What Every YouTuber Got Wrong about Fighting Games: GuileWinQuote

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
Guile Win Quote is to many the premier retro fighting game
video essayist, providing retrospectives and deep dives
into all the good, the bad and the weird the genre has to
offer. With many of his popular
retrospectives releasing within a month of an unexpected game re
release announcement, the Gall Win Quote effect has been coined
with people falling into one of two camps, those that view him

(00:28):
as a prophet of the retro fighting game re release, or as
a Capcom or SNK plant drumming up hype for reviving a lost
entry. Before his videos had the power
to revive lost fighting game franchises, Gall Win Quote was a
student of the games, spending his younger years downloading
and balancing Moogan characters and digging through obscure
fighting game ROM packs to learneverything he could about the
genre. Every day after school I would

(00:49):
straight up go home and download100 million characters.
Growing up with YouTube as his primary source of content
entertainment, he saw first handthe gap in terms of how fighting
games were discussed. But every single time they
talked about fighting games I would fringe.
With his authentic passion, realexpertise in the genre and a
clear mission statement to sharewhy all fighting games are
great, Kyle Win Quote has established himself as a trusted

(01:10):
representative and friend of tight knit retro fighting game
communities. Here's this video.
Like I'm like talking about it. Like, I know you're a game when
this is like someone's like passion.
You want to get that right, you know.
I sit down with Guile Win Quote to discuss his journey in the
fighting game genre, being a student of the game of YouTube,
and how to extend your reach while being true to yourself.

(01:31):
Please enjoy this episode of Trash Talk available on YouTube,
Spotify, and all major podcast platforms.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're backwith another episode of Trash
Talk, and this time we have content creator extraordinaire
Guile Win Quote. How's it going, man?
Hello fantastic and yourself. I'm doing great.

(01:52):
It's new year, New year, still old fighting games, right,
'cause I wanted to bring you on 'cause we actually kind of
crossed paths in the YouTube comments section recently on a
video I put out talking about fighting game content creation
and how you shared some similar thoughts and had a lot of
opinions about how content creation in the FGC space works.

(02:12):
So we definitely want to get into that towards the tail end
of this discussion. But I also think you're a really
interesting figure in the scene for people who might not be
aware of what you've been doing your your guile win quotes.
You know, your your profile picture on all the platforms has
the old school Street Fighter two guile picture there.
And you put out a lot of really interesting retrospectives on

(02:34):
more classic and often obscure fighting games from the past.
And The funny thing about that is when we first met in person,
I got to be honest, I didn't expect you like this younger
white kid out here. I don't know what I was
expecting, but it caught me by surprise that you were the
person that knew so much about these really obscure titles.

(02:55):
Because I've been watching your videos for a while and you go
really in depth with not only things about like the artwork
and the vibe of the game, but into the nitty gritty technical
aspects of them. The frame data, the techniques,
and then even some like the development history and how all
these things come together. So.
And now you have arcade cabs andall this retro gear behind you.

(03:17):
How did this start? Like how did this come to be?
Yeah, I definitely I don't feel like I fit the profile of most
like I guess like niche retro game.
You know, most of my friends area little older than me.
Most of the people I play games with are usually like especially
pre pandemic or like close to their 40s.
I'm I'm not maybe as young as I look.

(03:39):
I'm almost 30 so you know, but I've had like fighting games in
my life basically since I was old enough to actually play
games. So the first fighting game I
ever played was a Street Fighter2 Champion Edition on the Sega
Genesis. I think I learned how to do a
Hadouken when I was like 5 or something.

(04:01):
You know, cuz I have like an older brother who like taught
me. So yeah, thankfully I've just
gotten the fighting game brain worms and anything I could ever
like do a combo in like I, I wanted to play, I wanted to
like, you know, breakdown. So had has Street Fighter two on
the genesis and then I got a Dreamcast.

(04:21):
So you know, I played third strike, I played Marvel 2.
Of course they're all bootlegs cuz it's the Dreamcast.
So power stone and then, you know, PS2 I picked up like every
licensed fighter, even like 3D mortal kombats, whatever.
And then I think what like really like got me into like, I

(04:42):
want to know everything about the genre was I discovered
Moogan and this one like YouTubelike first like came out because
like someone at school is like, hey, you can watch Naruto on
YouTube and they're like way ahead, like Sasuke's a demon or
something, you know, so, and I'mlike what?
So you know, I'm on YouTube and then I discover like probably

(05:03):
like a Homer Simpson versus Eorifight or something.
And I'm like, what the hell is this?
So every day after school I would straight up just like go
home and download 100 Mugen characters and then like balance
them. And then I would want to figure
out like, oh, where is this character from?
Like who is this guy? You know?

(05:23):
So yeah, I just got introduced to so much and then I somehow
started stumbled upon the shind on YouTube who is like a third
strike historian. His channel is it just turned 18
not too long ago. So, and he's been posting like
third strike footage from Japan and you know, the early American

(05:46):
scene for such a long time. People like YSBRXTM, you know,
like all of the old like greats.And I guess through that I
discovered GGPO, which is before.
So right now we're on 5K2. Before 5K2 there is five K1 and
then before 5K1 there is GGPO and then before that there was

(06:08):
Kalera. That's before In my time if
someone mentions Kalera they're like they were in the trenches
of fighting games. Like for real, they're playing
like KOF 2002 on like dial up connections or something.
Wow. So I've heard Kalera mentioned
name drop here and there, but I've never really understood
what it meant. I knew they were just trying to
date themselves by dropping that.
And I'm like, yeah, you're old. Whatever you mean by that.

(06:30):
I could tell you're old so I didn't realize it predated GPO.
Yeah so GPO came out I think I could be wrong.
I'm pretty sure it was a response to the Hyper Fighting
release on 360. It was like the Cannon Brothers,
you know, Capcom released Hyper Fighting.
It was a big deal because of like, oh, Street Fighter two, we
could play online, but the online sucks so bad.

(06:52):
So the Cannon Brothers are like,man, we could do something
better. So they came out with GGPO and
yeah, I would just go through the list and just play
everything. I would parry full screen
fireballs on my keyboard againstlike probably someone from Chile
or something and think like, oh man, like I'm so good at this
game. Like I can parry something full
screen and yeah, just went through that and I would just

(07:15):
download like MAME, which is like the arcade emulator.
I would just download like Ron packs and literally like one by
one, just like, what is this game?
What is this game? What is this game?
And so I kind of got exposed to a bunch of fighting games and
kind of realized that, you know,a lot of the time, like on the

(07:35):
Internet, I would watch a lot ofYouTube.
I would go on sites like game trailers, screw attack, angry
video game nerds, stuff like that.
I felt like I was probably the first generation to grow up on
stuff like that. But every single time they
talked about fighting games, I would cringe even though I was
really young cuz it would just be footage of them doing jumping

(07:58):
heavy kick in the sweep or something.
And they'll be like, this game sucks, you know?
And it's like what, like you don't know anything about this.
And so that's what I kind of realized that, you know, like
Street Fighter clone. Cuz like, I feel like most
people just call anything that wasn't Street Fighter back then,
like a Street Fighter clone was kind of like this sounds
extreme, but like derogatory almost, you know, And I kind of

(08:20):
realized that like, man, like, you know, the 90s, all of these
developers were releasing like anew fighting game like every six
months. And they were just like stealing
from each other. They were just copying from each
other. And right now, of course, as an
adult, I realized like, you know, they all worked in the
same industry. They were probably just, you
know, friends talking to each other, like colleagues and
stuff. But you know, it kind of made me

(08:41):
realize like, you know, Street Fighter wasn't the first game
with a super Street Fighter alpha wasn't the first game with
airblock. You know, like all of these
games were coming out and everyone was stealing with each
other. And that's why, like from, you
know, 1991 we got Street FighterTwo and then 1999 we got Third
Strike. That is such an insane, like
when you put it in like, not even 10 years, eight years of

(09:03):
time, the genre progressed that much because there were just so
many games and so much competition going around.
And these developers were makinga game like, every six months,
you know, And I just kind of realized, like, man, like all of
these games have something, you know, special to them, even if,
like, the game isn't all the waythere, there's probably some

(09:23):
mechanic or something that was for thinking in some aspect.
And someone else probably saw that and was like, hey, we could
do that better. And it just kept progressing
from there, essentially. So I had a lot of free time, no
extracurricular activities. Well, it sounds like it sounds
like you didn't have a lot of free time because you were
really busy delving into this world of fighting and that's a

(09:45):
really in depth history you had actually exploring this genre.
And that's a great point you bring up between like Street
Fighter two and Street Fighter three, eight years time frame,
because in seven years we got Street Fighter 4 to Street
Fighter Fighter 5. And in many ways that was going
backwards. Yeah, no for.
Real think of that jump back then is is very jarring.
I mean that's all almost all of gaming now because the console

(10:07):
generation leaps like yeah, theycan pay like a few blotches of
pixel like look in 10 years timewe we smeared out these few
pixels in this corner here. Isn't that a great leap forward
to give us 500 extra dollars. But yeah, that time period
you're reflecting on, there's somuch innovation constantly
happening that there's like thishuge depth of history to go
through. But while you're doing all this,

(10:29):
it sounds like most of this timeline wise was right up
before Street Fighter 4 release if I'm remembering correctly.
Yes, so. Did leading up to that point, it
sounds like all of this was mostly you looking solo at home
at emulators and playing online a little bit.
Did you have any kind of experience with playing with a

(10:50):
community at this point? Yeah, so my neighborhood, we had
kids and I kind of taught them all how to do fireballs and
stuff. We were literally playing on
emulators in Mugen with two people on one keyboard cuz this
was still before 360. Wired pads, man.
Those are like a game changer when those come out.

(11:11):
So yeah, I was in 3rd strike lobbies, like horrible.
I was on like Wi-Fi connection stuff.
I didn't know any better and I would watch all of these like
old streams and stuff. And then Street Fighter 4 was
coming out and I remember when like the EGM issue had like Ryu
on it with like all the ink and stuff and I was like, Oh my God,

(11:32):
like Street Fighters coming backlike this is insane.
You know, I remember like reading it and like trying to
like figure out 'cause they would talk about like, oh,
there's a new revenge mechanic. And I'm like, I don't know what
this is. I can't understand like what the
hell like that is. So I was super excited, got
Street Fighter 4, loved it, you know, at the time I got on 360,

(11:54):
but it wasn't until Super came out where like, I think that
like kind of changed everything because I was still when Super
came out, I was still in the eighth grade actually.
But that was the time where I was like, I'm going to take the
Super seriously. All of my friends in my
neighborhood were taking it seriously.

(12:14):
We all had mains, you know, we were like watching Evo and
stuff, you know? But for the most part, I mean,
everyone was just doing like, I can FADC, like check this out, I
can FADC, you know? We weren't like, you know, we
knew like, oh hey, like there's this thing called plinking and
stuff, you know, and like there's like 1 frame links.
But that was all like, you know,like, oh, that's what Daigo's

(12:36):
doing on stage, you know, like that's not what we're doing, you
know. But I did have a local arcade
that was kind of big at the time.
Has a lot of controversy now, but it's Planet 0.
I did go there a few times, but like I was still a teenager.
So that was like my, my mom likedropping me off and then picking

(12:58):
me up and like I sucked, you know, right.
So I didn't really get to experience that like camaraderie
thing, you know, thankfully I did have like, you know, a bunch
of kids into my neighborhood andwe all played and stuff.
But I guess I didn't really get to experience like FGCFGC, like
I'm going to go to tournaments and stuff and tell Street
Fighter 5 because Street Fighter5 came out when I was in college

(13:20):
and before Street Fighter Five, I was like, you know, I I gave
in to the hyper. I was like, this is going to go
back to real Street Fighter. I was on, I was on Fight Cade,
like grinding super turbo so hard because I'm like, this is
going to be so important. You know, like this is going to
make me better than like everyone has Street Fighter
Five. Yeah, me and my like, me and
another friend, we really felt like, you know, Street Fighter 5

(13:43):
was our generation's game. This is going to be the game
that we're going to go so hard on.
We're going to go pro, we're going to like win tournaments,
top eights, whatever. And then you know, Street
Fighter five half in and sadly, it kind of killed a lot of our
like our locals and stuff. So there was like before evo,
the period before Evo, I feel like everyone was still in their

(14:04):
honeymoon. Me especially like that was the
point where I was like Street Fighter can't be bad.
There's no way that this series that I love like it's it's
impossible. I can't accept it.
Like, whenever I would like to defend it, I'd be the one in the
comments defending it. Like you don't get it.
Like all we need is training mode in online.
I don't care about anything else, you know, sort of thing.
Interesting. Yeah.

(14:24):
But, you know, taught me a big lesson that I can't be a shill.
You know, sometimes things you love just kind of suck.
At first. I ended up liking Street Fighter
Five more. I love Abigail.
He's one of my favorite characters of all time.
Oh really? I wouldn't.
Expect a stupid character. Man, I love that character.
I feel like to me, Abigail oftenrepresents the people who were

(14:46):
like burned by Street Fighter Five.
Like, that was the nail in the coffin for a lot of people.
But it's what he mentioned that,yeah, like when he released at
Evo. Evo 2017 was actually the first
evil that I got to attend. So I just remember the crowd,
like the air out of the room. It just that trailer dropped.
It's it's people are like waiting for Street Fighter five
to be saved. It's like season 1 was terrible.

