The Let’s Play Podcast
Episode 4: Niles Heron
Co-founder of Popdog
Transcript
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Niles Heron [00:00:00] Privilege is more about starting at the start line than it is getting a head start. You still have to run a full race. It's that not being privileged actually means you're starting from farther behind the line.
[Intro music]
Verta Maloney, the*gameHERs [00:00:19] Welcome to Let's Play by the*gameHERs, a podcast hosted by actress Kylie Vernoff. Fans know Kylie best as the fiery Susan Grimshaw in Red Dead Redemption 2 and Miranda Cowan in GTA V. Our series features some of the most informed and exciting people in the gaming industry today. Kylie and our guests discussed careers, gaming and so much more. If you like what you hear, be sure to check out thegamehers.com website to hear exclusive bonus material from each of our guests.
Kylie Vernoff [00:00:53] Hey, everyone. So I had the great pleasure this week of interviewing the chief strategy officer and co-founder at Popdog, Niles Heron. Popdog is a technology and services company, and they're focused on fixing core problems in the eSports and gaming video content industry. Also, one of the subsidiary initiatives flying under the Popdog banner is the Loaded Management Agency, which represents some of the top content creators in the gaming industry, including Ninja, TimTheTatman, Shroud, Annemunition, KingRichard, Lirik and many, many more. And they focus on supporting streamers and gamers as they grow their content, their brands and careers. I learned so much from talking to Niles and I can't wait for you to hear.
Kylie Vernoff [00:01:39] Niles, thank you so much for agreeing to be a guest today. I'm so excited to get to know you a little better.
Niles Heron [00:01:44] I'm looking forward to this. This is... This is fun.
Kylie Vernoff [00:01:48] I don't know if you know, but the*gameHERs team really credits you for the inspiration for their platform.
Niles Heron [00:01:56] They give me far too much credit, but I will take it because I'm trying to do this thing where I don't decline all compliments or nice things said about me.
Kylie Vernoff [00:02:08] It's not even just just a compliment. It really is the truth. You know, you were you were speaking at this Future of Esports and Video Gaming Conference at Goldman Sachs, and the way you addressed the audience, talking about are we going to have another industry with no diversity and no women, spoke to the*gameHERs team in this way that they just looked at each other and knew that there is an underserved community.
Niles Heron [00:02:38] And candidly, the fact that the community is so underserved in diverse segments, whether you're talking about people of color or women or women of color or LGBTQIA+ representation or any of those spaces, the thing that is so powerful and magical about the gaming space is it's implicit inclusivity. It's the fact that you only need to out of your four limbs. That's actually the litmus. And there are lots of accessible devices, to even take down that barrier. Right? And so the fact that in a space that is so implicitly accessible, granted, there's a economics question because you have to be able to afford the devices... but for that space to still not look like a true representation of either the country we live in or the societies in which we interact and engage and build and plant -- like how does the harvest not look like the soil? Like it's kind of nuts. And so I just, especially as somebody who thinks a lot about diversity, this is my typically long-winded way of saying I'm humbled that my words were able to be impactful. But, you know, I stand at a few intersections in my life in terms of my identity. But I'm a man everyday. I am a person of color. I am from a marginalized city. I'm from a Black city. I'm a high school dropout. I'm a college dropout. I'm a lot of things. Some of those are chosen. Some of those are given. But I'm a man every day. And that's a position of privilege that I'm able to stand in. So I could stand onstage and say, you know, Black people, dot, dot, dot. But it's much more powerful in my experience to say, where am I privileged? And how do I address inequality created from my position of privilege as opposed to... Complaining is the wrong word, because activism from the marginalized is necessary -- but I can make more of an impact talking about the fact that there are not women represented at this space than I can make an impact talking about the fact that there are not Black people represented in the spaces. Candidly, the Black people in the space or that are not in this space can see me. And that was all the activism they needed in a lot of ways. I can represent for the positions in which I am marginalized, but I can speak to the positions in which I am privileged. And so I try to make a real intentional effort to, when I am on panels, when I have an opportunity to do so, to say very clearly, look, let's have this great discussion. Looking forward to it. Let's also take a beat and acknowledge the fact that yet again, we are at an Esports conference talking about the future state that we would like to see this industry in, and it does not represent -- we are not representative of the future state we should be aspiring towards.
Kylie Vernoff [00:05:35] It's interesting for me, just beginning to dig into this stuff a little, and I saw something on Twitter just yesterday, a person saying she does cosplay and she's been really hesitant as a person of color to post some of her favorite cosplay pictures because she gets a lot of hate from the white community if nonwhite people pose as white characters from their favorite video games. And so she was bravely saying, this is me. And I thought, if you're talking about video games and cosplay where anyone can be anything and experiment with anything, it's such a shame that we're still dealing with these issues.
Niles Heron [00:06:16] Well, there was an uproar when, uh, I can never remember whether it's Chloe or Haley, got cast as The Little Mermaid. I mean, like, this is not new. The representation of black and brown bodies, the representation and slating of women in entertainment. We, and by we I mean the royal we, and by the royal we I mean the middle America often voting red we, tend to say that our art should reflect OUR lives, not the lives of someone else, not the lives of someone who is less worthy. I don't think that it's any different when we talk about the reactions, the "id," sort of like pure selfish reaction that we see from so much of the Internet about a lot of things, right? Candidly, it's not that much different from when Star Wars fans get mad because something stepped away from canon. Right? Like, here's this, like, visceral reaction of like, this space means so much to me. You're taking the only thing that I have. Which is a thread that I want to pull a few times, probably in this discussion, because I think it's so relevant to gaming. And I think it's so relevant to how I think gaming can grow when we start to include people as opposed to fighting. But I think that the space, specifically cosplay, anime conventions, gaming, these sort of subculture spaces. These are the spaces in which the participants have found probably the first safety they've ever had.
Kylie Vernoff [00:08:03] Yeah.
