The Truth About Making it as a Pro Gamer in 2024 | 5up DSH #938

Not as much as there used to be, but there was a big stigma before.

Oh, I want to be a gamer.

I want to be a YouTuber.

You think it's like a feasible path for most people, though?

Absolutely not.

That's what I think, too.

I'm sure you get this also.

Like, parents, like, oh, my kid wants to do this.

Like, do you have any advice for them to starting this now?

And you're like, well, good luck, I guess.

All right, guys, we got five up here today.

Is this your first podcast?

I've done a few podcasts before, but it's been a moment since I've done.

Because you've done a face reveal recently, right?

No, like two years ago.

Two years ago.

Yeah, I guess guess that's kind of recent but yeah yeah in comparison how long you've been playing i guess right oh yeah you've been pc gaming for how long now oh i've been playing games at least in the scene for like seven years now i'd say wow so yeah two years pretty recent yeah so what was the first big game that that got you into things uh the game that got me into stuff probably league of legends okay like the thing that kind of kick-started me uh if you know what that game is i i used to play i was terrible oh okay gotcha you were probably really good i assume no i was challenger in that game oh you weren't good no i was challenger oh challenger is that the highest rank yeah it's the highest rank you can be wow So you were playing professionally?

Not professionally, but it kind of kick-started me into getting a bunch of connections and meeting a bunch of people within the scene itself.

Got it.

And then what game after that did you go to?

What started me online was like Among Us, I guess.

That was the really big kickstart into everything.

Right.

I used to watch all those videos with Toast and all those guys.

Were you one of those players?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I play with Toast all the time.

Oh, nice.

And you still play Among Us, right?

Yeah, I still do.

That's impressive.

I love deception games in general.

People can get tired of them.

Me personally, I think I could see myself playing it for still like even years to go wow yeah it's I love it because I feel like it kind of died off a little bit it definitely had its like slums it's actually kind of coming back right now though really yeah surprisingly what do you think is bringing it back honestly toast oh he's playing again yeah he started playing again and everyone's like well it's time to go back oh god yeah dude he was so good at that game he's pretty good i'm better though you're better than toast i am better than toast all i mean like he'll he'll say that uh

not publicly

what's your ranking list of all-time Among Us players?

Among Us players overall.

I think it kind of depends on like...

So Among Us, there's different roles and whatnot.

Like you could be crewmate, imposter.

You can be like all-around player.

So I think all-around, I'm the best.

Whoa.

I think crewmate-wise, a person named Hafu is the best.

Oh, the girl, right?

Yeah.

Asian girl, yeah, I've seen her.

And then Toast is also like pretty like between us both, also, I'd say.

Got it.

So you're just really good at imposter.

Yeah, specifically imposter, I'm really good at.

Crewmate, I'm i'm not bad at though either got it when you get imposter what is your win rate uh

i think it depends on the lobby if it's like the lobby of like i guess medium skilled people i'll usually win every time wow of like higher skill people it depends on like because it's a two-person game it's very hard to win like as a solo person wow um but even if i have like a decent partner we'll usually win that round damn yes so you're that good i'm pretty decent at it dude i need to see some gameplay so are you just have you always been good at like deceiving lying stuff like that okay well you put it like that it looks bad

I've played a lot of deception games throughout my entire life, whether it be like

there's a lot of different starts with, so like you can have a game called Trouble in Traitor Town, or Trouble in Terrace Town, which was a game really popular back in like 2011, which was all about essentially Among Us, but with guns.

And then I got really good at Mafia, which is like Werewolf when I Ultimate Werewolf.

There's other social deception games like that that I've just played in like, I guess, higher skill groups for years.

And then Among Us comes out.

So it kind of fits all that.

Oh, so you were playing this style before Among Us.

Oh, I have more than like 15 years of experience in deception games.

Damn, okay.

Yeah, so when you put it like that, no wonder you're one of the best.

Oh, yeah, it's like my skill set naturally built up for this, right?

Because I feel like Among Us was a lot of people's first deception game they tried out, right?

