Asa Butterfield Shows Off His Gaming Collection and Set Up

Asa Butterfield, the Sex Education breakout star, is back home in the UK taking a breather. The 23-year-old British actor has found a reprieve, doing everything from reading and writing scripts, taking directors meetings, learning to play bass guitar and playing board games like Dungeons and Dragons — one of his favorites. Butterfield knows what he likes, and his walls showcase this almost instantly: an Akira box set, Gameboy drink posters, a Nintendo World Championship 2017 certificate and a poster from the first Smash Ultimate Summit in 2019 all hang throughout his space. He even has a custom-made Otis Milburn action figure that was gifted to him by a friend carefully placed in his room. He’s readily equipped with an impressive gaming setup, complete with the ROG Zephyrus G14 PC gaming device, which caters to his favorite past time. He’s developed such an affinity for the laptop that he’s now working with “Republic of Gamers” brand going forward too.

Butterfield is not new to this though, he’s been gaming for a long time. He even has a Discord server with a group of friends and fans so he can always be online, engaging with people who share his passion. As a fan of fantasy and adventure games, Butterfield opts for devices that sharply bring graphics to life, like the all-new ROG Zephyrus G14. The dynamic ROG Zephyrus G14 is the first 14-inch gaming laptop designed to take full advantage of a high-end Ryzen™ 9 4900HS CPU and potent GeForce RTX™ 2060 GPU. Thanks for its incredibly lightweight, small, and thin, without compromising performance, ROG Zephyrus G14 lets you work, create, and game anywhere. The device rounds out with the optional AniMe Matrix™ display which deepens personalization, enabling users to show custom animation or graphics and other effects across more than a thousand mini LEDs embedded in the lid.

Butterfield invited HYPEBEAST into his flat, where he talked about hanging at home with his cats, his extensive gaming collection and his favorite features on the slim but mighty ROG Zephyrus G14.

Hey Asa, how’s it been hanging at home with your cats?

It’s honestly been quite chill. I’ve really enjoyed being able to spend time in my flat and make it feel nice. I’ve also been focusing on myself a bit as I haven’t had to worry about going out and seeing people. My cats have obviously been loving all the attention. As soon as I wake up in the morning they want to play — they are loving it!

On Sex Education, you play Otis. How was it preparing for this role?

I have recently started going for more comedic roles, so when I read the script for Sex Education it got me excited. It’s such a funny script and it’s not something I get to do a lot of. Otis is a very relatable character. That whole secondary school, high school experience is one we can all relate to — being quiet and awkward, not knowing how to talk to your peers, girls or even your parents is a very familiar feeling. Being able to capture that in an authentic and humorous way was an exciting challenge for me.

What are some of the things you focused on to nail that character?

There were a few bits where he is very mature and weirdly wise. So whenever he is in therapist mode, he does have this much-wiser-than-his-years quality. I wanted to try and capture that as well as his empathy towards his peers. But he is also massively inexperienced and quite childish and over-reactive at times, so there are two parallels which I found quite interesting. I also bring a lot of myself to this part: We can both be quite specific about the geeky things we are interested in and vocally passionate about them. Figuring out what those were for Otis and pinpointing that was fun to do as well.

Speaking of your passions, can you tell us about your gaming collection and some of your favorites that you’ve collected over the years?

My whole collection is pretty much all on Steam and I play most of my games on my PC. I also like to play on my Nintendo Switch, but that’s much more of a group activity. My collection is looking pretty healthy. I’ve got quite a lot of VR games. Something I’ve been playing a lot of with a friend of mine, which is one of my favorites, is Divinity Original Sin 2. I started another play-through of that. It’s right up my street — I think I’m just a sucker for fantasy and adventure.

Is gaming a social thing for you or is it more of a space for you to get away from everyone for a bit? 

It’s a bit of both recently. It’s been a really nice way to stay connected with my friends and talk to them. We have quite a big Discord server with lots of people so there’s always someone playing a game on there. You can kind of guarantee you’ll have someone to play with. As a group, we have been going through all of our collections and we’ve been branching out and playing all sorts of stuff together. It’s been a great way to chat with my mates while also having a laugh.

What about the ROG Zephyrus G14 laptop appeals to your specific gaming preferences?

It’s really useful for me because I travel a lot with work, so it’s amazing to have something I can easily carry around with me and still be able to play high-quality games on. The laptop is really light and small. My old laptop was a bit of a brick, so it’s nice to have something now where I can just put it in my bag, wherever I am going and not even realize I’m carrying it around with me. I can play on it or plug it into a TV — whatever I need to do, it’s super easy.

What’s your favorite feature of the laptop?

Having a really high-resolution screen on a small laptop is really cool. It’s incredibly sharp. A lot of the games I play are visually very pleasing games, so to have a screen that can make the most of that is really nice. Also, when you open it up, it has this back design (called ErgoLift), which folds out underneath and lifts the bottom of the laptop to help with the airflow, easy typing and keep it cool which is pretty nifty.

What have you been listening to these days? And what do you like to play when you jam with your brother? 

I always listen to reggae and soul, Afrobeats, hip-hop and jazzy hip-hop, too. We also play music in the flat. We have a band — me and my brother and a couple of friends of mine. I play bass most of the time and my brother is on drums, so we’ve got a pretty good setup here and are always playing music. We have a loop box, so we can loop tracks, find samples and jam out together, and that’s been really fun to do over this time at home. We’re actually going to record some tracks properly so be on the lookout for that!

To learn more about the ROG Zephyrus G14, head to the brand’s website.