Inside Uplink Studios: Esports, STEM, and Giving Back with Derek Rodner

Episode Transcript
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Dane Shoemaker (00:03):
Hi. This is Dane Shoemaker. Welcome to the
Shoemaker Lab. I'm joined heretoday with Derek Rodner of
Uplink Studios. Derek, how areyou today?

Derek Rodner (00:11):
I'm good. How are you doing? Good.

Good. Chief gaming officer and owner.
Correct? Chief gaming officer,owner,

chief bottle washer. I do the toilets, sweep,
everything.

Excellent. As is the, entrepreneur that Yeah.
That do everything. So tell us alittle bit about Uplink Studios.

So Uplink is we, currently have 2 locations. Our
whole mission was built on theidea of making not only making
better gamers, but betterhumans.

Okay.

And so what we do is we are a primarily youth
focused esports training center.

Okay.

As well as a family entertainment center that
offers all sorts of sort of nextgeneration entertainment, golf
simulators, racing simulators.

Yeah.

You see our arena here. We do lots of private
events and karaoke parties andall sorts of different things.
So kind of like a communitylocal community, esports, and
family entertainment center.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is a fabulous space
here in King of Prussia, Waynearea. Your other locations in
where is that?

Ludwig's Corner. So it's at the intersection of
401 and 100 Chester SpringsGlenmore. That area.

Okay. Got it. And you established that
location. That was first.

Yes. That was our what we called our proof of
concept. That was Okay. Provethat parents were willing to
spend money for their kids toplay a video game they could
play in their basement. Yeah.
Yeah. So we started that. Thetiming was fantastic on that. We
started that in, February of2020. We sold out our 1st league
in 8 days.

(01:34):
We were well on our way and gota week and a half into practice
and had to shut down due toCOVID. So timing was impeccable.

Right. Right. So tell us about, you know,
everything that you offer here.What are the programs? What are
some things that you can dohere?

Yeah. Certainly. So, we're open to the public
basically all day every day. Soyou can come in and you can just
rent a PC for $10 an hour or,you know, book the golf
simulators, come in and golf,and we're a BYO facility as
well. So, you know, bring a beerwith you and and play around the
golf with your friends.
We also have, racing simulator,same types of setups that, Max

(02:10):
Verstappen would use if you wereif you're a Formula 1 guy.

Wow.

And you're seeing committed race and play with
your buddies. But that's sort ofour hourly model, which is, what
I consider sort of the icing onthe cake from a business
standpoint. Primarily, we offerprograms that are more,
repeatable and have value addbeyond just, you know, playing
on a gaming PC. So

Okay.

For youth, we focus on, esports leagues. As I
mentioned, we do 3 differentleagues right now. Rocket
League, which is RC cars playingsoccer, basically, is the easy
way to describe it. Overwatch,which is a 5 person first person
shooter, but very team focusedgame, and Valorant, which just
came out in, August of 2020,which is a 5 person a first

(02:54):
person shooter as well, but amuch different type of game
than, say, an Overwatch wouldbe. Okay.
So we do youth leagues. We haveafter school clubs. We're a STEM
accredited facility. So we have,we do Minecraft Mondays. We have
Fortnite Wednesdays, and then wedo chess clubs and, LEGO STEM
club where we learn to buildthings as well as code around
these these Lego STEM, programthat we have

Oh, that's fantastic.

Kinda cool.

Yeah.

And then we do summer camps and birthday
parties. And for the adults, wehave, adult leagues for racing
and golf. We do birthdayparties, corporate events. We
this whole room that we're inright now is we call our esports
arena, which if you can seebehind, we right now is
configured for, a gamingtournament.

Right. Right.

So we have 5 PCs on either side. And Okay. What
you see on the screens right nowis just filler that during a
game, you would see the screenof each competitor up there as
well as we have a camera onthem. So you see their faces
because their faces are kindahidden by the screens.

Yeah. Yeah.

And you get to see sort of the facial reactions and
the excitement in their facesand sometimes the disappointment
as well. Right? Yeah. But we canreconfigure this room. We've had
a live band on stage.
We have, karaoke setups that wecan do. We have, a trivia
setups. We've done trivia forcorporate events.

So Okay.

This is sort of a multipurpose room. It can be
used kind of for anything. Yeah.And our goal is to to fill it
all the time.

Yeah. And it's outfitted with pretty state of
the art technology, good sound,good lighting, good video.

I mean,

you could broadcast, from here. Yes.
Potentially, yeah, you can livestream.

