Travis Gafford is a prominent League of Legends content creator and interviewer from the US, and is in London right now to cover MSI 2023. But what does he think of our capital city, and what are his views on the blur between content creation and journalism? Dom Sacco asks him at the MSI press day which took place ahead of the event.
Travis Gafford on London, British food and weather
“I don’t like London. I want to like London, but when I came here in 2015, I was sick during Worlds and out of commission right up until the games. The weather isn’t great, I’m not a huge fan of the food, it’s really expensive…
“And everyone is like: ‘Well don’t you live in LA?’
“And I’m like, ‘yeah, but London is still even more expensive than LA. And also, it’s not like I’m travelling to LA. If you travel to LA, the hotels are expensive, so it’s cheaper to live there.
“But I want to like London. This will be the longest time I’ve been here. It’s not the fall or the winter, but the weather has been nice the last two days, hopefully it stays this way, although I doubt it.
“Also, why is it so cold? It’s like 62 degrees fahrenheit, it’s April, I don’t understand… you guys have beans on breakfast, right? That’s strange…”
[Travis Gafford goes on to moan about London some more – see the full series of complaints in our video interview above]
Travis Gafford on the blur and divide between content creation and journalism
I think it’s really difficult and there’s a lot of ego involved in it. I think the folks who want to say, ‘I’m a journalist’, they tend to be like, ‘I’m a journalist, and who is and who isn’t’.
I don’t care anymore. That’s basically why I stopped using the term [journalist], I don’t correct people when they say I’m a journalist. I think that term has become so blurred now, I’m just not gonna use it because I think a lot of people don’t feel like I should, and I don’t care enough to fight that.
“My whole thing is, I’m just gonna create the content I’m gonna create, and put it out there. I’m going to do the things I think I should do, I’m going to do them ethically, and people can then decide how they feel about it. If people wanna get mad about it or call me whatever, it’s fine. My content will speak for itself. “
Travis Gafford
I think it ends up becoming a matter of semantics, too. Esports has the same issue. What is an esport and what isn’t? Is a more fun tournament in a certain game not an esport, and League is an esport?
The line gets really blurry and I think sometimes we get hung up on terms rather than what the actual content is.
Also, this pops up in esports but I think there’s big conversations to be had around this in a lot of different areas. I really like the tech space and Marques Brownlee, I think some people are unsure of if he would be a journalist or a YouTuber/content creator.
John Oliver, speaking of Brits, is very popular in the US. He has a show that I think is way better than a lot of the journalistic content you see out there, but I don’t think he’d consider himself a journalist and other people would debate whether or not he is.
On covering international events and following League esports:
I mostly stick to LCS in terms of following it, then I think of myself as the LCS guy when I go to these international events [like MSI 2023 London].
I do think it’s really hard to follow all the different leagues and I’d rather hone in on the LCS, because quite frankly that’s where 80% of my time ends up being. But it’s still really exciting, though it’s so fucking expensive to cover this stuff. Gone are the days where you can get a media company to pay for you to do this stuff, so you have to figure it out on your own.
Travis Gafford interview quickfire round – cockney rhyming slang with Dom Sacco
Dog and bone.
Dog and bone?
One word that rhymes with that.
So it’s all one word?
Like apples and pears would be stairs.
Something phone?
You got it. Caps got this one in my Caps interview. Steffi Graf. Or maybe it’s pronounced Grarrf.
Sounds the same to me. Is it one word?
Yep.
I dunno, you have to tell me.
Laugh.
So you guys are extending these things?
Do you know the Flintstones?
Yeah. It’s an American cartoon.
Oh yeah! Barney. What do you think that means?
Oh. Barney? So this is cockney rhyming?
Yeah. Think of his surname.
Flintstone?
No. Rubble.
Okay, so. Barney Rubble… humble?
Trouble.
It reminds me of zoomer language on TikTok. Like when they say ‘it’s giving’, they mean ‘it’s giving something vibes’ but they cut it off, you have to interpret / finish the sentence and chop things out of it.
There’s more London chat in the video above. See more Esports News UK MSI 2023 Coverage Powered by SideQuest Gamers Hub here and follow Travis Gafford on YouTube here
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
