One Player Matters: The Story of Technoblade | DICE 2024

hey folks uh I'm Brandon Beck I'm the co-founder of Riot and I'm part of the AIS board here um and I was asked by our next speaker noxy if I would introduce his talk and sort of set the table for what we're about to hear and of course that'd be my honor um the story we're about to hear is near and dear to me and it will be a powerful reminder of why we all make games and do what we do so many of us in this room we found our way into this industry because of the incredible experiences that we've had as players Timeless memories of Adventures that we've had ambitious challenges that we've set for ourselves and overcome um in many cases friendships lifelong friendships that we've built um a sense of belonging to the communities that we've been a part of um you know the list goes on and on and the imprint of those experiences is why we do what we do to give those moments back to our friends to our communities and to the next generation of players and this is the story of one player a wonderful player who in impacted and enriched the lives of millions of other players but this is an unusually emotional story for a stage like this so I just want to prep you with that and out of respect for some of the subject matter I've been asked to have us please refrain from photos and video so finally I'd like to introduce our speaker he's a dear friend but also someone who I spent far more time with as a player than in real life as noxy and rise versus Aaron and Brandon teaming up and competing and adventuring and if I'm honest getting a little carried by um whether it's on Summoner Rift or other Fantastical lands he's a uh he's a mean Leona but um but actually a very generous player who's always been someone who gives a ton back to the part to to the communities that he's been a part of he helped us test League of Legends when we were making it in the early days as an early tester he he actually made the very first purchase in League of Legends ever um he was an honorary Community member and Community manager he was one of what we call wrenchmen who were the volunteers that helped players troubleshoot their way through our painfully buggy game and if um if you around for those early days then uh you know and I'm sorry um he's been a part part of the mod and now development scene for a number of years currently leading the development of hi tail the story he's about to share is one that is very personal to him it'll be powerful and touching and hopefully we can all find some meaning and inspiration in it so without further Ado please join me give me giving a warm welcome to noxy cool so uh thank you Brandon for that really lovely intro um so um name my talk today as one player matters I'm uh I'm noxy CEO of Hypixel Studios and um I'm really appreciative to have this chance to tell the story today it's been five years since dice de brnik where I spoke last and we're excited to uh share it so as some of you may remember from that talk uh when it comes to our elevator pitch it's a little bit complicated in fact it's so complicated that we'd often scare away many folks with complexity but good news I'm here to give you a very quick TDR any of you ever heard of a small indie game made in Stockholm called Minecraft made by that small Indie studio called Microsoft well it and other creator games like Roblox like fortnite like many of the games coming out now do this really amazing thing they allow for players to make uh a living doing cool stuff with those games and so we started in 2013 and we were just a Minecraft server and everything was great but ultimately the game that we were working on Minecraft at the time is someone else's game and we had aspirations aspirations that eventually came to the Forefront when 10 years ago something that the community calls the Ula update happened it was a big change in the rules of how you could create content with Minecraft and how you can monetize that and it's pretty old news by now uh like I said 10 years but it was a transformative event so that change to the rules put us in a new position where we had to figure out a future and we always wanted to be a game studio and luckily for us uh unlike most Studios we already had an audience a bunch of people that really wanted us to make something that they could uh continue their conversation with us on you know it's it's kind of a it's kind of looking back I can think about that moment in 2018 where we uh unveiled the game for the first time uh and we had made a promise that community and it went great the community posted a bunch of reactions there was a lot of hype there was a lot of fan art and in fact uh one person even made a giant kick from a piece of concept art which um is incredible and completely unanticipated uh so that reception was amazing it was very much beyond our wildest dreams but once we had processed all the emotions we started to feel different emotions we started to feel pressure expectation uh a lot of different things and so we we we felt a little bit of panic actually um the path that we wanted to develop the game on didn't really feel as possible as it was before so uh we started to reaching out to the business Community we were pretty underexposed in fact we were not sophisticated at all as a company um you know we didn't have bizdev we didn't really know what investment was or cap tables you know series a what the hell is that is that