Upping HERGaming with Rebecca Brock Dixon
Today on The Adrenaline Zone, Sandy and Sandra welcome Rebecca Brock Dixon, founder of the*gameHERs, a media platform and social network for women who game. In this episode, Rebecca lets us into the world of esports, what it takes to start a business, and why what she’s doing with gamers is changing the sport. First up, Rebecca shares how she got into gaming herself, having started in the corporate professional world before moving into entrepreneurship and getting drawn into esports by the huge success of the gaming industry and the fact that half of gamers are women. Next, Rebecca explains exactly what esports is—professional, competitive video gaming—how it’s structured and monetized, and what the experience of going to a tournament is like. She also talks about the amazing fan culture and the enthusiasm fans have for their teams and favorite players.
Rebecca then focuses on the involvement of women in gaming and esports—about half of the world’s three billion gamers are women—and how, despite such numbers, women gamers are often overshadowed, especially in the media and the professional side of gaming. Rebecca suggests that much of this is down to the early marketing of games as “boys’ toys” and their reputation as being isolating but points out that women have always been part of the gaming world and are eager to share the great experiences they’ve had through it. Moreover, she highlights how games can teach valuable, transferable skills, from hand-eye coordination to teamwork, that can be used in myriad industries, including the wide variety of jobs on offer in esports. And Rebecca also discusses her company, the*gameHERs, which aims to be the go-to space for women interested in gaming, whether they’re looking for community or professional opportunities.
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Transcript:
Dr. Sandra Magnus: It lies somewhere between the pit of your stomach, your racing heart, and your brain, somehow trying to keep it all together. It's an area we call The Adrenaline Zone.
I'm retired astronaut Dr. Sandra Magnus.
Sandy Winnefeld: And I'm retired Navy fighter pilot, Admiral Sandy Winnefeld. We're two adrenaline junkies who love spending time with people who are really passionate about pushing their boundaries as far as possible.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Rebecca Brock Dixon is a busy woman. A mother of three, she also started and sold one business focused on developing a network of moms, and has recently embarked on her second business, the*gameHERs, focused on building a community of women who game.
Sandy Winnefeld: It turns out that half of the 3.5 billion gamers in the world are women. the*gameHERs is a community for women who participate in esports and have an interest in technology. Today, Rebecca is going to let us into the world of esports and how it all works.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: We're also going to talk about what it takes to start a business, and why what Rebecca is doing with the*gameHERs is changing the sport.
Sandy Winnefeld: Many thanks to our sponsor for this episode, Culligan Water.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: With Culligan's drinking water systems, you can get the ultra-filtered water that you need to fuel your high-performance lifestyle, right on tap. Learn more at Culligan.com.
Sandy Winnefeld: We caught up with Rebecca at her office in New York.
Sandy Winnefeld: Rebecca Dixon, welcome to The Adrenaline Zone. There's a lot to talk about today; esports, how it works, what's involved in starting a business from scratch. But let's start with the world of esports. You come from a family that has invested in esports, so tell us how that evolved, and how you got into gaming yourself.
Rebecca Brock Dixon: So, my background is not in esports originally, although it feels funny to say that because now it's what I live and breathe. I am a mom of three kids, I have a corporate professional background in media buying and advertising - that's what I spent my 20s doing, and I loved it, it gave me a real passion for brands, and branding, and human nature, and who likes what, and all of that has evolved over time. But at the core, it's still something that I'm really passionate about.
And right around the time I was starting a family, I switched out of the corporate world into the entrepreneurial world but still advertising. I joined two of the co-founders of the*gameHERs at their parenting company, and it was a community for expectant and new parents. So, great experience - they had a lot of brands who were interested in reaching new parents, so, I helped them facilitate that, grow the company, and sell it.
So, how I got into esports; in 2016, I was still a mom and somebody who had just sold a company and trying to figure out what to do next with my life. I love the entrepreneurial world, I like many, many things about it. It's exciting, certainly a lot of adrenaline in the entrepreneurial world on a daily, if not hourly basis, and I was really interested in a lot of different industries. So, I started paying more attention than I had before, to what my dad and my brother had invested in, and then become very involved with - the esports team, Team Envy. So, a few years before that, my brother had been working in the investment world, he was working for a VC; he was trying to identify new industries that were going to become big. And it's actually always fascinating to me. The gaming and esports industry already was big. The statistic that everyone loves to quote is that gaming is twice the size of the Movie, plus the Music industry. So, you take Movie, plus Music, times two, gaming is still bigger than that. So, I thought, "Wow, I kind of want to learn more about that." And esports is the professional side of gaming, and women are half of gamers. So, those statistics alone caused me to become really interested in esports - women, community around women, it was their community for women in gaming. And I could tell you a lot more, but that's what got me here.
