French Bread Gaming's Fight for Edmonton Esports (ft. Ethan Horkulak)
EPISODE DESCRIPTION
What started in a community hall with nine-person brackets and a one-in-ten shot at breaking even has since grown into Bread Basket, Alberta's premier fighting game tournament, now drawing 207+ attendees and pulling live viewers including Smash Bros legends Hungrybox and Larry Lurr. That and weeklies are the products of French Bread Gaming, founded by Ethan Horkulak and Eric Kwas, along with some friends along the way.
In this episode of Good Game Edmonton, Ethan maps out French Bread Gaming’s entire journey: the early grind at community halls, the pivotal partnership with Canadian Icehouse in Ice District that gave them a permanent weekly home, the near-shutdown moment that almost ended everything, and the major announcement that FBG is launching their very own esports team in 2026 — complete with a Rising Star Program designed to lift up minorities and underrepresented players in competitive gaming.
KEY DISCUSSION POINTS
The Gap That Started It All
Ontario had 2,050 ranked Smash players in 2024, BC had 1,250, and Edmonton had 51. Ethan founded French Bread Gaming after losing his job and recognizing the city had the population to support a thriving scene. French Bread Gaming's first step was simple: ask the community what it needed, then deliver it.
Finding a Home at Canadian Icehouse
French Bread Gaming's first weeklies ran out of a borrowed community hall, where they broke even once in ten events. A check-box on a venue-booking site led to an offer from Canadian Icehouse in downtown Edmonton's Ice District — the venue they've used for weekly events ever since, and where Bread Basket has been held.
Bread Basket: Alberta's Premier Fighting Game Tournament
The 2025 Bread Basket drew 207 attendees and attracted live viewership from top Smash pros Hungrybox and Larry Lurr. The 2026 edition expands to multiple titles — Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Rivals of Aether 2, Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, Granblue Fantasy Versus, Guilty Gear Strive, 2XKO, and BlazBlue — and will be hosted at NorQuest College, which is providing the atrium and PC setups.
The Near-Shutdown Moment
A catering miscalculation at French Bread Gaming's Christmas party cost Ethan over $1,000 out of pocket after two years of working without pay. The organization recovered entirely through Victory Road, an Arcadian event co-hosted with NorQuest that made back the losses and stabilized FBG's finances.
The Big Announcement: Esports Team and Rising Star Program
In 2026, French Bread Gaming is launching an official Edmonton esports team across multiple fighting game titles, anchored by the Rising Star Program — a structured initiative to support minorities and underrepresented players in Edmonton esports with the resources to compete professionally. The program was conceived with a specific player in mind: Darcy ("Real"), a high-potential Smash player who needed a pathway that didn't exist yet.
Western Canada Circuit and Cross-Provincial Collaboration
French Bread Gaming ran a prototype Western Canada circuit through Canadian Brewhouse locations nationwide, flying winners to Bread Basket 2025. The head TO of Battle of BC has since reached out for cross-promotion, and FBG coordinates regularly with organizers in BC, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.
Local Ecosystem Spotlight
Ethan maps out the broader Edmonton-area fighting game community:
Rosehall Productions (Jayden & Serena) — FBG's Melee and Project+ contractors
Sherwood Heights Community League — runs a Smash Club in Sherwood Park, now meeting at Colchester Community Hall every second Tuesday
U of A Smash Club — led by Roman and Devin
NAIT Smash — run by Bandage and Wafflez
St. Albert Arcade — monthly free events with pizza at St. Albert Alliance Church
Indigenous Smash League — Mason, based in Wetaskiwin, promoting esports in Indigenous communities
Last Stock Leduc — returning from hiatus in summer 2025
Esports Alberta (AESA) and Alberta Scholastic Esports League — provincial support infrastructure
The Long-Term Vision: Ford Hall at Rogers Place
French Bread Gaming’s stated goal is to eventually host a national-level event at Ford Hall in Rogers Place, downtown Edmonton — with a full stage, LED wall, professional commentary, and a prize pool large enough to draw top players from across North America. Getting there requires sponsorship, production investment, and continued growth toward LumiRank A-tier recognition.
City Support: Where Things Stand
The City of Edmonton has unanimously endorsed the concept of becoming an esports hub. Ethan's ask is concrete: direct event funding, contractor models that hire grassroots organizers, and programming grants to staff organizations properly. Mayor Andrew Nack has been personally engaged with the scene and received a formal Bread Basket invitation. Edmonton Screen is a current Bread Basket sponsor.
QUESTIONS ANSWERED IN THIS EPISODE
What is French Bread Gaming (FBG)?
A registered nonprofit esports organization based in Edmonton, Alberta, founded by Ethan Horkulak, Eric Kwas, and Cameron Berg to grow competitive Super Smash Bros and fighting game culture in the City of Champions.
What is Bread Basket?
Alberta's premier fighting game tournament, organized by French Bread Gaming, now hosted annually at NorQuest College in Edmonton. The 2025 edition drew 207 attendees and attracted national attention.
Where do FBG's weekly events happen?
Every week at Canadian Icehouse, located in Edmonton's Ice District (downtown).
What games are featured at FBG events?
Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Rivals of Aether 2, Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, Granblue Fantasy Versus, Guilty Gear Strive, 2XKO, and BlazBlue.
What is FBG's Rising Star Program?
A 2026 initiative to identify and support minorities and underrepresented players in Edmonton esports, providing resources and infrastructure for them to pursue professional competitive gaming careers.
Is French Bread Gaming launching an esports team?
Yes — FBG is officially launching an Edmonton Esports Team in 2026, competing across multiple fighting game titles.
What is FBG's long-term venue goal?
Ford Hall at Rogers Place, Edmonton, for a large-scale national-level fighting game major.
How can organizations support FBG?
Through sponsorships, programming grants, and staff funding.
Is FBG involved with Game Con Canada?
Yes — FBG is an official partner of Game Con Canada and will operate the fighting game esports programming at the convention.
How does Edmonton's esports scene compare to other provinces?
In 2024, Ontario had 2,050 ranked players, BC had 1,250, and Edmonton had only 51. By 2025, Edmonton grew to 207.
LINKS & RESOURCES
French Bread Gaming
🌐 Website: FrenchBreadGaming.com
🐦 Twitter/X: @FrenchBreadGame
📸 Instagram: @FrenchBreadGaming
💬 Discord: https://discord.com/invite/XZzpYymudm
Mentioned in This Episode
🎧 Good Game Edmonton: goodgameyeg.ca
🏒 Canadian Icehouse (Ice District, Downtown Edmonton)
🍺 Canadian Brewhouse (site of the Western Canada Smash Circuit)
📺 Edmonton Screen (supporting local film, TV, and digital media creators + Bread Basket sponsor)
🚀 Edmonton Unlimited
🎬 Kiwi Productions (event production)
🎮 Battle of BC / Galint (Kevin "Deer," Director)
🏆 Alberta Smash Discord
⚔️ Rosehall Productions (Melee/Project+)
🏘️ Sherwood Heights Community League / Colchester Community Hall, Sherwood Park
🏫 U of A Smash Club / NAIT Smash
⛪ St. Albert Arcade (St. Albert Alliance Church)
🪶 Indigenous Smash League – Wetaskiwin
🏙️ Last Stock Leduc
Transcript
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Cory (00:16)
This is Good Game Edmonton. I'm Cory "Sellarcast" Sellar. According to many, Alberta has always had elite Smash Bros, but the local tournament scene hasn't always matched that level compared to other provinces. Today's guests saw that gap, and instead of waiting for someone else to fix it, they built something. I got Ethan Horkulak, one of the co-founders of French Bread Gaming, an organization built to grow Super Smash Bros Ultimate Competition right here in the City of Champions.