something to do baseball I don't know but we knew we needed some help um and eventually um we realized that Riot was super aligned with our vision for players and you know I could I don't want to like blow too much smoke towards Brandon but we joined up with him and it's been pretty great since uh so we're super hard at work on our new game high teal um and we're just coming out of an engine pivot um it's actually a new custom engine for the second time so yeah it's a bit scary for us I don't know if onreal is in the house but you know sorry we didn't go that way maybe we should have who knows we could do a whole talk on that but getting back to the the core really and not getting distracted by new engines and stuff like that let's talk about players and so when I look out into the crowd right now and I look into the elevators and I see the lobbies a lot of my own Game Dev heroes are in this room so the irony is very AAR to me coming to this room and talking about one player matters I think that's something that obviously is built into any developer's DNA uh in fact it's more so than um developer DNA it's company DNA good companies like Riot are built on the foundations of those stories so that's right Brandon you embarrass me with your intro I get to embarrass you a little bit now uh and so very small story here but uh about 10 years ago a popular YouTuber named cat riffic uh was very much present and she split her Focus between lifestyle Vlogs fashion and competitive League of Legends which for me that's a pretty dope mix and she finds a puppy she finds an abandoned puppy one day puts it up on social media and I think it was actually Brandon's wife Natasha who's actually sitting there in the audience over there who uh saw the video and so uh Brandon ended up adopting the dog so you know when I talk about one player mattering it's it's pretty easy to make the case that cat riic mattered especially Brandon's family and uh you know here's some obligatory cute photos of a puppy um that's Ziggy by the way way 10 years later Ziggy is still doing very well Brandon not so much he's a lot older but you know that's life so cat rfic obviously is just one story among many we we have a lot of amazing players in the world uh players like Faker or lily Pichu or Dennis Fong who was the first Esports player and is sitting in this room somewhere Dennis uh say hi at some point and of course Dao Imahara but we're going to tell you the story of our most famous player and his name is technoblade so technially had started to play on Hypixel on the Minecraft server when he was about 11 or 12 years old his Avatar is a pig with a crown and we're going to introduce him by showing you two quick videos the first is his first ever video in YouTube and the second one he is celebrating every teenager's favorite Milestone hey guys I'd just like to preface this video with an explanation of what goes on because when I am concentrated I don't talk at all welcome guys and today is a very special occasion and not because I'm going to kill metam music off spawn but because I have 420 Subs yeah you knew what that means we're going to blaze it so the first video was a lie he talked a lot and for the second one that's a glimpse of his humor you'll see that throughout the presentation but he grew and his voice deepened a lot played a lot of Hypixel and he became our number one fan one of the most active posters in the forum for example sometimes he was our number one critic as well uh but regardless he became a top five player for us and he joined our player Council which is players with even more ability to tell us what to do when I was SC um but like so many people his age his dream was to be a YouTuber and on the Hypixel server in order for you to qualify as a YouTuber you need to have 30,000 subscribers which you know when we think about like the big big YouTubers that doesn't seem like a lot but for someone starting out that's a that's a mountain to climb and so he sat about climbing that mountain we rooted for him cuz you know we were a little biased towards him we we loved him uh and we even debated letting him have that rank a little bit early but we thought you know if he gets it early it's going to take away that moment and eventually he got that moment and so that's a little video of what that looks like now all right hi told me that he had something hilarious had to record so you know I should probably check that out he's going to teleport me I swear to God if it's a dirt Shack I'm going to flip wait what oh my God what oh my God there's so many so many staff now seems like a good time to break the rules so that was the only time we ever did that for someone uh we were all you know obviously super proud a homegrown hero and he went on they set the record for the most amount of wins on our most popular game mode he won 1,400 times in a row which is great from the admin's perspective from an uptime uptime SLA point of view but we had some conversations about balance after that and his first first mainstream viral video was he beat Minecraft in hardcore mode with a steering wheel so take that accessibility but uh on the day we announced High teal he was nowhere to be found every other Hypixel YouTuber or Minecraft person or general YouTuber had done a reaction video but we wanted to see his the most and it took him a full week later to drop the video and this is what that looked like high tail Techo blade you're