“I don't know how we missed each other,” Hypoc said.
In mid-2019, Michael “Hypoc” Robins and Lauren “Pansy” Scott were two common names on international PUBG broadcasts, but with starkly different backgrounds. The former had just dropped a competitive career in that game, while the latter had been in front of the cameras for years. Despite that, they never commentated together.
But almost due to sheer coincidence, the stars aligned the following year and the two actually found themselves sharing a stage in an entirely different game. Since then, Pansy and Hypoc — affectionately named Panpoc — have become one of the staples of the EMEA and international Valorant broadcasts.
This is that story.
This is the second in a three-part series of feature articles about Pansy and Hypoc. The first part touched on their expectations for Champions and for Riot in 2023. The third and final part will be published in the coming days.
Photo by Michal Konkol/Riot Games
Hypoc's first shot at a competitive career came in Overwatch through 2016 and 2017, even signing with renowned British organizations EndPoint and Method. But only in PUBG, from 2018 on, did he make a name for himself. Under the Texan banner of OpTic, otherwise known as Why Tempt Fate, Hypoc and his team were a constant sight in the top echelons of PUBG.
But something changed in 2019.
“It was something I'd always, I guess, taken an interest in as a player as well which I guess is a little obscure — for a player to be interested and kind of care about telling player stories,” he said. “It's more kind of towards the shoulder content side of things which, at the time when I was still competing, would have been like the NPL, the PUBG pro league when we were all on site in Manhattan Beach and they did a lot of shoulder content around player background stories and things like that. That was the thing that kind of sparked my interest a little bit.”
He also highlighted OpTic's content series Vision, what he calls a fly-on-the-wall, candid representation of the more emotional side of being involved in esports, as something that pulled him towards broadcasts.
“Definitely the thing that interested me more was I'd say the content side of things, in terms of telling player stories and talking about the history of teams and prominent names and figures within the scene,” he went on. “But that actually very quickly transitioned into, after I'd done the first couple of broadcasts, being really passionate about the analytical side of things.”
But it wasn't all roses.
“I think a problem I was having in PUBG is I was seen as the guy that was an ex-player that's been brought onto the broadcast,” Hypoc said. “There were a couple of times on broadcast where, in terms of my colleagues, I went off-script, and they would say something that was fucking stupid. I wanted to become that very kind of stoic, opinionated person on the broadcast. After a couple of times of trying it, it didn't feel right because I wasn't getting the right response back. I kind of quite like that conflict between two people on an analyst desk, for example, or even on a cast together, where they can very constructively have those disagreements.”
The former OpTic pro later said one of the things that hampered his development in PUBG was the lack of a consistent duo like he has now. It resulted in a lack of trust in his ever-varying co-casters and overall unhappiness as a PUBG talent person, making his move to Valorant a no-brainer.
“The spark of the development for Valorant so early on was because I actually kind of always wanted to lean towards competing in CS:GO, I just was never good enough to be honest,” Hypoc said. “That was literally it. Initially the concept was a splice, a love child between Overwatch and CS:GO, and it kind of reignited that love for CS:GO that I had and the competitive side of it.”
Hypoc's desire to compete in CS:GO turned into a love for casting in Valorant. (Photo by Michal Konkol/Riot Games)
While Hypoc may be a fresher face in the world of esports casting, Pansy isn't. She launched her esports career in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Promod and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory.
“Casting tactical FPS games was always my criteria, even from CoD4 Promod or Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory,” she said. “But, in the meantime and in my own time, I'd always enjoy survival games. DayZ and ArmA 2, or the [ArmA 2] DayZ mod, or PUBG where it started.”
But before PUBG rolled around, Pansy casted CS:GO.
A lot of CS:GO.
Pansy's activity in the CS:GO community started as early as 2012, the year the game was released. She was a mainstay of talent panels up until 2018, when her activity began to thin out. In 2019, Pansy only worked two minor events. In the second half of 2020, she showed up for several events but, by that time, had published a TwitLonger explaining her absence.
In it, Pansy explained she left for three big reasons: underpayment, a top-end barrier, and a toxic community.
“It was a sign of the times, a little bit. It was the position I'd been in and, technically, I could have stuck it out in Counter-Strike and maybe these days be in a substantially better environment. It's still super competitive even in the casting side of the world,” Pansy said. “It wasn't necessarily the money or anything like that, it's the fact that you plateau in Counter-Strike and it's more political than people think it is. It's very easy to not find that next step forward unless you are the duo of ESL or the duo of FACEIT. And I wasn't as good as them either, simply put. It was a little bit of both.”
Long before these explanations had been given, in the game's very first competitive events, Pansy began to crop up on PUBG broadcasts. Between 2018 and 2020, she appeared at top tournaments like 2018's Global Invitational, the GLL Grand Slam, 2019's Global Championship and 2020's Continental Series in Europe. She was even present in 2021's Global Invitational and three other Continental Series since.
But by the time that TwitLonger had been published, Pansy had made clear that, eventually, she would be casting for Valorant.
