0:04

This is Space Cats Peace

0:06

Turtles, the unofficial podcast

0:08

for Fantasy Flight's Twilight Imperium.

0:11

Episode 325, The Commentators of Twilight Imperium.

0:16

Music by Ben Prunty, featuring

0:18

Matt Martins and Hunter Donaldson.

0:44

Or we could call it like Road to the Commentators.

0:46

What do you think about that? Like Road to the Commentators. Road

0:49

to the Commentators. We're leading up to the Commentators

0:52

Final. Why don't we do a tournament of

0:54

commentary, like who has the best commentary

0:57

face off, you know? In

1:00

Jasper's, before Jasper's

1:02

interview, Jasper was like, you know, I used

1:04

to try really hard in the tournament

1:06

because I really just wanted to be on the road to the finals

1:08

episode and now I don't have to try so hard

1:11

because I got to interview in this episode

1:13

so I don't care

1:14

anymore. There you go. That's

1:16

a little, that's a little teaser right there

1:18

or spoiler depending on how you think about

1:20

it. Uh, hey, Hunter, before

1:23

we do any of that business, can I

1:25

give you an update on the tournament so

1:27

far?

1:28

Yeah, I guess so. Oh, okay, great. Uh,

1:31

we've had a good number of winners this last week,

1:33

uh, and here, here, here they are.

1:36

First on the list, finally. Here's,

1:38

you know what, actually I'll preface it with this. This

1:40

week was I think the week of a handful

1:43

of people that have been putting in a lot of attempts

1:45

finding their wins. There's at least three

1:47

I'm looking at where I know they've played a lot

1:50

so far. Uh, the first on that list

1:52

is Rwise, who has been putting in

1:54

hours and congratulations

1:56

to Rwise for finally making it into the prelims.

1:59

Also Rwise. you know famously

2:01

really cares about winning and

2:03

is like a real competitive for

2:06

ya and you know competitive Yeah, of course

2:08

the game really seriously And

2:10

you know, I would say plays in that classic

2:13

just like meat and potatoes Straight

2:16

up and down does the optimal

2:18

play every time. I mean

2:21

also winning this week is Yeah,

2:24

Shun show Paul Davis 92

2:27

Teddy's Jam for you reek a

2:30

Previous winner of the tournament also

2:32

struggling to find a win this Qualifiers

2:34

Teddy in the prelims what I've

2:37

just seen how many games he's played Why

2:40

is I'm not talking smack? Congratulations,

2:43

he's struggling. He really needs that he

2:45

really needs this win. The next

2:47

one is funny. You might note on the tapestry

2:51

Congratulations to dumbest guy in the room on

2:53

your win Dumbest guy in the room then

2:55

messaged me and is

2:58

bowing out of the tournament So if anybody is looking at

3:00

numbers and all of that and the breakdown of who won

3:02

and whatnot and then you later Realize that dumbest

3:05

guy in the room is not in the prelims They

3:07

they our first bow

3:09

out of the tournament has occurred. So Congratulations.

3:12

Anyways, though, you still want to qualify our game. You

3:14

played a good guy. Nice work. Good job

3:17

Good job dumbest guy in the room. Yep.

3:19

Also, we have Fantasma stole

3:22

J6 288 Terminus

3:24

DT Dookie for life 123 and RY's

3:28

just texted me. That's really funny. Isn't

3:31

that weird? They felt they felt

3:33

you talking about them Ten

3:38

winners Moving on to the

3:40

prelims and that now gives

3:42

us we are at a hundred and

3:44

two We've broken the 100 person

3:47

mark for the prelims, but I still

3:49

have quite halfway there yet We're

3:51

almost halfway. Well, we're right

3:53

on track. Technically. It's halfway through November

3:56

We're gonna break through halfway this weekend.

3:59

Yeah, I'm I'm gonna make another attempt this

4:02

weekend so you know if you wanna

4:04

hang out and clown on

4:06

me more whatever you want you know. I

4:09

gotta assemble a new group of people

4:11

see which one of them prioritizes making

4:13

sure that I don't make it. We'll see.