It didn't start with great audio. When we moved
in, it was it was cavernous. Andso we had to go in and add some
foamware to the ceilings to sortof make the sound a little
better, but we do have a fullproduction set up in the back.
We have, this thing, 32, matrixswitch for video, so I can put
video anywhere in the entirespace, however we wanna

(04:44):
configure it Yeah. Which isreally cool.
And then we've got, you know, aprofessional audio and, and
lighting system as well here. Sowe can do anything from here,
and that room back there alsoenables us to take any of that
and live stream it. So Yeah. Welive stream our games for, our
youth leagues Yeah. Which isgreat.
We're not our goal is not tobecome these big Twitch
powerhouse or a streamingpowerhouse, but it's more about

(05:08):
kids today like to play videogames. If you're a parent, you
go watch your kid play soccer,you go watch them play baseball.
Why not watch and play videogames? It's what they're
passionate about. So weencourage the parents to come.
Usually, they're all fillingthis arena and set up, but you
have, you know, aunts and unclesand grandparents that live far
away or can't be here in person.And so we live stream so that
the rest of their family andfriends can watch as well.

Yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Are you are
you a gamer yourself? How didyou kinda get into this world,
the esports?

I don't know if I'd call myself a gamer per se.
I always had a game that I wasplaying, if you would. I mean
but, you know, as I get older,it was Tiger Woods for a while.
Yeah. But so this all cameabout.
I've worked in venture backedstartups for most of my career.

Okay.

And, this is a bit of a long story. But so, as my
last startup, I was ran productstrategy, corporate strategy
marketing. Okay. As that companywas sort of reaching its its
end, we sold that company in 21,I was looking for something new
to do.

Yeah.

But granted, you know, I'm at a position in my
life where I'm not getting anyyounger. Right? I'm 52 years old
now, and I wanted to dosomething that might have some
positive impact on the world.Designing and selling software
is great. It's awesome.
But, yeah, at the end of theday, what impact are you really
having on the world except formaybe on somebody some
corporation's bottom line?Right. And so I started looking

(06:29):
for something that I could donext where there could be some
sort of impact. My oldestdaughter went to school for
environmental studies, so she'svery much into the environment,
and I, you know, am as well. AndI started looking in that space
and just there wasn't anythingthere that that, I guess, called
to me or where I felt I couldadd value.
At the same time, my middledaughter was playing travel

(06:51):
soccer, and that's a bit of anaside. I'll come back to that in
a second. And my young son atthe time was playing Fortnite,
and he got me to play Fortnitewith him. And that's how this
ball got rolling. We played alot of Fortnite together, and
then we started to followPhiladelphia had a professional
Overwatch team called the PhillyFusion.
Yeah. And so we started watchingthem, and that's when I started

(07:12):
realizing that there was thiswhole world of of competitive
video gaming out there that wasat the professional level, moved
to the college level, and wasnow starting to infiltrate the
high schools. And today, it'sdown at the middle school level.

Yeah. So incredible.

It is amazing how much it's grown.

Yeah.

But there was no little league for video gaming.
So kids play in their bedroomsor in their basements, and
they're potentially watchingstreamers as my son was who were
dropping f bombs, and he's 11years old. I'm like, no. No. You
can't can't be watching thatguy.

Yeah.

And he was starting to develop some toxic
traits. Nothing bad, but justthings that I wouldn't want him
saying.

Yeah.

And he would only do it when he was on a headset
with his best friend, not whenthey were sitting shoulder to
shoulder. I'm like, there's awhole different model here. When
you're shoulder to shoulderplaying with each other or
against each other, you act alot differently than when you're
on a headset and you'reanonymous per se. Right? Yeah.
So, and I think that that that'sa statement that could be made
about all of social media Oh,absolutely.

You have keyboard warriors. You know,
there's things that people say,you know, with everything. Yeah.
Yeah. That you wouldn't say inperson.

That you'd never say in person. Right? Yeah. And
so I was looking at that going,wow. There's gotta be a better
way.
There's gotta be a little leaguefor these kids to learn the
right way to play these gamesand to learn those soft skills
that'll take them through lifethat they're not getting if
they're not playing on a sportsteam. So Yeah. Sportsmanship,
teamwork, leadership, respect,all of those soft skills that
they need to learn in additionto learning the right way just

(08:35):
to put their fingers on thekeyboard and the mouse to play
the game. So that's how this allstarted. Yeah.
Going back to my daughter, mymiddle daughter for a second,
she's playing on these travelteams for soccer. And there was
a different organization allover the I think there were 8
different organizations just inour little area.

Mhmm.

And they would jump from organization to
organization depending on wheretheir friends were going or what
soccer organization was, youknow, in favor this week, you
know, the flavor of the week.Yeah. And I thought, wow. If we
could build a community gamingcenter where we could be little
league, we could be

the the local youth association and the travel
team all in one and do that inall the communities,

you don't need to have all these different
facilities out there or thesedifferent companies. We could do
all of it. Right. And so that'show this model came about. Okay.
Yeah. And that was that was offto the races.

That's that's incredible. Yeah. What were
some, you know, some kinda earlychallenges and, you know, so you
had the the proof of conceptlocation Mhmm. In Chester
Springs, and you had this one.What were some learn early
learnings from opening up thatfacility, and then what did you
learn to to kinda implementhere?

