Them's fighting words!!

Last time, I posted the first part of an interview I did with Fashun Rivers, CEO of NOBï Gaming, regarding many topics.. This second part will feature Rivers speaking frankly on some of his prior fighting game community organizing experience. After initial publication, Greg Lancette, the former owner of 4o4 Esports, reached out to add his own context to some of the claims made by Mr. Rivers. His statements have since been inserted into the blog. Again, this interview was edited for clarity and length

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4o4 ESports and Atlanta FGC

Being based out of Atlanta, GA, Mr. Rivers has had a lot of experience with that city’s very vibrant FGC’s. At one point, Mr. Rivers appeared to be on the verge of purchasing a venue, 4o4 Esports, which is a major hotbed for the Atlanta community.

We mentioned it in passing, but you, at some point, were involved with or possibly trying to purchase 4o4 Esports in Atlanta, a pretty well known venue for Tekken and other major fighting games. That didn’t go through, as far as I can understand. How did it come to be that you were going to purchase 4o4, and why did it ultimately not happen?

Well first of all, shoutouts to Greg (Author note: Greg Lancette, founder/former 4o4 Esports owner), he helped me after I had an opportunity to run an event in 2021, a FGC event.

(Greg: I met Fashun one night at my shop. He just walked in and said he was working with Waka. We’ve kept in touch ever since. If he calls me today, I will still pick up and give my advice on things whether he wants to take it or not. That’s how I am with anyone who reaches out. Side note: nobody ever listens to my advice.)

Greg was one of the ones who said to the people who took my event that he wouldn’t be a part of it. I took a liking to Greg, and so he contacted me at one point in September or October [2022], saying he was exhausted and wanted to move away from 4o4 Esports.

I was shocked – he’s the face, the heart of 4o4! I thought he might want a partnership, like to help take the workload, and he could still stay there. But he was like ‘I’m ready to get rid of this whole thing.‘ So I thought that if he was really serious, we could talk more, because I didn’t have any plans to acquire a location anytime soon, but I wanted to get a feel and think about it. 

(Greg: I didn’t call Fashun to tell him I was tired of 4o4 etc… We were already having a conversation and I just happened to mention that I’d be hanging it up soon, just as I had been telling pretty much everyone. It’s not like I called him to tell him that I was intending to sell it to him or anyone at the time. It just came up in conversation. I made it clear publicly that if I couldn’t find a buyer by the time DreamHack 2022 came around, I was going to close the shop.)

The day I went up, it was in the middle of the hurricane season, and it was coming down bad. It took me a hour and a half to get there and I only live 30 minutes away, that’s how rough it was. And people were there, so I asked why they were there, given the crazy weather. And this guy said ‘This place…it’s like my sanctuary, my church. In life we get bullied or called awkward, but we come to 4o4 and we feel like superstars.’ After I heard that, that’s what got me to want to get involved. In that timeframe, we went into the process of acquiring 4o4.

What we didn’t know was the legalities. I had business partners involved, doing due diligence, lot of paperwork, legal work. Paper involved, y’know? We weren’t able to just acquire it, because certain things had to be done. But we already paid for 24 hours of legal work, which was $750 a hour, so do the math – we’re looking at 18-20 thousand dollars just to get the paperwork together. We knew the value, so we weren’t complaining, because we felt like we were keeping the church open. But it was a lot. And at that time, Greg had given Roshi a lot of control over the – 

Just to clarify, Roshi does –

Roshi was the manager. He was still training and learning, so even before I owned it, I was up there all the time, sometimes ‘til 2 in the morning, with Roshi.

4o4 has this thing they do called Oktoberfest, every October, and one of the kids had gotten into it with a female gamer, threatened violence and stuff to the venue. Greg was thinking he might want to cancel, but I called up Waka’s label’s security firm, the head of security, and told ‘em to run security for the venue.

(Greg: I definitely had to consider doing so due to circumstances, but I didn’t “want” to cancel after all the hard work I had put into setting everything up as well as all the players who had already paid for flights and hotels and arrived in the city. That whole situation went down the night before Oktoberfest weekend, so there was a lot going on in such a short amount of time to make decisions. Everything worked out though.)

