October 3, 2023 • 45 mins
Esports competitions have seen a boom in popularity in recent years with some of the highest paid players making up to six figures. Celebrities like Drake and Post Malone have even invested in the sport. Host Roy Wood Jr. sits down with Daily Show correspondent Michael Kosta and LA Thieves Call of Duty player Sam “Octane” Larew to break down the similarities and differences between traditional and electronic sports and how professional gaming is making its way into the mainstream.
Watch the original segments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE4qsJ1Lq1o
Original air date: January 24, 2023
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the Daily Show podcast that
goes a little deper into segments and topics that originally
aired on the show, like look this, I got to
think about this podcast. If The Daily Show is a salad,
then we're the toppings that make you want to eat
that salad. The crew toons, the grilled chicken, the seas
of salad dressing or FRENCHI Bosama, vindagarretta, whatever the hell
(00:27):
you prefer. We all know that honey must is the champ.
We got it for you. We're diving into the world
of esports today, based on a segment from Daily Show
correspondent Michael Costa. This segment took a deeper dive into
the growing professional gaming industry roll my clip.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Competitive video gaming known as esports is booming.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
There's even a training center with five training rooms and
six locker rooms.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
The Olympics are considering adding esports.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I went to California to a so called training center
in someone's garage to talk with these So it's about
why video games isn't a sport? What the hell is this?
This was the Alienware training facility for esports Team Liquid,
complete with scrimmage stations, a war room, pr department, a
(01:17):
team coach, and even an.
Speaker 5 (01:18):
In house chef.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
The team star, whose name is Taco, was acquired from
Brazil's top team.
Speaker 6 (01:25):
This is our real sport.
Speaker 5 (01:26):
You call yourself an athlete?
Speaker 7 (01:28):
Yes, of course, to compete. We go to tournaments, We
travel a lot, we got some money.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
What does an est sport athlete, mister Taco do every day?
Speaker 6 (01:38):
Just practice?
Speaker 7 (01:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (01:40):
I have a former professional tennis player. That's what I
would call a real sport.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
There was an opponent and you would relish the opportunity
to defeat them with your racket.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
What do you actually have to show for what you're doing?
Speaker 7 (01:53):
And come on, I have a real strong finger finger, Yes,
this finger, I have a kid at least one million people.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
That fingers killed one million people at least.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
To help break this down a little bit more for us,
I'm joined by my fellow Daily Show correspondent and Michigander, Michianderer.
Speaker 5 (02:16):
Michigander was right. Trust your instincts you.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Had, Okay, yeah, Michigander, and I'm going to learn from
you what you learned about making this segment. Costa.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
How you doing, I'm good man, Thanks for having me.
And it feels odd to even be called in on
this piece because I was such a skeptic going.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
In and uh now, I'm like, how professional? So you
got any sport?
Speaker 5 (02:39):
I mean I never you know, I grew up with sports.
Not what's this e? Why is there? Why is there
a vowel in front of it?
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Now?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
So but I was really impressed and turn the corner,
so to speak. But obviously your other guests can really
talk about esports.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah, and that other guest is a Call of Duty
player for the La ths Am Octane LaRue, Sam. How
you doing?
Speaker 6 (03:03):
What's going on? Guys? I'm glad that we uh glad
we converted you. Michael. I liked that.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
That's that's got I know you were skeptic before him,
and see that's just it's good one at a time.
Speaker 6 (03:10):
I liked that.
Speaker 5 (03:11):
Yeah, I was a reluctant convert.
Speaker 6 (03:15):
Even want you in the first place?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Okay, Yeah, I was reluctant and you won me over.
So that's that's a testament to how fun this can be.
Speaker 6 (03:24):
I like that. Are you a video game guy at all?
Or or not none at all? Nothing?
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Ever, since the controller had more than the A and
B button.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Lord, are you serious? Not even a Sega genesis.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
I mean Roy.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
I remember walking into you and Ronnie's office and you
guys would be playing whatever, and I was just like,
this looks cool, but I am so intimidator.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Oh yeah, running slow week where they didn't need us.
Oh yeah, okay, saithing set up.
Speaker 6 (03:51):
I like to see where we're starting here.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
Well, and I don't want to jump ahead.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
But when I said about the piece, and I guess
this is how I got converted. I like watching anybody
try to compete and perform under pressure, and once you
realize that esports that's all, that's what it is, that's fun.
Speaker 5 (04:12):
That's fun for me.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
That's how I am about most things. If I know
someone's going to be disappointed in crying at the end
of confrontation, it's usually my cup. At two, I can't
even watch Chopped Kids. Sam, let's start with that e
in front of esports. You know, describe that world to
us and tell us how long you've been a professional game.
Speaker 6 (04:33):
Oh man, we're summarizing esports. Okay.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
Competitive video gaming is something that is well used to
be extremely taboo.
Speaker 6 (04:40):
I'm happy, you know.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
Michael is a perfect example here that it's a little
bit more mainstream than it used to be for sure,
but like I said, it was it was taboo years ago,
and the older generation of just most people in general.
Whenever you say that you play video games for a living,
or you know, whenever I get into an uber and
they're asked where I'm going, what I'm doing, and I
tell them that, the usual reaction is, all, my my
kid plays video games, or.
Speaker 6 (05:01):
Oh, how do you do that?
Speaker 4 (05:02):
And it's a very misunderstood topic, I could say. So
I'm happy to see the progression that it's made over
the last couple of years because video games has a well,
at least used to have a pretty rough stigma around it,
you know, people being lazy. It wasn't a productive thing
to do with your time.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Then you blind it ruins your television exactly.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
You couldn't you couldn't make a living off of it.
It was just a huge time sink, And I'm happy
that the outlook on esports and video games in general,
like I said, has changed over the last couple of years.
But it's just competing at the highest level and whatever
chosen video game you would like mine happens to be
called duty. But there's countless out there.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
The way I've tried to explain it to people is
that it's really not that different than going to a
video game Marcade back in the day and you and
five or six different guys would all try to get
the high score on whatever the hell, pac Man, Galaga, whatever.
You're just doing that online. The only scope of knowledge
that I had of esports growing up was Madden. You know,
(06:00):
I went to college at a place where people would
play Madden for money in the dorm, in the you know,
in the TV or whatever. And then eventually at some
point ESPN had like a Madden League that used to
come on at like four in the afternoons on ESPN
five or some shit, and I was like, oh, yeah,
that makes sense because I've seen people do that here.
(06:21):
But then once it got into like the bigger world
of like all of these role playing games in the
first person shooters, I'm like, well, how where is the
money coming from with that? Like, how does the money
flow from that? Because this is being broadcast on Twitch
and the internet, and I'm assuming it's no different than
a broadcast network where you turn you advertised all of
(06:42):
the eyeballs, right exactly.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
It's very it's very similar to traditional esports, and at
least my neck of the woods. I play in a
franchise league, so similar to an NFL or an MLB.
It's a city based franchise league. I obviously played for
the Los Angeles team. So there are ways to compare
it to each additional esports to help people kind of
figure out how to navigate the waters. But it's definitely
(07:04):
a little tricky because, like you said, people don't know
where the money is coming from, and you hear these
absurd figures like and there's a game called Doda and
they're like basically their super Bowl.
Speaker 6 (07:13):
It was a forty million dollar tournament.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
So people are very reluctant and very confused when they
hear the numbers being thrown around. Like I said, it's
because it was so taboo years ago. The transition of
like trying to understand the landscape is a little bit
challenging for people at times. For sure, it's a little
forty million dollars is a little different than Madden in
your dorm, for sure.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
I don't know they was fighting in them dawns.
Speaker 6 (07:38):
The competition is probably about the same.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yeah, the how do you how do you get into this?
Because this is one of them careers that now like
do you feel like costa like at this point, like, ah,
why did the teacher tell me about this shit when
I was in the third grade? Out it's stuck with
that Sega genesis? How do you get into this world?
Like how do you even make a team? Like? Are
(08:00):
you so good at Call of Duty as an individual
that you get a call? Is it like the matrix
to someone knock at your door and say follow the
white rabbit? Like how do you get pulled deeper and
deeper into this world and then see it as a
viable career path?
Speaker 4 (08:15):
So I think I'm very confident. I could say that
like ninety five percent of people start out as a
casual video game player because they're doing it, whether it
be for fun or it's just a game that they enjoy.
In general, I think there are very very few cases
where people actually just start playing and want to play
competitively immediately. In my case, I just loved playing Call
of Duty and loved playing video games.
Speaker 6 (08:35):
My entire life.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
I've been playing since I could hold a controller essentially,
and I kind of tripped and fell into a career.
To be honest with you, I was playing recreationally, like
I said, and I had met some friends online that
introduced me to the world of competitive call duty.
Speaker 6 (08:49):
I didn't even know it existed when I was playing.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
I was kind of just in my own little bubble
wasting time essentially in high school. And my friend at
the time, like I said, that I'm online, he wanted
to travel to this event, and it was so strange
to me. And you know, I was like sixteen, and
I didn't even know if I was good. But you know,
when I'm sixteen years old, traveling across the country to
play at a video game event just sounds like a
(09:12):
great idea. So naturally I did it. I begged my parents,
and I don't know why they let me do it,
but they did, so shout out to them, and I
kind of just tripped and fell in love with it. It
was it was completely accidental, and I think that's honestly
the best case scenario because it's, you know, my livelihood today.
Speaker 5 (09:30):
Roy and the Piece, I interviewed Rick Fox, former Lakers.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Champion Echo Fox, the hell is he doing that? Well?
Speaker 5 (09:37):
Exactly? So this is I'm.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Sure I mean no disrespect to Rick Fox. I wanted
to beat my ass.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Well, and I remember when we were pre producing the piece.
I think one of my questions was, can we get
excuse me, Sam, I'm just gonna speak frankly, I say,
can we get a real athlete that maybe has got
into esports? Because I don't want to sit with an athlete,
want to sit with someone that like.
Speaker 5 (10:02):
Whatever, whatever, the tournament ship.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
But man, there was something really powerful about a guy
wearing his Lakers World Championship ring.
Speaker 6 (10:12):
It's easier, it's easier to connect with it.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
It's easier for me to connect with.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Certainly, what are you doing with these nerds?
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Man?
Speaker 5 (10:18):
You're a real athlete and so are they. What the
ship are you talking about?
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Me and you?
Speaker 5 (10:24):
We played real sports.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
You know, you can see our balls in our pants
when we played our error.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
I think there was no shame around pursuing a career
in professional sports because you could get a scholarship to college, which,
by the way, you can get as an esport player.
Now there's a number of colleges that are building esports
arenas on their campuses.
Speaker 5 (10:42):
This is all great, but let's get down to brass
tacks here. How much do these athletes.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Make probably the best top layer in the world in
one of our games, he makes probably eight hundred thousand what.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
And he talked about how I think he has a son,
or maybe he was talking about one of his players.
I don't know, but their parents were like, stop playing
video games, you know, go outside, go outside and play.