Yeah. So oh, man. There's so much. But I Yeah. I
think one of the funniest thingswas the beginning, the the the
very start of the process.
Mhmm. You know, I came up withthis concept, and I talked to my
wife at the time, and she waslike, that's horrible. Right?
Like, that was her like, whywould we do that? I don't want
him playing video games.
And then she thought about it alittle more and came back and
goes, okay. I did some research.This could be something. And if

(10:04):
anybody's gonna do it, you'rethe guy. You're a geek.
You play some video games.

You know?

You're a startup guy. But because of that and
because of my friend base who Italked to and used as sort of a
focus group and sat down with,they're all gen x. And we didn't
grow up on video games. Yeah.There was Atari for a while, and
there was Colecovision, stufflike that.
But by the time video gameconsoles came out and became
prevalent, it was the NES, thethe Nintendo Entertainment

(10:29):
System.

Yeah.

We were sort of in high school and beyond at that
point, college actually. And sowe didn't grow up with video
games. So when I did our firstinformation night to prospective
customers, I had pages ofobjection handling of education
I needed to do. And for the genx parents, sure. There was
something there.
Right? Yeah. For example, peopleprobably don't know that last

(10:51):
year, there was $50,000,000 inesports scholarships available
at the college level. Over 300schools now have esports
programs. Even locally,Immaculata's got a program.
Saint Joe's has a program.Villanova is building out an
entire facility for for esports.

Is that right?

Wow. It's big. And so for gen x parents, I had to
go through all of that. But thatnext generation down, the
parents who grew up with NES,there was no objection to
handling. They were like, wherewas this when I was a kid?
That was their perspective ofthe whole thing. So Pretty

cool.

So I found that it was a much easier sell to the
younger parents out of the gate.And so that was a learning that
I think was a positive learningfor us. Uh-huh. Negative side,
obviously, was COVID. That just

Yeah.

That Right. Right. Put a wrench in things. But, and
I think we're still, in manyways, recovering from that
because we had investors readyto go to invest, and they
disappear. They had proved themodel, and we'll we'll invest.
COVID hit, and they are longgone. So Right. It took us a
long time to find the rightinvestors, to invest in us, to

(11:54):
believe in what we're doing. AndI understand that I mean, if you
look at just look at thesoftware space today. Right?
And look at venture capital ingeneral. They're all looking for
the next unicorn. Right? That$1,000,000,000 business. And all
of the folks that I know in theventure community that I've
worked with for years are all inthat same space.
They're looking for a a SaaSsoftware as a as a service
application or an AI orsomething.

AI. Right?

It was first it was big data, now it's AI.
Whatever the buzzword of theweek is. Right. This is a whole
different thing. Right?
This is definitely not a unicornfrom that standpoint. Mhmm. This
is bricks and mortar. And soit's a different type of
investor. They understand thesocial impact that we're trying
to to create.

Yeah.

And they understand that there is a need
for places like this, for kids,for adults. And so that's been a
challenge for us was trying tofigure out, you know, what type
of investor we really wanted, apartner that was gonna help us
grow this business.

Yeah.

So I think that was key for us. But, you know,
there's still things we don'thave figured out even here.
Right? So we've been open sinceMay. Our other location has been
at capacity for 2 years andcontinues to be.
We just launched our our newseason our fall season of youth
leagues

Okay.

At the other location yesterday. And here
we're delaying those because wedon't have enough kids yet for
the league. Yeah. So it's kindadifferent as we go from a proof
of concept and in a space whereI was already a known entity, I
guess, in that local communityYeah. To here where we're not
known.
And so, we're sort of startingall over again trying to build
that base up and build thatmodel up. And we're growing.

(13:26):
It's just not growing as fast asI want. So Yeah. That's, that's
probably the way it works withevery start up.
Right? Sure. It's just Yeah.Always takes longer than you
expect.

Yeah. Would you say the business is seasonal a
little bit, you know, with,like, summertime versus
wintertime?

Oh, 100%. Okay. Yeah. And I think that's why and
that's one of the reasons why webrought in sort of the golf
simulators as part of thebusiness. Right?
1, I have parents that that theother location that come in and
their kids are practicing andduring practice because we run a
esports league like a sport. Wepractice twice a week. We have
games on weekends. Parents comein and some drop their kids off,
but others come in and just sitthere and play on their phones

(14:02):
or

Yeah.

On their laptops around. Like, there's a captive
audience here for them to bedoing something else. And that's
why we brought in the racingsimulators and the golf
simulators. So Yeah. While yourkids get, practicing, go play
around the golf.
Right? But it is very much aseasonal thing. The summer
camps, June to to end of August,that's you know, we have 30 kids

(14:23):
a week in here for summer camps,and each week's a different game
or or focus for us.

Yeah.

So they're always different every week. So we we
you know, that's a big businessfor us. And then in the
wintertime, golf simulators willbe the big business for us.

Right.

