TRANSCRIPTION

Announcer:

Ladies and gentlemen, there’s no way anyone beats him. Your Fortnite world champion, Bugha.

Jay Ruderman:

Kyle, known by the Fortnite Gaming community as Bugha, rose to fame after winning the Fortnite World Cup in 2019. But his father, Glenn, describes the sweetness of that victory as short-lived.

Glenn:

The day, Kyle won the World Cup, his phone was hacked and everything was… Like his ID and everything. They just went after him right away.

Jay Ruderman:

While the hate online and trolling that Kyle received was frustrating, he tried to keep his attention on his supporters.

All these people supporting you, these are the people that you really need to focus on and give your energy to. And me, being young, I wasn’t able to shift my mentality that early.

Kyle’s family has been tremendously supportive of his unconventional career as a professional gamer, as his father, Glenn, tries to walk the line between being his fan and being his parent.

Glenn:

My number one concern has always been his safety above and beyond anything else.

Jay Ruderman:

Kyle and Glenn, thank you so much for being my guest in All About Change. I really look forward to this discussion and welcome.

Glenn:

Thank you for having us.

Bugha:

Thank you.

Jay Ruderman:

So Kyle, let me start with you and ask you how young were you when you got into gaming, and what were the first games that you remember playing?

Bugha:

I got into gaming really young. Literally, when I was a toddler, I was just playing any types of games that my dad would throw on there. Some of the earliest ones I remember though, I feel like you remember them better than I do, honestly. I remember the Call of Duty is growing up.

Glenn:

Do you remember your first one?

Bugha:

No, I don’t.

Glenn:

So it was Mario Kart, Balloon Battle.

Bugha:

See those are the ones… I forget about those types of things. The little ones.

Glenn:

You were a little terror with those balloons.

Jay Ruderman:

Glenn, you’re also a gamer. What was your interest in getting Kyle involved so young in gaming? Was it your interest or did you think it would be something good for him?

Glenn:

It was a little bit of both. I grew up, my father was the first one that had an IBM computer with the 15-foot floppy drives for work and Apple to see and everything else when we were growing up. So I was always into that as a child. It was always been my passion. I’ve always liked gaming. I thought that gaming is a good way to bring some people together. It gives you something in common that you can have to chat with about. So I always thought it was cool to play the little Mario cards or there’s something little with him and that would give us a little bridge to talk to each other about things like break the ice maybe.

Jay Ruderman:

Did you guys used to play together?

Glenn:

All the time. We would just play, and then he got into the little bit of the first person shooters where we were playing the Call of Duty’s. And then I do remember one of the biggest games that he used to play was the Grand Theft Auto. Now that’s a game that everybody would say, “My God, why would you let your child play Grand Theft Auto? There’s a lot of craziness in it.” However, he wasn’t in it to play any of the missions. He just basically wanted to ride. It was San Andreas and he wanted to ride the motorcycle around town and drive the cars around town, and I actually used it as a learning platform because I explained to him that, “You can’t do this in real life. If you go out and you get hit by a car, you don’t come back. You don’t respawn.” So I always have used gaming with him for me as an inroad to have conversations with him.

Jay Ruderman:

I see. Kyle, when did you first get into Fortnite? When was that introduced to you?

Bugha:

So I got into Fortnite probably when I was early-fifteen, freshman year of high school. Actually, maybe even a little bit before that, I think, maybe even eighth grade. But I was 15, still playing now, about to be 22 in this year. So it’s been a while.

Jay Ruderman:

When did you know that you were good? When did you know that you had skills that were superior to maybe friends that you were playing with at that time?

Bugha:

Growing up, I would always play video games amongst my friend groups, and I usually was a lot better than them. I would also just play competitively online, just like multiplayer games. I was usually the youngest kid in the lobby and I was playing a bunch of playing against a bunch of older guys. Everyone would call me the young little prodigy in the lobby, this little kid just running around just being really good. So things like that made me understand that I was pretty decent at video games, but up until Fortnite, that’s really when I started getting especially good at something and then just kept going up and up.

Jay Ruderman:

Glenn, when did you realize that Kyle had sort of exceptional skills in gaming?