(15:06):
Season 2 was getting maybe a little bit better, but it was
still like kind of a shit show, offensive shit show.
People like we need something big now.
And then Abigail appears on screen, room, room.
And the crowd is like, what the hell is this?
I still can't believe that they didn't do the zoner Soko plater
Minot. Minot.
Yeah, I can't believe like, 'cause like Minot came after

(15:27):
Abigail, right? Like.
Right. I think they were the next
character, yeah. How in the world did Abigail get
at Evo and not Minot? Like that is so crazy to me.
Yeah, Minot has a life beyond the game now.
Like, like, you know, people love that character and she's
like a cosplay fan favorite. And then yeah, that would that
would have been an easy win. But no, they chose the giant

(15:49):
ugly guy role-playing as a car. Like I don't know what they.
Love that character. So such a ridiculous design and
not, not, I mean, appearance wise he's ridiculous, but like
mechanically what a what a dumb character.
But like, I love that, you know,I like playing ignorant
characters. So yeah, my name is Guile in
quote. I don't mean guile on anything

(16:12):
super turbo. He's like a secondary.
If I'm, I play boxer in that game cuz he's a dumb ignorant
character. And if I have to play against
like Honda or something, OK, I'mgoing to switch to Guile.
But like, Guile's too hard working in that game.
So So what does the name actually refer to then?
Is it just the the specific win quote when Guyle wins the family
man 1? I like my username used to be

(16:35):
like go home and be a family man, but then it didn't fit
anywhere. So that's like just morphed in
the Guyle one quote, which I think is like cool.
Now I like Guyle. I love charge characters.
The reason like when I first started playing fighting games,
like when I fight like first started like actually learning
them, you know, You know, I played Guyle, but then in Super
I just fell in love with Gamer B.

(16:57):
He's my favorite player of all time.
So I started playing Aidon. I get mixed reactions when I
tell people I play Aidon in thatgame, but I try to go back
because I saw Broski, he uploaded a video on like just
remembering Street Fighter Four.And I was like, you know what,
I'm going to bust, bust out someaid on links and I couldn't do

(17:18):
any of them anymore. It was, it was embarrassing.
I was like, you know what? Maybe fighting games getting
easier is like a good thing. That's funny you say that
because for me with Street Fighter four, it's like when I
go back after just a few minutes, the one frame links
come back, but I can't play the game.
Like I I did boot up one time since since Street Fighter 5
releasing, I feel like I've beenonline on Street Fighter 4 twice

(17:39):
in these many years. And when I went online, I lost
to a Ken player who was just doing carrot grab over and over,
like literally just over and over.
And I'm like, I know what you'redoing, but I know I'm supposed
to tech the throw, but I cannot tech the throw like the the
delay based net code plus like the tech window plus the care
grab delay. I was like, oh, like I have no
sense of like the flow of the match anymore.

(18:01):
In training mode I'll do the oneframe links but in game I'm I
was losing to some guy spamming grab.
Yeah, I'm so nostalgic for the game.
I think like is the ultimate like homie game, you know
especially I for our generation.I guess like you could put that
on in the background and someones going to get on what
we'll have fun. But at Texas show, the last
Texas showdown, you know, they had the, the, the Raleigh likes

(18:23):
Memorial Tournament and I was playing against like, like a
little group. I I believe you got top 8IN that
right. I got maybe top 8 or whatever.
I entered on a whim. I, I, I didn't even sign up in
time. I didn't know it existed.
So they they stuck me into the bracket and I borrowed someone's
hit box and I never played that game on lever list so.
Oh man, I just can't imagine. Yeah, I went in just free form

(18:46):
and played one, at least one game, but I barely remembered
how to play, it'd been so long. I was playing in a little group
against a a friend. He got like, I think he got
third sketch. He was like a rolento player.
And you know, I I I tried ADON. I was like, OK, I can't do this.
Let me go to someone easier. I tried like only set and I was
like, dude, I don't know how to play this game anymore.

(19:08):
It's hard. But anyways, yeah, so Street
Fighter 5 came out it unfortunately like, I mean, it
sounds like a joke now. I feel like maybe people who
weren't in the Street Fighter five generation maybe think it's
like an over exaggeration, but it did kind of like kill my
locals. Like people stopped like coming.
We had like really strong, you know, Street Fighter four

(19:30):
players and you know, other games like Hamad and stuff,
right? You know they played and tell
Evo and then this. This is not an unusual story,
unfortunately, I this happened everywhere, right?
And I think what if people who weren't a part of this, a part
of the FTC at this time might not get it, is that Street

(19:50):
Fighter four year over year was growing in the competitive
scene, which I don't think I can't name another fighting game
that has seen that type of growth.
Because usually what happens, especially from Street Fighter
Five era 2016 and beyond, is that the game's biggest the
first year and then it dwindles until the next hype cycle starts
over when a new release happens and then overall the dip.

(20:12):
The, the, you know, the, the minimum from the dip is still
higher than the previous minimum.
So the overall, the FTC keeps growing, but there's always
this, this Boone and bust cycle.But with Street Fighter four,
year after year, it was getting more and more tournament
entrance and more and more like visibility from the audience and
more and more viewers, more spectators until Street Fighter
Five released, which was the biggest EVO of all time until

(20:34):
Street Fighter Six. And then things fell off and all
over the country locals disappeared.
And I think that was 95% the game because Street Fighter Five
released like three years too soon.
Arcade Edition would have been agood time to release the game.
The game was just not finished and barely functioned.
But then also I think we startedto see beyond that to give to

(20:54):
not just 100% blame, just StreetFighter Five.
I think we started to see the evolution of the online scene as
well. Like for someone who like myself
had locals during Street FighterFive era, I at a certain point I
was like, I'm going to play online like as it's kind of
taboo. And it's maybe selfish to say

(21:15):
there was times where I was likeI went to the local here and
there in Milwaukee, but I was like, I am competing with
stronger players online with a connection that kind of works.
And Street Fighter Four that literally did not exist.
So there, I feel like there's this combination of like 95%, a
lot of people drop the game and that last 5% of the people who
are really committed, it's like we can just kind of play each

(21:36):
other online. And, and I don't think with
Street Fighter Six, that's recovered a little bit.
There's a resurgence in offline to a degree, but I think because
of the online situation, it's sogood.
A lot of people just want to stay online.
You see it with NLBC, right? Item goes to NLBC every week,
but there's only like 10 people that show up now, which is
great. It's still enough to have a
great time. I'm not trying to knock that,

(21:57):
but it's just not the same. I don't think we'll ever go back
to that era. Yeah, sadly not like our local
Street Fighter 16 at first, likewe had a, our first like big
tournament for Street Fighter 6 had 80 people, which is like
insanity, you know? But now like our like best
player in our scene is literallylike putting like $100 bounties
to like just beat him, you know,in bracket just to get people to

(22:20):
come out. Yeah, it's definitely a
different era, but I would say Street Fighter 5 failing.
It's kind of selfish to say, butlike, I feel like it was a net
benefit for the FTC almost in the sense that it got other
people to play other games. It opened the door.
For sure because like I mean in Street Fighter, the Street

(22:42):
Fighter 4 era, you know, snake eyes has the famous quote that
like you know like Street Fighter players are the best
fighting game players and I'm a bit biased.
I will say that like Capcom Cup 2015 Evo 20/20/15 Street Fighter
4 is like, that's like the peak of fighting games to me.
Fighting. Games, I kind of agree.
You know, fighting a skill, everything was just like the

(23:05):
culmination of everything was like, perfect, you know, But I
mean, of course an anime player ended up winning, you know, So.
But yeah, so people there was like a stigma.
Like, you know, Guilty Gear is so huge now, and I've said this
in a few of my videos, like the fact that Strive is as big as it
is, is like insane. Yeah.
It doesn't matter. Like how you feel about, you
know, if it's Guilty Gear, blah,blah, blah, blah.

(23:27):
Like Guilty Gear is a household name.
You know, people who wouldn't even play Street Fighter two
years ago are playing like, you know, are playing Guilty Gear.
So but back back then it was like you're an anime player.
You know, there was like a weirdstigma.
There was a definitely a pretentious heir to like Street
Fighter or like this is the maingame.
This is the game that's actuallytaken seriously for anything.

(23:49):
Yeah, I noticed that first hand a lot because like I I was an O
niner for Street Fighter and I can't say I didn't contribute a
little bit to the anti anime stigma.
And that's just me not liking anime in general, but the games
himself, I can tell they're likeway more technical.
Like I'm looking at these games like on the side here and there
at the locals or whatever. And I'm like, they're doing a
lot of stuff like there RPM, there are APM, they're actually

(24:11):
for a minute, it's like way higher than what we're doing.
I'm like, that looks kind of hard.
But then the, my mentors in the scene or whatever, there'll
always be that sort of attitude of like, oh, but the best
players are playing Street Fighter or, and my, my, my real
teacher, he talked about Melee. I brought the story up before.
He's like Evil 2013 happened andMelee was there and he's like,

(24:31):
but yeah, we could do that. We could beat all of them, can't
we? And I'm like, maybe I don't
know, they seem pretty good. I'm like they're doing a bunch
of wave dashing and technical stuff.
I'm like, I think it's kind of hard.
What they're doing is like, Nah,we're Street Fighter players.
We could beat them at their gamejust because we played Street
Fighter. There's an assumed position of
dominance and skill just becauseyou played Street Fighter, which

(24:52):
was very silly to have. And I, I think that has been
blown wide open in later years because I do think there's a
sort of sort of talent draw to Street Fighter because of the
economic opportunities. And we see that in Street
Fighter 6 where a lot of playersdo end up at the professional
level dropping other games to play Street Fighter Six, but
they come from other games and then they do great.
They're among the best of the best of the best, right?

(25:13):
We keep seeing that over and over, even like NRS players who
are still to this day, like disrespected like crazy.
And the start of Street Fighter Six, they were some of the best
players. Some of the best NRS players
were winning Street Fighter, like big Street Fighter weekly
tournaments in NA. And they just, you know, they
stopped to go play NRS game. So we've seen the cross
pollination on Street Fighter and we can see that players from

(25:35):
other games, the top players canbe top players in Street Fighter
as well. So you kind of have to lose that
ego as a Street Fighter player, but it was a real big thing in
the Street Fighter 4 era for sure.
I mean, it still exists in, like, old games, you know?
I mean, that's like a discourse that always happens.
Like, oh, like, but you couldn't, you can't play this,
you can't play Thursday, you can't play Super Turbo.

(25:56):
It's like, yeah, if MENA dedicate his life to Thursday,
yeah, he's going to win. Like, he's already proven
himself, you know, like, but people were open to playing new
things because they didn't have a main game.
I guess so there was like a kindof casual local where, you know,
it wasn't like a tournament. It was like everyone just brings

(26:16):
your own stuff and we can play games.
And I met some friends who were also burned by Street Fighter
Five and we just started playingold man games.
For whatever reason, Texas in general has like a huge CVS 2
scene. So there was just like, I, it

(26:37):
sounds like a joke, but like you, there would be a random
Friday in like 2017 and there would be like 30 people for like
CBS two or something, you know, And that turned into like, hey,
like I played this random game on Fight Gate, you know, like
Carnob's Revenge. You want to like, you know, mess
with it. And so we just kept playing a
bunch of games and then a group of friends came together and we

(27:00):
created this thing called like Poverty Maniacs.
And we've hosted like once a month we would host like a
dollar entry tournament for likea random game like Breakers
Revenge, Karnov's Revenge, a lotof revenge stuff, you know, just
stuff like that. And we would like pull like
people that we've never seen. Like there would always be like

(27:21):
one person who's like, oh, actually not to play this game
and I'm going to like kill you, you know, like we ran like a
random Soul Calibur 2 tournament.
Some like old dude didn't speak a word, never seen him ever.
Just like swept it, took his 40 bucks, went home sort of thing.
So yeah, just got, I guess a lotmore active in the poverty

(27:41):
fighting game. That's what, I don't know if
that's like a like a good term now niche fighting game.
That's what they're used to, used to call them.
But I got really involved in that.
I started running tournaments and then I fell in love with
Vampire Savior and I think that's probably my favorite
fighting game of all time. That's Dark Stalkers 3.

(28:01):
This is like an insane game cuz this was Capcom, like a small
team of Capcom just like making up stuff like there's so many
like rules to this game that no other game does cuz it's yeah
like let's just put out this game and hope it works and
hopefully, like thankfully the mechanics and everything turned

(28:22):
into something like beautiful. So fell in love with that game
and I started running or my friends and I, we, we started
running Vampire Savior and A2 atTexas Showdown, I believe in
2017 and we've ran that every single year.
So if you're going to Texas Showdown, enter Vampire Savior

(28:43):
A2. But because of that, we were
like, man, we got to get arcade hardware, you know, and that's
when we just dove into like, OK,let's start spending money on
super guns. Let's start spending money on
arcade boards and stuff. And it's it's turned into this
behind me, right? Yeah.

(29:03):
So started running that Texas Showdown just started getting
really into a bunch of niche fighting games, like actually
like playing them, playing them.But when the pandemic happened,
you know, obviously all of that stopped.
And me personally, I don't really.
I'm not the tournament player who is ever entering a

(29:25):
tournament like, oh, I'm going to win.
You know, I don't necessarily just like grind one game.
You know, I play like competently.
I would say like a like a bunch of different games and yeah,
like the, but like winning tournaments and everything is
like, not necessarily like why Iplay fighting games.
You know, I, I enter tournaments, I go to locals and

(29:46):
stuff, but I want to play other people.
I want to have fun. So during the pandemic, I kind
of, you know, lost like what I enjoyed about the genre pretty
much because, yeah, I didn't want to do the faceless bicade
rank and get mad at my opponent,you know, all day.

