It Began with a Tweet
One week ago this past Thursday, while readying to go out for dinner with my wife, I came across a Tweet from BushCampDad on my feed. It read “Who wants to make history and qual EU FNCS camping only?”
For those of you who might be unfamiliar with him, BushCampDad is a Fortnite legend. He skyrocketed to fame over the last year or so and is beloved by a large community of avid followers. He plays the game with an unconventional strategic playing style (aka camping) that enabled him to reach the highest ranking level achievable (Unreal). There are literally thousands of players that would love to play a game with him, let alone a whole tournament. Many pros as well!
At the time that I responded to his Tweet, I surely must have been an unknown to him. I was a subscriber to his Twitch channel but he has more than 623,000 followers on Twitch alone. My response to his Tweet was buried in a stream of replies. My reply was “Haven’t entered any tournaments yet. Recent subscriber to your channel. Solo camped to Unreal last season. Currently Elite in builds.”
Connecting with BushCampDad
Shortly thereafter, someone from his team reaches out to me, and before I know it. It’s set. We would play together to try and qualify for the biggest of all the Fortnite tournaments, the FNCS.
Since previously, I had never played in a Fortnite tournament, and the FNCS was a week away, I had a lot to learn quickly.
Technical Preparation
I needed to test that I could successfully enter a tournament. One of the criteria is that my Epic account needed to have two factor authentication (2FA) enabled to join. This seemed like it would be a relatively straight-forward process. It wasn’t. Turns out that when Fortnite gets installed for the first time on a XBOX, some sort of hidden Epic account is created so the XBOX user doesn’t have to sign in. Turns out, that this type of hidden Epic account can not be upgraded to a full Epic account which is required to get 2FA working. Gigantic shout out to my son for tirelessly working with me to help resolve this and also to Epic’s online chat support who delivered exceptional customer service. “ShoX” at Epic, provided the best customer support I’ve experienced in a very long time!
Game Preparation
BushCampDad let me know ahead of time that the competition in these tournaments is tough. I worked on learning and practicing some alternative “drop spots” and rotations other than my trusted key spot so I could have more options dependent on the bus flight path.
Then, that Saturday afternoon I entered a Solo Cup for Elite Plus players. I successfully joined the tournament which was played over a period of 4 consecutive hours. That gave me a lot of practice! I was greatly surprised that I finished in the top 5% of players.
Streaming Preparation
Atop not having any previous tournament experience, I am also a very new Twitch streamer. My streaming career began about 2 months ago when I was about to reach Unreal ranking. I had 11 followers on Twitch that was comprised mostly of family and friends. That follower count ballooned to a whopping 17 followers when more friends and family learned about my upcoming event with BushCampDad. I streamed regularly every other weekday in the evenings leading up to the FNCS to gain as much practice as I could.
Marketing Preparation
When PopsPlaysToo.com was initially created, I also set up accounts on YouTube, X, Instagram, and TikTok (my TikTok account is a mess since my desired user name was already taken so I had to go by PopsPlaysToo1 there). The main thing that I did which turned out to be very useful, was I added the couple of clips that I had from streaming to YouTube.
The Monday before the event, I shared the big announcement that I’d be playing with BushCampDad to my small stream audience.
Of course, the promo that got the most attention was this funny clip BushCampDad’s brilliant marketer CaseyBomb made and promoted on Twitter and TikTok. That clip so far has garnered several thousand likes across a variety of platforms.
Playing the Event
It was a blast! We followed the strategy BushCampDad devised for us. It was simple but brilliant. We each just did what we’re good at which is remain undetected as long as possible. When one of us got eliminated, the other survived as long as possible to rack up points. This is unconventional wisdom as normal Duos play depends on 2 players working together to protect and attack strategically. BushCampDad somehow did revive me once in the storm thanks to his incredible supply of health that he carries.
Our Results
I’m delighted to say that we did much better than expected! Out of 10 matches, we think we had 5 games where we placed in the top 10. Our total score was 222 points. We overcame communication problems in the first game where I couldn’t hear what he was saying and in other games, his game crashed on him twice. This team has upside potential!
Closing Thoughts
This was an incredible experience for me! I’m extremely grateful to BushCampDad and CaseyBomb for the amazing opportunity. Their support and generosity will forever be appreciated. You’re the best!
Last but not least, thank you to the BushCampDad and PopsPlaysToo communities for all of your positive encouragement. As you can see, this is all one heck of a learning experience!
