liked that physically felt different. And then I had my wife try it and I had my friends try it. It wasn’t until we were wearing it for like 4 or 5 months. I was like, we gotta do something with this. So I was just like, we should make gaming glasses and the guy who makes the lens says, I don’t know what that means, but I like your energy. I’ve been a gamer my whole life, there’s only one other brand out there and yellow lenses, goggle style, like pick you out, just, you know, it aligns with the pizza eating, Mountain Dew-drinking persona of a gamer, where I was more going for the like, sleek and modern more sophisticated gamer, which is what we are today. I feel like there’s a lot of health in gaming now. Whereas back then, it was like the more ridiculous, the more gamer it was. Um, so it just took a different approach to it and started Gamer Advantage five years ago.

Ryan Gallagher:

Very cool. And now where are you? Where are you based out of?

Bryan Reedy:

I was just outside Detroit, Michigan.

RG:

I kind of sensed a little bit of, uh, an accent there.

BR:

I’ve been told I have a strong Michigan accent. I don’t know what that means, but I think I always wanted to have an accent. Yeah

RG:

I don’t know if I have one either, but like I said, I’m based in New Jersey, and grew up outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. But it’s funny that I recognized it because I recently watched, uh, that movie. Have you ever seen that movie Fargo?

BR:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Great movie, great movie. Well, I bet you I could recognize your accent if we got you into an argument with somebody. Yeah, I would know that you’re from Philly.

RG:

Yeah. Start talking about the Eagles and, uh. Yeah.

BR:

Yeah. They’re not playing so hot.

RG:

Uh uh.

BR:

Yeah, I did it on purpose. Yeah. Go blue though [Michigan had just won the College Football Championship].

RG:

Just had this conversation the other night with, uh, a couple of Giants fans. So it didn’t it didn’t go well. But um, other than that, um, going back to the blue light and that was kind of one of the reasons I thought that this interview would be really cool because, number one, you know, I work remotely for a company that’s in Germany. So I’m on my computer all the time. And then obviously I work on game gaming websites. I’m not like a crazy hardcore gamer. I think my experience is more the reason I’m working on what I do. I come from a journalism background, I also have marketing experience. So, that kind of aligns me for, you know, working in media and, um, the project management role that I hold. But I’ve obviously tried to get more into gaming since working with TreasureHunter and working on, uh, sites like LeagueFeed.net. I am playing Nintendo Switch and I mean, the Fortnite thing, I feel like there has been such a resurgence and that’s on Switch. So I started playing Fortnite a lot. Um, and I still play Gamecube and my favorite game of all time is Mario Super Strikers, the soccer game. Me and my friends love to play that, but, uh, yeah, I always wondered about the blue light thing, because from what you said, I’m like, is it BS? Is it a real thing? Tell me a little bit like your definition of what is blue light and how what that means for someone like ourselves who are gamers and also, you know, connected all the time to a screen, uh, working or whatever it may be.

BR:

So I’m not a doctor, but, um, so everything I say is my opinion for the most part. But I have talked to a lot of doctors and I have read a lot of studies, and I have done a lot of interviews, and this is what I’ve gathered and has been true for me personally, and also have the testimonials of thousands of people that that agree is that, well, first of all, we barely had electricity for like 150 years, let alone have any clue what exposing ourselves to all this artificial light all the time does. Like all we need is the sun. That’s all we need. That’s our body’s programmed for the sun. And so we’re supposed to get sun in the morning. And we’re supposed to get sun at night. And we’re supposed to get these certain spectrums of the sun at certain times of day, and that helps regulate all the chemical production in our body with melatonin and the such. And so what I’ve experienced and what we’ve seen is that after the sun sets, there is a certain wavelength in the blue light spectrum that suppresses melatonin intentionally. The sun intentionally suppresses melatonin. But then when the sun sets, you’re supposed to start producing melatonin, which is part of your circadian rhythm. And if you’re exposing yourself to that same wavelength of light in that same color spectrum, then your body is saying, okay, well, wait a second, is the sun set or is it not set now? Is that going to happen immediately? I guess we don’t really know…

What we do know is that over time, though, it definitely is having a big impact on people’s circadian rhythms. We’re not nocturnal, so this idea that we can be awake during the night and asleep during the day and naturally regulate our body’s hormones and chemicals is not that’s that’s a we’re far off from being that type of species you know. So I think that once the sun sets, the more we’re exposing ourselves to this artificial light, the less melatonin we’re producing and the harder it is to fall asleep. So things like digital eye strain, which is like a marketing term, right? There’s a whole list of things you should be doing to be like a healthy adult, right? Like one of the suggestions is drinking half your body weight in ounces and water every day, but do it before 3:00 pm and make sure you add salt and make I mean like, right. So it’s like there’s 10 million things you should do. Sleep is the one constant that there really isn’t much you need other than what your body is already providing you. And if you’re disrupting that, then you’re going to find yourself looking for other solutions to fix it.

So one of the things that was really against or actually learned to become against that had no opinion of it originally was melatonin. And it’s like melatonin is not regulated by the FDA. It’s looked at as a food product. So what it says on the bottle doesn’t necessarily match what’s inside of it. And they have no clue what it means to overdose melatonin over and over and over again. You feel sick the next day if you take too much melatonin. But what does it mean for your body? Melatonin has only been on the shelves for a short period of time. As far as people taking it as a supplement. So I’ve looked at these glasses as the most natural, organic way to diffuse as much of that light that is disrupting my sleep. And the thought process is, is that if I can minimize the amount of that light and that light spectrum, that’s like the sun for as long as possible until I go to bed, that’ll have an easier time falling asleep now when you’re on your device.

And most people like almost 100% of people I’ve talked to agree with. It is like you’re on your device until the last waking second, and it’s like you’re almost falling asleep looking at it. So then you drop it on your face, or you finally shut it off and set it down, but then you don’t fall asleep right away. It’s weird you were falling asleep while you were looking at it, but then you set it down and now you’re not falling asleep anymore. And then it takes all this time to fall asleep. So let’s say you get up for work at seven in the morning, so you game until 11 p.m., then you’re on your phone while you’re brushing your teeth and doing your business or whatever. Then you’re laying in bed, you’re watching TV. Now it’s like midnight. You’re ready to go to bed now. It’s like 12:30, 12:45. You still haven’t fallen asleep yet. Let’s say you fall asleep around 1:00 in the morning. There’s simply not enough time left in your sleep to get optimal sleep.

So yeah, the more melatonin you can produce, the better chances you have at high deep sleep time duration. You want to spend as much time in REM sleep basically as you possibly can, and where people are spending a lot of their time when they’re sleeping just this much. It’s in that light sleep and they’re not really reaching REM sleep. And then we’re seeing things like anxiety and ADHD and things come into the conversation like, okay, is this person having an actual issue? Or are they just not sleeping? Because sleep has been the number one medicine since the beginning of time, yet we’re like, forget sleep, but oh my God, I’m having all these problems. Type two diabetes, heart disease, overweight, all that. So like, you work out, you look like you’re a guy who exercises, right? Well, if you don’t reach deep sleep and REM sleep, your body doesn’t synthesize protein the same way. So if you work out exercise and take all this protein and sleep like crap, like you’re really not doing the full circle of what your body’s supposed to do for that type of, you know, activity and, and to reap the benefits of that activity.

So I’ve always taken the position that I don’t ever want to give up gaming. I’m 37. I have tons of friends who the second they got married, the second they had kids, the second they got their real job, whatever it was like gaming was the first thing to go because in their mind, it’s like, this thing is bad for me. I’m just not going to do it. Whether you’re like you on your computer all day for work or whether you’re like a professional gamer who’s gaming the whole time, at the end of the day, better sleep is going to mean better performance whether it’s in your job or it’s in the game. And this is the easiest, most cost effective, most affordable way to possibly sleep better versus buying a new mattress or some supplementing melatonin.

RG:

No, I mean everything you just said makes so much sense for sure. I mean, the gamer lifestyle is almost nocturnal. It’s like any gamer that’s going to listen to this is going to be like, oh no, like how could this be true? I think the thing that made me, I guess, interested in this is because, you know, of general health, interest, listening to other podcasts about different ways to keep yourself healthy. I mean, for myself it’s now winter time and I’m still grappling with trying to get enough sunlight, trying to get outside enough because obviously on the East Coast and I’m sure for you too, like, it’s really like a crazy change going from October and then November hits, you know, that the daylight savings time. And it’s a really quick switch. It feels like going from spending hours outside because even after work, you’d have til sometimes 9 p.m. in the summer to go outside and enjoy the sun. And now a lot of times you have that time to get sun during the morning or midday and then, you know, you gotta make up work at some point. So if I go out and, you know, try to get in the sun in the morning, then I find myself working later into the night. So I always personally wondered, what could be a solution? I never really wanted to take melatonin either, because I’m not the type of person that wants to take something just to take something. I want to know that, number one, it works. And number two, I’m not going to have an adverse effect. Whereas if I take melatonin every night, will that, um, stifle me creating it naturally?

BR:

You know, I don’t know. And again, neither of us are doctors or claim to be, uh, for anyone that’s going to watch this interview. But it really is, to me, super interesting to try to understand and see what we can do. Because, like you said, we only are coming into such a problem like this in the last, however, 20 years… People working, you know, or behind the screen for 4 or 5, or 6 plus hours a day. Yeah. It really hasn’t happened before. And, you know, computers started out with green and black screens and yeah, it is very new. I just listened to a podcast the other day with the associate, uh, professor for the Sleep Institute at Stanford, and he said they don’t have the data to say what it’s going to mean, long term to take that much melatonin. Like they just don’t have it yet. Same thing with McDonald’s. Nobody thought eating fast food was going to be bad for you. Like it took people eating fast food for 50 years before they were finally like, uh, you can’t do that. Everything seems to be reactive. Usually we’ll wait for there to be a problem.

You know, sleep it’s kind of like a silent killer. It’s kind of like smoking. It’s really hard to convince somebody to quit smoking. But once they have lung cancer, like, they quit immediately, somehow they have the willpower to do it. Uh, sleep is similar. But if you got really sick and a doctor came to you and said, like, listen, if you don’t start sleeping better, you’re going to die. You would take it more seriously. And people have been told that by their doctor. And it does get that serious in some cases. So I think when you’re talking about going outside and getting sun, you’re already 100 steps ahead of the average person in our community. I think it’s like really some of that basic stuff that you got to do and you have to pay attention to. I was just listening to a sleep psychologist actually talk about how you shouldn’t put so much pressure on yourself where you’re, like, disappointed that you don’t achieve these things specifically with better sleep. Like you’re so, you know, you wake up in the morning and you look at your eye where the van. Okay, similar to the aura ring, right? You wake up and you’re disappointed. You start the day disappointed in yourself that you didn’t get a good enough recovery score. And then you end the day and you’re disappointed in yourself that you didn’t have enough strain or whatever. That’s not really the right way to go about it. I think what’s important is to actually give credit to the things that make a difference. You know? So one thing that’s huge for me, especially being diabetic, but it’s big for my wife too, is not eating three hours before I go to bed. Like that has absolutely changed the way I sleep again, consuming half my body weight in ounces of water and really trying to do it before 3:00. I don’t do that one as much as I like, but it definitely has me drinking five times more. Okay, so I don’t get to 95oz of water in a day, but I get to 70, which is way more water than I was drinking before I tried to do the other thing. So yeah, I’m a huge fan of the book Atomic Habits. It’s obviously super popular. I don’t know if you’ve ever read it. It’s one of the best books ever.

RG:

I haven’t read it.

BR:

No. Okay, so James Clear, it’s called Atomic Habits. And, you know, they just talk about how making a 1% improvement is like, if you make 101% improvements, it can be more powerful than one 100% improvement. But this idea that it’s impossible to just one day wake up and say, I’m going to do all these things to start sleeping better. Like your New Year’s resolution is a good time to talk about it. It’s like, I’m going to start going to the gym every day. I’m going to start eating healthier. And what he’ll say is he’ll say, if you want to start exercising, how about just start by doing ten push ups while you’re brewing your coffee in the morning? Do that for like ten weeks without missing one. Then come talk to me about maybe going to the gym one day a week. Do that for ten weeks, then come to me and talk to me about going to the gym twice a week.

This idea that you’re just going to wake up and start doing all these things to change the way you feel, uh, it just doesn’t work like that. So when it goes back to being like, getting that sunlight and doing those things, really what I’m saying is like, if you’re doing nothing, wear the glasses. If you’re doing nothing, wear the glasses and drink some more water. If you’re doing nothing, wear glasses, drink water and stand up every 20 minutes and walk around for two minutes.

You know, it’s like, yeah, the thing I have struggled to get any doctor or neurologist to agree with me on is that gaming can ever be healthy mentally. It can be helpful for things like dementia and autism and it can be a great learning tool and all of those things. But physically being sedentary has zero benefits. Not one ever, ever, ever. So it’s been really hard to come across with a story that is like, it’s okay to just game all the time. It’s absolutely not healthy. And so how do we fit that? How do we make it so we do everything we can to make it more healthy? Our glasses are one of many, many things you could do. But like you said, when it comes to getting sun, know that some sun is better than no sun. But let’s say you get no sun. Don’t also not drink water that day. Not get up and walk around. Eat like crap. You know, eat right before you go to bed. Watch TV until late–you gotta do more than that.

RG:

Yeah. It’s super easy to be down on yourself. I mean for, for many reasons, but, like, you know, just today here, here in New Jersey, it’s calling for heavy rain all afternoon. The sun was not out at all today. It will not be out at all today. So yeah, it’s easy from that perspective to be like, all right, I’m just gonna do nothing today. I guess it’s a good day to do nothing. But then if it’s winter time and that happens four days in a row or whatever, you know, it’s it really gets to you. So and then again, being on your devices, there’s that whole mental aspect to going on social media, seeing, you know, pictures of some beautiful sunny place and you’re not there. So having something I know, like we’re just talking about glasses here and going back to that. But it is having something that you can at least feel good about. And making a little change is, is definitely, like you said, better than nothing. Uh, It’s effortless.

BR:

Right. And the other thing is, I want to reassure you that the sun is out. Just because you can’t see it. Uh, only so much of the UV rays get filtered. So, like, even when it’s cloudy, even when it’s, like, seems impossible, it’s still good to go outside. Actually, some of the best advice I got when we had our first kid was to take the baby outside, like for five minutes every day, no matter how cold it is. Like, that’s good for them. And we did that a lot with our daughter. And it’s just that she’s so resilient. And that I feel could be part of it. Because just like this idea of being cooped up and being inside, like, you know, they make rain gear, they make winter jackets, they make… Just get out, get out there. Like a little bit, I think it’s just you gotta kick yourself in the butt if you’re not going to do that. Of course you could buy infrared lamps and, you know, uh, sunrise and sunset, you know, mimicking room lighting is helpful. Andrew Huberman talks a lot about that. There was one other thing I was going to suggest that you said. I can’t think of it right now, but when it comes back to me…

RG:

So, I guess going back to that definition of blue light and then how it kind of connects to sunlight… What is the difference between… Because from what I understand, sunlight contains blue light, but blue light isn’t the same as sunlight?

BR:

So I’ll explain it like a layman because I am. I’m going to tell you, out of everything I’ve heard from all the people with PhDs after their name, here’s how I interpret it. Sure, there is a light spectrum, right? And it goes from red to blue. Basically one end’s far red and you got red and blue. Okay. So as you follow that spectrum in the sun, I mean, it’s white to red, I forget. But there’s a light spectrum now I sound, now I really sound dumb. But you’ll get where I’m going with this. There’s a light spectrum. So as your eye perceives the light. Light is light is light. Right.

So whether the light is coming from, uh, LCD screen or the light is coming from the sun, it’s on that spectrum that’s just calculated in nanometers. So they say blue light that comes from the sun, which is part of the sun’s light spectrum. So it is sunlight coming down in a blue spectrum, but it gets filtered by the ozone. And, you know, all the other stuff that happens, that 455th nanometer area is the spectrum that suppresses melatonin.

So the idea is if man is awake when the sun is up asleep and the sun is down and has been for the last 50,000 years or whatever, I’m just talking about modern humans. When the sun rises and your eyes are exposed to it, the blue light suppresses the melatonin so you can wake up. Your body produces all sorts of other fun chemicals and hormones, and you get going for the day. Then when the sun sets and that blue light leaves the eyes (in layman’s terms) now your brain says, okay, it’s time to start going to sleep. And so here’s the sunlight pushing down the melatonin all day because you’re out. Da da da da da. And then now it’s time to start going to sleep. So the sun though this is the part that people have brought up that I spent a lot of time talking to people about. Trying to understand it is that the sun produces like, I don’t know, a million, a billion, a trillion. It doesn’t matter way more blue light than your monitor produces like way more, way more, way more blue light than your monitor produces. Okay. But it’d be like saying, can your body handle like another pint of blood? Like, do you know, I don’t know the answer to that question, but the odds are probably not right. Like your body is capable of containing a predefined amount of chemicals to keep and and and liquids and fluids and things to keep it surviving. You can’t change that balance. You are biologically programmed to function a very specific way that we’ve never been able to figure out how it totally happened. Right? So specific. So look at blue light in the same manner. Is that like we are programmed to the sun, then yes, the sun could produce a billion, trillion, whatever trillion million more times blue light than our monitor. But is the amount from our monitor too much for our body?

