FAZE CLAN'S GRAND PLANS

How a ragtag collective of infamous gamers, esports stars, and YouTube creators-plus the people who are transforming their exploits into a billion-dollar valuationis aiming to change the entertainment industry as we know it.

- SAM SCHUBE

NOT long ago, I walked into a hulking warehouse-technically, three warehouses conjoined into a gleaming, concrete-floored corporate campus, complete with a 20-foot Astroturf staircase-in Los Angeles. Though now the headquarters of the gaming-and esports conglomerate FaZe Clan, the building was once home to a Hollywood prop warehouse, and traces of its former tenant were still visible: 30-foot bow-trussed ceilings, immense doorways, an open-air elevator equipped with an enormous metal hook. But to FaZe Clan co-founder Richard Bengtson, the compound reminded him of something else: "It looks like a Call of Duty map, bro!"

This was fitting: Bengtson, under the gamer tag FaZe Banks, made a name for himself in the early 2010s producing videos of his exploits inside the first-person shooter Call of Duty. When he started, the idea of playing video games for work seemed farfetched. "It was like me telling you that I can make a living professionally chugging water," Bengtson said. "That doesn't make sense. How the fuck are you going to do that?"

We sank into an enormous couch in the company's luxurious new office. Two employees idly skateboarded in circles across the polished floor; a few weeks later, a 20-foot mini oin FaZe colours would be built in one corner. Bengtson, along with his friend and FaZe co-founder Thomas Oliveira (better known as FaZe Temperrr), explained to me how a group of video game streamers, YouTube creators, and social media personalities had grown, seemingly overnight, into a multimedia enterprise with 130 or so employees, many of them recruited from CAA and the NFL and the music industry, heading for a billion-dollar debut on the stock market.