Lauren “Pansy” Scott and Michael “Hypoc” Robins first met in 2018, but it took until mid-2020 for them to cast together. Once they did, though, it seemed like magic.
Over the years, they've become one of the most sought-after duos in Valorant and are a constant presence not only regionally, but also internationally. And to this day, they only have one explanation for Riot taking notice of them.
“Bribed them. Paid them lots of money,” Pansy jokingly said.
This is the third and final 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, while the second part discussed their first ventures into casting as individuals and as a duo.
(Photo by Wojciech Wandzel/Riot Games)
Growth as a duo
Recalling back to that First Strike cast, Pansy revealed one of the many troubles they had.
“I messed up my shoulder so bad, I had cortisone shots in it. I couldn't move it, I literally couldn't move my shoulder,” she said. “I had to go and have, it was like calcium in between the joint or something but I don't even remember. Essentially, it sucked like I was in agony the whole time.”
“Between games I would run to the bathroom and throw up from pain.”
At the start of that tournament, Hypoc was extremely careful and loose, allowing Pansy to take the lead to get a proper feeling. But watching it back, he realized most of the first map was them just talking and having some fun, which ties into their previous fundamentals work.
And even still — with Pansy in agonizing pain and Hypoc's newcomer insecurities — they put on a show. Remembering that experience, they said that was one of the reasons that Riot took notice of them.
“Shit happens and at our very worst we still do good and we still give a fuck and I think that's why we got the chance to be that you know, ‘number one' duo who took the finals, who, you know, did these sort of moments.”
But not even after overcoming that adversity did Hypoc's insecurities dissipate.
“I lean very heavily on the credibility and getting people to like me, as insecure as that sounds,” he said.
Even in the months leading up to and following the First Strike cast, he would be messaging Pansy at three or four in the morning asking what she thought of certain moments or plays they covered.
“Like a weird round. Like a round out of nowhere, it's nothing. He's like ‘I really didn't like what we did there.' I'm like ‘Michael, it's four in the morning.' But we all learn in our own ways,” Pansy said.
But for Hypoc, it was absolutely a necessity. It allowed him to overcome certain fears and focus back on him and Pansy becoming their own product with their own attractiveness. Because, as a duo, they were at a point where they would be getting finals cast and Hypoc still wouldn't feel ready
“I actually had a reality check when I started working outside of PUBG and being like, ‘Hey, this is not what I've been doing, this is completely different,'” he said. “So it was a real shock to the system at the start of last year when I actually went back into insecurity, I was like, ‘Hey, this is actually a much, much higher mark of quality of broadcast, the standard is much higher.'”
He later said it was a side of esports broadcasting and talent he had never experienced. Hypoc had come from a scene with static names and with little regional crossover, and arrived on a scene that featured some of the great names of modern broadcasting like ddk, Goldenboy, Dash, and even RivingtonThe3rd — some of those who saw Valorant as the next big thing and not just the next big paycheck.
“I remember just absolutely shitting myself,” he said about being alongside those names. “Mike is far too humble all the time. I stand by a phrase of ‘hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard.' We grafted like fuck. We worked hard,” Pansy replied.
Hard work has beaten talent. (Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games)
“The funny thing is I've always been in talks with Riot to an extent,” Pansy said. “'I work over here, you work over there. I like what you do. We are not the same. I work in the edgy mean world of Counter-Strike where we're a little honest, we're a little upfront, a little brash.'”
Meanwhile, she looks at Valorant as the “edgy brother of League of Legends.”
“We don't need to be buttoned up wearing those weird waistcoats they used to do and be like, super polished. It can be genuine, it can be a little gritty, it can be super creative and different and fun,” she continued. “But it also doesn't have to be completely like Counter-Strike, it has to be itself, so it's a little bit more zoomer-friendly, it's a little bit more tongue-in-cheek at times, but not quite to that gritty level that CS is.”
That's what they aimed to become. A little bit more personable, edgier even, but not to the point of nonsense.
“I think we did that pretty well, but I don't bloody know why they picked us. I do have probably the most experience on show casting out of anyone. I've done stadiums, I've done all this other stuff. I'm a safe bet to that, you know you'll always get a decent quality with me working,” Pansy said. “Mike is, I'd still say, one of the best analytical minds who doesn't get the credit he deserves because he hasn't come from Counter-Strike, because he doesn't have that ‘pedigre.' They'll always treat you with an ‘oh, this guy knows what he's saying. That's weird. Where does he come from?' Rather than ‘oh, he knows what he's saying.'”
Marrying all their hard work to the fact they were one of the first solidified duos in Valorant meant they were getting finals while still in the process of bettering themselves.
“I shit myself because I didn't know we were doing Masters Berlin [finals] until about three days before. I saw the schedule and I just went ‘Oh, fuck,'” Hypoc said, with Pansy being quick to point out he even went pale.
“It should be something that motivates you to do a better job: for me to be able to — in the first year of Valorant or my Valorant career at least — to be able to say that we did those grand finals,” Hypoc said.