Niles Heron [00:08:05] Right? I'm going to be honest, if you love cosplay conventions, if that's your favorite thing... And listen, I've worked security for a cosplay convention for the last like six years. It's the biggest in the Midwest. It's called Youmacon. My friend from school does security for it. So, like, I have a pretty deep personal connection at this point with with that world. This is the space where people get to be themselves. Two or three days out of the year. It's like Halloween, and this. And often this specific convention falls on Halloween. So it's like, this, but you get to go be yourself. No one is calling you a freak. No one is calling you a nerd. No one is saying you're less than, you're a weirdo. And no one is pushing you to the fringe. When that space, when that single space or one of the few spaces in your year that you get to really feel like your true self, your your freest self. When that starts to get attacked, people react very defensively. I think that's the the genesis of where people then say, you know, don't post your your black cosplay, because they feel like their space is getting taken from them. It was the one space they felt represented and all of a sudden that's being taken and someone else is being represented there. Now, I'm not suggesting that that's a mature response. I think it's a ridiculous response. But, understanding the humanity even in that moment, I think is also going to be necessary for understanding how we integrate people of color, how we integrate women into the space. In a more intentional way, recognizing that someone is going to feel like their space is being taken. Chances are many people didn't know how to talk to women, didn't feel as socially present. The most hardcore in the subculture from which the gaming space kind of grew. Like you're talking about a space where it was more comfortable to be online than in person. Right? There's a little bit of immaturity in that.
Kylie Vernoff [00:10:00] Yeah, absolutely.
Niles Heron [00:10:01] And so iit shouldn't be surprising to us, even if we have to stand against it and work against it. It shouldn't be surprising to us that that has turned into a boys club.
Kylie Vernoff [00:10:10] Right. Right.
Niles Heron [00:10:12] Not because it's OK, but because understanding it is how we combat it and how we deconstruct it. That's a wild generalization. More gamers than not in my day-to-day these days are very well socially adjusted human beings. They just participate in something that was built by a bit of a socially maladjusted structure.
Kylie Vernoff [00:10:41] Yeah, I hear from a lot of fans of my video game that they may have started out with social anxiety issues and found that online gaming was a way to learn just sort of societal norms, how to talk to another person, how to say goodbye to another person, how to have conversations and collaborate on missions. And then they love going to these conventions and meeting some of the people they've met online because it's like they've had this practice arena, you know?
Niles Heron [00:11:15] 100 hundred percent. I think that there was a time... I probably said this on on the panel that brought us here as well. There was a time when we thought of gaming as being a very anti-social act, like a deeply anti-social act, that it was kids in basements playing violent things, fantasizing about a world that they did not live in. That is, I think to most of the people that gamers would describe as boomers. That isn't the perspective that is carried about games when the truth of it is that in 2020, not debating when it shifted, but that it has positively shifted at this point. Gaming is one of the most social things you can possibly do. I bought my daughter Mario Kart a few weeks ago. Something positive had happened. I decided I wanted to reward that behavior.
Kylie Vernoff [00:12:18] How old is she, Niles?
Niles Heron [00:12:20] She's 10. And we got her Mario Kart. And the first question she asked was, you know, how do I get online and play? And I was thinking that I was getting this, you know, this game, she can kind of play on her own. It's a single, solo player game. It won't be the hyper social interactor. I was actually hoping that I was getting her a solo expedition, just something for her to engage in on her own, because I think that that balance actually is more necessary today than socialization. Finding ways to be with yourself and not seek the validation and not seek the constant interaction. So I was like looking for that and the first question was, you know, how do I get online? And then when she realized that I wasn't probably going to put her online in this game, she kind of lost interest. So, like, I think that this narrative, that gaming is this anti-social thing is nuts at this point. It's actually just boldly incorrect. These are incredibly social spaces. They're hyper social spaces. There are not human spaces or, quote, real life spaces, you could go to to get more social interaction than you can in a game. Where are you going to go see one hundred people and play against them in fortnight? Like that's hyper social interaction, even if you're not talking, and then they're talking.
Kylie Vernoff [00:13:40] Right. Well, let me back up a little bit about that, because we jumped right into the juicy stuff. But I want to talk about you and your journey back to gaming a little bit. And I'm wondering, so you started out in gaming. You did many years in gaming, and then you left.
Niles Heron [00:13:57] About 14 to 20. I was either playing Counterstrike at a very...a relatively high level or I was building businesses around that. I built a radio station, I managed some pro teams, what we would now call pro teams. They were semipro. It was about as high as you could get in the time. But it certainly is not the level that it has risen to today. But from like 14 to 20, that's that was what I did.
Kylie Vernoff [00:14:30] So you were a gamer from inception.
Niles Heron [00:14:31] Oh, I was a gamer. Yeah. I saved my money the summer between eighth and ninth and the ninth and tenth grade, and that summer between ninth and tenth, a little bit of help with some birthday money, but I built a starter p.c. I went out and bought the parts and really did it. And this is pre YouTube. So I had to, like, download manuals off the Internet to figure out how to plug everything up. But did it, built it. And then thanks to my parents, I often remember how difficult economics were in my youth. But I was thinking about this the other day and there was like, you know, I needed a 150 dollar Windows Key or something like that, when I finished building my computer because the one I bought or downloaded didn't work and my parents had just seen me spend like a thousand dollars. Right? I had saved up a thousand dollars and spent it. And they found 150. And then I had a computer. And it was privilege that my parents could find 150. You know, and just do that. And I'm really grateful for a lot of that stuff, even though I remember, you know, money being tight, being a lot of motivation for who I became in terms of entrepreneurship and really trying to go out and figure out how to make something. Lemonade, as it were. I also need to say thank you to the lemon tree and not just cry about the lack of oranges or whatever.
Kylie Vernoff [00:16:13] It's fabulous. I love that they were able to see that this was a passion for you in that you were willing to work hard for it and that you were accomplishing so much of it on your own and that if they could gift you that little bit to put you where you needed to be. That's what we want as parents, right? Like, we want to be able to see what it is that is bringing out all of your passions and then help you when you need it.