Yeah, I'd say it's like their introduction to the genre itself, right?

How has the game been evolving recently?

I haven't watched it in a couple years.

It's evolved where

there's a lot of mods to the game now.

So people kind of got bored of the base game of Among Us.

And they introduced like,

I don't know, like hundreds of different roles.

No, like new maps and new roles.

New custom maps, new roles that you can do to kind of like spice it up and keep it like so no one's just feeling bored like, oh, I got crewmate again.

Guess I'll just do whatever until I die.

I will say the task did feel repetitive at a certain point.

Yeah, I mean, doing it for four years, you can imagine.

What's your favorite mode right now?

Favorite mode?

Hmm.

I think it's more, not so much modes, more so like lobbies and groups of people.

Because the dynamic of the game changes depending on the group you play with.

Right.

Yeah.

So do you like a skill-based group or more just casual?

I like a group that knows how to entertain themselves while still being high-skilled if that makes sense yeah so like toast group right yeah essentially yeah because they were all really good but they would just mess around a little bit knows how to keep it fun and lighthearted but also like they're still there to win right right um so you're you were also a brown belt in martial martial arts uh a uh oh wow you know that i did not did some research

okay i was a uh the one step below black belt brown right uh i think it was red black for red black okay yeah and there's like because there's different

black belt.

I think it was karate.

It was one of the two.

But they have different systems for it.

And yeah, so I was the stuff right below it.

And what made you want to stop before you got to black?

I didn't like fighting people.

That was like kind of the crux.

So the higher level you got, the more I was like sparring and going to tournaments and whatnot.

And that just

didn't really interest me.

I didn't really find enjoyment from it.

I more like the forms and the, I guess, methodology behind everything.

Got it.

So after it evolved into that, I just lost interest.

Interesting.

Yeah, that fact interested me when I saw that because I know you're a gamer and gamers aren't fighters.

So the fact that you got that far is pretty impressive though, dude.

Thank you.

Good job.

I only made it to blue, I think.

Oh, what made you stop?

I didn't like the training, dude.

Oh, yeah.

Boring, like, you know.

That's fair.

That's fair.

As a kid, you're just like wanting to have fun.

And I feel like karate is like, you don't look forward to that.

It was excitement for me because you have the, I guess you can see your improvement, I guess, like visual.

Fair.

I don't know, like breaking through the wooden board, right?

That's like

not even in the scale of like how hard that is to break through it goes from like white to like I don't know I think black itself and then that would be like the wooden board would be like a third out of ten right so that makes sense get to see all the progress how tough was it convincing your parents you wanted to do this profession uh like streaming and like this um honestly not hard at all really uh i kind of lived my life where it's like they couldn't really control me i was kind of rebellious in the sense of yeah i'm i don't have interest in something i'm not gonna do that i have interest in this i'm gonna do this no matter what And they just like, okay, whatever.

We're confident in him.

He's confident in himself.

And so they kind of just took a chance on it.

Wow.

Yeah.

Because usually you hear that from parents.

They kind of rebel against the video games.

Oh, yeah.

No, it was.

I was very, very, very, I had a lot of leeway in whatever I did, which is really nice.

Were you really skilled in other aspects in life, too?

I'm, hmm.

Like academics, like.

Well, so I was skilled at what I wanted to be skilled at.

Like I said, when it comes to realizing, like, if there's something that interests me, I'll do it.

If If there's something not.

So like in school, there's a lot of things I just didn't care about, so I didn't try in it.

But the subjects that I did excel in, it was the ones I was interested in.

Got it.

So it kind of goes for like every little thing is just pick up a new hobby or nuanced thing, and then I'll become really proficient at that specific thing itself.

Right.

So that makes sense where your parents just kind of let you do it then.

Yeah, pretty much.

I mean, look how it paid off.

You got almost a million on Twitch now, right?

Yeah, really, really close.

I think like 70k off.

Dude, that's crazy.

That's one of the highest I've heard on Twitch.

Oh, yeah.

No, it's a pretty

daunting number, to be honest.