Spring and fall, that's where esports picks up.
So Okay. Yeah. It's very much aseasonal business, has been at
the other location, and that'swhy here with the golf
simulators, we believe that willhelp sort of balance that out a
little bit where summer campsare high. And during the
wintertime, we're a littleslower.
Golf simulators will help sortof balance that out so we don't
have that sort of peaks andvalleys.

Got it. Okay. That's great. I see you're
wearing the extra life shirt andyou're you're rocking your your
chop hat. Tell us a little bitabout the

philanthropy work you guys do. So, you know, part
of making better gamers andbetter humans is, I believe,
service to others. And so wewere looking for something where
we could sort of stay in ourniche, which is video gaming,
and do something for others. Andaround here, chop is is an
integral part of our community.

Mhmm.

I personally have been lucky enough that I never
had a child have to go to CHOP.Mhmm. But so many of our
customers, the kids that we workwith, have been to CHOP, or are
continuing to go to CHOP. Mhmm.If not, it's a family member or
a friend.
Like, everybody knows somebodywho's who's at CHOP. And so when
I learned about Extra Life,Extra Life is a a program that's

(15:44):
part of Children's MiracleNetwork. Extra life is focused
on gaming. It's a little hard tosee, but that's a controller
there, and you've got some dice,and they they focus on gaming.
And so for me, that was aperfect opportunity for these
kids to do something to raisemoney for Children's Hospital of
Philadelphia and learn aboutservice to others and learn
about giving back to thecommunity.
Right? Yeah. And so we startedour 1st year. We did a 24 hour

(16:07):
gaming event in January. Wecharged $10 an hour, and every
penny we make that day goesright into to extra life right
to chop.
Okay. And we also, at the sametime, do a 24 hour, race for
charity. So in our racingsimulators, that week in iRacing
is the 24 hours of Daytona race.

Right.

And so the 1st year, we had one team of of 4 of
us, and we raced for 24 hoursstraight. I did 6 hours in the
chair. Mhmm. This year, weactually had 2 teams. So I had
to do 8 hours of the chairbecause we had a team of 3,
which is exciting and fun andtiring all at the same time.
But, it's neither here northere.

Yeah.

So our 1st year, our goal was $2,000. Let's see
if we can raise $2,000. We'reopen for 24 hours straight. The
kids come in and game allthrough the night, not for 24
hours. Right?
Everything in moderation. But wehad parents that were coming at
2 in the morning because theirkids wanted to be there from 2
AM to 6 AM and come and do 4hours of gaming. And so that's
how we started this whole thing.Our 1st year, $2,000 goal, we

(17:05):
hit $5,000. I cried.
I do that a lot. The second yearis like, wow. If we can do 5, we
can do 10. And that's when westarted to expand, and kids
started to raise money, throughextra life from their friends
and family as well. Right?
Asking their grandparents andtheir aunts and uncles, and we
brought in a couple of businesssponsors as well. Okay. And we

(17:25):
did 15,000. That year, we gotinvited to participate in the
Extra Life United tournament,which is an esports tournament
that happens last year. Thispast year was in Kansas City.
The year before it was inOrlando. And so you we brought a
bunch of kids down, and wecompeted at Extra Life to win
more money for our localhospital. And last year, we won
$8,000 there. So last year, weended up at, like, 23, $24,000

(17:48):
raised for children's hospital.Amazing.
This year, I set up an audaciousgoal of $20,000. Again, this
place wasn't here. We have justour proof of concept, 18 PCs,
2,000 square feet, smalllocation. Yeah. And, and we beat
the 2 the $20,000, which wasphenomenal.
And then we went to extra lifeand raised another 12 or
$13,000. So, you know, we'reover $60,000 in 3 years rate in

(18:12):
terms of money for CHOP. And,you know, CHOP has a fair amount
of money, but the money we raisegoes to, like, child life
services.

Okay.

So things like making sure that they have game
consoles and books and makingsure that parents have a place
to stay if they have to stayovernight. Is there is there
accommodations for them? It'sall those things that are that
Quality of life. Quality oflife. Right?
We you want kids to to you know,if they're stuck in a hospital
for a long time, they need a wayto find joy and to thrive in
that, you know, in thatenvironment where it's not very

Yeah. You know,

it's not a great environment. Yeah. Yeah. And so
that's the money we raise goestowards those child life
services, which is phenomenal.Yeah.
And so now that we have 2locations, we're hoping that we
can start to expand that andraise even more.

So you talked a little bit about some of the,
you know, the the objections,right, that you get from parents
and things like that. What aresome common questions that you
get from from questions, youknow, from from parents today?
Maybe their kids asking about itor maybe their kids playing it,
you know, playing games or videogames at home, and maybe they're
thinking about, oh, maybe I needto get them outside or something

(19:18):
like that.

Yeah. Absolutely. So Yeah. Look. We believe
everything in moderation.
Like, if you do summer camp hereand you're an all day camp, it's
8 hours. We run a camp 9 AM to 5PM during the summer.

Mhmm.