Niles Heron [00:16:39] So, yes. To your point, though, I spent six years really deep diving, gaming and figuring out where I could be passionate and successful and learn and grow within it until I was 20. And then I took a long time off. Candidly, I was tired of being called every name that referenced blackness negatively in the book on the Internet. And I found it was a really toxic space. At the time, I also was writing poems and doing performance poetry and slamming and doing all of this creative stuff, and I come from a family of poets and really wanted to go follow big cousin's footsteps and record music and do that. And so between the two things was like this place that had been one of the first safe spaces I ever found. Gaming. And really felt like I could be... I didn't have to be beholden to who I was yesterday as a teenager because being a teenager is like reinventing yourself every day and figuring out what fits.
Kylie Vernoff [00:17:51] Yes.
Niles Heron [00:17:51] So like the problem is that in the "real world," when you when you present yourself as something on day one, you don't get to take it back in day two, which is also a very important concept. But it can be limiting when you're just trying stuff out. Right? And so I think that gaming was really like the first safe space I found where no one made fun of me for being a nerd. And no one made fun of me for being into weird stuff and liking the jazz that my dad had me grow up on instead of Montell Jordan or whatever was happening on the radio. Just, it was a space where I could really explore who I was without people knowing who I had been or looking at me and saying, oh, you're fatter or, you know, your clothes aren't as nice as mine or any of those things, any of those social pressures that we experienced as preteens and teens, just one of the worst collections of humanity kind of like shoved into a school or shoved into a space. No one knows who knows who they are. Everyone who's trying to figure it out and like still struggling for social hierarchy, it's just a bad recipe. But gaming was a safe space for me, so.
Kylie Vernoff [00:19:05] And then it turned on you.
Niles Heron [00:19:06] Exactly. And candidly, I think at some point what happens is you realize who you are. Right? That's great. It's fine when you don't know who you are. In some ways, or at least for me it was. And then when I found out or was able to better stand in my truth, even still not fully knowing at 18 or 19, I realized that, you know, I didn't want to have to, like, explain to people why the N-word wasn't a verb. On a daily basis, and then be met with no consequenceless reaction from people. I'm also a kid from Detroit. And at the end of the day, I started trying to come through at this point. I was like, listen, I'll slap you in the mouth. I'm going to be honest with you. Like, we can have this talk. But there is actual repercussion for being a jerk in life. You don't get to just... and feel no consequence as a result of it.
Kylie Vernoff [00:20:06] Yeah. I think that that is... I'm a parent and I have a teenager. And when we're talking about social media and these things, that I think is the one thing that I think that we have to be really careful of societally is that, you know, in middle school, when everyone tries out being mean, everyone tries out what does it feel like to say to someone, you're ugly. No one likes you. You can see what happens to someone's face. And I think it's empathy-building. I know for me, I had a lot of bullying going on towards me as a kid, and I barely remember that. But I remember the couple of times that I tried it back, and they stay with me. And I think the problem is that if you can be cruel to someone with no consequences and without even seeing what happens to them as a human, it doesn't build the empathy that we need.
Niles Heron [00:21:04] And I think that that's the nice end of the spectrum. That's the, to borrow the wrong analogy, that's the Martin end of the spectrum. And the Malcolm end of that spectrum is like, I'll put my hands on you. Not because not because violence is the answer, but because we all exist within our social contract.
Kylie Vernoff [00:21:26] Right. So everything has consequences. You might just get popped in the mouth.
Niles Heron [00:21:32] And I'm gonna be honest with you, I trust today as an adult, I trust people. Whether that pop in the mouth, and different people are built different. Right. So for some people, it feels like getting punched in the face to see someone's face turn by something they said. That hurts more than getting punched. Some people. But for some people, you need to get punched in the mouth.
Kylie Vernoff [00:21:54] I agree.
Niles Heron [00:21:55] And it's different strokes for different folks. And I'm not advocating violence. I'm just suggesting that people learn differently.
Kylie Vernoff [00:22:02] But we can agree that in that thinking space with no consequences, people say whatever they want to say.
Niles Heron [00:22:10] Because it's not that there is no consequence. It's worse than that because consequences in this regard, when we're talking about the social contract, is very reflective of the social fabric. It's reflective of how many women are in a room. The reason men don't walk into every room in the world and call women out of their names to the women's faces is because ultimately those same men want to procreate. They want families. They want girlfriends. They want friends. They want acceptance. And if half of the room hates you, you're not going to get accepted the same way. So you can't just walk in and say anything that comes to your mind, right? You can't. Because there is consequence to it. In a world where it's all men, now we have locker room stuff. And we talked about this a lot 2016, election season, 2016. There was a lot of talk about locker room talk. But what has happened in gaming, part of the reason I'm so adamant about inclusivity, is that if we're going to have a space that I don't think is going anywhere, that we're going to have more and more young people participating in every day. We need that space to represent something near the 50/50 balance and the minority majority racial and ethnic composition that we actually experience in the world, because this is how kids are becoming socialized. We can't let them socialize themselves in a homogenous white male space. It's not healthy. And we're wasting one of the most powerful tools of socialization we've ever had in the history of humanity. Like, it's just a loss for everyone to not have true representation, because, listen, if 50 percent of the chat room hates you after you say this word, that word, after you harass this woman, after any of these things happen, you'll stop doing. Because candidly, humans are built to be social. We want acceptance. We want validation, and we want social promotion. We want promotion within our social circle. But if that social circle doesn't represent the world, then what are you building? You're building little fascists. It's nuts.
Kylie Vernoff [00:24:20] Right. So when you came back to gaming, after you went I watched some wonderful videos of you, I swa work that you were doing in Detroit. I saw how your passion for empowering communities and building bridges for people to find their own visions to fruition. Something brought you back to gaming. I'm wondering, what was that? I can hear your passion for gaming and I'm wondering what really excites you about it right now? What made you find your way back?