Good to have you here, Ethan. Thanks for joining me.
Ethan (00:47)
It's
very good to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, like you said, I noticed there was a gap. Edmonton used to have the biggest locals in the world. We used to have 200 plus weekly events. Things that would be considered like higher level regionals now are where just our weekly status quo. And ever since COVID, things really, really died down. There was a lot of people stepping away from the scene, not really doing things
to help grow the fighting game community. yeah, FBG was to fill that gap.
Cory (01:18)
And you haven't done it by yourself, obviously. You've had a team to make this happen. Before French Bread Gaming was that registered org, what did those early days look like specifically? Walk me through that beginning, that founding story, so to speak.
Ethan (01:41)
Well, FBG was started with a group of my high school friends. We called ourselves French Bread as like a community name, just the seven of us from high school. And three of us specifically, me, Eric Kwas, and our friend Cameron Berg, we split off to create this organization in order to facilitate something that we loved, which was competitive Smash Bros. We since branched into more fighting games, but yeah, competitive Smash is where our love is at
since then we've just gotten more community members to join our ranks. You have, one of our, event TOs Bradley Codner. He's been imperative, our social media manager, Alex Goble and his girlfriend and our HR, Roy,
we've created an incredible community and company through this and we just want to grow esports here in Alberta and Edmonton specifically.
Cory (02:30)
No, I love that. had, know, growing, the space, obviously, you know, taking a look through my research before this recording, obviously, on the Edmonton chamber profile that you guys got online there, you know, there was some pretty stark numbers that I, that I saw that were, that was rather interesting. Looking back at 2024, obviously a little, a little bit old, older numbers, a little out of date, but looking at those, you know, Ontario was at 2050,
BC at 1,250, Alberta at 264, Edmonton at 51, in terms of numbers-wise on the board, attendees Now in 2025, more recently, course, Alberta around 397, Edmonton at 207. You talk about that gap. Again, we still see a gap there. But obviously, you know,
You did something about it. You wanted to fix it, obviously. When specifically was that point where you're like, we need to do something.
Ethan (03:30)
So
I had a realization in early 2024. I had just lost my job. I had been going through a lot of personal changes and stuff like that. And I needed some sort of hobby to do. And like I said, I had loved competitive Smash Bros. I had been a viewer of the community for years. I was like, okay, well, I want to go to these big events, but it's hard for someone who lives in
Alberta sure there's BC which is close that has like 1,500 people but like to get all the way to Toronto to get into the US and stuff like that for these big events It's like difficult for a lot of people here in Western Canada to be able to attend a lot of these so I wanted to bring something local I know Edmonton has the population the drive to support it and I have always felt a call to entertain so it's kind of been ⁓
My goal since then to try to get these numbers up to run these thousand people events to in order to play the game that I love with the community that I love.
Cory (04:29)
Yeah, no, 100%. And, you know, I guess...
When over that time, mean, where were you going to try and, try and make this happen, in those earlier days to fill that gap and to try things out, you know, where was it starting in terms of location, in terms of place, in terms of gathering, coming together to do this? Obviously, it's a little bit scattered. People are doing it either at home.
Ethan (04:56)
Mm-hmm.
Cory (04:56)
Obviously during the 2020, 2021, lot of online stuff from home, but going out in the community to see one another and to kind of build this as French bread gaming, where were you guys showing up at?
Ethan (05:11)
what we were doing is I started, me and Eric together, we started attending events that were around the thing and telling people, hey, this is what we want to do. This is our plan. What steps should we be taking? We figured the best way to serve the community is to ask the community. So they told us to start with a local event. They had just lost one of the university events that happened on Wednesdays. The MacEwan Smash events were no longer running.
And they needed something to fill that gap. So together we, me and Eric, we found a community hall through a mutual friend that we have. They are, part of the community hall, association there, and we were able to rent from them for the first couple, uh, events. And we just had little 16, 15, sometimes even nine person events in this community hall. We.
of the 10 events we ran in that community hall, we made money on one of them.
Cory (06:08)
Sounds about right. Yeah. Wow. So it's more or less started in the community hall. As far as the group, did everyone just sort of come together when you guys were at the community hall and then from there kind of branched out?
Ethan (06:20)
So the current
group, how that all worked is when we were at the community hall, there were a couple regulars that started coming that we became pretty close with pretty quick. And we realized that we're going to need someone who is already deep in the community, who knows what they're doing and is confident and wants to be a part. So we reached out to a couple of people, those regulars, and the standout was Bradley. He was the first person to join us after our formation.
and, he was our community liaison still is, but he's still just an event TO and just an incredible organizer. so that's how we found him. Just people who started coming to the events and then, I'm going to jump ahead in time a little bit here. we got a offer from the Canadian ice house to start operating our weeklies out of there. ⁓ yes.
Cory (07:06)
Nice. That's the one downtown
in Ice District there. Yeah.
Ethan (07:10)
That is the, we're still there to this day every week. Yep. So, how that happened was when we were looking for a venue for our first bread basket. Um, we went on this book, uh, venue website that I just found by Googling venues, Edmonton. don't even remember what it was. And one of the check marks when applying for a venue was allow other venues to reach out to me about my event. And I figured, eh, why not? So I.
Cory (07:13)
Still there. Okay.
Why not?
Ethan (07:36)
checked it and the Icehouse offered for us to run in there for a price I couldn't refuse compared to any other venue and they said we could run our weeklies in there, we could run our large event in there that it can fit the hundreds of people we're expecting. So yeah, they've been very good to us and we ran a Christmas party there with a bunch of catered food and stuff like that and I alluded to the MacEwen events before.
The old TO from that event was Alex Goble. And he came to that Christmas party, saw what we were doing, loved what we were doing, and said, how can I help? In any capacity, how can I help? So we had him start coming to the weeklies, just running brackets off his Steam deck. He started bringing other fighting games into our midst, and we've been enjoying that. And we've just added him to the board as of a month ago.
Cory (08:16)
love that.
Love that. things come together, you know, people that were that were starting things before things that fizzled out. Seems that there always seems to be a way of people coming back and wanting to to do something in a in a version two version three of an iteration of something. And seems like you're really rallying a lot of folks. So that's that's really exciting. You know.
Ethan (08:43)
Mm-hmm.
Cory (08:50)
Talk about moments like that, Since you started, what's been the biggest milestone that you have encountered through French Bread Gaming? That moment where you looked around, you looked at the team and you thought, this is actually working. We got this. This is it.
Ethan (09:13)
It was last year's Bread Basket — 2025 Bread Basket. We had we hit over 200 attendees. It was the 207 attendees I was telling you about. The day of I looked around, I saw all these players that I looked up to for years attending my event. And it was near the end. It was during top eight. I had someone run up to me and they go.
Hungrybox is watching your stream right now. Larry Lurr is watching your stream right now. There were big names watching my event that I put on. I was entertaining thousands of people at that moment. And after it was all said and done, everyone took coming out to me saying we had a great time. The one guy giving me shots of fireball all day. ⁓
I played my first set that day on nothing but ⁓ a single sip of fireball and a double rum and coke. I lost.
Cory (10:09)
thought that would give me liquid courage but...
Ethan (10:10)
No. No,
I had to play the best player in all of Saskatchewan. He's very good. Shout out to Nadia if you're watching.
But it was a great day, very emotional at the end of it, a lot of hugs, a of crying. So thankful for everyone who was with me through that. And then thankful for the Brewhouse for being able to give us their venue for that. That was the first time I was like, we made it.
