I’m David “UltraDavid” Graham. Why UltraDavid? In 1994, my family got America Online and I needed a screen name. I had no idea at the time that I’d be picking the name I’d be best known as for the rest of my life. Why UltraDavid? I don’t know, man. I just thought it sounded cool when I was 11. And you know what, compared to some of the other gamer tags out there, I think kid me did alright.
I’m a second generation gamer, raised by a dad who used to play in the arcades of the late 1970s and early 1980s. When I was 3, he brought home a Commodore 64 for us to play on together, and I’ve been playing games just about every day ever since.
I got to undergrad in 2001 and soon started playing actively in our campus arcade, The Bearcade. I majored in Political Science, but really more like political theory and philosophy. When I got to law school in 2005, I thought I wanted to go into international law. Within a month, I realized that I wanted to do something with intellectual property instead. Fast forward to 2008, when I graduated law school, took the bar exam, and then had two major turning points in my life happen simultaneously: Street Fighter 4 came out in arcades and I chose to work for a Congressional candidate rather than a law firm.
I grew up just outside Los Angeles, one of the beating hearts of the fighting game world, and at that time I was just a 10 minute drive from one of only a dozen Street Fighter 4 arcade cabinets on the entire continent. I spent almost every day there. I brought a book in case nobody else showed up, and I brought a bunch of quarters in case they did, but I got good enough that most of the quarters I brought usually came home with me. I began winning a bunch of tournaments in the toughest competitive region in the country! This was also just as online streaming was becoming viable for normal people, and I became friends with some of the folks who were starting one of the first fighting game streams in the world. They thought I knew the game well enough and could speak about it well enough that they asked me to be one of the first regular commentators on one of the first regular weekly fighting game broadcasts. And that’s how I started what became a side job as a fighting game tournament commentator, traveling the world to yell about video games, creating one of the first partnered channels on Twitch with my business partner James Chen, and so on, all without planning it in advance. But back to 2008.
I grew up just outside Los Angeles, where in 2008 a Congressional candidate whose politics I liked had earned the Democratic nomination. I got involved working in communications for her, writing press releases, creating website copy, editing statements and speeches, and securing interviews for her. It was fun! Until we lost. She did better than any Dem had ever done in our district, but it wasn’t enough. And that fall, toward the end of the campaign, came the 2008 Financial Crisis, which is capitalized as a proper noun because, phew. It sucked. The legal job market was hit just as hard as many others, to the point that many of my fellow recent alums who had taken jobs with firms were laid off or had their employment rescinded before they even got to start. After we lost the campaign, I couldn’t find work either. I tried and tried, applying not just locally but with firms in cities all over the country. I even tried applying to non-legal jobs, but was rejected there too because they thought I’d leave as soon as I found work as a lawyer, which they were right about. So I tried to ride out the bad economy by going back to school for my Master of Laws degree at UCLA, moving into Los Angeles proper, where I’ve lived ever since. I loved the experience, but even still, upon graduating in 2010, nobody was hiring. So at long last I had to open up my own legal practice. And who were my first clients? My friends, of course, and my friends were opening up some of the first online streaming businesses in the world, working as some of the first professional gamers in fighting game history, developing indie video games, creating popular YouTube channels, and selling things on new web stores. And that’s how I started what became my main job as an attorney working in esports, digital media, and video games, mostly without planning it in advance.
After about a dozen years of running my own solo law practice, traveling up to 25 times a year for commentary, and making my own content on Twitch and YouTube, I blew it up. Mostly I was tired of being on my own most of the time. As a solo practitioner with very tech-literate clients who worked from home, I never met the vast majority of my clients in person. My interactions with them were like, Dear David, We need a contract that does X and Y, signed, Client. Dear Client, Ok, here you go. Signed, David. And I found that I just got tired of it. I wanted to work more closely with other people, feel like I was really collaborating. And I also found that I was tired of the weekly content grind, doing the same show I loved with people I loved, but the same-iness of it all got to me.
In 2022 I decided to give it all up and go in-house with ten/o LLC, the biggest endemic broadcast and event production company in the FGC. It’s been great! I feel really happy and fulfilled getting to so precisely combine my love for law and contracts with my love for fighting games and the FGC. I feel very lucky to have such a unique career, much of which I worked hard to achieve, but much of which I super duper lucked into in a way that seems as preposterous as it does fortuitous.
I started this website because I wanted another creative outlet and social media has become ass. My hobbies include playing video games, making my own fighting game controllers, 3D printing projects, reading history and political theory, writing, learning Yiddish, and political volunteering. But, y’know. Why not also a website that I’m not planning to ever tell anyone about except my good friends and family?
The main signposts on my gaming journey so far, the ones that have led me down a different path than where I’d been headed before, have been The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, Doom, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Civilization II, StarCraft, Street Fighter III: Third Strike, and World of Warcraft. I had to go cold turkey on WoW and the whole Civ series years ago; to this day, I have to mute any mention of them on social media to limit my temptations. But the other games still have a huge impact on me day-to-day. My career, my hobbies, and so many of my friends and formative experiences have come out of them directly.
And now, I choose to recite a list.
Speaking and Interviews
Lecture: Practical IP Concerns in Esports – USC Gould School of Law, 2020
Lecture: The Legal Basics for FGC Players: Intellectual Property and Entity Formation – CEO 2019
Panel Host: The State of Collegiate Esports – Esports Bar Association, 2018
Lecture: Introduction to Copyright and Software Licensing – University of Kansas, 2016
Lecture: Legal Issues in Competitive Gaming – Game Developers Conference Esports Summit, 2009
Lecture: Copyright and Licensing Issues in Open Source Software, California State University – Northridge, 2009
Writing
David Graham – ZSA People, 2026
Junk Food v Hit Box – dpgatlaw.com, 2021
A Lawyer Explains the Very Messy Way YouTube Is Handling Videos for Kids – Vice, 2019
Copyright Law and the Vanishing of Dragon Ball FighterZ – dpgatlaw.com, 2018
League of Legends Contract Provision Analysis – dpgatlaw.com, 2013
Inviting Regulation – The Sportsification of Video Games – Shoryuken.com, 2013
Momentum Matters: A Historical Perspective on the FGC and Esports Communities – Shoryuken.com, 2011
Mortal Kombat 9, First Sale, and the Power of Clever Lawyers – Shoryuken.com, 2011
Analysis of Capcom’s Take Down Requests Re Evil and Oni – Shoryuken.com, 2011
Infringement as an Engine: The Value of Infringing Behavior in Internet Culture – UCLA Law School, 2010
The Public Performance Right in Video Games – UCLA Law School, 2010
Modernizing Copyright Theory – UCLA Law School, 2010
Novel Questions for Copyright Law: Mods, Machinima, and Match Vids – Georgetown University Law Center, 2008
Education
LL.M, Entertainment and Media Law and Policy – UCLA School of Law, 2010
J.D., Mostly Legal Theory – Georgetown University Law Center, 2008
B.A., Political Science – UC Berkeley, 2005
A Regular High School Diploma – Moorpark High School, 2001