Sandy Winnefeld: As a typical male, I admit it, I was really amazed to hear that half of the 3.5 billion gamers in the world are women. That's amazing.
Rebecca Brock Dixon: Yeah. It's growing all the time, but it's around there.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah, we're going to get a little more into that later, but we probably need to rewind and start from scratch because I didn't know really anything about esports until we started talking. So, maybe we need to start there. It's like, okay, how is it structured? What is it? How do the teams work? Just as a general intro for our listeners on the whole concept of esports.
Rebecca Brock Dixon: Sure. It's a complex question because you can think about it kind of like a sport, but because you know nobody owns soccer, or nobody owns football, and all of the games that are in esports are video games. So, at the core, esports is professional video gaming. It is a word that has become used a little bit generically to mean a lot of different things. But one way to think about it is, there are video games, people play them, they've played them for years, and as time has gone on, a lot of the video games are team games. And so, you can kind of think about it in the same way that you may enjoy watching, you know, Monday night football, or college baseball. If you're an avid video gamer, then watching somebody play video games is interesting, or it could be interesting. And so, it is to a lot of people for sure.
There are leagues for certain games that are professional, there is a lot of development in the collegiate space around leagues in a lot of different games. Some are more focused towards-- since I come from the place of where women play, women played all of them, but there are some that are more focused or have a higher percentage of women, but, you know, there are a lot of different kinds of setups. If you want to think about the path to pro, like, "I'm a kid, and I like playing video games. How can I become a pro?" I mean, the reality is a little bit like playing basketball on your middle school team and saying, "I want to join the NBA." It's not easy, and it's even probably less clear because there's not just one path. There's not Tee-ball to baseball, to camps in the summer, then to the NBA or MLB.
However, there are things you can do; you can, first of all, play a lot, and play on teams is, you know, a good way to do it. Meet people, it's actually a big networking space. And so, let's say you're playing a video game and you happen to be really good, and you think you might be good enough to be pro one day, what a lot of people in that scenario will do is stream. So, for people who aren't familiar with what streaming means, it means playing video games on a platform where people can watch you. And then, you know, joining a team is always a great thing-- there are tournaments that aren't a part of, let's say, a pro league that might just pop up. So, we'll get into what I do right now at the*gameHERs more I'm sure, but, you know, even the*gameHERs may sponsor, or host, or coordinate a tournament just for fun - we just did one recently with Benefit Makeup.
So, if you can join a tournament with a team and win that tournament, you're going to get visibility. And then if you look at the pro teams that are like I said, they're not consistent in how they're organized, but there are various leagues, if you win a tournament at a online or at an in-person place you might get noticed. So, it's sort of a laundry list of some of the ways along the path to pro, but it is a little complicated. But I think at the end of the day, if the best way to think about what is esports is, "Do you like to play video games? If you do, do you like to watch them - the professional side of video games."
Sandy Winnefeld: So, I would imagine that if you're a team owner, and you want to succeed, you're going to do like baseball does and have scouts, and looking for people as you just suggested. But how about once you actually get to be a pro? Is there a draft, or you know, how are the players paid? You know, can they be traded? You know, how does that sort of league vibe work in terms of the players?
Rebecca Brock Dixon: It's all still evolving, truly. There's not really a draft. Definitely, they move from team to team, the paying is also a little bit still evolving. So, one thing that's interesting also about esports teams is, there are a lot of people for sure, who love watching professional esports. And in the way that you think of a professional esports league operating like a professional sports league. That being said, there are also are a lot of people who like in addition to that, may like watching one person play a video game on their team, but there still could be one person, there could be sort of like the LeBron who stands out alone or-- So, a lot of the pro esports organizations right now are really trying to figure out how they're going to stay in business, and a lot of them, by the way, have multiple teams because they can, because there are multiple games.