And then one of his athletes had just signed like
a three million dollar contract. And it is very funny
because my mom, I mean, we played Super Mario, we
played you know, my mom, get outside, you know, I'll
(11:17):
give you an hour of video game time if you
go outside.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
All yes, you know.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
And it's really like, yeah, my mom, you really blew
my financial opportunities.
Speaker 5 (11:26):
And I blow my mom to this day.
Speaker 6 (11:28):
Your mom's the reason you're not a professional sports player.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Right, Okay, so constant staying in that lane. What were
some of the other like similarities and differences between like
traditional sports and esports? Are they getting time outs? Are
they getting water breaks between every round?
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Like?
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Do you have a corner man?
Speaker 5 (11:45):
Get them run? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
We went to Team Liquid's training facility in Santa Monica
and when I walked in, okay, quickly about me. I
played minor league professional tennis, dedicated much of my life
to tennis. Never got to the highest level in tennis
that I wanted to. But I walked into Team Liquid's
training facility and I said, this is a tennis academy.
(12:09):
I mean there was a chef who cooked this lunch.
There was a training facility. There was a breakdown room
where you would where you'd break down.
Speaker 5 (12:17):
Video, watch footage, watch footage.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
They had mental coaches maybe the wrong word on staff.
They had lots and lots of people whose job it
was to facilitate and make sure.
Speaker 5 (12:30):
The athletes were ready to compete.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
And as soon as I walked in the door, I
just had this feeling of like, oh shit, I got
to go put.
Speaker 5 (12:37):
My tennis shoes on and go practice. It just felt
like that. So there was a lot of similarities.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
So Sam, in that world, I would assume that dive
and sleep help your mental acuity, which makes you quicker
and more analytical. What is the typical training day, Like,
I'm not going to say you don't need to be
physically fit. I feel like you do.
Speaker 6 (13:01):
It helps.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
I've been on both sides of the spectrum of physically
fit and not physically fit.
Speaker 6 (13:06):
Well, competing it definitely helps.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
How does that tax your body?
Speaker 4 (13:09):
So it's it's much more mental. Don't get me wrong,
you were. I'm not going to sit here and pretend
that we go through the physical strain that and I'm
not gonna be.
Speaker 6 (13:18):
Naturally.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
I would love to do a side by side cholesterol
or blood pressure test of an athlete versus.
Speaker 6 (13:24):
We could run a forty right now, We'll see how
it goes.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
No, But still sitting in a chair, because I've noticed
them game costa. You ever said one of them gaming chairs?
Speaker 5 (13:33):
They are the rageous.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
They are kind of ugly, but so comfortable.
Speaker 6 (13:37):
They're not comfortable. They're not I actually prefer the office chair.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
So anyway, uh so, I guess that's all it's it's
essentially all mental. Obviously, being in better physical shape is
just better for your life in general. That impacts all
aspects of your life, not just video games. But to
Michael's point, how he mentioned the infrastructure behind team like
facilities and all that, that's that's pretty much the standard
(14:02):
throughout the majority of UH Tier one esports. That's when
you talk about League of Legends or or Dote or
counter Strike, call duty, all these things, that is the standard.
We have a chef as well, we have mental performance coaches.
We have all these things, and I think that that's
another thing that people really can gravitate towards and understanding,
because when you know, you watch these videos like behind
(14:23):
the scenes of I don't know the charters, uh facilities,
You'll you'll see like their locker room, you'll see where
they watch their their game film or vote for for us,
You'll see where the chef prepares their meals. It's it's
a it's a one to one comparison. So I think
that that's another thing that can help bring people uh
towards esports in an easier light and too to your point, Royal, Uh,
(14:45):
it's it's all mental. It's it's ninety five to five,
I would say, in terms of of mental and that's
arguably worse because you can become your own worst enemy
pretty quickly because uh, it's it's very performance based and obvious.
Speaker 6 (15:00):
So you know, traditional sports are as well, but.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
You can get hurt and you can go out for
the season and that's not really I mean, it's not
your fault. That's just an unfortunate circumstance, whereas in esports,
it's entirely on your performance and there's really bar like
an extreme circumstance. There's no excuse. It's you either played
well or you played poorly. And there's no not like.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
The defense sucked but I did my job.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
It's not like it's not like I threw for four
hundred yards and three touchdowns, but my defense let up
you know, forty points. It's like I went out and
I either help my team win or I helped my
team lose. So there are very strong uh yeah, very
binarytal health for sure.
Speaker 5 (15:33):
Are you guys drug tested? Is not a joke?
Speaker 2 (15:35):
I mean, if it's that mentally straining, Yeah, there's all
types of legal, illegal, focused drugs, and I know there's
stories in the NFL of there being bags of greenies
that guys pop in there, you know, before halftime.
Speaker 5 (15:49):
That keeps them focus, keeps them energized amphetamines.
Speaker 6 (15:52):
So we are for real?
Speaker 7 (15:53):
Is that?
Speaker 5 (15:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (15:53):
Tell me please talk to drug testing. Okay.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
That was something that came with the uh the CDO one.
We started franchising a couple of years ago. Before that,
it was kind of the wild wild West, and you
could do what you want and it was like a
tough It was just there wasn't enough money for it
because drug testing.
Speaker 6 (16:09):
I don't know. I didn't even know this. It's extremely
expensive to do.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
So once the CDL hit and there was a large
influx of money, you know, millions and millions of dollars,
the league's drug policy and just the franchising in general
really cracked down. And now there's it ties for everything
under the sun.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
And when you say cdo, we're talking about the call
of doing the league. Okay, now what are you old
drug testing for? What are the prohibited substances? No weed,
I mean the Big one's cocaine, heroin, I'm sure cracks, frowns,
none of none of it.
Speaker 5 (16:41):
You could have a legal prescription for adderall.
Speaker 6 (16:44):
Yeah, well there's things called tee east.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
I think it's therapeutic use exemption is the acronym, And
there are people in the league. I have friends of
mine that can vouch for this as well. When you
have ADHD, it is very hard to actually just function
as a person without uh, you know, adderall or whatever
you're on, because you need to come back to zero.
It's not or come back to one hundred, whatever it
may be. It's not like you're taking it to be better,
it's taking it to be like a neutral. So there
(17:07):
are cases like that which I had, Like I said,
I have very close friends that are like that as well.
So there are times you have to go to a doctor,
you have to go through the process to be like, look,
are you trying to do this because you need it
or are you trying to do this to get.
Speaker 6 (17:17):
A competitive edge.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
So CEELD does a phenomenal job on making sure that
that line is correct and there's no one pushing the boundary.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Now to that point. After the break, I want to
talk exactly about that a little deeper, because I want
to talk about the mental health implications of what you've
already kind of alluded to. Putting pressure on yourself and
knowing it's your fault that you suck today, and how
do you unpack that and if you need to address
that pharmaceutically, what does the league do to help? And
(17:45):
just I just want to talk about the mental health
implications of what your job because it seems stressful. In
any job that's stressful, there is definitely appeal that could
help you with it, and I want to talk about
that a little bit more after the break. This will
beyond the scenes. We'll be right back Sam. You know
we left talking about your practice schedule and everything that
(18:05):
goes into preparing first off, like in hours, how long
are you doing this? Like if football? Yeah, if football
is like nine to six with two a days and
a break in the afternoon from asade.
Speaker 6 (18:18):
So you want a full schedule breakdown.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Well, not a full schedule breakdown, but just from sun
up to sundown? How long are you holding a video
game controller?
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Between ten to thirteen hours?
Speaker 6 (18:29):
Fourteen hours?
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Shit? You crazy?
Speaker 2 (18:31):
A day?
Speaker 6 (18:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (18:33):
How many days a week do you get Friday Saturday off?
Like six? Six days? At thirteen?
Speaker 5 (18:40):
Is that?
Speaker 6 (18:41):
And that's that's a me thing. That's not a that's
not the standard.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
There are there's plus and minus obviously, but if you
want to win, you gotta put the hours in it
because if you're not gonna do it, then someone else will.
Speaker 6 (18:50):
So I've been around the block.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
I've been playing for you know, eight years at this point,
nine years, so I understand what it takes to win.
Speaker 6 (18:56):
And I've won a lot.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
So it's uh, it's a lot of a lot of
trial and area throughout my career to to to find
the spot where I know that I'm putting in the
work required to win.
Speaker 6 (19:05):
And right now, it's about that time.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Are you playing Call of Duty or are you working
on a specific exercise to improve a specific part of
your game.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
So you guys asked me if if it's controller held
the entire time, and it's not, it's probably it's probably
like eight hours of playing and then the rest is
either VOD review on the day, talking with coaches or
my team to figure out, you know, plans or strategies
for the next scrims, or talking in general about practice
and improvement, whether that be game planning for matches that
are upcoming, or if we're traveling, talking about our schedule
(19:37):
and bracket and all that kind of stuff. So yeah,
I mean for the actual the schedule throughout the day,
we practice from eleven am to give or take six pm.
Those are two scrim blocks per day with a break
in the middle scrimmage scrimmages. Yeah, okay, yes, other teams
she had two of those a day with a break
in the middle obviously for you know, lunch, and we'll
(19:59):
talk about the game play and if we're doing things properly,
if we're addressing the issues that we want to talk
about for that day, and then afterwards, when you get home,
I'll usually stream on Twitch and then that's kind of
the extra time. I mean, I'll stream for four to
five hours per night, and I'm also playing cod during
that time as well, so it's the the overtime essentially
that kind of pushes those hours.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Really, do you ever have fun? Do you ever just
go today?
Speaker 6 (20:24):
No, it's really fun.
Speaker 4 (20:25):
It's you know, it's a cliche, but if you like
your job, you know you're not gonna.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Work a day, okay, because you was in work voice
just now that was a work octave. Well, you know,
you got to train and then you would study the
other team strategies and me figure out.
Speaker 6 (20:37):
Yeah, it's I mean, it's video games.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Band it.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
At the end of the day, it is my job
and it is how I make a living. But it
is video games at the same time, so I have
a ton of fun doing it. It's competing. Obviously, competition
is great. If you're losing all the time, competition is
probably not that great. But yeah, I mean, it's it's
video games. Man, it cannot be fun.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
This is where I appreciate traditional sports and that you
cannot play that many hours, you know, you even in tennis,
even at our even at our even at our most
high training of two a days in college, where it
was two and a half in the morning, two in
the afternoon. I mean the last the second half of
(21:15):
that second workout is basically just feel horrible. Well, it's
just it's it's counterproductive. You're just you know, you're out
of Yeah, you're out of You're out of energy. So
chalk went up for the traditional sport that I didn't
have to play tennis twelve hours.
Speaker 5 (21:27):
And then go home and witch my serf. So you
know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
Man, That's that's where the boundary of the physical and
the mental comes up for sure, because it's mental burnout,
whereas in physical or trictional sports obviously physical burnout.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Okay, so then let's talk about the mental burnout of that.
Have you ever been impacted by that, Like, have you
ever felt that level of just I'm spent?