4:16

We'll see. I'm excited about it. This

4:18

week on Hunter and the Qualified. I

4:21

mean hey I enjoy the game I don't

4:23

win or lose I have a fun time with

4:25

it. So whatever. I

4:27

don't need to make it all the way to

4:29

the finals to know that I am in fact the winner. Yeah

4:32

very good. I've done this before. Yeah that's funny

4:34

given my recent YouTube experience win

4:36

or lose I'm having a bad time

4:38

in the game somehow. So we're polar

4:41

opposites in that regard I suppose. I'm

4:43

not actually having a bad time everyone it's okay.

4:45

You are though. I mean let's be

4:47

real. Like don't

4:49

turn it into a joke it's not a joke you're

4:52

having a bad. You have a bad time at the outcome.

4:54

I have a bad mentality. It's not the outcome

4:56

it's the it's the it's the sequence

4:59

of events that usually occurs in

5:02

round four and five makes

5:04

my brain explode in a way that is

5:06

hard to contend with is how I

5:09

put it. I think it's funny that when

5:11

you win you're like I didn't deserve

5:13

that. Because a lot of the people

5:15

that that kind of talk smack

5:18

sometimes to our faces they'll be

5:20

like that's kind of the stuff they say.

5:22

Yeah. And they're like Matt don't

5:25

worry about it. Don't do their job for

5:27

them. Like let them have this. You

5:30

know because like if you take up that space

5:32

if you're so self critical that the

5:35

haters don't have any room for

5:37

hate then you're kind of robbing them of

5:39

something. And I think that that

5:42

you don't need to do that. So I want to

5:44

rob them of something though. That's exactly

5:46

what I'm after is to rob them of the chance

5:48

to get to say it before me. It's a defense Matt. Yeah.

5:52

If you say you're bad then the

5:54

haters will just be agreeing

5:56

with you. Yeah. Well that's

5:58

still not. You don't need to do that. Why

6:02

would you need to do that? Why would you want

6:04

to agree with your haters? That

6:07

seems really strange. Let's not. I

6:09

don't know. Let's not agree with them. They

6:11

are in fact incorrect. Yeah. Philosophically,

6:14

emotionally, they're just wrong. Okay.

6:18

That's the actual truth. The tone

6:20

called truth right there. Well, let's talk about

6:22

what today's fun episode is. We

6:24

have a series of interviews

6:27

lined up that I'm very excited for because

6:29

we are in the midst of

6:31

the qualifiers, which is like just

6:34

there's a deluge of games

6:36

happening. There's a handful

6:38

of people working tirelessly

6:40

behind the scenes to try to bring you

6:42

those qualifier matches. There's all

6:45

sorts of people streaming Twilight Imperium. And

6:47

this is a community that I

6:49

think has grown quite

6:51

a bit since like our first two

6:54

to three years doing the tournament.

6:56

And even just the two to three years of us kind

6:58

of doing the show. Streaming Twilight

7:00

Imperium has really, really grown

7:03

quite a bit. And we just wanted to take time

7:05

and talk to a bunch

7:07

of the people who take part in it. Obviously not everybody.

7:10

We couldn't get everybody. But talk to

7:12

as many people as we could about what

7:14

it's like to commentate Twilight Imperium,

7:17

what it's like to endure that

7:19

long of a stream, which I think is pretty unique

7:22

amongst our community. This idea that

7:24

like a match takes eight hours. There's not

7:26

very many games that do that. So and

7:28

yeah, just in general, some tournament talk,

7:30

but also just streaming across

7:33

the board in this beautiful little community

7:35

of ours. I view it as a big

7:38

celebration. You'll hear every single interview

7:40

end with me being like, I just

7:42

think this is great. Boy, what a great, what a fun

7:45

time I'm having. So sorry for the repetition

7:47

there. But I genuinely have had an amazing

7:50

time doing this episode

7:52

and talking to everybody. It's just, I'm just so

7:54

happy everyone gets to listen to this episode.

7:57

And you're doing it again right now. Exactly. Apology

8:00

for this time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey haters. You don't

8:02

get to get on to me about apologizing

8:06

Wow, I really learned like a key part

8:08

of your psychological makeup

8:11

right now. Yep is this idea That's

8:13

interesting though. Yeah, I mean it is it

8:16

is a lot of people and I think

8:18

there were a lot of interesting perspectives that

8:21

you're gonna get from this episode on streaming

8:23

I also feel like this is an opportunity to

8:25

try and encourage People that are thinking

8:27

about it to like it involved It's

8:30

really fun. There's more tools now than

8:33

there have ever been for sure. It also

8:35

looks sicker Yeah

8:39

It looks great. And yeah,

8:42

even though it's you know, really long and

8:44

kind of crazy to do It's

8:46

it's fun and I'm surprised I'm always surprised by

8:49

how many people are interested in in

8:51

doing the job of that Yeah, something

8:53

we've always tried to encourage in people

8:55

sort of volunteering to stream, you know space

8:58

cats games is like I

9:00

like letting people

9:03

Like do it the way they want to right?