So, if you think about an organization that has, you know, maybe they have three different games that they have teams in, and then they might have, who knows, 10 to 15, or it could be more, it could be less, and it-- sometimes they're called content creators, sometimes they're called streamers, but just individuals who are their own brand, but then they also operate under that same team brand. And the reason for that is, it's hard to monetize these teams as this industry is still evolving. Now, all you have to do is go to a pro esports event and you will see that the fan base is phenomenally engaged. I mean, it really feels like, you know, there was just the League of Legends Worlds are in New York where I am located right now, Wednesday to Sunday, three weeks in a row, and they're at Madison Square Garden, they sell out. I mean, it's unbelievable. And that being said, it's all a big, expensive sports production. And so, the teams are teams, and they're also media companies.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So, if I'm a fan and I'm going to an event, what am I watching? How does the competition work? Is there like a ring in the center, and people are sitting on computers, and there's big display monitors, and I mean, people can play video games without an end. So, how do you create a competition?
Rebecca Brock Dixon: Yes to all of it. That's why the League of Legends Worlds are three weeks long-
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Oh, wow. Yeah.
Rebecca Brock Dixon: -and yes to, you know, you picture a big event space like the Garden or the Barclays Center, or whatever. People are getting suites, they're on the stage, the gamers are set up there, there's coaches, and, you know, nutritionists and all of the supporting people are down there, all the sponsors, the jerseys, the mics, the energy drinks, the chairs-- yeah, I've got my Respawn gaming chair right here that I have from one of our partners. And then, yeah, huge screens, and then you have people on their phones checking all the stats, just like, not unlike things are today at, you know, a baseball game. Of course, you know, you want to think that everyone is watching the game, but it's really fascinating. And then tons of activations around the outside with all of the different brand sponsors. And, you know, maybe there's a VR thing over here, and maybe there's a Doritos competition on this side, and it's pretty fascinating.
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Sandy Winnefeld: So, you've got these players that are-- the audience can see them in their sort of pit, or whatever you call it, and then there are screens. And so, with a Call of Duty tournament, I imagine there are a couple of players on each side, and you're seeing each screen for each person?
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Rebecca Brock Dixon: That is amazing that you could picture that experience and ask that question because it's something that I was curious about, "What is that job? Like, what career is that? The person who's watching and making the decision for what should be on screen? Because by the way, there are broadcasters, shout casters, judges, all of these different roles in terms of, again, just like umpires, refs, all of that.
So, to answer your question, different things are shown at different times. In the Call of Duty tournament that I went to-- by the way, I got into this business in March of 2020, which is two and a half years ago, most of which was COVID. So, I to date, have been to only one pro esports tournament, and it was phenomenal. You just need to go to one to see what it is, and now I can't wait to go to a million more. So, from a firsthand experience, I'll give you how that one was, but then also, it's very similar if you watch some of these online. It was the game, and then little asterisks or like kind of red lights where each person was. But then if it got to the point-- and ahead of time, the person who's coordinating the screen, I guess the producer, would know to-- you know, you so often would be focused in on one person, and then that person would die, or that person would win, or you know, win that round, or whatever. So, obviously, to get into a position where you could have that as your job, you have to know a lot about the game.
Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah. Do they do slow motion, instant replay for a particularly sanguine moment?
Rebecca Brock Dixon: I don't think they did slow-motion replay, but they definitely did replay.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So, there's this arena, so, this is like watching golf or tennis, right? So, the audience is probably people who play the games, but at a more amateur level, but the pros are really good. So, the fan base then, they're cheering their people on, most of them know something about the game, so there's probably a lot of energy in the fanbase during the event?
Rebecca Brock Dixon: Yeah. And actually, it's funny that I used golf and tennis. I haven't been to a ton of live golf, but I've been to a lot of live tennis, and it's a little bit-- I should have said it's like going to like a college basketball game, or like a pro basketball. You know, when the players arrived on stage, it was like madness. I mean, it was just complete celebrity freakout. And all the colors of each team were there, they all have cheers, it is literally like a sporting event. They all have nicknames, and you know, they were giving the heart. Of course, there are some teams, just like any sporting league that are more known for being nice fans, and less-nice fans, and taunting, and I mean, it was really pretty amazing.
Sandy Winnefeld: That's incredible. So, you know, now we get to the point about your participation in that fan base. It turns out that, as we mentioned earlier, a huge proportion are women, but it can be a tough space for women who are online playing these games. And you have your startup, which is called, the*gameHERs, and I'll spell that, you know, t-h-e-g-a-m-e-h-e-r-s, but it's kind of a wordplay, 'the gamers'. And what is your business intended to do to support that fan base?
