64 | You Wanna Play? - Episode Transcript
Brooklyn, USA | November 30, 2022

[INTRO]
[MUSIC BED: Drone swells] Khyriel Palmer: You’re listening to the Brooklyn, USA podcast – an occasional audio love letter from Brooklyn to the world.

Khyriel Palmer: Back in the 80’s, when video games first started attracting kids (and their quarters), concerned parents feared their children would turn into zombies, spending all their money on entertainment and shirking the responsibilities of work…

[Archival Clip]
Narrator: I think to a certain extent it’s taking over some children’s lives. Children are not developing communicative skills when they’re zero’ing in on a machine. They’re not learning to interact with the world around them and their peers. What is the future world going to be like if our children can’t speak to each other? [video game powering down sound]

Khyriel Palmer: Forty years later, the moral panic around video games is played out. Those first gamers grew up and some of them even turned their passion for games into a livelihood. But what happens when you make a hobby into a profession?

Khyriel Palmer: Last year, there were nearly 15 thousand professional e-sport athletes worldwide – all of whom have successfully turned a game about a game into their full-time job. For this installment of our series on work and labor, we spoke with members of the Nets Gaming Crew - a professional NBA2K team affiliated with the Brooklyn Nets, as well as the woman behind CoExist gaming - a hub for professional gamers in the NYC area. They shared their thoughts about what happens when play becomes work and why inclusion matters in digital worlds as well as the real one.

[FADE OUT MUSIC]

[NETAVERSE]
[FADE UP MUSIC: Quick-paced, electronic] Ivan Curtis: In the 2K league, our game is nothing like the retail version. Ultimately, what makes our E-sport a lot different than other e-sports is that we have a draft and kind of structure, just like the NBA. My name is Ivan Curtis. I go by the name by O.G. King Curt. I'm a general manager and head coach for Brooklyn Nets Gaming Crew. What exactly is the NBA 2K league? It's a professional league of gamers who actually have been playing and competing at 2K for a very long time. The league's inaugural season was in 2018. [FADE UP 2K basketball game] Monday through Friday, we train as much as necessary anywhere from 4 to 6 hours. I'm one of the older figures in the community, in part too why I go by OG King Curt. I started playing video games back in the eighties, and when I got into playing 2K, I actually started playing it when it first came out. [FADE OUT 2K basketball game] As the game evolved, I was hearing about a lot of people playing a particular mode, [typing / controller] but not only were they playing it, they were getting into individual leagues and basically competing as we do now. We are up to 25 teams. Three of the teams are non NBA related organizations. We have Duke's Gaming, in Gen Z, and we have Aus Gaming now from Australia. It's getting pretty global for us. I'm pretty proud of the direction that the league is going. The prize pool has grown over the years from 1.5 million now up to 2.5 million. [ka-ching sound] So, a lot of money on the line, high pressure situations. But I think out of pure passion it's something that we love to do. We look forward to competing each and every year. It's a six month season, typically starts anywhere from March to April, and ends in August. It has been pretty fun. I'm going into my fifth season now with Nets GC. The league is going into its sixth season, and I'm just still having fun doing what I love to do. [FADE UP 2K basketball game]

[CLIP from 2K League]
Announcer: Got a goodie here in virtual Brooklyn. 53, 53. [FADE 2K basketball game]