And it’s the opinion of a lot of experts that it is that any artificial light… No matter where it comes from, no matter what spectrum it falls on, has no benefit, like there is no benefit to artificial light because we get all the light we need from the sun physically. I’m talking about now, of course there’s like like I said, red light therapy and there’s getting vitamin D from a tanning bed or whatever. But I’m talking about when it comes to like in our eyes, there’s no benefit from this light other than if, let’s say you work midnights and you need to manipulate your environment to wake up at 6:00 in the evening, which is very difficult to do. If you’ve ever worked midnights, it’s very easy to go back to sleeping normally. You can work midnights for 30 years. It takes like a couple of weeks and maybe a week and you’re like, okay, I’m just back to how I was supposed to… You don’t become nocturnal. So you’re working at midnight so you can manipulate your environment to mimic a sunrise in your room. Okay. When you wake up at 6 p.m., that could be really helpful. Then when you come home, let’s say, you know, it’s 6:00 in the morning, the sun is rising, blackout blinds. You mimic a sunset. And those that can manipulate your body into thinking sunrise, sunset. But how you have to look at light is there’s a spectrum that contains all colors in the world that the human can possibly perceive, right? And in that spectrum, in the blue light spectrum, there’s a very specific wavelength of that blue light spectrum that science knows suppresses your melatonin. That’s the sun’s light intending to do that. We’re doing that same thing. Essentially, when we stare at a computer screen after the sun sets.

RG:

Uh, it definitely makes sense. I mean, I know how I feel, personally, and I know that after, you know, being out in the sun for a full day, you know, you feel you feel great. And then if you sit in front of a computer screen all day, you feel like you need to get out.

BR:

Because it’s not nearly enough, right? Yeah. It’s not. Not only is it the screen not enough to mimic the sun to wake you up. The screen is also not a it’s not a replacement for the sun. So this idea of comparing the sun to your computer screen. It’s like you just can’t. It’s so hard to even explain how big of a deal the sun is. As to how we function as human beings.

RG:

So one of the other, other questions I had and I don’t know how this relates. It’s just like, I guess my curiosity… Is wearing sunglasses on a sunny day. I’ve heard both ends of the spectrum on that. Is that beneficial because the sun, it’s just so much you don’t need that much. You’re absorbing it through your body… It’s good for your eyes to take a rest? Or is it like I’ve heard, the other end of the spectrum is wearing sunglasses is not good because it doesn’t let your body recognize that you’re in the sun.

BR:

I heard a couple things. One, being out in the sun, the sun is absorbing through your skin. So you can look up at the sun and close your eyes and get a similar benefit as if you had your eyes open looking through sunglasses. Because even with your eyes closed, when you stare at the sun, you can see this. You know what I mean? So, like, a lot of people say when they go out and get red sun in the morning, there’s this idea like, go out, get 10, 15 minutes of red sun in the morning. A lot of people say, just stand there with your eyes closed and put your arms out. And just let it bask on you.

You can’t stare at the sun. It’s too bright. So when it comes to sunglasses, that’s really what it is you’re wearing them for. Yeah, you’re wearing them because the sun is just simply too bright to function as a human being when it’s right in your face. Are you not getting all of the benefits of the sun through your eyeballs that you could possibly get? Yeah, maybe. But you’re spending so much time outside. The sun is seeping through your skin. This idea that you’re going to trick your brain when you’re outside wearing sunglasses to think that it’s not sunny outside that light is. Unless you had it, like vacuum sealed on your face. That light is coming like light is more penetrating than water, even right? It can through the tiniest, smallest, littlest thing you’ve ever seen, light will find its way through. Um, but the other thing is, too, is people with light colored eyes are much more sensitive to the sun than with dark colored eyes. So if you get somebody with brown eyes not wearing sunglasses, that’s just because they’re perceiving that light differently than somebody with blue. It looks like you might have blue or hazel eyes, I can’t tell.

RG:

Uh, it’s like they’re green. Green or brown. Yeah.

BR:

Green or brown. Okay. Yeah. So you’re probably not super sensitive to the sun. You might fiend yourself not worrying. I do that all the time. I’ll be driving or just simply not wearing sunglasses, you know? Um, plus, you can burn your eyelids. It’s very thin skin. So if you’re out on the beach all day and you get sunburned, wearing sunglasses also prevents you from burning under your eyes or your eyelids. And you know that any area of the skin that is thin is going to burn really easy. Same thing with your nose too, right?

RG:

Yeah.

BR:

So wear sunglasses. I mean, yeah, wear sunglasses for sure, because if not, it’d be really hard to function. But also, the idea of closing your eyes and basking in the sun is totally appropriate. I think that that would be if you were laying in the sun on the beach. I would lay without my sunglasses on, eyes closed before I sit there with my eyes open and my sunglasses on

RG:

Yeah. Makes sense. And then, uh, that was kind of not really off topic, but just something I jotted down. Thought it was interesting. But in general, I was gonna ask who do you have using your product? Is there any gamers of note that have used your product or any doctors that have used your product, anyone that you would want to talk story about?

BR:

So, uh, several I mean, there’s a couple doctors that they couldn’t officially endorse us because they’re members of like the American Academy of Ophthalmology, people like that. But there’s one doctor that’s on YouTube, his name is Doctor Eye Health, and he was actually doing a video about the best blue light glasses. And at the end of one of the videos, he mentions this lens manufacturer that you can only get at an eye doctor’s office, happens to be the lens manufacturer that we know as well. And so we’re like, hey, like that lens you said was amazing… We actually use some similar technology, and let me explain it to you. And he was like, oh my gosh. So he made a video calling Gamer Advantage the best gaming glasses. We use a prescription doctor’s office quality lens he was familiar with.

So yeah, if you look up Doctor Eye Health on YouTube, he’s got a blog, he’s got a channel. He talks about everything. And he’s not saying we’re the only game in town either. He just didn’t know about us until I saw that video. We have 800 people in our partnership program. We’ve had big streamers who we didn’t know were going to wear them–wear them like Myth [Twitch] and Shiv [Twitch] and these guys. And then we’ve had other people where we’ve paid them to wear them, you know, which is my least favorite relationship. Like, you can pay anybody to say anything about your product in this community. And it’s kind of a bummer. Like our we’re really strict on – we need to be able to send them to you. You wear them and they help you. And then because that’s the only way you’re going to be able to, for lack of better terms, sell it to your audience. Like you have to be able to go to your community and be like, remember guys, how was sleeping? Like crap. I’m sleeping so much better now that I’m wearing Gamer Advantage, it’ll sell immediately. But if you’re just like, hey, I partnered with Gamer Advantage, use my code for 10% off blue light glasses… I hate it. So yeah, we’ve had I mean, there’s dozens every tier one org has touched or tried our glasses. There’s just so many expectations because we’re a brand in the space. Everybody wants a big fat check from us, and we’re competing for sponsorships with people like Chipotle and they just have some arbitrary budget through some marketing agency somewhere that’s like… Porsche did a deal with the FaZe clan… So, all I’m trying to do is say, okay, listen for $100 bucks and these glasses literally help me sleep better. I think they’ll help you sleep better, too. And if they don’t, I’ll just give you your money back. Like we just say 45 days, no questions asked. We’ll give you your money back. So we’ve had thousands of content creators wear our product. We still have… When you say big, like we have hundreds of creators that are over 500 viewers on Twitch or whatever, we definitely WillerZ [YouTube] is one of the biggest Tarkov streamers and Genji, okay, one of the most viewed female streamers, um, they both wear our glasses. We’ve had people like a Black Hokage [Twitch]. He was a guy that, like, I didn’t even know was wearing them. He’s just a customer. Like, that was pretty cool. Um, that’s. So that seems to happen all the time. So yeah. Definitely our fair share of people who have worn them and loved them.

RG:

That’s cool.

BR:

Uh, and our return rate is 1.5%. So that’s really the metric that drives us forward pretty strongly. That’s why we say like, all right, how about stop complaining and stop fighting me and stop trying to prove me wrong and prove why I don’t know what I’m talking about and tell me that I don’t know gaming and tell me that I don’t understand the industry.

Like, listen, I’ve been gaming longer than you. I hate saying it, but I’m old enough now to say it like I’ve been gaming for twice as long as you’ve been alive. Like I’ve been playing video games. I’m telling you that these glasses help me sleep better. You don’t have to try them if you don’t want to. But if you’re going to talk smack, how about buy them? And if they don’t work, I’ll give you your money back and I’ll pay for the shipping… Just just please try them. That’s the best. That’s been kind of my mantra since day one, because I don’t know how else to do it. I know just paying and running like BS, corporate Facebook ads and that kind of stuff. We’ve tried it. It just never gets the right message across.

RG:

I mean, that’s for me like investing money in in something – it’s it says a lot because I’m obviously on a budget. And for example, one of the podcasts I listen to on Rogan was that Paul Stamets guy who was like the crazy mushroom farmer. But like, his podcast changed my perspective perception. I was like, hey, I want to try his supplements… You know, lion’s mane supplement or whatever. And, you know, even if it is just  in my head, I feel like I enjoy the supplements that he has. But again, that it took me, you know, a three hour podcast and then thinking about it and then be like, all right, I’ll give it a try to, to really like get my, my sale, you know, so I, I have to imagine that for everyone else it’s probably similar…

BR:

Oh yeah. Especially $20 on Amazon. Yeah. That’s what we’re up against. It’s like, why can I do it for $20 on Amazon? I’m like, no, it’s not the same thing. Yeah, we’re doing it. First of all we do prescriptions. So we’re regulated by the FDA. We have to be HIPAA compliant. Those glasses you’re buying on Amazon are imported as novelties. They’re lenses glued in… You get hit in the face with a baseball or something… I have to follow certain safety guidelines because I can put prescriptions in them. You mentioned the melatonin or placebo effect, which is a great Harvard article about that. Where basically, there is nothing wrong with purchasing a product that gives you a placebo effect. Like that’s a good thing. And that they said that in that melatonin podcast I was listening to where they said, if you walk into your doctor and said, hey, I’m taking 30mg of melatonin, which you need like point zero or point two milligrams, I guess, or something, but by the time you take, it takes like so long to get through your body that you don’t really get much of what you’re taking. But let’s say you say I take ten milligrams of melatonin every night, and I’ve been sleeping really well and I feel better and look at my blood sugar has gotten better. A doctor is never going to say it will stop taking that, you know what I mean? So if you buy lion’s mane and it turns you into a healthier person because you feel more empowered and you feel healthier, that’s a real thing. Like the placebo effect can change. Yeah, change you physically. So that’s positive. I think putting on the glasses definitely is a reminder, for me at least, to be a little bit more conscious of some of the decisions I make throughout the day, like when I when I get into my setup and I like put my glasses on, I’m like, all right, if I’m doing this, like I’m making a conscious effort to be a little bit healthier. So then they’re just kind of they’re reminding me, okay, what am I going to eat today? Well, you’re wearing the glasses. Are you really gonna eat like crap too? Sometimes you say yes. You’re like, hey, I worked out today and I haven’t had McDonald’s in a long time. I’m getting McDonald’s. I posted the other day for my mental health today, I put Cool Ranch Doritos on my peanut butter and jelly. And all I was trying to say is just like it every now and then. It’s okay as long as you’re doing some of this other stuff.

RG:

I think that’s why I enjoy, you know, listening to a lot of health discussion, especially long form podcasts and things like that. But yeah, where they lose me is just like the one guy I follow. I had a meniscus injury on my knee and it was the knee over toes guy. And I’m like, oh, he’s a great source of information. But the dude doesn’t eat carbs. He literally is like the guy from Step Brothers. Like, I haven’t had a carb in however many years. And it’s like, yeah, I’m not going to do that. Like, I love pizza. I’m gonna eat pizza and that’s that. I think everyone can as long as you have some, you know, thought to it… You’re in a good space. That’s like the internet effect of people sometimes where they just go, I mean, that dude specifically knees over toes guy’s just an insane, like, healthy dude. And he’s just taking his ideas to the next level. But I feel like also in general, the internet has tried to produce people that are extreme and I feel like people just need to know that you don’t need to be extreme… Do things whether it’s health or whatever it is like if it’s gaming, you know, if you if you love gaming, you don’t need to game for the entire day… If you love it. Sure. And if that’s making you money or whatever do it. But you know, it’s not necessary…

I guess on that same conversation. Do you, do you have a sense of like, would these glasses keep you more focused and alert during a gaming session or during work or anything like that?

BR:

So we even… One of our lenses is named Focus. And to not complicate things, sometimes we just say, hey wear are these glasses? And they can make you a better gamer. And it’s like, wow, that’s a stretch. How is that possible? And it’s like, okay, a couple things. So at the really basic level, when you wear glasses, you blink more often, just uh, it’s just a product of the lens being in front of your eye. Blinking more often keeps your eye more hydrated, your eye hydrated, your eye is less dry eye you’ll get. Plus, a lot of gamers have fans and stuff in their rooms. Yeah, so wearing glasses would also prevent direct contact with the air from fans and air drying it out. Now, I know that even sounds like a stretch, right? But let’s go back to sleep… If you sleep better 100%, there is improvement in some of the most important metrics. And the one I like to focus on is cognition. So reaction time is this how I explain it? Layman’s terms. Reaction time. The thing caffeine might be able to improve speed right is how fast you can turn left or right. Cognition is the quality of the decision. So yeah, you turn left faster. But you were supposed to go right now you’re dead, right? So when we look at quality of sleep, what we find is better quality gameplay, better decision making. Like, yeah, you might be able to sleep like crap, slam a monster be wired out of your mind, and if you’re just button mashing or doing something like playing Grand Theft Auto Roleplay or something, yeah, that could be a lot of fun. But when it comes to some of these competitive gamers, I mean, you can look at it from every angle, but the easiest way is to look at when the Boston Red Sox won the World Series. Go back and listen to some of the interviews with Alex Cora where he’s like, well, we had these sleep coaches here that could literally like, you might say that, okay, let me give you a real quick hypothetical. You’re in game seven of the World Series. It’s the night before you tell everybody, go to bed, get a good night’s rest. You’re two first starting pitchers. One guy stays in his hotel room all night, playing video games. The other guy goes out, has a few beers, and then goes to bed. You’re like, the guy with alcohol shouldn’t be the starting pitcher. It’s got to be the guy who just hung out and played video games all night, right? Like if you drank, like, there’s no way. But this guy stayed up till, like, one in the morning, and this guy got back at, like, ten and drank a bunch of water and, like, went to bed at the right time. And so now you got. So when you do the actual cognition test, you’re like, yeah, he might have drank last night, but because he did all these other things to offset it and still got a good night’s rest, like he’s the better pitcher where you play video games, and that had a detrimental impact on your quality of sleep. And while you might wake up and still feel like the best pitcher on the team, your cognition is actually lower than we’d like to see. And you know, baseball is the best sport for that because it’s like all science now. Yeah, everything is data in baseball. So they’ll put these players through these like brain exercises to figure out, like, are you capable of pitching in the bottom of the ninth, like, are you or do you have the mental capacity? And I think we have to look at it as the same way of gaming. You’re not sleeping well. There’s no way you could ever have, like, the mental capacity to be a great, great gamer.

RG:

Yeah. No. And I mean, it does just overcoming any, any feat, you know having the drive to do that uh, takes, takes, you know, some, some really, improved mental cognition and looking at something and saying I don’t even if it is a game that’s supposed to be fun. I’m sure there are, um, situations that these professional esports players get in and they’re just like I don’t want to do this, but I’m in a tournament or I have to train or whatever. Yeah, I think that’s the most telling area of are you functioning properly? Is your brain functioning properly? If you can overcome a challenge like that when it’s tough or whatever…

BR:

The industry has done a horrible job. They dumped, you know, private equity and venture capitalists, they come in and pump a bunch of money into these orgs, and they just make them into content houses. In the beginning of competitive gaming, nobody gave a flying F about the health and wellness, mentally and physically of these gamers who were kids. And it’s still not that great today. Look at the the average professional esports athlete, you could very easily make millions and millions, if not tens of millions of dollars, retiring at 27. You know, like Tom Brady played, I mean, he played in the NFL for like 30 years. And it’s like if you can play 25 years of professional football and get hit over and over and work out every single day and win seven Super Bowls and do all this crazy stuff, like there’s just no way you shouldn’t be able to do that playing video games. Like, why? How is it possible that gaming is so stressful that you can’t even do it professionally, for more than maybe like five years? And I think it’s because when you don’t sleep well and then you spend your time in an environment that’s so social media driven, mentally it is almost more challenging than it is physically. And you just get yourself in a rut. We see it with xQc, one of the biggest streamers in the world. You can just see it in people’s faces. You’re like, damn, that person is like there’s something missing. They’re not a good spot right now, and a lot of it goes back to no social life, not sleeping well, not eating well. You know, back when Covid did a real number on a lot of people for sure.

RG:

And it is like, you know, it’s a blessing for some, for a lot of people in the gaming realm where you’re like, all right, this person just bought a house with his, you know, he just got sponsored or whatever. He’s on a team. You know, he just bought himself a house and his family a house, and now he’s a professional. Like you can’t deny. That’s awesome. He’s doing what he loves. But then on the other end, we’re still in that kind of, wild West of, like, you don’t really know what the end game is. I mean, no pun intended, but the end end strategy is for these gamers now, because just five, ten years ago, we never thought there would be a professional gamer, that could make money. And now that that’s a thing, it’s like, all right, what is the strategy? Is it going to be like football where you just hope for the best and, you know, like you hope to get a couple good years and hopefully you don’t blow your money or is it going to be a longevity thing? Can it be a longevity thing… It’s definitely super interesting. And just like, you know, vaping versus smoking, you know, we really don’t know what’s going to happen with these professional esports players.