Rebecca Brock Dixon: So, you already said the numbers-there are about 3 billion and growing gamers in the world, half of them are women. And yes, there are a lot of challenges for women in gaming, for sure, and that's something that's gotten a lot of press over the years. You know, the word toxicity is used a lot, both in game, for even just casual players, and also in the professional side of gaming in terms of career advancement. And that being said, if half of gamers are women, there are also a lot of phenomenally special, and wonderful, and impactful stories that include those women. And so, having a background in-- I mentioned in my background, I'm branding, but also in community building, my co-founders, and I felt like-- I think we can most likely generally all agree, especially coming out of the pandemic, that at the core human nature is to want community on some level.
And we thought, well, if there are so many women gamers, and if nobody really knows that, I mean, it doesn't seem like there are-- this was in 2020, so it's much better by now, certainly, not just because of what we're doing, but I like to think a part of it. But, you know, that's not reflected in the media, it's not reflected in the protagonist of games. It's certainly not reflected in the percentage of women in the professional side of gaming at any level; entry level, you know, all sort of ways you slice and dice the various career paths, C-suite, all of it. And we thought, "Where do they go to be together, find community, learn about women in gaming?" You know, where would you go to find like, ‘who are the women gamers I should be following? And where are the mentors if I want to enter the industry, who might look and feel like me?’
So, we launched our company in March of 2020 with the intent to create some discussion, and some space for communities to form around the, you know, sort of the topic of women in gaming. We, by the way, are inclusive to everybody - men are allowed in our community, we have a large percentage of LGBTQ in our community. And it's a women-centered space, but no one was talking about women in gaming really before that. So, what we created in terms of a brand, and a media platform, and a community for women in gaming resonated, and we were able to grow very quickly. So, that was the original idea.
And where we are today, it's continuing to evolve. We have three-quarters of a million women in our network at this point, and that's across a whole host of platforms, and in our app, and Discord and Twitch, and socials, and we can talk about all of that. And we want to continue to grow that community, but we're also looking to, again we can get into the whole adrenaline behind a startup, but pivot a little bit and see how we can make sure to stay in business and grow.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Just to be clear, you have a community for women who want to game - so, on the player's side. But also women who want to get into the profession of working with games, designing games, and maybe even putting on events?
Rebecca Brock Dixon: It's a really good question. First of all, the overlap between women who play video games and women who would like to work in the video game industry is high. That's one thing. And the other thing, which is probably more important, is that we are sitting in a moment in time when gaming is intersecting with quite literally, everything - from education to healthcare, to the military, to kids, adults. And so, the word itself, the video game industry itself almost needs a little bit of a rebrand, a PR makeover. And so, what we describe ourselves as, you know, the go-to place for women in gaming. If you want to get a job, great, we have jobs. If you want to just find other people who game, great, got it.
If you want to, "Where's the next women's esports tournament?" You know, what makeup brands are working in esports because I'm a cos player-- a cos player is somebody who dresses up as their favorite video game character, and they really are total professionals at that. And there's just so many different ways to do it. And so, we're a media company go-to place for women in gaming. And as a company, as a business, the way we're going to be able to kind of stay in business to keep doing that is to really create tangible value for entities that would like to have access to women in gaming, and people who are interested in women in gaming, which is half the population. Because the final statistic I'll leave you with on this topic is, 99% of Gen Alpha games. So, it's just everybody.
Sandy Winnefeld: You mean we have another Gen?
Rebecca Brock Dixon: Oh yeah.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I did not know that, by the way.
Sandy Winnefeld: We're starting over - it was Z for a while, and now we're back to Alpha.
Rebecca Brock Dixon: We are. Yeah, it's my kids, that's why I know it.
Sandy Winnefeld: Okay. So, question for you - the actress, Olivia Cooke, played, you know, sort of double duty in Ready Player One, the film. She played the sort of rebel Samantha, and also her avatar, Art3mis. And I'm wondering, as you started this company up, whether that was sort of lurking in the back of your mind. Is she sort of a folk hero at all, or we've gone past that?
Rebecca Brock Dixon: No, it's such a great question, and I have totally never been asked that. But I would say, not that we have gone past that. We've actually come full circle to that. Because, yes, it was in my mind, I read the book Ready Player One during lockdown-
Sandy Winnefeld: I couldn't put it down.