Alex Bernstein: There's something special about what we do because people who watch us play get it to an extent, but you don't really get it. [FADE OUT 2K basketball game] You see that it's basketball, but you don't understand why I'm standing up trash talking and the guy in front of me who's playing in the monitor next to me. There's little quirks to it where it's like, Yes, it's video games at the end of the day, but there's so much passion and fire between this that it's almost poetic sometimes with how things go. My name is Alex Bernstein, a.k.a. Steez. I am the power forward for Nets seed. Traveling this road to be a professional e-sports athlete, it's lonely because not a lot of people know what this is… still. I know it's still developing, but if you tell people nowadays that this is what you want to do, especially, let's say, at a young age in middle school or high school, people are going to look at you like you're crazy and they're going to tell you you need to have a bunch of backup plans and things like that. I think I started taking gaming pretty seriously during college. I remember I ended up getting a football scholarship in South Dakota and the weather started getting like pretty rough there, it's the frozen tundra. And I remember for my birthday, my buddy had got me an Xbox. [Xbox booting up] [typing / controller] So we started playing a lot of Call of Duty competitively, a little bit of Madden competitively, and then that's when they kind of got me into 2K. But at the time, it was more just 3 v. 3 park mode. I was playing that not necessarily competitively, but I was trying to get to that level. Right out of college, I was working as a financial advisor [ding] for about a year, year and a half. So when I told them that I was going to go for the NBA 2K League, I remember they flinched at first. They were a little stunned. I'm 22 years old. Looks like I have my life pretty well set up with a financial advising job that's going to be able to carry me through a lot of walks of life. And when I told them that I was thinking about switching the path, they were a little hesitant, but they were still very supportive. And so they kind of told me like, "Okay, well really think about this and if it's something that you really want to do and it's something that you're passionate about, then go and go for it." So they were a little hesitant, like any parent or family member would be, because they don't really know much e-sports. E-sports is still new in its development. But now I could say, you know, going on my sixth season now they're pretty in love with what I do and they love supporting me. And, you know, they watch every game and I try to keep them up to date with all the news. They're definitely behind me and they support me. Once I was finally out of college, that's when I started taking 2K very seriously. And that was around 2017, 2018 where the 2K league happened to be announced. And I knew I had been pretty good at the video game and that's when I had kind of told my family that "I'm going to try to go for this and see what happens.”

Alex Bernstein: There's plenty of differences from my old job to what I do now. Waking up every day, being a financial adviser, it was cool. It was fun to like, tell myself that I'm 22 years old and I'm driving to Beverly Hills, working with dudes that are 40, 45 years old. I'm 22, don't know a thing about life yet. And I had to put on a suit every day, which was cool. Like that was fun. But I definitely like what I do now where I could just wear my basketball shorts, wear a Nets Gs t-shirt and just keep pushing and just play some video games. The biggest thing is that now I get to wake up every day and like truly be passionate about what I do. Not only just be like, "Oh, I have a good job", but I get to wake up and like love to the core like what I do. [FADE UP 2K basketball game] [typing / controller]

Alex Bernstein: This job is definitely way more stressful than my financial advising job, I'll say that. Because when I was a financial advisor, I got to kind of worry about myself with like paying bills and stuff like that. But now I have to worry about my roommate's bills because my roommate is my small forward on the team and my point guard, my shooting guard, my centers like cause, like I said, every play I make involves them. So it's way more magnified now, my mistakes than my previous job. There's days where it is really fun and everybody's having a good time. And of course winning helps with that kind of culture. But there's days where it gets taxing and it gets mentally draining and you got to kind of buckle in for that. You know, when you sign the dotted line, like it's not all sunshine and rainbows [laughs] it really isn't in e-sports. So even though it seems like it, because like Curt said, it's the same for me. When I'm telling my friends that, "Hey, I gotta work tonight", they always say like, "Oh, what does that mean? Like get to go play video games all night?" It's like, I mean, yeah, like when you look at it on paper, that's what it is. But my off season and my season, you're playing for a spot out of less than 150 out of the whole world. And we're talking in the U.S., overseas, Southeast Asia, Europe doesn't matter. And I have to realize that every single day I wake up, everybody's trying to get into the 2K league. [FADE OUT 2K basketball game] [typing / controller] Do I want to go out with my friends? Which, you know I love doing, I love hanging out with them. Or do I need to grind this game a little bit? You got to weigh those options sometimes. I love getting away from the screen. Trust me, I do. But there are times where you got to lock in and put some priorities to the side and realize that like, I got to grind for my spot. I really had to do that last year when I was back in the draft pool, right before Curt and the Brooklyn Nets picked me back up. Those are the days where it does get to feel like work. Sometimes it's a grind and you're going to have to just push through it. I don't want to just be able to throw in my Twitter bio that I'm a 2K league professional. That's not why I do this. I don't do it because I get a blue checkmark on social media apps like it's not what I'm here for. I don't like just leaving my family for six months out of the year for no reason. I love being in Brooklyn. I love being a part of the Brooklyn Nets. But I'm a Cali kid. You know, I like the West Coast. I love being here with my family. So when I do leave and I go to play in Brooklyn, like I'm here to compete, and I'm here to bring home some hardware. And I'm here to bring home a lot of money. And when we're playing you know, I look to my right, I look to my left with who I'm playing with and not only am I playing for my family, but I play for their family as well. Those are the high stressful situations that we're kind of talking about. If I miss a shot or I miss a defensive play or something like that, that could cost anywhere from $50 to $250,000 in like one play. And that takes money off my family's table right there. So it's like, I don't do this to mess around. Let's say it's a spot for the playoffs or a spot to win a tournament. It's like, hopefully I've put in enough work to where I could be in that moment and still be successful.