Yeah, I don't think many have hit that on Twitch.

I wonder what the data is on that actually.

No, compared to like YouTube, Twitch is like, hitting a million is a big number.

Yeah.

Well, on YouTube, I know this because I'm at a million on YouTube.

I'm ranked, I think, like a thousand somewhere around there in the whole world.

Oh, is it?

Or it might be US.

I don't know.

I was going to say, that seems like for now,

maybe in like 20

tens or something, that makes sense.

Yeah.

I feel like there's a lot of people.

It might be US.

Yeah, don't quote me on that.

That makes sense.

But for Instagram, I'm at 11 million and I'm ranked like 2,000.

yeah but twitch if you have a million you're probably like top hundred yeah i would imagine top 500 as like the max i think yeah and for among us you're probably the number one right um i think for competitive among us stuff i am got it yeah so there's like uh because among us has different genres itself within it like you could do the

at the end of the day it's also like for kids too so there's a lot of kids channel that just like thrive off of among us itself also right are there actual competitions for money with among us um there was every now and then there have been and that was like hosted by either like twitch or phase or whatnot.

There hasn't been one in a long time.

But they were trying to figure out a way to make it kind of competitive.

And so there was cash prizes every now and then.

So it's kind of like Fortnite.

Fortnite kind of fell off too with the money.

Yeah, but Fortnite also had like major organizations backing everything and trying to host tournaments itself.

And the

creators of Fortnite itself also, where Among Us is just like this tiny little studio of three people.

Right.

Have you met the creators of Among Us?

I haven't met them in person, but I do talk to them every time.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah.

Nice.

So they're still working on the game?

They're right now working as a production company, I guess, for other games because they had their big blow up and they were excited about that.

So now they wanted to give that feeling to other people.

Right.

So they must have made a ton off Among Us.

Oh, I mean, think about like how many.

Okay, so you play a mobile game or whatnot, you see an ad.

Yeah.

Among Us was the number one game for like three years or something like that.

Like there was more than hundreds of millions of people playing that.

Dude.

Yeah.

So just the ads, plus the merch.

Yeah, ads, merch, and then like on Steam itself, it actually costs money instead of being free.

Oh, I mean, so yeah, everyone that plays off of online,

that's like, what, I don't know how much people.

And when you have kids as your audience, the parents are buying them merch and toys and

stuff.

They are pretty, they're pretty set.

They're pretty killing it.

Because I know a lot of kids played that game, right?

Oh, yeah.

I mean,

it was like the most popular game, I think, for a solid year, globally.

I mean, there's a Jimmy Fallon did a segment hotter for him.

Do you ever go and just random lobbies and troll people?

No, because it's like...

Too easy.

I mean, you either have to go undercover, but people just recognize my voice, even if I was to try and do that.

Yeah.

So you need a voice changer, though.

I need a voice changer, and then I need a different play style, but then I thought, like, what am I really doing there?

Right.

Yeah, that would take away from your brand, right?

Exactly, exactly.

Do you have your eye on any other games, or are you pretty set with this one for now?

I'm

always looking out for new games.

Just like the Deception Game genre itself is one of the hardest genres to make games for itself.

And I don't think there will ever be a boom like Among Us Ever again.

Right.

So I kind of look more for different competitive games.

Like this new one just came out called Deadlock, which was by Valve.

It's a MOBA, so like league, I guess, but the newest one in that genre.

Wow, Valve launched a new game?

Yeah,

like soft launch.

It just became public, I guess I can say.

I used to love Valve, dude.

Oh, yeah, you should check this game out then.

Okay.

I feel like they haven't launched a really good game in a while.

This game's pretty good.

I think it's the biggest thing since Apex or Valorant.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Did you ever get into first-person shooter games?

Casually, I did.

It was never something I was actually just insane at.

And it's kind of hard to play the game when you're like, you have have to dedicate hours upon hours to get to them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You got to build that hand-eye coordination.

It takes time.

You play chess?

I dabbled in chess once upon a time.

Okay.

Yeah.

I was on a chess team in school.