Cory (10:34)
Love it. No, I love that. You know, you talk about the folks around you, the support, you know, that's there at the event and stuff. But I'm curious, talking about that, that togetherness of everything, you know, family, friends, what, what did, what have they've had to say to, all of this, of what you're doing with, with, this team? You know, what, what's been there?
support been like their reactions their feedback to all of this as you've gone along up until this point
Ethan (11:04)
Well, from at least what people have been telling me, I don't know what they say behind closed doors, but everyone has been extremely thankful for the community that we've kind of fostered and the attention we're bringing to the Edmonton scene. There is like quite a few people in the community now who I would call more than friends to their family at this point. It's just been like,
Cory (11:07)
Yeah. Fair.
Ethan (11:26)
They welcomed me with open arms, which they do to everyone. That is just something I love about the community. You can walk into, literally last night, today's Thursday, right? Yeah, last night. Yes. ⁓ Last night at Wednesday, we had someone walk in who had just moved to Edmonton from Kelowna. He hadn't registered for the tournament or whatever. He's just like, hey, I heard there was an event happening. And there were three
Cory (11:29)
Hmm. Yeah.
Yeah, we're recording Thursday. Yeah, Wednesday.
Ethan (11:51)
different people who are like, I'll play friendlies with you, let's hang out. What character do you play? That you weren't even a part of my company. They just want to make people feel welcomed. So ⁓ I've been welcomed with open arms. People absolutely love and support the events that we do. I have people driving from Saskatoon, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, just to come to my stuff. Because they love what I'm doing with the community. And I'm so thankful for them.
Cory (12:14)
That's amazing.
Yeah. No, that's amazing. Like you have an extended family by association with all of this. That's great. Yeah. It's just growing and just surrounding yourself with that support system to grow this, not just individually, but as a group, obviously. But no, that's awesome.
Ethan (12:21)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, something
I want to touch on with that, with this extended family thing is ⁓ the responsibilities go both ways. They like, I've learned the hard way that being a TO is more than just running a tournament. It's being there for that community. I'll have people call me up be like, hey, I'm stuck at IKEA with a table that I can't move because my car is too small. Can you come pick it up? Yeah, sure.
You're my friend, you come to my events, you're that, it's that close of a community that we do that sort of stuff for each other, we take care of each other.
Cory (13:03)
of playing on to that as well, you know, in terms of acting as a TO with all this and, you know, that two-way street of everything. You know, talking about leadership and just, you know, things like logistics and all of this, you know, what have you learned when it comes to those two things as a TO during this time that clearly maybe hasn't
Those skillsets haven't been gained anywhere else, but it was through this, through your passion to continue going forward with.
Ethan (13:34)
Well, something that you need to is adaptability when it comes to these events. Something I have learned to do is just drop everything on a fly. My entire plan out the window come up with a new one in five seconds. What do you mean every game is going to game five and now we're an hour behind? Okay, well, I guess we're going to have to swap things in our stream cues. We're going to have to move events. Sometimes the venue won't cooperate. We get kicked out at a certain time.
They've, they're not providing us the audio equipment they said they would. Okay. Well, Hey, random guy that I met four months ago through smash bros. Here's my credit card. Go run to Best Buy and buy the equipment we need. that sort of stuff, right? We actually had that at last bread basket. I handed my credit card to someone and said, go to, it was actually go to value village and buy as many power bars as they have.
Cory (14:21)
No, I always hear about things like that. It's validating to know that it still happens. It's not uncommon.
Ethan (14:21)
So now I.
One of my favorite stories in this community was they didn't have the PC setups for... I forget what game it was. So they went to Costco, maxed out someone's credit card buying four PCs, and then returned them the next day.
It's what you have to do to get it done sometimes.
Cory (14:44)
That,
I agree. No, I agree. 100%. No. Wow. Do you have any other stories that kind of matches up to that or is that sort of? ⁓
Ethan (14:54)
Uh, yeah, that was not one of ours. We have, we have
some fun stories from, just like traveling and going with the community and stuff like that. what's a, what's a standout? Okay. a standout one was, uh, an adventure I had to, we spent over an hour and a half driving around Calgary looking for a place that would sell.
Cory (15:03)
Especially
Ethan (15:16)
a display port cable. Because nowhere sold display port. They only had HDMI. The only place I think that sells display port is like memory express.
Cory (15:21)
Right.
Ethan (15:27)
that I can think of, but they didn't have it at Staples, they didn't have it at Best Buy, they didn't have it at Walmart.
Every time I someone they're like, no, we don't sell that. So what we ended up doing is calling up ⁓ one of the players who was at the tournament being like, can you walk from the tournament back to your dorm room? We will meet you there and we will steal your DisplayPort cable from your monitor.
Cory (15:49)
You do what you gotta do!
Ethan (15:50)
And we got it done and then the stream didn't even save afterwards so it wasn't even worth it. We got some good recording. ⁓ That was a really good tournament though. One of my favorites that I've ever run or helped run. It was our division in Calgary. We ran an event called The Aftershock. ⁓ It was at one of the there and it was just the most chill vibe. We had a bunch of different side brackets for things like
Cory (15:56)
no.
Okay.
Okay.
Ethan (16:18)
Cornhole, Magic the Gathering, Ping Pong. was just a place to hang out. It was awesome.
Cory (16:24)
That's great. That honestly that that takes me back to when I first actually just experienced, you know, just grassroots esports for my own self and kind of got me hooked and, you know, leading to this, to what we're doing right now. when I moved out to BC after graduating from NAIT back in 2017. was Prince George in northern BC, didn't know where it was, had to look it up.
on a map, didn't really know. And when I went there, there was, you know, open house and there was a local eSports company and they were, you know, had a bit of a demo going of what they typically play and, you know, kind of live streaming. And next thing I know, I'm going out to different events that they're hosting with, Smash and Arms. That one I got really hooked on.
Ethan (17:08)
Really? One of the four people in the world?
Cory (17:10)
yeah, I thought there was so much potential and yet I'm like, wow, no one's really doing arms. Okay, I guess I'm I won't ⁓ get too excited about that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was different. I felt more into it. But, know, Smash, I can't say I'm competition worthy for it, but.
Ethan (17:20)
Think about motion controls, I find.
Hmm. Yeah.
Do you play Min Min and Smash?
Cory (17:32)
I ironically enough, I'm the most casual gamer of all time for hosting a gaming podcast. So it's slightly ironic, I guess. But at the same time, I came in with a lot of curiosity with the esports space and coming back to Edmonton, just trying to learn more about it and the ins and outs and different stories like this one. So really.
Ethan (17:56)
Well, I'm in
a similar vibe, right? Like, I am not great at the game. I go one, two at best. Yeah, so.
Cory (18:02)
Fair. Sounds about me. Yeah. Bowser's
my go-to.
Ethan (18:06)
Heavy mains unite, I'm a K-Rool.
Cory (18:07)
it. Love it. No, this is great. So, okay, Bread Basket. We've been talking about it. So I think for everyone at this point, everyone's probably wondering, tell me more about Breadbasket. So, Ethan, pitch to me what Breadbasket is all about for someone who's never been to it, never seen it, and maybe hasn't even watched a Smash tournament before in their life.
Ethan (18:12)
Hmm. Yep.
Well, what our tagline is for Bread Basket now is it's Alberta's premier fighting game tournament. What we focus on Super Smash Brothers, of course, that is our first and truest love, but we're including a lot more games this year. We have Rivals of Aether 2, we have Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, Granblue, Guilty Gear, 2XKO. Oh, there's one more.
Cory (18:42)
course.