Ivan Curtis: This is a new league. I helped build the community before it was a pro-league. We only have so many spots and it's a lot of players that want to be in those spots. And I think the hardest part for me is most of the time is trying to figure out who is the best player or person for the positions that I have open. We take time scouting players, look over their social media, get to know the player beyond a gamer. I always try to figure out like, who are you without the controller in your hand? You know, these kids, they are just growing up, I am just trying to start figuring out life. That's something that I probably can lose some sleep just trying to figure out, you know, who I want to keep, you know, who I want to observe some more, how many players I want to bring back, you know, who to bring back, I'd say that without a doubt is the hardest part. And then, of course, making those phone calls when you don't decide to bring a player back. This past season, I had to trade some players and I had a player in particular that I had some success with a year prior and having to trade him was tough. [FADE UP 2K basketball game]

[CLIP from 2K League]
Announcer: 2K Sports for another edition of NBA basketball. [FADE 2K basketball game]

Alex Bernstein: So there's a lot that goes into what does it take to become a professional gamer. One of the first things I always harp on, though, with people is you gotta have a support system that's always going to be able to back you up and when times get rough. I think my first season we had an open combine tryout and there were 77,000 people who tried out and only 102 people made it. The odds are not in your favor. [FADE UP 2K basketball game]

[CLIP from 2K League]
[Players talking] Announcer: They focus on sharing the basketball and keeping everyone involved. [FADE 2K basketball game]

Alex Bernstein: When those days are happening, where you're struggling and you feel like you're not good enough or putting in the amount of work that you should be putting in. So that's the first thing, you have those people around you that are going to keep pushing you. And second thing is you don't cheat yourself. Like Kurt said when he came up with these leagues, those were avenues that you could take to try and better yourself and compete against high caliber players and high caliber teams. And so I never wanted to cheat myself, and I always wanted to compete against the best. I feel like there's people that will try to go through this process and try to cut corners and find the easy routes. But there is none. Like if you want to be a professional at anything in this world, does it matter if it's a new sport athlete or an expert at some profession, you can't cut corners. Cheating yourself is going to just hurt you in the long run. Even if you don't make it into the professional 2K League or if you're trying to make any other e-sport, if you don't make it your first year, you pick yourself up and you keep going. And so I was fortunate enough that I did put in the right amount of work with getting drafted my first year competing. I did deserve what I got coming to me. But yeah, those are the two big things -- You got to have that support system, and just don't cheat yourself at the other day. [FADE UP 2K basketball game]

[CLIP from 2K League]
[Players talking] Player #1: Keep calling the break, doc. Keep calling the break.
Player #2: I got you. I got you.
Player #1: Let's go. I see you. I see you. [FADE 2K basketball game]

Ivan Curtis: That's why you see the best of the best perform on that league bill. It's definitely a high stress environment, especially when we're competing. I have the pressure of putting together a competitive team and being able to go out and compete against other teams in order to, you know, win prize money and things of that nature. The players have the ultimate responsibility of carrying that through. [FADE UP 2K basketball game]

[CLIP from 2K League]
[Players talking] Player #3: Another stop. Another stop. Come on. [indistiguishable] I was on it. [FADE 2K basketball game]

Ivan Curtis: I know a lot of people look at it like, "Oh, man, must be nice." They think it's just focusing on video games. More or less, that's more for the players. But for me, on an everyday basis, I'm trying to acquire new business, help bring in sponsors, continue to build our image and how we want to be perceived not only in the gaming community but in the Brooklyn community throughout the boroughs of New York. [FADE UP 2K basketball game]

[CLIP from 2K League]
[Players talking] Announcer: You got Glo's number, Joe, because you got to call him and let him know: back to back 3-3 point lead for the Nets. [FADE 2K basketball game]

Ivan Curtis: There's constant ideology and concepts being put together to be able to do that. I wouldn't lie to anybody. It's great to be able to get up every day and know that not only do I get paid to be in the video game industry. You know, as similar to anybody else who works in the traditional side of it. [FADE OUT 2K basketball game] I'm affiliated with the NBA organization. I'm definitely proud about that. But it's definitely work and there's a lot that goes into it to make it successful. At the end of the day, we all are there to compete and the hope is winning championships and bringing home money. But no matter what, I want them to be able to leave an experience and something that they all remember. Because unfortunately in our league it's a high turnover. Not all players come back.