So that's why I was like, okay, you know what?

I'll compete again for a little bit.

Why not?

I did a thing with Nima, who's also a competitor.

Yeah, yeah, she's nice.

Yeah, so we became good friends.

She helped coach me in chess a little bit every now and then.

And I did a competition.

I got, I think, fourth place by a bunch of Twitch streamers overall.

Okay.

So like, still compared to like actual chess players, nowhere near.

Yeah.

What's your ELO?

Do you know your rank?

I think my peak was 1400.

Oh, we're still.

Right now, nowhere, like, I'm like a 1k player max right now.

Okay.

Yeah.

If you get back into it, hit me up.

Okay.

I'm a 1450.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, I'm decent.

But Nemo is god damn.

Oh, I think she's a WGM.

Holy crap.

What is she?

Like a 2,000-something?

Something like that.

She's insane.

Dude, that's nuts.

And she won the poke tournament last time.

Yeah, she was at my table initially.

Oh, you played last time?

Yeah.

She won the first one.

Oh, the first one?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

She was at my table last time.

Oh, okay.

How'd How'd you do?

I got wrecked.

Dude, you should have seen my table.

I had her, Rampage,

Mariano.

Oh, okay.

So you lost.

Lost.

And Mariano and Rampage were right before me.

So they were just raising every hand.

So I had to play kind of tight.

I feel for you.

That sounds painful.

Yeah, it was rough, dude.

You play poker a lot?

When I'm not busy, it's a nice thing to just like kind of, and not turn your brain off because it's very much an active thing.

It's like exercising a different muscle.

Yes.

So whenever I have free time, I will go and try and play.

Got it.

Did you ever realize the money would be insane like this with streaming?

Um,

yes and no.

I mean, I never streamed for the money itself.

I actually got peer-pressured into streaming.

Really?

Yeah.

So, you didn't even want to stream.

No, it was just something that kind of happened.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was just friends with a lot of, I guess, YouTubers or streamers within the scene itself.

And then when Among Us came out, they heavily peer-pressured me.

Like, yo, everyone's asking, who is this guy?

Who is this guy?

And so I was like, okay, sure.

And they're like, you need to stream this now.

I'm like, oh, okay.

Sorry, I guess.

So I turned it on, and then it was kind of an instant blow-up.

So So I'm like, okay, I know how to run a business, so might as well just get everything kind of kick-started and just instantly did that.

Got it.

Where did you learn how to run a business?

My mom runs her own graphic design business.

So just kind of self-taught from like specialists, I guess, of just seeing the nuances from home.

Nice.

AI has changed that space, right?

Oh, yeah.

It's been designed to be honest for that.

Yeah, all those artists got wrecked.

Yeah, it's a lot of people in the design space itself are like

Big corporations don't realize that like there's a nuance to everything and people can tell if something's soulless or not.

But a lot of them are soulless, like we're cutting corners, saving money, and then a lot of their product just looks kind of mediocre or bad, where they can just spend a little bit more, and then they have

way ahead of everyone else because it's just not AI.

Right.

Yeah, certain AI, you could tell it's like generated and it's not human.

Well, even if it looks good, a lot of it just kind of looks the same, right?

So everyone now all of a sudden is just a duplicate of themselves with a different color or a different font.

That's a good point.

Yeah, I don't think it's at the level yet where it can fully replace talented artists.

No, I don't think it will get to that.

Well, it'll get to that point, but not in the sense of originality, I guess.

Right.

Yeah, there'll always be style.

Because it's a prompt.

It's prompted to do a certain thing.

Yeah, and it's based off of art pieces that it's taken itself.

Right.

Were you very artistic growing up?

Yeah, full of artist family.

Oh, yeah.

So all your family's into graphic design, art.

Yeah, whether it's like traditional watercolor or graphic design.

Wow.

Yeah, so and photography.

So they're feeling the full effects of AI.

Yes.

Dang.

Yeah.

It's going to to wipe out a lot of industries, I think.

Yeah.

But I mean, when industry, like, I guess when industries get wiped out, there's always a resurgence in a different way, just by nature of it.

