Online Optimism
All right, Lindsay is passionate about entrepreneurship, data analytics, technology, and gaming. Thanks for joining us today, Lindsay.
Lindsay Poss
Thanks so much for having me. I’m honored to be the first guest.
Online Optimism
Yes, absolutely. So how are you today? I know we listened to your podcast a little bit. It’s awesome. So we’re glad to have kind of an experienced person joining us as our first guest. So the first question I want to ask you is, is how did you get started working in esports and gaming? How did that come to be?
Lindsay Poss
doing great. It’s a nice, nice sunny day here in D.C. I have nothing to complain about and I’m really excited to be on this end of a podcast for once. I’m so excited to be on this end of a podcast for once.
Online Optimism
And what do you do? What’s your current job and position?
Lindsay Poss
So this is sort of my little secret that’s not such a well-known secret, but I’m not a huge gamer myself. I am married to a gamer, and I grew up with a brother who is fairly interested in gaming, but I am not a mouse and keyboard or even a console kind of heavy into gaming gamer. I am definitely a mobile phones kind of gal, so, or mobile games on my phone kind of gal. Yeah, yeah, a little bit more relaxed, the hyper-casual kind of side of things.
Online Optimism
Oh.
Online Optimism
I’m not sure if you can hear me.
Lindsay Poss
But I started work at a small technology focused think tank. And I had a coworker who got really into blockchain research. And she started looking into blockchain, and we started learning more and more about microtransactions. Microtransactions definitely do happen on the blockchain, but a lot of times they happen in gaming. And I sort of started just poking around in this gaming side of things and thought, hey, there’s actually a lot going on here. And from a tech policy perspective or from just a future tech.
how we spend our time perspective, I was really interested. And again, I kind of seen gaming my whole life, but hadn’t had the slightest clue as to how big or how pervasive it was or how powerful a form of entertainment it was. And then I read a Netflix report, it was actually the 2018 shareholders report where they said, we lose more to Fortnite than we do to HBO. And I thought, oh my gosh.
Online Optimism
I still have a lot of things I want to say. I talked to a former faculty. Yeah. And then I found out that’s her husband, because that’s who she was talking to. And I remember her talking to him. And I remember hearing from him that she was going to be a part of the university. Wow. Really? Yeah. And then I was like, well, I’m going to be a student in college. I’m going to be a student in college. And then I was like, well, I’m going to be a student in college. And then I was like, well, I’m going to be a student in college. And then I was like, well, I’m going to be a student in college. And then I was like, well, I’m going to be a student in college. And then I was like, well
Lindsay Poss
Yeah, so even the streaming companies are, you know, thinking about gaming as this. This is how people are spending their time. And so from a research perspective and from an interest in technology perspective, I was sort of like, oh, man, nobody’s looking at this as they should be in my current fields. So I just started poking around and getting more and more into it and attended a couple conferences, met some people who are really into the space, who have been basically shouting this message from the rooftops for years.
and kind of linked up with them and started working and reading more and listening more and thinking more about gaming and bringing my own perspective of technology and economics and data analytics to their side of being really into gaming. And wound up being this really fun partnership where I was sort of an insider outsider in this world. I had a different perspective than the hardcore folks. Yeah, and I’ve just been, now it’s been about two years since I started that project.
Online Optimism
I’m going to go ahead and turn it over to you. I’m going to turn it over to you.
Online Optimism
Yeah.
Lindsay Poss
published a paper, done a bunch of op-eds. I now work as a executive producer for a company called Holodeck Media, where we cover a lot of gaming verticals. It’s gaming specific kind of publications. Started out with the business of e-sports, which is their Holodeck Media’s flagship production. They do a live news show where I got to be a pundit, very ESPN style round table kind of thing where we all give our hot takes, very fun.
Online Optimism
I’m not sure if that’s true.