Alex Bernstein: I've made a lot of great friends through the gaming community, a lot of lifelong friends, people that I talk to every single day -- facetime them, pop on other video games like Call of Duty, still play other video games if it's not 2K. You grow up and you're in high school and in college. I played football my whole life and you meet all these great people and they slowly fade away. In e-sports, a lot of relationships are going to fade because nobody's going to get what you're doing. Nobody's going to see you move' in silence and you've got to sacrifice a lot. And so the people that are going to get you most are the people that are in that same boat with you. That's why I've been able to have a lot of these lifelong friends from the 2K communities because they get exactly what I'm going through every single day. Any time I need something, these are the guys. Any time I need someone to ask. It's even hard to explain it to people when I walk outside in my hometown and like talk to them about the community a little bit. They don't really get it because they're like, "Wait, you never see these guys?" And it's like, "Well, I see him every once in a while, but most of the time, no, it's just over the internet or over, you know, parties, discords, whatever it might be." But yeah, you got to kind of be a part of this to really know what's going on. And I'm thankful that I've been a part of this for six years and can kind of say in some way, shape or form that I've kind of been an ambassador, a pioneer of e-sports. And so I'm pretty happy about that.

Alex Bernstein: Gaming's getting amazing now with the things that you're able to do. But there's something that I really do enjoy about the simplicity of nostalgia of just like grabbing the controller, turning the game on and just being able to relax and hang out and chill with your boys. I'm excited for the NBA 2K league and I'm excited for just e-sports in general. A lot of things to come. Nowadays you're seeing other e-sports that are just popping up. And I think it's kind of amazing because... For instance, when Rocket League popped out, for those of you that are listening that don't know what Rocket League is, it's a 3 v. 3 soccer-based e-sport that is controlling a car and like you're hitting the ball with your car. It's kind of like a bumper cars sort of thing. That e-sport popped up and it's a huge phenomenon now around the world. [FADE UP MUSIC: Quick-paced, electronic] You see videos and clips of League of Legends tournaments and Live [Land?] Events, and it's filling out packed stadiums. Hopefully that's where we get to as the NBA 2K league, I could see us going somewhere in Southeast Asia and hopefully filling out a whole crowd because I know how much they love the NBA. I am a professional, I'm a competitor, but I'm also an entertainer. You got to be able to have your own craft. There's an art to this game a little bit. I'm excited to see what kind of route we take and what the future holds for us as an e-sport.

Ivan Curtis: Something that I learned along the way is focus on the people that support you. Don't be afraid to follow your passion and follow your dreams and also understand that in doing so, just going to be honest with you, it's going to be some scrutiny, it's going to be some doubt. But then at the end of the day, they're going to support you wholeheartedly. For me, you know, being an older man, I was in my mid-thirties when I got started. I took a lot of flak here and there because basically people just didn't understand what it was. And it once they got a chance to experience it, it's like, "Oh, man, it's incredible." Follow your passion, put work behind it, because it's going to take a lot of it, but it is very rewarding in the end.

[END MUSIC]

[VOICE MEMO - COEXIST GAMING]
[voicemail] [beep] Letta J: I always say if you're not happy with the world that you live in, then maybe it's because you were built to create a new one. Walking into a space where you meet your tribe, people that understand who you are, you don't need to explain anything, you don't need to apologize for being.. Like is literally mask off, literally and figuratively. We get to experience it over and over again because we built the world we wanted to live in.