The easiest example was like people always say like a carriage, like horse-drawn carriages.

That was a huge thing back when there was no cars, but now there's cars replaced that industry's dead.

Now it's like a nuanced thing.

So there's always going to be fields that kind of replace it and things will come up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That is true.

But even when I go to grocery stores now, it's a screen.

Oh, yeah.

Like you don't check out with people.

I think those those kind of jobs are gonna be gone.

Yeah, it's um

it'll be something that'll be regulated, but I'm curious what happens with it.

Yeah, so are you kind of pro AI, anti or in the middle?

Um,

I'm not pro AI.

I think there is uses for it.

Um, I think there's ways to get inspiration from it without like going into the scummy side of it.

Yeah, so similar to Elon, that's uh his view.

Is that his view?

Uh, yeah, he's suing open AI.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah,'cause they um he was one of the founders and then he started it not to make profit,

but then something happened where they wanted to start making money and he didn't like that.

Oh, interesting.

I didn't know that.

He was a big supporter of it.

Yeah.

Oh, you're a big supporter?

No, I thought he was.

Oh, no.

No, he's not part of it anymore.

Interesting.

But now he has his own with Twitter.

I forget the name of his.

Gronk or something.

Gronk.

Yeah.

I haven't used it yet, but it's just another like chat GBTS thing.

Yeah.

I got some trust issues with what kind of data I'm giving.

Ah, you know, very, very, very sad.

Definitely.

The AI is so good now, they can replicate your voice, replicate your face, and make videos.

Biggest scary.

I mean, there's the whole voice actor thing of like people are just stealing their voice.

There's tons of games now where voice actors didn't say anything, and they're just using AI to replicate their voice in the game.

What?

Yeah.

That's crazy.

That was a huge thing recently.

That's always been a big strike also for voice actors, too.

Damn.

Yeah, because now AI can just use anyone's voice.

You see fake Joe Rogan ads all the time.

Oh, Mr.

Beast ads, Joe Rogan advised.

Mr.

Beast.

Oh, my gosh.

That's scary.

I wonder if there's a way to combat that.

If you're a public figure.

I don't think there's going to be a way to combat that other than like trademark protection on your image.

But even then, it's like

any 14-year-old just with their own computer can just, yep, here's a replication of now Mr.

Beast doing da-da-da-da-da.

Right, because you can't trademark your voice.

Yeah, so what are you going to do to protect it?

Right.

People are making Drake songs and he's getting pissed.

Yeah, that's something you can really do.

So it'll be regulation based on the country or whatnot.

For real.

So what's typical day like for you right now?

Are you playing all day?

Typical day is,

yeah, kind of streaming a lot.

I was doing a a big project over like, do you know anything about VTubers or whatnot?

VTubers?

VTubers.

It's kind of like a virtual avatar.

No.

How to explain this.

Imagine instead of like me being in person, now there's like an, I guess, a art design image of me that it's not a 3D model, but it's a 2D model, but it moves like it's 3D.

And that's a big scene that was blowing up in the past two years that I'm dabbling in.

Okay.

So what's the plan for that?

The plan for that now is my design is finished, so I've had that launched, but now it's kind of like going to the different design and,

I guess, shows that I can run with that now.

Interesting.

So you'll be everywhere at once.

Yeah, you can be anywhere.

You can do collaborations with a bunch of other people that are also in the scene or even not in the scene itself.

Wow.

That's cool.

Do you ever

like the public spotlight being in that scene?

Does it ever get to you?

So I've always tried to stay as grounded as possible.

I don't like to be too much in the public eye itself.

So every now and then I'll go on stuff like this or I'll do a poker show like this.

But I try to keep it like how I was before I was even a streamer and whatnot.

Pretty low-key.

Yeah.

Laid back.

Yeah, I like just meeting people and having fun rather than like, oh, the celebrity lifestyle.

Yeah.