Speaker 6 (21:49):
Yes, definitely have.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
Uh So when I was young, I went pro at
eighteen years old, I was playing obviously long before then.
I was just excited to be playing the game I met.
Health wasn't something that I was really focused on because
that never had impacted me essentially, and up until I
would say, like two years ago, It was the first
time where I had really noticed the decline, and I
didn't really take the proper steps beforehand, and I didn't
(22:13):
have like the warning signs of myself to.
Speaker 6 (22:15):
Have the self awareness to stop that from happening.
Speaker 4 (22:18):
So I was on a different team a couple of
years ago, going through a pretty rough stint in terms
of like placings and just team performance overall, and it
got pretty dark. I was contemplating like retirement. I didn't
know where my career was going to take me. I
didn't know if I was even capable of playing anymore.
So that's the self doubt had definitely crept in. And
like I said, since I didn't really have any prior
(22:40):
experience with dealing with mental health issues, it kind of
all hit me like a truck and it was definitely
something that I had to navigate being an adult and
trying to figure out how to just get out of
that headspace. That's where Michael, when you mentioned the Team
Liquid thing, like the mental performance coaches come in. We
had one that was phenomenal with one hundred thieves or thieves.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
So the team understands that and they've made space for
that within their facilities for you all to have that
the same as a cheft, the same as a missus.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
So we have and that's new, like that's my college,
you know, that's new. And one thing and Sam, please
talk more about this. It's always hard as an athlete
to know am I mentally ill? Or do I just
keep losing? And losing sucks?
Speaker 5 (23:26):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Like it hurts to lose that you take it personally.
You work so hard and you're losing. It's like a
slump is different than like I'm depressed, But there are
some crossovers.
Speaker 6 (23:39):
How did you Definitely?
Speaker 4 (23:40):
I mean, it's nuts, it's I think the only way
to really differentiate between two is how much work that
you're putting in. I mean, if you are doing the
bare minimum, you're slotting by and you're losing, then you
can really stell for right to be like, look, I'm
not doing what I could be doing right now.
Speaker 6 (23:54):
Someone should have my job. That isn't me.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
Whereas on the opposite of the spectrum, if you're putting
it in ten to twelve hours day, if you're watching vod,
if you're doing everything you possibly can to get better
and you're still losing, you need to have the mental
aquity be like, look, I'm doing everything I can. I'm
putting one hundred and ten percent into what I'm doing
right now, So that that's a thing that you can
take away. Maybe your team isn't great, Maybe then you
can look outside and not pass blame, but you can
(24:18):
understand that you are doing whatever you possibly can in
that situation. And that was something I had to learn
because when I was doing poorly, I really didn't understand that.
So I wasn't doing everything that I could have been
doing at the time. And once I started, and I
started to feel a lot better because it's like, look,
even if the results aren't there, I know that I'm
putting my best foot forward. So there's definitely crossover, like
(24:39):
you mentioned, it's just having to navigate that crossover is
very very hard to do.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Can you go on injured reserve? For my mind ain't right? Like,
how does it when you're talking about this is a
team based sport and you can be replaced by somebody.
I don't know how your JV squad or your minor
league or how you get called up from the G
league goes that In that world, somebody replaces you and
they do better.
Speaker 6 (25:01):
Than you.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
You ain't getting your.
Speaker 6 (25:02):
Job that so that is very true.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
What is the pressure of choosing to endure mental health
struggles instead of just literally taking a break and plugging
from everything.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
So, up until a couple of years ago, was very
taboo to do that. That's I mean, mental health in
general wasn't really looked upon until a couple of years
ago as a serious topic. And call duty held that
same sentiment with There have been cases where people have said, look,
I'm burnt, I can't do this right now. I'm not
in the headspace to compete. I am just a burden
(25:36):
to my team. Essentially. That has happened over the last
couple of seasons in multiple different cases. And to answer
your question, there are substitutes on rosters that will step
in for that player, whether it be like, hey, I
just need a week, I need X amount of time
doesn't matter. And again to your point, if they start
performing very well, it feels pretty rough. But nine times
(25:57):
out of ten, the player will either be traded the
next season if that is something that ends up happening,
or the players come back out right and be like,
look I feel a lot better. I'm in a much
better mental state. Than I was prior. But yeah, mentally, so.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
It's like quarterbacks and football. Basically, if you lose your
job to the backup, you still have worse.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
Exactly in the league, you're you're you're gonna have name value.
You're going to be like, look, this guy was playing
extremely well prior to his break, and maybe his break
made him feel ten times better. So you still have
name value when when that case happens, that also has
happened to your point where the substitute will step in
and perform. Well, that's kind of how new new players
entered the league in general.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
But but this is pro sports. I mean, the stakes
are high and there's real money. It's so it's not
like a participation trophy for everyone.
Speaker 5 (26:45):
So it's.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
You know, I mean it sucks, it sucks, but if
someone steps in and does better.
Speaker 5 (26:50):
Than you, you got to really think if you're gonna
pop off.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Yeah, yeah, I see one of Sam's mental health strategies
just ran into the room. That's right, because everybody who
competes or performs at a high level needs something that
loves it unconditionally.
Speaker 6 (27:08):
That's right. Cameo ca Okay, the dog came in trying
to get those likes.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Look, I can bomb all day, I can bomb all
day at a comedy club, but as soon as I
come home, this.
Speaker 5 (27:21):
Little idiot looks me and tells me I'm funny.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
That's all I need.
Speaker 6 (27:25):
I'll hear the door open. Here, the door open. But yes,
to your point, it definitely helps you.
Speaker 5 (27:30):
Have you ever fired a real gun?
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Uh?
Speaker 4 (27:33):
No, I have not, which is strange because I am
from somewhere that loves hunting in the dirty South.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
So yeah, no, I'm not Sam across all leagues. Now,
you play at an optimum level in your craft at
some of the lower level leagues. Have you seen an
increase in the level of support that esports leagues are
providing to the players with regards to mental health? Like,
I understand the care that you got, So.
Speaker 6 (28:00):
It would be like the G League in the NBA,
for example.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yeah, yeah, Double A Baseball and things like that.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
Uh yeah, I think it's just with a rising tide
lifts all ships kind of situation. Once the league franchised
and we've got that huge influx of money, like I
mentioned beforehand, it kind of helped everyone.
Speaker 6 (28:17):
I know that there was.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
A large structure put in place for we call it
Challengers that's like the that's our thing. So when you're
talking about the Challenger League, there is a lot more
structure than there used to be. I mentioned the Wild
Wild West a little ago. It was very much like that,
but now there's there's a lot of different organizations. There
are professional teams that have Academy rosters or Challengers rosters
(28:41):
that are dictor directly linked to the CDL teams.
Speaker 6 (28:45):
There are separate entities in their own that.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Just bro, that's British Premier League Soccer. Shit, where we
draft you at fourteen and you are part of our
organization exactly?
Speaker 6 (28:54):
That is exactly correct.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Wow, I understand when I watched the NFL how they
make money? How are these where? How are they making money?
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Like?
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Why would they invest? It's not broadcast yet, it's a
little bit of broadcast, but like, how are where is
the money coming in for esport? Is it the sale
of the game.
Speaker 6 (29:14):
So there's a couple of different avenues.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
The main one obviously is advertising and selling sponsorships is
as you do in general for the individual such as myself,
there are you know, brand deals. I have an agent
similar to how an NFL would do it. You know,
I can't go on a commercial with Save Farm and
Patrick Mahomes, but I can do some one off, you know,
something for like Herman Miller or just you know brands
in general that would want to work with you.
Speaker 6 (29:37):
They're streaming on Twitch. There's a lot of revenue there.
Speaker 4 (29:39):
You can do YouTube, so it's just content as an individual.
On the individual level is probably the number one, as
well as your salary, which I'll get into. On the
league level, it's a lot of brands, it's a lot
of selling partnerships, and on the organizational level, that's where
you have the tie to. Uh Basically in Sanley rich
people that like to do sport or have an interest
(30:01):
in it. So I just played for the Seattle Search.
They're partner with the Canucks. We I currently play for
the La Thieves, which is a branch of one hundred Thieves.
They are one of like a deep triple A esports organization.
They had a Series A investment when they first started
their company, invested by Drake.
Speaker 6 (30:18):
You said, like Rick Fox and Echo Fox.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
There are multiple different cases over esports where people just
have an interest and happen to have a lot of
money and uh so, I mean it's it's never a
bad thing.
Speaker 6 (30:29):
You know.
Speaker 4 (30:29):
I'm I'm salaried and it provides my living and there's
a huge structure, you know, I have insuran case.
Speaker 6 (30:35):
It's it's a lot of different things.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
But with that celebrity involvement, that has not made it
mainstream or uncool in any way.
Speaker 6 (30:45):
I think it's I think it's the exact opposite. I
think that.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
Funnily enough to Drake's involved, not reach there you go,
So to talk about the celebrity thing just for a second.
I think the pandemic really moved games into the spotlight.
I think beforehand it was pretty taboo and it was
nerdy to just put it blatantly if you played video games.
And I think the pandemic, with everyone being inside, kind
(31:10):
of tied everyone together, like, look, I can't go out,
I don't have anything to do. Let's all hop on
a warzone and hang out. So I think it brought
celebrities into the limelight. You look at like Kyler Murray,
he just has memes around him that he plays call
duty on his his Microsoft Edge when he's when he's
on the field. You know, Drake, like I said, is
a series of investor of one hundred thieves. There's a
bunch of things.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Post Malone is even.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Like exactly he loves apex and was on complexity. So
I've met a lot of these guys. I've met celebrities
strictly because I played video games, and these are things
that I never would have been able to do otherwise.
And it's kind of cool because it's an icebreaker. You
can go up and you can talk shit to them,
you can do it humanizes them because when you see
these people and you see Drake, he's like, dude, why
would I ever put myself in the same room as
(31:52):
this guy. I wouldn't even know what to say. But
it gives you the opportunity to be able to speak
freely and not be as nervous. And obviously that's just
an extremely privileged standpoint because I could talk to these people, but.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Because that's always my thing, I just want to make
sure that I think it's cooler if they're legitimate fans
and have some level of emotional investment in what's happening
versus this just being I've put some money on this,
and I am here to check on my like like
almost earnest in the way that like Ryan Reynolds and
Rob mclaney bought that soccer team over in England. But
(32:23):
they're legit there and running like they are invested in
care versus just somebody. Yeah, this is my liquor line.
What the fuck do you know about liquor? Yeah, tequila
by my tequila. Did you go down there and check
on your tequila plants? Bitch?
Speaker 5 (32:38):
Did you?
Speaker 1 (32:39):
You probably did? After the break, Costa, I want to
talk to you about your experience going to one of
these tournaments, what it was like. We need to talk
about the salary. Sam. I don't want to pocket watch you,
but I want to give us the median. We don't
need your number, but give us the median. And I
(33:00):
want to talk a little bit about women representation within
your sport as well. This is beyond the scenes. We'll
be right back beyond the scenes. We're rounding third and
headed for home. Talking esports. Now, Michael Costa, you went
to one of these sport events. Now I'll give you
my scope of knowledge. We have the Whiz with Fred Savage, yep,
(33:23):
where he went to play Super Mario three.