Ethan (18:55)
the other anime fighter sorry sorry Blazblue Blazblue there it is I didn't for I did not forget you Blazblue community
Cory (18:57)
Hmm that that other one Blazblue. There we go redemption. There we go quick on your feet
He didn't. He didn't. Ethan, Ethan recovered. It's all good. It's all good. Awesome.
Ethan (19:09)
I ⁓
I played Ruby Rose in that one game. There you go. That's my redemption. Anyway, and we just want to create this premiere event like you would get in BC, like you'd get in Ontario. A place with a lot of prizing, a lot of prestige for winning, huge brackets, a great venue.
Cory (19:15)
There you
Ethan (19:29)
And this year we have the we have Norquest College as our venue They were very kind to provide their their atrium and stuff like that. So we were able to run in there Run tables. They're also providing a lot of the PCs for the PC setups Which is it's so good. There's it's so nice of them there. They're so supportive of grassroots esports and French Bread Gaming as well. They've actually brought me on as a coach there for their Mario Kart team
Cory (19:33)
Nice.
Nice.
Phenomenal. Phenomenal.
Love that.
fantastic.
Ethan (19:57)
it's just been a great partnership with Norquest so far and I'm excited to see where it keeps going. Yeah, Bread Basket. It's if you want to watch the best of the best in Western Canada, you come to Bread Basket.
Cory (20:03)
100%.
Okay, well, there you go. There you go. Well, also shout out to NorQuest College, dear friends of the show within the NorQuest Esports program, Carlo, Jackie, Noah, great team over there. And honestly, great venue choice. I was gonna add, that was gonna be my follow-up question is where is this happening? Because when you talk about Alberta's premier event for Smash, for fighting games,
Ethan (20:11)
That's where they'll be.
Yep. Yep.
Mm-hmm.
Cory (20:37)
You gotta come up with a good venue to host these things and to have good options and not feeling too tight or claustrophobic or anything. ⁓ no, that's great.
Ethan (20:47)
Yep. ⁓
If we're talking about Premier locations, I have a connection, but we don't have the price yet. Our long term goal is to run in Ford Hall.
Cory (20:53)
Yes.
Ford Hall, okay.
Ethan (21:00)
Ford Hall
in Rogers Place, right there in that big hall.
Cory (21:04)
I am so glad to hear that because I've been wondering about the future of, esports and Roger's Place. Because doing my homework even before this show, looking up Roger's Place and seeing esports events compatibility for, you know, the tech that's built in Roger's Place. You know, Ford Hall, the rink itself — ⁓
Ethan (21:11)
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
be incredible. We just don't have the money.
Cory (21:27)
That's fair. That's fair. But honestly, long term goal. That's the first time I've ever heard someone say on the show here that that's a long term goal for them. That's fantastic. Ford Hall. So I guess, you know, well, before we move on, so I don't forget about it, Ford Hall, like what would you be envisioning, if you were putting together you had the cash flow in hand, you were putting together the proposal.
You know, without maybe giving away too much of the secret sauce or anything, but what would be the potentially high level ideal scenario of what a French Bread Gaming event would be there? I'm assuming Bread Basket, kind of the evolution of Bread Basket at Ford Hall. But yeah, no, no, fair enough.
Ethan (22:04)
Yeah, we might rename it, but we'll see. ⁓
it would be like it is now a premier fighting game tournament. We would have every title. We would get official support from as many titles as we possibly could. We would get tons of setups for each so that we can have potential for friendlies. We could run multiple brackets, things like that. A large prize pool, all the things. A big stage with a big LED wall, professional commentators.
There's so many connections that I have and things that I want to do that I just need to unlock with Income.
Cory (22:39)
For sure. Well, yeah, I, I, I feel, yeah, I feel you. I feel like I'm in the same boat on the podcast front, but, you I digress, but, ⁓ you know, in the, the future, if you can, if you still tolerate me by then I'm, I'd love to be involved on the, reporting slash podcasting side of things, you know, down the road with bread basket or anything like that. So.
Ethan (22:41)
Yeah, that's how grassroots always is.
Cory (23:03)
You know, I'm not saying that for the show. I'm legitimately saying that with personal interest, but no, that's awesome. Beautiful. So, you know, obviously we kind of alluded to it. You're not just running just a big event like Bread Basket. You got weeklies in the mix. So, you know, obviously it kind of correct me if I'm wrong. It started kind of off with the weeklies. So then what did you learn from that that, you know, you you absolutely needed?
Ethan (23:04)
Mm.
sounds perfect.
Cory (23:27)
⁓ before kind of taking that attempt on Bread Basket at that particular scale and just continuing to sort of see that evolve.
Ethan (23:36)
⁓ Well, what I needed was connections. That's the main thing. I didn't have any connections within the community. How actually I went the how I got my connections of my first start was I went to a local back in 2022 and I met one of the better players there and his name always just stuck in my mind. Those of you listening might know him RM8 or Renton McGlashan I reached out to him.
And he connected me with all of the TOs who have run a larger regional event in the past five years. He made a group chat with all of us and said, hi, is, introduced me what my vision was. Go. So I got to meet Cali, they're the head TO down in Lethbridge. Chandelure, or also commonly known as Charlotte Letters.
They are the lead TO for Lacombe Dome, is one of the bigger fighting game tournaments in and they have they have other fighting games They have Mario Kart. They have Yu-Gi-Oh! They have tons of stuff down the comb there and I learned so much from them they're the reason that I started French Bread Gaming as a nonprofit because they Were showing me the potential grants and city
support I could get through that.
And,
Yeah, it was just a big learning curve through there, getting to know everyone. And then once I make my impression, they introduced me to more people. So like, yeah, I was introduced to,
Andrew Silver, he's one of the best players in Edmonton. And then he introduced me to Marc of Game Con. And then, yeah, Marc introduced me to Carlo. And then Carlo introduced me to Ronnie, and then Ronnie introduced me to you, and the chain goes on.
Cory (24:56)
Mm.
Right, there we go. Good guy.
Just
Yeah. ⁓
wow. Well, shout out to Ronnie. I just saw him the other night at a VR cave event downtown. I love that. The community is just it's so tight knit. It's small, but the connections, the open doors and everything, that's huge. I love that.
Connections are huge, number one. That's so important.
as you go between connections, learning experiences, we kind of touched on a little bit of it. You've had a few instances in the past, but I guess I'll give it one more shot on this. If there was that one time where literally everything almost fell apart that or as I like to call it, a more non-sensor version, the oh sh*t moment of just completely
falling apart again from a TO perspective, obviously trying to problem solve on the fly. Is there another, is there a particular story during Bread Basket or something in regards to that?
Ethan (26:06)
No, actually, we,
it was during this year's Christmas party. was very recently. we had a, a big, oh shit moment, where we had, we had more people than we expected. But the thing about our Christmas party is that as a catered event. So I had allotted for more people than we thought. And so I put in pretty much the exact amount of attendees that we had for our catering. But the thing that I didn't.
Cory (26:11)
Okay.
Ethan (26:31)
realize was that I had offered an option to attend the tournament without the catered food where they can then go buy their own food. It was mainly just for people I figured who had like allergies or something, but I'd say 75 % of the attendees chose that option and just like bought wings or something, got something small because they didn't want to pay the price for the burger or for the catering. I ended up losing over a thousand dollars on that event.
Cory (26:44)
Of course, yeah.
Ethan (26:58)
just through catering alone. They also did a Bellatro Polychrome x 1.5 on the catering price, because I just used what it was last year as my figures and I didn't realize they had raised the price.
Cory (27:07)
Hmm.
Ethan (27:10)
So we lost over $1,000 and I hadn't been working for two years at this point and all that came out of my own personal finances. And it was like, well guys, we might need to shut down if I don't have any money and we're going to keep losing money like this. We might have to end it. But we had one more event planned, which was our latest bigger event called Victory Road.