All that hard work and introspection as a duo brought them to Champions in 2021. Where even after certain casts, Hypoc would walk away without feeling good about it, to the point he'd spend an entire cab ride in silence.
“I was just like ‘shit, he's in a bad mood, like what's going on here?' I felt good about it, I was like ‘Mike, you did a great job. It was a great grand final, you know, really fortunate we got that sort of thing,'” Pansy said. “And you were just in your own mind that whole time and I was like ‘shit, I don't know where he's at.' You needed to decompress for a bit. And I was there just like, ‘I need to remember this moment.'”
But despite moments like those, it was during that tournament's group stage that Hypoc first saw himself and Pansy on the top, as the two best Valorant casters.
“When I started reaping the rewards of that and we got some good community feedback and viewers started recognizing that, that was when I kind of then thought ‘hey, actually, you know, I don't see these comments about some of the other talent that I hold to a very, very high standard, so maybe I am looking at this in the completely wrong way,'” he said.
Leaving Counter-Strike, as she discussed previously, Pansy felt like she had plateaued. She knew she wasn't the best and had lost confidence in her work. She didn't push for what she believed in or wanted, and didn't work enough on her own craft due to being in her own head about other things.
“Moving into Valorant I was like, ‘I don't want to walk away with any regrets, I don't want to be the person who had the chance to do something cool and do something great and then go oh, man, I wish I did this. I wish I did it this way, I wish I'd come in from that way.' I wanted to come into this and do honestly the best work I could have done. In 2020 I did whatever I could,” she said.
”Obviously, we are all narcissistic, you have to be to do this job,” Hypoc said. (Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games)
Once the two had linked up, it started a process of everlasting improvement. Even nearly a year later after first feeling on top of the world, they're taking inspiration from other esports and other great duos to put their own spin on it and work at their craft.
“Sometimes there are moments where we're at an event casting and I'm like, ‘fucking hell where did she pull that from?' Hypoc said. “Whether or not it's a phrase or your wordplay or things like that and I'm like ‘fucking hell that was cool.' I don't know, you've just probably just scribbled it down in your notepad like during the halftime break or something.”
Hypoc went on to say that the fact they watch a lot of esports, and quite different esports at that, makes them approach their work always with the desire to get better, but often with different perspectives. It leads to their work not feeling like a grind, as they're both on the same wavelength.
And it also leads to them setting the example. Pansy singled out names like Day[9] and Matt Mercer as great storytellers who make you care about what you're watching, but others are slowly pointing to her and Hypoc.
“I hear other casters, bringing out these very out there wordplays, and working with alliteration and other stuff. I'm like, ‘shit, people are looking at us now. That's weird,'” Pansy said. “I hear people using Mike's terminology that is so niche, and it's some dumb shit that Mike said this one time and he's kind of coined the phrase and it makes sense — it's not dumb shit Mike, it's great, I promise — but hearing other casters do that, I'm like, ‘fuck, we're the ones that they look to now, we've set the bar throughout that run that our style has bled through to others.' It's very flattering but it's also very, very weird, because it was never the same in Counter-Strike.”
From looking at the example to setting the example. (Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games)
Experience with Riot
Working with Riot has, in general, been a great experience for both.
“Whenever I've worked directly with Riot, they've been very good at noting that we are humans,” Pansy said. “Riot were always pretty fair and pretty upfront and told us the yearly schedule and saying like, ‘Hey, we're not gonna lock you in 100% but we're really looking to have you at these events.”
“Look, I don't get paid to kiss Riot's ass and, you know what, I really don't want to, but they've always been very fair and very good at treating us with respect of letting us know the events upcoming, being reasonable about being a human and time and treating us not just like cattle,” she continued.
But while maintaining that excellent communication, Riot has always been very aware of Pansy and Hypoc's status as freelancers, apart from minor sticking points — something typical in freelance negotiations.
“It's a long process to work through, but from their side of things they've always been quite respectful of that. They've been actually quite good with rates. It's not been like pulling teeth,” Pansy said. “I know how other people have been treated in other esports and how I have been treated in other esports — it's actually been pretty painless. Who knows what the future holds with it. Because when franchising comes around, obviously, that could change the dynamic, but we have no word yet really as to what that entails for talent. So that's about as much as we can discuss and we actually know,” she ended.
However, their current status as freelancers isn't guaranteed forever. Riot is known to like exclusive talent, and only lost some of it in the recent years as several of their mainstays moved to freelancing. Members like Sjokz have even been absent due to failed negotiations.
For Pansy, exclusivity comes at a monetary and creative cost. Not only would she be taken away from casting games such as CS:GO or PUBG, but she would be personally and publicly attached to the product.
“I don't want to just be a caster at that point, because again, my entire reputation, my career, is just fully attached to that,” she said. “So I would like to have at least some sort of influence on the direction of the product and how it goes, because, as I said, if people attach their entire lives to something, you want to be able to have the right say, the right influence, and finding that balance and the respect internally takes time. It takes learning who each other are and trying to build that rapport.”