Niles Heron [00:24:51] One of my good friends, when I was gaming the first time around, and it's not even good friends because we were so close. It was actually good friends because I just had a lot of respect for him. His name is Alexander Garfield. He is a pioneer in a lot of ways in gaming. A true, I mean, prodigious actor in the development and growth of Esports over the past 10 years. He ran a team called The Evil Geniuses that also spawned an organization called Good Game, which owned a few different teams and properties. I mean, the guy's Forbes 30 under 30 twice. He had, for any of the boomers listening, he had the same wallet as Jules from Pulp Fiction. And I really have a tremendous amount of respect for him. He's now my partner in Popdog. I'm his partner in Popdog. I called Alex. I was working with a tech company in Detroit. I thought the tech company was kind of interesting. I'm really big on customer validation. So I called somebody who I thought would be a potential customer and just said, hey, you know, tell me about what you think about this. He's like, i"t's all right." But I'm working on this thing, man. How have you been? We hadn't at that point talk probably in eight to 10 years, candidly. But I reached out. We started talking and realized that, you know, we had both kind of like seen very different walks for those past 10 years. And we had very different, and I think in a lot of ways, complementary perspectives. And we started talking about this idea he had that gaming had a another step of growth to make in terms of its accessibility, in terms of what was represented there, in terms of it not being such an insular presentation of a very small sector. And we started talking about that stuff in it. And I thought his heart was good and I thought his vision was good. And fast forward probably not even three months after that. I was working on this project with him, this secret project called Popdog. And then we acquired a management firm called Loaded, which is what I think I am probably publicly most associated with. And I realized really quickly that... Candidly, when we started this, I wasn't sure if it was a job or a career. I knew it was interesting. Academically, I was interested in it. I was cool to kind of see this other side of gaming and how far gaming had come. But. I was still the only black person in any room that I walked in. I'm still. There are no other black people who work for my company right now.
Kylie Vernoff [00:27:44] You are kidding me.
Niles Heron [00:27:45] Now. We're at forty seven or forty eight people. And I'm the only person. I am not the only person of color. There are several people of color. There are several women. But I am the only black person. And that's candidly because, early stage startup you hire the best person who has the best experience. Like I'm not so idealistic that I will hire someone less capable because of race, ethnicity, gender, anything. I am hiring the person who is best suited, closest to network, and able to execute. Period. But that's also just a reflection of the space. It's a reflection of the fact that the people who have 10 years or five years of gaming experience tend not to be black people at this point. But that became what I realized, that I was in a position with Popdog and Loaded to do. Was to say, how do I represent, how do I speak with intention, and how do I help the next generation of hires? How do I help the next thing happen in a more inclusive and well represented way?
Kylie Vernoff [00:28:51] OK. Because I am so not a technical person and not a technological person, I was reading about Popdog and how it's been credited with changing the landscape of Esports and live streaming. And I was reading about your passion for inclusivity. And I was wondering if you could explain to someone like me, is this something that you can address technically, like technologically? In terms of bullying and safeguards? Or is this something that we're talking about just in a broader sense, in terms of who we hire and who is represented?
Niles Heron [00:29:35] I think it's both, and. I was talking with one of my colleagues earlier this week actually about a series we want to do regarding women in gaming and regarding inclusively. And I think that we could probably point to 15 things that are barriers. I've heard and have now said it a few times, that privilege is more about starting at the start line than it is getting a head start. You still have to run a full race, right? Everybody's got to run 100 meters and 100 meter dash. Privilege is not that you only have to run 50 meters. It's that not being privileged actually means you're starting from farther behind the line. I mean, just starting at 110 back, 120 back, 150 back. And so but the problem is it's not one thing that pushes you 50 yards back. It's fifty one yard things. Which makes it so insidious and difficult to combat. So to answer your question, I think that there are a lot of things you can do from a technological place. I think that you can intentionally build algorithms that don't just target volume. I think that a lot of live streaming right now, when you look at Twitch or YouTube or Mixer, and this is no slight against any of them. But I think that a lot of the algorithms that promote new content are based on volume. I don't think that we have spent time building qualitative, the right qualitative measurements for why content is good. And what that means is that your ability to promote is, especially historically on a platform like Twitch, the way that content is sorted, it is sorted by number of viewers and type of game being played. Those are the only real criteria for what content gets sorted to the top, which means that the top stays at the top. It's a system that benefits the one percent. Now, in a world where we know the one percent is not representative of the community that we want to see. Sometimes it takes intentionality to say we're going to take away just sorting viewership or just sorting suggested content by viewer count. Now we're going to say what kind of viewers are in these rooms, how much are they participating in chat, what's the chat line to viewer ratio? Now, that's not based on race or gender. That is still colorblind, you know, air quotes around the word colorblind. But that is still non-preferential, except that it allows a smaller streamer or a smaller content creator who has a very active community to grow more quickly because it'll reward you for how engaged your audience is.
Kylie Vernoff [00:32:35] That is fascinating.
Niles Heron [00:32:36] And so now your small community of 50 viewers who are just all there, they're in it with you. It's really a 50 person discussion with one person leading, has an increased likelihood of being discovered by someone. Or they could go watch Tim the Tatman, who has 52,000 viewers right now. Or you could watch a person with 70 viewers, but they have a little fire emoji under their chat. You can see something really interesting is happening there. I think that there are just different ways that we can surface content. So one of the things that Popdog is looking at is discovery very broadly. How are we finding content? There's also an insulation problem where Twitch will only show you Twitch content. And YouTube will only show you YouTube content, Mixer will only show you Mixer content. And so to watch what is happening in gaming at any given time, you have a minimum of three and more likely, more like 15 different tabs open on your browser. And I just think that's nuts.
Kylie Vernoff [00:33:28] Yeah, that is nuts.
Niles Heron [00:33:29] Well, I think that it's what people have become used to. But we were also used to taxi cabs.