BR:

We don’t know what long term exposure to this light that’s disrupting… It could be like a really sad story 20 years from now that I’m not really interested in being a part of. Here’s a couple things I do know for certain. Number one, nearsightedness in children has risen. Myopia is on the rise, and they’re talking a lot of it having to do with kids being introduced to digital devices when they’re younger, their arms are shorter, they hold devices closer to their face, and so they develop nearsightedness. That’s there’s a lot of articles on that. The second thing I know is that device manufacturers for about the last ten years, have been putting blue light filters and blue light features in their devices. Apple calls it night shift. They might not call it that anymore. Um, blue shield, blue defense, you name it, you buy it, you buy a monitor phone… You can remove the blue light. Now, if blue light wasn’t a thing, why would all these device companies invest so much money into filters and programs that remove blue light from your device? Like, why would they insist to make the screen look crappier? Because it’s good for you. Like they know or must be. I think they know. But I look at it like the McDonald’s hot coffee thing. If every device manufacturer puts on their devices a blue light filter of some type, then when the first mom sues Apple because her kids spent too much time on an iPad and has slept so poorly that he’s now developed some type of debilitating condition, Apple is going to say we’ve had blue light filtering on our devices for 15 years. You elected not to use them. No different than now. McDonald’s coffee cups have to say caution hot like no duh, right? But I just find it so crazy that every. Have you ever seen an Apple commercial highlighting Night Shift? Ever?

RG:

No.

BR:

And I think the reason is because they can’t say it does anything.

RG:

Yeah, that’s a good point.

BR:

They don’t have any data that just shutting the blue light off on your phone…

RG:

But they have an idea.

BR:

But they have an idea. Exactly. They know it’s something, but they’re not… They’re doing the best they can with the information they have to protect themselves.

RG:

And it’s about liability obviously.

BR:

Yeah, that’s I think it is, because why else would you do it? Would you ever turn the blue light filter off on your TV?

RG:

Again, I didn’t even know that was an option.

BR:

Well and why would you though? Why watch TV? They just shut the TV. When you get done with this call… Go play Fortnite, but turn the blue light filter on on your device on your monitor and go watch what it’s like to play… Nobody is shutting the blue light. Stop it… like this is not happening. Crazy people always say to me, well, I can just download f.lux or use Night Shift on my phone. I’m like, okay, we got two devices covered now they look like crap or our glasses don’t change. They don’t change any color. Yeah. What about the… I literally have like four govee lights in here right now. And they’re all set to like a light blue color.

RG:

Yeah.

BR:

Is your car your dashboard or your car? The lights behind your head. It’s like an endless amount.

RG:

Well, um, this was honestly so, so cool. I mean, this is a subject I was really interesting, and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to speak today. And one of the reasons I pursued this interview. I usually like to at least squeeze this in or end the interview on, you know, just purely about gaming in general. But what is, uh, you know, your maybe favorite game of all time? And then what’s something that you’re, like, most stoked to play recently?

BR:

Um, okay, favorite game of all time is I have a few, but I’m going to say Red Dead Redemption 2. It was the closest I’ve ever been to a character. I cried at the end. I listened to the soundtrack in my car for like months afterwards. Like, I just felt like it was so awesome. I found a rejuvenation for Halo recently, so. Okay, Halo Infinite and Guardians, I’ve been like swapping back and forth between the two. Um, I’d say what I’m most stoked for… And it’s stupid because it’s so far away from Grand Theft Auto 6. Like, I just can’t wait.

RG:

Yeah.

BR:

And then they’ve already, like, teased another Red Dead Redemption after Grand Theft Auto six. So I think it’s just crazy that I’m, like, excited for games that might not come out until I’m 40. Yeah, like when games were coming out. They were coming out like next month. Now they’re teasing games and they’re like, I mean Grand Theft Auto six is 2025. And if it’s a holiday of 25, you might as well have just said 26.

RG:

And it probably will be.

BR:

I’m excited for that. But I’ve been playing a lot of Halo. I’m having a ton of fun playing Halo for no reason. A Halo where it all started for me. I mean, yeah, online multiplayer. So it’s so fun that it’s capped. So true to its origin, I love it.

RG:

And are you just playing on Xbox or what is it?

BR:

Yeah, I play on Xbox, I have PC. Um, on PC, I would play like play Grand Theft Auto on PC, play Apex a little bit on PC. All my friends are old. Like I said, you know, being in our late 30s. So all my friends have Xboxes. And I found it’s easier to convince a friend who doesn’t game to buy an Xbox than it is to buy a gaming PC. Yeah, so I do luckily have a pretty sweet setup, and every now and then I stream for the brand and stuff like that. Um, but I find myself mostly playing Xbox with my other late 30s friends. But nightly, daily. And one of the guys in our group just turned 50. Okay. You would if you were on the chat with him. This is one of the guys you’d have no clue that he’s one of the dudes. And we play almost every night. Like after my kids go to bed like my wife, her and I hang out for a minute. She likes to go to bed a little earlier than me, and I get like a solid 90 minutes almost every single night to game.

RG:

So yeah, it’s fun. And I mean that the aspect of chatting with your friends and just like, I don’t know, like every so often you just have like a belly laugh, you know… It’s funny, you know. Again, I’ve been in and out of gaming my whole life. I’m 28, so Game Boy Advance, PS2, Gamecube. Then we got PS3 and now I’m on the Nintendo Switch.

BR:

Oh, I remember I was gonna say to you before… Ring Fit for the Switch. Yeah. If you can’t get outside in the winter, if you can’t get out, it’s like a Pilates ring, basically. But you put your Joy-Con… And it’s really cool. You run and then you, like, use it like a bow and arrow and like, shoot stuff. And it’s an exercise program. Do an hour of ring fit… It’ll kick your ass. But it’s so much fun on the Nintendo Switch. Oh, I brought that up again because that’s what I was thinking of earlier.

RG:

No, I have to check that out. That’s that’s sweet. That’s one thing I haven’t done with my Switch yet is because I knowi t was like Wii Sports was like the biggest thing. Bowling. You know, we would go over to my friend’s house and bowl. But yeah, that’s being in and out of gaming for so long. It’s like, it feels like every time I’m getting over gaming. I guess I come back and I’m like, wait, this is actually so fun.

BR:

Yeah, I know it is. You don’t ever leave it.

RG:

Yeah, but I really appreciate you getting on this call. I won’t take up any more of your time today. Thank you.

BR:

All right. Thank you. Ryan. Appreciate it.

Concluding the LeagueFeed Interview with Bryan Reedy of Gamer Advantage Blue Light Glasses

Bryan Reedy was a hell of a nice guy, who happens to be into health, wellness, fitness–as much as he is into gaming. On top of that, he’s got a company that seems to be doing business in an ethical way that will hopefully help lots of professional and amateur gamers and remote workers to achieve new levels of physical and mental wellness.

Thanks for reading and make sure to keep following along for more interviews like this one, and of course for the normal League of Legends and PC Gaming coverage from Leaguefeed.net!

The post LeagueFeed Talks Blue Light and Implications for Gamers with Bryan Reedy of Gamer Advantage appeared first on LeagueFeed.

When it comes to David Graham’s vision, the limits of traditional competitive gaming don’t apply. He covers topics around Valhallan’s mission: To use the power of esports to help mold young people into strong, independent adults. Rather than viewing gaming as an isolated activity, Valhallan takes a fresh tack by emulating teamwork and camaraderie seen in more conventional sporting settings.

Come with us and explore the impact of gaming beyond solo play, delving into the educational aspects of the esports scene. If you want to listen along or watch the full interview head over to YouTube and enjoy:

Read the interview transcription…

Ryan:

This is the LeagueFeed.net interview podcast. My name is Ryan Gallagher. Today we have David Graham with us from Valhallan, and he’s going to explain just a little bit about what he does inside our gaming realm. So. Take it away, David. I think you’re more than ready to share. 

David:

Thank you. So, within the esports world, what we’re really focused on is using esports as a mechanism to make kids better human beings. And so, they love to play the games. They love competition. Some kids are not, you know, acclimated or I guess set up to be sports guys and sports girls. So, we get them in and give them a way to get all those benefits of being in a traditional sport environment, but through video games and think that’s kind of power and beauty of the inclusive nature of the esports world, is that just about anybody can do it, given, you know, some good coaching, some good guidelines and a safe and non-toxic environment to thrive in. And that’s what we found. 

Ryan:

Awesome! So when did you start Valhallan? How long has it been going on and where are you? Where are you today? 

David:

We started at about the end of last year sometime, really trying to put our full heart into it. Let’s say we had some ideas before that and put together what it means. How do we want it to work as a business model? There’s a part of us that, you know, are entrepreneurs, and we want to make sure that it works for our franchisees. And then there’s also the part, like wholeheartedly, we want the kids to get something of value out of it, not just lip service to all these things that we’re talking about. So, we took about six months and put together a curriculum, put together a plan, put it into action, and found out like half of it didn’t work. Right. So okay, we went back to the drawing board, really nurtured and kind of fleshed it out and got it to where the kids were having a blast. Parents are seeing that this is the real thing. This isn’t just more game time, more screen time. This is actually, you know, changing their kids’ attitudes. They’re coming out of their shell a little bit more around family members. They’re able to talk in situations at the dinner table when they are a little bit shy. And you see people making friends and networking and, and doing all these things where it just wasn’t happening before, you know, they would kind of just go to their dark dungeon room and talk to their buddies online. But you didn’t know who those people were. It could have been a 53-year-old talking to a 13-year-old, and you wouldn’t know. And so, with our network and the way we do it, it just opens up that opportunity for parents and kids to get behind something equally at the same time.

And it shows the value. And so that’s really what we’ve done. And now we’re somewhere around the 65-unit range sold and probably have about 40 units open in the United States by the end of the year, 30 or 40. It’s a little bit slow with the permits and things that are out of our control. But yeah, we’ll have a bunch of arenas in the United States for sure, but wow. 

Ryan:

So, when you say units, what is that like a franchise location? 

David:

That’s right. So, a franchisee will have a small lobby, some set up for mom and dad to watch the tournaments. They’ll have 30 to 40 PCs. This isn’t a LAN center. So, throw that kind of concept out the window. This is training. We’re specifically bringing kids in at prescribed times, giving them a coach that they’re going to work with for 3 to 6 months at a time, going through a prescribed curriculum, getting them better at the game and stages whatever game they choose, and then also teaching them four other pillars, which are community, leadership, communication and teamwork. And those are just as important, if not more, than the actual game mastery, which is the fifth pillar.

Ryan:

Definitely. So, I mean, there’s so much to unpack in what you just said, but I think the main thing is, I had never thought of this concept before, but one of our writers interviewed another guy by the name of Jay Melamed. I don’t know if I’m not saying his name right, but he has a similar concept called XP League, and that was the first time I’ve ever heard of something like this. 

David:

I was the principal investor in XP League.

Ryan:

Really? That’s cool.

David:

I know it well. Yeah, well he’s not with XP anymore but. 

Ryan:

Oh really? No way. 

David:

Way. 

Ryan:

Okay. Yeah. That means our writer, Andrej, did the interview. I don’t know what it was a couple months ago. Maybe more. Um, yeah, maybe even in the springtime, before the summer. But, yeah, that was the first time I ever heard of the concept, but immediately it made sense to me. So, like, what do you think is a little different? 

David:

We’re different from XP League in a few different ways? Yeah. So. Okay. 

Ryan:

Yeah. Go ahead. Go into that.

David:

One of the reasons that I’m not an investor in XP League anymore, is that I felt like there were some things that, you know, I think there’s space for both of us. I don’t want to talk ill of anybody. I think that the way they do it is a little bit different in that they take a mobile first kind of approach. So, they have laptops, they go to a school, a library, a church they set up, and then kids come there, and we took an arena approach where we build out these locations in brick-and-mortar locations and you invest time, energy, furniture, fixtures, equipment, get all the, you know, fastest computers and best technology and put it in there. And we have a fixed approach. I think our approach is a little bit better for multiple reasons, but you can hold a birthday party at our location. You can’t do it in their van. You know, it’s a little bit different in that regard. Until very recently they weren’t on a subscription service. They were in a full season. So much like t ball, you would pay for a season. And then after that season you could just opt out. We think it takes longer to get what we want to accomplish done. And so, we took a more like a yearlong approach to teaching kids. And so, you need to come in. We financed that year monthly for our parents. And so, they can be a part of a bigger, broader strategy. And then the last thing I would say is different is our league and the esports league is big. It’s got probably 4000, 5000 teams that play every season.

And then, you know, however many kids that is I don’t know, it’s somewhere in the 15,000 kids’ range. And they’re not just made up of all Valhallen kids. We have the same ethos. Everybody that’s in there must be coach led. That must be non-toxic, zero tolerance for bullying, all those things. But there are schools that do not participate in the Valhallen arenas across the country now, we’re also in the UK and the EU as well. So, theirs is just their locations, their mobile units participating. So, a little bit different.

Ryan:

Yeah, that’s good to know. I’m obviously pretty new to the concept. But again, I think it makes sense in general that being in school, it works for certain kids, and it doesn’t work for other kids. There are gaps that are filled by extracurricular activities. A lot of the time, whether you know, it’s football, baseball, and now you have options like this, you know, if gaming is your thing and increasingly that’s becoming more kid’s things. So, who are you finding are the parents and the kids who come to you most often? Who is your customer base? 

David:

You’d be surprised. Yeah, something like 75% of all kids stop doing any kind of organized sport or activity after the age of 11. And so, that’s a massive number of kids. Like it’s the, you know, major majority. And so, we’re not targeting just the kids that are, you know, in their rooms and they’re the kind of edge case scenarios. It’s really the predominance of all kids out there. And now most of the kids have tried, you know, soccer, t ball, baseball, basketball and didn’t like it for one reason or another. And now this is their competitive part of it, right? I mean, it’s what they’re really getting charged about, you know, teamwork and making some friends around a common goal kind of stuff. But we do have a lot of sportspeople, a lot of sports kids come to us who are good athletically, and then they already know what it means to work on a team and be coached. How you remain coachable and take good advice. You know that kind of stuff. So, ask for good advice. Yeah, you know, so many of those kids come in and they don’t even know how to ask, or they don’t know how to take that advice in the right way. And that’s part of our objective here. But, you know, don’t think we’re targeting a specific kid in that regard because it is so just wide open right now. 80% of kids play games. I mean, it’s crazy. Yeah, as far as the parent’s side, you know, one of the things we hear most commonly is I wish this was available when I was a kid. I would have totally done this.

You know, I wasn’t a sports kid. I was kind of just left to my own devices and didn’t have anything like this. And this is perfect, you know? And I think that’s a really powerful testimonial, kind of like a multi-generational testimonial. And frankly, it’s my story. That’s why I kind of dug the idea from the beginning, I was not a super athlete. I was not, you know, my claim to fame was winning pentathlon in fifth grade, right? I mean, I was a nerd, I was and so being, you know, now nerd culture kind of caught up to me, you know, like finally I’m the, you know, have some claim to fame here. Um, and so I think, I think there’s a lot of that going on right now as far as parents are concerned. Yeah. 

Ryan:

Yeah. And I know for me, my parents, it’s hard to conceptualize because, when I talk about video games or something with my dad, it’s like he’s only played me at Madden, then lost like 70 to 80% of the times he’s played me and like, you know, Marvel versus DC universe on the PS3, like fighting and you know, we’d whoop him, me and my brother. So, it’s like he doesn’t really get it. So how do you conceptualize that for parents that, you know, don’t see a need for this or like, do you bring them in to show them what’s going on or how do you break that barrier? 

David:

We have the Boomer league too. So for the adults to come in and play on the PCs and participate just for fun, only it’s a little bit competitive, but we all suck. So, whatever. And that’s kind of fun too. But the way we really do that is like making it a very low bar to entry, right? We say, look, I know, you don’t get it. Come in for a week and try it out. Like, sure, whatever. We play different games on different days. I don’t know what your kids into Fortnite, your kids into, you know, Valorant, whatever it is, come into all of them. Just sit through it. You know, it’s an hour and a half class, two hours sometimes sit through. If they like it, they like it. If they don’t, they don’t. And if you don’t see the value after that, hey, like, we didn’t do our job right, you know, no harm, no foul. But at least the worst thing that happens is they have a good time, you know. And so, I think you just have to do that low bar approach because, you know, it is kind of unorthodox. It’s a 0 to 1 kind of idea. It’s not something they’ve heard of before. And the value proposition is hard to make to like to let your kid play another hour and a half of video games. On the mom’s radar. You know it’s not the dads. By the way, you said, dad, how do I convince dad? It’s always mom. 75% of all household income, the discretionary income is spent by the mom. And so that’s who we really have to convince. You know, dad’s pretty much like, let kid do whatever he wants, you know, like, yeah, mom’s like, do you really need another hour of gaming?

You’re already always on that thing, you know, kind of approach. So, we have to show just what I said at the beginning of the call is that this isn’t just more gaming. This isn’t just more screen time. This is productive screen time with an agenda, an ulterior motive, if you will, of making them better human beings. 

Ryan:

Yeah, it’s wild. Up until now and even still now, like, we’re kind of in the such early stages with gaming because, you know, with any other sport that’s new or any other organization that’s new, you would have, pretty much like set rules of how when this takes place, where it takes place, things like that, how to do it. Some like code of conduct and just general things like that. And I think with it, like especially with the internet and in gaming too, it’s like you don’t really have these spelled out rules as much. Yeah. 

David:

So, like in matchmaking, what do you need? Why do we need a schedule? Right. Um, but I think there is some value in working within an organization, a structure that’s been laid out, tracking your progress over time, finding friends that want to work together and build. Build a team that is better than just, you know, randoms that you matchmake with online. You know, your ego is fine and all that, but, like, do you know how this guy plays? Like, that’s a whole different story, right? Sure. 