Letta J: I am Letta J -- grammy-nominated recording artist, published songwriter. I am also the founder and CEO of Coexist Gaming, the first subscription-based membership gaming company ever. Our goal was to break the pay-to-play model by putting community first and really building a completely inclusive environment that's representative of the gaming industry from a 360 degree lens. Part of that representation stems from the promotions, the faces that you actually see to the faces and skins and people, characters, environments, all of those things that are digitized within game. The goal is to take the almost 4 billion people that identify as gamers in the world and enable them to feel represented within this industry. Being able to see and feel and interact and immerse yourself in video games that make you feel represented. And in terms of just augmented reality, you know, the goal is to augment reality and to really start building worlds digitally that we experience in real life.

Letta J: I started this company in my Brooklyn apartment. You know, finances are always a thing. And so, you know, some of the challenges were just like, "Okay, we need to grow the team. We need to make sure that we're finding the leadership that we need in order to execute this vision, building an ecosystem." And so establishing a business model that was scalable, sustainable, was something that was very important to me. I've been playing video games with my entire life, so since I was four years old when I had my first systems. So gaming has always had a very special place in my life. It's a very strong bonding agent. Parents still are not really open minded to the opportunities in gaming, but this is a problem that we're working to actively solve. The community can be ostracizing for women. It can sometimes be toxic, it can sometimes be alienating for other people. So when I talk about inclusion and representation and coexisting, that is me choosing to make a solution out of the problem. We just wanted to make sure that the representation in the game house focused on every aspect of gaming that would really optimize networking experience or a meaningful, significant relationship. So a lot of emphasis was placed on making sure that there were arcade cabinets and retro systems, because that's the nostalgia that introduced us to what gaming is now. It was these moments that brought in community because we missed that camaraderie that was formulated when we would go to arcades.

Letta J: Gaming has this power to bring people together, and we wanted to not just highlight the power, we wanted to harness it. And that's what our ecosystem is comprised of. It's comprised of ways to not just build, grow and connect, but ways for your personal growth and your professional development to actually coexist. While we're building community, we are running a company. It's definitely work and there are a lot of companies out there that can grow and do this. But are they building community? Are they really putting the people first and creating experiences that people identify with? The world looks at a kid like Dad Hat Tony, who is 25, two kids and a wife, from the Bronx, who is not only putting music in video games, he's a part of a game studio. He didn't go to school for any of this stuff, yet he's changing his life. And so watching him get thousands of dollars in prizes and, you know, getting checks for doing the things he loves is very amazing. At the end of the day, our focus is on showcasing and highlighting the opportunities that lie within the gaming industry and that-that takes work. It's meetings, it's traveling to have more meetings with people, it's continuing to fundraise and to show how our growth will facilitate more opportunity. I tell people the thing that sucks so much when you start running a company, even in gaming, you don't get to play near as much as you used to or you'd like to because you're tired. But you know it is rewarding because it's the work that you know you love. You're working towards building this world that you want to see. And that's not a light task.

Letta J: Existing in so many different worlds, from music to hospitality, like working in food and beverage, which I've been doing since I was 12, to having studied engineering to then, you know, competing in games and playing games casually and competitively. That's like four industries, right? I think that people are way more multidimensional than the world wants to give people credit for. We're oftentimes placed in boxes. What I love about Coexist gaming is that it's a place for all of you. The goal was to allow the many facets that we all possess to actually coexist, to really create a balance. There are no prerequisites. When I see that, the only question that begins a relationship that has meaning is, "You wanna play?"

[beep]

[VOICE MEMO - MIKE REN]
[voicemail] Mike Ren: Well, I think it's kind of funny because the moment you turn a hobby into a job, it's not really a hobby anymore. Hello there. I'm Mike Ren. I'm a game developer calling in from Brooklyn right now. I run Arcadia, a consulting and design company in video games. Previously, I worked as a level designer at Ubisoft Shanghai on Far Cry five in the DLCs. I also make a ton of indie games in my spare time. The project I'm working on right now is called Lucky Yu. It's a super chill meditative fishing game with the distinct traditional Chinese black ink art style. My mom actually painted everything you see in the game. I hope that this game can bring you some relaxation or escape from the stress of daily life. The demo is out now. You can find on my website at www.MikeyRen.com.