Speaker 5 (33:27):
That's right, hotly shit.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Before it came out, the whole movie was basically a
commercial for Mark three. It got my ass. And then
I also have the Last Starfighter where a dude was
so good at a video game that an alien from
space came down and said, can you help free our
press people with your video game skills? That's my spectrum
(33:50):
of knowledge of being good at video games and being
invited to do it at a pinnacle.
Speaker 5 (33:56):
I don't know the second reference.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
That's a cult hit.
Speaker 6 (33:59):
Bro some references.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
Let me tell you those are some Tier ONEEP cuts.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
I'm forty four years old. I'm old. So when you
step into the Barclays Costa, like just the array of
people there, like, what's the demo for this? Is it
fourteen to forty? Is it just young?
Speaker 5 (34:18):
Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Well, you know, my previous knowledge of this was that
documentary The King of Kong.
Speaker 5 (34:26):
If you ever saw that about the yeah, head of
Donkey Kong.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
And I remember putting that maybe in the DVD player,
saying what is this trash? Why did my brother make
me watch this? And immediately am suckered into because it's
it's about competition, It's about watching people compete.
Speaker 5 (34:45):
At their highest level. So I love that.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
So Barkley Center, I definitely felt fish out of water.
I definitely felt like I was the tallest person there.
There was twenty there was twenty thousand people there. I
immediately was envious and jealous of the fandom, of the passion,
of the enthusiasm, of the energy, you know, tennis, you
clap like this. I maybe had two people at my matches.
(35:11):
I was watching Team Liquid compete in counter Strike, and
all the fans, audience members, you know, whatever you call
they're wearing these bracelets, and when one team would place
the bomb on the the other team, you know, and
I'm gonna butcher the sport. But when one bomb gets placed,
(35:33):
a clock starts ticking down, and every time a second
goes off, everyone in the stadium's bracelet pulses twenty thousand
pulsing bracelets. So then as the bomb gets closer and
closer to going off, these bracelets start glowing to add
(35:55):
to the terrifying notion that this bomb's going to explode soon.
I'm like, it's so cool, Roy, I'm standing there, like,
there's twenty thousand bracelets going brighter red, brighter red, and
the other team's trying to like defend or find the bomb.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Or whatever that shit. Diffuse it.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Yeah, it was like, oh shit, e sports, you guys
tied in the fans in the game.
Speaker 5 (36:17):
That was a badass move. And that was when I
was sold.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Now, I didn't I don't play, and I didn't buy
the jersey, but I immediately I immediately got it and
gave it some props because it was it was a
fun environment.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Sam, are people bedding on this shit? Because this is wait,
I'm sorry, what thanks?
Speaker 6 (36:39):
On drafts?
Speaker 1 (36:41):
On DraftKings. I can just go on a gambling app
and just go, Yeah, give me forty dollars on Sam
to school to get fifteen kills.
Speaker 6 (36:49):
Throw out a parlazy do everyone?
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Wow, that's a level of knowledge that I do not
possess about this. So if it's twenty thousand people, you're streaming.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
The exact same thing. I'm sitting here preaching. It's the
same thing.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
So if it's being live stream there's revenue coming from that,
and eventually that has to trickle back to the players.
At at a high level. Pocket watching Roy's pocket watching
time at a high level. Could I make six figures
doing this for a living?
Speaker 6 (37:19):
Yeah? Absolutely so.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
When you're a member of the CDL, whether that be
substitute or on the starting roster. Your minimum salary is
fifty thousand dollars. You cannot make under fifty thousand dollars
if you are a contracted CDL professional.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
How long is the season?
Speaker 4 (37:33):
The season is nine months a school year. See's actually
got your time off.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
And you make aside hustles on twitch and do ather
stream should get your celebrity stuff.
Speaker 4 (37:44):
Okay, See the high end, you're making high six figures,
high sixes, mid mid to mid.
Speaker 6 (37:52):
To high sixes.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
On the extreme cases, like the highest played player in
the league makes high six figures. I'm in the middle,
not going to say where.
Speaker 5 (38:00):
So just so people who aren't good with their figures.
Six figures is one hundred thousand.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Dollars, So you're saying mid to high you can make
half a million, can make half a million to about
five hundred thousand.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
Damn it is like the majority of the leader probably
eighty percent.
Speaker 5 (38:14):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
So when you when you look at the research, you know,
with all of these different teams, at least the research
on outside, there seems to be a lack of representation
of women in ETES sports. Have you seen that number
slowly growing over the span of your career, talk about
where representation is for women when you started, versus where
(38:36):
you see it going today, because I would imagine there
isn't a need for a women's lead, like we're not
going to get into muscle mass and size. It's shit.
Thumb move you can you move your thumb thumbs too.
Speaker 4 (38:50):
So it's funny you asked, because I think the was it.
It was either yesterday or the day before there was
the first woman to qualify for the Challenges Elite, which
is basically like their tournament that is in the Challenger League.
That was the first time in forever and that was
like two days ago. I think so definitely there's there's
more women representation every year. It's building, and I think
(39:12):
that that's just across esports as well. I don't even
think that's specific to call duty. You know, Valerie has
women's leagues. They have full blown I don't know what
they call it in Valerie, but they have like Academy rosters,
they have a full blown league strictly for women. So
I think that as the year goes on, or as
the years go on, excuse me, I can't help but
agree that as time goes on, there's just more and
more women representation, which is incredible to see. Specific to
(39:35):
call duty, I think we're lagging behind just a tad
because it's not really something that I think women really
gravitate towards. I think Valeriane is probably leading the space
right now in terms of just esports as a whole,
because I was watching that the other day and no joke,
and it was legitimately impressive because I am horrific at Valerie.
I can't play on keyboard and mouse at all to
save my life in any aspect. Thank god, I have
(39:56):
a controller to make my living on. But yeah, I
think women are are definitely trailblazer in the space right now.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
For sure, is there in terms of the fight for
the because I don't want to. I want to be
very careful about not rolling the esports community into the
gaming community as a whole, right I feel like they're
two different things separate. We have professional gaming, which where
there might be some degree of gender discrimination, and you're
saying that there are leagues and that there are efforts
(40:23):
being that there are efforts to make things more equitable
for women. But on the gaming side, we're just talking
to regular Joe blow gamer in the basement. Women are
subjected to all types of harassment and trolling and bullying
and docsing. How much can the esports community do to
try to speak out against that. It's kind of like
(40:46):
the racism and soccer. Soccer's not racist, but there's a
lot of the fans that be talking crazy in them stands.
So has the esports community been able to do anything,
I guess to speak out about that or try to
stop and curtail that.
Speaker 4 (41:00):
Think that transcends the esports I think that becomes just
like a humanity thing and trying to be a good
person in general. But to your point, absolutely, I think
just trying to be as positive as you can about
the space, and I think that gaming definitely has that
stigma attached. Michael, since here's such a filthy casual, I'm
sure that you could you probably agree that, you know,
there are people that when you talk about video games,
(41:21):
they are just people that are assholes, and I think
that's an all walks of life.
Speaker 6 (41:24):
Unfortunately, I think that you're absolutely right.
Speaker 4 (41:27):
Roy, you know, the sexism and stuff like that, it
definitely is not great for the space, not even just esports,
but video games and life in general. That's something that
we need to be a lot more progressive on you know,
I do my best to spare as much positivity in
mus stream as I can, and I'm very welcoming to anyone.
But you're you're definitely not wrong there. And I think
that when you have women transcending in esports and becoming
(41:49):
you know, like I said with the Valorant Thing or
her name is Kelsey in Call of Duty, when you
have these women making headway into space, I think that
sets an example because you know, these women could kick
your ass in the video game that talking about. So
I think that is something that you know, hopefully down
the line, in a couple of years or hopefully sooner,
progression is made. But I mean, that's just a humanity
(42:11):
thing in general, just trying to be a good person.
I don't think that's necessarily an esports thing.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
There's something beautiful as we get more women playing competitive esports,
in particular Call of Duty. There's something beautiful about men
and women trying to kill each other in the video games.
Very wrong, I mean, like that is right now it's
mostly men trying to kill each other, but it's adds
such a beautiful complexity when it's both genders both working
(42:37):
together and also working against each other.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
And that was your takeaway from this whole segment.
Speaker 6 (42:44):
It's a filthy casual.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
I like it, no, But I mean you talked about
it a little bit at the top, Coster, But you know,
as a casual coming into this and having covered it,
how did it change your view of just you know,
even just the idea that video games make people crazy,
right like in theory right like they go all video
(43:09):
games make people violent?
Speaker 2 (43:11):
But then you have love that take that's such a yeah,
I know, it's such a hass take.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
I know you have an arena full of people watching
violence and people doing Violet Todd of the why aren't
they all fight?
Speaker 6 (43:22):
Well?
Speaker 2 (43:22):
You know, I I just was reminded and humbled that
what I think is one way is what I think.
But it's so important to step out of your comfort
zone because I one hundred percent would be the dad
that would say, get off the video games, go outside,
and if you do things, go outside. But then you
(43:44):
walk into the Barclay Center and twenty one thousand tickets
were sold, and I just say, this is another healthy outlet.
I know that what you know, they're they're doing a
violent game or whatever, but it was it was really
fun to see the team. There was a team aspect,
there was a coach, they were learning lessons. There was
(44:05):
people that were disappointed, there's people that had achieved that day.
It was preparing them for all facets of life.
Speaker 5 (44:12):
That's cool.
Speaker 4 (44:13):
So just to introductially quickly, that was your first and
only experience with the sports, that counter Strike tournament. Yeah,
you probably picked the best thing that you could have
possibly done to have your to do your for your
first time.
Speaker 5 (44:24):
Yeah, well that's probably why we picked it too.
Speaker 4 (44:26):
Counter Strike fandom is kind of one on its own.
I think it's a league above the rest. Not to
make the joke, but League of Legends is also very good.
Counter Strike has such passion behind it and it transcends
the game as well. It goes to nationality, the European
counter strike, you know, a team like it was Brazilian
counter Strike.
Speaker 6 (44:44):
There are we could compare it to soccer.
Speaker 4 (44:47):
I mean, there's legitimate fandom when it comes to nationalities
with encounter a strike, and that's why it's so incredible.
Like when North America does well, people are losing their minds.
You know, years and years ago, Cloud nine was doing incredible.
They want a major with Shroud, so counter Strike is
I think the extreme example of fandom in e sports
and lead of Legends is also incredible.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
As well well. Sam, I can't thank you enough for
coming on Costa. Thank you as well for contributing to
this wonderful, wonderful conversation.
Speaker 4 (45:16):
Hope we converted Costa while we were here, Roy, I
hope we did.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Yeah, Yeah, let's baby steps. Let's put him on a
Super Nintendo. Let's go to six buttons. He's not ready
for left L two R.
