Gerard "HipHopGamer" Williams talks new tech, schooling and opportunism in gaming

[Music] we are live here pokemon connex seattle and i'm delighted to be joined by the hip-hop gamer himself how are you doing today yo i'm lit right now b you already know what it is man i'm having a great time so this is my first one in person you know what i'm saying but uh you know we did the virtuals and stuff like that you know during the pandemic so to me i just love the energy you know me like just with katherine and jackie just the whole squad and stuff like that it was amazing so i had to be here you know what i mean it's plus i love seattle it's dope well so finally a chance to do this thing in person because you started you were working with us a little bit over the lockdown period when we were trying to make the best of the situation that we had but now this is a much better setup and what have you been doing like floating around the last couple of days so um there's this one company called hash games and stuff like that fire hash games was fire and i love the fact that they had the educational side to it with the aie so that was really really dope and then there's another company called z2b where you can

play games and earn bitcoin and i love learning about what they got in place because what they got in place is something that's game changing like the stuff that they're doing now three to four years from now people want to be trying to catch up and do so they definitely ahead of their time and i'm i love being ahead of my time i like being a leader in in everything that i do so that was great and then just the people and being on the panels and talking with the audience all of that stuff was incredible because to see people come back oh my gosh they are extra excited so that makes me even more crazy and my energy is already on a thousand so i had a great time man it like it's a humbling experience to be back real quick what does get you excited then because it's not just playing the games in and of itself some people that's where the interest ends like you know they're an overwatch person they're a counter-strike person and that survive they're not really interested in what goes on behind the scenes or the business stuff you take an interest in pretty much all of it all of it yeah all of it i'm a part of all of it like this is my

culture bro so i'm involved in everything and i'm disciplined enough to learn about so much so i can bring value in every area so i'm not someone that you can just say like oh he's an influencer so just let him let's use him for that and that's it it don't matter what it is whatever's moving in the culture of gaming i'm in a position to touch it and bring value to it period so i made sure i strategize my business and just me in my knowledge along those lines so that's the first thing right then the second thing i would say is very important for my grandmoms you know i'm saying rest of peace everything ties back to my grandma cause she taught me how to play games when i was four so now it's my career what i do today so everything that i do like it has like a different sentimental value to it so anybody that ever helps me everybody that i talk to anything that we uh generate experiences with it just brings me back to brings you back home to grandma you know what i mean so i am like just still blown away by the fact that we're back but now that we're

back we just want to get better period so big new trends a lot of stuff that's been happening in the mobile space has been based around like there's the idea of a play to earn business model right you've got nfts becoming kind of a controversial thing but some folks like free verse over there are trying to build them into evolving and living nfts yes what's the thing that you've seen that's gotten you the most excited over the past couple of years like what's the new thing that you thought yes this is where we're going that's interesting so it's a couple of things actually so one of the things that got me very excited was the developmental tools just in the game development overall so like when you see stuff like quixo and unreal engine 5 and stuff like that just the technology and how it's cutting a lot of time so that now you can do things and be more effective and more efficient with game development that right there is great because it's blurring the line between aaa and independent so now even if you're an independent developer you can still compete on triple a levels

because of the tools that's there so i love that because it's kind of like balancing the playing field when you may not have the money to compete but you got the skills to compete so i feel that's where unity like helped out a lot of years accessible yeah absolutely so i love seeing that so that's one because that's only going to get better and then the real talent is going to start to shine more so i really love that the second thing i would say about the industry is the overall business model so i understand subscription services and things of that nature we see xbox game pass playstation plus blah blah blah but what i'm more interested in is what you were talking about earlier with like the play to earn and how more valuable games are becoming so that's what i like to see more companies are getting into the gaming space investing in a gaming space and bringing new technologies and tools that's going to allow it to be more valuable as a business model and then another thing i'll add in there is how school is playing a major role in gaming overall because now because like a lot of the schools and the teachers is more open to having gaming and these arts and

these creatives like right in school laptops desktops like really putting it in there and teaching it now you're going to have more people growing up with this being the norm which tells me in the next 10 years things that we've been fighting for for the longest time is going to start to become more normalized which means it's going to be more valuable and we all get a chance to share in that pot so yeah i think it's fair to say that all the kids coming up nowadays it's just like they they know this stuff better than a lot of their parents do by the age of two like it's a natural thing for them but with the the play to earn thing which i found really interesting which is some people have pushed back on it for reasons that i feel are kind of understandable where the idea for a lot of people is games sit in this entertainment space for them they're a place where they want to go and relax so they want to get away from things like dealing with spreadsheets and financial issues and their job and the moment you start putting that stuff in games that you run the risk of turning a game into a job do you feel like there's some kind of conflict there and you have to deal with it just right to make it sit well yes you have to deal with it just right

