Posted in: eSports, Games, Interview, Video Games | Tagged: The Milk Cup, TheBestTaco, Yin Woon Rani

The Milk Cup: Chatting With TheBestTaco & Gonna Need Milk's CEO

We chat with caster TheBestTaco and Gonna Need Milk CEO Yin Woon Rani about their work and participation in The Milk Cup at LA Comic-Con

We're at Los Angeles Comic-Con this weekend covering the all-women's Fortnite LAN finals for The Milk Cup, and as part of our coverage, we had the opportunity to chat with a few different individuals taking part in the cup. Today, we got to chat with TheBestTaco, who will be providing color commentary for the event, as well as the CEO of Gonna Need Milk, Yin Woon Rani, the main sponsor of the event.

TheBestTaco

BC: Hey Taco! So first off, how did you get into esports and what specifically were you competing in before you got into casting?

Taco: Originally, I actually started off in a title known as Smite. It is owned by Hi-Rez Studios. And the very first org that I was actually a part of was Dignitas, at the time. It was exciting and that's actually what initially got me kind of started with the whole esports thing in general. It started off where I was just a kid streaming off of a laptop from my college Wi-Fi internet, and just it worked. They had good upload speed so I was happy with it. I just liked to stream on occasion, I started playing the game more and more. I got better at the game; I got picked up, and you started competing. It was fun, but by the end of the day, I don't think my interest was ever in playing a game professionally. I was always kind of drawn a little bit more towards the side of content creation and whatnot. But during one of the land events that I was attending, the Hi-Rez talent team head of talent at the time was this guy Hinduman, he hits me up and he's like "Hey, would you like to be an analyst, like a guest analyst on our show whenever you're coming down for LAN?" And I was like, sure, that sounds like it could be a lot of fun. Because my team wasn't going to be playing the entire time.

So I went and jumped on the analyst desk for the very first time, I gave my insight to the best of my ability for what I thought about the teams that were playing; the drafts for example. Things kind of just took off from there in a way that I wasn't even expecting. I didn't think that as many people were going to really care that much about that stuff that I had to say, because I can be a little bit of a yapper as well. I get really excited about the color commentary side of things. Chair 2 has typically always been a preference of mine, but over the years, I've definitely found myself leaning more and more into trying to exemplify the play-by-play stuff, too. Just because it's fun. I think all of it's just a good time. Hi-Rez was like "We liked what you did. The community was liking what you were doing. Would you like to come work for us as a commentator?" That's kind of how it all got started. So there's, there's a very big routing for me from Smite and Hi-Rez in general, and I will always be extraordinarily thankful and happy that was my starting point. It's a game that even up to this day, I'm still playing it. It makes me happy that something that I had started off over there, I've just been able to continue honing, my abilities and still receiving a lot of community support that I had back then. Even when I extended to other titles.

How was it transitioning, your career going into different esports and casting?

It's, it's a lot, right? Because for me, it was a really big jump. I really just wanted to challenge myself because it's one thing to do commentary for a game that you're already playing at a professional level, right? You already know all the ins and outs of it, and exactly what's going to happen for the most part. But what excited me about transitioning into a new esport is that I wanted to see if I can get myself up to par where everybody else is already at and make it something where my commentary is actually interesting towards that community. Because a lot of times people who are watching broadcast, they're people that are very involved in the community as well. So they know the players they know, where the players like to go, who's got like little bits of beef with each other, things like that. And It's it's a lot of downtime. At the time when I first got hit up for Chapter Three: Season Three to work that Fortnite Major, I had maybe a two-week heads up. They're like, "Hey, Denmark. Are you interested? It'd be for Fortnite." And I was like, "Down! sure! Let me see what I can do."

When I first started off, it was definitely rough because you're trying to learn a scene's competitive history that extends past just the 100 players that are going to be in that lobby. There is so much involved with Fortnite competitive history, but that, for me, has been something that's been really fun to explore. I would say Chapter Three: Season Three was really rough for me personally because there is a certain level that I like to make sure I am at, and I didn't feel like I was there or anywhere near it. But at the time, it was like, I think a lot of people also, in the Fortnite community, were kind of understanding of that. Like, "Hey, you're the new guy, you're not gonna know everything." But after that event, I didn't know if I was going to be, you know, continuing to work in anything Fortnite-related. I didn't really care, though, because it was exciting, just watching and getting to experience my first Fortnite event. I was like, "I want to know more about these players and about what got them to being where they are today."