Ryan:

Sure. Yeah. I mean, it’s like getting to know people. There’s working to a common goal, like you said, and then also doing it in a way that, like just kind of increases, well, increases your skills and increases like more than just gaming, like you said. I think that’s kind of the main difference for me when I’m thinking about, you know, leagues like this and the benefits of them. Yeah. That’s kind of where my mind goes. 

David:

My analogy is like if you play Lacrosse. Okay. Lacrosse is kind of popular now. Soccer, kind of popular now. But, you know, 20 years ago, nobody played either one of those really. And people kind of leaned on. Well, at least they’re outside exercising. Yeah. They’re doing something. Well, I think the kind of at least they’re here is at least they’re playing with their friends. At least they’re in a safe, non-toxic environment. And I think this industry is going to grow into what we know, as, you know, soccer, lacrosse and all these kind of ancillary sports, pickleball getting a lot of traction right now, all these kind of ancillary sports that are getting picked up are going to become the baseball, you know, and the football and the, you know, in soccer, in lacrosse and all that stuff moves up the rank. And we kind of fill in that next step. So, I think it’s just very new. I think it’s, you know, not evergreen in the minds of, of parents right now. But we’re working on it. We’re changing that, you know, as much as we can. 

Ryan:

So, who are the main leaders of the organization? Is it mainly you or do you have some other like leaders and partners who kind of like driving the goals and the next steps of Valhallan? 

David:

We have a very robust team, you know, my company franchise. Or you can see it on my shirt. Here is a franchising company. We own 4 or 5 different brands. So just from a business perspective, we have a leadership team that manages the kind of work on the business. Like how do you read panels, how do you build over time? How do you make a better business? So, there’s tons of people, we’re 50 people or so that work on just that. Um, how do you get open? All that kind of stuff is kind of a little bit generic in the sense that it’s not brand specific, right? For any business. And we have all that kind of tucked away and have for years. So, we brought in subject matter experts, um, a few different people that are in VP positions that work for TSM that have started their own organizations within the esports space. And so, a few different people like that. Awesome. Luke Zelon was one of them. He worked for TSM. Chris Barstad started his own league and then it kind of got bought by another company and then we acquired that company. So, we merged 2 or 3 of these huge leagues together to create an esports league. 

Ryan:

And the people like yourself and some of the other guys that you mentioned. What games are you guys playing in your or personally like what gets you guys excited about furthering, you know, Valhallan and this business. 

David:

Well, I think if you’re going to have an esports platform, you’re really going to make esports grow. You gotta do it kind of at the grassroots level. I think we’ve seen over the last five years, you know, taking this huge private equity venture capital approach to esports probably wasn’t the right tactic to go in. If you want to win the hearts and minds and actually monetize consumers, you have to go in a different way. And I think that’s one of the most exciting things I think we’re doing is we are actually taking the harder route to get there and getting in front of people, winning their hearts and minds, making them understand what esports is and how it benefits everybody around. That’s kind of exciting to me, you know, to take a different tact and a different monetization strategy, certainly, than the industry has seen to date. And hopefully by doing that, we become, you know, we become the tee ball field or the little league field in every community where, oh yeah, you want to get into esports? You got to go to Valhallan. Like that’s the starting rung. That’s where you start. I mean, the thing to do, just like you would say, oh, you want to get into baseball, you got to go to a tee ball. I mean, you got to go to Little League. And so, I think that’s kind of the exciting part of this is it is still kind of the Wild West in e-sports. I think a lot of people have done a lot of good testing to date, but never really kind of cracked the track, the profitability model. And so that to me as a businessperson is a very interesting kind of pioneering stage. 

Ryan:

Yeah and will you guys guess like there’s a subscription or like a, you know, yearly cost or whatever, but will you make money off like, you know, when there is an event or, you know, a championship like that’s, will you make money from sponsors or make money from streaming, or is that. 

David:

I have a real problem, like slapping somebody’s logo on a kid and like basically pimping them out to the world? That’s not what I want to be about, right? So, if Lenovo came to us and said, we really want to sponsor you guys and let me put my logo on your jersey and be like, probably not. If there was some context to that, if it was like Saint Jude’s or something like that, who obviously has a really big investment into making kids’ lives better, or if it was, you know, some other organization like that, okay, maybe we would make some kind of an exception in that regard. But sponsorships to me, you know, if you look at sponsorships in the esports world, it reminds me, you know, I’m old enough to remember the internet when it wasn’t a big thing yet. And in 1999, everybody was going to throw up a banner ad on their website and they were going to be millionaires. And that’s what I think sponsorship networks are today to e-sport. It’s a great hope and prayer, but if you don’t see the ROI on it, it’s never going to be anything. And it won’t continue. It may have a fleeting moment, which even banner ads did. Right. And, you know, some part of that is going to continue. Google makes billions and billions of dollars, but some parts of that is just slapping logos on stuff and then like having a commercial run, you know, in between tournaments, it’s just not working. Yeah. So, we’re going to figure out some model with sponsorship, but I just don’t feel like that’s a model to move forward for us–not a monetization strategy. 

Ryan:

I think that’s a really nice approach. And it sounds like you’re giving a lot of thought because a lot of other people would not have thought as much. You know, they would probably just say, oh, yeah, like we need this, you know, like, this is this is the way it’s done. So yeah, I think it’s really interesting.

David:

It is the way it’s done. It unfortunately hasn’t been working out for people. Yeah. I don’t. And to the tournament, you know, entry fees and all that. I think part of being a part of our organization is that you don’t have to do that. It is my plan as of right now that none of our tournaments will have entry fees. If you’re a part of our organization and what we’re doing already, you’ve already paid for your entry, right? 

Ryan:

No, that makes sense. So, like for if we’re keeping that tee ball or little league comparison. Like if these guys, these kids show up to practice or practice sessions, whatever you’re going to call it, when do they get to the game or when do they get to the championship or do they get to the championship? What are they guaranteed? 

David:

A season is for the year. So, you can be a champion of each game and each season, just like traditional sports, the season still goes on, but you’re just a part of the training and you practice year-round. So, any season you can be a champion. We do have a little bit of orthodoxy, a little bit unorthodox. You don’t get on a team right away with us. So, we call those early people who come in and then they spend about a month with us before they get placed on a team. And, you know, it takes a little time to get to customize Jersey and a lot of things that are going on in that time. So, there’s some good reasons for that. But then after you kind of prove yourself, you kind of learn what does it mean to be non-toxic? How do you control my emotions both when I win and when I lose? What does it mean to be a good team player? You know, all these things that we require kind of as our creed. Then we say, okay, you’ve done that, you’ve passed that. Here’s your jersey as your transition into becoming a teammate. Here’s your team. And it’s probably going to be a couple of guys that they were in that early stage with, right? I mean, they all kind of leveled up at the same time. And they become recruits. We have recruit, elite and then legendary status. 

Ryan:

Very cool. It reminds me of like, any good coming of age film where they, you know, the kid is skateboarding and he finally gets the Zephyr sponsor, you know, and Dogtown or you know, something like that. That’s cool. 

David:

Well, we learned this in our old brands that kids like milestones, you know, if you have to set the kind of next milestone ahead of them when you get here. This happens when you get here. This happens when you get to this point. You’re able to use this equipment, you know. So, we open up different things and different times and that keeps them on path and keeps them, you know, the carrot still out there somewhere for them to go to the next level and we want them to do that because. Well, I mean, it’s a business first. So, you do have to keep them around for, you know, 9 months to 12 months, then make it profitable. But we also want them to do that because the curriculum taken all at once would be too hard to consume. And so, we want you to practice what we want to teach you, what you need to know, practice what we’ve taught you, and then we’re going to come back and tell you what we’ve taught you, just to make sure you got it. And so that’s kind of our approach to all of it. And so, we need you around for a little while to really get to that next level. And I’m not just talking about mastery. I’m talking about self-control, talking about leadership. I’m talking about teamwork and communication. All those things take time and practice. So that’s what we do with them over that period of time. 

Ryan:

That makes a lot of sense. I think that’s part of the reason people like gaming a lot, too, is because inherently, as human beings, and whether you’re a kid or adult, you need some incentives or you need some boxes to check, you know, and gaming obviously is great for that. Like I just did good in a game I won. So, I get a new character…

David:

You know, I never thought about it that way. But yeah, Milestones are built into most of the games unlocking the characters and whatnot. 

Ryan:

Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, it seems, it would go well with a curriculum and with a campaign like you guys are running. So that’s interesting. Other things I wrote down. I noticed, I mean, we’re LeagueFeed which is a League of Legends-centric site, obviously. So, how much of League of Legends or how many players do you have of League of Legends and how, you know, is that big? 

David:

Not just yet. Okay. Yeah. 150 champions, thousands of items. I think it’s a little bit hard for an eight-year-old to kind of get into that world, which I mean, to me, it sounds like an opportunity, by the way. I think it’s an open opportunity for us to be successful in that space. But most kids are coming in asking for different games. I think you would agree that that’s an 18 and up game. 

Ryan:

Yeah, yeah. 

David:

So, we haven’t really gotten to that too much yet. Very open to hearing discussions on how we think we can get younger players more involved. Maybe we limit the champions. Maybe we don’t know. I’m saying champion, but I know nothing about the game. So, I think there’s something like that. But you know, we limit some of the things that they can use and different milestones and then put them through their pacing a little bit. Yeah. So, it’s not just like super free for all the time and it’s just too much to consume. So, you gotta take it kind of bite by bite. 

Ryan:

How do you choose games, like guess what goes into that? Are you basically choosing games from the coaches that you guys have or are you choosing games from what the kids are interested in or both. 

David:

The latter, yeah. If the kids are demanding Fortnite. We play Fortnite two days a week and they’re demanding, you know, Valorant and we do that Overwatch. It’s got to be games kind of conducive to the kid, more kid friendly stuff. And so, we’re also testing non video games. So, we’re testing chess. We’re testing some of the board games you know. 

Ryan:

Yeah. One of the other sites that TreasureHunter.media owns is called mykindofmeeple.com. And that’s a trading card and board game site. So yeah, I mean, the content around that is seemingly endless too. And I mean, there’s a million and one strategies for all these games, whether it’s, you know, Chess or Magic the Gathering or all these other kinds of interesting games that aren’t digital, but I digress there.

David:

It’s hard to, you know, track this nationally. You know, let’s say we have 100 arenas open next year. It would be hard for us to kind of track those board games nationally and come up with a system. We are building an internal system right now to track all of our tournament play, though, and so that’ll be a free league tracking system that will open up to the public. I think there’s definitely a need for that right now. You know, there’s a lot of pay to play kind of things out there that are pretty good. But you know, most schools don’t have that much money. And if you want to run a little local tournament, why should you have to pay that much? So, it’s kind of our mentality about it.

Ryan:

And guess one of the questions I wrote down that I was interested in talking to you about kind of like dancing around it, but like, obviously you said the game toxicity. And then obviously there’s the competition element. Um, so like, how do you guys’ kind of blend that when you’re teaching, like you want to win and you want to get better, obviously. So that’s like the competitive side of it. There are winners. There are losers. And you know, sports and esports teach that. Um, but then balancing that with the toxicity, like you said, knowing how to win, knowing how to lose and not getting to that toxic level, like how do you what’s your guess way of teaching that? Because it is such a complex issue or it’s emotional. 

David:

It’s an emotional thing and we’re dealing with kids. Yeah. Haven’t had fully brain development, right. I mean, there’s still very much passion over logic. Right. And so that only comes through practice and time. You have to know, it’s not all carrots and sticks. It’s just repetition. Sometimes it’s saying, you know, bashing your keyboard isn’t going to really help you become better. If you have that frustration. Maybe you talk to your buddy sitting next to you. How can we get better instead of just taking it out on the keyboard? By the way, that keyboard is $45. You’re going to have to pay for it, you know. No, I’m just kidding. But yeah, there’s a lot of different methodologies that we use. We go back to tried and true methodologies too. We work with a lot of educators and instructors. This isn’t that we didn’t invent coaching. You know, coaching for any sport is going to work for this and set some core level. And so, we’ve really navigated some of those kinds of already tried and true methodologies into what we do and how we do it. Um, you know, dealing with emotional energy and trying to stay calm. That’s like 90% of it, right? And just like figuring out your triggers for these moments of outrage or these moments of toxicity. If somebody says something to you how do you react? Well, it’s not that they’re bad for saying it to you, but you’re just as bad if you react negatively. Like how do you handle that situation? I mean, the easy thing is just to turn them off. You don’t have to say anything like, you know, just maybe they just never realized that. You don’t have to say you’re such a jerk whenever somebody is a jerk to you.

David:

You know, like, turn them off. You don’t have to listen to it anymore. There’s a solution there that you maybe just haven’t come across. And then, you know, especially girl gamers right now are getting it the worst. You know, they got voice changers and stuff, so they don’t get picked on and just hate that for them, because I think this is one of those few sports, if you want to call it that, that it’s certainly one of the few competitions out there in the world that women and men are really on the same playing field. Right. I don’t even know why they have women’s leagues in this. Like, I think they want to dedicate their time and energy. They could be just as good as a guy at any of it minus the toxicity, that bunch of kind of jerk dudes are throwing out there, right? So, like, let’s get that out of the system. Let’s give them that even playing field that they deserve to play on and, and make sure that we all hold ourselves accountable on both sides, you know, and let’s see what happens. And we see a lot of girl gamers really thriving in our world. Yeah, we’re talking about that. 

Ryan:

It’s true. I definitely agree. And I feel like with the internet and obviously gaming, there’s so many people involved. So just like there’s so many people involved, there are people represented in esports or streaming that are doing their own special thing. But yeah, I think it’s really interesting.  

David:

I’m not calling out any organization or anything that’s doing special things for girls. I think that’s great. I mean, gamers are doing great stuff. I saw some stuff online about them and, you know, there’s a lot of different groups doing their thing. I’m just saying, like, it would be great if it was just an even playing field without the toxic. 

Ryan:

Yeah. 

David:

Yeah, these, these guys, they’re just salty. They got beat by anybody but picking on the girl, right? 

Ryan:

Yeah. I mean and again that’s guess where you guys’ step in. And that’s another lesson for you guys. 

David:

That’s why we’re seeing such a success rate and the parity of girls and boys being involved. And you know and it’s kind of exciting. That is kind of the exciting part is we see a lot of girl gamers getting involved and really enjoying themselves and being a part of it equally as equal members of teams and stuff. 

Ryan:

That’s really cool. I guess, yeah. To kind of wrap some of this up. What’s, what’s next for you guys. Do you have any big events coming…

David:

We do a Ragnarok event. Sorry. Didn’t mean to talk over you. We do a Ragnarok event two times a year early in the year. Usually, Q1 sometime is going to rise to Ragnarok. That kind of sets the stage for our bigger event, which just happened a couple of weeks ago. So, we’re kind of in the middle of our big events. But, you know, every single season we’ve just kicked off the fall season. So, it’ll be rolling out. I think we’re in week five of that. So, in a few weeks, we’ll finish that. We’ll go into winter. Winter is kind of where we try some different stuff out. It’s a little bit shorter of a season, so we try some new stuff and if you like that kind of thing, you jump on board and get involved. We’re always running camps. We’re always running different workshops and micro tournaments. The local league, I mean, the local arenas are now running their own local leagues too. 

Ryan:

So very cool. Yeah. 

David:

So, if you want to be your hometown hero, you can do that. Or you want to become a national hero or now, you know, we’re also rolling out into Europe and the UK pretty strong. We just signed a master franchisee in the UK, and they’re going to roll out probably 100 units over the next two years, or 100 arenas or so over the next two years. And then we’re getting the groundwork for a European expansion right now. 

Ryan:

Wow that could be huge. 

David:

You know, Europe has, what, four times as many people and a third of the geography. So, it’s very dense and very populated. And we feel like there’s a big need for what we’re offering all throughout Europe, especially like Denmark, Holland, Germany, France, places where it’s already very popular. Esports are blowing up over there. And so, I think we’ll do well in those spaces. Name worked very well in the Norwegian parts of the world. 

Ryan:

That I mean, we, I work with writers from, from all over the world obviously. So, you know, they’ll, they’ll be hearing about this for sure when we post it. But yeah, I mean there’s almost infinite, infinite possibilities and infinite interest it seems out there. 

David:

So that’s our next couple of years is just really honing in on that, keeping true to our message, keeping true to the underlying value proposition of esports in general is to have a good time and then do it in a way hundred percent a fair competitive environment. And that’s really what we want to set up for our kids. 

Ryan:

Very cool. Well, I’ve one more final question to ask. What are you, David Graham? What games are you playing right now? What’s most interesting to you? 

David:

Yeah, I get this a lot. So, everybody thinks I’m like a super big gamer. I do run a few companies, so I don’t have a ton of time but. 

Ryan:

It’s tough, right? 

David:

I spend some time with my kids, and so that’s kind of our time together. And they like Overwatch and Apex. And so, I think that’s probably where I spend most of my playing time right now. 

Ryan:

Cool. Yeah. It’s a thing called work that gets in the way of a lot. 

David:

Gaming would have been great if it wasn’t for all that work I had to do. Right? Yeah. I’m very blessed. This is something I’m passionate about. We get to come to work with and work with all my best friends, so it’s kind of awesome in that regard. We just do fun stuff and build bigger companies and better so we can help more people. I mean, it’s. It’s just great. 

Ryan:

So cool. Well thanks again David. I really appreciate it. And I’m sure the viewers on League feed will love to hear about this. Let me know. 

David:

Let me know how I can get League of Legends into it.

Ryan:

We’re going to put that that question out there to our writers and editors and hopefully online too. So yeah, maybe we’ll get some coaches coming forward or something. 

David:

There you go. There you go. We need to get a bigger youth involvement in League of Legends. Tell you what. Everybody agrees on that. 

