So I just watched King of Chinatown too.
As someone on the outside looking in, Triforce has always come across to me as a guy with his heart in the right place and who is passionate about gaming, but who doesn't have anything even remotely resembling a business plan. And so the way things run in the Empire just come across as mad shady, and it's why dudes like Henry Cen troll so hard about the guys in the ARC living off Chef Boyardee and Spaghetti-Os, tourney winnings paying the rent, and "contracts" drawn up on napkins. It's why there are so many ex-members.
It's nice to have lofty goals, but the reality is that a business must either provide a service that it can charge for, or produce a product that it can sell. Empire Arcadia does neither, which is why the question "So what the fuck does Empire Arcadia actually
*do*?" comes up so often. And it's why the answer is always a
long, rambling statement from Triforce which leaves the person who asked the question even more confused than before.
From Empire Arcadia's website:
Empire Arcadia Inc. (The Empire) is a corporation forged from gamers to help develop and preserve the fundamentals, elements of the Greater Gaming Community and its culture. Empire Arcadia leads by example by providing information and performing the procedures and functions to the G.G.C. on how to express other way to enjoying videogames. The organization uses cultural elements such as Music, Fashion, Art, Media, Education, Competition and health to express video gaming in its other formats.
Empire Arcadia Inc. is a business that has successfully and feasibly merged the eccentricities and cultural elements of the gamer culture into the professional marketing system of the videogame industry. Using this formula has proved successful for Empire Arcadia Inc. and will be for you too.
Triforce always refers to the Empire as a "development company". OK, so what does it develop? It was founded in 2002, so that is coming up on 10 years now. It isn't unreasonable to expect to see some fruits of labor that this company has developed in all that time. If a few sponsorship deals with Evil Controllers and Jinx clothing are all that it has developed in 10 years, then by every metric the company is a failure.
Empire Arcadia Inc. creates venues that will draw hundreds to thousands of spectators to expose this love of videogames to the mainstream. Most importantly the procedures that we use enables us to make a difference in the videogame society as a whole from the home, to the arcades, right to the very developers and producers of the videogame industry that we love and play.
Every attempt to explain the Empire as an actual business is just an empty jumbling of words designed to resemble something tangible and useful, but when examined under scrutiny one finds there is nothing worthwhile actually being offered.
"The procedures that we use enables us to make a difference in the videogame society as a whole". What procedures are these and what differences has Empire Arcadia made in the videogame society as a whole in the last 10 years?
The emptiness in all of those words is what makes the scene with Gootecks so poignant, since it crystallizes how all of Triforce's rhetoric comes across as so shady and meaningless. A normal person will say "Point to these differences you've made. Point to a source of revenue you have tapped. Point to something which will give me confidence to become a part of your organization." Unfortunately there is nothing there for him to point to except promises for the future.
But that's from a business perspective. As far as being a collective group of friends and a place to congregate and grind games out, it seems to have almost no peer. No one can deny that EMP dudes are fucking good. And when you hear EMP guys talk about Triforce like a father, as someone who looks out for them and really does have their best interest at heart, it's hard to hate him for that. There is something to be said for being a part of a group that has each other's backs like they do, and it seems like the guys in the Empire are a tight knit group.
I just get the feeling that if Triforce were managing sports players or actors or recording artists that he would be fucking godlike at it. It's just that the talent in the particular area he specializes in doesn't (yet) have the opportunity to make the big money that those other areas do, so his particular skill for managing or cultivating talent doesn't amount to anything tangible.
Of course this is all just observations from the outside. He could be 100 times more benevolent or shady than I could ever know. The power glove thing is lulz, changing his name legally to Triforce is kinda weird, the cultish aspects about the Empire are a little goofy, and getting trolled into sending pics of his junk is kind of worrying at least with respect to his decision making. But at the very least it makes him an interesting character in the fighting game community.
Also, I saw this on the Empire's website and kinda chuckled.
"Teaching gamers can even be one on one."
I bet it can, Triforce.
=3