(30:07):
So I feel like with everyone, wewere stuck at home watching a
bunch of YouTube, a bunch of mindless stuff.
And I was so bored that this is going to sound raw like bad, but
I ended up watching a bunch of smash stuff, even though like I

(30:27):
don't care about smash. I've never been like a smash
guy. There's no like no offense.
I don't want anyone to like walkaway with like God willing quote
hate smash or something, but it's never been.
I have fighting in brain worms. You know, it's not the same to
me. And but I would watch a bunch of
smash stuff cuz like they had stuff on YouTube that wasn't
just technical. We're playing the game gameplay

(30:51):
exactly like you've mentioned Awesomesauce on other I I think
you've mentioned Awesomesauce. Yeah, I've mentioned before in
some videos, but I've also mentioned just Smash in general
because your timeline sounds very similar to me.
Because 2020 I was tweeting about this a lot too before I
sort of made a jump into the YouTube game more heavily.
Because before I was like, I waspracticing streaming on Twitch

(31:12):
and then like once a month clip something for for YouTube.
And then here and there I would do something a little bit more
edited, but it was just on my spare time, which I had like
none of at the time. And then I was like, why is
Smash doing so much cool shit onYouTube?
I would turn it on and there'd be really in depth
retrospectives on tournament runs, player history, technical
stuff, but maybe in a way that'ssuper digestible and edited well

(31:35):
and tells a story. Like how do you turn a, a, a, a
video game glitch into a story? Like, you know, like their
content creation game was just light years ahead of what we
were doing. And I was like, I remember
tweeting about it, like, why don't we do this?
And then I'm like, why don't I do this?
So it sounds like a similar timeframe where you were observing
this. I mean, I was a fan of Smash,
though I did actually like Melee, so that helped me get

(31:56):
into that. But it sounds like you noticed
the same sort of trend in their community that they actually
really embraced content creationand expressing their passion for
their game. Yeah, you know, cuz there was a
a moment where I kind of realized like, you know, like I
can't show a fighting game videoto like my girlfriend, you know,
cuz there's like nothing for herto like grasp on.

(32:17):
It's literally just like, Oh yeah, like that was sick, right.
And it's like what what even wasthat?
But yeah, on melee it was like, here's a three hour documentary
on Marth's F smash. It's like what?
Like we have so much like history we have like there's so
much nuance and cool stuff in our games, but it didn't really
exist on YouTube besides, you know, just gameplay or like

(32:41):
edited streams, like lightly edited stream stuff.
Besides Corey Gaming, of course.I feel like anyone who talks
about fighting game content on YouTube always says like, yeah,
Corey Gaming is like the one. But like, yeah, they were like,
they were the first ones to be like, yeah, we can do this same
thing but for fighting games, you know?
So yeah, I kind of just decided,you know, I was also working

(33:05):
from home and had a lot of free time, you know, just wiggling
the mouse to keep myself online.So I was like, yeah, let me
whenever. I was always bothered by how
people who talked about fightinggames, who didn't know anything
about fighting games talked about fighting games and videos.
But I was also bothered by the fact that the people who do know

(33:27):
fighting games, you aren't talking about them in a way
that's like, digestible to like,anyone.
So I figured, you know, I like abunch of old games.
Let me start talking about why Ilike these old games and why
they are important even though they're not, you know, going to
be on the mainstage of EVO, eventhough that, yeah, there's a lot
of broken stuff in this. Or even if you think the game

(33:49):
feels horrible, like look at this cool aesthetic choice.
Look at this mechanic that some guy thought of, you know, right.
And it's thankfully, very luckily, has taken off since.
Yeah, you've been doing really good.
I mean your your channel based on what is a publicly available.
So I don't know if you did the Rob TV.
He told me he had tons of videosthat he delisted your your first

(34:11):
video on there right now is the unfinished fighting game with
Heart Daraku Tenchi, if I'm saying that correctly, which was
nearly four years ago and February 4th, it'll be four
years ago when you published that video.
And it's you with your branding already ready to go, the gal win
quote, plus the intro. Your your music is set there and

(34:31):
it has your style that you've maintained.
You know, you tightened it up throughout the years and it
improved your production and youknow, you've improved your
craft, but it has already that first video there looks like a,
a YouTube video, like something I would put on today.
But Yep, this is a good YouTube video.
It's digestible. You're doing your narrative
retrospective about this game and explain what you what you

(34:52):
like about it and making it entertaining for the viewer to
follow along. And that's a great first YouTube
video. But that's not your first shot,
right? I will admit no, I've had so a
really long time ago before Street Fighter 5 came out, when
the Street Fighter 5 crack came out or like was like leaked, I
made a video that was like here fighting any fundamentals you

(35:16):
need to know for Street Fighter five.
OK, and that video got like 100,000 views at the time.
It was like I, I delisted it. It sucks and you know it's a
little embarrassing, but it was it was me like basically like
this is what a frame trap is, you know and but I also went
into like weird stuff like this.This is what a chain combo is
when it's like man, Street Fighter fighter is not going to

(35:36):
have chains, but Street Fighter four had chains.
You know if you kept mashing light points, you would get
chains. So it, it was a bunch of like
just weird stuff, but like it, it was big.
And I was like, Oh my God, like I can do this.
Corey gaming even like used the video in like one of his videos
like 10 years ago. We met at EVO 2016 and I was
like, oh, like I'm the guy you used the video from.

(35:59):
But then I didn't do anything for five years, four or five
years. OK, so this was your second
video, the one? Yeah, I I've like gabbled in,
but like not in like actual likeputting stuff out in YouTube,
you know, like when I was young,I would like mess with like like
going back to like Moogan, you know, I'd be like here check out
this awesome fight I edited in like Windows Movie Maker sort of

(36:20):
thing, but. Put some Linkin Park in the
back. Yeah, exactly.
Make it an A&B. But I will like I will say that
most of the media that I consume, it sounds embarrassing
is YouTube, you know, and I've just like grown up like like I
said, like watching everyone on screw attack, you know, everyone
on game trailers. So I feel like I kind of

(36:43):
understood what was needed and Iguess we could go into this, but
you know, the branding from fromthe get go.
I immediately, you know, I set out with the channel with like a
kind of mission statement where it was like, I want to make
fighting games accessible to like everyone, but I also want

(37:05):
the people who know fighting games to not click off of it
because that was what I would do.
I would click on that fighting game video and it's like, you
obviously don't know what frame data is, right?
And I know that sounds pretentious, but I was like,
I'm, I'm just not interested in hearing your point of view
because like, I feel like I'm, I'm not going to get anything,

(37:26):
which is like, you know, which is harsh, but like, that's what
I was feeling it. It depends on how they present
it. I think there is a place for
that if it's forthcoming that they don't know what they're
they're getting into and it's more of like their journey.
Because I've seen some videos that were great from the
perspective of I've never playedStreet Fighter before.
Here's me trying to win a tournament in 30 days.
Like I've seen a video, I've seen videos like that where it's

(37:47):
like the the assumption for the get go is I am a beginner being
exposed to this. Here's that experience and how I
make it digestible for you. You would come at it from an
expert of like, I love fighting games and then I don't know what
a combo is. It's like, well, you love
something about this, but I'm not sure if it's the game.
Yeah, cuz I would like, you know, I would look up these
random old games and you would only see like, you know, like

(38:08):
you know, 240P combo videos and stuff.
And then you would get like a video of someone talking about
it. But like I said, it would be
like footage of them just like in arcade mode, just like
talking, you know right. And I was just like, I want to
do that, but better. So with like the branding from
the get go, you know, with the mission statement, the mantra of
the channel, you know, like all fighting games are good.

(38:30):
You know, the kind of immediately is like, hey, like
this is what you're getting yourself into.
You're getting yourself into like an enthusiast, someone
who's passionate about this. But also, you know, for those in
the know, it's like, oh, that's that's the CPS 2 Jingle.
That's if you start up an arcadeboard, here's the Q sound CPS 2
Jingle. This is what he's, you know,

(38:50):
referencing. He knows what he's talking
about. Guile win quote, like like guile
win quote. I know what you're talking
about. Like I assumed it was the go
home and be a family man quote. So that that already is.
I feel like guile win quote is an interesting phrase in and of
itself or some it's kind of catchy on its own.
And then that pair with the image, it's like the windscreen

(39:11):
image and you can it gets your mind going on.
What is the one quote he's referring to?
Is it the one that I know and people who don't know, it's just
catchy. And you know, you can, you can
maybe recognize Guile. There's some kind of reference
there to to give you that. So there's already an inside
reference while being digestibleand and having reach for greater

(39:32):
audiences. So I feel like you really nailed
that balance and getting that out of the gate is very
impressive. I had to say I, I don't think a
lot of people get that first. I mean, on my channels, I have
like over, I almost have 3000 videos on YouTube at this point.
And I, I feel like I'm still figuring out what exactly I want

(39:52):
to do. But I think your focus really
shows because from the get go, you have your, your, your
mission statement. And I think that's, that's
really powerful that you understood exactly what you
wanted to achieve upfront. And I think that's something
that's missing from a lot of other.
People who try to do content in the FTC space, which is I guess
sort of related to the video that you commented on that I was

(40:15):
discussing this in. A lot of the people who are in
this Reddit thread that I went through were discussing why they
don't do content creation and a lot of people were saying I
would, but XY or Z. And the common theme from it is
that they're like, I want to make something, but I have no
idea what to make or why I want to make it.
And I'm like, well, why do you want to make it in the first

(40:35):
place? What, what is the actual natural
goal that you're trying to achieve?
So it seems like they're they had no reference to that core
mission statement like you happen to have from the get go.
Yeah, You know, with the commentthat I made on your YouTube
video, which whenever FTC content comes up as a talk, as a
topic, I'm always extremely super interested, obviously

(40:56):
because I make it. But I want to see like, you
know, what people are strugglingon, like what people want to see
sort of thing. Yeah.
And I, I respect that. You were very blunt with, you
know, going through this Reddit thread, people saying like,
yeah, I would love to do this, but it takes a lot of time.
And you're like, yeah, it does, you know, and it's like, yeah,

(41:17):
like, of course, like it's work.You know, I feel like a lot of
people come to this space content creation very I don't
know if entitled is the right word, but with the way that
people complain, it's like I'm doing it, why aren't I getting
views? You know, and I do want to say
like, obviously like YouTube is extremely lucky or like luck

(41:40):
based. There's a lot of factors
outside, you know, like, you know, gender, race, occupation,
education, literally all of thatgoes in it.
Like no one is trying to say that like, you know, literally
all you have to do is make a good video.
You know, it's that's just not the case.
But I do think for the most partthat YouTube rewards good videos

(42:05):
in the sense that if you make something good that someone's
going to watch, you know, it's going to keep pushing your stuff
as long as you keep doing that. It's just of course, getting
that first initial click is likealmost like a little miracle
that you have to hope for, whichis why you have to like come out
prepared and strong and like focused of like, if I do get

(42:26):
this random click, I'm going to keep them here, right?
So. Very true.
Yeah. I think there's that that
psychological element of delayedgratification that goes with it.
And I think it's not just content creation that's anything
like if you look at like fitness, whatever your career
and any aspect of life where youyou have to put in work up front

(42:46):
and then get results later, thatsort of mantra or that mentality
comes into play. I I ate the broccoli and I did a
push up. Why am I not Arnold
Schwarzenegger? You know what I mean?
Like there's, there's always that kind of disconnect that
happens in in every lane. So having having it happen in
content creation is, is it's expected, I guess you know, it's
you should, you should make sureto fight that mentality or

(43:07):
whatever creeps up in your own mind.
But it's to be expected that people react that way.
But, but the thing I like to reiterate or use you as an
example, this whole conversationup till this point, you've been
establishing your genuine passion and expertise that
you've built over your entire life.
So you know, you, you had a passion for fighting games.

(43:30):
You, you used all your free timeto explore the genre and to
collect actual expertise over time, right?
You are now an expert on this genre because you've put in
years of I mean, I, I, I wouldn't call it work.
It was just passion. It was, it was play, right?
You, you played for years and now you know a thing or two
about the genre. Therefore when it came time for

(43:50):
you to do content creation, you're able to deliver that
value. You are a unique individual
where you're positioned in a waywhere you can communicate the
things you've learned over yearsof experience that I can't just
do that right now. I can't just Google this, this
wealth of fighting game knowledge that you've
accumulated over the years. I, you have to distill it to me
or else I will not have it, right?
So that's a very powerful position to approach it from.

(44:13):
And so I see that with other people, whether like, well, I
don't know what to make, but don't make it right.
So you knew exactly what you wanted to make because you knew
exactly what you wanted to talk about because it's your genuine
passion. So that part was easy.
Now you just had to figure out the mechanics of actually making
the video. But if you have nothing that you
actually want to make or do, whyare you trying to make or do

(44:35):
something? What is the actually the goal?
And I feel like there's a, this image of just like maybe they
just want to be an influencer, they just want to make money
talking. So it's it's hard to understand
the the motivation there. You know, I, I'm in an
interesting position because I'mnot really doing this as my job.
I'm not looking for it to be my career.

(44:56):
I'm sure it's the same with you.But when people outside of, you
know, fighting the FGC, like here, you do YouTube, probably
the first question they ask is like, how much do you make
right? You know, truthfully, I don't
make a lot on YouTube and I alsoI'm not doing YouTube to make a
lot of money. So I am in a position where, you
know, I literally every month just, OK, I want to talk about

(45:19):
this game. You know, there's no like rhyme
or reason for the most part. And so when I see other people,
like even other creators, like with platforms bigger than me
being like, what kind of videos do you guys want to see?
You know, it's like I I it's hard for me to not feel like
you've lost the plot like a little bit, you know, where it's
like, like, what do you mean? You know, but like, obviously

(45:39):
I'm not making a video every dayand I'm not doing this as like
my income. We're like, I need to know what
you guys want. So yeah, I definitely have, I
think a much different perspective.
And but I also feel like the fact that I'm not coming in this
wanting it to be my job and I'm able to, you know, just do

(46:00):
whatever has kind of like helpedthe image and the the brand,
especially in the games I'm talking about.
Because since I'm talking about niche things, it's very easy to
like sniff out like a poser, youknow, or a grit or a grifter,
you know, even though there's what am I to grift here?
You know, I guess besides clout,but you know, it's very easy to,

(46:22):
you know, do things like that. So yeah, I feel like it's, I'm
just in a very interesting position because like you said,
like I have like this my entire life and I am, you know,
whenever I say like, I think this game is really cool, like
I'm not like hamming it up, you know, like I think it's really
cool. I'm trying to tell you, hey,

(46:44):
This is why I think it's cool. You don't have to think it's
cool, but like at least try to think about like some aspects of
this that you may not have otherwise.
Right, Yeah. So the authenticity comes
through and that's to the the content's benefit.
And that that that was the otherexample I was using that video.
It's like, well, if, if I don't think it's wrong to want to make

(47:04):
an income or return from whatever you're producing on
YouTube, but there is sort of like a sliding scale between
genuine passion and a scheme to make money, right?
Like you have to find that sweetspot.
And if you go to the full passion side of things, then you
should have no problem doing whatever you're doing because
you're not going to care at all if a single person watches it.