You're lucky if the kid gets 4 hours on the PC.
Okay. We go outside and playGaga Bowl. We do cornhole. We do
walks.
We do nature things. Like, weand every day of camp, there's a
different educational component.So it's digital citizenship.
It's online safety, careers invideo games because every kid
wants to be a a streamer or agamer today. Right?
That's what they wanna do. Theirtheir hero is no longer Michael

(19:50):
Jordan and LeBron James. It'sNinja and, you know, you name
it. It's it's some streamer thatI'm even losing touch with these
days. Yeah.
That's who they look up to thesedays. And so we try to teach
them about other careers aroundgaming and streaming that you
know, something like this as anexample. Right? Where where you
could still be involved in thein the world that you wanna be

(20:10):
involved in, but notnecessarily, you know, go for
it. Go for the brass ring.
Right? Go for being a astreamer. Go for being a a pro
gamer, but have a fallback, andhere's some of the things you
can do. So Yeah. That's some ofthe stuff that even parents ask
about.
You know, why would I why wouldI do this? Why would I pay money
for my kid to play a video gamehere? And it's well, for a

(20:32):
number of reasons. One is, yeah,there's a scout there's
scholarships available. Right?
$50,000,000 in scholarships isnothing to sneeze at, and then
that number continues to growevery year. So if you think your
child has that capability andI'm not guaranteeing any kid's
gonna get a scholarship, but atleast, you know, give them the
proper training to give them a ashot at that scholarship. Right?
Yeah. It's I think it's 56% ofkids that play video games in

(20:55):
high school pursue a STEMdegree, which is pretty cool.
We need more STEM, STEMgraduates out there. And girls
who game are 3 times as likelyto pursue a degree in STEM than
girls who don't. So there's, youknow, definitely academic and
educational benefits to videogaming. Right? But there's also
a bunch of kids out there thatthat don't play sports.

(21:17):
What is their where are theygonna learn sportsmanship? Where
are they gonna learn teamwork?It's not on a headset alone in
their bedroom. They're not gonnalearn any good skills that way.
Right.
Right? So it's being here inperson, and it's a whole it's a
whole different vibe in thisroom when there's a when there's
a game going. The parents, we dowe do play by play for all the
games, and we do it at a parentlevel. Right? We're not doing it

(21:38):
at the pro level where they're,you know, rattling off all these
stats and Yeah.
Calling picks and all the stuffthat that parents are like, I
just tell me what's going on inthe game. Help me understand
enough so that I can cheer. Andthat's what we do. And and by
the 3rd game of the season,they're on the edge of their
seats. They're cheering inRocket League.
It's I mean, Rocket League's alittle easier. Right? Ball goes
in the goal. It's a score.Right.
Everybody knows that. But Yeah.But in Overwatch, one of the

(22:01):
games is called payload payload,and they have to stay on the
payload to move it through themap. And you'll hear parents
yelling, get on the payloadbecause the kids forget, and
they run away from it. It'slike, get on the payload.
You it's really exciting. And soYeah. Part of it is look,
parents. We agree that it's notall video games all the time.
Like, there's gotta be more toit than that.

(22:21):
Right. Right. And, but with ourplayer code of conduct and with
the the soft skills that theycan learn, this is an
opportunity that an outlet forthem to pursue something that
they're passionate about Yeah.And for you as a parent to be a
part of

it. Yep.

To come and cheer on your kid and and watch them
thrive and grow and and see thethe thrill of victory on their
faces or the agony of defeat.It's just it they're only young
for so long. So come supportwhat their passions are and be a
part of it and and join thatexcitement.

Yeah. Yeah. Now you mentioned the player code of
contact.

Yes.

Tell tell us a little about that.

So I think that, you know, if you look at at any
youth sport, right, there's aplayer code of conduct, and a
lot of them have a code ofconduct for adults as well.
Right? As a parent, what can youdo and what you can't do on the
sideline, which is necessary.Right? We don't have that issue
here, by the way.
Like, parents are juststruggling to know what's going
on with the game, and there's noreferee. Right? The game is the

(23:15):
game, so there's no ref for themto yell at. Nobody's yelling at
the at the ref in in East Texas.

That out.

It takes all of

that out

of it. Right? But the player code of conduct is
all about focusing on, you know,helping each other up, helping
each other, lifting each otherup, not being toxic. Right? So

Yeah.

Working as a team and and self regulating, what
that's one of the coolest thingsI've seen at at Uplink is that
the kids on a team, if somethingstarts going south and a kid
starts to sway a little bittowards toxicity or whatever,
they'll just they you you hearthem all at once. Go player code
player code, and they they selfcorrect. Right? Like, that's.

(23:52):
And kids are kids.
It's not a 100% all the time.Right? Kids, like, we all have
kids. Yeah. They they, you know,they try our patience and test
us whenever they can, but it's99% of the time, these kids are
really doing the right thingwhen it comes to video games.
They're not toxic. They'rehelping each other. To see the
older kids helping the youngerkids on the same team is just

(24:15):
it's really cool to see howthese kids become mentors
without even knowing the termmentor. Right? Yeah.
And helping the younger kidsout. And, ironically, in some
cases, it's the younger kidshelping the older kids because
with video games, it's, youknow, all about your experience
and skill level.