Glenn:

He’s still got to get up to my level. One of the things I realized is honestly, when you were talking, I was thinking about that is when he was younger, we always had rules that you had to be in some a sport. I wanted him to not just be in the house, sitting there playing video games, 24/7. I realized that there’s a world out there, there’s a lot of other stuff. So Kyle played soccer, he also played hockey and he played basketball, but he played these sports and I noticed, especially with the soccer and with the hockey, that he has an ability to see the field.

But I started knowing he was pretty good, probably like five or six years old, to be honest with you. All kids when they’re young have good hand eye coordination. You raise them on there, you can go to your neighbor right now, and that little kid is going to probably be much better than it is than we are. But it’s like anything else in life, I just think if you have a passion for it and something that you want, you just got to basically tell yourself, “This is what I’m going to do and I’m going to make sacrifices to get there.” And you’re going to have to do that if you do anything half, but it’s not going to work.

Jay Ruderman:

So Kyle, can you describe… I know a lot of people, my kids play Fortnite, I know a lot about it, but describe Fortnite to listeners who don’t even know what it is.

Bugha:

All right, so pretty much, Fortnite is what they would call a Battle Royale. There are a hundred players and you are all on an island, and the objective in the mission is to pretty much be the last one standing. So throughout the game, there is a storm or a zone that closes in all the way down to a very small point, and you just pretty much need to be the last one standing. The ways to do this, you can run around, you can fight other people, you can hide, you can use strategies, whatever you’re more comfortable doing. That’s pretty much just what Fortnite is.

Glenn:

No game is ever the same. That’s one of the benefits of that game.

Bugha:

It changes each game.

Glenn:

It changes every game because there’s of a hundred different people and different POIs and Fortnite itself is always changing. Every week, they add new content into it so it doesn’t get stale.

Jay Ruderman:

How did you choose the name, Bugha?

Bugha:

So the name Bugha, it’s a nickname that my grandpa gave me. When I was a little baby, he would call me Bugha and I would laugh, and that sucked through and it was just like a family nickname for me.

Jay Ruderman:

Let’s talk about, in 2019, you entered the Fortnite World Cup. What was that like? Why did you decide to enter and what was your experience?

Bugha:

I was playing Fortnite beforehand. It was about a year leading up until they announced the World Cup. They announced it. The game was very fun. I was pretty good at it. There was a very large prize pool and all my friends, everyone around me was going to try to compete and try to qualify as well. So I was like, why not? I really enjoy the game. I’m pretty good at it, so let’s just give it a shot, see what happens. It’s just what I did. I just put my head down. I was playing pretty much every single day, playing a lot of the scrimmages, the practices leading up to it, and I eventually qualified and made it to the big stage.

Jay Ruderman:

Was that a shock to you? Did you ever expect to go that far in the World Cup?

Bugha:

I had a lot of confidence in my own abilities early on in Fortnite. I was very confident as a player. I thought I was one of the best players in the game very early. I expected myself to qualify. I knew I was going to do good, but everyone understands that in order to win something, you need things to just fall into place and things to just happen. You need certain things to occur, and I think I had the perfect mix of all of it and ended up winning.

Jay Ruderman:

First of all, congratulations. It was a nice prize that came with it. Glenn, how did you feel about Kyle entering the World Cup?

Glenn:

A little bit torn. I didn’t mind him trying, but any other parent, we had discussions with this. If I’m being blatantly honest, I didn’t have any expectations that he was going to win. He was a 16-year-old kid that just had gotten into it a couple of months prior to it, and he had been playing it. I knew he was good, but you’re going against 40 million people, you’re going worldwide. You’re going against people that have been playing games for their entire life. You had some of the biggest names at that time, were even involved in this, and here you are, your first LAN event. We kept our expectations in check. I was happy for him. We were all excited about it, me and my wife, his best friend went with us to the World Cup and we had fun. We were running around the streets, but I honestly thought maybe top 15, that’s where I realistically was thinking, and it’s not a knock on him, it’s just age, going against people, being in the lights and seeing how he would deal with all that.

Jay Ruderman:

When you won, you’re pretty young and all of a sudden, you have all this success and popularity. How did that hit you?

