The Perception of Gaming and Youth | Spiro Khouri, The Gaming Stadium

Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of Bits and Bytes. This time we have our special guest, Spiro from the gaming stadium. So, Spiro, I just want to, you know, open the floor. How about you introduce yourself to some of our listeners?

Yeah, so thanks for having me. My name is Spiro, as you mentioned, CEO of the gaming stadium. And so, yeah, just a bit of background on me personally. I mean, I'm a gamer. I've been one my whole life. You know, I got my first Nintendo when I was 5 years old and I haven't really put down a controller or today a keyboard since. So to me, gaming has always been a passion of mine. I've had the luxury of working at EA as part of my history and be able to be part of a marketing team to promote a game kind of on the back end. And then, you know, in 2011, 2012, started to get exposed to esports and really said, you know, this is something that in my opinion has some legs. At the time it was like we just called it competitive gaming. I didn't know what the term esports meant. And yeah, and then started to follow that as a passion which led us to where we are now with the gaming stadium. So for me, like, you know, what I do on a day to day basis is purely born out of passion and a love for the industry and what it does.

Awesome. And so for those that may not be familiar with the gaming stadium, do you want to just give us an explanation of what it is and the impact that gaming them has, especially in the esports culture?

Yeah, for sure. So the gaming stadium as a facility was developed in 2018. And so originally the concept was a facility where people could come and play games. I mean, you know, for those of us that are a bit older, we grew up with arcades, there are still some now, you know, there's a rec room opening in Burnaby, hopefully fairly soon. But you know, when I grew up, every mall had an arcade and everywhere had a place where you could go and play because not everybody could afford to buy the equipment that was needed to participate, or couldn't afford to buy every single game that came out. And so when the original concept for the gaming stadium was put together, it was an opportunity for those that needed a place to play, whether it was due to financial reasons, couldn't afford a PC or couldn't afford equipment, or again, buying every game, or for those that were just looking to get out of their house every once in a while. I mean, I think we all know the online gaming culture can Sometimes not be the greatest. Toxic is a word that gets thrown around quite a bit. And so when you bring that experience in person, it creates a totally different environment. And so in 2018, we came up with the idea of developing a facility to accomplish those goals. As time went on, our philosophy of what we wanted it to be changed and what we ended up settling on after a lot of consultation and discussions with the community was basically building a community center, which is what we have. And our whole thought process is when you go to a traditional community center, there's basically high level two things you can do. Number one, you can go any day of the week and you can pay a fee to go in and use their facility. There's a gym, there's typically a fitness center, there might be a yoga studio, there might be a daycare, whatever the case may be. However, on top of the everyday uses, they have very specific programming that they do throughout the week. So they'll do drop in basketball on a Wednesday, they'll do yoga class on a Thursday morning. I have a two year old son in our local community center every Thursday afternoon. Pre Covid, of course, did a drop in playtime where the gymnasium would be filled with like cars and play mats and all these fun things. And those are meant to build community. And so with the gaming stadium, we basically took that concept and brought gaming as the conduit. Seven days a week, anybody can walk into our facility, pay a fee and utilize our equipment however they see fit. We're open all the time for anyone who wants to just come in. But most days, five days a week before we closed due to Covid, we would actually run specific tournaments to drive that community, whether that was Fortnite or Counter Strike or Valorant or whatever the case may be. And the reason was we wanted to develop a social community utilizing video games as the conduit to bring those people together. And when you have that layout and that setup, it allows people to walk into a place where they don't know anyone, but instantly have something in common with them. And so you're able to get people to engage in conversation and build friendship and build loyalty through a video game, which is a pretty magical thing. So, you know, again, 2018 was one concept. Where we are today is different. We opened our facility in Richmond in June of 2019. So as a company, we've been running events out of TGS since then. And then of course since March due to Covid, have been focused mostly in the online space.

Awesome. Yeah. And so the gaming site, we were first developing this community center for gamers. Like, what were some of the challenges you faced? Because I know this is the first of its kind, especially in Canada. Yeah. What were some of the things that you were just not expecting, or some things that, like, were just so out of the blue? Or what were some of the challenges that you expected to come? And how did you handle all those?

Yeah, I mean, there's a long list of them. So, you know, at the start, if you go back to, like, pre construction, you know, you're dealing with architects and construction companies that had never done something like this before. And so when you're laying the foundation for your Internet or your power drops, or even just where the screens are going to go, where the microphones are going to be, where the speakers are facing, everything is from scratch.