Richard Lewis

Rich gave me my first real shot at writing, back in 2009. While working on a current project with him, it felt necessary to get his perspective on Marcus’ impact. Sharing esports territory for nearly 15 years at this point, they have clashed in the past, but have since grown. It was all about respect, now.

With Marcus, I don’t think we’ve ever directly worked together.

We’ve been on a few podcasts and shows and interviews, I don’t think directly. We’ve had a pretty interesting relationship early on, as we’re both very outspoken people. So, we’ve had some dust-ups and arguments, but as we’ve gotten older and mellowed out a little bit, I think we’ve both come to have this really healthy mutual respect and certainly the amount of respect I have for him is almost unprecedented in esports. This guy’s been a pioneer in pretty much everything he’s touched.

He’s one of the reasons I started—it’s no exaggeration to say—one of the reasons I started doing podcasts is because of him. Him and Joe Rogan are pretty much the two inspirations for the type of content I started doing, particularly with Live On Three. Just in terms of the way that he’s carried himself, he’s never shied away from having an opinion, even to a certain degree while he’s been working at Twitch. It must have been very difficult to say some of the things that he was publicly saying [has said].

He’s always remained true to himself. I think even when you disagree with where that might take somebody, you have to respect their clarity, vision, drive, and motivation to where they’re going. Marcus is an inspirational figure within esports and everyone could learn a lot from him.