So that never attracted you, the attention, the views.

like hanging out with celebrities no i mean it's it's fun hanging out with fun people but that's for the sake of being like having fun rather than like oh i'm in like this prestigious area yeah that's a mature take man i noticed a lot of gamers are pretty logical actually yeah

a lot of them just like oh i'll play like stay home and play video games to be honest yeah yeah who would have thought though that would turn into a career Right?

Like, I got ridiculed growing up.

It's still growing here, also.

Like, in Europe, for example, it's like just a completely normalized thing here.

There's still like not as much as there used to be, but there was a big stigma before.

Yeah.

But even now, it's like, people are like, wait a second, you can earn money doing this.

And now, like, ask any kid.

Oh, I want to be a gamer.

I want to be a YouTuber.

Yeah.

You think it's like a feasible path for most people, though?

Absolutely not.

That's what I think, too.

Yeah, it's

you get parents.

I'm sure you get this also.

Like, parents, like, oh, my kid wants to do this.

Like, do you have any advice for them?

They're starting this now.

And you're like, well, good luck.

Yeah, I think it's important to be honest and just look at the statistics.

How many people play video games and how many of them actually make a livable income?

Yeah.

It's not high.

No, it's

compared to like the thousands of thousands and thousands of people want to do it.

It's not anything.

No, not at all.

I mean, it probably took you, oh, you blew up pretty quick, I feel like, but for most gamers, it probably took a while, right?

Yeah, I mean, you can be one of the best in your field and you can still not have any popularity with that and be able to make money just because it is, at the end of the day, it's also like luck and personality.

right?

Because Among Us took off at the right time for you where you could just blow up.

But like you said, you were playing games for 10 years before that, and they probably didn't have the same eyeballs as Among Us.

Oh, nothing at all.

Yeah, Among Us was the,

I mean, it realistically, besides like Minecraft, was the biggest game.

All right, and Fortnite was like the biggest game in the public eye for just like normal casual people.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I wonder if Fortnite or Among Us had more players, actually.

I think at its all-time peak, I think Among Us actually had more.

Whoa.

I'm pretty sure.

That's crazy.

Because mobile.

That's true.

Fortnite got removed from the App Store.

That's yeah.

The whole thing is really funny to be honest.

I don't know what happened.

It's still gone.

Yeah, there was a, I think it was, there was, they didn't want to pay Apple the price for skins.

30%.

Yeah, something like that.

Yeah.

So it got taken off because they just refused, and then they made like a joke Apple skin in game.

Yeah, but now they're both losing.

Yeah.

So I don't know if that worked out.

I mean, Fortnite's still huge.

They're still huge.

I mean, but still, they're both losing out on probably tens of millions.

Yeah, probably.

But I mean, at that point, what is tens of millions to them?

Good point.

Good point.

It's all perspective.

Would you ever launch your own game?

Yes, I would if I had the correct circumstance for it.

There was a I was actually making a game.

Oh.

It ended up getting boxed, sadly.

Too expensive?

Yeah, there was some complication with one person that was going to fund us that didn't end up funding us.

But it was something I still want to do.

I enjoy the production side of things itself and like kind of project directing or direction of it.

Yeah.

And I think I have a good eye of like what what will get popular and what makes a game popular.

Yeah, they do seem very expensive to make a good game.

Yeah, I mean you have to have a lot of passion people because like you're gonna either have to have millions of dollars or you're gonna have to underpay your staff

or you have to strike a deal with them to like get a bunch of talented people to make a game itself

without any like initial funding.

And for a first-time game maker, that's like impossible.

Yeah,

I had all the devs.

It was the art side that

was what ended up halting it.

Really?

You're an artist though.

Well,

okay, I'm an artist, but like making a whole game with all the 3D assets and the music.

If you think of a game, right, there's that random tree.

You have to make that random tree.

There's like so much that goes into it.

Wow.

Yeah, that made me think of RuneScape.

I used to be a woodcutter.

Spend hours chopping trees.

Hours.

I never got to 99, though, man.

Did you?

You weren't dedicated then.

I got to maybe 90 on one of them, but some people had maxed out accounts.

I'm like, how?

