Geff Croteau: We Believe That Esports Can Be the Most Open, Inclusive, and Diverse Community Out There

July 10, 2022
by

Team Play. Smarter.
We hear you loud and clear!

Team play for EVERYONE is our mission statement!

We believe that Esports CAN BE the most open, inclusive, and diverse community out there! We’ve built our Fox Hole platform on this statement.​

Why?

Esports have grown exponentially over the past decade, but the community still suffers from serious problems. Toxicity, harassment, and discrimination have always been commonplace in competitive multiplayer gaming, making esports hostile and daunting to many. Team games have been a letdown as many play the “Lone Wolf”, only to taunt others.

Esports fans are fed up and looking for a change. A change for the better. A way to have fun and CRUSH the competition. Facebook and Discord channels aim to offer connection, but all they really offer is chaos and frustration.

Esports is an industry that MUST evolve to be inclusive, tolerant, and SAFE for all athletes. RocketFire Labs is here to EMBRACE the fight and invite you along with us. Esports is not just a title. It means professional gaming for EVERYONE!​

How does Fox Hole improve
my game?

Fox Hole was devised purely from the necessity for communication. Dropping into a game and having your teammates scatter for their own personal goals, no microphones to ACTUALLY communicate or simply incompatible languages leave athletes frustrated and at a loss. LITERALLY LOSING! Our mission was to build the most open, safe, and inclusive environment for esports athletes to connect with one another.

What does Fox Hole do that others don’t?

​Your Fox Hole profile is directly derived from YOUR Esports ecosystem. This means we aggregate your performance data across your favorite games and social platforms to construct your “DIGITAL FINGERPRINT”. This allows us to know WHO you are as a player and ensure that users will conduct themselves appropriately.

​2. We’re teaming up with Collegiate Esports teams to promote the educational programs offered as well as their STAR athletes!

​3. We allow users to report feedback on matched players. Essentially, if an athlete respects others and is an overall awesome player- they will be upvoted. If a user becomes disrespectful and toxic, users can derate them and search for alternate squadmates. Derated players will receive fewer invites than others and are less likely to be asked to join a squad. Reputation matters.

​4. Set parameters for the team YOU want to play with. By filtering out specified metrics, you are years ahead of searching for teammates on Facebook or Discord. The wild west is in ages past, no need to bring it all back with a different wrapper!

​​This is just the start. As we scale, we will be incorporating further metrics to develop this “Fingerprint”, and

even the playing field for all Esports athletes in a competitive, fun, and inclusive way!

​-Geff Croteau, Founder & CEO

Tell us about yourself?

I’ve always been an avid gamer, regardless of my career. 2020 and the arrival of Covid presented an opportunity to go in a different direction, create something new and offer a positive impact on the community.

If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?

  1. Build the team you need around the mission. Find the right person for each critical task and let them run with it. Nobody can accomplish everything on their own.
  2. Buy more bitcoin and get ready for a ride!

What problem does your business solve?

Our app Fox Hole bridges a gap in the gaming community. Multi-player team based games generally auto match you with strangers. There’s no way to tell if they are a good fit for you.

Whether they are a good or player, fun or toxic, or even speak the same language. Fox Hole allows users to set their own criteria for team mates and filter out those that fit their play style.

What is the inspiration behind your business?

Literally the Silicon Valley TV show. EPIC characters and crazy startup shenanigans. That and Startup TNT out of Edmonton, Alberta. A very exciting and inclusive e group to be involved with. We’re solving a communication, and including issue for team based games in the Esports community.

What is your magic sauce?

Traditionally users are sharing their contact details in droves on groups like Facebook or Discord. This is incredibly ineffective. Not only are there endless lists of names to pick from, but there’s no search criteria or ways to identify or verify your potential new friends. Fox Hole provides the tools to do that.

Not only does Fox Hole allow you to filter, but if something doesn’t add up, or you have a bad experience with another use- you can rate them and provide feedback to the community. We aim to offer a fun, stronger, inclusive community free of toxicity.

What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?

We’re ready to launch this rocket! We’re aiming to grow our user base to well over 200,000 within 5 years. We’re also going to be building out the platform to include more titles, as well as baking in monetary valuations for each individual.

What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?

Our biggest challenge so far has been figuring out how to solve the problems we face in a time sensitive manner. Sometimes we wouldn’t know there was a problem until we built a feature and it broke right away. Back to the drawing board for a rework. Sometimes this took days or weeks.

Being that we’re new to the app development space and completely founder boot strapped for funding- there’s been alot of frustrating lessons that have been learned. Although, with every lesson in failure, we have come out on the other side capable of solving the next problem even faster!

How do people get involved/buy into your vision?

Fox Hole is for everyone that wants to play team based games. Currently it supports titles like Call of Duty and Fortnite, with more coming shortly. If your a teenager, looking for friends- Fox Hole is for you. If your a 36 year old dad with very limited time to play, this is for you!

We’re currently engaging with influencers in the gaming space, academic institutions with Esports programs and teams, as well as angel and VC groups. If your interested in a partnership, please email me at info@RocketFireLabs.com

Check out Fox Hole on either Playstore for Android or App store on IOS.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rocketfirelabs.fox_hole

https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/fox-hole-squad-up-dominate/id1581614635

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