Bugha:

Being that young, it definitely came at me very quick. It wasn’t really something that I had the choice to choose between. It happened and I had to just face it and deal with everything that was coming after that. So all the talk shows, hopping on interviews, doing those sorts of things, they were all very new to me and I was getting used to them. It was definitely very different at first, but over time, I’ve gotten used to them. I don’t mind any of those things at all. Now, at the very beginning, it was just different because I wasn’t prepared and I didn’t really understand what people are going to ask me.

Jay Ruderman:

Glenn, did you have to scramble to put things in place to protect Kyle at the time from this onslaught of attention?

Glenn:

We tried. The day Kyle won the World Cup, his phone was hacked and everything was like his ID and everything, they just went after him right away. So we tried to do what we could. We used the resources that we had available to us and we made some calls to people with police department, things of that nature and just say, “This just happened, just letting you know in case we call or you hear about it.” Just tried to get out there with the authorities and see what options we had more. So a lot was worried about a lot of people just was worried about people actually trying to come here and break in and do things of that nature.

Jay Ruderman:

So it must’ve been super exciting, but also a little bit scary at the same time.

Glenn:

It’s exciting for him. We were really excited for him because it was an opportunity that we know, as a parents, that doesn’t come around, doesn’t happen very often to many people at all. It was an opportunity for him to get his name out there and get a career going and become something that we weren’t able to do. But it’s also scary because he has a sister, I have my wife, and all of a sudden everybody being targets.

Jay Ruderman:

The cash prize was announced, I think it was $3 million. Whenever that stuff is announced publicly, everyone’s going to come out of the woodwork.

Glenn:

You got to forget, there’s taxes, there’s management fees, there’s ownership fees. He doesn’t get $3 million, but still, it’s more money than he’ll need for a while.

Jay Ruderman:

Have you decided how you’re going to use the money yet or has it just been set aside for future education or something like that?

Bugha:

Pretty much, right away, when we got the money, we got an accounting, we got someone very good to handle the money, and we pretty much just put it straight to investments right away. I’m not a big money spender. I don’t really use my money for anything unless I need to. So I just sit back, play the video games, invest my money, and just let it happen.

Jay Ruderman:

What advice would you give your younger self now based on the experience that you’ve had all these years?

Glenn:

Listen to Dad more.

Jay Ruderman:

That’s always a good answer.

Bugha:

Honestly, I’m not really sure because I feel like I did a lot of things in my career the way I wanted to. I feel like I didn’t change what I was doing based on what other people were saying or what they wanted. I was always just focusing on what I wanted in my career in gaming, and I’m happy I did that. I really don’t know any advice I could give myself early on. I enjoyed everything that happened and went on, and I’m cool with it being that way.

Jay Ruderman:

Glenn, what concerns did you have at this point in time where Kyle’s going to become professional video gamer? How do you support him at this time? Your life has changed as well as his life.

Glenn:

To be honest with you, my number one concern has always been his safety above and beyond anything else. When Kyle started this out, he was 16 years old. We’ve all been 16 years old. He’s 21 now. He’s still growing. He’s still changing. His mentality is still changing and learning. His brain is still growing. So the only thing that I can do as a parent is try to explain to him from my worldview of what has happened to me in my life, not necessarily a hundred percent the same for his life. I didn’t have fame and all that, but I tried to explain to him things that I’ve seen in the world and try to impart that knowledge to him, and it’s hard because he doesn’t live in the same world that I did.

One of the things I’ve always explained to him is, it is weird for him because most of his friends are in college right now, getting ready to graduate. They’re juniors or seniors or whatever it is, and here he is, still playing video games. So to him, a lot of times he feels like he’s missed out on a lot of things in life and he has to a degree. But if you take that flip side, I try to explain to him that everybody going to college right now is vying to get an education to try to make some money out there in the world.

You, right now, have the opportunity to make the money more than you’re going to ever have to do going from school, for the most part. So you’re earning your money now, and I’ve always tried to say, “You’ve got to be professional, even though you’re not mentally there. You’re 16, you’re 18, you’re 20. But you’ve got to have this adult mentality about your career because those are the years where you’re going to make the money and it’s got to last you for the rest of your life.” Do you know.