Lindsay Poss
And then from that live show, that live stream, spawned off into having my own podcast that’s focused in women in gaming, because there weren’t a ton of people that looked like me. So trying to find and highlight that work.
Online Optimism
So what’s your day to day look like? What do you do kind of every day in gaming or around gaming?
Lindsay Poss
It’s a lot of managing the podcast, quite honestly, and I’m sure you all will learn this too, getting guests and having conversations. And the wonderful thing I think about catering to a specific niche in gaming is that niche is very willing to collaborate and share their own resources and their own folks with me. So it’s been nice because I’ll interview one person and they’ll recommend another person, but that requires a lot of talking.
So I went from sort of being in an office and doing research to just a ton of meeting and talking to people, which is very fun. I am an extroverted introvert, so I sort of enjoy both. Spend a lot of time doing research still and writing scripts, but that research is more focused now on who I’m talking to, what they’re currently working on, what it means for the gaming space, and what it means for this whole metaverse idea, which I’m sure we’ll get into.
Online Optimism
Yeah.
Lindsay Poss
But yeah, the day to day is a lot of just, yep, day to day is a lot of just kind of management and talking to people and still a little bit of that research element.
Online Optimism
We’ll talk about that in a second.
Online Optimism
So gaming, I mean, there is a million different jobs you can do in the gaming industry and what advice would you give to someone who wanted to get started? Um, you know, there’s kind of the technical side, these artistic side, the, you know, there’s so many different sides to it. So what do you talk to people? Do people reach out to you and ask you about getting started in the industry? And what do you say to them?
Lindsay Poss
the time. I’ve had several people kind of reach out and just ask where they can look for jobs even. And there’s a couple websites that have popped up for gaming specific jobs now. I do recommend that people who want to work in gaming, if you are going to maybe a degree program or even if you’re in high school, taking some sort of basic business classes, taking some of the marketing.
even finances, planning, all of that. If you are a non-technical person, of course, if you’re really great at software engineering, go for it. Do all the technical stuff, go be a game developer. But if you’re on the non-technical side, any form of basic, you know, I’m trying to think about business marketing, accounting, entrepreneurship, all of that kind of, all of those courses, all of that classwork, all of that experience can be.
pretty much directly translated somehow into the gaming industry. And we’re early enough on that all of those soft skills or non-technical jobs are still really highly coveted. There’s a couple of websites I always recommend. One is called Hitmarker, which is a great one to look at if you’re interested in the gaming industry. If you’re a woman who’s interested, there’s a nonprofit called Women in Games International or WIGI for short. They have an awesome jobs board. And then I know of a couple Discord servers, I’m really active on Discord.
Online Optimism
I’m going to take a few minutes to get back to you.
Lindsay Poss
There’s a lot of Discord servers that specifically have job channels where people will post jobs. So if you have a field, say for example, you’re interested in education, find a Discord that’s gaming and education, and usually there will be a channel where people will post jobs for that specific group, yeah.
Online Optimism
Wow. I feel like there’s a real misunderstanding that you have to be like a coder to like working games. I was just going to say that. Yeah. That there’s so many different ways that you could work in games. Yeah. Like you have to write storylines. You have to market them. Like
Yeah, I
Lindsay Poss
Oh, cool.
Lindsay Poss
Oh, neat.
Mm-hmm.
Online Optimism
So it’s really interesting to see that technical side, but like Meara said, there’s a ton of different jobs where marketing, business strategy, how do you actually build the game? How do you promote it? Where does it go? And it has to release almost like a feature film. And these games have to be constantly updated, right? I mean, that’s how they make money is by constantly updating them and re-releasing them, which I’m sure we’ll talk about in a second, but it’s so interesting.
Lindsay Poss
Oh yeah.
Lindsay Poss
Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Poss
Well, and they also, yeah, they also are, are businesses at the end of the day as well. So any, and they’re trying to make money too. So any kind of skill that you have that leans towards business is, is definitely sought after. Don’t have to be, don’t have to code a program, although that’s also sought after.