9:05

Like I don't I try not to come

9:07

in and be like this is the space cats method

9:10

and you should do it this way We have like a we've had I have

9:12

a pretty old tutorial up that I would

9:14

love to update of like how to stream Twilight

9:16

Imperium and I think it gives

9:19

some pointers, but I tried in that thing to not Dictate

9:22

like anything that I think is the best way to do anything

9:24

because I just think it's better when people throw in

9:26

their flavor And so, you know having

9:29

different styles of commentary with

9:31

different Focuses on like what

9:33

is being commentated about I just think

9:35

makes the scene a little bit richer I want

9:38

to talk about something me and you before we get

9:40

into the interviews Yeah, and it's it's

9:43

it's sort of related to this through

9:45

line of of criticism But it's

9:47

something that I've kind of been thinking about for

9:50

a little bit which is You know when

9:53

we started streaming We

9:56

weren't even really sure it was something anyone

9:58

was going to want right? And

10:00

then we found out people did want it and

10:03

then it kind of went through this phase of being

10:05

like kind of feeling like a party

10:08

Mm-hmm, and I feel like we're out of that

10:10

now mostly because of Conceding

10:14

to a lot of criticism that we

10:16

would get kind of on the YouTube Which

10:19

I don't normally like listening to YouTube

10:21

criticism but a lot of times we would

10:23

get it on our finals video

10:25

of It being confusing

10:28

or it feeling like we were

10:30

treating that day like sort of a celebration.

10:32

Yeah, and Now

10:34

I feel like our logic is it's

10:37

not a celebration It is a

10:39

it is a very serious eSports moment

10:41

with very serious commentary Yeah,

10:43

but

10:43

I'm kind of still in between

10:46

like

10:46

I'm not sure which is

10:49

the right. Yeah Want call

10:51

there and I'm wondering if you feel similar.

10:53

Yeah, I think the reality is it's impossible to

10:56

sustain the like level

10:58

of seriousness that I think sometimes YouTube wants

11:01

and YouTube is cheating, right? They they get

11:03

to skip around so they want every

11:05

second of what they watch to be Good

11:08

perfect analysis and like they're fine to want

11:10

that and that's not like that would be a wonderful standard

11:12

to uphold That is a standard

11:15

that a large crew can

11:17

uphold when you can maybe cycle people

11:19

out or whatever But like you will note that

11:22

like almost no other sport

11:24

Asks anyone to maintain a critical

11:28

eye for longer than six hours

11:30

like that doesn't here exist

11:33

basically Even even the

11:35

Olympics where it's like yeah stuff is running

11:37

for like 14 hours a day at the Olympics But

11:40

people are coming and going from that

11:42

or whatever right and so I

11:44

think maybe that's the part that viewers

11:47

forget and you talk to literally

11:49

any Commentator and

11:51

they're like, oh, yeah, it's gonna break down at some point

11:53

like you're gonna you have to follow a tangent

11:55

You have to get distracted like there is just no

11:57

other way to do this job

12:00

then to hang out with twitch

12:02

chat basically, right? Like you're just there for too

12:05

long and sometimes nothing's happening in

12:07

front of you Like with Twilight Imperium, sometimes there's just

12:09

dead air and you

12:11

need to fill it Like it would be it would

12:13

be weird to be sitting there not saying anything

12:15

and and there's not always like a critical

12:17

analysis To do or whatever and

12:20

also I just think it makes it a better time So I'm

12:22

with you that I think it's it is a necessary

12:25

aspect To have sort

12:28

of goofing around and you watch this in in

12:32

I don't know Starcraft commentary My favorite commentators

12:34

are the ones that goof around a little

12:36

bit mid mid stream You know if it's the

12:38

beginning the first three minutes of a match of

12:41

Starcraft, right? It's like well, we're just sort

12:43

of building our bases probably and

12:45

unless someone's doing something really cheeky We're

12:47

probably just setting up and the commentators

12:49

get to sort of play around in that space. They don't need to

12:51

sit here and See your theorize

12:54

every potential thing that might happen They just have to wait

12:56

to see what's gonna go on and

12:58

during that time They get to goof around a little bit and

13:00

I and and we have way

13:03

more of that goofing around

13:05

time available to us That's

13:08

true But I would say we did not really utilize

13:10

it in the finals video that

13:13

we just did that we did a couple months ago Right.