Told ‘em I’d pay ‘em double! Just so Oktoberfest could happen. And what happened was we didn’t need them – the guy had been arrested for terroristic threats, and Greg said he didn’t need them, but they were booked and paid for, so they ran security and we had a great event.

(Greg: While I appreciate Fashun and Waka being able to find me some security guards in a pinch, there was no offer from anyone to pay standard, let alone double, for that security team. That $1400 came out of my pocket, and those security guards were terrible. They literally did nothing but smoke weed outside my shop, hit on one of my event staff members, and play on their phones. They didn’t even wear shirts that said security. If I’m paying you, at least look like you’re security so everyone feels safe. Fortunately, a smash players’ dad is the captain of the city’s PD and got wind of the situation. That’s pretty much how everything was taken care of. I am still upset to this day that I paid that price for such terrible service. This isn’t to blame Fashun and Waka. They have no control over the lack of professionalism of those security guards.)

All the time, I’m getting closer to Roshi. Roshi’s like 19-20, but I saw he had the potential, y’know? He was dedicated and passionate. 

He’s running the store and he’s 19 or 20?

Yeah, yeah, he’s running the place. Driving from downtown to do it. But I told Greg that if I bought the place, Roshi was going to have to be equipped to do the job, which he agreed.

(Greg: Roshi was never the manager, nor did he have “control” over anything. He was my only staff there who I had just started helping me occasionally if I needed to take a day off for whatever reason maybe one night every couple weeks until I thought I could trust him to be there more. He started working there more often, maybe my last month of ownership. But to call him the manager and say he was running the entire business on his own is a bit of a stretch. 4o4 is not a big space. It’s only 1580 sqft. So there’s not much to do other than turn on consoles, sweep the floor, wipe down tables, and sit at the front desk all night. Anything admin wise was still done by me.)

So there was a lot of work, more than I thought. And then Greg came in and said he had another buyer interested. I told him I already had a bunch of work done, legal and standings and whatnot –

Thousand of dollars, you said?

Yeah, y’know, so I thought the deal wasn’t even worth the same as it was when we initially talked about a couple months earlier.

He told me the person was willing to cut a check, and I just knew then that…Well, when it came to business, he wasn’t fresh, y’know? I was disappointed, and I told him to tell the buyer, this guy Chris (Author note: current 4o4 Esports owner), to see if we could hook up and come in as partners. But he never connected both of us.

(Greg: The “deal.” I made it very clear publicly that I was putting 4o4 up for sale. There were really only 4 parties to express any interest in buying. I ultimately went with the highest offer, which by the way wasn’t anywhere near what I had invested into the business, but the market dictates what you can sell for. I ended up selling it for basically a year’s salary. Chris, the current owner, made the highest offer, so of course I was going to make the best decision for me. All other offers I received were entirely too low, nor did they come anywhere close to what Chris offered. And we aren’t talking any 6 figure deal or anything like that, but I felt Chris valued my business and the work I put in the most based on his offer and the time he spent looking over all legal documents I sent him and everyone else. I think he was the only one who actually looked at everything.

Also, I did link Chris and Fashun up in the sense that they know each other and have a means of communication. They’ve definitely talked via twitter. I just don’t think Chris was interested in partnering with anyone. I did tell Chris that there was interest from Fashun in working together. Whatever happens from there is out of my hands. To clarify, because people always come and go who want to be “partners” of 4o4. 4o4 Esports is literally a hole in the wall arcade. There is no money in it to be divided up amongst partners. I barely made ends meet for 4.5 years running the place, which is why I had no staff and took no sick days etc… the entire duration until the last month or so when Roshi started working. I did everything myself. I have always refused business partnership discussions because there just isn’t any money in it to be going around for more than one person.)

Eventually we got a figure back, and my business partner Craig and Waka both said we could easily match it. But it was the principle, y’know? All these things we done to get it to be acquired should be honored in the dollar amount. I prayed on it, and decided that Chris should have it. Once I heard his background, I felt he would be a good fit. 

(Greg: One of the main reasons I decided to sell to Chris was because of the nature of the business and its unreliability. There was another guy who was very serious about buying, and offered basically the same deal as Chris. However, he was using his life savings to do it. If the shop had tanked instantly, I would have felt so terrible and probably offer to give him the money back. Chris knew that this isn’t necessarily the most dependable means of revenue, but as a software engineer with three very good jobs, 4o4 sinking and not swimming wouldn’t put him on the street. He insisted that it was something he wanted to do and knew the risks that come with it, which is why I felt most comfortable selling to him. It wouldn’t make or break him.)