It was our Arcadian event that we held with Norquest. And we ended up making back pretty much everything we had lost from that event. That event was such a huge success and pretty much brought us back on our feet.
Cory (27:44)
Your heart rate must have just been going up and down, up and down, just beating, beating, then slowing, slowing, like back to normal, normal. ⁓
Ethan (27:47)
Yup, ⁓ yeah.
Mm-hmm. I was I was fighting tears at some points.
It was it was a lose very hard to maybe have to admit defeat
Cory (27:58)
Glad to see that it's still running. Things are still running. You're still here. know, obviously not without its ups and downs, obviously, but so much to look forward to ⁓ from here on out, obviously. whatever challenges come your way, it's cliche, but it's definitely, think everything's made you a lot stronger. you know, obviously keeping in mind the financial side of things like everybody else when it comes to
to putting on these kinds of events, because you don't want to come across those situations all the time. You want to just have that confidence where it's like, here's my credit card. Just go buy the damn thing. Just make it work. We've got to make it work. We've got 20 minutes. The show must go on. Run faster.
Ethan (28:30)
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
The show must go on. Run.
Cory (28:44)
As you have come along this journey, especially with Bread Basket and continuing to just to get through it and, you know, find successes with other events to kind of make up for the ones that, you know, obviously you had a bit of a loss for you, whether it's, you know, professionally, personally, financially, whatever the case may be, you know, growing as a TO with Breadbasket, you know, at which
point within the Bread Basket events did you kind of come to realize as it I'm sure it's happened by now or maybe it still hasn't I'm not sure but you know when you've kind of looked at the the turnout you've looked at you've heard the reactions and the feedback where it's like you know this this has something to go up against Battle of BC you know what at what point has that has that happened yet or not
for you.
Ethan (29:32)
happened
about a week ago when the head TO of Battle of BC reached out and said, hey, can we run ads?
Cory (29:38)
Okay. Okay. Huh. That's-
Ethan (29:39)
You
And can
we give out passes and stuff like that? So.
Cory (29:44)
So when you get a request like that, what does that mean to you when you look at, know, because for each from a provincial level, everyone's kind of competing against each other. So, but when you when you get a request like that, I feel like the competition is kind of goes out the window where it's like, we're just trying to build this together to put Canada on the map, to put Canada as a serious contender for this kind of thing, where it's like, you know,
Ethan (29:56)
Mm hmm. Yeah.
Exactly.
Cory (30:13)
This is real, this is legit. Like, let's not mess around.
Ethan (30:17)
⁓ Well, I'm gonna talk about the TO of BC. His name is Kevin. He's also known as Deer. He's the director of Galint. I'm sure know him or know of him at least. Yes.
Cory (30:28)
I know of him. Yeah, I know of Glint, yes.
Ethan (30:30)
so i met him before and he he just remembered me he liked me ⁓ he wanted to reach out and ever since then we've just kept in touch with our mutual things battle of bc was actually having some issues with getting their nintendo license and
Cory (30:44)
Hmm.
Ethan (30:45)
So he was updating me on all of that in order to keep us from making the mistakes they did. That's our stuff. yeah, all of, especially Western Canada is very united in our scenes like this. Alberta, Saskatchewan, BC specifically, and Manitoba, even Manitoba does support a lot of Alberta players.
Sadly, they're running their big regional the same weekend as Bread Basket, so they won't be coming out.
Cory (31:08)
Maybe they're run ads. Right, yeah. Yeah.
Ethan (31:09)
They'll be cross promotion. We'll be like, go check out this stream for
a Perfect Pivot is what their event is called. So let's shout them out.
Cory (31:14)
Hmm, okay.
No, that's great.
Down the road, do you see ⁓ a thing where, you know, there's more of a Western Canada event sort of thing that's sort of combining everyone's joining forces for something. Obviously we have Esport Canada on a national level, but I'm curious, like, are these the breadcrumbs, so to speak, to kind of lead into stuff like that?
Ethan (31:38)
There has been ideas floating around of a Western Canada circuit. We did a sort of prototype circuit a couple years ago with the Canadian Brew House where we ran smash events in every single brew house across Canada. I facilitated that, I gathered all the TOs and stuff like that and then the winners of each thing we flew out to Bread Basket 2025.
⁓ So we've floated around the idea of doing something similar, maybe without the brew house affiliation, maybe with. A lot of brew houses, as great as the Icehouse is, as a venue. Some of them aren't that great of venues for esports. It's a restaurant, first and foremost, right?
Cory (32:12)
I mean, that's fair. That's fair.
Ethan (32:14)
So no slight to them at all. ⁓
Cory (32:16)
Oh no, no.
Every so often when I hear anything regarding esports, Brew House seems to come up one way or another. It was the same situation I think in another instant where, oh it was NHL esports. Brew House seemed to be a common denominator.
Ethan (32:35)
Brewhouse has always been very interested in the NHL esports. They've wanted to run their local stuff. I know because they wanted me to do it, but it's just never really been able to get legs.
Cory (32:45)
Hmm. Have you? What would NHL be on on the docket ⁓ at at a Bread Basket event? - That's fair. That's fair. Does it does it happen on weeklies now? I'm just curious personally. OK.
Ethan (32:52)
Pay me enough money, brewhouse, I'll do it.
No, we don't run CHEL ⁓
on the weeklies or anything like that. We've just been trying to get it going. We have like setup sourced and things like that. And we want to run a kind of similar circuit, but just in Edmonton based with NHL. Find the best CHEL player in Edmonton was the tagline and stuff. It might still happen. So I hope I'm not leaking anything.
i haven't heard anything about it in months
Cory (33:24)
You never know.
All good. All good. There's still hope. Maybe there's hope. There's still hope.
Ethan (33:28)
Yeah, there's still hope.
If you like NHL, reach out to FBG, maybe we'll run something in the future. Who knows?
Cory (33:34)
Well, we'll stay in touch. We'll stay in touch. That could be fun. That could be fun. Looking at 2026 this year as we're chatting here, it's early in the year still, obviously, but what are some of the things you're able to share with us right now as far as what's on the schedule for French bread Gaming?
Ethan (33:56)
Well, this year is actually going to be pretty sparse for events for us because we have put a lot of focus into something else. This is the big announcement I was alluding to earlier. French Bread Gaming is going to be starting an esports team. So we are not just going to be signing Edmonton players, but we're going to be signing players from all over. But we have a program that we are doing called the Rising Star Program, which we are going to be focusing on.
like minorities and unrepresented groups in Edmonton, in esports. We want to be able to provide them with the means and capabilities to go out to events, prove themselves, get results, and move on to becoming that professional player they want to be.
Cory (34:35)
Well, in terms of that esports program, why that decision? What went into that whole process?
Ethan (34:47)
I'll be completely honest with you. We made this entire program for one person. There is... The program is going to be available to all of people and it's just like a great idea. But the idea of this came because of one person and his name is Darcy. His tag is Real. He is a Smash player from the Alberta Smash scene and he is the most lovely person. He has so much potential.
Cory (34:56)
course. Yeah.
Ethan (35:11)
in this game, just life has dealt him with some certain...
issues and ⁓ he needs just that push. So we know that if Darcy exists, there's other people like this that exist that don't have the support that they need in order to go pro and do and achieve their dream. And we want to be able to facilitate that.
Cory (35:22)
100%.
And it's happening here in Edmonton.
Ethan (35:31)
happening here in Edmonton.
Mm-hmm.