13:15

I mean that's kind of more my question

13:17

is like like I'm trying to get you to commit

13:20

here Yeah, do you think what do you

13:22

think was our best finals video? There

13:25

we go. Now you have now you have no way

13:27

to wriggle out I have to give me a solid well, but

13:30

I want to say the newest one and but the

13:32

big difference with the newest one and

13:34

the thing we've been trying recently is

13:37

a lot more of Leaning

13:40

into the edit During

13:43

the stream and letting the commentary lean into the edit

13:45

So the new philosophy I have is hey

13:47

we can goof around at certain points

13:49

because guess what? I know that's not even gonna

13:52

be in the YouTube video. I'm gonna cut

13:54

that out entirely And then

13:56

when it's an important moment, I either

13:58

hush up because the players are talking or I talk

14:01

about very specifically what's going on because

14:03

I know that's going to be

14:05

the chunk that goes into the video

14:08

that is Paired down and edited so

14:10

to even sort of remark back to what I was saying earlier You

14:13

know YouTube gets to skip around I

14:15

think you and I have this interest of making a video that there's

14:18

nothing to skip around Anymore, right? I if

14:20

I've made the video an hour and a half long

14:23

I'm giving you the skipped around bits which

14:25

means that I'm also isolating the

14:27

sort of most important commentary And

14:29

that definitely affects the live stream because we're

14:32

sort of mentally noting

14:34

those things and tracking those moments But I think

14:36

it gives us the freedom to have like a space For

14:39

goofing around rather than that sort

14:41

of looming fear that it's got because there

14:43

was plenty of goofing around in the finals

14:45

Right. I mean we had we had some some dumb

14:48

things happening Not so

14:50

much together you and I were kind of in separate rooms

14:52

or whatever basically, but we had

14:54

a few moments And yeah,

14:57

that just gets like kind of removed from

14:59

the finished product basically Yeah,

15:02

I mean I just think about that compared to me

15:05

you and EJ sitting on a couch yelling

15:07

That was the best time I ever had that

15:09

was the best finals for us, but

15:12

it was not the best finals video Yeah,

15:15

I just think maybe it was Audience

15:19

agrees, you know if you think that

15:21

or if you don't think that right I

15:23

would because here's the thing I feel

15:26

like I maybe

15:28

don't care that much

15:31

About a YouTube video if it's

15:33

like a bunch of people that aren't kind

15:36

of already in the audience coming

15:38

in and saying like I Don't think this is

15:40

funny or like I can't understand

15:42

like it's like there's two people we could make

15:44

that video for sure There's

15:47

for the larger Twilight Imperium audience And

15:51

then there's like for the space cat

15:53

sea turtles audience, right and they're not they're

15:55

not one-in-one And I know that for

15:58

a fact around this the space cat sea turtles People

16:00

that are like cool funny interesting

16:02

people and then there's the rest that no people No,

16:08

it's okay, they're not listening so we're fine Like

16:13

it's like seriously have you ever met someone that plays

16:15

Twilight and period but doesn't listen to the show That

16:19

is a huge red flag right

16:21

there. I'm like whoa. You're

16:23

probably evil Oh

16:27

my gosh, just kidding.

16:29

I'm just kidding. Okay But

16:33

yeah, I don't know. I'm just interested for the audience

16:36

to kind of sound off on that like yeah like

16:38

and and I Know

16:40

hostility to anybody one way or the

16:42

other I truly am kind of torn Yeah

16:45

about this subject like every time I think about

16:47

it. I'm like should it be just

16:49

us? Aren't around and

16:52

having a good time and like yelling

16:54

and being ridiculous or should

16:56

it be like, you know Considered

16:59

reserved serious. Yeah Accurate

17:02

exact, you know what I mean? Like like

17:05

what what should the guiding principle be?