So that started like my deep dive exploration of their comp scene and history because there's there's vods out there. There's so many vods out there, which I'm very thankful for that there is a lot of coverage on Fortnite's competitive history as well. I spent roughly the next six to eight months [watching] and I did get the chance to come back and do other stuff. But every single major, and like, even when I went to the 2022 Invitational, I just felt like even if it's 1% better, that's really all I needed. Over time a lot of people in the scene, also kind of started to realize that I was actually putting in a lot of time and investment to make sure that I knew what I was talking about, until eventually I was able to get to a point where I feel very confident in the things that I'm saying now, because I do feel like I have a pretty good understanding of what it is that the players are trying to do now. Obviously it's going to come easier once you spend X amount of time, especially watching past events and things like that. That's been really cool for me, but I think, in general, I would recommend anybody to go back and do a dive on Fortnite's competitive history because there is so much story involved in a lot of these players' backgrounds.

How did you get involved with The Milk Cup?

I think Raidiant was just looking to try and establish an all-women's team and since they might have recognized me from the fact that I was already working the official FNCS Majors and stuff like that. So I think that's part of the reason why they were interested and having me be on board. When I saw that it was an all-women's event, a great chance to just spotlight all these incredible women, I was already familiar with a lot of the ladies that are already competing and that have actually qualified for this event. I was so down. I was just so excited and so gassed that they would even be willing to consider me for this kind of opportunity.

What have you thought of the qualifiers so far leading up to this weekend's event?

The first qualifier was definitely the biggest easy without a doubt. I think, most people would also argue was, by far, one of the most competitive quals to get here. But I don't want to take away from what the teams did and quals two and three. And while quals three might have had a few more qualifier spots open for teams to get in, I still think at the end of the day when you look at the top ends of those leaderboards from qual tow and qual three, you're looking at some teams that formed after the fact from the fallout of like qual one, right? So it's like if it didn't work out what the teams you're working with then, let's see if we can get better chemistry with like a new trio, right?  It's going to be a lot of that in general because you're always gonna get a little bit of like mix and match when it comes to Fortnite competitions. Sometimes, you just need a new honeymoon phase; sometimes switching it up and getting a new teammate is just… You want to prove to like your old duo or your old trio that like, "hey, you know, we haven't proved, but you k, it goes both ways, right?" I think that's been really exciting.

What are your thoughts as far as women's esports and where is today?

It is by far, so much better than where it was ten years ago when I first started to get involved. I think the most important part about all women's events and titles and tourneys and stuff, it's giving women that might have felt like they had no way to actually–because I don't want to say it's a boys club, but sometimes it can be really intimidating to try and approach a group of guys and be like, "Hey, I want to play with y'all. I want to see if I can compete with you guys." I can understand wanting to have the women's events because you build up your confidence and you continue to just try, because it's giving these women so many opportunities to just realize, "hey, I just want to keep pushing to be the best version of myself. I want to be the best competitor as a whole, like not even just for women's esports exclusively. I want to compete with everyone." And that's my favorite thing to see.

What do you think would be the next big development for women's esports? What do you believe is the next goal?

What I really would love to see is other companies in organizations and also game developer companies themselves, to take a look at what's happening with an event, like The Milk Cup and be like, "What if we just did this ourselves as well?" I would love to see more events, without a doubt, that give that like inclusivity. That safety feature for women to have an opportunity to showcase their capabilities and their potential. And also to showcase the fact that they are putting out a lot of effort. I'm telling you, these girls have been scrimming like crazy and it's insane to think about. There's just been so much work put in that people don't see on screen. How do you not respect somebody's time in that way? Yeah.

Final thoughts going into the event. What are you looking forward to the most?

What I'm looking forward to the most is that I know that there's a lot of content creators and also pro-players as well from the Fortnite scene that are looking to show their support for The Milk Cup. Anytime you see community involvement to that level is super cool. You couldn't ask for anything better than to see not just women but also the fellas in your gaming title be interested in what you're doing and also cheering you on and trying to help indicate to everybody else out there that this is like a serious competition. This is a very hard thing to qual to, this is like not going to be some walk in the park. Some people might scoff at the fact, like "Oh it's all women, how tough could it actually be?" Well, I promise you, most people will probably get smoked by Moxie's trio. I love seeing the fact that people are just taking so much notice and so much pride behind the woman in the scene. As for the event itself, I just want to see a top five that's really hard to dictate. But that's just that's also the commentator side of things, you always wanted to be the photo finish.

What's next for you after the cup?

After The Milk Cup I am planning on participating in a really big charity event, but it's mostly for a wildlife organizational thing. It's a lot of downtime. Because it's largely just trying to prep for the next year and seeing what kind of developments are going to take place for 2025. But yeah, I'll largely just be doing a lot of my own streaming on my personal channel.

Yin Woon Rani

How did Gonna Need Milk first get interested in esports in general?