So it’s always been hard like that. But what I do is I was more heavily involved when Kyle was younger and almost all aspects of his career with his deals, his management, everything going on, I have scaled that back as Kyle has gotten older. I’ve put a little bit more responsibility on him and I have scaled back and I just pretty much handle a lot of his financial, his billings. If there’s some coordination events that have to happen in the background, I do that. But I pushed that to him. He’s 21 years old, he’s got to start learning. He’s been learning.

This is a different world. It’s challenging. He wants to have a normal life as well, but there’s also the professional side.

Jay Ruderman:

So there’s a balance.

Glenn:

There’s a balance, and he’s going to make mistakes. What we made mistakes. The problem I’m trying to do is make sure that the ones he makes aren’t life-changing.

Jay Ruderman:

Kyle, were you a good student and do you have any interest in the future of pursuing an education?

Bugha:

I would say I was a good student when I tried leading up to high school. I was pretty good in my freshman year. Everything was good, As, Bs. Sophomore year, I mean I started focusing a lot more on Fortnite, I still was getting good grades, obviously just not all As anymore. In the future, I definitely could see myself having interest in something and whatever that is, I could see myself taking some classes on. Just anything. But right now, I’m not set on that. I’m not looking at that right now. But maybe in the future, I think I definitely would.

Glenn:

For Kyle and for anybody else that’s watching this or hearing this video or podcast, I think especially, if you’re going to be doing a career in eSports or anything like that, I think some level of education and finances is a must. You need to understand the world around you and not just, “Hey, I made a hundred dollars. I can just pocket that and go do what I want to do with it.” You do need to save for the future, and that’s a hard thing for most people. But you need to take a portion of that money and put it aside for taxes. You need to take a portion of that and set it aside for everything else because it isn’t going to last forever.

We would love to say, “Hey, Kyle’s going to be in the limelight for the next 20 years.” But the reality of that is it’s not really there. If you do make it successful, where Kyle has, you need to understand where your money’s going and who’s doing what with it. So I think even if it’s a finance class, just to understand the basics of it and investments and things of that nature, I think that’s something that every kid should have.

Jay Ruderman:

I think that that’s very wise advice so that you know what’s going on and you can hire the right people to help you through the process. I’d like to shift the conversation a little bit to mental health. Kyle, one of the unfortunate side effects of being visible and popular is the increased harassment and trolling that you’ve received. After 2019, you were swatted while you were playing. Can you tell us what swatting is and what that experience was like?

Bugha:

Swatting is pretty much when there’s somebody just from a random place around the world, hops on the phone, will call the police, give them my address pretty much, and just say that I did a bunch of bad things, and the police will come, even SWAT team will come and they’ll come out with guns. Their intention is to obviously have bad things happen to you, just some bad people out there that are trying to get you. Lucky for us, we have that all figured out, settled, and we had contact with the people around us.

Jay Ruderman:

Did that happen to you? Did the police show up at your house? It must’ve been super scary.

Bugha:

Two or three times, that happened. Obviously, the first one was probably the most severe. They came in, they didn’t really… It happened before. So they had to come in, they came up into my room while I was playing. They had machine guns out everything. I was like, hold on. I literally told them, I was like, “Hold on, can I finish this?” Because the police officer, the first one that I saw, he was actually, my school’s police officer, he worked there as well. He would always be in the lunchroom just standing around, stuff like that. So when I first saw him, I thought he was just coming by to congratulate me or something. He was still in uniform, and I was just so shocked.

I was confused, but he told me, “No, you need to get off now.” It was serious, and then I realized what happened.

Speaker 4:

Shockwave, flint knocked in the safe zone. Doubling back another one. A valiant effort. He’s got to find a bead, but he won’t be able to do it. Ladies and gentlemen, game two goes to Sky.

Bugha:

It was definitely scary. Walking out to the front yard, all these people that have angles on you, there’s people surrounding your house to make sure you don’t leave. They have it down, they have it figured out. But it was definitely weird.

