Zaqueri 'Aphromoo' Black is one of the longest tenured players in League of Legends professional play, with his career spanning almost 13 years and two championship runs. He is also the League Championship Series' only Black player in its decade-long history. But in mid-January, he announced his retirement, hanging up the mouse and keyboard and assessing what's next in his career. He joins Prem, who guest hosted this episode, to discuss his legacy and the impact he left on the world's most-watched esports game.

"When your favorite player stops playing, or whatever might happens, moves teams, either you follow or you don't. So a lot of the old guard is gone now and all I can really think about [is that] a lot of us, back in the day, we were all streamed most of the time. It was easy to hop on Twitch back in the day, watch our stream, learn League of Legends when it was first coming out. Nowadays, you don't really see a lot of people streaming... and obviously it's a lot harder to build that sort of connection."

You can follow Aphromoo here.

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Ovilee May started her career young, creating content about professional 'League of Legends' in her late teens. She's had a meteoric rise, becoming a host at Comcast's G4 network and at Riot Games' official League of Legends Championship Series. Her content, known for its humor and intentional cringe, is a standard bearer in an esports industry that's struggling to retain viewership. In January, she returned from freelance work to go full time with FlyQuest, one of the LCS' teams and get back to where her career started, while still pushing it forward in a new and meaningful way.

You can follow Ovilee here.

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'The Last of Us' recorded HBO's second-most watched premiere of the past 13 years, behind only 'Game of Thrones' spin-off 'House of the Dragon.' An adaptation of the 2013 video game of the same title, the $100 million post-apocalyptic zombie drama may just be breaking the video game curse of bad translation from small screen to big screen. What's so different about it? And why are video games the hottest new thing in Hollywood? Emmy award-winning podcast host Jason Concepcion joins the show to share his thoughts.

"The technology got to the point where you can make this stuff look good on television. Second, 'Game of Thrones' proved fantasy could really make hay with a television audience in a huge way, in an international way. Maybe with 'The Last of Us' now, you're seeing the same thing with video games."

You can follow Jason here.

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So far in 2023, the likes of Google, Microsoft and others have laid off tens of thousands of employees, with some in the gaming industry. Each day there's new news of layoffs and on this episode of 'Visionaries', Washington Post reporter Shannon Liao joins Jacob to discuss the layoffs and what they mean for the tech, entertainment and gaming industries at large.

"A lot of this is due to the pending recession that hasn't happened yet that people are worried about and they're thinking the market is going to contract. To correct for that, as the prices of milk and everything increases, the companies—and a lot of these are public companies—want to keep profitability up and look good for their shareholders, for investors and their next earnings call."

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If you're into games, chances are you've played—or at least heard of—League of Legends and its developer Riot Games. Despite League's success, though, Riot famously didn't publish any other titles for the first 10 years of its company's existence. That is, until it got inspired by a group who created a mod for one of its competitors, Dota. In less than six months, a small scrappy team at the California developer built Teamfight Tactics, a spinoff digital board game that mixes chess with slot machines and inspiration from card games. Now it's one of the studio's most successful titles. It's lead designer, Stephen "Mortdog" Mortimer, joins the break down the genre-defining game, how its maintained and how the team finds inspiration for new ideas.

"TFT's success is about novelty and new experiences. If you come back and everything feels the same, you're kind of like, 'Yeah, I've kind of seen it before.' What you're looking for is those new unique experiences that excite you."

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In November, the community-organized 'Super Smash Bros.' esports circuit Smash World Tour canceled its finale event just two weeks before its kickoff date, citing legal concerns stemming from conversations with the game's publisher Nintendo. But the organizers behind the event also made another accusation: the CEO of their biggest competitor, Panda's Alan Bunney, had threatened 'Melee' and 'Ultimate' grassroots organizers on behalf of Nintendo, who his organization partnered with in 2022. In an intense set of events, Bunney resigned in fear in December and issued a statement scolding the Smash World Tour organizers and tournament broadcaster Beyond the Summit. Now, he joins Jacob for his first-ever interview in the wake of the scandal.

"The shadow of Nintendo behind us made [our competitors feel threatened.] You have to keep in mind I was working towards phasing myself out. The only thing connecting any distrust people had was me."

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Visionaries is back! 2022 capped off as one of the biggest year's ever for gaming entertainment, but for esports, the year was less than kind. What will happen in 2023? Award-winning investigative journalist Jacob Wolf and producer Prem Thottumkara sit down to dole out their big predictions for 2023. After allegedly stealing millions of dollars in customer funds, will 30-year-old notorious crypto count Sam Bankman-Fried actually see prison time? Will FaZe Clan, amid financial uncertainty, make it until the end of the year without additional financing? All this and more in Visionaries 2023 prediction episode.

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Parth Naidu is the former general manager of esports organization TSM, which Forbes estimated in May is worth $540 million. After nearly a decade with the team, Parth decided to move on last fall and now, he's launched a consulting firm, Sido, focusing on tackling some of esports' most challenging issues.

You can follow Parth here and Sido here.

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Marcus Bromander is the co-founder of Innersloth and the co-creator of 'Among Us', the online multiplayer titles that became one of the most popular video games in 2020. But before its smash success, 'Among Us' nearly died, as it struggled to maintain a player base and Marcus and his team looked to move on. Yet thanks to the pandemic, 'Among Us' became a favorite of gamers isolated away from their friends. Now, 'Among Us' has made more than $100 million in sales and gone from life support to thriving with new development.

"We were basically done with it at the start of 2019. We had put out our third map. We had done enough bug fixes that the game functioned. We were like, 'alright, that's it.' Forest and Amy started prototyping other game ideas that got decently far along, but when 'Among Us' took off again, we were like what do we do? We should ride the wave."

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You can follow Marcus here.

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This past weekend, YouTube star Ludwig Ahgren hosted the Mogul Chessboxing Championship, an exhibition event featuring chessboxing. What is chessboxing, you might ask? It's exactly as it sounds: chess and boxing. Competitors compete in both, alternating between the board game and the combat sport every round until there's a winner in one or the either. 2018 chessboxing world champion Matt Thomas, who helped organize the Mogul event, joined Jacob to discuss the history of the niche sport and how it's growing beyond its small community.

You can follow Matt here.

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