Speaker 6 (45:29):
Two, He's not not quite the keyboard and mouse yet.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
That's all the time we have for today, but hopefully
by now we're taking you beyond the scenes. See you
next week. Listen to The Daily Show Beyond the Scenes
on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the Daily Show podcast that
goes a little deper into segments and topics that originally
aired on the show, like look this, I got to
think about this podcast. If The Daily Show is a salad,
then we're the toppings that make you want to eat
that salad. The crew toons, the grilled chicken, the seas
of salad dressing or FRENCHI Bosama, vindagarretta, whatever the hell
(00:27):
you prefer. We all know that honey must is the champ.
We got it for you. We're diving into the world
of esports today, based on a segment from Daily Show
correspondent Michael Costa. This segment took a deeper dive into
the growing professional gaming industry roll my clip.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Competitive video gaming known as esports is booming.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
There's even a training center with five training rooms and
six locker rooms.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
The Olympics are considering adding esports.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I went to California to a so called training center
in someone's garage to talk with these So it's about
why video games isn't a sport? What the hell is this?
This was the Alienware training facility for esports Team Liquid,
complete with scrimmage stations, a war room, pr department, a
(01:17):
team coach, and even an.
Speaker 5 (01:18):
In house chef.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
The team star, whose name is Taco, was acquired from
Brazil's top team.
Speaker 6 (01:25):
This is our real sport.
Speaker 5 (01:26):
You call yourself an athlete?
Speaker 7 (01:28):
Yes, of course, to compete. We go to tournaments, We
travel a lot, we got some money.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
What does an est sport athlete, mister Taco do every day?
Speaker 6 (01:38):
Just practice?
Speaker 7 (01:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (01:40):
I have a former professional tennis player. That's what I
would call a real sport.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
There was an opponent and you would relish the opportunity
to defeat them with your racket.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
What do you actually have to show for what you're doing?
Speaker 7 (01:53):
And come on, I have a real strong finger finger, Yes,
this finger, I have a kid at least one million people.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
That fingers killed one million people at least.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
To help break this down a little bit more for us,
I'm joined by my fellow Daily Show correspondent and Michigander, Michianderer.
Speaker 5 (02:16):
Michigander was right. Trust your instincts you.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Had, Okay, yeah, Michigander, and I'm going to learn from
you what you learned about making this segment. Costa.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
How you doing, I'm good man, Thanks for having me.
And it feels odd to even be called in on
this piece because I was such a skeptic going.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
In and uh now, I'm like, how professional? So you
got any sport?
Speaker 5 (02:39):
I mean I never you know, I grew up with sports.
Not what's this e? Why is there? Why is there
a vowel in front of it?
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Now?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
So but I was really impressed and turn the corner,
so to speak. But obviously your other guests can really
talk about esports.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah, and that other guest is a Call of Duty
player for the La ths Am Octane LaRue, Sam. How
you doing?
Speaker 6 (03:03):
What's going on? Guys? I'm glad that we uh glad
we converted you. Michael. I liked that.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
That's that's got I know you were skeptic before him,
and see that's just it's good one at a time.
Speaker 6 (03:10):
I liked that.
Speaker 5 (03:11):
Yeah, I was a reluctant convert.
Speaker 6 (03:15):
Even want you in the first place?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Okay, Yeah, I was reluctant and you won me over.
So that's that's a testament to how fun this can be.
Speaker 6 (03:24):
I like that. Are you a video game guy at all?
Or or not none at all? Nothing?
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Ever, since the controller had more than the A and
B button.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Lord, are you serious? Not even a Sega genesis.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
I mean Roy.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
I remember walking into you and Ronnie's office and you
guys would be playing whatever, and I was just like,
this looks cool, but I am so intimidator.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Oh yeah, running slow week where they didn't need us.
Oh yeah, okay, saithing set up.
Speaker 6 (03:51):
I like to see where we're starting here.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
Well, and I don't want to jump ahead.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
But when I said about the piece, and I guess
this is how I got converted. I like watching anybody
try to compete and perform under pressure, and once you
realize that esports that's all, that's what it is, that's fun.
Speaker 5 (04:12):
That's fun for me.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
That's how I am about most things. If I know
someone's going to be disappointed in crying at the end
of confrontation, it's usually my cup. At two, I can't
even watch Chopped Kids. Sam, let's start with that e
in front of esports. You know, describe that world to
us and tell us how long you've been a professional game.
Speaker 6 (04:33):
Oh man, we're summarizing esports. Okay.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
Competitive video gaming is something that is well used to
be extremely taboo.
Speaker 6 (04:40):
I'm happy, you know.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
Michael is a perfect example here that it's a little
bit more mainstream than it used to be for sure,
but like I said, it was it was taboo years ago,
and the older generation of just most people in general.
Whenever you say that you play video games for a living,
or you know, whenever I get into an uber and
they're asked where I'm going, what I'm doing, and I
tell them that, the usual reaction is, all, my my
kid plays video games, or.
Speaker 6 (05:01):
Oh, how do you do that?
Speaker 4 (05:02):
And it's a very misunderstood topic, I could say. So
I'm happy to see the progression that it's made over
the last couple of years because video games has a well,
at least used to have a pretty rough stigma around it,
you know, people being lazy. It wasn't a productive thing
to do with your time.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Then you blind it ruins your television exactly.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
You couldn't you couldn't make a living off of it.
It was just a huge time sink, And I'm happy
that the outlook on esports and video games in general,
like I said, has changed over the last couple of years.
But it's just competing at the highest level and whatever
chosen video game you would like mine happens to be
called duty. But there's countless out there.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
The way I've tried to explain it to people is
that it's really not that different than going to a
video game Marcade back in the day and you and
five or six different guys would all try to get
the high score on whatever the hell, pac Man, Galaga, whatever.
You're just doing that online. The only scope of knowledge
that I had of esports growing up was Madden. You know,
(06:00):
I went to college at a place where people would
play Madden for money in the dorm, in the you know,
in the TV or whatever. And then eventually at some
point ESPN had like a Madden League that used to
come on at like four in the afternoons on ESPN
five or some shit, and I was like, oh, yeah,
that makes sense because I've seen people do that here.
(06:21):
But then once it got into like the bigger world
of like all of these role playing games in the
first person shooters, I'm like, well, how where is the
money coming from with that? Like, how does the money
flow from that? Because this is being broadcast on Twitch
and the internet, and I'm assuming it's no different than
a broadcast network where you turn you advertised all of
(06:42):
the eyeballs, right exactly.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
It's very it's very similar to traditional esports, and at
least my neck of the woods. I play in a
franchise league, so similar to an NFL or an MLB.
It's a city based franchise league. I obviously played for
the Los Angeles team. So there are ways to compare
it to each additional esports to help people kind of
figure out how to navigate the waters. But it's definitely
(07:04):
a little tricky because, like you said, people don't know
where the money is coming from, and you hear these
absurd figures like and there's a game called Doda and
they're like basically their super Bowl.
Speaker 6 (07:13):
It was a forty million dollar tournament.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
So people are very reluctant and very confused when they
hear the numbers being thrown around. Like I said, it's
because it was so taboo years ago. The transition of
like trying to understand the landscape is a little bit
challenging for people at times. For sure, it's a little
forty million dollars is a little different than Madden in
your dorm, for sure.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
I don't know they was fighting in them dawns.
Speaker 6 (07:38):
The competition is probably about the same.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yeah, the how do you how do you get into this?
Because this is one of them careers that now like
do you feel like costa like at this point, like, ah,
why did the teacher tell me about this shit when
I was in the third grade? Out it's stuck with
that Sega genesis? How do you get into this world?
Like how do you even make a team? Like? Are
(08:00):
you so good at Call of Duty as an individual
that you get a call? Is it like the matrix
to someone knock at your door and say follow the
white rabbit? Like how do you get pulled deeper and
deeper into this world and then see it as a
viable career path?
Speaker 4 (08:15):
So I think I'm very confident. I could say that
like ninety five percent of people start out as a
casual video game player because they're doing it, whether it
be for fun or it's just a game that they enjoy.
In general, I think there are very very few cases
where people actually just start playing and want to play
competitively immediately. In my case, I just loved playing Call
of Duty and loved playing video games.
Speaker 6 (08:35):
My entire life.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
I've been playing since I could hold a controller essentially,
and I kind of tripped and fell into a career.
To be honest with you, I was playing recreationally, like
I said, and I had met some friends online that
introduced me to the world of competitive call duty.
Speaker 6 (08:49):
I didn't even know it existed when I was playing.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
I was kind of just in my own little bubble
wasting time essentially in high school. And my friend at
the time, like I said, that I'm online, he wanted
to travel to this event, and it was so strange
to me. And you know, I was like sixteen, and
I didn't even know if I was good. But you know,
when I'm sixteen years old, traveling across the country to
play at a video game event just sounds like a
(09:12):
great idea. So naturally I did it. I begged my parents,
and I don't know why they let me do it,
but they did, so shout out to them, and I
kind of just tripped and fell in love with it. It
was it was completely accidental, and I think that's honestly
the best case scenario because it's, you know, my livelihood today.
Speaker 5 (09:30):
Roy and the Piece, I interviewed Rick Fox, former Lakers.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Champion Echo Fox, the hell is he doing that? Well?
Speaker 5 (09:37):
Exactly? So this is I'm.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Sure I mean no disrespect to Rick Fox. I wanted
to beat my ass.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Well, and I remember when we were pre producing the piece.
I think one of my questions was, can we get
excuse me, Sam, I'm just gonna speak frankly, I say,
can we get a real athlete that maybe has got
into esports? Because I don't want to sit with an athlete,
want to sit with someone that like.
Speaker 5 (10:02):
Whatever, whatever, the tournament ship.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
But man, there was something really powerful about a guy
wearing his Lakers World Championship ring.
Speaker 6 (10:12):
It's easier, it's easier to connect with it.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
It's easier for me to connect with.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Certainly, what are you doing with these nerds?
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Man?
Speaker 5 (10:18):
You're a real athlete and so are they. What the
ship are you talking about?
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Me and you?
Speaker 5 (10:24):
We played real sports.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
You know, you can see our balls in our pants
when we played our error.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
I think there was no shame around pursuing a career
in professional sports because you could get a scholarship to college, which,
by the way, you can get as an esport player.
Now there's a number of colleges that are building esports
arenas on their campuses.
Speaker 5 (10:42):
This is all great, but let's get down to brass
tacks here. How much do these athletes.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Make probably the best top layer in the world in
one of our games, he makes probably eight hundred thousand what.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
And he talked about how I think he has a son,
or maybe he was talking about one of his players.
I don't know, but their parents were like, stop playing
video games, you know, go outside, go outside and play.
And then one of his athletes had just signed like
a three million dollar contract. And it is very funny
because my mom, I mean, we played Super Mario, we
played you know, my mom, get outside, you know, I'll
(11:17):
give you an hour of video game time if you
go outside.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
All yes, you know.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
And it's really like, yeah, my mom, you really blew
my financial opportunities.