Jay Ruderman:

It’s a very dangerous situation actually. I’m so sorry for you and your family because that must’ve been horrific.

Bugha:

Everything with us is good. There’s some people out there, bad things have happened to them when swats get called and those sorts of things, which are so terrible. But luckily for us, nothing bad happened.

Jay Ruderman:

How do you deal with the trolling?

Bugha:

Definitely, early on, the trolling was a lot more massive. As soon as you win, there’s going to be a lot of people that just instahate. There’s so many people, they know nothing about you, but they’re just jealous and they’re just going to hate. But obviously, with all those haters comes a lot of supporters and you need to balance that out and just realize that these people hating, paying attention to it does nothing. All these people supporting you, these are the people that you really need to focus on and give your energy to. Me being young, I wasn’t able to shift my mentality that early. So it was hard, but growing up, and just getting used to it, that helped me a lot as well.

Jay Ruderman:

When you’re playing Fortnight, are you seeing these negative comments come up? Is there a chat going on during the game?

Bugha:

If you decide to stream your gameplay, you don’t have to stream your gameplay, but if I get on a service and stream and other people can watch me, they can write comments and I’ll have the chat up on my side. Advice during tournaments, probably don’t have your chat up on the side because it just takes your thoughts away and whatever you’re thinking on the game.

There were times when I’d have the chat up, I look over and there’s people. They’re just saying random things like, “You’re bad.” This and that. It’s just a bunch of people just trolling. Early on, I really hated that. I wanted people to think that I was good at the game. I had this thing about me. I wanted people to think I was good and I hated when people didn’t like me for no reason, but over time, I literally just understood that there’s nothing that I can do for these people that are hating. They’re just hating because it’s just them.

Jay Ruderman:

Nothing prepared you. You couldn’t have been prepared for that stream of hate coming at you. How did you deal with it?

Bugha:

Definitely. Even if somebody is to tell me, “Hey, a bunch of these people are about to start hating on you, you need to ignore it.” Some tips might help, but I truly think you just have to experience it and just let it settle with yourself. These are just comments on a screen. Try to separate those hate comments and try to look at them as just like bots or robots online. That’s the way that I was doing it, and then all the real positive messages, I was connecting those with real people. So every message I saw that was just hate. I was like, just another bot spam message and just tried to ignore it.

Jay Ruderman:

That’s a very healthy way of looking at it. One of the things I always think with trolling is that people don’t really know you. They don’t know who you are. They don’t know your family, they don’t know you personally. They’re just randomly attacking.

Glenn:

I wanted to jump on that because there was something that you guys were talking about. So social media has been a blessing and a curse, especially for a young person of Kyle’s age. When we grew up, you might go to school, you might get picked on, somebody might say something stupid to you, but then you went home and you had the weekend, you had the nights, and then you went back to school and you had to deal with that again. With social media, that doesn’t exist anymore. There’s a lot of kids that go to school, have issues, get bullied, whatever it is, and then they go home and people are still doing it on social media. They do it to Kyle as well.

People that play games heavily, especially competitive, don’t go outside and see the world like me and you do necessarily. He wakes up, opens up TikTok, Twitter or X or whatever you want to be. Instagram, looks at the feeds and sees people making comments, and they’re all just hate, and that’s his world. That’s what he sees. The reality is, if you turn that off and go outside, nobody even cares. Nobody knows who you are, and it’s a different perspective. But when you’re living in that bubble where everything is through social media, it can be very polarizing. It can be very demoralizing for younger children, it’s very hard, and I think from a parent’s perspective, you also need to have the kids understand that social media, what it is and what it can be positive, but there’s also a lot of bad people, actors out there that just try bring you down.

Jay Ruderman:

You can’t really…

Glenn:

You can’t turn it off.

Jay Ruderman:

You can’t turn it off. You can’t really control it.

Glenn:

You just got to ignore it.

Jay Ruderman:

Kyle, walk us through your daily routine, your training process, and what are you doing every day?