so the thing is anytime there's an opportunity to make money you got a lot of people that don't care about the culture at all they just trying to see what they get out of it so that's one part where it's like i don't really want to do this because you have these types of people that's going to invade our culture and what makes it pure they're going to spoil it so that's one fear that a lot of people have then another thing is like on the flip side of that is like there's people out there right now that's making a living playing games and they're paying their bills and getting groceries and like eating even outside the united states so you got to see the good in it as well you can't just uh say we don't want it just because you don't understand it or know how to use it because a lot of people are still testing the waters you know what i mean so i feel like now we're at a point where the more people learn and understand the balance of having an actual great game and you can actually merge it with the nfts and you can merge it with the

metaverse and you can do it in a way where it's respectable and it's valuable for everyone that take part then and the thing is you're going to get a lot of failures before you find that right one but the great thing about it is we on the brink on finding that right one fast so when we find the right one or the right company that do it and knock it out the part correctly now we got the blueprint now we understand how to build it the right way and now we can build on top of that correct way so i just think people need to be patient give it a shot and learn like don't just look at something and just say something because you heard somebody else say it and you have no knowledge of it for yourself because the very thing that you saying is bad is also the very thing that's saving a lot of people's lives you understand so you got to take the good with the bad but when you learn it and understand it then now you're going to change the narrative on how impactful it can be and that's what i'm looking for well i think the term gaming has

become a little bit stigmatized recently in a different way originally like back in the late 70s early 80s it was seen as a kind of a fringe thing that was done by a bunch of people and there was nowhere near the mainstream coverage it now has and it's now you know mobile alone is a 93 billion a year market it's crazy but what do you think even to this day what's the biggest misapprehension people have about gaming and gamers do you still find it difficult to communicate the value of it to people who may be outside the space absolutely so there's a difference between people that play games assuming people that play games versus somebody that's a gamer see when you're a gamer you understand the layers so if you want to be an animator we need that you want to be a writer story writer we need that you want to make music we need that there's so many layers of careers in the gaming space that can be valuable to your livelihood so that's one thing that's not talked about enough you know what i'm saying then the second thing is in terms of gaming how it makes you feel so

let's say you got somebody that's in a wheelchair but they can run and jump and fly when they're playing the game and they could relate to that in a different way because it's an escape for them you know me that's the second thing the third thing we always have these conversations about mental health and if you play a game like psychonauts 2 you'll see that wow like this game touches on it in such a way that i never thought a game could so if you're not a gamer and you understand and you don't understand the culture and how everything is made and built then you're going to immediately dismiss it because you don't know what you talk about that's why i don't listen to those people because they don't know what they talking about now if you want to take it on the flip side when it comes to another like gaming being stigma because gaming makes so much money and more people are starting to see more people make money and it's getting more common and you're seeing articles about like ninja articles about booger and all this millions of dollars being made now everybody want to pay attention so if you're if you're geared and fueled by so much money and now it's

so all of a sudden okay for games it's still a problem because you don't know what you're talking about so i think more people need to understand what gaming is what it does and the nature of the culture when they understand that and they get it then it won't be so stigmatized because now they actually understand what it's for so that's what i would say and in the interest of sharing with everybody then and of transparency what are you playing at the moment what's on your game list oh dawg i'm playing a bunch of stuff son so um dying like two dads on his fire i'm playing that um i just beat tiny tina's borderlands so that right there was crazy i love that i love tiny tina's wonderlands but you know the borderlands world then um i'm playing wwe 2k22 because that joint is way better than 2k 20. horrible horrible so 2k22 phenomenal that joint is great uh i'm playing ghost wire tokyo so that right there is it's an interesting title it's an interesting time i'm a horror guy so i'm looking forward to trying that one out see that

game is spooky it's real spooky it has like this lore where it's like creepy it's like oh like you know me it has the little uh jump scares there but it's cool um uh i still gotta finish um eldon ring and uh what else um what else was i playing uh it was another game that i was playing oh this game called chorus so it's a fl so i just had tom cruise on my show right so you know top gun and everything and chorus is a flying game and that game is fire so like you know flying top gun all this other stuff so i just recently started playing that on my show so chorus is phenomenal and like the gameplay a lot of it's hard to do pilot team controls chorus knocks it out the park with the controls bro so yeah that's just a few games i'm playing right now [Music]