Cory (35:33)
that
the slogan city of champions like it just it just fits that's why I love using that tagline ⁓ no me too no that that's great as far as the the esports team is gonna be an esports team you said so is there are we sticking to one title or we're gonna open it up to multiple titles okay okay
Ethan (35:40)
Mm-hmm. I miss it.
Nope, are staying fighting games, but we are multiple titles. ⁓
We don't have exact player list yet, but we have a mainly Smash players. That's what we're going to stick to because it's what we know. But we have a Rivals of Aether player as well as a Street Fighter player and a Tekken player who are both interested and they want to be a part of this program.
Cory (36:00)
That's okay.
Well, in terms of more info, I'm sure that'll come along the way. That's super exciting to hear and definitely excited to see more updates, coverage, news and all that. Obviously, I feel like could be an opportunity to have a return on the show, to dive deeper into the teams and just progress, you know, how they're doing, how the players are doing and how they're growing as individuals, as athletes.
professionals and seeing where their careers go with that. So yeah, that's that's huge. that's that's a few months out. OK, OK. sounds good. Well, definitely looking forward to more as it happens with that. But yeah, I know, you know, take a look back on on French bread gaming as a whole, you know, obviously
Ethan (36:48)
that's a few months out, so, yeah.
Cory (37:03)
focusing around Smash and other fighting games. and now an esports team in the coming months for the year 2026. obviously lots is happening obviously in the community. NorQuest College, Case in Point, great friend and partner on both sides of this conversation of course.
Building esports, building esports teams, varsity teams, programming, drop in gaming, you know, just a lot of different resources and support and community building. You got GameCon Canada coming in another year in Edmonton and is from what I understand a five year extension now. ⁓ So that's big news. So.
Ethan (37:42)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yep, ⁓
FBG is an official partner of Game Con. We'll be ⁓ at Game Con running their fighting game, Esports.
Cory (37:53)
Okay, fantastic. That's exciting news. How are you guys feeling about that with Game Con? ⁓
Ethan (37:58)
⁓ I'm
a little nervous because it's very close to after Bread Basket, right? They're very, very close to each other. So what we're seeing GameCon as is more less of a showcase and more of an outreach. What our Game Con bracket is going to be for is geared towards the people who are curious, the people who are interested, the people who want to be a part of the community but don't really know what the best foot forward is.
Cory (38:04)
Right.
Ethan (38:23)
There are some very key members to our community who their first ever tournament was Game Con 2024.
And so we want to keep doing that. We want to find these people who are just gamers who are interested and show them the community, show them the ropes. Like this is what we do, this is how we do it, and this is how much we love it. So that's what Game Con is for.
Cory (38:43)
Yeah. Yeah.
that's exciting. mean, and, you know, on top of that, they of course, it was announced that there's a new game industry summit that's also coming leading up to Game Con So that's also exciting. Nope. That's the North American Game Industry Summit.
Ethan (38:57)
the one at Norquest?
Okay.
Cory (39:02)
Yeah, so new game industry summit co-produced by GameCon leading into their main conference there. So that's super exciting.
Ethan (39:11)
Yeah, because there's...
I don't remember, but there's some summit at some point where I've been invited to be a speaker, but I guess I'll get reminded hopefully when it happens.
Cory (39:19)
Hopefully not
a last minute thing. by the way, you're going to be talking about this and you're on in five minutes. Not to mention, obviously, aside from GCC and NorQuest, we've obviously local staples as well, overclock gaming. In fact, I think I went there once or twice, actually. It's been a long time, sad to say.
Ethan (39:28)
Mm-hmm.
long time so I've been
there too.
Cory (39:43)
with some local fighting game meetups there and hoping to actually have them on the show at some point. And aside from that, obviously provincially, we got Esports Alberta, AESA as well as more recently in the last couple of years, the Alberta Scholastic Esports League as well.
Ethan (40:01)
Yes. ⁓
Productions, it is a group of talented tournament organizers that run Melee, P +, and P and something else. No, it's just Melee and P+. Melee and P plus events, they do incredible work. They are our Melee contractors whenever we're running a Melee event, it's with Rosehall Productions.
Jayden Serena, just those two, they're incredible. Then there is the Sherwood Heights Community League. They have a Smash Club that does incredible workout in Sherwood Park. Sadly, their venue is shut down for the weekly events, but they're still very active running at the Colchester Community Hall every second Tuesday of the month. And...
have awesome events there. always have rivals to Smash Bros, sometimes to XKO and other fun side events. During the summer, it's an incredible time because we'll play kickball or whatever out back. There is the U of A Smash Club. Shout outs to Roman and Devin who are have been taking that on since the other TOs have since stepped down.
And then there's NAIT Smash. They are the That's currently run by I'm just gonna call them by their tags because I don't actually know their real names Bandage and Wafflez
Cory (41:16)
waffle sounds familiar actually
Ethan (41:17)
Yeah, waffles with a
Z. Yeah, everyone's heard of waffles. Bandage's real name is Alex. I do know that, Alex, if you're watching, but there's just so many Alex's, so.
Cory (41:27)
Love it. No, that's great. I mean, it's good intel for me. So I know a few more. There's a few groups, a couple of groups there that you mentioned that I wasn't familiar with. So that's really good to hear. And know because obviously with Good Game Edmonton, I also try and set it up as a resource for community reference of who's who in the esports space — players, groups, organizers, TOs, all that.
all that good stuff so definitely need to do some updating after this episode for that so that's good to hear.
Ethan (41:58)
I got more if you
want to keep if you want to keep it going? There's so many great people who run great stuff. There's yeah Yeah, we'll wrap up. Yep The the two big ones I want to name are St. Albert Smash or they're now St. Albert Arcade ⁓ They run out of the St. Albert Alliance Community Church. I don't know there's community the St. Albert Alliance Church. They have a great
Cory (42:03)
Okay. Well, yeah, give me a few more and we'll take the rest offline. But yeah, no, what's a few others you can name?
Yeah. OK. OK.
Ethan (42:25)
⁓ last Friday of every month event, free pizza, ultimate, melee, rivals, everything. It's incredible for the community. And then the last one that I really need to shout out is Mason out in Wetaskiwin with the Indigenous Smash League. Doing a very good job promoting esports in Indigenous communities, working with the Chiefs and things like that. It's been, he's been such a pillar to the community and getting an underrepresented group out into esports.
Cory (42:49)
Love that. That's fantastic.
Ethan (42:51)
⁓ Leduc! Last Stock Leduc is a organization that's running out there. have, they're a bit of a hiatus right now. They're returning in the summer, but that's run by my good friend Sam. And then I think Spencer is another person that is also
Cory (42:51)
Okay.
Ethan (43:06)
working with him on that. They've worked alongside French Bread Gaming before. We've gotten them venues with the Brew House. We work very close. I actually have his monitors sitting right there.
Cory (43:16)
if we're talking venue options for for things to host coming from the broader innovation ecosystem, I would be remiss to not mention Edmonton Unlimited ⁓ in downtown Edmonton. They've
⁓ had obviously just recently this week that we were recording this vrCAVE event for some VR experiences between vrCAVE and their sister org Basement Bunker Labs Heroes Together VR and Hospital of Horror and we had it happen at Edmonton Unlimited in their space so they obviously offer entrepreneurial programming for
founders and startups in the tech space and the broader innovation space. This is not an ad by the way, I just want to give you a bit of a spiel. Great potential there for you know esports tournaments and things like that. As I know there was some esports activity aside from the game development, game dev demos and play testing that's gone on but in terms of esports there was in fact an esports tournament that I was able to witness there.
Ethan (43:58)
Yeah.