Speaker 5 (11:26):
And I blow my mom to this day.
Speaker 6 (11:28):
Your mom's the reason you're not a professional sports player.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Right, Okay, so constant staying in that lane. What were
some of the other like similarities and differences between like
traditional sports and esports? Are they getting time outs? Are
they getting water breaks between every round?
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Like?
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Do you have a corner man?
Speaker 5 (11:45):
Get them run? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
We went to Team Liquid's training facility in Santa Monica
and when I walked in, okay, quickly about me. I
played minor league professional tennis, dedicated much of my life
to tennis. Never got to the highest level in tennis
that I wanted to. But I walked into Team Liquid's
training facility and I said, this is a tennis academy.
(12:09):
I mean there was a chef who cooked this lunch.
There was a training facility. There was a breakdown room
where you would where you'd break down.
Speaker 5 (12:17):
Video, watch footage, watch footage.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
They had mental coaches maybe the wrong word on staff.
They had lots and lots of people whose job it
was to facilitate and make sure.
Speaker 5 (12:30):
The athletes were ready to compete.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
And as soon as I walked in the door, I
just had this feeling of like, oh shit, I got
to go put.
Speaker 5 (12:37):
My tennis shoes on and go practice. It just felt
like that. So there was a lot of similarities.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
So Sam, in that world, I would assume that dive
and sleep help your mental acuity, which makes you quicker
and more analytical. What is the typical training day, Like,
I'm not going to say you don't need to be
physically fit. I feel like you do.
Speaker 6 (13:01):
It helps.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
I've been on both sides of the spectrum of physically
fit and not physically fit.
Speaker 6 (13:06):
Well, competing it definitely helps.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
How does that tax your body?
Speaker 4 (13:09):
So it's it's much more mental. Don't get me wrong,
you were. I'm not going to sit here and pretend
that we go through the physical strain that and I'm
not gonna be.
Speaker 6 (13:18):
Naturally.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
I would love to do a side by side cholesterol
or blood pressure test of an athlete versus.
Speaker 6 (13:24):
We could run a forty right now, We'll see how
it goes.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
No, But still sitting in a chair, because I've noticed
them game costa. You ever said one of them gaming chairs?
Speaker 5 (13:33):
They are the rageous.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
They are kind of ugly, but so comfortable.
Speaker 6 (13:37):
They're not comfortable. They're not I actually prefer the office chair.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
So anyway, uh so, I guess that's all it's it's
essentially all mental. Obviously, being in better physical shape is
just better for your life in general. That impacts all
aspects of your life, not just video games. But to
Michael's point, how he mentioned the infrastructure behind team like
facilities and all that, that's that's pretty much the standard
(14:02):
throughout the majority of UH Tier one esports. That's when
you talk about League of Legends or or Dote or
counter Strike, call duty, all these things, that is the standard.
We have a chef as well, we have mental performance coaches.
We have all these things, and I think that that's
another thing that people really can gravitate towards and understanding,
because when you know, you watch these videos like behind
(14:23):
the scenes of I don't know the charters, uh facilities,
You'll you'll see like their locker room, you'll see where
they watch their their game film or vote for for us,
You'll see where the chef prepares their meals. It's it's
a it's a one to one comparison. So I think
that that's another thing that can help bring people uh
towards esports in an easier light and too to your point, Royal, Uh,
(14:45):
it's it's all mental. It's it's ninety five to five,
I would say, in terms of of mental and that's
arguably worse because you can become your own worst enemy
pretty quickly because uh, it's it's very performance based and obvious.
Speaker 6 (15:00):
So you know, traditional sports are as well, but.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
You can get hurt and you can go out for
the season and that's not really I mean, it's not
your fault. That's just an unfortunate circumstance, whereas in esports,
it's entirely on your performance and there's really bar like
an extreme circumstance. There's no excuse. It's you either played
well or you played poorly. And there's no not like.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
The defense sucked but I did my job.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
It's not like it's not like I threw for four
hundred yards and three touchdowns, but my defense let up
you know, forty points. It's like I went out and
I either help my team win or I helped my
team lose. So there are very strong uh yeah, very
binarytal health for sure.
Speaker 5 (15:33):
Are you guys drug tested? Is not a joke?
Speaker 2 (15:35):
I mean, if it's that mentally straining, Yeah, there's all
types of legal, illegal, focused drugs, and I know there's
stories in the NFL of there being bags of greenies
that guys pop in there, you know, before halftime.
Speaker 5 (15:49):
That keeps them focus, keeps them energized amphetamines.
Speaker 6 (15:52):
So we are for real?
Speaker 7 (15:53):
Is that?
Speaker 5 (15:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (15:53):
Tell me please talk to drug testing. Okay.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
That was something that came with the uh the CDO one.
We started franchising a couple of years ago. Before that,
it was kind of the wild wild West, and you
could do what you want and it was like a
tough It was just there wasn't enough money for it
because drug testing.
Speaker 6 (16:09):
I don't know. I didn't even know this. It's extremely
expensive to do.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
So once the CDL hit and there was a large
influx of money, you know, millions and millions of dollars,
the league's drug policy and just the franchising in general
really cracked down. And now there's it ties for everything
under the sun.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
And when you say cdo, we're talking about the call
of doing the league. Okay, now what are you old
drug testing for? What are the prohibited substances? No weed,
I mean the Big one's cocaine, heroin, I'm sure cracks, frowns,
none of none of it.
Speaker 5 (16:41):
You could have a legal prescription for adderall.
Speaker 6 (16:44):
Yeah, well there's things called tee east.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
I think it's therapeutic use exemption is the acronym, And
there are people in the league. I have friends of
mine that can vouch for this as well. When you
have ADHD, it is very hard to actually just function
as a person without uh, you know, adderall or whatever
you're on, because you need to come back to zero.
It's not or come back to one hundred, whatever it
may be. It's not like you're taking it to be better,
it's taking it to be like a neutral. So there
(17:07):
are cases like that which I had, Like I said,
I have very close friends that are like that as well.
So there are times you have to go to a doctor,
you have to go through the process to be like, look,
are you trying to do this because you need it
or are you trying to do this to get.
Speaker 6 (17:17):
A competitive edge.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
So CEELD does a phenomenal job on making sure that
that line is correct and there's no one pushing the boundary.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Now to that point. After the break, I want to
talk exactly about that a little deeper, because I want
to talk about the mental health implications of what you've
already kind of alluded to. Putting pressure on yourself and
knowing it's your fault that you suck today, and how
do you unpack that and if you need to address
that pharmaceutically, what does the league do to help? And
(17:45):
just I just want to talk about the mental health
implications of what your job because it seems stressful. In
any job that's stressful, there is definitely appeal that could
help you with it, and I want to talk about
that a little bit more after the break. This will
beyond the scenes. We'll be right back Sam. You know
we left talking about your practice schedule and everything that
(18:05):
goes into preparing first off, like in hours, how long
are you doing this? Like if football? Yeah, if football
is like nine to six with two a days and
a break in the afternoon from asade.
Speaker 6 (18:18):
So you want a full schedule breakdown.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Well, not a full schedule breakdown, but just from sun
up to sundown? How long are you holding a video
game controller?
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Between ten to thirteen hours?
Speaker 6 (18:29):
Fourteen hours?
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Shit? You crazy?
Speaker 2 (18:31):
A day?
Speaker 6 (18:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (18:33):
How many days a week do you get Friday Saturday off?
Like six? Six days? At thirteen?
Speaker 5 (18:40):
Is that?
Speaker 6 (18:41):
And that's that's a me thing. That's not a that's
not the standard.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
There are there's plus and minus obviously, but if you
want to win, you gotta put the hours in it
because if you're not gonna do it, then someone else will.
Speaker 6 (18:50):
So I've been around the block.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
I've been playing for you know, eight years at this point,
nine years, so I understand what it takes to win.
Speaker 6 (18:56):
And I've won a lot.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
So it's uh, it's a lot of a lot of
trial and area throughout my career to to to find
the spot where I know that I'm putting in the
work required to win.
Speaker 6 (19:05):
And right now, it's about that time.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Are you playing Call of Duty or are you working
on a specific exercise to improve a specific part of
your game.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
So you guys asked me if if it's controller held
the entire time, and it's not, it's probably it's probably
like eight hours of playing and then the rest is
either VOD review on the day, talking with coaches or
my team to figure out, you know, plans or strategies
for the next scrims, or talking in general about practice
and improvement, whether that be game planning for matches that
are upcoming, or if we're traveling, talking about our schedule
(19:37):
and bracket and all that kind of stuff. So yeah,
I mean for the actual the schedule throughout the day,
we practice from eleven am to give or take six pm.
Those are two scrim blocks per day with a break
in the middle scrimmage scrimmages. Yeah, okay, yes, other teams
she had two of those a day with a break
in the middle obviously for you know, lunch, and we'll
(19:59):
talk about the game play and if we're doing things properly,
if we're addressing the issues that we want to talk
about for that day, and then afterwards, when you get home,
I'll usually stream on Twitch and then that's kind of
the extra time. I mean, I'll stream for four to
five hours per night, and I'm also playing cod during
that time as well, so it's the the overtime essentially
that kind of pushes those hours.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Really, do you ever have fun? Do you ever just
go today?
Speaker 6 (20:24):
No, it's really fun.
Speaker 4 (20:25):
It's you know, it's a cliche, but if you like
your job, you know you're not gonna.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Work a day, okay, because you was in work voice
just now that was a work octave. Well, you know,
you got to train and then you would study the
other team strategies and me figure out.
Speaker 6 (20:37):
Yeah, it's I mean, it's video games.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Band it.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
At the end of the day, it is my job
and it is how I make a living. But it
is video games at the same time, so I have
a ton of fun doing it. It's competing. Obviously, competition
is great. If you're losing all the time, competition is
probably not that great. But yeah, I mean, it's it's
video games. Man, it cannot be fun.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
This is where I appreciate traditional sports and that you
cannot play that many hours, you know, you even in tennis,
even at our even at our even at our most
high training of two a days in college, where it
was two and a half in the morning, two in
the afternoon. I mean the last the second half of
(21:15):
that second workout is basically just feel horrible. Well, it's
just it's it's counterproductive. You're just you know, you're out
of Yeah, you're out of You're out of energy. So
chalk went up for the traditional sport that I didn't
have to play tennis twelve hours.
Speaker 5 (21:27):
And then go home and witch my serf. So you
know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
Man, That's that's where the boundary of the physical and
the mental comes up for sure, because it's mental burnout,
whereas in physical or trictional sports obviously physical burnout.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Okay, so then let's talk about the mental burnout of that.
Have you ever been impacted by that, Like, have you
ever felt that level of just I'm spent?
Speaker 6 (21:49):
Yes, definitely have.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
Uh So when I was young, I went pro at
eighteen years old, I was playing obviously long before then.
I was just excited to be playing the game I met.