Online Optimism
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I know that gaming is changing and there’s a lot of talk about virtual reality. We’ve got the metaverse coming, all of these different things. Do you think VR is here to stay? And how do you think that’s going to progress as we keep going with games?
Lindsay Poss
So this is always a fun question to answer because the honest truth is that I think we just can’t predict the direction technology is going. I mean, 15 years ago, even five, 10 years ago, I don’t think anyone would have predicted the power of phones, the power of social media, the power of software, and it’s not just hardware, it’s software, right? I would love to say I’m a huge believer in VR.
I frankly think that AR has more useful applications right now because we do all carry around phones and it’s easier to kind of build AR experiences. It’s a little bit just less of a barrier to entry there. I don’t know what we’re going to do. I have been learning a lot recently about fitness and VR, which has been really cool. And I think that there’s just so much potential in sort of every area of life.
Online Optimism
Yeah.
Lindsay Poss
I think it’s a little bit hard for me to say this is the thing that’s really going to get us there. Do I think that technology is going to continue to evolve and that we’re all eventually going to have some sort of pod like or thing? Yeah, exactly. You know, headsets and a treadmill and all of that. I actually do think that’s going to happen because it’s fun. It’s very entertaining. So I think that we’re going to have a lot more development into the hardware side. I think that
Online Optimism
Weird headsets, just walking around. Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, cool. Yeah. I didn’t know that.
Lindsay Poss
We’re gonna have things that we haven’t even thought of. Snapchat actually just recently launched a augmented reality ability that allows you to try on clothes in stores. So it goes, yeah, it goes way beyond entertainment too. I think a lot of how we shop and interact with the world will change. And I think honestly there’s, it’s nice. I think that changes, I think it will be largely good too. I think a lot of us have
Online Optimism
I need all the help I can get with shopping so that.
Lindsay Poss
a lot of anxieties about the real world, and especially over the past two years, those have really come to light. And I think that there can be a lot of different ways for people who are neuro-atypical to interact with the world, people who have more nerves. I mean, just the growth in therapy alone has been huge. So I largely believe in all these changes being good. That being said, I also think that the value of in-person interactions is never going to fully go away.
Online Optimism
Yeah.
Online Optimism
I’m also a little bit concerned. Yeah. I have a question. You mentioned that you were a graduate of the University of New York. I’m wondering if you have any experience with the University of New York and how you’ve been doing with the university. Yeah. I’ve been told so many times, but I don’t know the answer. It’s hard to predict. I remember five years ago when I was interviewing to be an intern here, I got the question, what do you think is gonna be the top?
Lindsay Poss
So we might change the way we shop or the way we work or the way we work out. I still think there’s going to be a lot of specialness in real world connections. And frankly, it might be that we learn to value those a little more if we’re spending more time online or with devices. So I’m very hopeful, I guess, but I have no idea what it looks like.
Online Optimism
Uh, social media network in five years. And I was like, I don’t think it exists yet. And that felt like a really bold answer, but here we are with Tik TOK and Facebook now losing money. Yeah. So. And literally never know what’s around the corner. And speaking on mobile games, you know, I did a project in, in college 10 years ago about, you know, growing industries. And I remember doing a case study on temple run. Do you remember temple run? Temple run. Heck yeah. Oh my God. Temple run. Uh,
Lindsay Poss
Yep.
Lindsay Poss
Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Poss
Oh, heck yeah. What do you mean, do I remember Temple Run? You’re looking at a Temple Run champion.
Online Optimism
just was so addictive and everyone was playing it at the time. And I remember my professor was saying like, you know, you really think that these mobile games are going to make money. And I said,
Yes, they make tons of money from in-app purchases, from downloads, all this stuff. And they just weren’t quite with it yet. And now I, it’s just amazing to see how much they’ve grown. You see an ad for like a sketchy puzzle game and they’re like, do this 10 minutes a day and it’ll improve your brain function. You’re probably like, who down, me, I download that. Exactly. I love those games. Those ads. Thank you. Oh.
