(lapping waves)
- Hey, what's goin' on?
Welcome to Brooklyn, New York.
It's not the greatest place in the world,
but it's where we live for now.
I'm planning on movin' to Saint Martin.
I'm just used to home, which is New York,
but I definitely wanna move back out
to the Caribbean Islands, which is my, you know, real home.
So, nothing against America, but I'm just used to, like
the natural food, the natural water, the natural air.
Everything is cleaner down there.
The water's actually blue, it's not green.
No offense to Orchard Beach, but it is.
And yeah, you don't have grocery stores and stuff like that,
that's open 24 hours, but the crime is down.
So, it's not that bad.
Probably the only thing good in the hood.
Vitamin Water, where's our endorsement deal?
We've been pushin' you guys for like 10 years now.
(background talking)
Alright, y’all.
- Nah.
- Video games.
- Yeah.
- All right, get me on a game. I’m like CJ over San Andreas.
(laughs)
The good news is, in the hood as long as
you're cool with the people nobody bothers you.
So, and they can tell whether or not
you're from the hood or not.
Like, I’m endangering the cameraman, everybody,
but as long as he's with me he's alright.
We understand the environment so we know the dos and don'ts
It's like you get this heightened sense of how to avoid the danger,
and stay away from certain people.
We just do our thing here.
We just live here.
We don't hang out here in Brooklyn.
We wanna hang out we go into Manhattan.
Blah, blah, blah, we live in the ghetto.
We're not a part of it.
(music)
It's funny, the world's greatest gamer’s
house is in this apartment.
That's my room.
- Excuse me?
(all talking)
I’m not even going to use the exercise to elaborate on that.
I’m not going to use my carbon dioxide to elaborate on a stupid statement
That's stupid, that statement was stupid.
(all talking)
I'm gonna let you rock on that, I’m gonna let you rock. You’re Empire, I’m gonna let you get by.
- It's Saturday, so we can usually have all the members of the Empire
come over and, pretty much, run sessions, Marvel, Street Fighter.
I remember these guys when they were like 15.
Now these guys are like in their late 20s, and stuff like that,
and they're all world champions.
- That’s zero, frustration is setting in!
- Nah, I’m not frustrated.
If I’m frustrated, I just wanna play.
I'm not mad, I'm just tryin' to figure it out.
- Players like me, I came from Jersey.
So, this is a lot further for me,
but when I come down here this is what we do.
We play, we, I guess, do a think tank.
We try to figure out the best way to be the best
at the games that we play.
So, with that in mind, we require each other.
It's like we couldn't do it on our own.
- I, uh, met TriForce through my best friend Jaron
16 years ago.
I didn't know someone could play so many games,
and beat so many games.
In the house there's also a lot of other players,
like Claymore.
They all were really good at different types of games.
- Before I met TriForce I just didn't know that
somebody could own over a thousand games, physical games.
This was before, like, a lot of these systems.
This was like during SNES, Genesis, 64.
- The most documented tournament wins
for a gaming team is 1,111 achieved by Empire Arcadia,
members of whom have competed in live gaming
tournaments, online competitions and world record attempts,
and we been doing this since 2003.
How many people can actually say their organization
has over 20 something players
in Guinness Book of World Record.
Only one.
(gaming sounds)
- You can imagine I was like seven, eight years old,
and I was running around the Bronx with my friends
going to arcade to arcade playing the latest games
trying to get high scores.
And then, you know, I got older, I got married,
and my wife was like, "What are you gonna do?
Do this forever?"
And I was like, "Pretty much.",
and she was like, "Well it better put food on the table."
So that's when I incorporated it into a business.
(music)