We walked away at that point, and that was the final choice made towards the end of the year. I’ve supported since, sponsored some of their events, so there’s no hard feelings. I explained to Chris that even though I seemed disgruntled, it was only because we were going through all this stuff before he acquired it. I’m team FGC, so any way I could support it, I would, and it’s not about my ego I just wanted to support the community.

(Greg: Fashun’s legal team, I don’t know who they are but would always hear about them, kept telling him that I was lowering the value of the brand and deal by telling people I was selling the shop, but how else would I have found buyers without making it known I was selling? I think his legal team really ruined any chance of a deal working out between myself and them. It got to a point where almost every day they had something totally random to complain about me doing that “lowered the offer.” Also things with that guy on their team, Craig, stalled because he was always out of town and on some sort of trip, so it was nearly impossible to progress negotiations without him. So there were a lot of things that weren’t Fashun’s fault getting in the way here. He was just listening to the advice of people who he and Waka pay for that very reason. I don’t blame him for following their advice when they’re supposed to be experts. I know Fashun wasn’t happy that I was in talks with other potential buyers, but that’s how business works, which we ended up coming to a mutual understanding after I made the deal with Chris.)

So many, many different reasons why a deal that was tentatively in place never seemed to get off the ground, I got you. I do want to backtrack a bit – you mentioned earlier that someone ‘took your event’ from 2021. I went back and found this tweet, as well as this one. There seems to be some pretty rough feelings there. What’s the story on this ‘stolen’ event with Coca-Cola?

I’d love to talk about it. It was August, and –

Of 2021, right? A little while ago.

Yeah, exactly. So, August of 2021, we were going to produce Anime Weekend Atlanta originally. NCA (Author’s note: New Challenger Approaching, an Alabama-based organization) calls me up and says [NCA and NOBï Gaming] should partner and create the FGC experience for Anime Weekend Atlanta. In that process, I acquired sponsors, like that beverage company you just mentioned, and –

Damn, won’t even say their name. That’s heated!

I-I don’t really have any animosity on the company, they don’t control everyone who works for them. It’s like a record company – not everyone who work at the record company is a snake, just the few guys making decisions higher up. I came to [Coca-Cola] to sponsor Anime Weekend, but then [Anime Weekend Atlanta] came to me last minute and said ‘All staff who work this event gotta have the shot.’ Now a lot of people had reservations about that, I, personally, felt it was so fresh, I didn’t know it was safe to take, and I didn’t want to take it. A lot of people on the team felt that way. 

I communicated that a lot of my team didn’t want to commit to that, that they’d be willing to take a COVID swab. They said no…I felt that was wrong, 60,000 people were gonna attend the event that had no shot, that you couldn’t regulate, so why is it fair to force it on the staff? The people attending would be exposing people too! I couldn’t force people to do that, so I postponed my duties with that event, because I wasn’t taking it neither. 

I ain’t one to leave with people’s money, so I went back to the sponsors, including that beverage company, and said we’re not working the event, so if you don’t want to be involved without us, there it is.

Only fair, I suppose.

Yeah. So they contacted me and said ‘No problem!’ In fact they loved my slide deck so much, [Coca-Cola] asked if they could produce an offsite, offshoot FGC that correlates with Anime Weekend. I thought that sounded good, and I was cool with Greg and 4o4 at that time, so I figured we could set something up. A buddy of mine who does events with Red Bull, though, he contacted me and said to be careful. Sometimes, these activation teams, not the company themselves, but the agency, are known to take events and then sell them back to you.

I was green, though, and excited to be in the FGC, it was my first event! I was telling ‘em all these ideas, thinking it was gonna be amazing. But once I brought up a contract, we really started getting pushback, and I thought about what my friend told me. ‘Don’t let them be shysty, please’ I thought! We arranged a date around the time of a convention called Momocon, and they started talking to my vendors and everybody I had doing the staging. One of [Coca-Cola’s] team members, who I won’t say by name, contacted me and said the budget was this amount, and they were trying to “à la carte” me. Once I heard that, I was devastated, and by the time I got a hold of ‘em to get a contract in writing, they told me they wanted to move on from that event.