Mike Ren: I think one of the hardest things about making games is the pressure to deliver on time. You're always running up against the clock in development, and the larger the project, the more moving pieces you have to think about. One of the main things about games is that they are an iterative process, which means they're constantly experimenting with new designs for ideas. The issue here is that every iteration requires many people to stay in sync, and that can get difficult as the scope of the project increases. We take games as big as Cyberpunk, it all adds up rather quickly. One small change can have drastic effects across the board and influence the decisions of hundreds of people working on the project. My main concern for the games industry is burnout. I feel like this is in two folds. One is the literal burnout from working and iterating on the same project nonstop for years. The other is actually a creative burnout where the projects start to feel so similar, it feels like doing the same thing over and over again.

Mike Ren: In terms of unionization, we're currently seeing some movements. For example, this year, the Activision Blizzard Unionization Movement took shape. In many ways, unionization is difficult in the games industry because on one hand you have full time staff that are in essence corporate workers with rights and benefits and bonuses afforded by the company. And on the other hand, you have thousands of contract-based workers and outsourced workers who do not share the same benefits. Certain positions are also considered project-based or deemed as short-term hires. For example, the QA department in which employees test games daily, looking for bugs and other issues, is usually a contract-based position or more commonly outsourced globally. The issue here is that as an entry level, short term position, you're considered replaceable and generally the job will be lost when the project is complete. Comparing the QA department to say the design team however, designers have a relatively stable role within the company as long as the projects they work on continue to make profit.

Mike Ren: A bit of context, I'm originally from China. Immigrated to the U.S. when I was five years old. One of the first video games I owned was Pokemon Red on the Gameboy, and playing that game really opened me up to how video games can go further past just entertainment. Being an Immigrant. One of the hardest things is how language and cultural barriers can make you an outsider. As a kid, it was difficult to connect to my peers, especially with so many socioeconomic barriers to cross. Playing games like Pokémon, however, broke those walls and became a way that I formed friendships and grounded myself in a new world. Just like listening to music or watching movies, playing games becomes a means to foster shared experiences. That's really the power of games, right? Through playfulness, it bridges people together under a sure common interest.

Mike Ren: I think games are definitely a passion for me and I truly care about games as an artistic medium. With that in mind, I'm always looking towards helping the medium of games grow rather than just collecting a paycheck. That enthusiasm is how you sustain herself in her job because it's about something bigger, about contributing to a new and powerful medium of expression and culture. But to put it simply, right? The pro is that I make and play the games that I want to see. The con of that, however, is once you know how the sausage is made it's a lot less exciting to do. Well after spending more than a decade working in games, I have to say it's one of the most exciting new mediums to be working in. Games are currently at the forefront of entertainment technology and it is inspired by all of the art forms that we currently have. To work in games means I have an understanding of so many different elements, whether it be writing, design, audio, visual performance, computer science and so forth, it truly is a hybrid medium of everything that came beforehand. What I'm really excited for is looking at games as a future of storytelling. That's definitely one area which will exponentially grow as more people with diverse backgrounds contribute to the art form in their own ways.

[beep]

[MUSIC BED: Beat with space-y melody]

[CREDITS]
Khyriel Palmer: Brooklyn, USA is produced by me, Khyriel Palmer…
Emily Boghossian: and me Emily Boghossian,
Shirin Barghi: and me Shirin Barghi
Charlie Hoxie: and me, Charlie Hoxie
Mayumi Sato: and me, Mayumi Sato

Khyriel Palmer: …with help this week from Kuye Youngblood, Rachel Patrick, Alex Bernstein, Ivan Curtis, Letta J, and Mike Ren.

Khyriel Palmer: To learn more about the Nets GC team and NBA 2K league, visit www.netsgc.nba.com or follow their social media handle @netsgamingcrew.

Khyriel Palmer: To sign up for future events and meet fellow like-minded gamers, visit www.coexistgaming.com or follow @coexistgaming.

Khyriel Palmer: To explore Mike Ren’s work, and play a demo of his game, visit www.mikeyren.com.

Khyriel Palmer: If you want to tell us a story, or somehow end up on the podcast, check the show notes for a link to our guide on recording a voice memo on your mobile phone and sending it to us on the internet. And if you like what you hear or think we missed something, comment, like, share and subscribe, and follow @BRICTV on twitter and instagram, for updates.

Khyriel Palmer: For more information on this and all BRIC Radio podcasts, visit www.bricartsmedia.org/radio.

[FADE OUT MUSIC]