We Spoke to Mads Brown About Running Australia’s Largest Gaming Venue

Fortress Melbourne had been open for four days before Melbourne went into its first lockdown. It’s preparing to re-open when I speak to Mads Brown, the COO of Fortress and the woman responsible for guiding the business through a pandemic.

“It feels almost surreal to be re-opening,” Mads says when we jump on a video call the day before Fortress opens again, hopefully for good.

Fortress is a gaming and e-sports entertainment venue in Melbourne — the largest in Australia — and hosts a huge range of events that are designed to make gaming more inclusive for everyone. That goal begins at how its events are structured and goes all the way through to its “no trolls allowed” policy. Thanks to Mads, Fortress is also a space where women can feel safe exploring and expressing their love of games.

We spoke to Mads about what it’s like to hold such a high-up position in the games industry and how Fortress is making games more accessible for everyone.

POPSUGAR Gaming: Hello Mads! Can you please tell us a little bit about Fortress and what you do there?

Mads Brown: Fortress is all about games culture and we have a really big venue in the middle of the Melbourne CBD that caters to all types of gaming. We’ve got PC gaming, consoles, board games and arcades, there are two bars and we’ve got a full medieval tavern where you can have a restaurant meal. It’s pretty cool!

Our aim is to make gaming accessible for everyone. A lot of our events are built to welcome newcomers and make sure that everyone feels like Fortress is a home to them when they walk in. Our mission is to ignite the spirit of gaming in anyone who walks through the door.

I work broadly across Fortress on things like developing new products and events and experiences, to working with our partners, to building a really fun and welcoming workplace culture and hiring talent. I also work on building the future of Fortress: what that looks like, who we want to be, who we want to serve and how we can continue to build a community that can celebrate their love of games.

No day feels the same for me, but it’s fun and it’s exciting.

PS: What kind of events do you run at Fortress?

MB: We run regular weekly events that are all about gaming. So we have game-themed trivia, beginner sessions for Dungeons & Dragons and we run a gaming film festival every Thursday night. We also have the 200-seat Alienware Arena where we run e-sports events, host viewing parties and run gaming-themed parties.

We try to build most of our events for beginners and for grassroots players, and to date we’ve had roughly 50 per cent of our participants be people who have never played in an e-sports tournament before. We’re very happy that the work we’re doing around making Fortress accessible is actually working.

PS: You’re running open e-sports competitions? What kind of games?

MB: A range of games, everything from first-person shooters like Valorant and CS:GO to sporting titles like FIFA and Rocket League. We even run titles that you wouldn’t consider e-sports games, like Tetris and Overcooked — fun competitions to get a broader gaming demographic involved in a competitive nature.

PS: What have been some of the highlights of your time at Fortress so far?

MB: A big highlight for me was just getting the doors open. I’d been working for almost two years up until that point to build Fortress from scratch. We’d done so much market research, we’d spoken to so many community groups and we’d built so many relationships with publishers, but we didn’t really know if what we were doing was going to resonate with gamers until we actually opened the doors. So it was a really special moment to be able to do that because we received such a positive response from day one.

We had a queue of people lining up around the corner from 6am on opening day. We had about 2,500 people come through on that opening day as well. And a lot of them stayed with us on the journey through lockdown, participated in our online events and have been celebrating with us as we’ve sort of reopened and locked down again over the last couple of years.

PS: Do you know how many of those people are women?

MB: A really huge personal goal of mine from the very beginning was to have a lot of women come to Fortress. There was a lot of speculation from people that our audience would be predominantly male and that we’d really struggle to get women through the door. I’m really proud to say that from day one we’ve had a lot of women come to Fortress: over 40 per cent of our audience identify as female.

And I think what that really comes down to is that one of our core values is to make Fortress a home and to make it welcoming. That sort of permeates through our customer service and the type of products and events we create for our customers.

We also have a very strong female presence in our product team, and I think that really helps us constantly think about how our products are translating to a female audience and how we can attract multiple demographics into the venue to enjoy what we’re doing.