Yeah, we've been participating for seven or eight years in different fashions. We sponsored a team, and we did a Roblox build. I think it really started because we're very focused on youth, young kids between 1 and 18. Disproportionate consume milk is 20% of the population, 40% of the volume. And as you know, gaming is a part of their life, as everyone plays something. So I think we've been dabbling in the space and trying to find the right way in and we got more serious in the last couple of years. We built the Zany Zipline custom maps for Fortnite, created our own Discord Community, we hired a specialist agency, partnered with ThePeachCobbler. But it really starts with gaming because it's such a big part of Youth Lifestyles. I have an 18 year-old son, and music and gaming are basically his whole life.

How did the subject of starting  The Milk Cup first get broached?

We have a commitment at MilkPEP to support women and women in sports. Women will receive only five percent of sponsorships, and I think something like seven percent of media coverage in regular sports. So we lean heavily into the running space. We're hosting a marathon for only women next month. And so we brought that same thinking to esports, and our thesis has always been that "esports is sports." That's why milk has the right to be there. We want to be the performance drink for gamers. I was kind of shocked at the level of the female inequity. Half of the gaming community are females, but only 5% of professional gamers are females. From an earning standpoint there's no female professional players in the top 500 players. So the best female player is paid as much as the top 500th male player. That is a shocking amount of inequity! So we we wanted to host this and try to bring attention and support to the female community, put our money where our mouth is and try to give them a great experience in playing this first-ever LAn for Fortnite.

How's it been for you watching the cup progress and seeing the different types of players and teams that have formed out of it?

It's been really interesting. I'm not a gamer myself, um, but the level play has been really high. I was told of all the women who qualified, for 60% of them, this is their first real competitive tournament. So it's been interesting to see people with some track record and some following and then brand new teams and trios that have shown up. And the outpour of support online and now in-person is really special, I think they're very appreciative of having this opportunity and appreciative of them showing up and being part of it. One of the decisions we made was to pay for all the players to come so that financial barriers wasn't an issue for people to be able to come and participate. And we didn't know from the first qualifier, like we just really had no idea. We'd never done anything like this on this scale before but it was really gratifying to see the level of viewership. Apparently it was a record-breaking viewership for the first qualifier, and then the second qualifier beat that record, and the third qualified beat that record. I think it was worth watching, they played hard, and it was entertaining. There were great commentators and watch parties. It just has a momentum of its own. So we feel pretty good coming into the finals that we're on the right track.

How did the opportunity come to hold it here at LA Comic Con? Did they approach you, or did you ask them looking for a venue?

I think it was a little bit of both. There was a little bit of a timing thing, like we knew we wanted to do at this time of the year. So there weren't a plethora of options. We like Comic-Con because i has a gaming section, but it wasn't only gaming. We had done we've been at TwitchCon the last couple of years and we've done VidCon before. So I think it was a little bit of a combination of when in the year we wanted to do it and then Comic-Con being a good host and a good sponsor. Objectively, I think [the space] looks pretty cool. I think we're pretty present and we feel good about the space, but we wanted something that we didn't get overshadowed by all the other gaming options. I think it's going to be a good crowd here, but we can have a chance to stand out more, hopefully.

What are your thoughts going into the tournament tomorrow?

Excited is probably the big word. The team has worked so hard in so long; it's like an opening day kind of thing. I feel grateful that we can spend our advertising on dollars in a way that's affecting these 99 women's lives and all the ones who compete in the qualifier, and we have heard such an outpouring of support. Some of them are getting approached for sponsorships and brand deals they wouldn't have had before. I just feel grateful that we as an industry and we as organization can make a real difference. I'm sure there will be wrinkles and snafus and technical failures and all the chaos that comes with events but I feel like we've already done a lot of good. I just feel grateful to be involved. It's cool.

Based on the success, I assume in 2025 you're gonna bring the cup back. Any plans to expand it or keep the same format? Maybe get involved with other esports festivals and events like that?

We do want to make a long-term commitment to this exercise. I think we're going to do a winter split on asmaller scale for Fortnite, but we will definitely probably repeat the Fortnite version of it. We are exploring potentially expanding it to other titles and platforms. But we're gonna try to get to tomorrow first and see how it goes. Really the community support has been very high and there's been a lot of interest from people who don't necessarily play Fortnite, but are in the women's gaming community. We are looking at that pretty seriously, so stay tuned, and hopefully, we'll get to do something more.

Any final thoughts on Gonna Need Milk and your work in esports?

I will say we one of the reasons we like being in the gaming space is, I think a little bit of an unexpected player. I think you often see carbonating soft drinks or energy drinks or technology players. We like showing up and supporting this youth audience. We believe that esports are sports and milk has always supported that. We want players to understand that milk can be part of their diet, obviously for all the benefits that you really can think of in terms of strength and growth and hydration, but the benefit we're promoting for gamers specifically is focus. Milk can help you focus and also give you sustained energy without caffeine jitters, and there's a lot of science behind that. So we're hopeful that gamers will appreciate that being well-nourished and fueled is important.

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