In recent years, esports has become a billion-dollar entity. With competitions amongst various leagues, esports continues to thrive. Over the past couple of years, Kansas City has begun to establish a legitimate presence in the sports world (a guy by the name of Patrick Mahomes might have something to do with that), and now the Kansas City Pioneers, the city’s Rocket League team, are making their presence known with a vengeance as well. In this episode of One More Game, host Aaron “Don” Dukes and co-hosts Warlock Rakaul and Redinfamy spoke with Sam Kulikov (the chief creative of the Pioneers), Pioneers star Michael “Memory” Loss, and head coach JG7, about all things gaming.
Don kicked off the conversation with a discussion on how we’ve seen the growth of the Pioneers and Rocket League over these last several months in particular.
Sam: “I think it’s performing well, if we didn’t perform well in Rocket League, there would be nothing really to brag home about. So that’s one major thing. We want games to know that we are able to facilitate anything that they want/need to happen. There are so many little pieces, and to keep having James (JG7) and the team show improvement week after week, people pay attention and lock into that. They become fans instantly.”
Another factor in the organization’s success has been Rocket League now being free to play.
JG7: “I’m actually a full-time streamer in Rocket League, so I’m really looking forward to it. Obviously, Epic Games is massive, and Fortnite has huge viewership numbers in terms of Twitch and YouTube. I think Rocket League is a game that has a lot of potential. Especially for the younger audience Twitch and YouTube tends to cater for. I think Rocket League could be up next. It’s so easy to learn—it’s exciting to learn, and fun to struggle. I honestly could see it blowing up.”
Memory: We’ve even seen the start of that with Liquidpedia. People have been looking up pro player controls and settings for the game. I think it was number one on the trending pages for the Wiki.”