late the trailer's been out for days who asked them to upload it on like the last day of the semester I was up for like 27 hours with no sleep just so I could submit my last assignment before my flight so I didn't record my initial reaction to the trailer but I'm I'm going to do an approximate Recreation of it right now oh my [Music] God Mom get the steering wheel so yeah he was he was pretty hyped um we were we love that video and uh he was doing great in fact he was smashing his goals cool slide anyway um eventually he got invited into a Minecraft tournament and this Minecraft tournament featured all the top content creators like Mr Beast ninja PewDiePie DanTDM you know the list goes on and there was tens of thousands of dollars in the line as a prize pool and like like I said remember he was only around that 100K Mark at this point he was much bigger than those people with 10 plus million Subs but there was one key difference between him and everyone else in that tournament he actually knew how to play Minecraft he knew how to PVP and I can assure you Minecraft PVP looks really simple but it's deceptively deep and uh you know to to contextualize this maybe a little bit more for the audience for any Esports fans this is like Faker and bronze Q or it's like Daigo against like a kid and an arid or it's like I don't know if anyone watches offline TV but it's like Lily Pichu playing Uno demon so here's what that looked like DanTDM Captain Sparkles everyone's childhood heroes are here and I'm going to stab all of them yeah Tech come to me mate where are you I'm I'm killing ninja give me a second are you actually killing ninja I actually killed Ninja bro I'm getting I'm dead a stone axe Tech blade just on me dude oh my god oh ant venom spotted ant venom and Captain Sparkles get him I killed ant venom is this where technoblade gets banned from Minecraft Mondays just right here no matter who he teams with they win don't you dare take this from me thank you thank there's a dude behind you wait no you're chasing them never mind get that guy and and victory yes let's go Bo nine kill Victory it's PewDiePie give get him it's James Charles get him gam there's somebody behind me get him I'm dead hey take the cake take the cake technoblade more like I got nothing you're so bad you're s i we're just going to be real with you guys yeah techno blade technoblade is the worry okay he no likes this game he plays this game with a steering wheel he does this for a living all day PVP what do we do about him what do we do about him he's so good at walking why is he good at everything oh no that's his head dude technoblade run [ __ ] let's get the [ __ ] out of here dude oh my God [ __ ] this [ __ ] where do we go we're so dead no I hate I hate this I oh my hate TNT all right this yeah I'm dead I'm screwed how what's his I got him I got him I got him did youing get him why is this a thing why is this a thing blade I killed teade way let's go in the chat Bros holy get the out of di dip dip dude I have an enchanted sword oh my God I can dude I can brag that I killed freaking technoblade dude you know how big that is that's got to rush him rush him going to going are we going let go I'm coming in get him let's go yeah oh my God we actually won beautiful what do you know technoblade won again yay hunger G woo surprise o Ender Pearl's in what camping what are you doing Ming him oh my goodness how is techno doing this did somebody say Minecraft Hunger Games I'm the best of technoblade look at me go I di I'm the best Minecraft player ever [Music] PVP so nice he had a a lot of success due to that series and he became a superstar of YouTube uh uh you know he smashed that million sub goal and his Legend boiled down the one simple phrase that players repeated over and over again and that was technically it never dies he uh hit 15.9 million subscribers on YouTube 1.5 billion video views all the way from nothing and so as he grew so did Hypixel from a business point of view it was worth a lot of value right just like if you want to talk about business terms that's not the most most fun thing but it was worth a lot to us right and more than that um players just wanted to play where technically played and that happened to be on Hypixel his success became ours and vice versa he had finally achieved his dream but like so many stories there was an unexpected twist out of the blue technically put up this video so in the last few days of July I noticed that my right arm was starting to hurt a decent amount and noticed that my right shoulder was starting to swell like crazy and I was like oh my God so I headed over to the doctor to see what was wrong and uh they they ran a couple of scans and then they came back and they told me that uh the reason my arm hurts is because I have cancer so I know people are going to be like no technoblade you don't need to make videos for us please rest now this isn't about you bro this is about me I enjoy this man this is like one of the safest and most fun things I could be doing right now bro I'm going to do it so yeah that's where I've been and uh that's what I'm going to be doing for the foreseeable future wish me luck that's all I've got for today see you guys next time and you know true to his word he kept making videos but the pce uh started to slow down he received a lot of love and support from all his fans and he was in contact with a lot of the Hypixel team at that time asking questions