(47:25):
You're making it for yourself because you, you just have a
passion about this topic and youwant to create something related
to it, right? So therefore, great, you're
free, you know, there's no problem.
Now, if you start sliding the skull in the other direction a
little bit, you might have an actual genuine passion, but then
you care a little bit about if it actually has success and
there's a part of the metrics about it.
And maybe you enjoy the game of how to produce a YouTube video

(47:46):
and it's like another video gameto play.
Like how can you learn this system and optimize it?
And that's fair and that's all good.
But if you go to the other extreme where it's like you have
no passion, you don't care at all.
And you're literally just like an AI trying to regurgitate a
reverse engineer the YouTube algorithm and spin get out
content to get views and money. Then we've seen like the dark

(48:06):
places that go, it's with like influencers on the Internet and
like the disgusting content theydo for views and money.
And it's just degeneracy, right?So that that's always the thing
I point out. It's like, what do you care
about? Like just figure out to how to
make something related to what you care about.
And then you find your balance for optimizing it for YouTube,
because I think there is a game to be played with it.

(48:30):
And I think it's kind of a fun game.
Like I kind of enjoy figuring out how YouTube works because
once you start getting into it, there's all these different
metrics like the click through rate and then watch time and,
and those things are objective metrics that you can take back
from and make the video better. I, I mean, I, there's definitely
something to be said about a video that people want to watch

(48:52):
to completion and in a genuine way.
Now they're those stats can be gained by, you know, you can do
other retention techniques that keep people strong along for the
length of the video with no realpayoff in the end.
But if you're not trying to actually just to see people to
game the system, I think it justgives you a really good feedback
to actually just make your videobetter.
No, for sure, and I do want to clarify.

(49:14):
I don't like I don't want to come off from like a potential.
I don't need YouTube for money or anything.
I don't like if I want people to, you know, profit from
because like making videos sucksa lot of the times, you know,
it's it's a lot of work. It's like so much like this past
video that I just dropped, you know, I spent most of my
Christmas holidays like anytime I wasn't with like my family, my

(49:37):
girlfriend, it was like, OK, I'mgoing to be in the office and
right cranking this out, you know, so, but yeah, definitely
like because I'm not necessarilylooking for like the monetary
game. It definitely allows me to be a
lot more relaxed and a lot more I want to say like eccentric

(49:57):
with my topics, you know, because yeah, you know, I, I
have people ask me, you know, like, oh, why don't you make a
video on, you know, something, something that I know would be
like big, you know, like something like, you know, the
the three kings of like poverty games are like Cardinal's
revenge, Jackie Chan and Sailor Moon.
Those are like everyone like kind of knows those games like,

(50:19):
well, why don't you cover those?And it's like, well, I feel like
those have been talked to death,even though like, I know that
that would do good, you know, but it's, it's just like, I
don't feel like, you know, I, I need to right now.
I, I can still make a video about a game that, you know, has
a fight cave lobby population of0, unless I'm in it, you know,

(50:40):
sort of thing. So yeah, I, I definitely think
I'm in a cool spot. And I think because of that, has
that has also helped me that I'mnot, you know, putting a Nord
VPN ad. Not that there is anything wrong
with a Nord VPN ad, but it's just like the fact that that to
me, it would feel jarring to talk about this game from 30

(51:02):
years ago and then be like, Oh yeah, hey, check this out.
Here's an ad break. And then so I feel like that
kind of like, helps the brand ingeneral where it's like, OK,
this person's obviously passionate and he's also not,
you know, chilling out. If that you know, it's funny you
you talked about grifting this space before.
I think the YouTuber is Carl Jacobs.
He's the guy who does a lot of like, oh they cheated a speed

(51:25):
run. Yeah, the speed run.
Yeah, and he did one a couple recently about the similar sort
of strategy applied to YouTube videos where there's a bunch of
Youtubers who keep copying otherpeople's YouTube videos and
creating other languages and stuff.
Not yeah, not just other languages.
I think some of them were in thesame language, but definitely a
lot of them were like in different languages where it's
easier to get away with. And so yeah, it exists.

(51:47):
There's people who just crank out YouTube channels literally
just ripping people off on esoteric topics.
So if someone wants to do like, I don't know, Ballrog lose quote
or something, go do the the the opposite version of what you're
doing. This game sucks and just flip
all the facts that you put out. You can just grift your way into
any niche if you really wanted to.
If you follow the the proper guidelines for making a good

(52:09):
YouTube video while you're just stealing information in tech and
you don't actually care about whatever you're talking about,
you can do it. So it's just funny to think that
that actually does exist. But another interesting thing
about your position, I find is that and also contrasting and
getting to that thread because Ifeel like that's such a good way
to view a lot of people's perceptions about constant

(52:29):
creation and fighting in space. You're not like an influencer,
right? I think that's a a good contrast
to make because you have the ability to influence and you do
influence by presenting these topics in a passionate way.
People do get interested in influence about these games and
it's in a positive direction. But you're not like an
influencer, right? Like you're a faceless YouTube

(52:49):
channel, right? Like you're, you're not, it's
not like people want to see gal win quote do something.
I want to see gal win quote playthis game.
I want to see him go do a backflip over a Lamborghini.
You know, like, like what you mentioned before, like, hey
guys, what video should I make next?
That's because the product is the persona on screen and you're
trying to put them into different situations because you
want to see the, the persona dance for the, the, the

(53:13):
audience, right. And I feel like that's such a
powerful position to be in because you don't have that
pressure like you can, you can really do what you want in a way
because you have there's no expectation of return
necessarily. And it's not tied to you as a
person, which is something recently I've been really like
thinking about how even though I've been a much more like on

(53:36):
camera kind of personality basedcontent creator for a long time,
I kind of wish I could pivot. I can get away from that and get
off camera and do a bit more like what you're doing 'cause
you, I think there's a freedom there.
I don't know if you ever thoughtabout that difference in your
content creation path compared. To others, Oh yeah, for sure.
But first of all, you're Mr. Street Fighter on YouTube.

(53:58):
Like you can't, you can't stop now, you know.
But yeah, I mean, I do get hit with the, the, the joke is that,
you know, I'm like an S&K or like a Capcom plant, you know,
like I, I make a video and then like, oh, a RE release gets
announced or something. That's like the joke.
That's as far as it goes. But yeah, like people have asked

(54:20):
me, it's like, oh, why don't youstream?
Why don't you do this? And it's like, well, you know,
streaming is a whole another skill.
It's hard as hell. I don't think I can do that.
But yeah, like you said, like I don't necessarily think me
myself, I'm the product. I think my enthusiasm is, if
that makes sense, you know, But yeah, I'm definitely glad that,

(54:42):
you know, I'm not the I guess like the face, you know, in a
way it's kind of a double edged sword because Guile is the face,
which is like not like, you know, that's a copyrighted
character. Not that I'm going to like do
anything, you know, not like I'mgoing to sell like I one call
plushies or something. But it is like funny because
it's like I've had the thoughts,like I I don't think it would

(55:02):
ever happen, but like Capcom could be like, hey, like stop,
you know, like stop with guy Owen quote, you know, but yeah,
I definitely like this position.Also just, you know, because I
feel like, you know, people are mean and weird on the Internet
and you know, I already like I hear things about, you know, the

(55:25):
only time I've ever gotten like,because I'm never like on
camera. I was in AI was in a collab with
JM Crofts and this is going to sound bad.
It's a it's funny. I'm not, I'm not hurt by it or
whatever, but you know, I'm in jam cross video.
We do a collab. I'm like, oh, I'm going to check
out the comments and someone's like, he can afford calves but
not braces. And I'm like.

(55:45):
Damn, you know, like what's going?
I'm like Jesus. Christ, you know, so I'm like,
you know, I'm glad that I'm a faceless entity sometimes for
the most part, you know, becausenow people can just like make
fun of the way I pronounce things and not me as a person,
you know, like not that there. I guess there would be a lot to
you know, but the one time I waslike, you know, I did get

(56:05):
attacked. So, right, I definitely do think
and there's like, I guess there's like a mystique to it.
I don't know, maybe. No, there definitely is.
I think there definitely is. Because yeah, you come across,
there's still like this. I mean, you're kind of
destroying that mystique by doing this.
By the way, I, I actually, I wasn't sure if you'd want to do
this 'cause I, I mean, it's something I thought of when I

(56:26):
asked you to come on the podcast.
I've like you kind of have this faceless persona that does give
it when the mind can wander likethat, they can think of who
who's this guy who knows so muchabout these ancient fighting
games, right? He's he's coming at us to us
from above, delivered to us by the YouTube algorithm and he's
blessing us with this knowledge.Who is this person?
We'll never know. And and now we know and it's

(56:48):
like it does kind of kill that mystique a little bit.
Do you think about that? I mean, I've been on triple KO
and stuff with like Maximilian, Justin Wong, Matt Mcmuscles and
stuff. So I felt that was like the
first time I had like, really like, I guess put myself out
there. But I guess at first there was
never like the real idea of like, oh, I want to be like

(57:09):
faceless, but in the because like, oh, I'm never going to
show myself. I want to be mysterious.
It was just like, yeah, like I want the focus to be on the
game, like not myself. I don't want to do like and like
what am I gonna do? Like skits in the middle of my
video, you know, like old, like anchor video game nerd, like
type stuff, like right, destroy the game or something.
But yeah, it is. I, I guess it also helps because

(57:34):
in a sense of like appearing more on camera, because I do
like go to tournaments, you know, I go to combo breaker, I
go to evo, I run games that takes a showdown.
I definitely think like appearing in the Fighting in
Community when you're like making stuff for the fighting in
community is like, good because it shows that like, you're one
of us, you're actually here, youactually play these games.

(57:55):
So it gives like a bit of authenticity.
But yeah, for like my channel itself, I want the focus to, you
know, solely be the games. I don't need to be, you know,
that's why I also, I try not to like crack jokes as much.
Like early on, I would like throw jokes in and stuff.
But like as I've gotten, I'm like, I don't think people are

(58:18):
clicking on my videos to hear like a gag, like a joke, right,
That I might think it's funny. That might just fall flat.
I think they're here because they want to know about this
fighting game. So like, let's make the focus
the fighting game. Right.
That's also let you think about that because I talked about that
in the video as well. But I feel like doing good
YouTube, like content creation in general is about value

(58:39):
proposition. That's that's kind of the
analogy I've been using a lot where art is just about
self-expression. Do whatever the hell you want.
It doesn't matter if anyone elseon the planet finds it valuable
or not, because it's about expressing your true self.
And if other people enjoy that and find some kind of meaning in
that to them, great, awesome, wecan share that.
If not, no skin off the artist back, right?

(58:59):
But content creation, I think just by the nature of the
medium, it's just it's an exchange of value.
Like you're you're spending yourtime to consume this.
So there better be value in whatI get out of it.
Like you make a promise of the title and thumbnail and then you
better deliver on that. The promise might be this might
be humorous, this might be make me emotional.
This might, you know, make me angry, might be some rage bait,

(59:20):
something I want to complain about on the Internet.
Or it might be I want to learn about this topic and you got to
deliver on that. And so you found the value
proposition for your channel andyou've really narrowed in on it,
which it is not your personality, right?
It's your knowledge and expertise about whatever topics
and you would deliver that and, and return that.
So I think finding that very clear understanding of what

(59:42):
you're giving back to the viewerand what you want to focus on
is, is very, very valuable just for them and for your own
performance as a content creator.
Because that's, that's what I also see is people saying like,
or an issue I see with new content creators in the FTC is
they're often just uploading themselves playing ranked or

(01:00:03):
something. And they even approach it from,
oh, let me set the expectations low so they're not disappointed
when they click on the video. And I'm not a pro player and I'm
not that great. And one of the people in my
comment section was like, yeah, I do this series where I play a
character for a week. And then I upload the video on
YouTube and then the video is titled like a low level player

(01:00:26):
plays Rasheed for a week and loses a lot.
And I'm like, what? What is the promise here?
It's a promise that I promise you when you click on this
video, I'm not that good and I'mplaying character I'm not that
versed with and I don't know much about.
And I'm like, you made a great promise for me to not click on
that video. You gave me every reason in the
world that I should not watch this video where like you could
rephrase that or reframe it and restructure the whole video to

(01:00:48):
be so when new, yes, you're not an amazing player and you are
new. Use that to your advantage.
Show some kind of growth. This is I tried Rashid for a
week. Here's what I learned right?
And then in the beginning, you you set out your expectations.
Currently, you show how you grewas a player, what you learned
and and what you implemented. By the end, you have a story
suddenly. So I feel like that's something

(01:01:08):
that's so missed in so many YouTube videos where they're
just like pumping out gameplay and there's no value to anyone
at all. Like you've like spoken on this
before, but, and I kind of mentioned it in my comment that
I replied that people like Justin Wong, Maximilian get to
upload gameplay because like they've earned that.

(01:01:30):
You know, people click on them because they're Justin Wong and
Maximilian, you know, you as a random person have not earned
that. So and I and I 99% guarantee you
that you're not the next punk, you know, in your gameplay
probably, you know, So yeah, youhave to have like some kind of

(01:01:54):
like, like you said, value proposition where you need to
structure your video in a way, like I said, where if you get a
click, it's a tiny miracle. You need to give them something.
You need to have structure, you need to have a purpose to this
video, even if it's just you playing ranked.
I feel like you're the one who kind of, I guess like really
perfected that for the modern FTC where it's like, yeah, this

(01:02:18):
is my brain gameplay, but there's a purpose, there's a
goal here. Either there's like a funny
incident or like I'm building upto something, right?
You know? And yeah, I feel like if you're
making videos, the number one thing I would say is, of course,
I mean, this is beyond just like, is this a passion project?