Greg, to his credit, declined to help them when they called him, because he knew they took my creativity, they had no class, no morals.

Greg: (The “Coke event” was one of the first times we tried working together. We were on phone calls every morning for hours with some representatives doing all this planning for a series of events. To be clear, I think Coke’s name was on it, but the people we were working with weren’t actual Coke employees, rather some marketing agency people. After about a week, I brought up that we should have contracts in place because I wasn’t too fond of doing all this imaginary work and not having any guaranteed contract in place for our time and energy. It seemed like as soon as I brought that up, that’s when we were ghosted. There were some other parties involved that got in the way of things too, but I don’t want to waste my time even mentioning them. But true, that event was definitely Waka and Fashun’s idea, and I think it would have actually been cool had we done it.)

FGC Twitter had my back too, and the event was ultimately a failure. Everybody involved with that thing lost their job, and that’s just how the energy works. But I was pissed at the time. Why would they do that? So I called them out on Twitter like that, because some of the people there knew what we had been planning, and I was disappointed in their loyalty, wanted to let ‘em know. They even called me to ask me to tone it down on Twitter, and I said that’s the repercussions of your actions!

If [Atlanta FGC] showed unity, they would respect us, and not believe that we can just be bought off. If we could be bought off, that would compromise the whole integrity of the FGC and Esports, y’know? I had no idea the event cost $400,000 – that’s what I heard – so the idea that I didn’t plan properly was wrong because I was expecting a budget of, like $150,000, y’know? 

I see. The budget ballooned, you found yourself on the outs, and without that local support it didn’t really go that well. 

Not at all.

Being in the FGC so long, stories like that are just all over the place, definitely something I’ve heard before with different actors. I did want to bring some attention to, back in February of this year, a fight or some sort involving Roshi around the time 4o4 changed management. It sounds like you and he got pretty heated, with some insults back and forth. Here’s one instance, here’s another, this one here, and one last one. 

Um…these are pretty loaded. There’s some threats mixed in there.

I wouldn’t say no threats. It was just, uh, about the job, y’know…

Well, if you’re going to threaten to post information that may turn a community against somebody, I’d say that’s a threat! It’s not physical, but –

Nah, nah, it’s not a threat, it’s just umm – In that process there’s a lot of exchange of conversation and things that were said that I’m not gonna speak on, ‘cause we’re past it, but at the time the things that was communicated to me were not in the best interest of the community. I was passionate because I’m an advocate for the betterment of the space, so when I see people like that – and like I mentioned before I-I love Roshi, but he’s young, so he’s still got a lot of growing to do, like all us young men do. 

At that time frame, he was speaking on a subject of me getting behind a player for a tournament, and he needed a co-sign. I was trying to educate him on the business, and telling him that these companies aren’t in the best interests of the players. That player in that instance, I felt, if his organization couldn’t get him in that tournament, then he needed a better org. I wasn’t accountable for that player’s org not backing him, and I wanted it to be a teachable moment for them to say ‘Why isn’t he in this tournament?’

Trust me, I know a thing or two about bad orgs.

So I was trying to say to Roshi, that if I had this player, I would do everything I could to get my players in tournaments. Why is the community trying to vouch for him when it should be his own organization? That don’t make sense. And [Roshi] then tried to low blow me about the 4o4 stuff…I was passionate about that, it was still fresh. I was just letting him know that there’s a lot he had to learn. 

A lot of people troll. And I come from a era where we used to play the Dozens at school. If you troll me in public I’m gonna troll you back. It’s like a big brother, educating his little brother. That’s why it was a public display – I’m gonna spank your butt in front of the public because the things you saying aren’t valid. You don’t know the business of what you’re saying. Unfortunately – it’s on Twitter now, he got fired, recently! I was giving him things I already knew about because I was looking out for him. But I was looking out for him, I was trying to buy the place, help him out at 2 in the morning so he could get home. Trying to buy the place, keep the lights on so he could have a job. 

You certainly did put a lot of time and money, as you say, into that potential acquisition, so I understand where that passion comes from. 