Rebecca Brock Dixon: -yeah, it was definitely on my mind, and I loved it, I thought it was just fascinating. And I mean, I read it just as in-- you know, I was on lockdown starting a business, zoom-schooling with my kids, and that's when I read it. So, that was on my mind. What wasn't on my mind when we launched was Web3 or the Metaverse, because I didn't hear the word Metaverse until six months after we launched. And then I was actually speaking on a panel one time, and I was asked the question, "What is your view on the Metaverse?" And so, I quickly got off that panel and regrouped with my team, and I'm like, "We need a view on the Metaverse." And that was a year and a half ago.
But I think Ready Player One is a really interesting setup, beyond just the fact that you mentioned that the hero of the story, but just where kind of how that Gen Alpha that we were just talking about is going to interact in the world. There's some people who believe that you know, everything is just going to be in the Metaverse, and then there are other people who think the whole Metaverse is ridiculous. And I think it's probably somewhere in between, because I see my own kids weave in and out of discussions around things that they do online, versus things they do in person, versus things they do in Roblox, but you know, games, it's all just natural to them to be in and out. So, that's a little bit more answering that sort of avatar piece of the question. But in terms of is she a folk hero, we are always looking at women in the history of gaming who we can highlight, and emulate, and make sure they aren't forgotten. And so, actually, the star or the asterisk in our logo is a throwback to the first professional video game player who played Q*bert, and that little asterisk is from Q*bert.
And then, the majority of our first group of followers was from just a friend of ours who played a character named Susan Grimshaw in Red Dead Redemption Two, which is a Western game. And she was really popular because Susan Grimshaw was like a really tough Western character, as opposed to a lot of the characters historically who were women in video games were, you know, very sexy and wearing like bikinis, and those kinds of things. And so, she was always somebody that we really loved. And again, we're really lucky that's changed a lot.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: You talked a little bit about the importance of the strong woman character as opposed to the ones running around wearing bikinis and so forth. So, can you talk about the barriers and the stereotypes in the gaming community that you're trying to break down via this community?
Rebecca Brock Dixon: Yes, definitely. Because I think that's really what we are all about at the core. I think there's a lot of actual writing on this, and a variety of different opinions, but why the video game space as for consumers, and also as an industry, why it evolved to be so heavily male, or at least to be perceived as so heavily male is, it has a couple of reasons; one of them, really, quite frankly, is that video games were put in the boys’ section in toy stores in the '80s. It's like one of the main reasons. And I am a child of the '80s, and my brother got video games, and I didn't. And that's just how it was. It's not that I didn't play, I did play with him some, but as a brand marketer and someone who grew up in advertising, it's pretty powerful. So, if you just feel like they're for boys, they're for boys. That's one thing.
So then, the other thing, well, not the only other thing, but another element of the situation is, video games historically had a reputation of being, you know, somebody isolating in a basement, kind of degenerate. Did that ever happen? Yes. Was that ever what it was primarily? Probably not really. It's hard to know for sure, but a lot of the power and value of video games is, again, something that we all need, certainly crave, but need as humans, which is play. So, if you're playing a video game with a group of boys and you kind of fast-forward that story to adulthood, then you're on a team of primarily men in a primarily male-dominated field.
It's not that anybody said, "Let's cut all the women out," it's just that is one thing that evolved. So, what are we trying to break down now? In this field, that even as recently as a few years ago, was perceived to be very heavily male, there always have been women, and there have always been great women. So, before we launched our company at all when I first was chatting with my dad and my brother about their investment in Team Envy, and I heard all these statistics, and I thought it'd be great to dig a little deeper, we talked to, quite literally, thousands of women in a variety of different ways - focus groups, surveys, on social media, on the phone, in person.
We were able to go to two-- there's an event called PAX, which is similar to Comic-Con, which is a little bit more widely known outside of the industry, but PAX is a conference, an expo that is for people who love video games. And we went to two PAXes before we launched. So, we did all of this really on-the-ground research. And what we found, overwhelmingly is that, yes, there's toxicity, yes there is harassment. I mean, some of the things that are said, which are not generally what we lead with at the*gameHERs, it is discussed a lot, and we talk about it, and we partner with initiatives in this space, but we don't usually, you know, lead with the words, toxicity and harassment because most of these women want to talk about all the great stuff - you know, how they met their best friends through video games, how they got their career through video games, how they had some serious mental health problems and video games were a tool that they were able to use. And in fact, one of one of our most long-term partners is the Center for Suicide Awareness. And one of their main tools that they use is gaming. So, it's just fascinating.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That's amazing.