Lindsay Poss
ads.
Lindsay Poss
Those are my forte as well. Are you guys wordle, wordle players?
Online Optimism
I got Wordle in three every day for an entire week. And I was so proud of myself. Wordle is the only way that my group chats start these days. It’s like, if you’re not starting with Wordle, then you’re nowhere. I have a friend where every day we send each other our Wordle results. But it’s initiating conversation. Yeah.
Lindsay Poss
Thank you!
Lindsay Poss
Isn’t that amazing though?
Isn’t that amazing how exactly, and I think that there’s a lot of power to be had in these types of interactions because a wordal to me is particularly special because it is once a day. And so it’s like for one brief moment every morning, kind of everyone is united in doing this thing and in talking about it. Yeah.
Online Optimism
Yeah. You’re on the same page. And we also have this like really unique, like undeclared, but unanimously decided social code that you don’t spoil the word. Oh, yeah. Like no one had to go out there and say like don’t spoil the word. Like, yeah, we all just knew. Yeah.
Lindsay Poss
Oh, absolutely, yeah. It reminds.
Lindsay Poss
Yeah.
Online Optimism
I accidentally spoiled the word when I first said, I just didn’t know how to share. I didn’t, I didn’t click the share button. I screenshot it and sent it. And so that was the first time I did it. I’m done with that. I know how to send wordles now. I’m good. I’m a thousand years old. Sorry. Well, okay. So you had mentioned that you like, we’ve especially seen this big shift in gaming, especially with like COVID in the past couple of years. How have e-sports and gaming in general changed since you started working in them to now?
Lindsay Poss
UGH!
Lindsay Poss
It just-
Lindsay Poss
That’s a good question. I haven’t been in this industry for too terribly long, I will say. I guess the most interesting thing that’s happened is the pandemic and seeing that change. So the explosion in growth during the pandemic was of no surprise to people who’ve been watching the industry. Being stuck at home with little else to do, it’s totally not a surprise at all that this was the main thing that people, yeah. Well.
Online Optimism
Okay. Switch. Switch also nailed it with Animal Crossing coming out at the very start of a pandemic. Yeah.
Lindsay Poss
Animal Crossing, yeah.
Well, so it’s funny that you bring that up because Warzone also kind of came out, Call of Duty Warzone also kind of came out right during the pandemic. And the biggest thing about these games is that it was an easy way for people to connect with friends without having to be in a phone call or be in a FaceTime or even over chat or text. You could log in and play a game together. It’s way easier. I, you know, my husband plays with friends that live in England.
and that live overseas where they all can get together once a week and actually have the time to sit down and play with each other and chat and catch up. But it’s sort of, the biggest thing in gaming is we talk about how it’s not a lean back experience. Watching TV and talking on the phone to an extent is a lean back experience. You’re not sort of actively engaged. You’re not moving, you’re not thinking about the thing that you’re doing. You’re just sort of sitting back and taking it in. Gaming is a lean forward experience. You have to be actively engaged. You have to make decisions. You have to think on your feet.
Online Optimism
Yeah.
Online Optimism
I think that’s a great question. The thing that we think of in the middle of college, not only in college, but in the university, is that you see other colleges that have this kind of faculty experience, not only that, but in the university, not only in the university. You remember our state faculty. You think it’s only the full-time experience. You think it’s not really up to them. You think it’s not up to them. And I think that’s a great question. We want to know about the faculty that we’re with.
Lindsay Poss
And I think that people are learning the value of combining that with time spent with friends and time spent catching up in a way that maybe is way more accelerated because of the pandemic. So.
Online Optimism
Yeah. I like that you say lean forward and lean back because when I think of a lean back experience, I think of literally turning my brain off. That’s like how I think of it. I’m not thinking, I’m not trying, I’m not doing anything, I’m just relaxing. And a lean forward is really being active. And I like the way you worded that. I just wanted to put that out there. I do.
