After dropping out in eighth grade to pursue esports, Cody Conrod wants to help others enter the increasingly expensive world of professional gaming.
asserted
others → drop → gaming
The 21-year-old competitive Fortnite player, better known as Clix to his more than 8 million Twitch followers, already provides hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of gaming equipment through an annual holiday giveaway.
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player → know → giveaway
Through his new holding company, launched Thursday, he is formalizing those efforts into the Dr3amin Access Fund.
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he → hold → Fund
Fortnite, one of the world’s most popular video games, features last-one-standing showdowns where players hunt down each other’s customizable avatars across an ever-shrinking map.
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players → feature → map
Content creators have found loyal audiences by live streaming their exploits on platforms such as Twitch, the livestreaming platform owned by Amazon, and clipping the most eye-catching segments into viral short-form videos.
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creators → find → videos
But the equipment needed to compete at higher levels is pricey — and getting pricier.
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equipment → need → levels
The massive data center buildout has pushed up the costs of computers, graphics processors and memory chips.
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buildout → push → computers
Conrod recommends a setup that can handle at least 120 frames per second for a GPU-intensive game such as Fortnite.
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that → recommend → Fortnite
And even sub-$500, entry-level PCs are becoming scarcer, according to Joost van Dreunen, a longtime games industry researcher and adjunct assistant professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
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PCs → become → Business
“Anybody who is starting up early in their career, anybody who is building their first PC, is having an increasingly difficult time finding hardware and components for it,” he said.
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he → start → it
Conrod understands the squeeze.
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Conrod → understand → squeeze
His parents couldn’t afford a “crazy gaming computer” when he started playing when he was five.
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he → afford → computer
As Fortnite took the gaming world by storm, with publisher Epic Games offering $100 million tournament prizes, Conrod said he had to make do with a “worst of the worst” computer running 30 frames per second.
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he → take → second
After months spent begging his parents to help buy a roughly $1,600 computer, Conrod said, his dad wrote up a contract: the teenager would have three months to pay him back by working for his plumbing company throughout the summer.
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teenager → spend → summer
Conrod ultimately needed just two weeks’ worth of Fortnite earnings to honor the deal.
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Conrod → need → deal
“If I never had that PC, if I never had access to that computer, this career — this setup that you see — would not be a thing,” Conrod said, speaking from his Dallas bedroom where he streams to thousands of viewers for hours at a time.
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he → have → time
He’d made nearly $200,000 through the Fortnite World Cup and felt he couldn’t balance classes with his career.
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he → make → career
Waking up for middle school at 6 a.m. to then compete in tournaments at 6 p.m. left him exhausted.
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Waking → wake → him
“You can’t be tired when you’re playing,” he explained.
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he → play → ?
Reaction times, he said, have to be “crisp.”
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he → say → ?
After some hesitation, his parents agreed to let him go all-in on competitive gaming.
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him → agree → gaming
Esports is still a place where it’s “very hard to make a living,” according to van Dreunen.
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it → ’ → Dreunen
The real money is clustered at the top, he said, and there’s no “healthy” talent ecosystem.
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he → cluster → top
There’s also the stigma — many people still don’t view competitive gaming as a legitimate career, both he and Conrod emphasized.
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he → ’ → career
Conrod hopes that by lifting the financial burden of buying a computer, he can get more parents to let their children test the professional limits of their hobby.
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children → hop → hobby
“They also have to get good grades if they’re in school,” he added, noting that he made the “still delusional but a little less delusional” move to drop out only when he’d won “a good amount of money.”
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he → have → money
Full Box Inc., his new holding company, is inspired by MrBeast’s sprawling media empire, which houses the YouTube megastar’s food brands, production company and philanthropy.
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which → hold → brands
Full Box Inc. encompasses Clix’s clothing brand, clipping agency and game studio, among other endeavors.
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Inc. → encompass → endeavors
He’s still figuring out the funding model for the Dr3amin Access Fund.
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He → figure → Fund
Some proceeds from his clothing brand will support the initiative.
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proceeds → support → initiative
Other brands will have the opportunity to donate during his end-of-year giveaway, Clixmas.
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brands → have → giveaway
And he’ll give some, too; last year he said he personally contributed about $100,000 as Clixmas gave away five custom PCs daily throughout the month of December.
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Clixmas → give → December
Conrod got some proof of concept this past weekend.
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Conrod → get → concept
His team took fourth place — and $120,000 — among 50 duos at the Fortnite Global Championship in Belgium.
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team → take → Belgium
Among his competitors was a gamer known online as Joshreyli.
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gamer → know → Joshreyli
They’d met two years ago during the first-ever Clixmas when Conrod challenged his audience to eliminate him during a one-on-one match in exchange for a computer.
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Conrod → meet → computer
Josh won, got the PC and has since earned six figures as a pro, according to Conrod.
“It’s like a full-circle moment of what helps me want to do more stuff like this,” Conrod said.
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Conrod → win → this
“Those stories fire me up.”
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stories → fire → me
Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc.
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coverage → receive → funding
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