“[PUBG] was never going to be the be all and end all because of just how it was run, that's the simple truth of it. But it was one thing that I genuinely loved and it was very different from Counter-Strike, CoD, any of the other games,” she said. “It never knew quite what it was, it was in that awkward teen phase. It wanted to be streamer-friendly, player-friendly, but it didn't know how to then incorporate esports into that with it being fair still. It never quite married it perfectly.”
She went on to say that, while there is a die hard community that will follow PUBG until the end, its mismanagement, promoted by its fast-growth, killed the game's potential.
“I'll always love PUBG for what it could have been, for what it was at times but it's a shame to see it not being taken to the furthest potential.”
As a renowned caster, several wanted to cast with Pansy at the start of Valorant. (Photo by Wojciech Wandzel/Riot Games)
Despite both appearing on so many talent announcements together, Pansy and Hypoc never got to cast PUBG together. They had a brief encounter at IEM Katowice in 2018, but never actually worked a tournament together, something both called ridiculous, crazy, and strange.
By the time Valorant rolled around, both casters were represented by the Character Select Agency, whose portfolio includes other big names such as GoldenBoy, potter, aEvilcat, Sideshow, JessGOAT, and others. Richard Simms, a former PUBG caster, made the initial proposition of having them work together in the Ignition Series' Mandatory.gg Cup.
And they just clicked.
“‘Okay, he's got something here. He knows what he's saying, he's diligent at saying it, he knows the game.' It was that sudden realization that we both wanted to get better,” Pansy said.
“I said to Lauren ‘I know I'm still pretty green but I haven't been taught well,' basically. That was honestly the way I felt,” Hypoc recalled. “I felt as if a lot of the things that my peers and colleagues were telling me were the expectations of a color commentator or an analyst and I just didn't see eye-to-eye on a lot of it. The first time me and Lauren worked together was the first time I felt like I could speak freely on a broadcast.”
And that's something they both credited each other for as a Valorant duo. While Pansy was always trusting of Hypoc's knowledge and decision-making, Hypoc leaned on Pansy's credibility as a well-known caster, and they leaned on each other for growth and shared a vision not only on what they wanted their cast to become, but on the game itself.
“When we started we played it pretty safe. It was ‘let's get the fundamentals down, let's just learn how to work together,'” Pansy said. “How each other operates, what style does Mike like, how does this work for him? Same for me, it's learning on the job. It's one of those where the environment changes, how you cast changes and what the people want changes too.”
Over time, they became more than coworkers. They became friends. Panpoc's casting evolved into what some called the equivalent of sitting down at the pub and watching football with a couple of friends. So much so, it became weird and tiresome to cast with other people.
“When I'm casting with Mike, I don't have to worry about Mike. I know Mike is good. Mike will handle himself,” Pansy said. “If I want to put 20% of my energy into just making sure that that connection, that back-and-forth, whatever it is, is perfect. That's fine. It's 20%. When you're working with a caster, you don't know you're fully aware the whole time and it's trying to learn a new skill.”
“It's like, ‘yeah, I've ridden a bike. So I should be fine on a boat.' Probably not. It seems similar, but eh. It's just that you have to become hyper aware.”
That evolution led to them becoming a fan favorite, as well as the most conversational casting duo in Valorant.
Watch-party style has always been the way to go for Panpoc. (Photo by Wojciech Wandzel/Riot Games
“It's very difficult to try and spoon feed things to the audience if they're not really engaged in the conversation,” Hypoc said. “If you have a very, very dry color caster, for example, that can't be there in the moment with a play-by-play and actually just do the whole, you know, candid reaction kind of moment, then whatever you say after that the audience just aren't going to care. And humor really helps with that.”
“We spent a lot of time just talking shit, honestly.”
As a duo, they have always made it clear to each other that whoever they are as people and casters can never take precedence over the players and the game. That's the line in the sand: they can have fun, make jokes and quips about the game, but it'll never get too silly and go too far from what the game should be. It's always within touching distance, because they worked on fundamentals from the get-go.
“We may not be everyone's flavor, which is completely fine,” Pansy said. “For us, it was finding who we are and finding a personality that we both are happy with, that works together, and we can package and put out there and hope that it does a good job.”
Pansy and Hypoc's casting style is ever-evolving and is still far from its peak. For Hypoc, it took until Champions' 2021 group stage to feel like the actual best. It was a moment of resolve after a troubling period in Counter-Strike for Pansy, and a tough event in Masters Berlin for Hypoc. Even then, they are still open to change.
But the run-up to both of those events are what made Pansy and Hypoc such a strong duo. The experiences they shared in the LEC Studios for First Strike, the way they've molded themselves to fit their own criteria of happiness, their continuing relationship with Riot as freelancers, and every other experience they've been through together, are part of what makes Pansy and Hypoc Panpoc.
The first months Pansy and Hypoc worked together were based on building each other off of each other. But the next two years of their casts, reaching as far as Champions 2022, are an entirely different story.
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