(01:02:38):
Is this like, you know, is this creative or is this like
building towards something? I feel like you either have to
have like a goal and actually edit something or like you need
a script because like that will like set you apart from like 90%
of everyone else. And again, it's, it's all, it's
still luck. It might not work.
But if you do get that miracle click, you know, you're more

(01:03:02):
likely to keep someone right then, you know, a little box in
the corner of someone that I don't know, that I've never
seen, that I don't recognize who's not winning tournaments.
Even if it's like you're 1600 Mr. It's like road to 1800, you
know, like that simple thing is like, you know, that establishes
you and gives the viewer like, OK, this guy's doing something.

(01:03:22):
There's a. Right.
There's stakes, there's there's stakes at hand and then there's
there's a chance for success or failure.
And you want to resolve that that tension by the end of the
video. And yeah, I love your your
comment about people watch the Max and Justin Wong lazy
reaction videos because they're Max and Justin Wong.
Like, yeah, if you want to be like the fighting game GOAT for
20 years and win every tournament for every game and
then start making lazy reaction videos or like make the world's

(01:03:44):
greatest tutorial entertainment edutainment series of all time
and then retired making reactionvideos, go ahead and do that.
Right. Like they, they didn't just wake
up and start doing reaction videos and start getting
hundreds of thousands and millions of views, right.
It was because they established their expertise in their realms
over years and they built rapport with the audience and
they, they established expertiseand people know they'll get

(01:04:05):
value out of their perspective where they want to understand
their perspective because of what they've accomplished in the
past. So yeah, like reaction videos
and even streaming, in my opinion, is a luxury of the
established content creator. Like you can't copy what people
are doing when they're already successful because that's not
what they did to get into that position in the 1st place.
And that's the other thing I mentioned is like, I don't think

(01:04:27):
anyone should be streaming. Like I think streaming if you're
new is such a waste of time. And that's something that I wish
I had like balanced better when I first started.
But I guess when I first started, I was in my years of
grinding like competitively. So I it was more me double
dipping my practice time. So maybe I wouldn't have done it
differently, but if I was tryingto only do content creation,

(01:04:50):
spending all those hours streaming is wasting your time.
You're spinning your wheels, going nowhere, like you're not
going to build an audience on Twitch.
And that, that's always a frustrating point to talk about
because even on that video, someone commented they were
saying, well, if only other streamers supported other
streamers, maybe we could grow on Twitch.

(01:05:11):
Like if you just collapsed more and if the big guy helped out
the little guy and I'm like, no,that's not the point.
You know. It's not the point.
Very early on, I had a very, I guess like that lesson where a
big creator, like someone who had like, you know, close to

(01:05:31):
like 100,000 subscribers made a video that was like similar to
the realm of videos that I made.And you know, I like, I felt
threatened. You know, I was like, oh shit.
Like, you know, this is my wholestick.
And now, so I'm so much bigger than me.
He's doing the same thing. So I messaged them, you know, I
was like, hey, man, like I saw you do this.
I do something similar. Do you want to collab?

(01:05:51):
And he was like, no, you know, like he didn't say that, but he
was like, Nah, it's OK. And, you know, like, of course I
felt like a little bitter, but that was more of like me being
like, like, shit, like, you know, like, I'm going to lose
like the little traction I'm getting, you know?
But you know, that was a lesson that was like, yeah, like, yeah,
I can't expect to be given, you know, the and a handout, as you

(01:06:16):
said, you know, like I'd still. And I just kept doing the same
thing that I did. And thankfully, you know, it
worked out because I felt like Ihid a niche that wasn't like
fully being explored on YouTube at the time.
But yeah, you can't as soon as you're blaming the audience, I

(01:06:36):
feel like you've really you've you might be too far gone a
little with like with your dooming because like if a movie
bomb, like, you know, I, I promise your YouTube videos
probably not like some avant-garde art piece that's
going to be understood 20 years from now, you know, So you just
have to get into the mindset of like, hey, this might not work

(01:06:58):
out. I've had videos that have
bombed. Not everything has like been a
success. Things that I feel like oh, this
is going to be amazing for my channel turned out to not be
good. The video I just uploaded a
video that I was like, this is gonna be a surefire.
And I uploaded it and it had 9 out of 10 on, you know, the
YouTube ranking. And that was the first time in a

(01:07:20):
long time where something has like been that low, right?
And you know it. And I was like, oh God, like
what I do. But you know, I checked the
watch time. It had like 10 minutes.
The average watch time, you know, all had a bunch of likes.
All the comments are positive and you know I could sit there
and be like wow like what did I like you should think about like
what did you do that maybe have affected this, but you know like

(01:07:44):
I can't like Stew in it. You know I can't be like mad.
I can't be like why aren't people clicking my video?
This is like what what is wrong with y'all?
You know, like you just got to take it on the test and keep
going, right? So, and I feel like, you know,
publicly dooming is kind of bad for the brand as well.
At the same time, if you're on Twitter complaining that people
are going to click your video, do you think people are going to

(01:08:05):
click on your video right, like.No, no, you don't want, you
don't ever want sympathy support.
I've seen a lot of FTC creators dip into that like sympathy
support. And I'm like that pity support
is temporary and it's not genuine.
And you're not learning to actually fix the core issue.
Like if, if, if something is notworking, you need to actually
fix it and not go for the, the pity view because it's just not

(01:08:27):
going to, it's not sustainable. Like if people don't actually
have a genuine passion and it, and it can hurt your channel or
your consecration in the long run because you might get an
influx of viewership from the wrong audience.
And then they get recommended your videos in the future.
They ignore it. Your click through rate starts
plummeting. Like you're, you're, you're
trying to game the system in a way which can actually hurt you
in the long run. Where really you're trying to
narrow down your niche to find exactly who wants to watch your

(01:08:49):
videos and deliver for them. So you really have to focus in
on that. And the other thing you
mentioned about like blaming theaudience, it's like your job is
to figure out what they want to watch.
Like either you're trying to make videos that you want to
watch because you want to make it itself, or if you have like a
wider range of things you could make, if you're trying to narrow
in on what would be the most popular, that's your job because

(01:09:10):
the audience doesn't know what they want.
Like that's something, you know,I don't particularly use Apple
products myself or anything, butthere's a big philosophy that
they've had which made them successful, which is like the,
the consumer doesn't necessarilyknow what they want until you
show it to them that that is nottheir job.
Their job is to just react to whatever's put in front of them.
The, the, the member of the audience on YouTube doesn't know

(01:09:32):
what they want to watch. It's whatever gets put into
their feed. And then that they're like, oh,
that grabbed my attention. I'm going to click on that.
There's no thought process there.
It's, it's mindless. It's just natural reaction to
what they see on their feed. They don't know what they want
to watch. I watch YouTube videos all the
time about topics I've never heard of.
And that's part of the appeal sometimes.
I did not know I wanted to watchthis, and now I do.

(01:09:53):
And that's your job as a creatorto figure out.
And yeah, and that's the the joke that, you know, watching
the six hour video essay on the video game I've never played,
you know, sort of thing, which is why, you know, like my
mission statement was I want anyone who clicks on this video,
even if you don't care about fighting games.
I literally got a comment today,like, the first notification I

(01:10:14):
saw when I woke up this morning was your videos make me feel
like I know how to play fightinggames when I don't, which was
like, beautiful. It was like, that's all I want,
you know? Right.
So yeah, you know, they don't know.
The audience doesn't know what they want, but I promise you,
they probably don't want a jury trailer reaction from you.

(01:10:35):
You know, because they don't know you.
Yeah, yeah. If you're going to do it that
that's the the difference, right?
Like the value proposition type of videos.
If your value proposition in thevideo is something to do with
personality or some established expertise that you haven't
demonstrated yet, it's not goingto work.
It's not going to work. Like I don't care about who you
are or why you're reacting to something.

(01:10:55):
Like occasionally that can work if you're doing like over the
top reactions and somehow you breakthrough and but then people
over time recognize, oh, this personality is engaged and they
slowly build that brand. But that means that if you're
fighting player and your expertise that you're starting
with is I know fighting games and it's not I am an engaging
personality. That means you have to suddenly

(01:11:17):
shift your focus to building your personality brand instead
of your fighting game expertise brand.
So I feel like you've already put your eggs in the wrong
basket and you're making a channel about fighting games.
But try the value proposition isyour personality and no one
cares about you. Like no one likes you like, you
know, And that's something that I, like I mentioned before, I
feel like I don't want you want to be in that lane anymore
because I've kind of been in between for a long time.

(01:11:39):
I, I think it's great when you can just let the, the expertise
do the talking. There's something really great
about that. And that's, that's most of the
YouTube videos I've been watching lately.
I'm trying to get more into thatdirection of the faceless
YouTube videos, because even with your channel, the very
first video I saw that you put out was I think it's super turbo
is broken. You don't even narrate that one.

(01:12:01):
It's 100% music, gameplay and text on screen describing the
the technical situations happening.
And that video is great that that's one of your best
performing videos, I think, right?
Yes, that one in 3rd strike is broken.
That's like kind of like a riff on there is a a creator named
Hugh. This goes back to FTC ripping
off smash. He created melee is broken and

(01:12:23):
then it brawls broken whatever. So I was like, oh, like, why
don't we have that book for fighting games?
So and, you know, Street Fighter2 is the the very first Kasoga,
you know, it's the very first crazy broken game that we still
love and play to this day. So yeah, that was, yeah.
Again, like just like the very beginning, I saw something that

(01:12:45):
existed in Smash because they're10 years ahead of us for some
reason. And I was like, all right, let
me do the exact same thing but for fighting games, which I
think is good, you know, in the sense that you should recognize
like what is missing from your space that you care about.
And I can fill that niche cuz that's exactly what I did.
That's exactly what you did. We saw something that was

(01:13:08):
missing that exists in other places that was successful.
And I feel like I have the ability to fill that niche and
so. Is there anything right now that
you feel is really missing from the FTC?
Oh, man, absolutely. What?
So there's only one person doingit and it's Papa Lobster and he

(01:13:29):
is fantastic at doing it. But FTC retrospectives, like
what I brought up earlier with Smash, you'll have a like a
three hour documentary on a guy who it's like not important, you
know, in the grand scheme of things, in the sense that like,
hey, this, this person won a tournament 2010, but he did
something weird. Now here's his three hour video

(01:13:51):
about it. But there's No 3 hour video on
Capcom Cup 2015. You know, there's no Capcom Cup
on all of the Street Fighter 4 evos.
Like you know, like when Papa Lobster recently put out a video
talking about Latif and Street Fighter 4 Evo 2011, right that
before 2015, that was my favorite Evo.

(01:14:12):
That was like the most insane Evo.
Diego get knocked out like it was crazy poon.
Co ripping the shirt off. It was beautiful and so like his
video focused on Latif and whichis an amazing story because no
one knew who the hell this guy was.
He was playing Steve Viper. It was awesome.
But there's so many other stories just from this one
tournament that I remember that you remember that people who got

(01:14:33):
into fighting games through the pandemic, strive Street Fighter
Six, they have no idea about like I feel like they know who
Daigo is because of the Daigo Perry.
But it like to them, Daigo's probably like this, like he's an
older player, like who all of the boomers love for some
reason. He's not going to win a
tournament. But there was a time where,
like, Daigo was the Michael Jordan, where like, everyone was

(01:14:55):
like, I want Daigo to win. And when Daigo got knocked out
of a tournament, like, viewership dropped, you know,
like, Daigo is that guy, you know?
And like, he could have taken any tournament.
And I feel like, I mean, that's just me being nostalgic about
what I grew up with and what I loved and what I was passionate
about. But yeah, if I, I wasn't making

(01:15:16):
the videos that I was making, I feel like that would have been
the direction. And if you want to be more
faceless with things, if you want to feel that knees, if
anyone wants to feel that knees.I feel like there's just so many
great stories about like, I mean, I love Gamer B, you know,
he still streams Street Fighter Six.
People who know who are deep into fighting games know Gamer
B. But like, I wouldn't expect the

(01:15:37):
average Street Fighter Six player to care about Gamer B
because like, you know, but like, I love this guy.
Whenever I see him, I get so happy.
Whenever I see Bon Chan, I get so happy, you know?
And I feel like with what Smash does for their players, we could
be doing for hours. Absolutely no, I I agree 100%.
I mean that's why I've been doing on my channel.

(01:15:58):
I do like the tournament CBT recaps because every I mean it's
been going on since Street Fighter 5 right?
As someone who like got no one in the scene in Street Fighter
5I, I started playing in Street Fighter 4, but I was going to
tournaments and like I would be watching tournaments and like no
one. I mean, people hated the game,
so they added another like levelof disdain for the whole
experience. But anyone who found success
during that era was looked at like you're a scrub, like you're

(01:16:20):
like the better you were at 305,the worst of a fighting game
player. You were and like all the
players were constantly disrespected.
And I went through that personally myself and I was
like, this is stupid dude. Like people were like, Oh, who's
this random guy winning? And it's like that guy has been
winning tournaments all mine andall these regions and and, or
they like, oh, where's XY or Z player?
That guy you're talking shit about eliminated them off stream

(01:16:41):
and top 64. You know like there's all even
within the same tournament the players get shit on because
there's no context and there's no storyline being built up and
I've seen that for years. So now I do the CPT recaps
because for one, Capcom is doinga horrible job of doing the CPT
and no one even knows the eventsare going on, and two, the
storylines are lost by the format itself.