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Sandy Winnefeld: So, here's a question for you - I'm often asked, you know, "What about this generation? Don't they do terribly in the military, and everything's woke, and all that kind of stuff?" And I come back, and among the many other things that I tell people about how great this generation actually is for the military, I tell them that their electronic hand-eye coordination is phenomenal. Partly, because they grew up gaming, right? If you look at the fighter airplane that I flew, we may have had, you know, three or four buttons on the stick, and four or five buttons on the throttle. The airplanes these days are amazingly complex, just from where you put your hands. And a lot of the people flying those airplanes are women - my daughter-in-law flies in the back seat of an EA-18G Growler, one of the most sophisticated airplanes on the planet, and she's back there doing her thing.
So, do you have any thoughts within your business in terms of how that relates? Forward of, this is not only fun, but it is also an increasingly technical world.
Rebecca Brock Dixon: Yeah. There's so much research on this. And then, what I should say is the data is so compelling and it's so current that it's almost hard to keep up with what the research sort of findings are. But just basically, an overwhelming YES. And then once you spend just a little time reading about it, and thinking about it, it's like, "Yes, obviously." Another example that I could give you is, I was talking to one of my doctors the other day, and he said something very similar about surgeons - he's like, "Yeah, the best surgeons are all gamers." I mean, obviously, I agree. There's a really neat graphic that I would actually love to share with you after, and it talks about, "What are all the careers in the esports industry?"
So, the other thing I want to tell you is, the esports industry that we discussed earlier was very like sports professional leagues. That term is also sometimes just used for esports and video game industry. So, if somebody says, "What are all the careers that you could have in the esports industry?" It could mean, "If you like to play a video game when you're a kid, what are all the things you could do with that?" And it's like a really nuanced thing, but I always like to mention it because if people are thinking about this, that's where some of the articles are titled that the research is around that. So, what are all the careers? It's almost endless. So, one reason is, there's so many different genres of video games. But you brought up a good point, which is just even moving the controller takes a level of finesse, that if you've never used a controller before, you're not intuitively going to be good at.
And so, certainly, military is one of the, you know, light bulb moments that seems to be a kind of path, and then medicine. I brought up those two, but even in that esports kind of sports league world, these people operate like sports teams, so they have nutritionists, they have physical therapists, mental health coaches. Also, when you think about making a video game, of course, Computer Science, and Game Design, Game Development, all of that is maybe a little bit obvious, or maybe not, but it's sort of intuitive at first, but then there are all of these sort of other careers around it; PR, Event Management, Graphic Design. The number of people in the video game industry who are at the core artists is incredible. And you might not ever think of that - it's such like a technical field. And it's technical, but it's art. I mean, in the future of where the Gen Alpha is going to grow up in, there's going to be a technical aspect to so many of it. And somebody, you know, created what the video game characters looked like, and what world they're in and all of that.
So, this graphic that I have, it's just like a spider web of all the different doors, writers, the storylines that open, and it's really amazing. Another phrase that's thrown around a lot is, "esports as a path to STEM, or esports equals STEM." And that also kind of reminds me of-- to bring up the point that I think is another important one, which is; there are a lot of conversations about the negative aspects of video gaming, and I literally just came from a meeting at my kid's school this morning around screen time, and how to manage it in today's world. And as a parent, I mean, of course, I don't want my kids just playing video games all day, every day and doing nothing else. And I mean, they're 10, and 12, and five, and they have things to learn, and places to be. But there is less discussion around the many, many, many benefits to playing video games, and we just discussed some of them - the career pieces of it. We talked about mental health, I think also for community building.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So, how will you know? What's the measure of success, or the metric that you're using to know if you're having an impact on the larger gaming sector? What would you like to see as an outcome of the organization that you formed?
Rebecca Brock Dixon: We've been asked before, sort of facetiously, "What are you going to do when you're not necessary anymore?" And I think the answer to that question is, people always do like communities that feel, you know, like-minded people. And I mean, I'm in a million women's groups in other places in my life, so I don't necessarily know that we'll not be necessary as a community space, the go-to place for women in gaming, but how will we be successful? That's a tricky one. As an entrepreneur, I'm always thinking of, "I have a team. I want to make sure that we stay with a healthy business model so that we can pay our team." One of the reasons we launched as a for-profit instead of a non-profit, is so that we could have the resources to hire people to facilitate other jobs, and to really make a broader impact.