Kylie Vernoff [00:33:37] Right. I still like a taxi, Niles. I still like to raise my hand in the air.
Niles Heron [00:33:41] And listen, I hear you. As a black man, when I go to New York, I mean, to be honest, it's actually much easier for me to get an Uber. Especially if I'm traveling in the evening. It's interesting. Listen, midday financial district. I can get any cab I want. Midday Harlem. I can go anywhere I want. But if I'm late night on, you know, even Lower East Side, like, it doesn't matter. Like it's harder for me to get a taxi. So Uber is great. And that's an example of how Uber doesn't preferentially treat anybody by color, except that it has a positive effect for people otherwise marginalized by the nuance of a system. And that's the reason I bring Uber up. I think Uber is a really played out example, generally speaking, in startup discussions. But I do think it's important to recognize the impact that that has differently to each of us. You are still very pro taxi. Or not very pro taxi, but you appreciate a taxi, however. I don't want to put words in your mouth. I appreciate being able to get a ride whenever I need it. That's value trumps the joy of putting my hand in the air and saying, I'm going to walk another block. I'm tired now. It just started raining. Any of the things that an on demand, like if there's a taxi near me, I can hail one? Like that value is trumped by me knowing that I can just get a ride and get where I need to go. And so it changes things. So I think that it's really just about making sure different people are building the algorithms and thinking about different ways to find content. That's a big part of the tech side of what Popdog is trying to do.
Kylie Vernoff [00:35:17] I think that that is incredible. And I'm so glad that you explained that for me, because I'm new to this. I was never a gamer and I had never played a videogame at all. When I first started working with Rockstar, I had no idea what I was, what kind of space I was moving into or what the response would be. I shot performance capture on nothing for four and a half years, it was like five years before the release. So a couple things for me. I didn't realize that... I don't know if you know anything about the Red Dead series, but my character is this middle aged, bossy woman who is sometimes cranky and who is not hyper sexualized, but is really given a lot of agency in missions, and Susan's pretty good with a shotgun. And when I finally got to start hearing from fans, overwhelmingly, people reaching out to me specifically were saying, I am so grateful that you were allowed to be a bit of a nag. I am so grateful that you have wrinkles. I am so grateful that Susan, you know, gets to do stuff that is badass, slap people around. And I heard from so many older women and mothers who were saying that they play games all the time. As soon as the kids go to sleep. And they don't see anyone that looks like them or sounds like them. And so that was sort of my introduction to this space and how many people feel like they love it and they spend so much time with it and so much of their money and still feel like they're not seen.
Niles Heron [00:37:05] It's, I think, a really important story. I think that that testimony, is what I will call it, and that testimony is really important because I think so often... All right. One of the core tenants, when Popdog was thinking about, you know, how we were approaching market. Was that we make a lot of noise historically in gaming about donations on streams. Right? We talk about, isn't it amazing that there is this whole economy of people just tipping and donating to people and blah, blah, blah, blah. And we kind of looked at it and said, well wait a second. And by we I mean, Alex Garfield, like it was one of the things that he said consistently that I think is brilliant. If people are just donating this much money, doesn't part of that mean that we haven't figured out what to really sell them?
Kylie Vernoff [00:38:07] Oh, wow.
Niles Heron [00:38:10] Right? Because on the other side of that discussion is our Esports teams and lots of non publisher gaming entities saying, man, we're trying to figure out how to make money from this. We're still trying to figure out how to unlock the revenue. And on the other side of it, people are like donating 50 hundred dollars to their favorite streamers for a shout out. Like, that's an NPR pledge drive. That means you should be finding better things to sell them if they can give you 50 dollars and not five dollars. That means you didn't sell them forty five dollars worth of stuff. Just the pure capitalism, right? So I think that we get so caught up. Gaming has, over the last 10 years, has gotten so caught up in how quickly it has grown and been adopted and how much money it has made, that we have not paid attention to how much money it has not made. We have not paid attention to the voices that didn't participate in that meteoric rise or participated, and this is the important part, participated at 10 percent of what they would have if they had felt represented. I'm going to buy the game, but I'm not going to go and buy the other stuff. I'm gonna buy the game, but I'm not going to show up at the event because, like, it's not for me. Like, I go there and I feel uncomfortable. I'm the only black person, the only woman I'm whatever. And then the harassment and all these things. But I think all of those cascade from, candidly, people not feeling included and represented in the initial thing. And so I think it's so important when you tell that story, because I think that it highlights... If all it took was a nontraditional representation of a videogame player to get people to, like, touch into a different level of emotion when they played a game. That's a sign of unrealized opportunity to me. So I still, even when I talk about inclusivity, you know, my pitch is still: guys, I'm telling you, there's just more. People. Not even guys. Let me remove gender specific, you know, plural announcer Or, let's look at the opportunity that you have in representing other cultures in these games. Let's look at the opportunities that you have in representing different voices in these spaces. There are makeup brands looking at gaming, trying to figure out how to get in, recognizing that there is an underserved population of women who are not being marketed against in this demo. And also aren't being given a voice and representation in this demo. How do we increase that? So, I mean, I just think there's a tremendous amount of opportunity. I'm really glad that you share that story and I think it's a really important one.
Kylie Vernoff [00:40:48] Thank you. It was so meaningful to me. And I really credit Rockstar for... I felt like our experience there... They really maybe took a risk at letting the women divert from any kind of stereotype that, at least that I had, of what women in gaming might be.
Niles Heron [00:41:10] Did you get much pushback? What's the flip side of that coin?
Kylie Vernoff [00:41:16] Almost none. Do you mean from gamers?
[00:41:22] Like if the upside is people telling you that they felt represented. Were there people who were on the other side of that coin at any point in the process?