It might just be that I’ve been around long enough, but there’s a pattern that we’ve seen of individuals who come from either mainstream ESports or corporations, and there’s a tone…I’m not defending what Roshi said, just giving some pushback.

Right.

When they get pushback the first thing they say is how young and stupid everyone is, how they knew so much better, how if only you listened to them, you could make money. But you stay ignorant, you stay poor, you stay in your place. It’s very condescending, and I think, while you didn’t intend it, to do it publicly like you did, which is fair since the insult was public, it’s the optics, right? Could you understand that publicly saying how dumb people are, and that people could be making money if they weren’t ignorant, that might create some skepticism in you?

I understand where you’re coming, listen, I’ll take it like this – when you have a sibling, someone you care about, the tone is going to be different.

Sure.

And you tell that sibling don’t go down the street, some bad people are down the street. You’re not going to be like ‘Oh, that was a mistake,’ you’re gonna be like ‘Oh you stupid, I TOLD you’. I wanna make sure that every time I approach any conversation or topic people know where I’m coming from. I was looking at Roshi as a family member and it’s so stupid that people get in their own way about people who have their back. I come from an industry where people get their royalties taken advantage of, since the beginning of time! The things they’re doing to ya’ll are what they’ve been doing to us in music for decades.

I’m trying to encourage…People need a player’s union in Esports, or the FGC. But instead of coming together to fight on a corporate level, they come against the smaller guys coming in trying to help them. I’m coming in as an ally, I love videogames, it’s not no different. A lot of the players have other jobs, because they can’t sustain their livelihood playing games. That’s not good, y’know, that’s why I wanna change that. I just wanna be a part of the change for the better – if I plant that seed in one person, then maybe it can grow.

Look at the Gamers8. The Gamers8 was the equivalent of like a League of Legends, y’know? I just want to be a part of the conversation, and that players know their value.

I’ve noticed a tone in posts between both yourself and Waka, like a ‘Hey, we play games too! We’re just like you!’ If someone were to say ‘You’re not really a fighting game player,’ I don’t agree with that basic gatekeeping, but…You’re not an outsider in the sense that you don’t play games, you’re an outsider in the sense there’s a community with social queues and ways to interact, that might not be understood yet.

Yeah. 

It’s understandable, given you haven’t been participating long, but when you come in and say ‘If only you were smarter, you’d make more money’, and with, unfortunately, no pedigree to back it up, it can come off as holier-than-thou. There’s some instances where people would like to earn money, but they’re also not willing to compromise on certain things. For example, if it’s someone like you, who’s vaccine-skeptic, they may not want to do business with you. You mentioned Gamers8 – that event is run by the government of a country where SonicFox, who you’re running an event for, would be imprisoned for being themselves proudly. 

Now you’ve been in business; you have to know your audience, right? When you have these public spats, and you’re trying to be in this community, it seems like you’re butting heads out of a personal disconnect with the culture rather than a strictly economic disagreement. In a community this tight-knit, I think that messiness is a red flag. People have seen it before, they know what to look for, and I think that tone, of an outsider knowing better, is what you came across as.

Between the Bergen PAC situation and the ones here with Anime Weekend and how they didn’t work out, there’s an instability there that I think I have to point out, that I worry about. Are these all instances of individual actors getting in your way, or are these mistakes that you will learn from and iron out as time goes on?

I wanna say this to you – 3 years ago I started this company. Back then, I was on the phone with a FGC player, and the one thing they told me was “Fashun, people who get into Esports, they fail because they grow too big too quick.’ So I spent 3 years, mostly watching, trying to figure it all out. I’m not a narcissist, or some a-hole who can bogard the Esports realm. I want to help, I want to be held accountable.

There’s a lot of actors, sure, but I don’t have a Academy award, ‘cause I don’t act. I’m just gonna play me, be one of the good guys who help take us to the next level. Some of us gotta be the martyrs and the ones who are looked down upon at first, but then people see they had their best interests the whole time. You have to be able to take the ridicule, it comes with the territory.

Do you see yourself as a martyr?

I mean – I’m just saying.

Be honest!