Bugha:

My daily routine, I wake up pretty early, like 9:00, 10:00 A.M. I’ll make some breakfast, relax for a little, hop on the game, just mess around a little bit, build. I’ll hop on, check out some YouTube, Twitter, just see what’s going on in the community, those types of things. Throughout the day, I don’t really have a set schedule, but sometimes, if there’s something that I can stream, I’ll hop on and stream it, play it. But around 5:00, 6:00 P.M. is when scrims, which are just scrimmages, like practice, those go live. So around that time, I dial in, sit down and just play, and I play those up until… They can run pretty late. Sometimes, they’ll run until 1:00 A.M., 2:00 A.M. Those are the late night sessions, usually when summer is you in effect. But it is very simple.

Now, it’s a little bit different than when I first started playing. When I first started playing, every single moment that I had, I was spending on trying to improve and getting better. But now, I’ve definitely dialed it down a little bit, but I’m still very active when it comes around tournament time.

Jay Ruderman:

Do you ever feel burnout when you’re playing?

Bugha:

I think burnout really comes with you not enjoying what you’re doing. That’s what I’ve found. When I wasn’t enjoying the game much and was forcing myself to play, I would find myself really burnout. I would just not like it at all. But when I can find myself in a friend group online and playing with them all day, having fun talking to people, I don’t really feel burnout. It just feels like another day and doing something I enjoy. That’s honestly the key to gaming. You really need to find enjoyment in it, and the people around you help a lot as well.

Oh my God, bro. What?

Speaker 5:

It’s fine. No.

Oh my God, that was so sick.

Jay Ruderman:

So what are your ambitions in terms of Fortnite? What’s the next step for you? What’s the next goal?

Bugha:

So the next goal step, we have grand finals, which are the finals of all the qualifiers we’ve been playing over the past few months. In this finals, you can make around 60, $70,000 each from my region. So I’m hoping to win, take that home, as well as qualify for the LAN event from this FNCS Grand Finals. If you get top 10 in this Grand Finals, you’ll qualify to the actual in-person event. So I’m shooting for that and obviously to hopefully win.

Jay Ruderman:

I wish you good luck. Glenn, do you ever give Kyle any advice in terms of mental health, how to get himself balanced and deal with stresses that someone his age may or may not have to deal with?

Glenn:

I’m probably not the best person to get mental advice.

Jay Ruderman:

How do you deal with your own mental health?

Glenn:

We’ll save that for the after dark podcast. These people, a majority of them that are the trolls are just jealous. There are a lot of people that support him, but the best thing that I can do, like I said, is just support them and be there for him.

I’ve had this conversation with him even recently. I said… I’m going to call him out on things. I’m not his a hundred percent fanboy, where I’m just going to say yes to everything, but I’m his father and the deal is I’m not going to agree with everything he does in life. It doesn’t mean, he can’t do it, it’s just I want him to understand everything that I do, and where I come from is from a loving perspective.

It’s from me wanting the best for my child and knowing that the world is not always a nice, fun, safe place. When you’re 21, nothing will happen to me. Nothing bad will happen, and it’s just something that you got to go through. But I support him. I do have some issues with certain things, but I’ll support him. Anything he asks for, I leave him be. If he needs help, I jump in there and do everything I can for him.

Jay Ruderman:

As a father of four, what you say resonates with me. Kyle, I think you’re lucky to have Glenn as your dad. He sounds like he’s a super dad and he’s there for you. So I’m sure there’s tension. Every family has tension, but you’re lucky to have him in your corner.

Glenn:

My wife and his sister are just as a supportive, obviously. They just don’t do the face this stuff as much as I do. He does have a huge family that’s around him that loves him and supports him, and I think that matters more than anything else because at the end of the day, when this is all over, we’re going to be the ones that are still there for him.

Jay Ruderman:

Exactly. So Kyle, how do you balance your online life with your offline, your real life?

Bugha:

I don’t know. I find a lot of enjoyment in my online life. I don’t really do too much in my outside life. Like here and there, I’ll go to the gym, I’ll work out, do those things. I really treat this online thing like it’s just my job, my everyday hobby as well. That’s the one thing I find. It’s a hobby, but it’s also my job. So I find myself spending a lot of time doing it on both ends. I enjoy what I do, and the balance for me is just get out there a little bit, try to experience some things, but ultimately, just stay locked in on this, and that’s just what I’ve been doing.