Right. Right.

It's not as much about age, and it's certainly
not about gender, which is theother part I love about this.
You know, I I think that inesports, one of the reasons the
NCAA has not adopted esports asa game or as a sport for them is
because you have to have anoffering for men and women.
That's part of NCAA's charter.Right? Right.
So there are other organizationsin the at the collegiate level

(24:53):
that that do esports, but a lotof girls are not gaming today,
not in competitive environmentsbecause it can be such a toxic
environment.

Mhmm.

And we're trying to break that cycle. 1 kid at a
time. Right? One kid, one teamat a time. You know, we've got,
you know, 50, 60 kids in ourleagues at the other location,
this season, and every one ofthose kids is learning not to be
toxic, learning to have goodsportsmanship, learning the
leadership, learning to listen.
Right? Learning to listen andknow what to do in a game when
you have a a team leader andfollowing that what he says or

(25:25):
she says Yeah. Can mean thedifference in winning and
losing. And so they're learningto to fit in that whatever role
it is that they have in that onthat team, which is really cool
to see.

Yeah. And those are critical skills. I mean,
it's just, you know

Yeah.

That's that's amazing. Yeah. I remember
growing up. So going back tokind of that parenting, like, my
I grew up late late nineties,early 2000. We we had, what was
it?
Everquest. Oh, EverQuest. Yeah.Diablo 2. I never really
graduated from Nintendo 64 inthe gaming.
So I haven't been up on esportsand everything. But, like,

(26:00):
obviously, this is a very bigbusiness. There's scholarships.
There's professional levelgaming now. I mean, where do you
see esports going over the next10, 15 years?
You know, do you think it do yousee it being more integrated
into schools? Bro you know, Idon't know.

Oh, absolutely. So I think that, so esports has
professional esports has gonethrough what I would call a bit
of a winter the last coupleyears. Oh, okay. The
professional scene kind of inmany in many different games
kind of imploded on itself asbeing reborn again. I think they
went too big, too fast, and theythey thought that the model was
all about advertising.

(26:36):
Right?

Okay.

BMW invested something like $1,000,000,000 in
esports on all these differentteams and all these different
leagues. And what do you get toshow for that? Right? If you
don't show return on yourinvestment Yeah. You know, the
there's you know, it's not gonnasurvive.
So those the the professionallevel, it's being sort of
rethought and reborn right now

Okay.

For a lot of these different games, but you're
seeing it to start to come backup again.

Okay.

What is thriving is the college level. The
university level esports is justthriving, and that's having a
long tail of dragging highschool esports and, even middle
school esports is is comingalong. You're gonna see, you
know, you're gonna see theprofessional space sort of grow
again. It will you know, itsfirst instantiation wasn't the

(27:19):
right business model.

Okay.

And it's gotta be a business model. Right? So
you're gonna see that that getreborn. But you're gonna see, VR
and AR, the virtual reality andaugmented reality, I think, take
a bigger a bigger front seat invideo gaming as we go forward.
Right?
Right now, it's sort of youknow, a lot of kids have an
Oculus, and they they do somesome VR stuff. But Okay.

You're

gonna see that, I think, in the next 10 years get
much bigger. What I think isreally interesting if you take
sort of video games and setaside the esports for a second,
just video games in general,there's been this this buzz for
the last couple years about thethe metaverse. Right?

Mhmm.

If you saw Ready Player 1 or read the book, and
book is so much better. Yeah. Itis the metaverse. It's where you
get up in the morning and youput on your goggles and you live
in this world, essentially.Right.
Right. We're not gonna get tothat stage that you see in in
ready player 1, but, there are alot of companies pushing down
this path of the metaverse. 2 ofthem that come to mind for me

(28:20):
are Epic Games and Roblox. SoEpic Games is heading down this
path with these islands. Sotheir first island was the
battle royale.
Right?

Okay.

And that was a 100 players drop in and fight to the
fight to the death. And if youlose, you get kicked back to the
lobby and you drop in again onthe battle bus. Well, now
they've added new islands. Sothey have, they have a they
started off with an island thatwas all about entertainment.
They would do live concerts inFortnite on this one island.

(28:49):
Now they have built an islandthat's all about Rocket League.
So it's Rocket Racing. So that'san island all about car racing.

So that's

you can go there if you love car racing and do
that. They have Legos, a LegoIsland. So you're building
bricks. It's like Minecraft, butit's the Lego version

Okay.

In Fortnite. They have a huge partnership and
investment from Disney wherethey're building Disney worlds
that are gonna start showing upnow. So you're starting to see
all these different reasons tocome to Fortnite. Right? It's
not just a battle royale now.
Now there's all these differentreasons, and so they're
collecting more and more. It's along term vision

Yeah.