about balance High teal his favorite game modes and so on but eventually uh he went quiet and a few weeks passed and I was at a team dinner and I got a DM from a member of our team and it was a link to an obituary we didn't know if that was him we didn't even know his real name he was technically I'm noxy we don't use real names uh we weren't even aware that things had got more serious but um there was a lot of things in that abitrary that concerned the same age the same condition the same rough area around the same time we went quiet so we had our our customer support team check into it and we were able to confirm then that was him that was devastating for us you know um and after that heartbreak passed we realized that we were sitting on a on a on a pretty big bombshell millions of people tens of millions of people most of them children around the world will be heartbroken their hero technically had died we looked online and we couldn't find any reference to any rumors there was no URLs pointing that a bet there was nothing but we knew there was a it was a matter of time before people found out and we we didn't know what to do with that there's no rule book around how do you deal with that our nightmare was that some awful drama a YouTuber or something like that would break the news and uh we also realized that we didn't know anything about his family we didn't know if his family even knew who he was my own mother for example to this day does not have any clue what I do so we thought the best thing we could do was call the the church from the obituary and you know we I called the receptionist and you know we explained who we were and what we had found out and you know we asked politely if the pastor could give us a call back and about 10 minutes later I got a call back but it wasn't his Pastor uh it was his mother and uh you know I started to nervously explain everything from the top but you know she cut me off she knew everything she knew who I was by my name what H pixel was she knew of course everything um and you know that moment for me that was that was tough I wasn't you know I had asked to speak to the pastor I was not ready to talk to his mother um and uh you know the crazy thing about that is that she was the one who comforted me you know I was having a moment and uh you know since we had found out what had happened you know we were in a what can we do to help kind of mode I hadn't had my own time to to process that news so yeah um so I I told her about what the information that we had found out about and we were very concerned concerned about how that news was going to break and you know she told me they knew this day was coming and they wanted to do that on their own terms and they asked for our help to do that so we came up with a plan together um our goal of course was to Shield them as much from any negativity any trolls that would have been possible we advised and how to lock down social media talked about the skill of reaction to um expect I mean as a family they were pretty on the ball for that uh we called some of his friends on YouTube on the Family's behalf so they would at least have uh a little bit of a heads up beforehand um about what was coming and so we prepared a memorial on our end and and they prepared on their end and a few days later we noticed and was about 48 hours we noticed that the rumors were starting you know a forum post here or a social media tweet here even the very first links to the obituary and we called the family and we said time is running out if you want to control the news and so um luckily their uh video was nearly ready and the very next day the following video went live hi I'm technoblade's dad he wrote a message and he asked me to read it to all of you hello everyone technoblade here if you're watching this I am dead so let's sit down and have one final chat my real name is Alex I had one of my siblings call me Dave one time in a deleted video from 2016 and it was one of the most successful pranks we've ever done thousands of creepy online dudes trying to get overly personal going oh hey Dave how's it going sorry for selling out so much in the past year but thanks to everyone that bought hoodies plushies and channel memberships my siblings are going to college well if they want to I don't want to put any dead brother peer pressure on them but that's all from me thank you all for supporting my content over the years if I had another hundred lives I think I would choose to be technoblade again every single time as those were the happiest years of my life I hope you guys enjoyed my content and that I made some of you laugh and I hope you all go on to live long prosperous and happy lives because I love you guys technoblade out we'd been talking for a couple of months about Alex doing a final video sometimes he called it a face reveal we were going to shoot it in his living room but we kind of waited too long then we were going to shoot it from his bed he wanted to have everything he wanted to say written down ahead of time and I think he was having a hard time focusing with all the various things that were hooked up to him he's always been kind of particular about his environment and that really put him off the mental state that he wanted to be in to write eventually he said he was going to write it and he asked me to read it but he was having a hard time doing the writing and at some point I just I got down on my knee at his bedside