Ryan:

I’m sure our writers and our community would agree too. However, they do love playing, you know, Valorant and some of the other games as well. But yeah, I’m sure they’d love to see you guys get into some league. 

David:

Well, I appreciate your time. 

Ryan:

All right. Well. Thanks, David. 

The post David Graham of Valhallan eSports Training: A LeagueFeed Interview appeared first on LeagueFeed.

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Thanks for stopping by…

Ryan:

To showcase this interview on our site, it’s called outsidergaming.com. And outsider Gaming mostly focuses on console gaming. And it started out as pretty much a hub for sports games, but it’s expanded into pretty much every type of game nowadays. But that’s kind of where it started. That’s where our audience kind of lies. And then we’ve obviously expanded into a lot of larger titles. Like I said, mostly console games, a little bit of the PC games, some tech reviews, and, and things of that nature. So, I guess tell me a little bit about, you know, yourself, you know, where you come from, what you do, a little bit of your professional background and of course, the company Yeah, for sure.

Ron Kerbs:

So, Ron, I, as I said before, uh, currently live in New Jersey, originally from Israel, actually an engineer by training. I have a master’s in, in machine learning. I moved to the US to do, to do my MBA. And then while I was in the US, I realized I’m also a gamer myself. So, I realized that there is a huge problem in gaming, especially in toxicity, bullying, harassment started to research a little bit more, uh, saw that a lot of kids suffer from the problem. So, there is a lot a big problem in toxicity. And, you know, I wonder what kids, what kids do with that and realize after researching that most of the kids who play are actually bullied or harassed at some point, estimated that 60% of the kids will be bullied or harassed, in video games before they turn 18. And unfortunately, there is no solution. Like if you are playing, and I assume that a lot of your audience play, like they know there is no solution if you’re playing, you know, Fortnite, Call of Duty, a lot of the games, and they’re very toxic, not because the game is toxic, because some of the other players are toxic. So what we created at Kidas is, is basically an extension, a software for parents. They install it on their kids’, gaming devices. Once they do, we monitor modern 200 of, of the most over games. And then we can alert parents and also kids if something really dangerous is happening. So if someone is trying to scam them and they get an alert, and if, if they suffer from, from severe, severe bullying, if they’re talking with an online predator and have no idea that they’re talking with an online predator, sometimes they pretend to be like a 13 years old, you know, boy, then they would get alert.

Ron Kerbs:

So, so basically what we do is we monitor the voice conversation, the text conversation combined with the gaming events to understand if something is dangerous to the player, and alert them accordingly. If something is not dangerous, we, we just don’t do, you know, anything they can play as usual.

Ryan:

Interesting. I, yeah, I think I totally agree that, you know, you hear about the toxicity in gaming and, issues like this all the time with, you know, the, the lower-level stuff, you know, just with bad mouthing or whatever you want to call it, I guess. And then it would move into bullying and then obviously the higher-level stuff of, you know, a predator or a scammer or something like that. So, I mean, for me, when I was a kid, like the first online gaming thing I had, I think was the PS three and my parents, their initial, you know, the, the way they handled it was just like, no, you’re not playing online with other players. You can play with your brother and your friends when they come over and that’s it. But now I feel like parents, even if they try to stop their kids from doing that, they might not even have the chance. Because, you know, everyone’s so connected now. So, it’s interesting that, that now there’s a solution to this. Do you find that it’s all, it’s pretty much all parents that are coming, coming to you? Like who, who are your main customers and the people that, use your product?

Ron Kerbs:

Yeah, first of all, it made me feel really old as I, because I started to play with PS one, and it was like NBA and it was still Michael Jordan against Carl Malone and, you know, you just against the Chicago Bulls NBA. But yeah, that, definitely is a big problem. And, you know, wanted to clarify, it’s not like we’re alerting every time, every time someone says, you know, the F word or something like that. That’s not the goal because otherwise we would be alerting parents like every second. And that’s not completely the goal. The goal is to, to understand if we’re dealing with more severe cases, severe bullying, that kids really, you know, suffer from hate speech, that can really affect kids, scams, online probation, and only alert about the most serious things. Another alert every time someone is saying a curse word. That’s pretty, common in gaming. In terms of, in terms of our users, and we currently support only PC games, only Windows computers. And most of our customers are parents to kids aged eight to about 14, usually before eight. They’re, they’re young, you know, they’re too young to play with other players online, the same as you said, uh, with your parents not allowing you to play with other players. And after 14, they’re, you know, old enough to probably do it themselves. They don’t need, you know, our help with doing it. And at the end, we, we see that as, you know, some kind of a gaming training. So, you start playing, the first time you play with other players, you, you have this, you know, backup plan called Protect Me and installed behind the scenes, and we can alert you if something is happening.

Ron Kerbs:

We can protect you from other things. But as you get older, you get more sophisticated and you learn how to behave online in those online community, in those online games. And then you probably no longer need, you know, the protection the same as when you start driving like somebody’s sitting next to you. Uh, at some point you realize, okay, I’m good enough and I can drive by myself.

Ryan:

Definitely, definitely. I mean, to that point, there’s been studies I’m sure, and it’s, I mean, common seems to be common knowledge, but I don’t know to any everyone, but I know that kids under, you know, 16, sometimes even 18, they sometimes can’t decipher, what’s reality versus you know, what’s on the TV and what’s, what’s in real life. So that they don’t know, you know, what situation is presenting danger, what situation can be taken lightly. So, in media in general, whether it’s entertainment, tv, video games, I feel like kids really do need to be supported because, you know, they’re brains still developing. I know everyone’s brain develops until sometimes, you know, I don’t know for a fact, but 26 sometimes I’m, I’m not exactly sure, but yeah, kids definitely do need to be supported in this day of, uh, media.

Ron Kerbs:

Yeah, I completely agree. And you know, a lot of the parents in the US understand that are threats in gaming and as you said with your parents, like the common answer is like, you’re not playing anymore. And, and that’s actually what we had with, with parents using our software. So, when we initially started the, the company with our first users, they got an alert about something happening to your child, and their first reaction was like, their child is not, you’re not playing anymore. And we know that because, you know, our system identified that the child didn’t play, you know, the week after and the week after. And then we realized that with those kinds of parents and, and most of the parents, we need to provide some recommendations that don’t really know what to do with those scenarios. So, we, we partnered with children’s psychologists and bullying experts from, from CHOP, the Children Hospital of Philadelphia, and they created a tailored recommendations for each one of our, you know, recommended each one of those, our detections. So, if your child is talking with an online predator, you’ll probably like terrified and don’t, don’t really know what to do. Um, you’re gonna get from us, you know, a bullet list of what are the things that you need to do, like, who do you need to call, how do you need to communicate it to your child? Because it’s a lot about, development and, you know, the age of the child. Like you cannot talk about online predators with an eight-year-old, the same as you talk with, you know, a 14-year-old, uh, child. So, you need to understand what are they able to perceive at this age and, and direct, you know, the conversation towards, you know, those topics.

Ron Kerbs:

And, and the goal of kidas is not to be, you know, a spy, you know, on ki to be a conversation story. Say, listen, I received some alerts about those situations. Let’s talk about it together. Let’s figure it out together. Um, let’s solve it together. It’s not about me. You, I’m not getting the full conversation. I’m not getting a transcript. I’m just getting an alert, a summary of what happened. And it’s not like I can listen to all of your conversation, read over your text or something like that. I know a lot of, you know, some of the parent controls allow you to do that. We’re totally against it. Like we’re, we don’t allow parents to, to read all of their kids text or listen to all of their kids’ conversations. We, we, we want kids to have their, you know, personal space. We want, we want ’em to do it safely.

Ryan:

So, so how does that situation go then? Um, if you had to identify a common, like step-by-step when, um, you know, a situation arises from, you know, in game to, after the game’s over and then, you know, coming back to playing, where is the intervention? Who is intervening? What is the notification like? Take me through a little bit of that, like step by step, I guess.

Ron Kerbs:

Yeah, so, so let’s take, like a financial scam. That’s like a very common thing. Let’s say that the child is talking with someone, and he or she convinced the child, the scammer, to share some private financial information. It could be anything from, you know, credit card numbers. We had a lot of kids sharing their parents’ credit card numbers because someone convinced them to purchase virtual assets. Could be social security number, it could be password to their account. Hey, let’s switch virtual assets. I’ll, I’ll give it to you, you’ll give it to me. In those cases, parents are getting in a minute an alert, an SMS alert to their phones as well as emails. And, and they, they’re getting recommendation on what are the most immediate things that they need to do right now to solve the situation right now. Then in the weekly report, they’re getting every beginning, every beginning of the week, they’re getting, you know, a full report with strength, how much time your kid is playing, what type of games, what new games we recommend parents to play with their kids or to read about so they can be, you know, be more aware of what is happening out there. So, in those longer reports, those weekly reports, they’re getting more recommendations for the long run. So basically, what conversations should we have? What are the next steps? Do we need to change some of the settings within the game and so on.

Ryan:

Interesting. And is there, I guess anyone from your team that, is there like a conversation that happens at some point with, with the parents or with the kids, or, is it mostly just like you guys are, your team is advising the parents and then it’s up to the parents obviously to, you know, make sure their card information is safe or make sure that their kid’s not talking to someone they shouldn’t be talking to, things like that?

Ron Kerbs:

Yeah, so, so we, we send them the information and they, they read it on our website. You know, our customer support is always open, and we, we had a few cases of parents asking us more, and we of course help them. But the goal is to provide them enough information and to leave the choice to them. Like you, we send you what do the expert, recommend to do and expert who are children’s psychology, uh, bullying experts. Now you can choose if you follow the recommendation or maybe, you know, it’s a unique situation and you would, do you want to do something else, but in the end, you are the parents, you are the parent, you are responsible for your kids. We’re not, we’re here to provide recommendations. We’re not here to force you to, to tell you what to do. And parents should be parents and should, they should do the parenting is not on us.

Ryan:

Absolutely. Yeah. That’s, that’s super interesting. So, I guess, for our sites that Treasure Hunter works on, like we said, I said, I, we have the outsider gaming.com and then, we have league feed.net, which is all about, um, obviously League of Legends, but other PC games and PC gaming technologies. So now I’m thinking about that audience. What kind of games do you, do you mostly, or yeah, I guess what kind of games are the kids playing that you are offering these recommendations to? Yeah, what, what are you finding most often that they’re playing?

Ron Kerbs:

Yeah, so we’re, we’re finding a lot of Call of Duty, Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, League of Legends is, is another big one. A lot of, you know, NBA, FIFA we see a lot. So, so those are the top, the top games. But, you know, it changes, it changes within demographics. So, even within the US you see that, you know, within specific regions, some games are more popular than other games. And also, within you know, age range. So, the games that are played by, you know, 8, 9, 10-year-old are completely different than the ones that are played by, you know, 13- or 14-year-old, uh, kids. So completely different. But you know, that’s one thing that we, we do share with parents so they can see the gaming habits of their child when they can feel all. So how is it compared to other kids in the relevant age range? So how much time are they playing the other kids? What type of games are they playing? How many others did they receive, like on average? Uh, and so on. And we, we also just integrated, connection to the gaming database, the parent gaming data database. So, we’re able to see their gaming activity, the kids gaming activity, and recommend parents. What are some other games that they should recommend their kids to play? So, for example, some parents, you know, the same as your parents, you know, their kids play multiplayer games and they think that, eh, maybe my kid should play more single player games. So, we have the ability to recommend them, okay, here are some single player games that are pretty similar to the multiplayer games that your child is playing.

Ron Kerbs:

Or maybe their kids are spending a lot of money on in-game purchases. So, we have the ability to recommend, hey, here are some games that are pretty similar to what your kid is playing, but don’t have in-game purchases. Those kinds of things.

Ryan:

Interesting. And so, you said, um, you just support at this point, um, PC gaming on, on Windows computers usually?

Ron Kerbs:

Yeah. And, and we, we support more than 200 games. We have the field full list on our website. I can send you the link.

Ryan:

Very cool. Do you guys have any plans to expand into the console realm, or, I know, I mean, there’s, now there’s VR gaming, well, do you have any expansion, goals there? I guess?

Ron Kerbs:

Yeah, we actually created a proof of concept for Xbox in the past, um, but decided for now to focus on PC gaming. I think the, you know, the next obvious place for us would probably be cloud gaming, uh, because we see a lot of players, especially young ones who don’t have the, you know, the right equipment, they don’t have strong enough computers. They’re probably using their school computers, using those to use those services, or even playing that on, on tv. So I think that’s one, one place that we we’re looking to extend to, and also mobile gaming, and definitely console gaming as well. At the end, we want Kidas to be a hub for, for parents. You can connect all of your kids’ gaming devices and see all of the activity in one device or in, in one place, in one dashboard, and control everything from, from there.

Ryan:

Interesting. I guess I’m sure you guys, you know, are conducting research on, on the gaming industry all the time. Where do you see the industry going, especially for the kids, um, I guess between the, you know, the young guys and girls who, you know, five, six sometimes are playing games, and you said, you know, seven, eight till 16 ish, I’m sure. Where do you see that, that age range and their interests, now and going into the next five to ten years?

Ron Kerbs:

Yeah, so, first of all, we see a lot more kids playing. So currently it’s about 90% of the kids in, of the boys in the us and 70 something percent of the girls in the US play some kind of game. So, it could be either mobile games or console or PC games. What we see, we see a lot more games with, uh, voice chats, you know, usually before, I think in the last, you know, two or three years ago, game that were directly towards younger kids did not include voice chats. Like you can think about Roblox, um, but even Roblox, they added voice chats, you know, a few months ago. And I think a lot of those games going towards voice chat, it creates a little bit of problem for them because of COPA, the Children Online Privacy Protection Act, you need to make sure that children are not sharing, you know, private information. You’re not processing information without the parents’ consent. But definitely seeing a lot more game going for Voice Chat. We’ve seen kids maturing with the platform that they started to play the younger kid. So we see the average age of Minecraft, Roblox, even Fortnite, and getting older and older as kids start to play, but just don’t leave those games and continue to play, you know, as teen and even adults. And so, we think that it creates some, some threats to younger kids who, who start to play those games because if, you know, four or five years ago, most of the people playing Roblox were almost at the same age range. Now you’re gonna see a big variance in the age range. So, you’re gonna see some kids who are seven to eight, and you’re gonna see some people who are like 25, 24, 8, 4 playing those games.

Ron Kerbs:

So, once you have those, those things, like imagine a club like you, you, you wouldn’t imagine a club, a dance club with, you know, someone who’s 25 and someone who’s eight or nine, that’s even the same, you know, place. And you know that that’s the reason that you, you have some age limits for those things. And I think that’s what it happened virtually, you know, in the metaverse in in those, some of those places in Fortnite, in Roblox, in Minecraft, in many of those games.

Ryan:

Definitely. I mean, now that, we’re talking more about this, I remember back in the, you know, when I first started, uh, trying to play online, like I said, PS three was, was one avenue to do that. And you know, my parents at first were just like, no, like, you shouldn’t be doing online gaming for now. You know, too young, whatever. I forget what age I was, maybe 13 or, something like that when, when that came out. But there’s also the games that you’re playing that your parents don’t know about. And you know, as a kid, you’re always, you know, trying to be a little sneaky or trying to pull one over on your, on your parents. I know for, for myself, uh, one of the games I played at a, a younger age was, uh, Club Penguin. And that was like an online interaction type, type game. What, what do you guys recommend for parents, where kids are, you know, kids are smarter than parents sometimes, these days. What, what are some other recommendations for parents, um, when it comes to, you know, the games that they don’t know about? You know?

Ron Kerbs:

Yeah, so I think first of all, it should be, you know, parents should assume that, you know, kids are smarter, smarter than them in most of those cases. Um, but they should be more aware, they should play with their kids. So basically, I know a lot of the parents never, you know, played with their kids, like, that’s a major thing that they’re interested in. Why don’t you just, you know, sit with them for, you know, the few hours and tell them like, hey, teach me how to play Fortnite. Teach me how to play Roblox. Teach me about that. Like, can we play together? And the same as your, you know, trying to, to make them, to be, to make them interested in things that you are interested in as a parent. Like, show some interest in the things that they’re interested in and learn about, you know, the slang, you know, what are some of the words that they’re saying? Like, what is robloxs? What is v-bux? What is some of the terms that they’re using? So, I think that’s like a really good important, important thing. And other than that, I think that they should be, you know, really open about video games because I see, see a lot of parents was like, hey, my child is playing video games all the time. I don’t know, I want ’em to spend some time outside and spending some time outside is important, but I think parents should understand that video games and those online virtual worlds are actually the park of, you know, this generation. So, they’re playing, but they’re also meeting all of their friends online. So, if you’re not letting them play, you are basically eliminating their option to play with their friends and meet online with their friends.

Ron Kerbs:

And sometimes they, you know, they can go to the park, and no one will be there, cause all of their friends are at home playing those games. And, and so I think especially for parents who, you know, who don’t live in the city, who, who live in, who live in places that are, you know, a little bit trickier for kids to meet each other. And I see a lot of the kids playing online afternoon, and just because, you know, if their parents don’t drive them, that’s their only way to, socialize, interact with our kids.

Ryan:

Yep, yep. Definitely makes sense. Yeah, I think, uh, for, for gaming in general, it’s just, it’s not going anywhere, right? So, I think it’s just all about not trying to eliminate the, the problem or eliminate the possibility of the problem. It’s what you guys are saying. It’s kind of guide it, make it a little bit more safe and, you know, get the parents involved more or less, rather than, I know most parents, or some parents probably more play games nowadays than they did, but most of the time, and you know, myself growing up is just like, parents never really played video games. They, they’re just like, I know about basketball, I know about football, I know about soccer. I don’t really know about Call of Duty. So, it’s like sometimes what you don’t know can, can be a little scary and you try to just shut it out. But it’s definitely like what you’re saying, it’s the right move to, uh, engage rather than disengage.