Cory (44:19)
through a event festival called C-Tribe and that was part of their gaming arm that they were having over the course of the late summer in August a couple years back and yeah, so great great potential obviously cost and accommodations and support is obviously things to be worked out, but definitely there's been hackathons and
Also, game jams have happened more recently in fact, Game Camp Edmonton helping to host Global Game Jam and just seeing the game jams happen in that particular space, great way to cross paths with other folks and just.
maybe looking at potential entrepreneurial routes as well, or just at the end of the day, just networking.
hey are you familiar with Edmonton Unlimited? I guess I forgot to ask you yeah okay
Ethan (45:08)
I'm not actually. No, this
is the first, as you were saying that I pulled up their website and I'm looking.
Cory (45:14)
Funny enough, former workplace actually of mine a few years back. Yeah, no, it's definitely a space to consider. They've had events in different areas of their space from kind of small events of just kind of a meet and greets kind of networking mixer style stuff, whether it's like an esports industry mixer you'd want to do.
We got Edmonton Screen that's actually in the same building up on the sixth floor with Ronnie over there. They'd be a probably good collaborator as well for that kind of thing.
Ethan (45:46)
Edmonton's
Screen is sponsoring Bread Basket.
Cory (45:49)
Fantastic. OK. well, shout out to Edmonton Screen for that. That is the ongoing work and effort to put digital media from video games of game development to e-sports on the map here in Edmonton. That's fantastic.
Yeah, maybe look at it as a potential future venue piece whether it's for Bread Basket or maybe something in between the weeklies and and that so
Ethan (46:11)
Yeah, we are looking
for a venue to start running a monthly. We were going to use NorQuest, but they're not available to run till about May. So maybe if we want to start something.
Cory (46:21)
Looking into the future that that crystal ball of yours, you you talk about some of the goals that you Ford Hall You know with Game Con and in the Expo Centre Where where else could we conquer? You know in the next three to five years Obviously the the goal I feel is to likely bring, you know a national major smash tournament to
Ethan (46:23)
Mm-hmm.
Cory (46:43)
to compete alongside these other big, big events. Over the course of the next few years, how do we see us getting from that roughly, two, 300, regional to, something that's, LumiRank recognized type major that's something to be said on a national stage.
to showcase Edmonton, but obviously Alberta as well
Ethan (47:11)
Our next step sadly is sponsor dollars. Money talks. ⁓ Due to the nature of Smash Bros. as an esport, ⁓ not a lot of esports orgs provide much when it comes to flight compensation and funding and something like when flying out their players. That's something we also aim to do different. We want to provide that. So a lot of times if you want to get the top players, you want to get them interested,
Cory (47:14)
Right. Money talks. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mm.
Ethan (47:34)
You need to be able to help them on their flight up. You need to be able to provide them with this sort of housing and that sort of stuff. And you need to have a prize worth winning. And of course, you need to have a production that is ⁓ high level that people are watching so that the eyes are on that tournament for the notoriety of the tournament. So we just want to expand our scope by bringing in better players.
by having a better production, by making a better show for people.
Cory (48:02)
Love that. I love that.
Ethan (48:03)
So that's
our goal is to reach out to places and advertise for them because we want to put on the best show possible that people are going to watch. Why don't you want your name attached to the best show possible? Yeah. Exactly.
Cory (48:16)
I can't argue with that.
Well, you know, assuming the money the money comes, we talk about production value, production quality, definitely can't recommend Kiwi Productions enough to check that out. I know they'd be they've been keen and friends of the show. I've used their studio in the past. But being able to do event production within an esports capacity, I think would be a fun challenge for them. You talk about big LED walls in the back.
Ethan (48:42)
Mm-hmm.
Cory (48:42)
ground kind of thing. That's the idea. That's
Ethan (48:44)
Yeah, like, well, that's the idea.
Cory (48:47)
what they got going for him over there. So it's definitely on the docket.
Ethan (48:49)
That's
good. There's a couple of production companies that got their start in Smash grassroots and stuff like that. Depending on budget and stuff, we would love to be able to use them in the future just to support the community, support community, right? ⁓ But someone like Kiwi would be probably a great interim thing if we have a budget for production in the future. But it's like...
Cory (49:03)
Totally. Yeah. 100%.
Ethan (49:12)
we're not at that level yet, that would probably be a great opportunity for both of us.
Cory (49:14)
For sure. Yeah. Yeah, no,
no, 100%. Yeah, definitely hit up Bryce and the and the team at Kiwi there. So for sure. When the time is right, when the time comes. Obviously you few things jumped out just now that you mentioned, you know, things like funding to to support folks that are maybe out of province to be able to come to
Ethan (49:24)
will do.
Cory (49:37)
these events, especially as they get bigger. They're a bigger deal. They're something that people are playing towards to compete, to show off their skill set and to win something significant, whether it's cash prize, cash prize plus something else, whatever the case may be. And just with all those supports, if there's potential sponsors, civic leaders,
public agencies or Angel investments a very big thing in Western Canada with Startup TNT obviously But you know if any of these folks are listening right now. What's one concrete thing? That they could start doing this year
Ethan (50:05)
Yep. ⁓
Cory (50:16)
to help move the needle for this community, for esports, in this case, to support French Bread Gaming, FPG, to help support this from your lens of what you're trying to accomplish.
Ethan (50:31)
Well, what FPG needs right now is with our esports program starting is staff. We need player managers for these players. We need like people to work the back end and that sort of stuff. And those people cost money. They need payment. I can only do so much working for free for my own company. I have not in the two years of French Bread Gaming, I have not seen a single dollar.
come to my account from this company's revenue because all of it's been reinvested back into equipment, back into other staff, graphics, more tournaments, more prizes, that sort of stuff. And what we need is to be able to get people on our payroll in order for them to focus on this full time to facilitate the growth that we are wanting, projecting that can be possible.
Cory (51:19)
Right. So programming grants that that kind of thing, perhaps kind of thing. Yeah, for sure.
Ethan (51:20)
⁓
Exactly. Those those sorts of things are incredibly helpful. ⁓
Connections, again, are something that's super helpful. If like there's any company out there that visions aligned where you want to create this safe space community of gamers, that sort of stuff, that's what we want to do. And we will promote your product, your business or whatever within that safe space. I'll tell you right now.
The Smash community is the most loyal community you'll ever meet. We got a hundred dollars worth of Denny's gift cards for the monthlies at one point. We went to Denny's for four years straight. Because they gave us, we got, we, the, and the thing is that entire gift card was all absorbed by one single line. A round of chocolate milk for everyone.
Cory (51:59)
That is commitment.
Okay, well now I gotta bring up this story. I'm ashamed to say that it was the year, I want to say 2022, 2023, 2022.
Ethan (52:10)
You
Cory (52:20)
228s here. We'll go with that year. I probably have proof somewhere else that says otherwise, but that was the year that I tried chocolate milk for the very first time.
Ethan (52:31)
That's crazy.
Cory (52:34)
Ha ha!
Ethan (52:34)
How did you get
away with never having chocolate milk?
Cory (52:36)
I mean, growing up, my parents just never bought it. No, no, no. I think I was offered it, but I just said no. So, yeah.
Ethan (52:40)
You never went to a friend's house and they had chocolate and milk?
Okay, that's fair then.
What'd you think?
Cory (52:49)
I liked it. It's good. It's very good. And now I know what to do if I ever get a Denny's gift card. A round of chocolate milks for the table. Let's do it. Stat. Come on.
Ethan (52:50)
It's good. Yeah.
Round of chocolate milk for the table.
Thank you, Silver Andrew.
Cory (53:02)
have to say though, if Bread Basket becomes that third Canadian major, which I feel like at this point it's bound to, I have, you're almost there. It sounds like it. You're almost there. Okay.