(01:17:02):
Like you, even if you watch everything, it's so
disconnected. You can't tell where the players
are and how they intermingle andwhere everyone stacks up.
And then three, the players are participating in the tournament.
No one knows their history or like why it matters that they
got here or where they came from.
Or so like when I do those recaps, I try to always like
bring like any player who has a storyline, figure out what the
storylines are in the tournament, highlight the

(01:17:23):
players, where they came from. Is this a rematch?
Have they been fighting throughout the season?
Did they fight 20 years ago and in a different title?
So I've been really looking intodoing that throughout the past
season. So I've seen that that that lack
of understanding and the kind ofthe dissolving of our cultural

(01:17:44):
history and awareness in the scene, especially from the jump
from, you know, pre about COVID to now, we've lost a lot of that
collective memory. And so when I saw Papa Lobster
doing a lot of those retrospectives, I'm like, OK,
that's, that's great for me. It's nostalgic, but also it
tells the story so that other people who have come after this
time can understand why these players have these legacies and

(01:18:05):
where these stories come from. But yeah, there could definitely
be a lot more that that's very true.
And Papa Lobster's like channel,it's successful, like his
videos, like some of his videos have gotten over 100,000 views
because like that this the videoand writes itself in the sense
that like something cool happened.
Let me tell you about this cool thing that happened, right?
You know, let me tell you about how Cane Blue River beat

(01:18:27):
Filipino champ. You know, like let me tell you
how Alex Ballet beat Bon Chan. You know, it just writes it like
these things kind of write themselves.
And, you know, I always say thatlike, you know, I keep talking
about, you know, Evo 2015, Calcum Cup 2015, but like the
amount of storylines, like, you know, Kioma, you know, and

(01:18:48):
Infiltration Memochi, like all of those are like, just like,
they're just beautiful moments. And I feel like, yeah, they've
been just kind of lost the time.And the.
Yeah, like you said, the format doesn't really help it.
You know, the whole format had its issues, of course, but yeah,

(01:19:08):
you don't really get storylines because a player wins something
and there's no gatekeeping or anything.
They stopped playing until Capcom Cup, you know.
Yeah, it literally removes the storylines as they form.
Yeah, on top of people not wanting to travel because it's
like 2 top heavy where if I'm not guaranteed to get first, I
might as well just stay home anddo World Warrior.

(01:19:28):
And then the people who do get guaranteed first just stay home
because they already qualified. Yeah, it's kind of on both ends.
It's not really building our or lending itself to building
storylines. So that's rough.
I also think just like another thing and this is like, I guess
like a more selfish desire, you know, you have like theory

(01:19:49):
fighter, but I would love for people to like dive into more
like mechanics and their nuancesand like I guess they're grander
application because I mean, theory fighter has a video that
has 300,000 views about reuse, far fierce and Street Fighter
cross Tekken. That shouldn't be a video that

(01:20:10):
gets 300,000 views, you know, but it is because he packaged it
and he said like this is the punch that changed Ryu.
That's automatically interesting.
And like, let's see how like Capcom adding you know that to
the game, like changed everything and why 300,000
people, you know, will click on that.
And again, all of this stuff exists in Smash.

(01:20:32):
There's insane videos about likethe most like nuanced like
topics like ever, right, you know, and smash so.
Yeah, yeah. That's what.
I feel like. Oh, go ahead.
I was just going to say, you know, I feel like there's a lot
of areas in the FTC that haven'tbeen explored.
Obviously, I would like you to have the passion for those in
the 1st place before you make videos on this.

(01:20:54):
And I know that's not. I feel like maybe a lot of the
people who especially watch you,they want to, they want to be
gameplay guys. They want to just like, hey,
like here is like me improving at the game.
But I guess there's a differencein you can do that.
Nothing is stopping you. But if you're wanting and
treating YouTube as something you want to grow in, you have to

(01:21:16):
realize that you know you're notgoing to feel that niche and
right, you know, you got to be realistic about things.
Right. But that is, that is a niche
that people could feel because if you're a gameplay guy, you
can understand why a mechanic works the way it does and
understand its implications. And then the, the skill then you
have to develop is how do you tell a story out of that, right?

(01:21:37):
So I think the other problem is you have to develop multiple
skills. So I, I, I do think consecration
is great. If you establish any kind of
skill in any area, then you figure out how to put that on
YouTube. So if you're a gameplay guy,
100% you can do things about mechanics and breakdowns that
aren't tutorials, right? There's a difference between
tutorials and like a story abouta mechanic or some kind of piece

(01:21:58):
of tech like you, you can make. Maybe there was a patch that
made something from plus one to +2 and how 1 frame broke the
game. I don't know what that video is,
but that's a video somewhere, right?
I I bet you you can find a patchsomewhere or someone made
something more plus one on hit and and then they completely
changed the balance or how something worked.

(01:22:19):
And you can restructure the video around how this balance
change change something. And you can understand that
because you're a competent player and you develop your
skill to really understand thoseimplications.
But then you have to do it in a way that actually comes across
on YouTube. So I agree, there's lots of
things people can be doing. And it doesn't need to be like a
grand like video essay either. I know, like I feels like I feel

(01:22:40):
like I'm alluding to that, you know, like that's what we need.
But you know, Jane Crofts Broskihave like filled a niche of
like, hey, here's like this weird interaction or weird thing
in this game, you know, Jane Cross, Dragon Ball fighters,
Marvel 2 Broski Street Fighter six.
And it's like, here's what this thing is, here's how it works.
Here are the implications. And it's been successful.

(01:23:01):
You know, I'm not keeping up with Street Fighter six
competitively, but you know, I'mclicking Broski's video about
this weird thing Chung Lee has that I've never like, you know,
that I I hadn't thought about ornever seen because it's a good
format and there's not like heavy editing.
There's not like, you know, there's probably an outline, but
he's not like reading off a script, you know, cuz and it

(01:23:24):
works and it's like good stuff. You don't need to make an essay
is what I want to get to. But you can't just upload
gameplay. Right, definitely.
Have you ever thought about actually doing that competitive
retrospective channel? Cuz it's something I've I'm
seeing with your style is, and Iknow you're saying you do this
part time and it's not a career or anything.
But I think your talent and the way your skill you developed for

(01:23:47):
YouTube could be something whereyou could create another channel
and do a very similar branding and style and just change the
focus and slightly tweak the mission statement and go from
there. So have you considered doing
that? No, only because it's like,
damn, the YouTube has so much work, man like already, and I
make a video one video a month and I'm already like it already

(01:24:10):
takes up so much time and like my videos end up getting longer
and you know, it's it's I feel like my script writing and my
editing has gotten more concise,but my videos have gotten
somehow longer, which is like funny, but so personally, no, I
would I selfishly want someone else to do it, but who knows,
maybe I'm not going to I'm not going to write it off

(01:24:32):
completely. I.
Guess yeah, I know you're not inthis for the business side of
things, but that is something that I've been thinking about a
lot more recently. And I, I can see that as being
like a franchise, maybe completely destroying your whole
narrative about or your whole fundamental belief about this
being a passion project, not formoney, but you could definitely
franchise what you're doing. And I mean, maybe we have too
many like game theory, food theory, whatever.

(01:24:54):
You know, the theories are all over the place, but but you
found a great formula, which I, I think there would be a lot of
interesting content that can come about expanding that focus
and you have other areas of interest that you could share
that with. So who knows, maybe one day I,
I, I'd love to see your video that you want to see you about
EVO 2015. Maybe you you have to be the one
to make it. The greatest tournament of all

(01:25:15):
time, I promise you. If you've never seen it, that is
Street Fighter. That is peak Street Fighter.
Or Evo or Captain Cup 2015? Which one?
Both, but if I had to pick one. Yeah, I think Cap'em Cup.
I Capcom Cup, you know, I hate to say it like the ending is
bittersweet to Capcom cup in a way because it's like the ending
that no one wanted, but like it was like.

(01:25:36):
The, but I, I love it. It gives me, I love it because
at the end it's like Daigo is finally coming back to reclaim
his throne as being like, like the, the book ends of Street
Fighter 4's life, like winning the Evos and then winning the
final Capcom Cup. And right when he's about to get
it, at the very end, it's like, you know, Casinoco with the the
anime, like he's coming out fromthe shadows, the sheet on his

(01:25:57):
glasses, and he says, Nope, let me take that with my fucking
crackhead. Disgusting young gameplay the
way the game truly is. It was the antithesis of what
every Street Fighter player talked about.
Like we could never lose. Like here's our go of the game
and we lost to an anime player and the last Street Fighter.
Not just an anime player like the most degenerate, like non

(01:26:19):
like there was at that time. There was that people
romanticize footsies and fundamentals so much during that
era. And I'm like, I'm watching guys
in Oakland. I'm like, that's not what he's
not doing. What you guys are saying.
You guys keep saying this, but this guy is doing dive kick into
DP on block and like wake up, command grab and mashing
non-stop. And he won the whole thing.

(01:26:40):
So I think he's pretty good, youknow?
So I think it was the appropriate ending.
Like Street Fighter Four got what it deserved in the end.
And then Diego, I mean, he had the beautiful the Rio moment.
He didn't even show up for the award ceremony.
He just walked off to find his next challenge.
I think Captain Cup 2015 ended perfectly in my opinion.
It's peak, peak fighting games. You know everyone else who

(01:27:00):
didn't get into fighting games yet.
You don't know what you missed. I'm sorry.
The peak has already gone. True.
Well, before we wrap this up, there is one more like topic I
wanted to get into with you if you want to share a little bit.
I'm curious about your your actual process for YouTube video
creation and this might, I don'tknow if the audience wants to
hear this is for me almost what is your process about when you

(01:27:22):
go about setting forth to createa video?
So you have all these different games that you like to do these
deep dives in. Does it start with the game?
And then how do you figure out the actual creation?
Script Writing, editing, gathering footage?
You want to do that? So it sounds funny when I say it
out loud. But every month I just think
about like, OK, like, I need a video.

(01:27:42):
Like, what's the next game I talk about, you know, And since
I've played so many games, you know, I just, like, think about
like, oh, could I, you know, write something interesting for
this? Or do I have like, an idea of
how to, like, sell it? Like, I think about the title,
Like, what would get someone to click on this?
Like, would this even be interesting to click on in the
1st place? And there have been games where,

(01:28:03):
like, I've recorded footage, I've done all this, and then I,
like, try to write something about it.
I'm like, I don't have anything interesting to say about this,
you know? So yeah, I just, I pick
something and then I just feel like, OK, like I need something
interesting to say. And if I feel like I have that,
then I'll start writing like a basic script about it and I'll

(01:28:26):
start playing the game again, essentially with alts on fight
Cade. Because it got to a point where
I would get into a lobby on fight Cade and people would be
like, Oh, are you guy on one quote rank first to 20?
And it's like, oh, dude, like I don't need this, you know, like
I like, I I want cool. I almost want like, I mean,

(01:28:47):
usually when someone's playing anice game on fight cades because
they're good at it, you know, And I kind of want that footage
because I want someone to do like the sick, nasty stuff on me
anyways, because like, I want toshow that the game is cool.
But so then I start playing the game again.
And then I usually try to reach out to, I guess, like a
figurehead in the community and like, have them read over the

(01:29:12):
script. Thankfully, like since I've
gotten like bigger, like I guessa lot of people in smaller
communities kind of see this as like an opportunity to like, oh,
more people will play my game, You know, because like there's a
joke where right before I was about to post the video, my most
recent video, someone tweeted like a screenshot of the fight

(01:29:32):
cave lobby. And it was like, I'm pre gaming
the guy with the this fight cavelobby before the video drops,
you know, because there's like, I mean, I hate to sound like
full of myself or anything, but like, I guess at this point
there's like an expectation thatlike, oh, there's going to be
this 5K lobby that had three people in it is going to have
like 30 people in it, 50 people in it for like, you know, a week

(01:29:52):
maybe, right, However the honeymoon lasts.
But so I try to reach out to a figurehead to kind of like and
both like legitimize the script and like see if like there's
anything I got wrong. But also I guess in a way to be
like, hey, like there is an exchange going on.
Like I'm not again grifting likeon the community.

(01:30:14):
Like I'm not just like shadow, like I I've never interacted
with you guys. And here's this video.
Like I'm like talking about it. Like I know you're a game.
When I'm like for a lot of the times, I'm just like, I like
this game, but I'm not grinding it every day.
I'm not like, you know, I'm not actively entering tournaments at
every major I go to, you know, so I don't want to seem like,

(01:30:37):
again, like a. It's a sign of it's a sign of
respect. No, for sure.
You're you're you're entering their territory.
It's it's you know, there's kindof an analogy to like real life
here. It's like, hey, this is these
are our streets here. Like who are you?
Like, what's your business here?Are you just, oh, you're trying
to make a quick buck off of us? Like what's what is your
intention? So you're deferring to their
expertise. You're getting their approval.

(01:30:58):
You're making sure you're not like mis stating or
mischaracterizing the game that they're very passionate about.
Yeah, I didn't consider that till right now.
It's a very sensitive thing to to work on, even though it's
kind of silly. When you zoom out, it's a.
Fight for sure. But like there's a, there's an
analogy to be made there about talking about any like, I don't
want to go that extreme. Maybe like a marginalized group

(01:31:19):
or like a smaller community, like like something that's very
tight knit and an outsider comesin to highlight that and you
don't know if you trust them or not.
So I didn't consider that until right now that you have to go
through that to to make sure that you're doing justice to
these communities and to avoid. So a lot of negative feedback
like that could really blow up in your face if you if you
approach something incorrectly. I've seen other creators who are

(01:31:42):
like much bigger than me talk about a smaller game and like
get something wrong. And then even even though that
like, to me, it's like, it's notthe end of the world, you know?
But like, I've seen these peoplelike, you know, kind of just
like right off the crater, like all together, like months later,
it's like, oh, I don't like him because he said this about this
game and like he didn't do his research sort of thing.

(01:32:04):
When this is like someone's likepassion, you know, you want to
get that right, You know? Yeah.
Especially if you're talking about something that has been
mischaracterized. Mischaracterized like for so
long, like I said about like people referring to Street
Fighter, like older games, like Street Fighter clones, you know,
So I mean, yeah, it is silly once you like zoom out, but like

(01:32:25):
it is sensitive to a lot of people.
And I've seen, you know, colleagues, people that I like
that I don't think are doing, you know, they're not, you know,
being negative. They're not.
I keep saying grifting. They're not grifting.
They're just talking about something, but they don't have
everything there. And they get like ripped apart.
And it's like, guys, that's like, you know, we're arguing

(01:32:46):
about 30 year old games. That's like, not that important.
But you know, when it's someone's like, yeah, when it's
someone's like, this is my thing, this is my passion.
This is what I compete in. Yeah, I could see like, you know
how it, you know, irks people. So yeah, I try to have that
exchange and, you know, I've never had like a bad experience

(01:33:08):
with that. I've never had someone like,
except for whenever I try to buyarcade hardware, I need a, an
alt for that because I've had people be like, are you just
buying this so you can make a video on it?
And it's like, man, I'm like, I just want to buy it because I
like it, you know? But that's a different.
And So what? Like, what do you mean?
Yeah, whatever. Maybe you're scared you're going
to sell more hardware. Like like what's the problem?