Oh, yeah, that was my brother.

Your brother did that?

Yeah, he was a pretty well-known RuneScape player.

Oh, yeah.

Who was he?

I don't, honestly, I don't remember.

Zazema or whatever?

Oh, no, but I do know that guy.

He tried to play Among Us every now and then.

Oh, really?

Oh, wow.

I didn't know he was still around in the gaming world.

Yeah, he still dabbles in RuneScape, and he's also a big league player.

Wow.

People still play RuneScape?

Oh, RuneScape is huge.

What?

Yeah, you didn't know?

No, I thought it died off because they

changed it or whatever.

What happened was they made the newer RuneScape.

Yeah, they liked the 3D.

Everyone hated it.

So they're like, okay, we'll just relaunch the old one.

And then it's like explosion.

Isn't Isn't it funny how games do that?

Fortnite does that with their original map every year.

Yeah, people like nostalgia.

Nostalgia is a very powerful thing.

That is crazy.

Nah, I mean, what is there to do once you're maxed out, though?

That's an excellent question.

I don't really, I mean, go for challenges, I guess.

Go for like...

I guess collect gold.

Yeah, I was never like a max max out the player.

I just had a few skills in 99.

What was your casually?

What was your skill of choice?

Thieving.

Oh, you were that guy?

Yeah, I was in, well, once again, to the deception stuff, I was a big scammer in RuneScape.

Oh, you were?

Yeah.

It was, I mean, I was like a 12-year-old playing that game.

I was like, oh, this is captivating, deceiving people to give them money.

Wow.

So how did the scam work?

There's a bunch of different ways to do it.

I guess whether it's just convincing people to like follow you into a place where you can kill them and get the car.

Or like,

I was part of a scamming guild, which was.

There was a scamming guild.

There's a few scamming guilds.

I was part of one of the larger ones.

Wow.

And we knew a lot of the glitches in the game, I guess, to

just, yeah, I mean, flat out making it forcing people to drop items that they don't know they're dropping.

and then like you remove them from that area or like unpickable, uh, or like make them drop something in an area where you can't pick it up no matter what.

Yeah.

You have to use a spell to pick it up.

Wow.

Yeah, there's just a ton of

purchases, like, know how to do that.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, it's by word of mouth for sure.

That's crazy.

Yeah, that was back then when you probably couldn't even look up these scams on Google, right?

Oh, no.

I mean, some of them were public, some of them weren't.

Yeah.

Obviously, the good ones weren't.

I remember getting PK'd.

It ruined my whole week.

Oh, man.

The first time you get PK'd.

Yeah, imagine if you're on the other end.

RuneScape.

Good memories.

I feel like that was the first game for me.

Yeah, I think that was probably my first game, also.

Like, actually, online first game.

Yeah, it was fun.

I used to do the Clan Wars, too.

Oh, yeah, that's always fun.

Yeah, those were fun.

Did you have the membership, the paid one?

Oh, yeah.

I mean,

dedicating that much time to RuneScape.

Did you ever get into Maple Story?

I did not get into a Maple Story.

No, I feel like it was always like either RuneScape or Maple Story.

It was never both for people.

True.

I got in that.

I was scamming in that one for sure.

With the trades, because all the scrolls looked the same.

So you could just replace it with a shittier scroll.

Yeah, people are trying to convince me to play MapleStory back in the day because the scamming was good too.

There was a lot of scamming and hacking.

That's true also.

Yeah, was there hacking in RuneScape?

I don't...

There wasn't so much as hacking as more just like botting.

Botting, yeah.

That was a big one.

Yeah, everyone's just getting like, they don't want to chop wood for a year of their life.

So like, just

bought to it.

I could never figure it out how to set it up.

Hmm.

I mean, it's just auto-clicker.

Who had one day to you?

I had a person level other things for me, but like, you can have full-on programs like run pathing for you.

Pathing, wow.

Do you get into fliff?

Uh, no, really?

Wait, what is that?

Fly F-L-Y-F-F?

I don't think I know what that is now.

Oh, okay.

It's like a Maple Store.