Ron Kerbs:

Yeah. And also, you know, those video games are sometimes the new avenue to get, you know, scholarships for, for college. And like if, you know, 10, 15 years ago you can get a basketball or football scholarship now you can get in a lot of the places you can get an eSports scholarship and you have eSports teams. And so, it’s, it’s something that, you know, people do professionally and people, you know, pretty seriously. It’s not just like a hobby. People do it professionally and, you know, some of the most popular, you know, online, online tournaments have more people watching them than, you know, watching, you know, the NBA finals. So, definitely something that the parents should consider and, you know, understand.

Ryan:

Absolutely. One thing that reminds me of is one of our writers from, uh, leaguefeed.net, his name’s Andre. Um, he interviewed, um, Jay from, uh, XP League. Have you, have you ever heard of XP League? It’s a, um, eSports team for just for young, younger kids. You know, he says it’s the same, same thing as, you know, he’s trying to make just a, you know, the best soccer league for, for kids, the same thing, best eSports, um, league for kids to join to support them while they’re gaming, show them, you know, making real relationships, show them how to handle defeat, how to handle winning, like all these things that, you know, when we both, uh, growing up it’s mostly just sports teach you that, but now he’s trying to do this in eSports. Just something I thought, I thought you might, know of this XP league. Um, but yeah, it’s something that, that we just did an interview on it, it was really interesting.

Ron Kerbs:

Yeah, actually I wasn’t aware of that, but that’s, yeah, that’s something I should check. Definitely.

Ryan:

Otherwise, what kind of, uh, technology does Kidas use, and how do you kind of assess, you know, what’s going on and trigger the software or the product to kind of spring into action there?

Ron Kerbs:

Yeah, so it’s quite unique what we do. So, um, I like what people expect. They think, ah, okay, they just detect when we, when you use curse words and send an alert, we, we actually take the voice chat combining with the gaming events and identify a lot of things that are happening within the voice chat. So, you can think about like identifying if someone is crying, if someone is happy, if someone is sad, understanding the child’s age based on, you know, the type of words they use or maybe based on their, um, their voice. If some people are using voice changer. So, you know, it runs that, but like, based on their voice. And then combine all of this information with the context of, of the conversation and also with the context of the game, and then alerting parents about the situation. So, if you are telling me I’m going to kill you and we’re playing a shooting game, we are not gonna alert you. Um, but if we know that you are not playing a shooting game or it’s not part of the game and we saw that, you know, there was hate speech before or something like that, we can definitely alert parents about the situation. So, we’re combining a lot of features from different aspects and to, to understand what is happening within the conversation.

Ryan:

Interesting. Is that, is now, is that like done with a certain type of ai? Is that something that exists, the technology exists in other, you know, other areas of the world that we know about? Or is this really, really unique to you guys?

Ron Kerbs:

Yeah, it, it’s pretty unique to us. So, our background is actually national security. So, all of the team worked in national security before. So, what we did, we basically brought our expertise from national security to the video game industry, uh, to protect kids. So, it’s not like something that you can, hey, I’m just gonna feed it to check it, I’m gonna, you know, uh, tell me if something is toxic or not. It’s something that we, we built in house, we train them on millions of conversations and to make sure that we’re, you know, really accurate and detecting more than 60 type of risk. So, it’s not just one type of risk, we’re supporting more than 60 of them.

Ryan:

Interesting. That’s, uh, that’s pretty crazy. I noticed when I looked you up on LinkedIn, and obviously I know this just about, um, being, you know, in Israel, you were in the army there or in the, you know, tell me a little bit about that and how that, informs and led you to, this role you’re in now.

Ron Kerbs:

Yeah, so, I was in the military almost seven years. Uh, Israel has an obligatory service, so three years, I was actually for almost four years more. I went to the university before, did my bachelor’s and also my master’s and served in the military. And it basically affected us a lot because all of our core team, we work together in, in the military together, so we know each other well. We worked together before on similar problems. And then when we started Kidas, it was very easy to say, okay, we know each other, we work together, we know how to solve this problem. We identify those problems because we know that because we’re gamers, so we have the, the industry knowledge, we have the technological knowledge, we know each other very well. So, we know that we, we like working with each other, so it was very easy for us to start working together and specific problem.

Ryan:

That’s cool. I mean, yeah, it’s talk about, people you trust, you know, if you’re in the, you know, in an armed service, you know, whether Israel, us, wherever you are, I mean, you’re gonna, you’re really bond with the, the people that you’re with and then going ahead and starting a company with those people, that’s sounds like a recipe for success.

Ron Kerbs:

Yeah. And, and once you, you know, we were not come as fires. We were working in office, you know, solving engineering problems. Um, but you, you know, you work in very stressful situations, uh, things that you, you know, you’re doing things that you know are really going to protect people and people’s life depend on, on what you’re doing. And so, you’re under a lot of stress and you know that if you function together with those people under a lot of stress, you’re probably gonna be okay, even in a startup context, which is stressful for itself. But definitely you, you already stressed as the, the connection with those, with those people.

Ryan:

Yeah, I bet. And then I guess talking about, some real-world examples for Kidas ha have you personally or anyone on your team worked on and prevented some, you know, situation that if without this product or without this software might have really gone, you know, gone bad or, or anything like that?

Ron Kerbs:

Yeah, we had a lot of cases actually. We have almost every week we, we have like, well every week we send alerts to parents, but almost, you know, every week or maybe every other week, we, we have very serious alerts. So, we have, a lot of cases of kids sharing private financial information, credit cards, social security numbers, passwords, and we have kids setting up meetings with online strangers. We actually had a kid who was planning to, to drive, to take a bus 600 miles to meet someone they didn’t know that didn’t know him, met online, and we had a case involving a gun and some, some kid was, you know, talking about playing a game and then, thinking that, yeah, I can implement it in real life. So, he was talking about bringing his, uh, his father’s gun to school. So, we, we, we about the situation as well. So definitely, and I’m not even counting, you know, the, the cases of bullying or hate speech that we, we detected. Those are, you know, really, common. Uh, but I would say that the most serious thing that we prevented are, you know, gun, gun related, things, financial scams and a lot of bullying cases.

Ryan:

Wow. Yeah, I mean, no one likes to talk about, you know, these things, but they’re, they’re very real. You know, it’s, there’s obviously, crazy stuff happens every day and it’s, you know, it’s not always brought to light, but it seems like you’re really doing some important work here. So, this is, this has been super interesting, on the lighter side. I guess one of my, one of my final questions for you is what’s your, what’s your favorite game or what’s the last game that you found yourself, uh, playing?

Ron Kerbs:

Yeah. I like a lot of shooter games, so I, I played a lot of Call of Duty and GTA, I played a lot, with social games. I actually played FIFA, so I played it with, you know, France with, with my brother just came to village from, from Israel. And so, we play, we used to play a lot of FIFA this time we didn’t have time. It was quite a busy, um, but you know, a lot of the sports games, FIFA was one of them. And, and the shooting games.

Ryan:

Cool. Yeah, I’m more of a, I guess for my background, I’m more of a casual gamer. I work on, on these sites more as a, you know, journalist and project manager and marketing manager more so than, you know, an actual, um, avid gamer. But for me it was, growing up, it was always Pokemon, um, at a real young age with a Game Boy. And then now I got the Switch, you know, just last year and then played the new Pokemon game, and I was like, oh my God, it came full circle. But yeah, I, I think when it first came out, I, I did it and it was kind of like, oh, like this is funny, you know, like I would bring it, bring it around and see my friends and be like, Hey, there’s a, a Pokemon next to you know, like, but no, I never really played, played that one too. Uh, too seriously.

Ron Kerbs:

Yeah, I remember, I remember like, I don’t know, it was five, six years ago and my wife back then, she was my girlfriend, and when we came back from the party, it was like, I don’t know, two or 3:00 AM and then she was like, yeah, I wanted to go to this random, you know, place at night. It was like a park. And I was like, well, what do you wanna do there? Yeah, I see that they have some po, some Pokemons there when I came like, are at like 3:00 AM I want go back, back home. And you were like catching Pokemon in the middle of a, dark, dark park.

Ryan:

And yeah, maybe that was, uh, inspiration for your technology. Had to alert, alert, uh, some, I don’t know if they had a parental guardian on, uh, your, your girlfriend or your wife’s account at that point. Yes. But alert someone catching Pokemon too late. Yeah. That’s funny. All right, well, um, again, thank you so much. Um, that kind of brings me through all my questions, but if there’s, is there anything that, you know, you wanna leave, the audience with anything that you think, if anything they should take away from this, uh, this interview?

Ron Kerbs:

Yeah, I think that, you know, we, we talked a lot about the risk in the mean and don’t want to, you know, end it in a negative note. I want, you know, wanna encourage people out there to play games, do it in a safe way, but definitely play games. It has been proven to, to improve kids’ lives socially, improve skills, coordination, definitely a lot of benefits, and just try to do it, safely and be informed about some of the threats out there.

Ryan:

Definitely. Yeah, I think, I think it’s supposed to be fun and it seems like you guys are trying to keep it that way, so appreciate that.

Ron Kerbs:

Yeah, Sure.

Ryan:

All right. Any, uh, big events or happenings for you guys coming up?

Ron Kerbs:

We have pretty, we, we have few, few big announcements that we’re going to announce soon with big companies. Maybe we can share it with you, you know, pretty soon. And we definitely have some big announcements, um, you know, partners that we’re launching with in the next few weeks.

Ryan:

Cool. All right. Well, yeah, obviously if you ever have any, any PR or anything, send it over. We’ll try our best to, to write about it. And as far as this interview, I think, uh, we’ll probably, you know, between over the next week, by the end of next week, hopefully be able to publish this and, uh, we’ll keep you updated and show you where the, the interview lands. Um, we’ll usually do a, a video interview and then we’ll do like the, uh, an article on the site as well, so we have a written and the video version.

Ron Kerbs:

So, yeah. Sounds good. And really, thank you. Really wanted to thank you for, for taking the time to talk with me. Definitely enjoyed our conversation and, you know, getting to know you. And definitely feel free to reach out, you know, if, if you have any questions or you are wondering about something or wanted to, to hear aspect about a new trend or something like that, we’d be happy to talk anytime.

Ryan:

Awesome. All right. Well, yeah, super appreciated and yeah, it was just really interesting conversation, so thank you, Ryan. All right, bye Ron.

Ron Kerbs:

Thanks Everyone. Have a good one.

Conclusion

As we conclude this informative interview, it’s clear that many things have changed in the gaming industry. From its early, rudimentary beginnings to its modern, global reach, gaming has become a staple in the lives of young and old alike. However, mindful parenting in the digital sphere is now more important than ever.

Kidas’s creator, Ron Kerbs, has helped bring the issue of toxic players, cyberbullying, and online predators into the spotlight. Protecting young athletes from harm is of utmost importance as the globe grows more linked. Kidas provides parents with the tools they need to monitor their children’s online activity and prevent any inappropriate content from being accessed.

The discussion with Ron Kerbs has brought to light the importance of tackling these issues and the potential of technology to create a more secure digital community. The programme developed by Kidas serves as a watchdog, keeping tabs on players’ actions and sounding the alarm if anything seems amiss.

For more information on the convergence of technology, gaming, and kid safety, we invite you to watch the whole video.

The post Kidas CEO, Ron Kerbs’ Mission to Protect & Support Kids while Gaming Online appeared first on LeagueFeed.

The world of gaming has recently seen the introduction of Gamerabble, an AI-based gaming tool that aims to give a better learning experience to newer players. 

Fabrice Samedy sat down with Chris Matthews, CEO and co-founder of Gamerabble, to discuss topics surrounding his newest creation. After the conversation, Chris Matthews set up the coupon code “leaguefeed” for the community to use on both gamerabble.com and academy.gamerabble.com.

Fabrice Samedy: Hi, I want to start this interview by asking a simple question: who do I have the pleasure to talk to?

Chris Matthews (Co-Founder and COO of Gamerabble):

My name is Chris Matthews and I am co-founder and the COO of GameRabble.

Fabrice Samedy: It’s a pleasure to talk to you. In your own words, can you explain what GameRabble is?

Chris Matthews: Sure, GameRabble is an esport coaching and community platform for players that want to improve and engage in a non-toxic gamified experience.

Fabrice Samedy: Can you explain what kind of service does GameRabble provide to the customers?

Chris Matthews: Sure. So we provide a couple of different things. We’ve recently pivoted fully into AI. We launched an AI based match analyzer in November that will analyze your gameplay.The way it works is simple,you upload your gameplay and the AI will look at it and it will give you immediate feedback with a bunch of fancy statistics. These stats will tell you what you did well and what you utterly sucked at or what you can do to get better. The program can send you to different exercises that you can do to get better. It can also direct you to an in-person coach.

On top of that, the entire thing is gamified as well, which means that there’s different Quest cards that you can unlock. For example, if you  get five head shots with a character, the AI will recognize that and a Quest card flips over. You will be able to gain things like GameRabble XP which you can build up to purchase things like coaching experiences or stuff like a free medium pizza. We also have our coaching side of the platform where you can hire one of our vetted coaches who caters to all sorts of players so they can feel more comfortable when they play online with friends, coworkers, or with strangers.

Fabrice Samedy: When it comes to the coaching side of the platform, what games can the customer get coaching in?

Chris Matthews: Right now, we will provide coaching for anyone that wants to be coached. So, assuming that the coach fits in with our ethos and everything, we’re willing to offer anything if there is a market for it. For now, our biggest markets are League of Legends, Valorant, Apex Legends, and surprisingly, Sim racing.

Fabrice Samedy: Where did the idea of creating such a tool come from?

Chris Matthews: I’m a longtime gamer, but I also am an adult that runs a company, so I I don’t have as much time to game as I would like to. I am at the point where with my limited time, I would like to get on and play these games and not have some 12 year old telling me 50 different ways that I should go kill myself or how bad I suck after 30 seconds of playing. I saw that there were other coaching platforms out there, but they sort of lean into people that think that they’re gonna be a high level professional esport players which most people are not, which also means that they also don’t need an extremely high level coach either. You know, if I wanted to go out and learn how to play golf and I went to hire Tiger Woods, it would be a waste of everybody’s time because he is well above and beyond what I’m ever going to be. I just need somebody that can sort of sit there with me and give me tips in a very friendly manner and that will help me get better. Additionally, I am a father now, so I saw an opportunity to try and make the gaming world a better place for my son before he starts getting into too much online games.

Fabrice Samedy: Right, and how does GameRabble differentiate itself from the rest of its competitors?

Chris Matthews: Our ethos is different. We want to be the sort of a kinder and friendlier platform that is available to those new players and the discontent ones instead of aiming ourselves at the super high performance crowd that  sometimes lends itself to the toxic side of things. We want to get together with the people that play because they like playing or that want to get a little bit better at playing when they do play without necessarily having the need to be with the super competitive, high performance players.

Fabrice Samedy: From the client point of view, how does the whole process work?

Chris Matthews: As I mentioned earlier, we have a few different offerings. It depends on what you want because some people don’t want to hire an in-person coach and are only utilizing the software.The software itself is free and that’s what 90% of people are gonna use. There is a $7 a month subscription available for that as well that will give you unlimited vids from an in-person coach.

So for $7 a month, you get unlimited human analysis and you can also have that video that you made . So that’s two levels utilizing the software and then some people just want to go straight to playing with a coach to get that immediate feedback from an actual person.

Fabrice Samedy: You mentioned earlier that you’re using an AI. I want to ask you, what made you decide to use that tool for this project?

Chris Matthews: Our ethos and software is trying to be a little more fun and more friendly. We also wanted something that is going to be less tantamount to what a lot of people see as cheating.

You know, there’s a lot of software out there that gives you so much information while you’re playing the game that it gives you an unfair advantage and a lot of people see that as cheating.

Even the developers don’t approve of a lot of this and you definitely can’t use these things as tournaments, so you’re not actually getting better at playing the game.It’s like if you’re playing chess and you constantly had someone over your shoulder saying what move to take. Are you a better chess player or are you just doing what your coach is telling you to do?

Our product actually does not incorporate an overlay while you play, it doesn’t give you that feedback until afterwards. It’s there to actually coach to get you to be better. With that in mind, not only can it be a good tool for the players to actually improve, but it can be a tool for the coaches to utilize it as another step in the VOD. It can also be a good tool for streamers and influencers because it also automatically generates highlight reels, and all you have to do is push a button and you can share it with your socials as well.

Fabrice Samedy: From your point of view, what are the benefits that come from using your platform?

Chris Matthews: By using our platform, you are actually going to improve and you’re going to have fun doing it as well. We fully guarantee that our coaches aren’t going to start tilting and go nuts on you or lose their patience with you because you’re a new player or that you’re just not that good at it. You are going to improve in whatever game that you end up signing up for and you’re going to have fun doing it as well.

Fabrice Samedy: How long has GameRabble existed?

Chris Matthews: I think it initially launched exactly two years ago. It had been in development for about eight months prior to that, so let’s say two and a half years total.

Fabrice Samedy: What has the feedback been like since the launch?

Chris Matthews: We’ve had some amazing feedback, especially from the coaching side of things. People really appreciate what we’re trying to do and our users and coaches are some of our biggest cheerleaders. The reason behind that is because a lot of them have gone other places and tried the mountain, but they kind of  felt like they were just another cog in the wheel, that they weren’t actually being looked after or cared for as a person. We tried to actually reach out to our coaches, players and solve problems or engage with them. I will talk to anybody that wants to talk to me. They have a direct line to one of the founders to talk about whatever they want.