17:07

I'm not I I realize it's never going

17:09

to be purely one or the other right?

17:11

I'm not it's not possible for that I mean,

17:14

I I'm I'm not even asking that

17:16

what I'm saying What if people want

17:18

us to set in our site?

17:20

Yeah. Yeah, I'm torn. I think another Relevant

17:24

aspect of that is like, I

17:26

mean we've started to differentiate Games

17:29

where one of us is at the helm and the

17:32

vibe of that and then the eventual YouTube video

17:34

for that Where that's like we aren't

17:36

cutting those up like we will continue

17:38

to like when it's hunter plays sardac

17:41

or Matt plays ghosts of creus the

17:43

whole VOD goes up on the YouTube of that still

17:45

because that's like You're here with us

17:48

in the driver's seat and sort of the whole point is

17:50

to be hanging out with us Which then also

17:52

lends itself to like we're just hanging out and maybe

17:54

we're farting around for a while And and I think that

17:56

one gets to be a lot more screwing

17:59

around and maybe Maybe tournament games

18:02

are a bit more serious time or at the very least

18:04

definitely the mentality We went with for the finals

18:07

is like well the finals is where we

18:09

should probably take it seriously the prelims

18:12

When we're gonna happen to do 36 over

18:14

the course of a few months, and it's just like a relentless

18:17

gauntlet I think I give us permission

18:19

to let that be a bit of the party because

18:21

there's tons of other prelims You could watch basically

18:24

like there's so many other and honestly Extend

18:26

that same thing to the qualifiers when all

18:28

these other people are doing it if you don't like one

18:31

streamers style Guess what

18:33

there's other streamers available. There's other games available

18:36

to you. I you know I don't Give

18:39

a lot of credence to people who want to like trash

18:41

talk one streamers style over

18:43

another It's like you can just that's why it's

18:46

good to have a bunch of options because we all like

18:48

different stuff Yeah, and

18:50

there is it's important to remember that Whatever

18:53

it is that you want out of this it's

18:56

new it's not yeah like it

18:59

isn't like a Defined

19:01

thing we don't have a lot of like yeah,

19:03

and that's actually what's exciting about it right like

19:06

it's not very old The idea of

19:08

commentating Twilight and Imperium And

19:11

it sort of originated by accident

19:13

mm-hmm, and so I would say there

19:15

is no if you have some sort of dogma about

19:18

it It's too young for you to go that

19:20

way really I mean objectively It's it's it's

19:22

too young to know what it is supposed

19:24

to be We're you

19:27

know in 30 years when I'm long dead

19:31

there will be 10 years

19:34

ahead of it Good

19:36

to know There will be

19:39

like you know a defined way of doing

19:41

it There will be a lot of things that people have like

19:43

concluded over the years that is just kind of floated

19:46

to the top But yeah right now. It's new and

19:48

that's why it's fun to get a whole bunch of Perspective

19:51

on it because we don't know you know we don't know who's

19:53

gonna be correct in all of this Well,

19:55

let's do that then let's get a bunch

19:57

of perspective and let's talk to just all

19:59

of our friends who are

20:01

a part of this community and bring

20:03

it to everybody else's eyeballs.

20:06

So let's cut to our interviews with

20:09

the commentators of Twilight Imperium. Let's

20:11

do it.

20:16

I'm joined now by

20:18

one of the streamer extraordinaires,

20:21

I would say. And when I say extraordinaire,

20:24

I mean perhaps terrifying

20:26

machine. It's Big Al Cappuccino, the

20:29

man who cannot be stopped when

20:32

it comes to streaming. I don't know, Big

20:34

Al, do you have a rough guess over

20:37

the past however many years you've been

20:39

now involved in streaming? Do you have a

20:41

rough guess how many games you have streamed? Um,

20:44

top of my head I want to say 60 to 70? That

20:47

seems low, Al. Let's be honest

20:50

with ourselves. You've had

20:52

a lot of double or even triple header

20:54

weekends. So I'm

20:57

a bit hesitant to say it's more than

20:59

that. But I do think you are

21:01

up there with like, you know, I

21:03

don't even know if Hunter and I have streamed as many as you at this point

21:06

because Hunter and I split so many up.