Lindsay Poss
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Lindsay Poss
I would love to take credit for that, but that’s an industry thing.
Online Optimism
Yeah. I feel like even though there’s been this explosion in like people playing, I still automatically like think of honestly straight white men playing video games. All the people that I know who exploded into video games, like traditional like working with people video games fit that category. Have you seen a change in representation with like women, people of color, LGBTQ identities? Have you seen a shift in that?
Lindsay Poss
Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Poss
So I think it’s first really important to note that when people think gaming or e-sports, they usually do automatically think of the games that attract straight white men. They think gaming is call of duty, and it’s just not. It took me a long time to come to grips with the fact that I am a gamer even though I play just mobile games. I can still interact with this industry. I still am contributing to it, right? Because I’m playing these games and I’m watching the ads and I might not be making in-game purchases, but I certainly know people who…
Online Optimism
In gaming? Yeah.
Online Optimism
If you can get in person, I’ll be happy to. So this is, first of all, we have this business. And we’re going to be having this business. We’re going to be able to do this. And we have a lot of things that we’re going to be doing in the coming months. So we’re going to be able to do this. And then it’s a lot of the time, we’re going to be able to do this in the coming months. So we’re going to be able to do this.
Lindsay Poss
make in-game purchases on mobile games. So that’s just, first of all, we have to expand the definition of the industry. And when we do that, there is a lot more people included, which is good because they should be. And now we’re starting to see a rise in a lot more communities that actually welcome those types of folks who are a little bit more, they’re just less intense. They’re not gonna sit down and play League of Legends for 10 hours on a PC. That doesn’t mean that they don’t understand the power and value in gaming and interact with that as a medium.
So I’ve seen more companies working to actually cater to those people. I don’t know if you all know, but some of the most successful divisions of companies are the mobile divisions. And so companies are learning to really value that customer and that customer actually tends to be a lot more female. And then they’re also learning to value outside markets. So to your point about racial and ethnic diversity, the Latin American market is exploding. The Asian market has been
Online Optimism
Yeah.
Lindsay Poss
more powerful than the Western market for a while. But the Latin American and Indian markets are exploding. The Middle East is just exploding. Weirdly, Saudi Arabia, which has its own issues, is one of the countries that’s investing the most in gaming. So we’re seeing a lot more people being added and as more and more people are being added, I think companies are starting to realize, hey, we shouldn’t just cater to straight white men because we’re then shooting ourselves in the foot and cutting off a huge portion of our consumer base that we could also be making money off of.
So in the past couple of years, you’ve seen a lot more character introductions of people of color, of people who are, who have diverse sexual identities and diverse genders and all of that. So it’s still dominated by straight white men and I don’t wanna paint the illusion that it’s not, but companies are coming to the tune that not only is this just better, because it’s way better to have more voices at the table, it actually is more profitable.
I recently had a guest on my podcast who said, DEI equals ROI. And I thought that was a really succinct way of putting it because it’s true. The more people you cater to, the more you’re inviting people to spend money on your product.
Online Optimism
Yeah.
Lindsay Poss
So they’re changing the games themselves. They’re changing the marketing and the promotion of the game, but they’re also educating and informing people like yourself that you are gamers, right? That’s the idea is opening up the umbrella and saying, you know, you’ve already been a gamer for 10 years. You just didn’t realize that or identify as a gamer. And now we’re including you and making it known that you are part of this community, which I kind of like. Yeah, I always joke that I’m a gamer because I love the Sims. Sims are great. I’m like this close to building a PC so I can play the Sims more efficiently. And I.
Online Optimism
Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Online Optimism
You would not be the first one and you won’t be the last.
Lindsay Poss
Yeah, absolutely. I wanna customize it with like LED lights. Like I will be full gamer mode.