That when they have a a princess island, I
mean, you know, you're gonnahave every every girl on that
princess island all the timedressing up to be Ariel and
beauty and all. Like, there'sjust so many and there's stories
to go with it. It's just gonnabe amazing. The other one is
Roblox. So Roblox is a platform.
It's not a game. It's aplatform, and people build games
in Roblox. Okay. And so whatRoblox wants to do is because

(29:46):
they have all of thesedifferent, different games in
there, Some are educational. Sothey want to build a metaverse
where your education happens,your child's education happens
inside Roblox.
That you put on the headset, andnow you're in a Roblox world,
and you're learning about mathand addition. And and it's
gamification of math, right, asan example. But it's gonna go

(30:09):
beyond that. It's gonna be whereyou wanna go see the battle of
Gettysburg. Right?
Today, we're not too far fromGettysburg. We get in the car.
We take a class trip out toGettysburg, and you see it.
Right? And you get to to seewhere people stood and where the
battles happened, and it's it'sit's visceral.
Right? Right. How cool is thatgonna be when you put on a a a
VR mask and that battle'shappening 360 degrees around

(30:33):
you? Like, you're you're in thebattle witnessing it. It's gonna
be a whole different experience.

Yeah.

And I think that's where we're headed with video
games. Esports will continue,and it will continue to grow.
And there's gonna be new gamesthat come out, that will then
rise to the top, and others willfall down in favor as time goes
on. Right? It's not likefootball where the game is the
game.
There's all different games. AndI think that will continue to
grow. I think you'll get to apoint again where you're gonna

(30:59):
see arenas in cities for foresports. Like, that this is a
regional one. Call this aregional Right.

Right.

Arena, but you'll see bigger ones again. They were
talking about

building 1 out by the stadiums. They were.
Right?

So that was

that was gaming or Pre,

pre COVID. Yeah. Comcast owned the Philadelphia
Fusion, and they were gonnabuild the Fusion arena right
down where all the rest of theparks are or the the ballparks
are. Right? Right.
And that they actually I believethey actually broke ground and
COVID happened, and that kindapushed the whole overwatch
season, what was off the 1styear. And then what they did is

(31:35):
they moved the whole thing to, Ibelieve it was China, and they
moved and put everybody just inone location. Right? So
everybody was in a pod,basically, and they played 2
seasons like that. And that sortof was part of the reason why
Overwatch eventually implodedbecause you took all these teams
from the US and put them overthere, and everybody kinda lost
lost interest.
Right? The Philly fusion, youhad DC had a team, New York had

(31:59):
teams, Dallas, Spitfire, LA, SanFrancisco, Toronto. What was
cool about the Overwatch Leaguethough is it was it was based
off of sort of the the citymodel like the NFL Right. Where
cities had teams, but they wereall around the world. Yeah.
Seoul Dynasty and and Toronto orI forget what they are team.
Like, Paris eternal, there wereteams all over the world, which
was really cool from from acity, from a standpoint of,

(32:24):
like, city pride and stuff.Right? We went and saw a game.
They had some games here.
They did the battle of brotherlylove. It was awesome. Yeah. But
that whole thing won the themodel the pricing model of that
whole thing, hurt that. And thenwhen they move the whole thing,
to Asia, that that hurt evenmore.

So you think that'll come back eventually,
that model? Whether it's

whether it's, Overwatch or a different game, I
think that model is gonna comeback.

I think that Yeah.

There's gotta be a better way of doing it, a
different a different financialmodel that will make that
successful, but I absolutelythink that'll be back. Yeah.
Right now, most of the esportsteams are are corp what you
would call corporate teams.They're not associated with the
city. You've got cloud 9 gaming,and you've got, you know, all
these different teams that are

Okay.

Owned by a corporation. Faze is is a prime
example. Right? Faze Clan whohad teams in all different
games. Faze blew up.
I mean, that was that was a casestudy in how not to run a
business. They were a marketingmachine more than anything else.
Right. Right. But you see all ofthese other teams that are
corporate owned.
I think we'll get back toeventually a place where there

(33:26):
are city based teams, which Ithink will be really exciting
and and bring in a broaderpopulation into the game. And do
you see

I mean, just because the nature of video
games change or, I mean, newgames are getting coming out all
the time. Right? I mean, youhave unlike baseball and NFL,
you know, that sports haven'tchanged in 100 of years. Right?
Right.
But you have Overwatch, and I'mnot familiar with that, but you
had other games like, I don'tknow, World of Warcraft and
things that come and kinda comeand go. How do you establish a

(33:54):
league around a game and then 10years later, is that game still
relevant? Or, you know

It it's gonna be interesting to see. I mean, if
you look at Rocket League,Rocket League came out in 2016.
Yeah. And it's just as popular,if not more so, today. Okay.
It's the simplicity of the gameto play it, but to master that
game is super challenging.Right? And so I think that's
what lends itself to being inesport. 1, it's, team based
games. Right?
Team based games where there's aclear objective in winner and

(34:21):
loser, I think, is is part ofthat. League of Legends is
another one. Now we don't playLeague of Legends here with kids
yet. It's something that I keeplooking at, but the League of
Legends world is is reallytoxic, at publicly.