and I said to him Alex you don't have to do anything else you've done so much for so many people millions of people and if you want to now you can rest but if you want to write one last one last video and you're you're waiting for things to get a little better then I would say don't wait I don't think things are going to get any better anymore it seemed like that reached him and he uh asked for my laptop and then he wrote a few paragraphs I don't think he said everything he wanted to say but I think he got the main points he finished that up and then he was done he lived about another eight hours after that who we all said goodbye he was the most amazing he was the most amazing kid anyone could ever ask for I miss technoblade thank you to all of you for everything you you meant a lot to him for you know the uh the level of bravery that has his dad displayed in that moment is just it's just incredible um you know the video went live and the entire internet was heartbroken it became International news and uh tributes poured in from all around the world amazing fan art from everywhere among other things and everyone grieved in their own unique ways on our side we wanted to do something for his family and provide an emotional outlet for our players who would be experiencing a lot so we uh put together fairly quickly an ingame Memorial so this is uh this is taking place on the Hypixel server on Minecraft and what we did was uh we put it put it together so that players could actually use a Minecraft book to write a message that would be delivered to his family and this is what that looks like so players queued up on mass to sign a book inside Minecraft on the Hypixel server at the end of two weeks there was 430,000 messages left for his family we had obviously expected a lot but that was much more than we ever could have imagined we formed uh a volunteer group to moderate all the messages dozens of us signed up for it and we we just didn't want his family to see anything in in in in the messages that would be inappropriate and obviously you know the Hypixel the technoblade the Minecraft communities are very kind-hearted but so fortunately we only needed to delete a few of them after two weeks of volunteer moderation we had only got through 10% of the messages and so we had to Outsource that to uh a moderation company actually and then the ACT then of getting all these messages done into to a set of books we thought or we estimated that it would take 200 books to print out all the messages so we also then worked with a company that specialized in making Bibles to get all the messages printed in a collection eventually we got that collection to 22 books and those very books are going to be here today for you to look at and uh check out they're very special and we'll we'll talk more about those later on top of the books we put out a submission for or call out for fan art and there were hundreds of submissions and obviously you know from a legal point of view we had to get all the rights and all that sort of stuff to make the fan art printable and all the fun stuff associated with you know business stuff but uh one fan artist in particular stood out and her name was Sniff and uh she had started working on an oil painting after he put up that original video announcing he had cancer but sadly she had ran out of time she actually really wanted to finish that artwork for the family and she hit me up on Twitter and it was just very simple um you know how long do we have or how long do we have to finish the art and we thought this was just an oil painting of that size was just the most amazing thing possible so we reached out to her in private and actually asked Nish if she'd like to come along and present the art in person to the family uh she asked if her friend could join us they had actually met each other and became friends through the technoblade community itself he had cosplay technoblade cosplay and a YouTuber right that's it's pretty amazing and so there was three of us at that point and I'll be honest with you I started to feel a little bit nervous about meeting his family and then that's where um Brandon uh who very kindly agreed to come along and uh had been following the story and offered his emotional support to meet the family and you know I really appreciate that so we sat out and we visited his family and we knocked on the door we shared stories about how much he meant to us we delivered the books and the fan art after about 15 minutes his father Hands Brandon a phone and asks him could he record a part of it and were able to share this with the family's permission with you today I have a a a sort of a handful of memories of that squeaky voice kid uh coming to me and saying that d d d everybody's talking about Mineplex uh mplex is not it let me tell you why let me tell you why let me tell you why it's Hypixel and then he had a whole list of reasons why the place to go was Hypixel and he said they're going to go they're the ones I don't remember the words exactly but he he was very clear that was what he was going to do he was going to he was going to go with you guys and then in the years when he was on the player Council you know the you sort of alluded earlier to him uh uh being on top of you and I I remember there were times where he was like oh this thing is currently 10 points and it should be 12 Ah that's but that's that's the sort of detail that matters yeah yeah and like I I