Health wasn't something that I was really focused on because
that never had impacted me essentially, and up until I
would say, like two years ago, It was the first
time where I had really noticed the decline, and I
didn't really take the proper steps beforehand, and I didn't
(22:13):
have like the warning signs of myself to.
Speaker 6 (22:15):
Have the self awareness to stop that from happening.
Speaker 4 (22:18):
So I was on a different team a couple of
years ago, going through a pretty rough stint in terms
of like placings and just team performance overall, and it
got pretty dark. I was contemplating like retirement. I didn't
know where my career was going to take me. I
didn't know if I was even capable of playing anymore.
So that's the self doubt had definitely crept in. And
like I said, since I didn't really have any prior
(22:40):
experience with dealing with mental health issues, it kind of
all hit me like a truck and it was definitely
something that I had to navigate being an adult and
trying to figure out how to just get out of
that headspace. That's where Michael, when you mentioned the Team
Liquid thing, like the mental performance coaches come in. We
had one that was phenomenal with one hundred thieves or thieves.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
So the team understands that and they've made space for
that within their facilities for you all to have that
the same as a cheft, the same as a missus.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
So we have and that's new, like that's my college,
you know, that's new. And one thing and Sam, please
talk more about this. It's always hard as an athlete
to know am I mentally ill? Or do I just
keep losing? And losing sucks?
Speaker 5 (23:26):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Like it hurts to lose that you take it personally.
You work so hard and you're losing. It's like a
slump is different than like I'm depressed, But there are
some crossovers.
Speaker 6 (23:39):
How did you Definitely?
Speaker 4 (23:40):
I mean, it's nuts, it's I think the only way
to really differentiate between two is how much work that
you're putting in. I mean, if you are doing the
bare minimum, you're slotting by and you're losing, then you
can really stell for right to be like, look, I'm
not doing what I could be doing right now.
Speaker 6 (23:54):
Someone should have my job. That isn't me.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
Whereas on the opposite of the spectrum, if you're putting
it in ten to twelve hours day, if you're watching vod,
if you're doing everything you possibly can to get better
and you're still losing, you need to have the mental
aquity be like, look, I'm doing everything I can. I'm
putting one hundred and ten percent into what I'm doing
right now, So that that's a thing that you can
take away. Maybe your team isn't great, Maybe then you
can look outside and not pass blame, but you can
(24:18):
understand that you are doing whatever you possibly can in
that situation. And that was something I had to learn
because when I was doing poorly, I really didn't understand that.
So I wasn't doing everything that I could have been
doing at the time. And once I started, and I
started to feel a lot better because it's like, look,
even if the results aren't there, I know that I'm
putting my best foot forward. So there's definitely crossover, like
(24:39):
you mentioned, it's just having to navigate that crossover is
very very hard to do.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Can you go on injured reserve? For my mind ain't right? Like,
how does it when you're talking about this is a
team based sport and you can be replaced by somebody.
I don't know how your JV squad or your minor
league or how you get called up from the G
league goes that In that world, somebody replaces you and
they do better.
Speaker 6 (25:01):
Than you.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
You ain't getting your.
Speaker 6 (25:02):
Job that so that is very true.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
What is the pressure of choosing to endure mental health
struggles instead of just literally taking a break and plugging
from everything.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
So, up until a couple of years ago, was very
taboo to do that. That's I mean, mental health in
general wasn't really looked upon until a couple of years
ago as a serious topic. And call duty held that
same sentiment with There have been cases where people have said, look,
I'm burnt, I can't do this right now. I'm not
in the headspace to compete. I am just a burden
(25:36):
to my team. Essentially. That has happened over the last
couple of seasons in multiple different cases. And to answer
your question, there are substitutes on rosters that will step
in for that player, whether it be like, hey, I
just need a week, I need X amount of time
doesn't matter. And again to your point, if they start
performing very well, it feels pretty rough. But nine times
(25:57):
out of ten, the player will either be traded the
next season if that is something that ends up happening,
or the players come back out right and be like,
look I feel a lot better. I'm in a much
better mental state. Than I was prior. But yeah, mentally, so.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
It's like quarterbacks and football. Basically, if you lose your
job to the backup, you still have worse.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
Exactly in the league, you're you're you're gonna have name value.
You're going to be like, look, this guy was playing
extremely well prior to his break, and maybe his break
made him feel ten times better. So you still have
name value when when that case happens, that also has
happened to your point where the substitute will step in
and perform. Well, that's kind of how new new players
entered the league in general.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
But but this is pro sports. I mean, the stakes
are high and there's real money. It's so it's not
like a participation trophy for everyone.
Speaker 5 (26:45):
So it's.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
You know, I mean it sucks, it sucks, but if
someone steps in and does better.
Speaker 5 (26:50):
Than you, you got to really think if you're gonna
pop off.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Yeah, yeah, I see one of Sam's mental health strategies
just ran into the room. That's right, because everybody who
competes or performs at a high level needs something that
loves it unconditionally.
Speaker 6 (27:08):
That's right. Cameo ca Okay, the dog came in trying
to get those likes.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Look, I can bomb all day, I can bomb all
day at a comedy club, but as soon as I
come home, this.
Speaker 5 (27:21):
Little idiot looks me and tells me I'm funny.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
That's all I need.
Speaker 6 (27:25):
I'll hear the door open. Here, the door open. But yes,
to your point, it definitely helps you.
Speaker 5 (27:30):
Have you ever fired a real gun?
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Uh?
Speaker 4 (27:33):
No, I have not, which is strange because I am
from somewhere that loves hunting in the dirty South.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
So yeah, no, I'm not Sam across all leagues. Now,
you play at an optimum level in your craft at
some of the lower level leagues. Have you seen an
increase in the level of support that esports leagues are
providing to the players with regards to mental health? Like,
I understand the care that you got, So.
Speaker 6 (28:00):
It would be like the G League in the NBA,
for example.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yeah, yeah, Double A Baseball and things like that.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
Uh yeah, I think it's just with a rising tide
lifts all ships kind of situation. Once the league franchised
and we've got that huge influx of money, like I
mentioned beforehand, it kind of helped everyone.
Speaker 6 (28:17):
I know that there was.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
A large structure put in place for we call it
Challengers that's like the that's our thing. So when you're
talking about the Challenger League, there is a lot more
structure than there used to be. I mentioned the Wild
Wild West a little ago. It was very much like that,
but now there's there's a lot of different organizations. There
are professional teams that have Academy rosters or Challengers rosters
(28:41):
that are dictor directly linked to the CDL teams.
Speaker 6 (28:45):
There are separate entities in their own that.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Just bro, that's British Premier League Soccer. Shit, where we
draft you at fourteen and you are part of our
organization exactly?
Speaker 6 (28:54):
That is exactly correct.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Wow, I understand when I watched the NFL how they
make money? How are these where? How are they making money?
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Like?
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Why would they invest? It's not broadcast yet, it's a
little bit of broadcast, but like, how are where is
the money coming in for esport? Is it the sale
of the game.
Speaker 6 (29:14):
So there's a couple of different avenues.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
The main one obviously is advertising and selling sponsorships is
as you do in general for the individual such as myself,
there are you know, brand deals. I have an agent
similar to how an NFL would do it. You know,
I can't go on a commercial with Save Farm and
Patrick Mahomes, but I can do some one off, you know,
something for like Herman Miller or just you know brands
in general that would want to work with you.
Speaker 6 (29:37):
They're streaming on Twitch. There's a lot of revenue there.
Speaker 4 (29:39):
You can do YouTube, so it's just content as an individual.
On the individual level is probably the number one, as
well as your salary, which I'll get into. On the
league level, it's a lot of brands, it's a lot
of selling partnerships, and on the organizational level, that's where
you have the tie to. Uh Basically in Sanley rich
people that like to do sport or have an interest
(30:01):
in it. So I just played for the Seattle Search.
They're partner with the Canucks. We I currently play for
the La Thieves, which is a branch of one hundred Thieves.
They are one of like a deep triple A esports organization.
They had a Series A investment when they first started
their company, invested by Drake.
Speaker 6 (30:18):
You said, like Rick Fox and Echo Fox.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
There are multiple different cases over esports where people just
have an interest and happen to have a lot of
money and uh so, I mean it's it's never a
bad thing.
Speaker 6 (30:29):
You know.
Speaker 4 (30:29):
I'm I'm salaried and it provides my living and there's
a huge structure, you know, I have insuran case.
Speaker 6 (30:35):
It's it's a lot of different things.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
But with that celebrity involvement, that has not made it
mainstream or uncool in any way.
Speaker 6 (30:45):
I think it's I think it's the exact opposite. I
think that.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
Funnily enough to Drake's involved, not reach there you go,
So to talk about the celebrity thing just for a second.
I think the pandemic really moved games into the spotlight.
I think beforehand it was pretty taboo and it was
nerdy to just put it blatantly if you played video games.
And I think the pandemic, with everyone being inside, kind
(31:10):
of tied everyone together, like, look, I can't go out,
I don't have anything to do. Let's all hop on
a warzone and hang out. So I think it brought
celebrities into the limelight. You look at like Kyler Murray,
he just has memes around him that he plays call
duty on his his Microsoft Edge when he's when he's
on the field. You know, Drake, like I said, is
a series of investor of one hundred thieves. There's a
bunch of things.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Post Malone is even.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Like exactly he loves apex and was on complexity. So
I've met a lot of these guys. I've met celebrities
strictly because I played video games, and these are things
that I never would have been able to do otherwise.
And it's kind of cool because it's an icebreaker. You
can go up and you can talk shit to them,
you can do it humanizes them because when you see
these people and you see Drake, he's like, dude, why
would I ever put myself in the same room as
(31:52):
this guy. I wouldn't even know what to say. But
it gives you the opportunity to be able to speak
freely and not be as nervous. And obviously that's just
an extremely privileged standpoint because I could talk to these people, but.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Because that's always my thing, I just want to make
sure that I think it's cooler if they're legitimate fans
and have some level of emotional investment in what's happening
versus this just being I've put some money on this,
and I am here to check on my like like
almost earnest in the way that like Ryan Reynolds and
Rob mclaney bought that soccer team over in England. But
(32:23):
they're legit there and running like they are invested in
care versus just somebody. Yeah, this is my liquor line.
What the fuck do you know about liquor? Yeah, tequila
by my tequila. Did you go down there and check
on your tequila plants? Bitch?
Speaker 5 (32:38):
Did you?
Speaker 1 (32:39):
You probably did? After the break, Costa, I want to
talk to you about your experience going to one of
these tournaments, what it was like. We need to talk
about the salary. Sam. I don't want to pocket watch you,
but I want to give us the median. We don't
need your number, but give us the median. And I
(33:00):
want to talk a little bit about women representation within
your sport as well. This is beyond the scenes. We'll
be right back beyond the scenes. We're rounding third and
headed for home. Talking esports. Now, Michael Costa, you went
to one of these sport events. Now I'll give you
my scope of knowledge. We have the Whiz with Fred Savage, yep,
(33:23):
where he went to play Super Mario three.