Ethan (53:08)
We're almost there this year. This year we might hit it. We might just
barely scrape that A tier. It'll be hard. It'll be hard.
Cory (53:16)
Okay.
Well, regardless, let me know how it goes on that. I'll try and stay in touch and everything. you know, what do you... Community is everything and you talk about loyal fans, loyal community, and the followers, whether they're new, they're just discovering what Smash is about or just the fact that there was an event. Or you're loyalists that are...
Ethan (53:25)
Of course.
Cory (53:40)
are coming up to compete, got folks flying in. What do you hope that people are saying about the Edmonton scene three to five years from now
Ethan (53:51)
Well, I want people to look back and say, wow, that was one of the most fun events I've ever been to. The community was a community that I enjoyed. I laughed with. I had a good time. They were welcoming. I want us to be welcoming, open, and fun. That's what I want to be known as. Let me tell you a story compared to this for last year. I don't know how much you've looked into competitive Smash Bros before, but there is a legend in the community.
especially Canadian Smash, his tag is Big D. He is an ice climbers player from Vancouver. His name is Dawson and he's about 6'9". Which is why he is called Big D. He's a big man. He came to our event last year and he won the whole thing. He had won an event in years because he's an old head, right?
Cory (54:26)
Damn.
Ethan (54:38)
After the tournament, he comes up to you staying at my house and he goes, Chips are going to the water park tomorrow. Come with us. So I go to the water park with a bunch of group of people from BC. We had the greatest time at the airport. He gives me a big hug and says, this has been one of the greatest weekends of my life.
Cory (54:44)
Okay.
Ethan (54:54)
And that made me feel so warm inside because like, not only was I providing something for a community member, this is a community member that I have known for, watched, like loved his gameplay, loved his story this whole time. And the fact that now I'm able to be a part of it was so it was very heartwarming and very cool.
Cory (55:12)
That's awesome. That's awesome.
Looking again into the future there, three, five years from now, we talk about some gaps still in terms of formalities, things like that. What else on that front in terms of programming or funding just to help further sustain and grow the community from that side of things? What are you hoping to see more of by that point?
Ethan (55:40)
I'm hoping to see more direct support of just esports in general from the City of Edmonton. I would love the City itself to be funding events and maybe not even funding like organizations, but starting their own events for these things and reaching out to the grassroots community to then run them and pay them in that sort of sense as a contractor. I think
Edmonton could be, I know they've unanimously agreed on trying to be an esports hub. But that's just been jargons thus far. Someone who's in this esports community. It's it's been a lot of talk. I want to see the game, literally.
Cory (56:17)
Literally. Yeah. No, I can vouch for that. know, having, well, our current mayor, Andrew Nack, when he was city councillor, had him on the show. We talked about a lot of that. So, yeah, I mean, a lot of time has passed since then. And yeah, I agree. There hasn't been much action. As far as where the source comes from in terms of where this support comes
Ethan (56:24)
Mm-hmm.
Cory (56:41)
is going to be happening through remains to be seen. Is it the City? Is it the business associations? is it Edmonton Screen? Is it these other entities of sorts? We don't know. We don't know yet. But I would say we continue to advocate and be loud where we're at.
Ethan (56:57)
Mm-hmm. So we'll see.
Cory (57:05)
Just promote, tag, you know?
Ethan (57:07)
I did meet Andrew Nack at a event he was running. He was at the U of A answering a bunch of questions and playing Rocket League. ⁓ It was during his campaign, yeah. And I went up there and I talked about my company and what I'm doing and he seemed very excited about that. He also, he whooped my ass. He's good at Rocket League.
Cory (57:14)
yes, I think that was during his campaign, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Awesome.
He's good at a lot of games, I just want to point that out. He kicked my ass at Mario Kart and I... I mean, mind you, I'm not the best, but again, like I get by where I do pretty good, but I was in like last place and he's just cruising along at first. Felt like I was playing with my brother-in-law. Shout out to Alex, another Alex there.
Ethan (57:27)
Yeah. Yeah.
⁓ Yeah, so many Alex's.
No, ⁓ I did invite him to Bread Basket informally then but also formally through the like contact the mayor of the like the City of Edmonton Mayor website thing.
Cory (57:55)
Hmm
Before we wrap, Ethan, I will want to just open the floor just quickly here before we wrap things up as far as where can people find you and stay up to date with everything French Bread Gaming.
Ethan (58:11)
Well, our main source of updating people on things like that is our Discord. I'll give you a link to that. ⁓ We have that and the Alberta Smash Discord are both very prominent places to see that sort of stuff. FrenchBreadGaming.com. Newly refurbished. It looks nice now. Yeah. Thank you. I did that in an evening.
Cory (58:17)
Be in the show notes.
I saw! It's beautiful, I will say.
I'm impressed. We should talk. I need to update my website. I mean, I have more pages probably than you, but yeah.
Ethan (58:34)
Hahaha
Yeah,
it was a frenzy night of remembering how web dev works. ⁓ There's our Twitter as well. I think it's @FrenchBreadGame, I think. The Frenchbread Gaming must have been taken.
Cory (58:49)
Well, in the, okay, Twitter, okay.
Instagram.
Ethan (58:58)
We do have an Instagram, it is @FrenchBreadGaming. It's very rarely used. We're going to try to bring it back once we get our esports program started. Seeing that we're going to have some funding for that, we're going to be able to get a graphic designer hired. So that should be nice.
Cory (59:10)
There we go.
Okay, well that lots of exciting stuff. Like I said, I'm super excited for the esports program here. That's that's on the way. So I'm sure that'll be a nice new section on the refurbished website. So that is good through that progress of the website enhancement I am happy to say I did add French bread gaming to my website under the esports section and event section so
Ethan (59:28)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yippee!
Cory (59:41)
⁓ yeah, I continue to try and keep that up to date as I try and go through a bit of a website overhaul at some point or another. But first and foremost, a brand refresh that I'm excited about with a MacEwen Design student as part of their capstone project. So that's super cool. So I'll be excited to reveal that later this year. So yeah, thanks. yeah, and I guess, before we go, before we wrap, is there anything else that we
Ethan (59:56)
Nice. That is really cool.
awesome.
Cory (1:00:07)
Haven't talked about if there's anything else major you want to mention at this point in time. Otherwise, I can wrap things up here.
Ethan (1:00:15)
Nope, that's it. Come to Bread Basket. I want to see you there, specifically, the person I'm pointing at or the person who is listening to this podcast. You specifically. I know your name. Jim. I know you're listening. If there's a Jim, he's going to be freaked out.
Cory (1:00:17)
Come to Bread Basket.
Over there, yeah. You.
likely.
There we go.
Just just single out Jim. That's all the gyms. I like I'm watching Shoresy is like, Jim, Jim, Jim. Yeah. OK. Good. I I'm guilty because I went to the Shoresy hockey night. So that was fun at Rogers. That was fun. But anyway, well, thank you so much, Ethan. It was.
Ethan (1:00:31)
Yeah, I want you.
Yeah, that's why that name was at the top of my head.
that's so cool.
Cory (1:00:51)
been an absolute delight, a lot of tangents, well over time, but thank you so much for everything. It was great to chat with you. Hopefully next time we can get your co-founder on there as well. busy guy, no, it's all good. I appreciate you making the time at least for this. I'm sure we'll touch base in a follow-up later on. But of course, if you enjoyed this conversation, give it a thumbs up, leave a comment, or just share it with a friend or your network.
Ethan (1:01:01)
Yep. He's a busy guy.
Cory (1:01:20)
You find more episodes at GoodGameYEG.ca and if you haven't already, hit that subscribe button wherever you listen to podcasts. Until next time, Sellarcast out.