Kylie Vernoff [00:41:34] So my experience being new to all this, and really my experience in gaming is being in the game, playing it a little to see my work and the work of my colleagues, and being on social media and conventions. Right? I don't game. I was told to expect when I first, you know, got on Twitter as a member of the Red Dead cast that it would be a very mixed experience. For me, it has been almost exclusively positive. And mostly I hear from from, you know, from people who love it, who feel like they were represented. I had a woman at a convention tell me that she had changed her thesis based on the way the women in our game were. Every now and then, I'll get things like, just a comment on Twitter where someone will say, the women in this game are irrelevant. So it's rare, but it always surprises me. It always surprises me because it feels like it comes out of nowhere. And I don't know why... It's like what we were talking about, why someone sitting at home on their phone needs to sort of find me to let me know that my character was irrelevant. It's a curious thing.
Niles Heron [00:42:51] Does that make you want to explore gaming more. Like, how impactful is that in your experience? Because you haven't been here long enough to be jaded by that type of stuff. So, what does that do to how you engage?
Kylie Vernoff [00:43:17] I will say that it makes me want to hear someone out and listen to them. I always feel like if somebody has a really,,. You know, look. The other times that I'll get a little bit of hate is because I'll have my politics on social media and every now and then someone will come at me with, you know, "you're trying to take away our guns" because I've retweeted something. It makes me want to stay engaged because I feel like if someone is taking their time to reach out to me, even if they completely disagree with me, they are open to me in a certain way. And maybe as a character in this game that they love, they might take the time to listen to a different perspective. So it doesn't shut me down. It makes me want to sort of say, tell me why? Why? Or, who do you think is the most relevant character? Or what would have made my character more relevant to you and your, you know, your gameplay?
Niles Heron [00:44:26] I think that's interesting. I think it's really interesting. Part of the reason I'm asking this question is just that I spent so much time thinking about it, because I think that that is indicative of you having a person, like you have a human inside of you that is not rooted in gaming being their safe space. That you have found your safe space. You have found your lane. There is a social psych book I read a long, long, long, long time ago called Flow and Finding Flow. It's a series. And it's that space where you feel in sync, right? Where who you are matches with what you're doing, matches with how it's perceived, matches with the outcome. And I think that when you have found that, places where you don't have it are less jarring. Because you're just doing something that isn't in that, and that's OK. Or what you're doing in this moment, even if it is uncomfortable, your outcome is not tied to who you are doing the thing you're doing in this moment for specific purposes. There's a broader context to your life. And I think that the worry to me is when those sorts of comments disrupt someone's ability to find that space in gaming.
Kylie Vernoff [00:45:57] Yes. Yes.
Niles Heron [00:45:58] When that becomes a hurdle you're not ready to jump over. Now, listen, you show up to run the hundred ten shuttle, you're expecting hurdles. You literally trained for hurdles. You are running over hurdles. And it's actually almost the game to jump the hurdle. That's a different process than I showed up to run the hundred meter dash, and all the sudden the hurdle popped up. Like now I'm going down and I'm going to have, like, road rash or whatever. I think it's really interesting, the way we interface different people at different positions in their lives and with different perspectives, interface with the space. But I would say, stay asking those questions and do so very publicly.
Kylie Vernoff [00:46:46] Yeah. Thank you.
Niles Heron [00:46:47] Because there's a young woman somewhere who's going to see that entire interaction and feel safer because you kept talking.
Kylie Vernoff [00:47:02] I just got a little bit emotional, and I really appreciate that. I really appreciate that. And I feel it. I feel what you're saying, and I think that you're right. But that's the best thing we can do is stay in the conversation.
Niles Heron [00:47:16] We can't make people feel accepted, but we can make them not feel alone. Which is its own acceptance. There is no community of one. You gotta give somebody something to anchor to. And that's the thing that I think about most when I think about how I participate in gaming. Which I think was probably ultimately the plus or minus line of questioning we're on, is how do I make sure I'm always giving people an anchor point? How do I make sure that I'm always giving people acknowledgment, even without talking to them, that the thing that they were feeling is not crazy, they are not alone in thinking and feeling it. And even if the status quo does not explicitly accept and protect that line of thought, that you can give proof that that line of thought is not going to destroy you. That you are still safe here. Reminding people that the same way that trolls, that the eggs on Twitter, that the random people who still to this day, by the way, call me out of my name on the Internet, the same way that they are free to do that, we are free not to agree with it. And that doesn't mean we have to leave. And it doesn't mean that it needs to be us versus them, even.
Kylie Vernoff [00:48:42] No, we stay, we hold our space and we stay.
Niles Heron [00:48:47] And we, as best we can, mirror Martin, and not Malcolm in that moment. And accept that they are also humans.
Kylie Vernoff [00:49:01] Yes, yes.
Niles Heron [00:49:02] Which is the hardest part. Cause I am a lot more Malcolm than Martin. I don't suffer fools kindly. It's not my ministry. But I do try to make sure I see the human in everybody before I react.
Kylie Vernoff [00:49:19] Yeah. Yeah, well, this has been amazing, and I am so inspired by this conversation myself. I really am taking away more than I imagined I would. I know that you have this beautiful thing to go to, which is your daughter's science fair.
Niles Heron [00:49:43] Yeah. Yeah, we made a lemon battery.
Kylie Vernoff [00:49:47] Oh, that's so cool!
Niles Heron [00:49:50] The science project was discuss energy. And we had these like science kits that I had been ordering that we hadn't gotten around to doing. And one of them was creating a lemon battery. And basically, I will spare listeners the technical explanation of magnesium ions jumping to copper, but it allows you to power a small light or a small buzzer by sticking two pieces of metal into a lemon. And it's pretty cool. So that was what she and her partner did their project on and I get to go see them presented in not too long. I'm excited about that. Not because it is trendy, but it's pretty awesome to be a girl's dad. And I inherited full grown little 10 year old not too long ago. And she's awesome.
Kylie Vernoff [00:50:39] They're the best. I have one girl. She's 14 and she is the best. And she loves science. She just loves it, which I just think is the coolest. I learned so much about science from her. She's home sick, so we may be buying lemons on the way home. I want to put this to the test, Niles.