I'm trying to think of what else.

Team Fortress.

Oh, yeah, huge Team Fortress.

I mean, any type of game that you have like trading in,

whether it's like items or like, I guess, and TF2 is hats and weapons and whatnot, usually I'm playing that type of thing.

So you played Fortnite too, then?

I did play a little bit of Fortnite.

Fortnite was.

Actually, you can't trade in France.

You can't trade in Fortnite, but it was like an okay game.

It wasn't really my style.

Yeah, yeah.

yeah you can't trade team fortress though was so fun team fortress cs go cs go um what was your class in team fortress uh spy

i shouldn't have even asked that yeah it's kind of obvious but i'm like nah yeah so you like those movies where uh people are undercover oh yeah any type of like

you have to outsmart people i guess is a fun way to think about what i like have you ever done an iq test um i i don't think i've taken an official iq test i've taken one of those like adhd facility kind of testing all around things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What was the results of that?

The results of that, I came back as an anomaly.

Really?

Yeah.

It was inconclusive in some aspects.

I didn't even know that was possible.

Yeah, I didn't either.

It's kind of hard.

It's bad, to be honest.

No, what they ended up doing was there was a few tests that was based off of doing things in the fewest moves possible.

A lot of like, if you've done one of those tests before, is very similar to an IQ test.

You have like...

puzzles in front of you or like logic deduction things or memory-based things.

And a lot of the tests I held a stopwatch in front of me and they're like,

I looked, I'm like, oh, is this timed?

And they're like, no, don't worry about the time at all.

I'm like, but there's a stopwatch in front of me.

So I ended up doing everything extremely quickly, but not

as accurate as I could be, but I still ended up doing it quick.

But they weren't even running the

stopwatch.

Oh, they were.

Yeah, it was based on.

It was based on accuracy, and I didn't know that.

I thought it was going to be based on time.

Got it.

So that's where a lot of things kind of came back inconclusive.

But I was also in the place I tested was the first person to get 100% on a memory section.

Damn.

Yeah.

Do you have photographic memory, you think?

Not, hmm.

I don't think I get photographic memory, but like I'm

I have like memory based on relation to things, I guess.

There must be a word for that because I know there's photographic, audiographic, and then there's one for touch, kinesiology or something.

Yeah, it's

I it's it's very hard to describe how my memory works.

It's very much

once I can associate something to something, I won't forget it.

Wow.

Yeah.

That is interesting.

So you just tie it to an object or a thing and to tie it to an object or a place or a feeling.

Wow.

That's impressive because a lot of humans just forget everything.

I mean, I don't get to choose often when I get to do that.

It's just something I like, I naturally will remember it.

So you've got some bad memories too, then.

Oh, yeah.

That are still with you.

Yeah.

Bad memories are also how like I'll just, there's something important, I'll just forget it because I just don't deem it as important.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That makes sense.

How close are you with your brother?

Um

they talk every now and then, not too close.

Okay.

I'm a fairly independent.

I mean, I guess my entire family is fairly independent as is.

All introverted, kind of?

Yeah, introverted or like just kind of staying in their own lane, doing their own thing.

That's how my dad's side is.

All PC gamers, all introverted.

Just lock them in a closet for a year and you wouldn't notice.

Yep, pretty much.

Yeah, that's interesting.

Well, dude, it's been funny getting to know your side of the world.

What do you got going on next?

And what are your predictions for tonight's game?

Kind of going into stuff, I'm getting a lot more into cooking overall.

And then

cooking and poker are like my two endeavors kind of just interested in overall.

I guess for today, I think,

I mean, Wolfgang, my table.

Oh, that's tough.

Yeah, a pretty decent shot at winning.

I think any of the people that just like actually play poker a lot, so like obviously Nemo, also.

Yeah.

Big advantage.

But there's like, I mean, by nature of poker and especially how quick this tournament is,

it's anyone's game, really, to be honest.

Yeah, we'll see what happens, man.

Thanks for coming on.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Yeah.

Thanks for watching, as always, guys.

See you next time.