21:08

You know, if you were putting Hunter and I together,

21:11

we would probably have you beat. But individually, I think

21:13

you might be completely up there. And I'm sure there's a

21:15

few other names in that camp. My

21:18

YouTube is at 110. Probably 10

21:20

of those would be other people's

21:23

where they didn't have YouTube. Maybe five

21:25

to two non streamed events.

21:27

It's probably about 90. Wow.

21:31

Maybe one or two that got cut into two or three

21:33

parts or maybe 80. Well, that's terrifying.

21:36

The thing to talk about then and the reason that

21:39

number got so high was you were

21:41

among the sort of Legion

21:44

in the last two years that sort of made

21:46

a pact to try to get

21:48

every single qualifier game streamed.

21:51

I would throw obviously Elspeth into that

21:53

camp. Jasper was a part of it last

21:56

year. There were there were a few names that really made it their

21:58

kind of goal. to see every

22:00

single qualifier game get streamed. This year, obviously

22:02

the format is different. Have

22:05

you been going lighter

22:07

this year or has it been business unusual

22:09

for Big Al? No, 100%. So

22:12

for me, streaming in 2022 and 2023, 24 and five, we're both first

22:14

of Jan

22:17

start of season. And for me, that's low season

22:20

at work, you know, summer in New Zealand,

22:22

everybody's on Christmas holidays and New Year's

22:24

and I can do three

22:26

streams a week. I'm still working but I'm a

22:28

far lighter work schedule. I

22:30

could do four schedules, four in the weekend at

22:33

times. And as a passion, you

22:35

know, what else am I going to do but play TI or stream

22:37

TI and I believe there's a season for these things

22:40

and Jan said was streaming season.

22:42

That's what it became. And so

22:44

yeah, it was relatively easy this year though

22:46

two factors, obviously the 216 is nigh

22:49

on impossible to stream. We just do not have the

22:51

streamer base to actually meet that. We've got you

22:54

know, all those streams in place at the moment that do help

22:56

with that but leaving a computer unattended

22:58

for 10 hours as the host is a little

23:00

bit sketch.

23:02

That helps but then also for me, it's a

23:04

busy time. Yeah, I've just had my financial year end, 31st

23:07

of October and you know, those real

23:09

life obligations come a little bit

23:11

before.

23:14

I tried to do one a weekend. It is

23:16

partly the reason I did the dirty

23:19

in my qualifier game to get through and then open

23:21

up the streaming schedule a little

23:23

bit. It's

23:25

not about getting into the prelims. It's about not

23:27

having a reason to play in the qualifiers

23:29

anymore so that you can stream. Yeah, that's what you're

23:31

saying. I'll be honest,

23:34

grinding those qualifiers is hard. Like

23:36

streaming is pretty chillax. You're not trying to

23:38

win every time. You're not chasing victory. You're

23:40

chasing the adventure and you're getting to be on a very

23:43

chillax way to consume Twilight.

23:44

After I did

23:46

only four weekends in a row grinding and

23:49

it's arduous and I feel for the players that are going to go,

23:51

you know, a good 10, 12, 13 weekends over the season.

23:53

I hope they will get through but

23:56

it is taxing and I do remind people

23:59

that this can be a bit of a problem. of an addiction where

24:01

you've got to be mindful that it doesn't start riding you.

24:04

The monkey's not on your back riding you ragged

24:07

and it's on your terms. And often it

24:09

can be good just to take a weekend off or go

24:11

for a walk or find something a little

24:13

bit exparté from your passion that

24:16

allows you to come back in a more balanced way. That's

24:18

always my kind of fear or whatever

24:21

as someone who feels sort of in charge of you

24:23

all is I want to make sure you're doing it for yourselves

24:26

and not some sense of obligation to

24:28

the community. It's great

24:29

that everybody wants to give so much but

24:32

I never want that to come at some sort of cost. Can

24:34

we talk a bit about you were sort of remarking

24:36

in there that there's so much less load

24:39

mentally on streaming and everything

24:42

compared to playing obviously. What

24:45

do you get out of streaming and maybe

24:47

specifically commentating? How

24:49

does the experience differ for

24:52

you?

24:53

Okay. So, I'm obviously a bit of an exhibitionist

24:56

and I like the performing art aspect of Twilight.

24:58

So when you're commentating specifically

25:01

whether you were streaming or commentating, you're

25:03

dealing with chat and you're getting to perform in a different

25:05

way. And there's definitely tables

25:07

I've been at where I'm over talking, the

25:09

other five players feel big else just ranting

25:11

and raving and they want a bit more of a subdued game.