(01:33:29):
That that's a, that's a different thing.
But yeah, so I usually try to get someone to oversee it and I
always try to shout out the communities that I'm speaking
on. I've gotten a little, I've had
to learn that sometimes I will talk about specific individuals
and videos and then. Someone will get burned.

(01:33:52):
Someone will get cancelled or something.
You'll get. Burned.
And it's like, and it's like, and it's like, man, now this
part of the video kind of like is like, it sucks now, you know?
So I've like, I've had to like, you know, I've like learned
through like how to navigate that stuff better.
But yeah, I always try to like put out like a hand to the
community. Like, hey, guys, like I'm trying
to show the good side of this, you know, And I've, I've also

(01:34:15):
like messed up in that regard towhere I made a video on SBC
Chaos, which is like for as longas I've played fighting games,
no one has liked that game. Like people hate that game.
People always. And it's like historically it's
a rushed game. There's a lot like goofy with
it. But I put out a video and I call
it like the worst, you know, like the failed like crossover.

(01:34:38):
And yeah, I got attacked. Like, you know, not OK.
I say attacked. That sounds dramatic.
But I got a lot of negative, negative comments.
And it did like affect me in thesense that like, this wasn't my
intention. I wasn't trying to make anyone
scene look dumb. I wasn't trying to like hurt
anyone's passion. In a sense I would.
This is a failed game. Like sales wise, reception wise,

(01:35:01):
it is. But there are like groups of
people who, you know, like rightto death and they feel like
everyone else, you know, craps on this, and now you are too.
Sort of like you're just like them.
Yeah. This happened directly to, I
believe it was Justin Wong with Street Fighter, the movie, the
game. And he put out some videos.
He put out some videos trying out the game.
And, you know, he was, it was stream footage, a lot of it from

(01:35:24):
what I recall. And he had off the cuff remarks
about how bad the game was in terms of like, it's actual
fairness, competitiveness, you know, like, older games have
jank, which is like, if judged by today's standards, is
garbage. Like, you would not accept it.
But that's also part of the charm and the fun of these old
games, that they're allowed to, you know, take these risks and
just throw shit at the wall, seewhat sticks.

(01:35:45):
And you get to go back and enjoyall these really weird and
esoteric type of games. And so like, I feel like a live
stream reaction of like a reallyjank moment happening, calling a
game garbage to me as someone from the outside.
So I won't speak for that group.I would give that grace.
He'd be like, yeah, he's having,it's an over the top moment.
And it's not meant to be taking too literal or like condemning a

(01:36:06):
whole group of players playing that.
But I remember there's a lot of pushback from that because
people are like, wow, you're making fun of Street Fighter,
the movie, The game. And, and from my perspective,
it's like, yes, that is the gameyou make fun.
It's a, it's a bad game. It's a beautiful bad game in my
opinion. And I think that's fine.
But to some, to people in that community who actually
participate, I can understand being sensitive about it.

(01:36:27):
I, I, I feel like you should be able to give some grace.
And there could be, but there's also responsibility on the
creator's part for sure to, to balance those sides, right?
To say, yeah, this game might bea little bit not designed in the
most modern way where it's fair and balanced, but there's
something to be enjoyed regardless.
You could you could do your yourpart to show both sides.

(01:36:48):
But I've seen blowback in some ways where I'm like, you know, I
feel like you can give a little bit of grace to the content
creator and understand they're just having fun.
But it does feed into a negativeperception that might
potentially harm smaller communities.
So it's a hard tightrope to walk.
And I'm even with that video that I got pushed back on where
in the title I said it's a failed crossover.
The video, like, I feel like it's mostly positive.

(01:37:11):
But I mean, of course, if you title it something like that,
you know, you watch the 1st 30 seconds.
I didn't sell the fact that thiswould eventually be, you know,
something positive. So like, even though like, a lot
of people are like, yeah, this game does suck, you know, in the
end, that's not my intention. And like, I learned from that,

(01:37:32):
you know, and that's not mean, like bowing down, like, oh, like
I don't want any. Like, it's no, it's just like,
yeah, that wasn't my intention. I'm sorry that you felt this
way. Let me see how I can package it
better. Taking that feedback in stride
like that I think is super important too, because it can
feel it. I mean, when you put something
out where you, your, your goal is to be positive and make other
people have a positive association with something and
then there's a lot of negative feedback from it.

(01:37:53):
It, it does suck. It hurts.
It's like, man, I wanted everyone to be having a good
time. This is my party, come on over.
I'm hosting. And then half the audience, half
the people at your house are pissed at you and booing you.
It's like, OK, well, I meant foreveryone to have fun.
I'm sorry, I'll, you know, but you have to be able to take that
feedback in stride because that is an important point.
You brought about the thumbnail title.
Even if the bulk of the materialis singing praises about

(01:38:16):
something, unfortunately, negativity is just such a great
way to get people intrigued likeyou, you, you need conflict.
I think conflict, not in the sense of just negativity, but
like in the sense of a story arc, right?
Like a story occurs because there's conflict resolution.
Even if it's a, you know, a children's book and it's all

(01:38:36):
sunshine and daisies, there's still conflict resolution to
make it a story, right? So calling something a failed
crossover that to me it's objectively true.
By the way, I think that is an objectively true thing, but you
could be like, that is the wholetake away from the video to most
people because they're just going to see the thumbnail and
title and start typing in the comments immediately.
And that's something I've been trying to navigate as well as

(01:38:58):
like the thumbnail title to 95% of the audience is the message
of the video. No matter how much detail you go
into another direction and how much you're actually like, oh,
wait, that was actually a bait and switch.
I'm trying to show you how despite this in the thumbnail
title, this other outcome occurred.
If you don't resolve that immediately, like the first
line, this is the failed crossover.

(01:39:20):
The video starts, but actually it's a great game.
You know what I mean? Like you didn't immediately come
out swinging, but actually, you know, there's still a good video
to be had there. The takeaways, the thumbnail
title and I'm dealing with that too because like I I've done a
few in the clips channel about Rasheed is I've been making the
clips channel more of like a commentary, sort of like off the
cuff discussion videos, like kind of YouTube slop where the

(01:39:43):
main channel I'm trying to focusmore on long form videos more
like your style is what? I've been loving it by the way
and I'm like running and stuff so.
Awesome, thank you yeah there there's AI kind of hate doing
that stuff, but I also feel likethere's a need for it I don't
know I I we'll see where it goes, but I've been talking
about like the. People discussions on Twitter
and I'm trying to come from it from a place of I'm part of the

(01:40:05):
community. I'm not like trying to be
grifting from the community and like looking at them like
they're zoos, zoos or animals ina zoo and like reacting to their
social interactions. Like I feel like that's kind of
weird content when people do that, just like observing
Twitter reactions from a third party and analyzing the
characters like they're not humans.
That can get ugly quick. I've seen it.

(01:40:25):
But I've been doing that with Rashid and people talk about
Rashid tech and some people get angry.
Some people don't get angry. They find the tech cool, but the
thumbnail title I, I, I do framethe negativity from a lot of
community reactions, But in my analysis of it, I say it's
interesting and cool and I don'tmind it.
I think it's actually a really cool tech they put out there.
But a lot of people had negativereactions in the community.

(01:40:48):
The comments reflect why are youcomplaining about Rashid?
Why are you talking negative about this?
Why are you bitching like you'rea washed up pro and you suck?
You know, like I can give you all these comments and I'm like,
well, that hurts me a little bitin the sense that that wasn't my
intention. I wasn't trying to complain
about Rasheed and now you're angry at me.
Well, that that sucks. But the responsibility is I

(01:41:09):
leaned into that negativity in the thumbnail title.
So there's like a line to be to be drawn there.
Or like, how do you, how do you represent conflict without
taking a side on it and making that the perception entirely of
the video, even when you're messaging in the actual bulk of
the content, is something completely different.
It's really hard to to ride thatline, especially when it

(01:41:30):
generates clicks so well. Yeah, even with, you know, that
video, I, I made a tweet about it because like, you know, I saw
someone post about it, like theyposted the, the thumbnail and
like the title for the failed crossover.
So I quoted it and I was like, you know, this, this taught me
like a valuable lesson that like, you know, no matter what,
like is in the video, you know, like the way you package it,

(01:41:53):
like that's all that matters. And I still got replies being
like, well, you were negative, blah, blah, blah.
And I'm like, I'm like, I feel like, I've like, I broke face a
little and like explained my video on Twitter, which I feel
like it's kind of like the opposite of what you should do.
You know. Even though most of most of the
audience like reception was likepositive, this was like an

(01:42:14):
outlier, you know, right. But even like explaining like
this wasn't my intention. And even though like objectively
I feel like it's a failed thing,I go into more of it and I still
got replies like, well, it's nota failure.
And it's like, OK, like maybe I,I don't know, I, I, I'll just
can't please everybody. I'll just learn from it, you
know, I'll just learn from it. Yeah, not all feedback means you

(01:42:35):
have to completely comply with that one person says, but it is
feedback. And that's something that I've
been trying to really understandis like even when people say off
the cuff and saying things in your YouTube comments, you have
to filter through it. There might be something
valuable in there or might be just complete nonsense and there
is feedback there. It's like, well, if you if you
focus on a negative aspect of something that people are

(01:42:55):
passionate about, even if you sing it's praises, people will
some people will react negatively.
Is that something you're OK withor not right.
That's the question you have to ask yourself and.
That's something that I think about a lot is I got a comment
on my 3rd strike is broken videotalking about how, you know, I,
I talk about how Akuma has an A,a, a super that can't be

(01:43:18):
parried. The first hit can't be parried.
And so you could do unblockable setups with it.
And I got a comment that said like you could parry that bro,
like you're an idiot. And I was like, and, and so I
replied, I was like, hey, like, go ahead and like record the
first ever video of like someonepairing this.
Like I would love for you to do that sort of thing.
You know, it's like a little bittongue in cheek, but you know, I

(01:43:40):
kind of realized like this guy, like he's wrong, he's just
wrong. But he's probably going to look
at my channel forever. Like man, this guy lied in this
video, you know, like he had this 20 minute video on this one
part. He's a liar and he's lying to
everyone. And it's like, it's like, and
like, what do you do at that point?
You know, it's like you're you're just wrong and I'm sorry
that you're wrong guy. I want to educate you, but yeah,

(01:44:02):
you're gonna. Have you have the second channel
or you take the comment and you break down?
Exactly. That's that's what I literally
just did, right. I had the cheater video and
that's actually what kind of spurred the commentary channel.
It was an off the cuff thing of of me running to a scripter and
ranked an auto DI scripter. And then it was just I have a, a
clips editor who just like takesup from the stream and throws it

(01:44:22):
up there. And that's what it's been for a
long time. And then everyone's like, oh,
bro, you're just salty that you got bodied.
You're doing so predictable withTerry's burn knuckle.
Of course they DID you on frame 4 frame perfectly every single
time with inhuman reactions and in frame perfect accuracy.
So I went through a video like replying to those comments and
just like a little tongue in cheek but also more more just

(01:44:43):
like fact. Here's why I thought this.
Here's why I came to this conclusion.
Right, so it, it turns like negative moments where people
are factually incorrect and justkind of like showing their ass
in your comments to a learning opportunity to to both disprove
them wrong. Maintain your like brand or like
you maintain your, I don't know,'cause your, your credibility is

(01:45:04):
what I'm going for, right, Like your, your brand and your
credibility is based on your knowledge of these games.
If people are constantly challenging that or saying that
you're incorrect or you're lyingor you're wrong, that is
something that hurts your credibility, which is what your
entire content is based on. Your content works as a
credibility that what you're saying in these videos is
correct and that you have this information that you verified

(01:45:28):
and that we can trust. So that's why it kind of cuts as
a content creator when people say stuff like that because not
only that, it's a fresh frustrating that they're so
wrong. They're just absolutely wrong
and they're being an asshole about it while being wrong.
It is something that if other people start reading that and
believing it, it can damage yourreputation, your credibility
going forward, and hurt the performance of other content

(01:45:48):
that you do in the future. So yeah, you can do the second
channel where you don't have to,you don't have to be snarky
about it. You can just show the comments
and then deep dive into that onemoment.
It it provides another opportunity for another
reflection, right? Not wrong, not wrong.
There's ways to this to spin it to, to offer more learning
opportunities for everybody involved because I think that

(01:46:08):
would be interesting to see about that super.
You know, go into training mode,turn on a bot that parries
everything. That's it.
That's literally all you have todo.
But I guess make it a short. But to go back to, I guess, like
the process, yeah, after. So I play games on Fight Cade.