I-I see how you take words, and inflate the meaning of – I think a lot of people are misconstruing the intentions. Even in your article, y’know, once the crypto mention is there, a lot of people see the word ‘crypto’ and say ‘Oh my gosh, this guy’s a bad actor’. Sometimes, there’s information that you’re not privy to. A lot of us bring insight that people don’t understand – you look at the Martin Luther King and Malcolm X’s of the world, they got assassinated just for wanting peace! Now we’ve got statues of them for people who want to celebrate them every year. But all they wanted was peace.

In reality, when you’re trying to do things, people are always going to worry you’re going to get taken advantage of. I pay players trying to participate; if I’m putting money in people’s pockets, I can’t be taking advantage of them. I can’t allow that narrative to be true, nah. I got the best interest of everybody, and I’ll look forward to history taking place.

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Social Media Accounts

I also wanted to ask about the NOBï Gaming YouTube channel. When I was looking across your social media, it seemed like the YouTube and Instagram were out of step with some of the other accounts – Over a hundred thousand subscribers, and 14 million total views on YouTube, for example. If you look through the channel, the vast, vast majority of the videos are from a young Brazilian man named Joshua Acriano, and he’s credited in the channel profile. There’s about 7 videos from yourself. It seemed like this was an asset, by yourself or business partners, that was bought rather than grown organically. Is that how it came to be?

Yeah, there was no part – it was me. During the pandemic, I wasn’t looking for it, but overseas they have a different outlook on social media. YouTube channels are considered digital assets, so when you buy, like, a digital arts company, all the assets attributed to that might include YouTube channels. I was presented with a portfolio of a gamer who’s in need of financial assistance. I wanted to assist him directly, but was told they just wanted to sell the asset and go to college.

I didn’t want to delete the videos for his diehard fans, so I contacted him and asked him to make a video to tell his fans, so they could be redirected to follow and support him on other social media. As the page transitioned, people could stay subscribed and watch the old videos if they wanted. 

A video which is featured prominently in the library, just to be clear.

Definitely. I wanted to help this kid financially by acquiring his assets. And NOBï Gaming wasn’t designed as something like what it is today, I was just gaming for myself with Waka at first. I didn’t want to let the channel slip, so I started putting some stuff on there.

As for the other social media, the Instagram, all that: that is organically built. To explain the follower amount, the Instagram used to be my KDRMG account. During the pandemic, I didn’t have any events – I was just playing videogames! So I converted it to, and if you look you see a lot of celebs follow the page. I archived most of that, I could send you a screenshot, and used it for NOBï Gaming instead of KDRMG. I brought it back after the pandemic, because media stuff started picking back up, and because I was busy with that, I wasn’t able to make content for the YouTube page.

Obviously you have grand ambitions for NOBï Gaming –

Thank you!

And you said that the YouTube page didn’t come to you – You weren’t seeking it out, I mean. How did it come to be that this company from Brazil came to offer you a YouTube channel? Clearly you had some business purpose for buying a YouTube channel, for its value. I’m wondering only because I doubt it came to you out of nowhere.

Uh, that was as I was mentioning, I know a lot of people in different media. In the United States, digital assets aren’t seen the same as they are around the world. I knew a guy in the space who had a multi-channel network with a bunch of content creators. This is big business overseas, and people that know me, they seen I was gaming during the pandemic, so they tell me about this kid who needs money, and that I might need a gaming channel so I can livestream. Certain amenities are already on the channel, and things you need, right? So why go the long route if I don’t have to? I help this kid out and help myself out. Nothing deceptive though, which is why I kept his videos up.

Sure, I don’t mean to imply that this kid was tricked out of his channel, it was very clearly a consensual business agreement. I sort of have an understanding that social media pages are important for potential advertisers to look at and see how the engagement is, to know what they’re investing into. If you are in the business of event management, and you need sponsors, I would imagine a 100k+ subscriber YouTube channel would help with that. But if you bought a channel that already had those built in for an entirely different type of content, it could give a view of the channel, of its value, of the power of the brand, that might come across as deceptive. What would your response be to that?

I wouldn’t say it was deceptive, because the audience is there. If I do a video right now in full Portuguese, that audience would be there.

Is that why some of your videos have subtitles in Portuguese in them?