Okay.

And it's a game where, like, the games we focus
on require teamwork, and itrequires a team effort to win a
game. If you don't play as ateam, you're not gonna win the
game. Right? Yeah. League ofLegends has situations where a
single player can can mess upand that ruins the game for
them.
Or a single player doessomething really good and that
wins the game for them. Right?So teamwork's important, but but

(34:55):
a single player can have adramatic impact, not so in the
games that we play. Okay. ButRocket League, back to your your
question.
It's been around forever. Leagueof Legends has been around
forever. Overwatch has had itsups and downs. Valorant just
came out 2 years ago, and itjust peaked everyone's interest.
And now you've got the VCT,which is the Valorant
championships tour tournamentand and esports leagues around

(35:17):
that, and that continues to growRight.
And get bigger. On the flipside, Halo was a game that I
love to play. I I had my firstXbox I got because of Halo.
Yeah. Love to play that game.
They came out with a new versioncalled Halo Infinite, and it had
an esports component to it, 4v4in different game modes, and I
loved it. I we built a leaguehere at our other location. We

(35:39):
did a it was an adult childleague. Right? So it was parent
child type stuff that we didjust to, you know, get the
adults involved again, and Iloved it.
Yeah. My son did not. It's tooboring. It's too you know? And
I'm like, okay.
And and he was right if you lookat it from a broader
perspective, right, that, Halostart off great when it came out

(36:01):
for an esport, and now it'skinda just bumping along. Right?

Yeah.

So there are games new games coming out all the
time that are peaking interest,and, some of our party games. I
mean, you look there's games onyour phone that you can play
esports tournaments on. Right?

Yeah.

Fall guys is a great party game. That's a great
family game. There's tournamentsaround that. So you can make a
tournament out of anything. It'swhether it's gonna become that
next big game.
And I don't think anybody'sreally cracked the code yet on
that.

Yeah. I would imagine these manufacturers, you
know, Blizzard, Microsoft,they're they're probably
building a game in mind with eesports in mind. Right?

Right.

Like, hey. This is we're betting that this might
be a big hit in 5 years or

something like that. Yeah. And the money today
for esports is really at thatcommunity level, I think, or the
the self organized level. Right?Like Uh-huh.
There's there are leagues. Thereare big leagues that are out
there. Rainbow 6 has them.Valorant has a a pretty
successful one. But most ofthem, I think, are are
grassroots.
Right? Fortnite actually has ahuge, tournament mode that they

(37:02):
play. Yeah. But, yeah, I thinkthat that most of that is it's
gotta have grassroots. It'sgotta come from the community to
build up to create that league.
You can't just launch a game andsay, okay. Now we've got a big
global, you know, esports,league. You have to you have to
let it have that groundswell. Idon't want

to happen organically.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Yep. Well, this is this is fun. I mean, let's
bring it back to Uplink here. Imean, you know, any what's your
vision for the future for forthe business?

So I think that, in the short term, obviously,
getting this place firing on allcylinders. That's our focus
right now is get this firing onall cylinders. But in longer
term, I'd like to have, youknow, 25 locations up and down
the East Coast. I think that's agood start. Yeah.
But I could envision hundreds oflocations eventually. That's
that's really where we're headedwith this. This each location is

(37:55):
it's a it's a community focus.Right? It's not, the old style
LAN center where you just packas many PCs in as you can, and
every the space nook and crannyhas a PC in it.
We wanna be a place where peoplewanna come and hang out. So,
we're we're parents coming.Their kids play video games on
Friday night, and they'regolfing over here, and so they
have date night and family nightall at the same time. Like,

(38:16):
that's what we wanna be. Wewanna be a part of the
community.
And I think that that, we can dothat all up and down the East
Coast, and then let's go tacklethe rest of the country.

Yeah. Sounds good. I mean, this this place
definitely lends itself to youknow, I could see my wife and I
or a group of friends, you know,playing, doing some golf or, you
know, I got my boys are 35, sothey're not quite into video

games yet. Not yet.

They're on the they're on the tablets, but, you
know, someday maybe they'llthey'll be in here playing

Excellent. I hope so.

Stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is this is a
lot of fun. It's really nicemeeting you and Yeah.
Nice meeting you too.

Yeah. This is great. I I really enjoyed this.
As you can tell, I'm never at aloss for words.

Oh, that's good. Thanks, Derek. Appreciate it.

Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for
listening today.

Shoemaker Lab is an original production by
Shoemaker Films LLC. If youenjoyed today's content, please
consider subscribing on YouTube,Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and
wherever you get your content.Follow us on Instagram at
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(39:23):
contact form on our website,shoemakerfilms.com.

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