(01:46:29):
I usually do it anonymously, youknow, I have a million Fight
Cade ranks. Maybe you've played my alt at
some point. You know, dear viewer, you know,
who knows? But and then, yeah, I just go.
So I do a video a month and I spend like a week, I guess in my
brain, I kind of part to mentalize it as like this is

(01:46:51):
vacation mode. We're like, OK, I just released
a video. Time to see the reception and
not think about making another video.
Now I get to play Marvel Rivals with my friends.
Cuz like for the rest of the time I'm just doing this, you
know, And then once it gets to like the second week of the
month or whatever, I start like,you know, brainstorming, OK,

(01:47:12):
what am I thinking? And then I start playing the
game a little bit and then I start writing and then I start
after I write and I get like a body, I start playing the game
like, I guess even more, you know, to like confirm.
Because sometimes I do go into videos like with a bias already
where it's like, oh, like I knowthis game is cool already or

(01:47:32):
like, oh, this game is a little janky.
But then I play it, I'm like, oh, wait a minute.
It's like way better than I thought or something.
You know, I've had moments like that.
So I finalize and then I usuallyspend like a week and 1/2 or
like 2 weeks, just like editing.And this is probably like an
hour a day. Or if my girlfriend is like

(01:47:53):
hanging out with her friends or something, it's like, OK, this
is a night I could spend like six hours just like knocking
this out. And to anyone wanting to get
into content, I use Davinci Resolve.
It's free. They make real movies with this
program, you know. Learn how to use Resolve.
It will change your life. I know AA is nodding his head

(01:48:14):
right now. The the Brian F YouTube channel
is made off of the back of Davinci Resolve.
I use I use Sony Vegas because when I edited my first ever
video there was a Humble Bundle for like 5 bucks.
It had Vegas 14 and I to to thisday that's all I use if I had
something. I I tried to do that at 1st and
I was like, man, this is like too complicated.
And then I went to premiere and then I was like, OK, let me put

(01:48:37):
on my big boy pants and start using resolved.
But at the same time, I don't even like edit like crazy
anyways a lot of the times. This is another important
monster that I'll just throw in.Something that I've noticed from
a lot of fighting game creators is that whenever they speak on
something, the footage on screendoesn't reflect what they're

(01:48:58):
talking about. Yes.
And it bugged me that they, you could be talking about like,
man, this character is so brokenand has this really strong tool.
And the footage is of like an old tournament of that character
losing, right? And it's like, what are you
trying to convey to me right now?
You know, So, you know, my wholething is like, OK, I'm going to
have a concise script that doesn't waste your time.

(01:49:19):
And everything on screen is going to be somewhat related to
what I'm speaking on, right? So most of my editing is like my
timeline is like 300 clips. Cuz it's just like, I'm talking
about this, talking about this, talking about this.
And I want the video to actuallyreflect that.
Cuz I don't want, I know most people watch YouTube very
casually in the sense that, you know, it's in the background or
something a lot of the time. But if someone were to look at

(01:49:42):
my video, cuz I'm talking about like, man, this character's
crazy. He can do this crazy juggle.
I want to show that juggle. Even if it takes me six hours of
recording, you know, like whenever I get third strike,
it's broken. I had to do Makoto SA2 Touch of
Deaths. I had to learn Ganaijan stuff
and I hated it. I was like, dude, I'm not an

(01:50:02):
execution guy, this sucks. But what would this video be if
I didn't show this? And I also don't want to take
someone else's video, I also want to.
Ask, I also want to ask to have you considered just using clips
and maybe credit for if it's a specific combo or something like
have you ever hit the point where like this is too much?
Because I, I, I love that you recorded yourself for like
consistency and quality as well and also giving the right shot

(01:50:25):
with the right settings. And also I think it gives you
some credibility. Like it gives you some St.
credit. Like you, you went through the
the the real shit to get it done, you know, like you
actually know what it feels liketo do the combo.
But have you considered going for something else?
At that I have done that in the past for like stuff that like
it's either like hardware or something that I just like I
don't have the money or I can't obtain or something I don't know

(01:50:47):
if I've ever done it for a combospecifically, but they're
actually games that like I get so many comments for like can
you talk about this? Can you talk about this that
like I haven't made a video on because I, I don't have the
execution for it as weird as that.
Like, you know, fist of the North Star is one of like my
most requested videos, right? And it's like I, I would not

(01:51:11):
feel comfortable talking about fist of the North star if I
can't do the, the basketball combos that last a minute that
everyone knows the game for, right?
You know, if I were to play A3, I'm going to need to learn how
to do, you know, Crouch cancel, right?
You know, even though, like, it's hard and it sucks and I'm
gonna wanna die, like recording it.
But so yeah, there is definitelystuff that I put off just

(01:51:33):
because I feel like there's an authenticity I would lose if I
made a Fist of North Star video and all of the footage was like
of just tournaments, right? Because it's like, why am I?
How am I in? How am I in authority?
Like if you made the video on that ball roll combo that, you
know, you recently did about with all the one frame links and
you just talked about like, thisis really hard because of this

(01:51:54):
and this and this. And you just kept replaying his
Twitter clip. Maybe that maybe I'm too deep
into the the woods where like I think other people wouldn't
care, but like I feel like I wouldn't care.
No I agree. I I had the exact same thoughts
while doing this because that was supposed to be a quick win
video. Like the whole point of the the

(01:52:14):
clips channel is supposed to be like more quick win videos so
that I can start to spend longertime between videos in the main
channel. And I, I had a point and I'm
like, this is no longer a quick win.
I'm sitting here recording and it had been like 3 hours almost.
And I was like, I don't know if this is this worth anymore.

(01:52:34):
And then eventually it came together.
But I had that same thought where I was like, if I don't do
this combo, first of all I love grinding combos.
So it wasn't actually hard to spend the time doing it.
It's more like budgeting my timewith real life and content.
If I had unlimited time, I wouldsit here all day doing combos
and training mode over and over.Like I actually enjoy doing
that. But I was thinking like oh man,

(01:52:54):
I might need to just like move on and start recording it.
But what would the video be if there wasn't a pay off of me
actually doing it and my own personal payoff?
Because then I'm like, there's anarrative here for myself.
And suddenly in this journey, I had never done Jab to Ultra.
That was a technique that I played this game for 10 plus
years, whatever. And I never actually done that.
And I made this character and I could do all of his other

(01:53:15):
combos. But that was something that like
eluded me for so long and it wasn't worth digging into.
Now it's a chance to like uncover that secret.
And I figured out like some secrets to get that to actually
work. And I was like, whoa, it's real.
Like, so yeah, I, I, I felt thatsame connection when like this
little touch here of me personally going through the
journey kind of completes it andall offers credibility to what

(01:53:36):
I'm saying and offers a sense oflike a journey to the viewer
itself. And I think that adds a whole
other elements to the video. And credibility is so huge in
these kind of videos, I think. Yeah, I feel like, I mean, like
I said at the very beginning, I I didn't watch a lot of YouTube
fighting game stuff because I felt like they weren't fighting
game players, you know, But how far that actually goes, I don't

(01:53:59):
know. It would someone have been like,
man Brian F sucks 'cause he couldn't do the the hardest.
Part No, because all the comments were like, OK, you know
what? You didn't do it on arcade
stick. You did it on leverless.
That was I got so and I was like, bro, that there's no
charge execution at all on that combo.
I play charge characters on stick for 15 years.
Like give me a break. Like it's all in the right hand
on that one. But a lot of the comments were

(01:54:21):
like, you know, old heads like, oh, you did it on leverless for
cheating, you know, so. Yeah, cuz that the charge is the
hard part. Yeah, I need to do, I need to do
an ultra at one point. You know, it's so hard to do on
occasion. It's not yeah, it's not the
linking or anything like that. It's the charge that would have
lost you. And then yeah.
And then I, I start, I feel likemy Twitter is very not a

(01:54:43):
personal Twitter anymore, which I think is like a good thing
because I, you know, Twitter kind of like sucks a lot of the
times. Yeah, so, so like the guy who
would quote Twitter is more of abrand, I will say that.
And I do kind of like I do my own little marketing, you know,
like when a video starts drop, like when I'm getting ready to

(01:55:04):
drop a video, I'll start dropping like crazy combos or
like stuff that looks cool. So like people will be like, oh,
what what is this, you know, Andthen you know, I, yeah, so I
kind of just start like marketing towards that.
And then the community usually already knows that a video is
coming. So there a lot of times getting
ready to help new players and stuff get into the game.

(01:55:27):
So yeah, then I drop a video a month and then I pray that it
goes well. I usually whenever I record, I
turn off my notifications and everything.
I don't want to know which it might be a bad thing because if
I mess up something in a video, I could just be like, you know,
there could be like 5 seconds ofsilence or something and like, I

(01:55:49):
wouldn't know because I'm not looking at the comments, you
know? But yeah, I just like drop it
and then I come back to it and I'm just like, OK, like, I hope,
you know, I'm just letting the algorithm do whatever it does.
And sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't.
Yeah, I think that's a good for your own mental health, a good
way to approach because for people who haven't done YouTube
content creation like those, youget your feedback after 30

(01:56:10):
minutes and you can already tellhow your video is performing
because you get like this in your dash for like a mini
metrics of your video, like how many views it's getting and like
watch time and things like that.So you can already get a
perspective of how it's performing relative to your
other videos. Then after 30 minutes, it ranks
it based on number of reviews compared to your last 10 videos.
So if it's 10 out of 10, that's the worst possible.

(01:56:33):
Like it's doing worse than all other 9 videos that were
published in this time frame. One out of 10, it's doing better
than everything else, right? And it even has like a green,
solid green arrow if it's like top three or like, I think 3 out
of 10 is like a green arrow. If it's doing better than
average, then like a hollow green, like an outline of a
green arrow if it's average. And then like a Gray arrow
pointing down if it's below average and like a solid Gray

(01:56:55):
arrow if it's like really bombing.
So YouTube is it's meant to be addictive for the viewer, but
they also have engineered it to be addictive for the, the, the
creator itself. Like it's a little of nefarious.
This is on purpose. There is addictive forming
habits to give feedback to creators if they come back to
make their video more consumableand more popular, which means
there's more people spending more time on YouTube.

(01:57:17):
So on both ends of the creator audience spectrum there YouTube
is engineering socially engineering both of us.
It's pretty nefarious, so I understand closing it during
that time period. It it's really brutal because
yeah, when you, whenever your video is doing well, you get
fireworks, you get a fireworks animation.
One out of 10 the fireworks are going off.

(01:57:38):
It's totally trying to hijack your dopamine receptors and make
this addicting. And it's true.
It's crazy addicting. I refresh like crazy during that
time period, but I I do that because I'm addicted.
And also to you're right, there is times where it's actually
important to make a change because there might be a typo in
the title, There might be, theremight be an editing error
somewhere and it's better to just swap it out as as soon as

(01:58:00):
you can. You know, there's, there's
things that you might need that you might have missed that you
want to address before it's too set in stone and you don't want
to touch the video. Yeah, for.
Sure. Also the thumbnail, we, we, we
rework thumbnails a lot. Like I look at thumbnails and if
they're not performing well, title thumbnail, I'll completely
take time to revamp it within the next couple hours because
that's like 90% of the job of a YouTube is making a title

(01:58:23):
thumbnail. So.
Yeah, if you've watched the video and then the title
changed. No, it didn't, you know, like
just just let it be, you know, right.
But it's a yeah, it's a it's a real brutal process.
But whenever like everything goes right and you know, you see
like average watch time is like something like ridiculous.
Like I thankfully, I don't know how, but I've been blessed for

(01:58:46):
like, I think the average retention time is like 3 to 5
minutes or something like reallylow, really like mine is like
like 9 to 10 or something, right?
Which is like usually like halfway through a video and all
the comments are, you know, I'venever had a video that has been
like, you know, thumbs down likea lot or anything or anything

(01:59:08):
like that. So at the end of the day, even
like with like I said, my my latest video, I thought it was a
surefire win. Like in my head, it got 9 ranked
nine out of 10. But when I think about it, I
look back and it's like, man, 30,000 people clicked on a king
of fighters video for like a game that came out 20 years ago.

(01:59:28):
All in all, like that's amazing.If I would have had that four
years ago, I would have died, you know, So like, I can't let
YouTube, you know, make me want to, like, jump off a Cliff.
Yeah, they, they put you on the,the, the hedonistic treadmill
real quick, right? Like whatever your, your past
success was, you you get numb toit.
And that's the the benchmark which you judge yourself going

(01:59:51):
forward. So it's, it's, it's definitely
tough as a creator to, to deal with that.
But yeah, it's good to remember that there if if you have any
level of success on YouTube and if anyone watches your videos,
like if 100 people watch your videos. 100 people like that's
crazy to think about, right. So it's, it's, it's important to
have that sort of mentality in mind, especially for aspiring,

(02:00:11):
aspiring creators like understand, you know, if anyone
watches your videos, that's theychose to spend their time, which
is the most valuable resource that anyone has has in life to
consume your content. And that should be very
motivating to you. And then if you want more people
to choose to spend their time onsomething you create, you know,
there's ways to make it more worthwhile while to them and to

(02:00:34):
understand how to supply that value.
Well, this was a great talk. I feel like we're coming up on a
good close here. Is there anything you want to
relay to the the Brian F trash talk listeners at home?
Anything you want to say? Just quickly, you know, if you
want to get into the space, finda niche, write a script, edit
and try to focus on Evergreen content.

(02:00:58):
I feel like that's a big thing we didn't kind of talk about.
Don't focus on like, what we'll get a click right now and then
no one will talk about it a month from now.
Focus on videos that will get clicked on for years, which is
why you write a script and why you produce, you know, because
yeah, just make something that you would click on and something

(02:01:20):
that can be timeless as much as possible, right?
Easy advice. And I want more people to make
cool fighting and stuff. We can't let Smash be killing
us, man. It's, it hurts me, man.
I I I, I hate it man. No, that's not a good way to
position it. You know, nothing against Smash,
but they, they're killing us. And I like, I like traditional

(02:01:41):
fighting games. I want us to be dominating the
space, please. Let's do it.
Yeah, I I like that more as a competition rather than a Smash.
A real fighting game or not, whocares?
Let's make it a competition who can make better content.
And Smash has for years been killing it.
I definitely would advise anyonewho's interested in the space to
to watch more Smash content creators.
Even if you don't care about thegames, just see what people are
putting out there and you can probably just start stealing

(02:02:03):
their ideas and do it for for street fighters or whatever.
Like be shameless. Let's go.
Let's steal all our YouTube videos.
There we go. Great way to end it.
All right, gal, one quote. Thanks again for hopping on.
Appreciate you. Thank you.
It's an honor. Yeah, thanks everyone for
listening. Peace.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

Betrayal: Weekly

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}What Every YouTuber Got Wrong about Fighting Games: GuileWinQuote

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

Betrayal: Weekly

All Episodes

What Every YouTuber Got Wrong about Fighting Games: GuileWinQuote

Stuff You Should Know