Some of them, yeah. But all the sponsors – I been around 3 years, and just now am getting sponsors. I get them based on the exposure of the event, that YouTube channel hasn’t been utlizied other than creating content. For brands, brands are engaged based on the opportunity, rather than looking at social media. I’m not really a content creator, so I –

I would also imagine that Waka himself, with his celebrity, is quite the draw for some of these brands.

Most of these brands see this as a event of two amazing, reputable people in their own right. That’s where the sponsorships come in, rather than social media.

The reason I pointed the YouTube channel out on the blog was mostly to chart a pattern of events I was seeing. When you are buying up digital assets, you are attempting to buy a gaming venue, when you book the Bergen PAC – this could – and I’m not ascribing intent – but I think it could be seen as someone trying to simply throw money at the community and see what grows. But in the past, what we typically see is that money comes, it very quickly centralizes, and then it goes away, leaving a hyper-inflated bubble around it. Which hurts the whole endeavor.

I-I think I’m just trying to understand what you’re getting at.

Sure. Where I’m getting at is, given the FGC’s history with this sort of spending, and given that not all of your endeavors were successful, could you see how that pattern of events could imply that someone was just throwing money at the wall to see what works?

Nah, I would have to disagree. The only thing that was really valued and invested in has been this event, and all we care about is people coming in and having fun. It’s not a monetary thing.

And to be clear, that’s extremely common in the FGC. People aren’t in it for the money, normally!

And also, no sponsors have paid – we have been putting this event on our own. Razor, el Gato, they are all just giving equipment, and it’s mostly an opportunity to work with amazing companies. We didn’t get any monetary compensation.

I’m not the kind of person to go in and bot things to get views. With KDRMG, one of our services is going viral – sometimes that cost millions of dollars, to get a song to go viral. When you have a budget, you can get songs on Spotify playlists, and things like that – it can be completely organic. But it costs money. I’m just having fun trying to play games, it isn’t about the money.

—

“The Shot”

I did want to circle back to the reason you initially pulled out of doing the Anime event – there’s a tweet here, and another here, that would hint at COVID vaccine skepticism. These are from a little while back, but would you say you retain that viewpoint to this day?

The thing about it – I never got it, right? A lot of people I know, even in the medical field, didn’t get it. I had doctors call me and tell me ‘don’t get it.’ When a doctor calls you and tells you that, it’s a red flag. When I don’t know enough to make a decision, and I start seeing all these mortalities increasing, from the people that are – that public knowledge…That received it, it makes you more skeptical. I need more proof to see that’s not the purpose, ‘cause these people seemed like they were healthy candidates. But a rapid rate of people who were healthy declining because the only thing that was added to the equation was…

Um, when you get those kind of – that kind of insight from people in that space, it makes you take it with a grain of salt. So let me stay in the neutral zone while I get more information. When I started to see family members passing away, and the rate that these family members passed, was shortly after [the vaccine] was the only change they made, there was some passionate tweets. At that point, there was so much pushing towards that narrative that this could be potentially, y’know, for this mortality rate. I was hurt seeing so many people’s lives taken, and at the end of the day, all this could be debated. But a lot of people have come out and said ‘Hey, this has been researched that this could cause things to the blood, there’s blood clots’, due to people adding that to their body.

Now that people are saying this, it’s not speculation. These are people from the medical industry validating that these claims are the real result. I’m just passionate about lives, so anybody trying to take advantage in any way, I’m opposed to it. And to the point that if this was something potentially developed to, uh, decrease the population, I’m gonna be opposed to that! If I’m proved wrong I’d apologize and change my narrative, but so many people are coming out and saying that’s a huge factor in mortality, so I’m against that. 

Just to be clear, and you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, it’s your life, but are you vaccinated currently? Have you ever taken the COVID-19 vaccine?

Um, I don’t have any problem answering that. I, personally, have never gotten the vaccine.

Okay. Despite there being no real instances of mass death after the vaccines, that hasn’t swayed your skepticism?

I can’t say that’s the case, because there’s a lot of instances I’ve heard, of people having cardiac arrest that’s taken that. When you look at the stats, there’s a lot of people who have cardiac arrest with it than without it.

But –

When you look at analytics, it doesn’t validate the reason to – It goes back to the same conversation we had earlier: it’s all up to the eye of the beholder, it’s –

A narrative.

Yeah, yeah, a narrative. It’s a narrative thing.