joke about it and saying okay he wasn't really honest but like being honest like that keeps us you know sharp not just a player cons but as a you trer as well you like the direct feedback and his relationship with Simon and a lot of the other stuff as well was was really critical and you know he was such a he was such a you know Cornerstone with the community you know so I really we really appreciate everything he did for us and so this is the smallest thing we could do uh Alex thought about his channel and he thought about Hypixel and he thought about Minecraft a lot and in the middle of having a burrito or something he he'd start talking about some aspect of the game he wanted changed or um some something he was uh working out with you guys and I was impressed that um sometimes especially from somebody who's 14 or 15 uh might they might be harder to take seriously but um you guys took him really seriously and he it was like he took it very seriously it was like more important than his grades unfortunately uh he he he get got fine grades but he thought it it was like his life's work and uh uh it was really heartening that you guys uh took him at his word you believed in him and worked with him and uh I think it was a wonderful [Music] experience this is this is amazing that you did this for us I can't tell [Music] you you staring at the window and said I'll just bring this to you oh but if I was gone tomorrow won't the waves crash on is it selfish that I'm happy as we pass the Setting Sun somay I'll be overcast but you won't have to cry cuz we'll do the green well I'm by your side I said don't try to make yourself remember darling don't look for me I'm just a story you been old so let pretend a little long cuz we were gone that was a that was a pretty powerful moment something I'll never forget uh how could I ever uh there's huge parts of that story we can never share very much not just games at that point was a very real thing we all comforted each other you know I didn't just see Brandon the founder of Riot or board member of dice I saw Brandon the dad comforting and connecting with him our dad you know um you know as developers when we invested players we're also opening ourselves to them right and you can be fulfilled by love but Hearts worn on sleeves are the easiest to get hurt and sadly for game development like Megan spoke about earlier and as so many of you room so many of you in this room know I'm sure ping is always going to exist and in come in so many different ways layoffs toxic player interactions not meum Milestones or as G beled to the launch of cyberpump um or financial goals or what whatever it is it it can come and it can really nagg at you and you know you can fear opening social media you can dread breaking some bad news at the next team meeting or you can just feel burned out but despite all that it does remain imposs to look past it they look through it like it's a Mario ghost because through that there are amazing Stories floating stories of players that make the pen that we all feel as developers so worth it that that we would never consider doing anything else stories like that of technoblade like that of catrific so in this moment where I'm lucky enough and honored enough to be in a room filled with so many amazing developers all I can just do is Encourage Yourself to allow yourself to be pulled in by those stories even if it's just one player it's easier said than done you know as we rise in seniority it becomes harder to maintain a direct connection but find that exception because if you succeed and you get pulled in by just that one story it's so worth it because players are just amazing out of all Industries we are allowed to have a unique relationship and a unique conversation that can last a lifetime and by allowing yourself to have that story you might find your own technoblade or you might find a new friend for life what we know carry at Hypixel is the pain of the realization that technoblade will never get to play high till he he is not going to be there for us on lunch day he's not there for us on the Minecraft server his memory has coalesced and formed has both love and pain in our hearts and so the only thing we can do now as a developer is channel that into making a game that technically would have Lov so it's about time to wrap this up I don't want this uh talk to go as long as a game award speech but uh today there a few final closing notes I really recommend that you spend a little bit of time with those books they're going to be in the archid I think until the uh reception litter but those aren't Just Books they're unique they're special they're artifacts they're physical embodiments of what this talk was about about love and pain they're truly special and there's almost like a they feel heavier in your hands than they are so dice have very kindly put it together over there in the archade um check them out please uh and I really also want to give a super special thanks to techn bl's family for giving their permission for this talk to go ahead and a shout out also to our artists Bob and Thomas who did all that really cool artwork You' saw today so with that all being said um I just want to say thank you for letting me share his story with you today

Channel: IGN

Views: 371,355

Keywords: Hypixel Studios, DICE, DICE 2024, Aaron Noxy Donaghey, noxy, DICE Summit

Id: gSRfWIhBARs

Length: 41min 27sec (2487 seconds)

Published: Thu May 23 2024