PS: Are there that many women in the gaming scene in Australia more broadly?

MB: I think there’s always been a lot of women who enjoy games and I think they’ve just been under-serviced for a really long time. Now people are realising that there are a lot of women like me who have played games since they were a little kid and have a keen interest in spending money on games and being involved in games. People are realising they’ve been overlooking an incredible group of people for such a long time. So I don’t think the female demographic is getting larger — I think maybe we’re becoming more vocal and more seen, and I think that’s only going to bring really amazing things for gaming in the future.

PS: Did you always want to work in the gaming industry?

MB: I actually didn’t. I graduated university with a Bachelor of Laws and I worked in the legal industry and then in government doing a policy role. I loved working in those industries and I loved, in particular, the process of problem solving really large systemic issues.

It wasn’t until a bit later when this opportunity at Fortress arose that I saw I had a chance to really make a difference. It was a really incredible opportunity to have an intersection of the things I was really good at and the things that I loved. That really changed my mind instantly on whether I would work in games, and I immediately jumped on that horse and took the opportunity. I’m very glad that I did.

PS: Have you had any unpleasant experiences playing games online because you’re a woman?

MB: Sometimes you can find yourself in an environment with someone who doesn’t respect you as they would in real life. I’ve had people somehow find my social media accounts from my gaming account and realise that I’m a half-Asian woman and have used racial slurs while I’m in game. I’ve had men graphically describe how they would want to hurt me — things that you would never experience in the real world, and it’s very difficult to reconcile and deal with in the moment. On one hand, you’re supposed to brush it off and pretend like things are fine, but on the other hand it can have a really significant impact on your mental health and the way that you enjoy something that is often so fulfilling.

It’s one of the things that drove me to want to be a part of Fortress, because from the very beginning it was all about “how do we make gaming as welcoming as possible?” We have a “no trolls allowed” policy at Fortress — we just have a no tolerance policy for anyone who behaves like that in our realm.

PS: What do you do to trolls?

MB: We normally very kindly ask them to leave. And we like to explain to them why their actions can be hurtful or why they’re not tolerated at Fortress. A lot of people have a lightbulb moment where they realise what they’ve done is really inappropriate.

Often they end up apologising and sort of completely turning around their behaviour. It’s a really nice thing to be able to witness as we slowly build our brand — seeing the change that we’re having on these communities. People come up to us and tell us how safe they feel at Fortress and how much fun they have, and how they were scared of coming for the first time but had an amazing time. It’s a really rewarding experience.

PS: And have you had many great experiences playing games with people?

MB: I think the majority of my experiences have been really fantastic. I’ve made so many great friends playing games online. I’ve had hours and hours of fun and laughter and joy from gaming and I’ve been able to use it for so many different things, from social interactions to managing my mental health.

I credit pretty much all of my problem solving abilities to playing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time as a kid, and I credit my entire career to being able to game from when I was a little kid. I think there are so many benefits that I’ve derived from gaming over my lifetime that it really drowns out any of those negative experiences.

PS: What advice do you have for girls and women wanting to get involved with gaming as a hobby or industry?

MB: My advice to women is to just apply. Don’t get in your head worrying about whether you belong or whether you deserve a space in this industry. There are so many women in this industry now. My main goal, and the way that I feel most empowered to encourage women to join the gaming industry, is to hire women and to let them become advocates and inspire other women. The more of us that are here, the more people recognise that, not only do we deserve the space, but that we’re integral to its success.

It’s incredibly important when you’re developing in a new space to have a difference in perspective, ideas and backgrounds, and it only serves everybody to be able to include people from all walks of life.

There are spaces available and they’re waiting to be filled by the many talented women out there who maybe get in their heads or doubt themselves or worry that they’re not going to fit in. I think my advice is just to take that opportunity. Grab it by both hands and go for the ride!

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Fortress Melbourne is now open and running weekly events in-person. Check out the full schedule of events on the website or Fortress Melbourne socials.