Given that we just had Evo, and it sounded like – even you were feeling a little low! It’s pretty common, people gathering from all over the world in one space. We used to call it the ‘Evola’ virus, but obviously that’s taken a bit of a turn. But we have more than 50 confirmed cases of COVID-19 after Evo. I would say if you’re going to be running an event, and not that you speak for everyone, everyone’s their own person, but when the head of an operation is being vaccine skeptic and openly saying they haven’t been…

COVID-19 is a big deal in the FGC. The pandemic was a huge blow to the community, people have gotten sick, people have gotten what’s called ‘Long COVID’. Do you think there’s a reason why there would maybe be some hesitation if people knew that the figurehead of this event was pretty strongly vaccine skeptical?

Umm, I mean, that’s up to the eye of the beholder, y’know what I mean? For me, I believe in life, and those being able to provide the evidence that this thing validates the security of life. I’ve seen too many in my circle, some personally that I know, that have gotten it and have blood clots in their leg and have to go to the doctor more than I do. I’m skeptical because it’s too many people getting sick. For me to get sick, and survive…I feel like there’s too much out there to prove a opposite narrative. 

Like I said, though, it’s up to the person. If you choose to get it, I’m not opposed – whatever way you need to feel safe, you gotta do you like we gotta do ours.

So would you say, maybe in the opposite direction of your attempted Coca-Cola event, no NOBï Gaming event would require the people running it to be vaccinated? Is that fair?

Yeah I’m not – I’m a person that allows freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I can’t force people to do things, that’s the problem, y’know?

Fair enough. Had to ask.

Yeah, I get it.

I think, for me, now that I’ve had 4 (and counting), the vaccine is the safest method of protecting myself from a virus that is still out there, maybe lost a bit of potency, but still very real. When I hear someone so steeped in ideology, inflexible on this point, even when the evidence is out there that the COVID vaccine works, it makes me wonder if this could be applied when evaluating how you might take community feedback. Could you take in criticism and contrary info, or just say ‘I know better’?

Tanner, how old are you?

I’m 31.

Okay, so you know. At the end of the day, you and me on the same page. We want the best for everyone – to live, to laugh, to be healthy. Your stance on being protected, that’s you. I want people to live. If the best way for you is how you did, if you feel protected, then there’s no disagreement. I just want people to live, and when I see people who are older than me or you that have gotten it, have suffered tremendous damage? I’m older than you, and I –

But I know older people who have gotten it and they’re fine! What I’m saying is that if you’re running an event, which requires trust that you can provide safety for the people there, and I have someone who is willing to kinda go “I don’t think the vaccine is safe,” even when all the evidence is against it, I kind of –

See? But that’s wrong! You are going with the narra – You got it, and you personally have had a good experience. There’s narratives that go against what you say, there’s narratives that go against what I say. It’s just like religion. We all have to find out eventually. In the meantime, we just wish the best for everyone, and that they’re safe as they get to their final destination. That’s all it’s about. I want you to be safe, and I hope you want me to be, too.

Of course! I don’t want you to –

Good! I’m just saying that if we watch the news, one news channel is gonna say ‘Get it’, the other is gonna say ‘Don’t get it’. It’s the same way I look at all the ideologies of the world – if someone say this is it, and someone else says it isn’t, I’m staying neutral until I learn more information. I can’t inject something until I’m supposed to know that I can do it. Once I do it, I can’t undo it, y’know? 

I would just say, if the thing is trust and safety, with a surge of COVID-19 going through Evo, where there could be possible long-lasting effects, it would be in the best interest of any event to take it seriously. In a space like BrookLAN, which isn’t the biggest space in the world, I think it might be necessary to take certain protocols, whether that be masking up or providing proof of vaccination, or –

Definitely. I agree.

If someone is inflexible about the realities of the vaccine, can I trust they take COVID as seriously as the attendees do, running an event?

Let me correct myself. I agree you should wear masks, and have some kind of proof of not having it. I’m in agreement with you. I’m not against masks, especially with this new spike, I definitely want people to be safe at this event. I will definitely request it, but I’m not going to force anyone. 

I think that sounds great. Fashun, it’s been a long time, thanks again for your time. I appreciate the conversation.

You too, man, appreciate it.