“So I'm not wildly against being exclusive at all. But it obviously comes at a cost, that's just how it goes,” she went on. “But also it has to then have creative input, because the worst thing that could happen would be that, let's say you do go exclusive, and you're just you know, you're very secondary to anything, you don't have influence on direction, you just become a mouthpiece and you get locked in and you lose out on that chance of growing elsewhere.”
Hypoc gave a similar answer when asked about exclusivity, detailing that while he will always love PUBG for giving him his first shot at a talent career, it's “been dying for the last four years.”
“If it would have happened at the start of last year, I wouldn't have done it. I think I'm probably — and this obviously plays more into kind of mine and Lauren's success or journey in Valorant — definitely now more open to the discussion,” he said. “Obviously, things feel a little more long-term now with the announcement of a partnership and what's going to happen next year and those are obviously all factors that play into tying yourself to a product. I mean, I'll be honest, it comes down to the numbers, right?”
The final stage of the 2022 VCT is approaching fast. In just two days, the tour's capstone event will kick off and the year's 16 best teams will fight for the world championship in Turkey. Of the several casters present in Istanbul, Sideshow and Bren are the only other duo to have previously casted an international grand final, at Masters Copenhagen.
However, the Champions grand finals will not close out the year. There will be several Riot-sponsored tournaments, like the Red Bull Home Ground #3, that will follow the end of the VCT before 2023's partnership system kicks off.
In Riot's LEC, the European LoL league that was franchised in 2019, only three talent members — Quickshot, Drakos, and Vedius — are still Riot employees. The others are all freelancers. In America's LCS, franchised in 2018, there are also several freelance talents.
Just like franchising changed many things in LoL, Valorant's partnered leagues will change the game's landscape for everyone. Viewers, players, teams, organizations, and talent alike.
Maybe we'll see a similar unfolding of events in Riot's 2022 partnered Valorant leagues.
Exclusivity is not off the table for either caster (Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games)
Panpoc: the future of casting?
By this time in 2019, if one asked either side of the Panpoc duo who the other was, they wouldn't provide much of an answer. Pansy would say Hypoc is an ex-PUBG player turned caster, and Hypoc would say Pansy is a storied CS:GO and PUBG caster he's always admired and respected.
But by this time in 2020, they had just started to form what would become Panpoc. They were forming their pre-broadcast routines and rituals. But more than that, they were forming a friendship. More than coworkers, Pansy and Hypoc are friends who enjoy working alongside one another. That's what makes them such good casters.
“I'm very thankful I got to work with Mike. It makes a big difference, mentally, to have someone that you align with, that you understand hopefully to a degree, that you can work with and there's not any weird dynamic,” Pansy said. “It's just purely this fantastic culmination of two minds coming together that agree on a lot of areas and can expand topics around where we want. So I was always very fortunate that I got to work with Mike.”
Pansy always took Hypoc at face value, as a Valorant caster and not an ex-pro. He got the space and trust he always felt he needed, and she got to work with a great mind she can resonate and go back and forth with on topics. In Pansy's words, she'll usually play the fool in discussions because Hypoc doesn't need to. He'll have backup knowledge and, generally, a correct baseline perspective.
But not only are Panpoc great casters and — particularly in Hypoc's case — analytical minds, they're also funny. Really funny.
Humor is something they've never shied away from introducing into their broadcasts. Watch parties are, to them, a key indicator that shows there's a balance of humor, personability, relatability, and actual casting that the community likes. Panpoc like to teeter on that edge where they know how to handle a chaotic situation, but they also know when to relax and be themselves on camera.
“It works nicely because I think these days you can't sit there and watch a seven, eight-hour broadcast and not have some normal interaction,” Pansy said. “People are dedicating their evenings to this. God, it's not just one football game, right? They're over there maxing out from, if you watch from the start to the very end, like a couple of hours.”
Take a good, hard look. The future is here. (Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games)
Friendship, humor, and relatability.
These are the three keywords that define Panpoc. Who they are as people and as casters. A blend they've worked hard to find, and one that's given them great success.
That success doesn't mean they're comfortable. An esports freelancer has to be on his toes at all times and Pansy and Hypoc are no different. While Riot have treated them well, there is never any guarantee of constant work and they get hired mere days before things kick off.
But comfort comes in many forms, not just monetary. As was previously highlighted, Pansy and Hypoc both want to push for more supplementary content and that doesn't need to be limited to players. Players don't make an esport by themselves, there's a much larger crowd that works to give a title the justice it deserves, and Valorant is no exception.
Esports are more fun when people know more. When stories are told, when people become recognized, when backstage heroes step on a stage.
An esports caster's work is more than shouting at a screen. There's a lot of technicalities, fundamentals, and behavioral components that play into what being a good commentator is. It's a craft that requires constant maintenance and improvement, lest one stalls and falls into forgetfulness.
As the perfect blend between shouting at a screen — when appropriate — and having humor-filled conversations on-air, Panpoc may just be the next big thing in esports casting.
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