Niles Heron [00:51:00] Listen, I can send you a link afterwards to how to recreate the experiment. The one thing that I do want to make sure that we touch on briefly, though, is. When we talk about an inclusivity, like I'm going to be totally honest and say I can never really figure out how to say this publicly, so I'm going to dance a little bit. So bear with me. The truth of it is that I don't really care about gaming. I don't. Like I think that it's great. Well, I don't really care about video games, is more more appropriately stated. I think they're fun. But I also like documentaries and I also like Netflix and I also like basketball. And it's like it's a thing. It's a thing that I like doing. I do care about people. But when you asked about this sort of like history and background that I have over the last 10 years of really talking about building bridges, not creating wedges. How do you really bring people together and how do you give people access and opportunity? You know, the thing that changed my life... I grew up on the east side of Detroit. Well, if anyone is familiar with the geography of Detroit, it's a huge city. Geographically speaking, not necessarily in population. Because everyone has cars. So, we built wide, not tall. So like San Francisco is forty nine square miles. Detroit is one hundred forty two. Built for two million people to live. Flat. And there are like seven hundred thousand people in it. I guess it's like 900 now. So anyway, blah blah blah. Another podcast, another day, we can talk about all the interesting things about Detroit. But the thing that fundamentally changes my life is that I'm just outside of downtown on the east side of Detroit. And all of my friends, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, they're outside. Like, they're outside. Ic andidly saw the first pistol, like I was probably 11 at the basketball court or twelve at the basketball court or something like that, in my neighborhood. A lot of stuff happens in those communities that isn't conducive to future prosperity, we'll say. Many of the people that I grew up with in that neighborhood, I cannot call them today. For lots of reasons. And I still like, some of my good friends from that era, I still like call their mom just to, like, see if they're home and somehow they're never home. How come? Listen, I grew up in a house full of books. Bless my parents. They're both journalists. I'm not suggesting that, like, I didn't have support, but I would have been outside with my friends had I not been inside on a computer. And there are lots of people who had two parents who had library cards, who read books, who were outside instead of inside. And they're still outside. The thing that changed my life was that I built a computer. I stopped playing on a PlayStation. I started playing on a computer. As PlayStations have gotten better, I'm not suggesting that it continues to be as much of a divider or a difference. But the thing that changed was when I finished playing Counterstrike, I could go Google that weird radio station link that someone dropped into the chat over the game during it. And I could explore what that was, and then I could figure out how to go build it. And then people were like, Oh, man. Are you getting on, like, IRC later? And I didn't know what the hell IRC was. And so I Googled it. Like, what is IRC. What are you people talking about? And it's Internet Relay Chat. I found that there was this whole professional community of people in my channels. And I went on there and spent so many hours on IRC in the early 2000s just talking to people. But the thing that changed my life was the computer. And it wasn't because I knew I was going to get back into gaming. In my 10 years off from gaming, I worked in biotech. I worked in tech. I worked in music, in creative spaces. In every one of those I had a laptop. In every one of those, I had a computer. One of my biggest skills was that if you needed something done, chances are I could do it because I could go Google it. I could go figure out how to do it. That was the thing that changed my life, was a computer. Was access, and more important than access, comfort, on a computer. That a computer became my go to? That is what video games gave me. Video games gave me that if I was uncomfortable, about anything, chances are the answer was on that computer. I don't care if League of Legends is successful. I do not care if Counterstrike is successful. I will be fine either way. I do care deeply that people continue to feel incredibly comfortable. And specifically people that are historically not the people that feel comfortable doing this, that they feel comfortable solving their problems with technology, because that is the greatest equalizer I think that we have in terms of marginalization, because that is implicitly colorblind. You can either do it or you can't. I want more neighborhoods that I grew up in to have access to computers. And more important than that access again, is I want them to be comfortable with technology as a second language. My mother speaks Spanish. Some amount of privilege and some amount of hard work and some amount of brilliance and mix it together. And now she speaks Spanish. She told me once that being fluent in a language means you dream in that language. Being proficient in a language means you hear it and translate it into your own language.
Kylie Vernoff [00:57:33] Fascinating.
Niles Heron [00:57:34] But being fluent means you can dream in Spanish and not have to translate it back to English to understand what was happening. I want kids to dream in computer. I want black kids and brown kids and women, young girls, that will when they grow up and be women, to dream in technology, to dream in science. So I think of videogames as being one of the greatest pathways and widest doors or like widest channels for ships to sail into. Of like, how do we get these children who are historically excluded from the space to dream in technology? I don't care if they become professional videogame players or content creators. I care that they can go get a job in STEM or that their use of STEM amplifies whatever else they want to do in their lives. That's what I care about. So the reason I'm here, the reason Popdog matters, the reason gaming matters is that the wider I can help gaming grow, the wider we can make this net, the wider we can make the door, the more people can come in and play Fortnite and accidentally learn how to code. That's what matters to me, because if I don't hire a single other person of color into my company. If I can generate 10000 new engineers, black engineers, 10 years from now. That was good enough. By the way.
Kylie Vernoff [00:59:14] Yes.
[00:59:16] You know, and also I want to hire people of color into my company. But the primary mission is like I am not focused on my generation. One of the things that, you know, waking up one day and realizing you have a stepdaughter, you have a daughter, is like recognizing that this is not about us anymore. Like, I'm thirty four. But like, it's still not even about me. Like, I'll be all right. I'll figure it out. I'm a pretty smart guy. People tend to listen to me talk when I talk. It's fine. I'll figure it out. I want new people to figure out how to do this stuff that wouldn't have otherwise. I don't want to hire Chet, ten years from now.
Kylie Vernoff [00:59:57] Sorry Chet.