So, from a business perspective, I'm looking to grow our resources and be successful for our investors on a long-term basis. From a mission-based perspective, you know, there was this story recently about the founder of Patagonia giving away his company. And we did this exercise where we were accepted into a venture capital sports tech accelerator, and they have a few different activities that we do just to kind of make us think of questions like the one you just asked us. And we were saying, you know, wouldn't it be great one day if-- we felt like it's hard to say what would've had to happen, but enough had happened where we felt like we could give our company away. So, he gave his company away to all to initiatives, and you know, the company's still operating and everything, but he gave whatever piece of it was still his, away to climate change, I think.
So, if we were in a position where maybe it's that esports was in the Olympics, which by the way it's likely going to be so, and you know, a female had won the gold medal from the-- you know, and then X, Y, Z metrics had happened, and we felt like we could give the company away because our work was kind of done. What needs to be done there, because it's such a complex industry, it's so broad. Do half of all teams need to be women? I mean, that's just a tricky question to ask everywhere right now, but I think the answer is there is definitely room for us now on the mission side of things. I think there will always be room on the community side, and we're just really thrilled to be a big part of that journey.
Sandy Winnefeld: It's interesting the overlap, I hadn't really thought that much about the overlap between gaming and other things, like we talked about pilots and things. You know, just a couple of reflections; one, women in STEM, I have to give a shameless plug for Sandra, has a great non-profit called Astra Femina, which I think people ought to check out if they're interested in getting girls into STEM careers. And, you know, a good friend of mine, Gilman Louie, who is on the President's Intelligence Advisory Board with me, he was in the gaming industry before he stood up the CIAs, and venture capital firm that they use, you know, and has brought that considerable expertise from that industry into some pretty unique things that they've been able to do. So, there's a lot of intersections there that are more important than people might imagine.
Rebecca Brock Dixon: Yeah. I think the STEM-- first of all, I can't wait to check out Astra Femina and learn more about it. The STEM piece is so important for young girls because we talk a lot about, for this generation of kids, and probably all of them, but especially this one, if we are going to be successful as parents, as educators, and as you know, stewards of this next generation, we do need on some level to meet them where they are. And if we continue to say like, "Get off the screen, and da, da, da--" then they're just not going to interact with us, because they're going to be doing some version of broadly, 99% of them are going to be playing video games, right?
So, why not use what is already a natural path to get to intentionally say, "By the way, that video game you're playing, you have a coach, you have teamwork, you have accountability. You're learning eye-hand coordination, you're getting skills that can lead to six-figure salaries right out of college." And another statistic that I love is that kids who play on esports teams are more likely to-- a lot of the stuff I just said, like the six-figure salary out of college, but more likely to volunteer in life and be compassionate and charitable. And, you know, the data behind that statistic, I don't have off the top of my head, but it makes sense. I mean, you're on a team, you're learning responsibility, and disappointment, and hard work, and it's a lot of the same skills in other places, just a little harder to see at first.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Well, you know, Rebecca, we could probably talk for hours on this, I'm sure, but we're running out of time. So, we're going to stop on this note about women in STEM, which is near and dear to my heart, and really just want to thank you for spending some time with us. Thank you for what you're doing, it has a huge impact. I mean, when you think about it, the numbers you've thrown out, basically, half the people on the planet are gamers. Half. It just boggles my mind, and clearly, getting women more engaged, and highlighting what women are doing there is super, super important. So, Thanks for doing what you're doing.
Rebecca Brock Dixon: Well, thank you. And I hope you two get to a pro esports tournament sometime. I think you'd both enjoy it.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I'm going to go; I just have to.
Sandy Winnefeld: I have to check it out for sure. Thanks again.
Rebecca Brock Dixon: Thank you. I appreciate it so much.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That was gamer, and esports entrepreneur, Rebecca Brock Dixon.
I'm Sandra Magnus.
Sandy Winnefeld: And I'm Sandy Winnefeld.
Thanks again to Culligan Water for sponsoring this episode. Get exceptional water for exceptional performance. Learn more at Culligan.com.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: And check us out on social media, including a short video of our interview with Rebecca on TikTok. Our handle is very simple: @theadrenalinezone.