Fabrice Samedy: Okay. I don’t know if you can provide some statistics about how many people have used your platform since the launch and how many coaches do you have?

Chris Matthews: Sure, as far as the coaching side of things, we have about close to 500 coaches on board.

They’ve brought in quite a few users on their own with probably about 700, actual players utilizing those coaches as well. We just launched the software and we haven’t marketed it yet. We launched the software at the very beginning of this year and that has already brought in 172 users until this point and all of that has been by word of mouth or us reaching out to get people to test it out and give us feedback on it.

Fabrice Samedy: Are you happy with the growth of it so far?

Chris Matthews: We’re not happy with the growth of the software side of things yet, but like I said, we haven’t started marketing it yet. Part of the reason why we haven’t done that is we are actually launching a brand new platform. Hopefully, it will launch in the next five to eight weeks and it is going to unify our platform. Right now, we’ve got two parts of the business and we are going to launch a new platform that’s going to unify everything to make it a lot easier for our players to find. With this fusion, they’re gonna be able to talk to each other and help improve the offerings for our users.

Fabrice Samedy: What is the future for your company and this project?

Chris Matthews: So for the future of the company, we are going to continue to develop our AI, not only with the current software that we have, but we are going to add more options to that software.

We’re working on adding a couple more games and we’re looking at potentially adding in an AI coach who is built into the software. It will be able to give you human-like feedback on top of everything else that it’s giving you. Obviously, it’s got a long way to go and it won’t have the soul that an actual human does. We’re definitely leaning more into AI with the software. We are also going to launch an AI matching system for players and coaches to make sure that the players actually get the best coach for them instead of going and picking someone out randomly. With that said, they can do that as well. They will be able to pick out and be matched with a coach depending on approximately 50 to a hundred different data points to make sure that they’re gonna be matched with the right coach for them. 

Fabrice Samedy: What are your wishes with those new modifications to your product?

Chris Matthews: I wish that it would be ready tomorrow. That’s my main wish. Once it’s out there, I hope that people can really understand the value that we’re trying to give them. Which is that we really want to build it for them and not at them.

Fabrice Samedy: Okay. You  spoke  earlier about including new titles or new games to your offer. Can you tell me what kind of games you are looking for?

Chris Matthews: What I can tell you is that the next few games coming out for the software are going to be first person shooters.  We’re also working on some of the sports ones as well. We’re playing around with things like FIFA and Rocket League, but  the first ones to be out are going to be first person shooters. I don’t wanna tell you exactly which ones yet because one might end up leapfrogging the other, and I don’t want us to be wrong. What I can tell is that there’ll be a couple of the big FPS’s out there.

Fabrice Samedy: Last thing I had to ask you is if  you had to convince someone to use your software or your platform, what would you tell them?

Chris Matthews: I’d tell them that the software is free. You don’t have anything to lose. In fact, if you use the software, you could actually win things there. We’re still rolling out some of our sponsorships that will be able to give our users free things like we talked about. You have nothing to lose. In fact, you could actually gain things by utilizing the software. On the coaching side of things, if you’re really not happy with the way things go, we’ll give you your money back.

Fabrice Samedy: Well, that is all that I wanted to ask you for this interview. Again, thank you for taking the time out of your day for this. I wish you a good day.

Chris Matthews: Absolutely. You too. Bye bye.

Conclusion

As someone who loves to play competitive video games like League of Legends, but don’t have as much time as before, I think it would be to my own benefit to use the services that Gamerabble offers. I think that using these services would help me get better at the game that I spent a lot of time playing in the past while maximizing the limited amount of time that I have now. I would personally recommend stuff like that to the people that are in a similar situation. 

All the services described in this interview and more information can be found at https://www.gamerabble.com/.

The post Understanding an AI-based Gaming Coach Service: Interview with Chris, the CEO of Gamerabble appeared first on LeagueFeed.

Fab: So Dr. Respawn, thank you for taking the time to answer my question today. Can you give a small introduction about who you are?

Respawn: Hi, my name is Dr. Respawn online or I go by Jordan. And yeah, I’m a physical therapist, as well as a board-certified orthopedic clinical specialist. I’ve been working in outpatient orthopedics for about four years and in professional esport for almost the same time. I’m currently the team physical therapist for tier one organizations, including Cloud  9 and Evil Geniuses. I’ve worked with 100 Thieves and TSM and a few other orgs as well in the past. My main primary objective is player performance and Player Health. And thank you for having me.

Fab: I always wanted to ask, but do you have any fun anecdote or something that the public might not know about you that you want to share?

Respawn: A fun fact about me is that I used to be an art student. In high school, I went to an art school, I used to do visual arts, and I still enjoy painting, drawing, and sculpting, but it is more of a hobby now instead of a career. After high school, I went to the army. So I’m also a US Army veteran. I served in Iraq from 2007 to 2008. I was a combat medic, which kind of got me into the medical route. I’ve been a gamer my whole life and being able to work in professional eSports is something of a dream come true for me. So I really enjoy it.

Fab: Alright, so you said you were an art student? That is quite a shift in career path. Can you explain why did you decide to change from an art job to a medical one?

Respawn: I was a bit lost in my life at that time when I was 18. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do in the future. I started my first quarter of college as a studio art major, but I really just didn’t enjoy it so I decided that I’m just going to change my entire trajectory. I wanted to figure out what I want to do in life because, in the US, you’re paying so much money for college every semester. So I dropped out and joined the military. They also pay for your college, if you do your time. I ended up spending three years in the military, as a combat medic made me really enjoy the thought process of working with people as well as trying to figure out how to help them. After my deployment, I decided I’d like to go back to college and decided to pursue medicine.

Fab: All right, so we’re gonna go right in. Can you explain what you do for a living?

Respawn: As a physical therapist, I primarily see patients in the outpatient world for injuries, post surgeries, and basically rehab if they have pain, or discomfort while working. With the esport side, this is something I’ve kind of built out myself. It was definitely not a position that is very common for most people. For me, it was cool to be able to get into an industry that I really love. I’ve always liked playing and watching games, while still being able to help people. With teams, I do regular check-ins with mostly League of Legends players, but I work on ergonomics and preventative health. I make sure they know exercises, what to do between games, how to stretch, how to work, etc. If there are any potential issues that arise during practice like wrist pain or shoulder pain, then I work to resolve that. I teach them what they can do posturally as well as with a specific treatment program to basically keep players at 100% through the year.

Fab: How long have you been a physical therapist?

Respawn: I graduated in 2018 so four years.

Fab: What brought you into this world of esport and what is keeping you in it?

Respawn: I’ve always really enjoyed gaming. It’s always been my pastime. I think I started playing on the original Nintendo and I just always loved games. So for me to have the opportunity to actually do something for the community of gamers is a really cool opportunity because not many people are doing this stuff. There are not many rehab specialists out there period. The fact that it was wide open, I feel like I can benefit people. All of that together was something I should just pursue.

Fab: Can you describe what are your responsibilities as a physical therapist?

Respawn: I mostly work for musculoskeletal pain and injury. I also do movement rehabilitation, which means teaching people how to move better, exercise better, and how to do their daily living better. How you sit when you game and all of that stuff is really important.

Fab: What does a typical day or week look like for you?

Respawn: Right now it is a little bit weird, but when I first started out with gaming and my outpatient job, I would go to work like everyone else and then I would go see one of my teams after work. I would do a couple of hours at their house or their facility and then I would go home. I also try to work out every day. That’s six days a week minimum and I go to the gym as well after work. Right now, it’s a little bit less, it’s about 50/50  between esport and general physical therapy.

Fab: What do you cover during a session? What do you do with your clients?

Respawn: My first thing is that I want to know if they have a current problem that they’re trying to address, do they have a very specific issue. Then my assessment becomes much more dedicated towards that. So if they say that they have wrist pain, I’m not gonna spend too much time addressing everything else and I’m probably going to look at what’s influencing the wrist. If not, then I generally look at posture. How do you sit when you play? How are your computer peripherals? To make sure that those are ergonomically sound. After that, I go into what are your habits when you play. Are you grinding the game and then not taking breaks or are you actually making sure to take regular rest breaks? From there, it depends. If they have questions about specific exercises, if they want to know stretches, a lot of it is preventative, but I also really believe that it should be individual with the person. If you can find a goal that they have it becomes much more meaningful when you give them the stuff to work on.

Fab: What do you value the most? What do you get the most out of your job?

Respawn: What do I get the most out of my job? I guess at the end of the day, I just really enjoy working with people and helping them. I know that’s kind of cliche, but I do find a lot of satisfaction. At the end of the day when my primary mission was to make somebody feel better that day. My goal and my mission are to basically help people live their lives with less pain and fewer issues.

Fab: In your experience, what are the most common injuries or discomfort that you had to treat?

Respawn: Well, if we’re talking specifically about PC gamers, I would say that the number one thing I see is tendinopathies, meaning irritation of the common extensor tendons usually, those are the muscles that control your finger muscles. In games like League of Legends, you’re clicking the mouse 1000s of times per game and that can really irritate the tendon and really adds up. I also see forearm pain, neck pain, and shoulder pain as well.

Fab: So you explained the injuries, but what are the ways of treating or preventing them?

Respawn: It’s usually building capacity. This means having more strength and endurance because it will inevitably just make everything much easier for you. You want to be strengthening as well as regular stretching. When overuse injuries arise they are either caused by excessive use or insufficient capacity. What that does is it generates stress on the tendons, on the muscles, etc. If you can control the rate of stress accrual then you can also limit how much capacity or how fast the stress actually a cruise then you can recover faster. You can actually make it so you don’t have any of these problems. What I mean by that is you can increase endurance and the strength of the muscle which will increase capacity. You can also limit stress rate accrual by having good ergonomics and good habits. Regular stretching, rest, sleep, and eating well are all super important. They all factor into recovery. Managing those two areas can prevent 99% of gaming injuries. I actually think that almost every injury in gaming is basically preventable.

Fab: What exercise do you recommend for people that play a lot of video games to do to prevent those types of injuries that you mentioned earlier?

Respawn: This could go all day but mainly focus on strengthening the postural muscles which mean the muscles that govern your, ability to like pull you out of the positions that you find yourself in when you game. So if you’re playing on a PC, you tend to sit with your shoulders forward and your arms out in front of you. You want to be strengthening the muscles that pull your shoulders back and actually bring your shoulders into a better position. So a lot of strengthening of the muscles between your shoulder blades, the row motions, etc. I also really value wrist strengthening so building capacity by training players to use dumbbells when they do exercise helps increase the stability of the wrist. All of that stuff is really helpful.

Fab: All right, so we’ve talked a lot about the injuries and all that, but I want to pick your brain for a second. In your mind, what are the benefits of physical therapy?

Respawn: I’m biased, but I would say that everyone could benefit from physical therapy because our job is to basically identify what areas of your life would be made better by changing small things. Good small habit changes equate to massive change over time. Let’s say that you fix your posture, that eight hours a day multiplies over weeks and months is actually a massive amount of stress you’re taking off your body. In the end, I think PT is really uniquely placed to be able to assess and treat that kind of stuff and people.

Fab: Alright, so that’s really all I wanted to ask about your job. But now I want to ask some questions about how your job is treated in the NA ecosystem. Were there any significant difficulties or differences that you saw over the years in the way that organizations or CEOs took your job?

Respawn: I think there’s been a lot more interest lately, which is great. I think I’ve seen more organizations start to take more of an interest in the health and wellness of their players as well as streamers. I think it’s a really good thing overall, I do think the gaming industry is starting to realize that the longer we’re doing this that the more we have to actually think about how to take care of ourselves. Because everyone who games wants to do that for a long time. You don’t want to have to retire. Especially at the pro level. There’s really no reason for these guys to be retiring so early, but until now, we haven’t really had a lot of information out there. That’s starting to change, which I think is really good. I think that orgs have a good amount of performance understanding now so they understand the benefits of if the players feel good they will generally play better. I think that’s important to just maintain practice and all that stuff to be able to keep the consistency up for their scrims. I think all of that is a huge factor that we’re seeing more and more of which is good.

Fab: Do you think that physical therapy is treated the same as other aspects like psychology or the mental aspect of the game?

Respawn: I’ll be honest, I think having a good sports psychologist or having a good psych focus specialist on the team is probably more meaningful in esport than physical therapy. I think you can make a bigger impact as a psychologist than you could as a physical therapist. That being said, I don’t think that the benefits that we provide are different. A sports psychologist can actually improve the performance of a team. A physical therapist’s job is to prevent the degradation of the team. So my job is not to make the team actually better for the most part. As a physical therapist, my job is to prevent them from getting worse because of something preventable like an injury. Now, that being said, without physical therapists on staff, teams are significantly more likely to suffer injuries, which you could then argue would potentially cause more issues long term, but it’s hard to say that. We deserve more of a slice than a psychologist. If I was building an org and had to choose one or the other, I would personally take the psych over the physical therapist.

Fab: The way I’m interpreting your last answer is that it is still difficult to sell the benefits of physical therapy to CEOs or bosses of teams.

Respawn: Maybe, I don’t know if I would say that it’s hard. I would say that it depends on how you want to sell it. I think that there are all these benefits. I think it’s really clear what a lot of the benefits are. I wouldn’t put my field over psychology in this case. It’s easy to sell the benefits, but it’s just it’s not necessarily something that every team needs. If you’re short on funds and you need to build a solid squad for as little money as possible, I would say that your basic minimums would not include physiotherapy, it would include psychology. If you’re trying to build a tier one org and you want to be the absolute best in the game, you absolutely have to have physical therapy.

Fab: So how do you manage to sell the benefits to the management of a team?

Respawn: I feel like I just explained that. I tell them what it is that we can do. In my mind, the benefits are pretty self-explanatory. It comes down to just the basics of what do you want to do to build a tier one org. In that case, you have to have these things in place or your team is not going to be in the same realm as teams who are doing all of that. So it’s an easy sell. If you want to be the absolute best, you have to think of everything you can do to achieve that. Everything has to be addressed. You can’t have weak areas. If you’re talking about the top orgs, they have to account for everything and every little performance change is massive. At that level, I just feel like they’re too close together. If you are missing 1% performance compared to the other teams, you’re just gonna lose.

Fab: So in your mind, do you see a huge disparity between the top and the rest of the race?

Respawn: Yes 100%. If we’re talking specifically about the LCS, we’ve seen the same four organizations dominate playoffs for the last three to five years. There really hasn’t been much of a challenge to the top four teams. It’s gotten better this year, but overall that’s kind of been the trend. I think we see that across the board in every region. The vast majority of the playoffs are dominated by the same few teams so I don’t think it’s an outlier. I think it’s definitely more than the norm.

Fab: I’m gonna ask you a question that’s more appealing to the fan side. The League of Legends Worlds Championship is currently happening right now and yet again, North America and Europe are not doing well compared to the rest of the world. In your opinion, what are the differences between the Western world and the rest of the world?

Respawn: This is actually a huge question. This is something that I debate all the time with people. I think that we’re just slightly behind. Well, we’re very behind in terms of solo queue. Our solo queue environment in the West is so inferior compared to Korea and China. The other thing is our practice is not the same. When you have an environment in which you have a very strong solo queue, what happens is that the players get more benefits from playing. If you have a great solo queue environment, you get way more benefits from grinding the game 10 hours a day than someone with a terrible solo queue environment, because you are wasting time. So because they have a better environment, it gives them options to practice way more and actually benefit from it. Whereas in NA, there’s to some degree a negative effect on how many hours you play because the solo queue environment is so much worse. A lot of times, it ends up tilting players, and they just get frustrated. They don’t want to play the game which is not ideal. The other thing is that our organizational structure is different compared to Asia. They have a very robust Academy system. All of those players are phenomenal players and this is in part secondarily because of the solo queue environment. They have much better talent coming up to draw from. And so because they have a great Academy system, they can use that to keep the competition high in their regional leagues. That means that even the bottom teams are getting better and better every year, which is really hard for NA or EU to replicate to the same degree. Although,  I think EU does better than Na. If you look at the trend there, it’s also because EU has a great Academy system like  ERL or the European masters. Those are great tournaments to develop young talent in order to go to LEC so it’s almost directly correlated. There are better players coming up and that makes the league better. We don’t see that as much in NA, although I hope it’s changing. What we see is players staying around LCS kind of jumping teams. We don’t see a whole bunch of native talent being developed and it’s not entirely due to orgs. It’s also partially due to just the fact that solo queue in this region is not very conducive to improving players.

Fab: My last question is, what are your wishes for the NA ecosystem in the next few years?

Respawn: Obviously I want us to do better than we have. I want our academy, amateur talent pool, and development side to improve significantly. I’m not going to even say I want us to win Worlds because I think that’s ridiculous. I think what we need to do in the next couple of years is to demonstrate a clear shift in our mentality and our approach to developing players. If we can do that, then we have a shot of winning worlds later on down the line, but if we can’t even do that, then everything else is kind of a pipe dream. It just doesn’t make sense.

Fab: Well, that’s all the question I had in mind. Again, it’s always a pleasure to talk to you. Is there any way that people can find you?

Respawn: I’m most active on Twitter at Dr. Jordan Tsai. You can also find me on Instagram at Respawn Therapy. Other than that, I try to stream every once in a while. If you’re ever on Twitch, my handle is Respawn_Therapy. If you have questions, feel free to reach out via DMS on Twitter or whatever I always try to answer those. I appreciate your time.

Fab: Thank you very much for taking the time and I wish you a good day.

Respawn: You too.

*This interview has been edited from the audio version for clarity*

The post Interview with Dr. Respawn appeared first on LeagueFeed.