Jay Ruderman:

You’re a professional. What advice would you give to all those people out there playing who are not professionals, and maybe how would you recommend that they take care of their mental health?

Bugha:

As far as mental health, just try to find yourself surrounded by people that you like and you have good friendships with, and people that are supportive and not people that are just trying to tear you down. Just lock in on what you want, set goals for yourself and just try to focus on those things. Just try to ignore these outside gaming, just things that will throw you off and try to have a good time, set these goals for yourself and spend time with family and friends, online, offline, whatever that may be.

Jay Ruderman:

That’s good advice. I understand you have a dog, and I’m sure the dog helps with your mental health also.

Bugha:

I have a little pug. Her name’s Zoe. She’s getting old though. She’s awesome.

Jay Ruderman:

You’ve used your platform and popularity in terms of philanthropy. Can you tell us about some of the causes that you’ve supported and what the funds have gone to help people on?

Bugha:

We’ve done gamers outreach. We have done some things where we have donated money pretty much to these stations that go in hospitals for kids, and they are able to pretty much just play video games when they’re sick or whatever they may be going through. That resonates with me because a gamer, and I love to be able to help these people that aren’t as in a fortunate situation as I am, and let them experience these things and let them have fun as well.

Glenn:

I think one of the good things about being in Kyle’s position is that he can use his platform to a degree for betterment. Gaming is a very powerful thing. I grew up with gaming. I’ve loved it my entire life. I think there’s a lot of positives that are in it. There are negatives in it, but I think if you’re already susceptible to some negative aspects in your life, if you’ve got anger issues, certain games are going to probably bring that out more. But from a gaming perspective, I love the fact that Kyle was able to work with Children’s Outreach where, like he said, we work with kids that have cancer, kids that have other kind of sicknesses that bring a little joy into their life. They get to play video games. We were trying to go out and visit people, but the problem with COVID, all the hospitals were closed down during that time. Kyle did start a platform called… We worked with Five Below.

It was getting to gaming, so it was affordable. One of the barriers for gaming is cost. To buy a nice high-end PC, to buy a nice high-end console or to buy anything. Obviously, there are hundreds of dollars. You got monitors, you got TVs, you’ve got peripherals, a hundred dollars for controllers, everything else. So one of the things that we did is we partnered with Five Below, and Kyle was spearheading, helping with the designs and the products that would bring low cost keyboards, mice. They aren’t high end, they’re not competitive, but they were $10 keyboards that would get kids into gaming. It was a great success, and I’ve always wanted him to… I feel like that’s where he is good at.

Bugha:

Just adding onto what he was saying, the product line, it was great. The entry of products were very great. When I started out, I didn’t have the most expensive gear ever. Those things were just good to be able to get back and help people, and that’s truly what I try to use my platform as much as I can too, as well as play competitive.

Jay Ruderman:

First of all, Kyle and Glenn, I want to thank you for being my guests on All About Change. You sound like you guys have a super family, very strong, there for each other, which is so important. Kyle, I wish you a lot of success in your career as you move forward, but I really want to thank you for speaking out about mental health and removing the stigma and bringing it forward and giving advice to people who are also into gaming and may not know how to deal with it. So thank you for your leadership. I think you’re going to be a great role model of people.

Bugha:

Of course. Yeah. No, thank you.

Glenn:

Appreciate you having us on.

Jay Ruderman:

Glenn’s love and support for Kyle has given him the ability to pursue the career of his dreams and has shaped Kyle into becoming the positive role model that is a bright spot in the online gaming community. That’s it for today’s episode. Join us two weeks from today for my talk with Princess Noor Pahlavi. 

Today’s episode was produced by Rebecca Chaisson with story editing by Yochai Maital and Mijon Zulu. To check out more episodes or to learn more about the show, you can visit our website, allaboutchangepodcast.com. If you like our show, spread the word, tell a friend or family member, or leave us a review on your favorite podcasting app. 

We’d really appreciate it. All About Change is produced by the Ruderman Family Foundation, in partnership with Pod people. That’s all for now. I’m Jay Ruderman, and we’ll see you next time on All About Change.