After six hours of brainstorming, we finally found an idea everyone wanted to build: FaZe Draft. We were inspired by the pride of discovering a creator before they become famous and wanted to turn that feeling into something fans could play together. Our app lets users draft five rising gaming creators with a $50 virtual budget and compete using real YouTube statistics and measured growth. Fans get to test their scouting instincts, smaller creators gain visibility, and FaZe gets a community-powered watchlist of promising talent. We built the experience with Next.js and the YouTube Data API, automated creator discovery, and developed scoring based on channel activity and engagement. Along the way, we struggled with coordinating Git branches, getting the same experience across Windows and Mac, and understanding how to share player data between computers. Those challenges taught us how much clear communication, consistent data, and testing matter when building as a team. Watching our mock profiles turn into real creator cards made the project feel real, and reminded us why we chose it: the next gaming star is already creating, and we want fans to help find them.
Built With
- css
- github
- javascript
- next.js
- node.js
- react
- youtube-data-api