Speaker 5 (33:27):
That's right, hotly shit.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Before it came out, the whole movie was basically a
commercial for Mark three. It got my ass. And then
I also have the Last Starfighter where a dude was
so good at a video game that an alien from
space came down and said, can you help free our
press people with your video game skills? That's my spectrum
(33:50):
of knowledge of being good at video games and being
invited to do it at a pinnacle.
Speaker 5 (33:56):
I don't know the second reference.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
That's a cult hit.
Speaker 6 (33:59):
Bro some references.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
Let me tell you those are some Tier ONEEP cuts.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
I'm forty four years old. I'm old. So when you
step into the Barclays Costa, like just the array of
people there, like, what's the demo for this? Is it
fourteen to forty? Is it just young?
Speaker 5 (34:18):
Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Well, you know, my previous knowledge of this was that
documentary The King of Kong.
Speaker 5 (34:26):
If you ever saw that about the yeah, head of
Donkey Kong.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
And I remember putting that maybe in the DVD player,
saying what is this trash? Why did my brother make
me watch this? And immediately am suckered into because it's
it's about competition, It's about watching people compete.
Speaker 5 (34:45):
At their highest level. So I love that.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
So Barkley Center, I definitely felt fish out of water.
I definitely felt like I was the tallest person there.
There was twenty there was twenty thousand people there. I
immediately was envious and jealous of the fandom, of the passion,
of the enthusiasm, of the energy, you know, tennis, you
clap like this. I maybe had two people at my matches.
(35:11):
I was watching Team Liquid compete in counter Strike, and
all the fans, audience members, you know, whatever you call
they're wearing these bracelets, and when one team would place
the bomb on the the other team, you know, and
I'm gonna butcher the sport. But when one bomb gets placed,
(35:33):
a clock starts ticking down, and every time a second
goes off, everyone in the stadium's bracelet pulses twenty thousand
pulsing bracelets. So then as the bomb gets closer and
closer to going off, these bracelets start glowing to add
(35:55):
to the terrifying notion that this bomb's going to explode soon.
I'm like, it's so cool, Roy, I'm standing there, like,
there's twenty thousand bracelets going brighter red, brighter red, and
the other team's trying to like defend or find the bomb.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Or whatever that shit. Diffuse it.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Yeah, it was like, oh shit, e sports, you guys
tied in the fans in the game.
Speaker 5 (36:17):
That was a badass move. And that was when I
was sold.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Now, I didn't I don't play, and I didn't buy
the jersey, but I immediately I immediately got it and
gave it some props because it was it was a
fun environment.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Sam, are people bedding on this shit? Because this is wait,
I'm sorry, what thanks?
Speaker 6 (36:39):
On drafts?
Speaker 1 (36:41):
On DraftKings. I can just go on a gambling app
and just go, Yeah, give me forty dollars on Sam
to school to get fifteen kills.
Speaker 6 (36:49):
Throw out a parlazy do everyone?
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Wow, that's a level of knowledge that I do not
possess about this. So if it's twenty thousand people, you're streaming.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
The exact same thing. I'm sitting here preaching. It's the
same thing.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
So if it's being live stream there's revenue coming from that,
and eventually that has to trickle back to the players.
At at a high level. Pocket watching Roy's pocket watching
time at a high level. Could I make six figures
doing this for a living?
Speaker 6 (37:19):
Yeah? Absolutely so.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
When you're a member of the CDL, whether that be
substitute or on the starting roster. Your minimum salary is
fifty thousand dollars. You cannot make under fifty thousand dollars
if you are a contracted CDL professional.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
How long is the season?
Speaker 4 (37:33):
The season is nine months a school year. See's actually
got your time off.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
And you make aside hustles on twitch and do ather
stream should get your celebrity stuff.
Speaker 4 (37:44):
Okay, See the high end, you're making high six figures,
high sixes, mid mid to mid.
Speaker 6 (37:52):
To high sixes.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
On the extreme cases, like the highest played player in
the league makes high six figures. I'm in the middle,
not going to say where.
Speaker 5 (38:00):
So just so people who aren't good with their figures.
Six figures is one hundred thousand.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Dollars, So you're saying mid to high you can make
half a million, can make half a million to about
five hundred thousand.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
Damn it is like the majority of the leader probably
eighty percent.
Speaker 5 (38:14):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
So when you when you look at the research, you know,
with all of these different teams, at least the research
on outside, there seems to be a lack of representation
of women in ETES sports. Have you seen that number
slowly growing over the span of your career, talk about
where representation is for women when you started, versus where
(38:36):
you see it going today, because I would imagine there
isn't a need for a women's lead, like we're not
going to get into muscle mass and size. It's shit.
Thumb move you can you move your thumb thumbs too.
Speaker 4 (38:50):
So it's funny you asked, because I think the was it.
It was either yesterday or the day before there was
the first woman to qualify for the Challenges Elite, which
is basically like their tournament that is in the Challenger League.
That was the first time in forever and that was
like two days ago. I think so definitely there's there's
more women representation every year. It's building, and I think
(39:12):
that that's just across esports as well. I don't even
think that's specific to call duty. You know, Valerie has
women's leagues. They have full blown I don't know what
they call it in Valerie, but they have like Academy rosters,
they have a full blown league strictly for women. So
I think that as the year goes on, or as
the years go on, excuse me, I can't help but
agree that as time goes on, there's just more and
more women representation, which is incredible to see. Specific to
(39:35):
call duty, I think we're lagging behind just a tad
because it's not really something that I think women really
gravitate towards. I think Valeriane is probably leading the space
right now in terms of just esports as a whole,
because I was watching that the other day and no joke,
and it was legitimately impressive because I am horrific at Valerie.
I can't play on keyboard and mouse at all to
save my life in any aspect. Thank god, I have
(39:56):
a controller to make my living on. But yeah, I
think women are are definitely trailblazer in the space right now.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
For sure, is there in terms of the fight for
the because I don't want to. I want to be
very careful about not rolling the esports community into the
gaming community as a whole, right I feel like they're
two different things separate. We have professional gaming, which where
there might be some degree of gender discrimination, and you're
saying that there are leagues and that there are efforts
(40:23):
being that there are efforts to make things more equitable
for women. But on the gaming side, we're just talking
to regular Joe blow gamer in the basement. Women are
subjected to all types of harassment and trolling and bullying
and docsing. How much can the esports community do to
try to speak out against that. It's kind of like
(40:46):
the racism and soccer. Soccer's not racist, but there's a
lot of the fans that be talking crazy in them stands.
So has the esports community been able to do anything,
I guess to speak out about that or try to
stop and curtail that.
Speaker 4 (41:00):
Think that transcends the esports I think that becomes just
like a humanity thing and trying to be a good
person in general. But to your point, absolutely, I think
just trying to be as positive as you can about
the space, and I think that gaming definitely has that
stigma attached. Michael, since here's such a filthy casual, I'm
sure that you could you probably agree that, you know,
there are people that when you talk about video games,
(41:21):
they are just people that are assholes, and I think
that's an all walks of life.
Speaker 6 (41:24):
Unfortunately, I think that you're absolutely right.
Speaker 4 (41:27):
Roy, you know, the sexism and stuff like that, it
definitely is not great for the space, not even just esports,
but video games and life in general. That's something that
we need to be a lot more progressive on you know,
I do my best to spare as much positivity in
mus stream as I can, and I'm very welcoming to anyone.
But you're you're definitely not wrong there. And I think
that when you have women transcending in esports and becoming
(41:49):
you know, like I said with the Valorant Thing or
her name is Kelsey in Call of Duty, when you
have these women making headway into space, I think that
sets an example because you know, these women could kick
your ass in the video game that talking about. So
I think that is something that you know, hopefully down
the line, in a couple of years or hopefully sooner,
progression is made. But I mean, that's just a humanity
(42:11):
thing in general, just trying to be a good person.
I don't think that's necessarily an esports thing.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
There's something beautiful as we get more women playing competitive esports,
in particular Call of Duty. There's something beautiful about men
and women trying to kill each other in the video games.
Very wrong, I mean, like that is right now it's
mostly men trying to kill each other, but it's adds
such a beautiful complexity when it's both genders both working
(42:37):
together and also working against each other.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
And that was your takeaway from this whole segment.
Speaker 6 (42:44):
It's a filthy casual.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
I like it, no, But I mean you talked about
it a little bit at the top, Coster, But you know,
as a casual coming into this and having covered it,
how did it change your view of just you know,
even just the idea that video games make people crazy,
right like in theory right like they go all video
(43:09):
games make people violent?
Speaker 2 (43:11):
But then you have love that take that's such a yeah,
I know, it's such a hass take.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
I know you have an arena full of people watching
violence and people doing Violet Todd of the why aren't
they all fight?
Speaker 6 (43:22):
Well?
Speaker 2 (43:22):
You know, I I just was reminded and humbled that
what I think is one way is what I think.
But it's so important to step out of your comfort
zone because I one hundred percent would be the dad
that would say, get off the video games, go outside,
and if you do things, go outside. But then you
(43:44):
walk into the Barclay Center and twenty one thousand tickets
were sold, and I just say, this is another healthy outlet.
I know that what you know, they're they're doing a
violent game or whatever, but it was it was really
fun to see the team. There was a team aspect,
there was a coach, they were learning lessons. There was
(44:05):
people that were disappointed, there's people that had achieved that day.
It was preparing them for all facets of life.
Speaker 5 (44:12):
That's cool.
Speaker 4 (44:13):
So just to introductially quickly, that was your first and
only experience with the sports, that counter Strike tournament. Yeah,
you probably picked the best thing that you could have
possibly done to have your to do your for your
first time.
Speaker 5 (44:24):
Yeah, well that's probably why we picked it too.
Speaker 4 (44:26):
Counter Strike fandom is kind of one on its own.
I think it's a league above the rest. Not to
make the joke, but League of Legends is also very good.
Counter Strike has such passion behind it and it transcends
the game as well. It goes to nationality, the European
counter strike, you know, a team like it was Brazilian
counter Strike.
Speaker 6 (44:44):
There are we could compare it to soccer.
Speaker 4 (44:47):
I mean, there's legitimate fandom when it comes to nationalities
with encounter a strike, and that's why it's so incredible.
Like when North America does well, people are losing their minds.
You know, years and years ago, Cloud nine was doing incredible.
They want a major with Shroud, so counter Strike is
I think the extreme example of fandom in e sports
and lead of Legends is also incredible.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
As well well. Sam, I can't thank you enough for
coming on Costa. Thank you as well for contributing to
this wonderful, wonderful conversation.
Speaker 4 (45:16):
Hope we converted Costa while we were here, Roy, I
hope we did.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Yeah, Yeah, let's baby steps. Let's put him on a
Super Nintendo. Let's go to six buttons. He's not ready
for left L two R.
Speaker 6 (45:29):
Two, He's not not quite the keyboard and mouse yet.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
That's all the time we have for today, but hopefully
by now we're taking you beyond the scenes. See you
next week. Listen to The Daily Show Beyond the Scenes
on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
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