Andrej: First and foremost, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to talk with us about XP League and everything you do. I want to ask you first what XP League is and to give us sort of a rundown about yourself and XP League as an organization.

Jay: Sure. XP League is a youth eSports organization similar to Little League or recreational soccer or any other traditional youth sport. But instead of balls, bats, nets, whatever, we trade ’em out for mice and keyboards. We’re a franchise, so each one of our locations is independently owned and operated. And so they’re building their own teams, getting as many kids as they can in their market to come join and be a part of this. We’re positive coach led, so all of our coaches get certified through the Positive Coaching Alliance. We actually created our own coach certification program in partnership with Next Level eSports, who have some pretty impressive coach programs and training programs for collegiate and professional level coaches. And in a nutshell, that’s essentially what XP league is. Our kids are in the seven to 17 age range. We’re all over, the US and Canada. We’ve got a few locations, but we focus on North America. And my background is I’ve built a few businesses and sold ’em in the past. And now I was more and more interested in how kids interact with each other and socialize through gaming, and saw a need for a structured way of having them do that. If anyone who’s familiar with it, you know, obviously as a gamer you get it, queuing up with a bunch of random folks sometimes isn’t the best place for a kid. So we wanted to get some adults in the room to help create that structure, and start building those positive life skills and core values that we really emphasize in our program.

Andrej: Well, that’s really great to hear as, of course, gaming has been on the rise these past few years, I think exponentially, and I think there’s a generational gap between the, should I say, millennials and the, the Gen Z kids and Gen X. So are you looking to fill the generational gap left in the nineties, early two thousands generation that are just now starting to have kids, born in the late eighties, early eighties, and they don’t really understand gaming as as a whole, so are you trying to fill that generational gap and fill them in on how their kids should consume video games?

Jay: I argue that that age group and that parent group are a lot of them first gen gamers. I mean I’m probably on the older end of our spectrum of people who grew up with Nintendo [or similar]. First, the NES came out when I was a kid, so I played that, and I had the 64 and things like that. GoldenEye was one of the big first multiplayer first-person shooters and I was about 19 when that came out. So that puts some perspective on age. But yeah it’s not just filling a generational gap–it’s a way of building a way for kids and parents to speak the same language and it allows the parents to meet the kids on their level. One of the most rewarding things that I have in my life are those moments and times that I get to spend gaming with my kids, because it’s where they live and it’s where they get to be great and they see themselves as great. And I get to come in and be a part of it, and spend all my time teaching them about life and what to expect. And, they’re the teachers [too], they get to teach me about what we’re doing and how that works. So, it’s really great to see the parents, you know, who may be skeptical at first when they come out and think, “Do I want to have my kids playing more video games? it’s just more screen time. What’s the value in this?” And then reconnecting with them after a season or two of their kids playing and hearing them talk about their kid fragging out and just using terms that you just like, are blown away that man, this guy two and a half months ago was telling me his kid was spending too much time on the computer and he really just was bringing him in to make friends. And he found a way [for] the kid [to] to build confidence, make friends, build a community, but also the parents start to get involved and meet their kids where they are and build those relationships.

Andrej: I, myself, am on the younger side and I’ve met older people that began connecting with their children through games and hearing those terms “fragging out,” getting “top frags” or “top score” on the scoreboard and it’s fun to hear. It actually makes me happy to hear, and, your league, XP League and organizations that are similar, I think are very beneficial for society as a whole currently, because kids spend a lot of time playing games, but they do not, I think, connect with people outside of the 25 inches that they stare at. So I think connecting the parents and their children and creating this sense of community is very good. And I think it’s very commendable. But why would someone choose XP League outside of that? You know, outside of that, connecting with, creating community, trying to connect parents and kids, creating a [positive] environment. What is the mission that XP League has? Are you trying to create new professionals or just gamers in general?

Jay: Yeah. We’re building a place [to be] essentially a team for all gamers. So any kid who is looking at games and is looking for either community building, self-confidence, learning life skills, [or] just wants to get better at the game, wants to be a big competitor, [and] just wants to play for fun. They all have a place in the XP League. And that’s all part of our vision and our mission. We have structured tiers where we’ve got kids who are just recreational and they come out and they  play for fun and they’re not too stressed about winning. They’re just learning how to be a good teammate and having fun and building confidence and the parents start seeing that. And so those are the values. The other side of it is we’re in person, so these kids are in the same room. They’re also learning positive habits around gaming. Because one of the biggest issues I believe that we have in multi-player games is toxicity. It’s a tough place. I mean, gosh, it’s a really tough place to be a woman. You know I’ve said to you, girls who game and play Call of Duty are obviously [having] a horrible [time]. And they use voice changers because it’s so toxic. And so what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to fix that by educating this generation on understanding [and listening] to the other side of that mouse and keyboard and monitor [where there] is a kid just like them probably. And so when you’re competing, you’re competing against other kids just like you, [only] you’re hiding behind this veil of anonymity. And then, the veil of your gamer tag doesn’t change the feelings and emotions of the person on the other end. And so having them play together, come together in person, on a team, it really adds a lot of value in the way the kids start to behave and to interact and to start learning those values. Again, we’re coach-led. That’s all about positive coaching and it’s values driven.

Andrej: Of course. It’s good to hear that you’re refining toxicity. I think the eSports side of things is very, very toxic. Of course, it’s a competitive environment. Every competitive environment is going to have toxicity, but I think online gaming, the anonymity of the things, et cetera, very much creates a sense that on the other side, there’s no one, it’s just a screen, it’s just character. You can say to them whatever you want. But creating those communities, I think it’s very, very important. When mentioning toxicity I think there are a few titles and video games that stand out a lot in this regard. Which games do you focus on? Especially because you’ve said that  League Legends is not part of the program. Our site, LeagueFeed, focuses on League of Legends. But, do you have anything more to say on what games you guys play? And what are your plans for League Legends itself?

Jay: Yeah, so we’d love to have more players who play League. So if your readers and, and folks who are on this are in the under 17 age range, man, we would love to have them find the closest XP League and get started and join the team because right now we’ve got a handful of teams [but] not enough to run a season just yet. But the most commonly requested thing to do is to really emphasize pulling up League and getting more folks involved in gaming on League. But right now our games that we play are Valorant, Fortnite, Rocket League, and Apex Legends. Overwatch too. The most popular right now I’d say are Fortnite and Valorant.

Andrej: Fortnite is all the craze with the kids these days, as they would say. But, just today, League of Legends, or Riot Games announced they’re closing their North American Challenger League, which was their developmental league. Does XP league have a plan on trying to step into the market of developing actual pros and building them from the ground up? As for, for example, some soccer clubs would be in their youth development divisions.

Jay: So we have some partnerships with pro teams, and we’ve looked at academy programs and building things out so there’s the potential in the future for that to exist. I can’t say whether we’ll get there or not, but right now we’re really just focused on building great players. The kids on the higher end of the spectrum that compete [at high levels] we try to pair up with colleges and universities, so when they’re old enough and go off to college they’ve got scholarships and a place to play. So that’s something that we’ve been really focusing on lately on the pro side. We’ve had three kids sign pro contracts so far in Rocket League, which was really cool. And then we’ve had some other kids who are competing in tournaments and place really highly and do really well in some of the Fortnite tournaments and things like that. So it’s exciting to see that. Is that our mission? Is that our only goal? No, not at all. I mean we’re focused on helping all of the kids [including those] 10% of 1% that have what it takes to go pro.

Andrej: Naturally, getting to the pro leagues or the big leagues is a great leap ahead. And not everyone is cut out for it. But I think that we are seeing more and more kids inclined to go pro. And that will lead me into the next question. You mentioned that you are one of the earlier [or] the earliest gaming generations and that you’ve experienced gaming from the very start, [or] should I say, from the console era, from the first and second generation consoles up until today. How do you see the gaming industry today compared to what it was over the past 20, 25 years, and how do you think it will change in the next five to 10 years?

Jay: Looking at the growth obviously in North America year after year [and especially] in the last five years, eSports has grown significantly. When you look at Valorant Challengers, and the VCT League in North America had huge viewership. And [Valorant] is only two years old. When I started the company, on my original pitch deck when we were putting together ideas about three years ago I had a slide showing all the colleges in the US that offered [gaming] scholarships. I can’t have a slide like that anymore because the number is 300 plus. There are so many schools that have gotten involved, and so the landscape in the US for competitive gaming has really blossomed and continues to increase. And so if you ask where do I see the future going? I think the CEO of Netflix, and his letter to shareholders in 2019 mentioned that he was more afraid of Fortnite than he was of HBO Max. And I think that’s an interesting way to think about it. I have a 14-year-old and 11-year-old [child], and their world isn’t [the same]. They watch some TV, but really they watch Twitch and YouTube and they play games [most of the time]. And that’s the world that they live in. And so as they grow up gaming is at the forefront of everything they do. And competitive [is a big deal]. I mean, my son can [name] more competitive gamers than football or soccer players.

Andrej: The rise of the digital world is very much taking place in front of our eyes. More and more organizations and even governments are now stepping into the digital sphere, especially gaming, which has, I believe, earned around 170 billion [dollars] this last year. So many organizations are coming in. And so many organizations and schools and governments, and as I’ve said, corporations, et cetera, want to get their slice of gaming. And what organizations or partners are primarily involved with XP League? You’ve mentioned some big professional teams that you guys are associated with. I saw Alienware [on your website]. So can you elaborate more on how you cooperate with your partners?

Jay: Alienware actually sponsored our big event last year. It was a North American final, so we’re not actively involved with Alienware. They just came in as a sponsor of a big in-person event that we have. So the way that our seasons work throughout the year [is]  the kids compete [in] splits all year long. But then it culminates in a regional tournament where the top place kids from the regional tournament go to a large final event. And we actually hold that at Full Sail University. We take over almost the whole campus in terms of their production, capacity facilities. We’re the largest eSports event at full sale. We’re gonna be there again this year, and this year we’ve got MSI HyperX supporting us. We’ve got Peripheral, who’s gonna be our PC sponsor. And so we try to work with a lot of the OEMs in the space. You know, you think about kids in our age range, we’re exposing them to the things that the brands that they’re going to love. And this is where they start building loyalty and building allegiance so a kid who starts playing on a Logitech G is always gonna wanna play on that, right? So, it starts building out those opportunities. [As for the pro teams], we work with Ghost Gaming. We work with Dark Zero. We were partnered with Paraba Parabellum, but Parabellum has had a bit of a pause [as] they’ve been suffering through the eSports winter. Their team is still competing, but their operations have been put on hold. So it’s kind of interesting. Then in terms of other partners and companies that we work with we try to interact really well with the publishers and do what we can on that end as well.

Andrej: It’s nice to know that you guys are looking to branch out as always and to connect with as many gamers and organizations as possible. Of course, connecting with the youth through youth organizations is the best tactic. And, you’ve mentioned that for now you guys are cooperating and spreading your franchise across the US and Canada. Are you looking to significantly expand into other continents? For example, Europe or perhaps even Asia that is right now the biggest emerging gaming community.

Jay: I won’t say we’ll never do it, but there’s, there’s still a lot of white space in the US and so we’re heavily focused in North America and continuing that. At some point, you know, perhaps, we will expand out into the UK and into Europe, but right now we’re putting all of our effort into North America.

Andrej: I’m sort of sad to hear that. I myself am from Europe. I very much have a few candidates of my own that would fit well or benefit from being a little educated on how online gaming presence should look like. XP League to me seems more focused on developing the youth than developing a gamer. So would you call yourself a youth organization more than a gaming organization?

Jay: It’s both. It’s a youth gaming organization, right? They’re one and the same. Our focus is on developing these kids into the best gamers they can be, but also the best people they can be. I think it’s like you can’t have one without the other.

Andrej: Yeah. Being a good person online and being influenced by  the online space, and still being a good person is kind of hard for these kids today, especially with, as I said, the online anonymity and toxicity of competitive environments. I’d like to know if you guys are looking to create a sort of championship? I know you guys hold tournaments, regional and national, but does it serve only to emulate the competitive environment, or are you genuine in your competitive sense?

Jay: Our North American finals are a very competitive and well produced event. If you look for it on YouTube, and you find some of the footage from the 2022 North American finals, I mean, it’s really, really well produced. And the level of competition that these kids [express] is really strong. We have a kid that’s a Supersonic Legend in Rocket League. We have kids who are peak Immortal or Radiant in Valorant. We have a kid that’s in the top 500 in Overwatch. These are really, really competitive players. And they’re playing with other kids that they play with regularly, and they build a really strong team dynamic and, with a good coach putting them in place. It’s really exceptional to see. I mean, it really is. And we’ve had pros, and pro organizations attend and comment on just how impressed they were with what we do and what we put on. We actually were nominated for a Tempest Award from the eSports Business Summit last year for the event. And we were shortlisted. We were one of the five finalists, so we’re pretty excited about that.

Andrej: Well, I was impressed with what I saw. Definitely. It makes me very excited because I’ve been a gamer for since I can remember. I kind of feel jealous of the kids today that get to experience such a sense of community and not have to be thrown into the wild online and fend for themselves.

Jay: That’s the most common thing we hear when we talk to somebody about this who’s over the age of twenty. “I wish I had this when I was a kid.”

Andrej: Oh, yeah, I definitely wish we had this when I was a kid, especially in my country in Europe. Gaming didn’t pick up steam until the last few years in the late 2010s. So that would’ve been very beneficial. But let me get back to League of Legends for a second, because of course LeagueFeed focuses primarily on that. League of Legends since a few years ago has been franchising their competitive scene. They removed the smaller tournaments and just removed their developmental league. And it seems to me that they’re focusing more and more on corporate interests and big organizations that can actually pay the 10 million [entry fee] to enter. How does XP League see itself in helping create amazing, insane stories of the underdogs coming together and entering the competitive scene and making strides just like Team Dignitas, for example, made so many years ago?

Jay: That’s a great question. And I wish I had an answer for you in League of Legends [slang], and but really where I can kind of elaborate and talk to that is more in what Riot is doing with Valorant. And they just had this Premier Beta where it was an open tournament, to try to start feeding their competitive play within the program, within the game platform, and then eventually hoping to like start feeding their challengers, which eventually will feed the ascendant league, which will eventually feed the VCT, and give kids and smaller orgs an opportunity to compete. And so I actually took one of our teams and worked with them and coached them through Premier, and  I think there were 1200 teams in the North American East Division. Our kids came in 20th, and so I thought that was pretty damn good. And that’s beyond impressive for 13, 14, 15-year-old kids.

Andrej: That’s good to hear. That’s beyond impressive, really goes to show how much you guys focus on bringing out the best in children and the youth, both of the members and people. I think we’re nearing the end of our time here. But, for the end, I just wanted to ask you what the future holds for the XP League? In short, do you see yourself growing into something very super national, encompassing the entire gaming world, at least in the US? And, do you see yourself branching out of the traditional MOBA sphere, meaning Riot Games and popular titles and entering as many titles as possible? Or do you just want to stick to the very concise competitive scene?  

Jay: The quickest answer is, in terms of game titles and things like that we’re always going to stick with what kids are playing. And not address our sales pitches to the parents. The kids are easy, they want to do it, and they’re playing the game, so I don’t wanna try to have to sell them on a new game to play. But in terms of where we see ourselves and where the future is, our vision and our goal is to be the [definitive] youth brand in youth eSports. In the US if somebody talks about young kids playing baseball, they talk about Little League. Well, Little League doesn’t just mean little kids playing baseball. Little League’s a trademark, that’s the name of the league. And so I want XP League to be synonymous with youth gaming. So, if our kids apply to colleges and a collegiate recruiter sees that they played in XP League, that means something to them. If a coach coaches an XP League and then wants to go coach for a collegiate or professional team, they can list that experience with XP League and it’ll mean something. And so that’s the vision and the core idea of where we see ourselves going and the goal of XP League in the next five to 10 years.

Andrej: That is great to hear, and I surely hope that you succeed in this. I believe that what you’re doing is very, very beneficial for the entire gaming world, especially in the US. The United States or Canada are global cultural exporters. So I think that any and all development of the youth in the US  in terms of gaming will benefit us across the ocean over here so I thank you for doing what you’re doing and I wish you the best in your work and especially thank you for taking the time to come over and talk to us about gaming and the future of our youth, and of eSports.

Jay: My pleasure. Thanks so much, man. Take it easy. It’s great talking to you.

Andrej: Thank you. Goodbye.

Conclusion

XP League, spearheaded by the passionate Jay Melamed, has devoted its activity to bringing up the best people and gamers in North America. The full podcast-style interview is available at the link above. You can find out more about Jay Melamed and XP League below.

Jay Melamed | XP League

More: about Jay Melamed, the co-founder of XP League, the first and largest esports franchise in North America…

XP League’s website

When the pandemic first hit, like many parents, Jay Melamed saw the huge impact it had on his kids’ social lives. Online gaming quickly became their only form of interaction. With four kids under his roof, Melamed immediately noticed a huge gap in the gaming industry, specifically in the esports world where young gamers had zero structure to engage in safe, friendly competition.

He set out to find a solution to help not just his family, but other kids who were experiencing the same hunger for social interaction. What began as a seed of an idea eventually led Melamed to co-found and launch XP League in 2020.

Melamed was a competitive swimmer in college, and being on a team had a huge influence on his approach to leadership. With XP League, he wanted to bring the same skills and values taught in traditional sports to kids in the esports space, helping young people develop resilience, teamwork, sportsmanship, and leadership.

Today, XP League is a fast-growing youth esports franchise, with 50 franchises awarded and more in the pipeline, Jay’s vision is changing the esports landscape. Young players are led by a coach who focuses on teaching gaming tactics in addition to the above-mentioned skills and values.

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