[00:59:57] I mean, listen up, Chet's gonna be all right. I will be honest with you. Chet's going to be just fine. He's CHet the third, there's going to be a Chet the fourth, it's fine. It's fine. And I say that tongue in cheek. We are always at Popdog looking for the best talent, period. Full stop. But, that's the thing that matters to me. So when we talk about inclusivity, when we have this discussion, what I am excited about are finding new ways. And one of the reasons your story matters so much to me. What I want to do is figure out how do I go get 50,000 girls to really feel safe here so that this space can be for them, what it was for me. So that it can save them from being whatever the equivalent for them is of where I could have ended up. If the marginalization that naturally occurs affects them the way it is designed to... if that happens, where do they end up? And that's not to say that they don't live happy lives. And it's not to say that everybody... Whatever. Like, I'm not trying to judge anybody here, but I just want everyone to have options and freedom. So how do I help 50,000 girls learn how to code? How do I help 50,000 little black boys that look like me not feel like they need to rap or play basketball or play football in order to make it? How do I help that happen? That is the only thing that 10, 30 years from now, the only thing that will have mattered. I'm going to do a bunch of stuff in the next 30 years. Hopefully it'll make me some money. Hopefully my kids will not feel insecure financially.
Kylie Vernoff [01:01:37] But there's a bigger purpose to it all.
Niles Heron [01:01:39] There's has to be.
Kylie Vernoff [01:01:41] Yeah. There has to be. I love that. And it actually sort of really leads me into what is a question that I've been trying to end all of my interviews with. And I feel like you may have even sort of answered this a couple different ways. But I'm going to ask you anyway, since what we're talking about here is that, it is a community and we can't do anything in a vacuum and we can't do anything alone. I would love to have you tell me about a time when someone recognized something in you Niles, something special in you and gave you an opportunity.
Niles Heron [01:02:21] I have impostor syndrome and survivor's guilt. And that is to say, I never feel like I actually belong in the room that I'm standing in, and I'm always wondering why it's not someone else who didn't make it to that room that I know, or that we used to be in the same place or whatever. So I could give you a list of people, I could give you a long list of the people who have recognized something in me when I couldn't recognize it myself. But top of mind is a guy named David Tessler who was my partner in Michigan Funders, the first real business that I quit corporate America to pursue. He saw in me that I was valuable, that he wanted me on his team, you know. But it's also Leon Richardson, who is the CEO of the company I worked for for seven years before I did that, who hired me on my 21st birthday and allowed me to run a biotech operation in San Francisco at 24. It was also my high school creative writing teacher, Robin Motin, who saw that I was writing because I was hurt and she thought that I was great.
Kylie Vernoff [01:03:57] Thank God for teachers, Niles.
Niles Heron [01:04:00] And it was also Nancy Carpalati, my 10th grade English teacher, who... my parents were going through a rough divorce, and she saw that I wasn't OK and told me that I deserved to be OK. And it's also Alex Garfield who brought me into this company now, and told me, not told me, but gave me an opportunity to get back into gaming in a way that really mattered to me. Allowed me to reconnect and reintegrate with a community that meant so much to me growing up. And it's also my fiancee, who thought that I was great when I was not yet, in my mind. And so it's all of the people throughout my life who have looked at me and told me, I understand that it feels like the world is very heavy and I understand that it feels like it's all on your shoulders. I understand it feels like you're crumbling under it and you're not able to lift all of it. And let me tell you something. Not only are you already great. You're allowed to be happy.
Kylie Vernoff [01:05:17] Oh, that is beautiful. Right.
Niles Heron [01:05:21] So it's really tough for me to answer that question in a different way than that, because I still remind myself every day that joy is not just something that other people get to... there's a poem I wrote a long time ago that says it feels like the street that they grew up on had joy hanging low from fruit trees and they could just walk to school happy. And I didn't have trees in my neighborhood, you know. My colleague, Nick Allen, is brilliant. I love him. He told me the other day he's like, you know, the best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago. And the second best time is right now. And that meant so much to me when he said it because it returned power to me.
Kylie Vernoff [01:06:24] Yeah, well, I think you can count yourself as a tree planter of this gameHERs platform. I mean, you know, I'm so glad that people have given you these opportunities. And feeling that you are filling up that well, and spreading it out to other people, and watching it grow. I can feel it when I talk to you. And I'm just really glad that we've had this time.
Niles Heron [01:06:55] I am, too. I am, too. Thank you. To you or anyone else who feels, you know, impacted. All I ever ask is that you go pay it forward. You go bless somebody.
Kylie Vernoff [01:07:12] Yes. Yes.
Niles Heron [01:07:15] If you feel, if you are full of spirit, that is spirit that you could give to someone else in some way. Go through your text messages, figure out the last person who asked you to do something. Just do it for them. Just go through your text messages. Go through your email. The last request, the last person who said, hey, will you get coffee with me. Hey, will you... Just go do it. Do it and go be a light for them. If any of this is a light to you, that's all I ask.
Kylie Vernoff [01:07:43] I love that call to action, and I think I might just do it. Thank you, Niles. Thank you so much for making the time. And go get that lemon lighting up.
Niles Heron [01:07:54] Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We lemon batteries out here. We're a true green household over here.
Kylie Vernoff [01:08:00] All right. Well have fun. Thank you so much.
Niles Heron [01:08:03] Thank you for the time.
Kylie Vernoff [01:08:14] All right. Well, if you'd like to learn more about what Niles is up to these days, we invite you to check out his socials @LoadedGG @Popdog and @NilesHeron.
Verta Maloney, the*gameHERs [01:08:28] Thank you for listening. Let's Play was brought to you by the*gameHERs. A community that connects all gamers who identify women and welcomes people of all genders who support this. Let's Play was co-produced by Kylie Vernoff, Jenny Groza and the*gameHERs team: Laura Deutsch, Rebecca Dixon, Heather Ouida and me, Verta Maloney. Please visit thegamehers.com for show notes to access exclusive bonus material and to learn more about the*gameHERs community. And if you liked what you heard, we'd so appreciated if you subscribed and gave us a five star review. Thanks again for listening.