25:14

When you're commentating especially solo, you've

25:16

got free reign. So it's a nice environment in

25:18

that respect. The

25:21

other thing that I love is the people aspect of

25:23

TI. So for me, the mechanics, it's all

25:25

part of it. It sets the stage. We have props,

25:27

we have rules, we have boundaries and it's

25:30

the undercurrents. It's watching somebody

25:32

get a little bit teachy because

25:34

somebody's just talking to

25:36

them a certain way and human politics

25:39

and emotions coming into it and

25:41

streaming and commentating. I feel I get

25:43

to experience that in a way I don't from a player

25:46

seat. A player seat is very blinkered. Your

25:48

relative perspective is very narrow. You're looking

25:50

at your slice, your home towards mekitol. You're

25:52

missing things happening all over the galaxy. I actually think

25:55

having watched hundreds of players now folk like

25:57

Deft, she's good. because

26:00

she zooms out. Because she's almost commentating

26:02

a game for herself. She's so autopilot

26:05

in her own slice, she's actually aware of all that. So

26:07

as a commentator, I get to experience that viewpoint.

26:10

Yeah, and feel those undercurrents.

26:12

And the other good thing is, as a player,

26:15

you're trying to win the game, you're trying to be victorious.

26:17

Sometimes you might have another person you're kind of backing

26:19

as well, to be honest. As a

26:22

commentator, you can switch and switch. You

26:24

can take the underdog for the first round. Then you

26:26

can go, I was going to do it. Then you can get all excited

26:28

about some dude who's never played online

26:29

before. And it's suddenly getting their money. Those

26:32

are my favorite. My favorite are the completely

26:35

new faces when they show up. They're like, this is my

26:37

fourth game of TI. I don't know. I'm

26:39

checking it out. And then they're just a slayer.

26:41

You know what I mean? I love it when you

26:44

see a natural at the game. This

26:46

is how I feel about Jono. Honestly, Jono will

26:49

tell you he doesn't play a ton

26:51

of games, but he's just got the brain

26:53

for it. He just clicks into it instantly.

26:57

I love the storylines that develop behind players,

26:59

like you're saying,

26:59

and getting kind of to understand

27:02

the theatrics of the whole

27:04

thing, as it were. What I love about Jono

27:06

was he played a lot of Warhammer. In

27:09

the Prelims game, where we ride or die, I

27:11

noted a positional placing

27:13

of units more akin with a Warhammer

27:16

game, where you're measuring with your three-inch ruler how

27:18

far away things are than any game of TI

27:20

I've seen. And it's trying

27:22

to uncover how much of an impact it has

27:25

and how that actually starts fitting in. Because

27:28

we do become as a community blanket by

27:31

our metas, and diversity is

27:33

really the key. So coming in and going, you know,

27:35

we never wash each other. Why would you? And

27:38

we've kind of tried that. We've seen where it goes,

27:40

but maybe we haven't fully explored those corners

27:43

of our universe. Absolutely. Something

27:45

else I love that you do, obviously, you don't

27:48

just stream Space Cats,

27:50

PCurals, tournament games. You're doing all kinds

27:52

of stuff. You know, a big deal in the Australian

27:54

scene. And there was a recent

27:58

match or whatever of...

27:59

uh... slightly different rules

28:02

at play and i think all of that

28:05

feeds into uh... that as you always

28:07

put it kind of a stew my favorite thing

28:09

about trying to encourage other people to like run

28:11

tournaments are run sort of the various matches

28:13

is having those different rule sets

28:16

play some sort of role in

28:19

how everybody now has to reinterpret what they

28:21

think about the game so can you tell us about some of

28:23

the the side projects the non space

28:25

cat streams you've done

28:27

so who could go to this last week in gone

28:29

by that the charity stream still available on which

28:31

and is on the youtube uh... and

28:34

a lot of them are hellfish players helmet players

28:36

they just love taking home systems and whatnot uh...

28:39

because of charity you're trying to you know have

28:41

a slightly different going to be a and

28:43

uh... people got to donate money and then

28:45

dropped other players slices for them

28:48

and who weren't playing the mission and against like that

28:51

uh... and jessica who's the two years running champion

28:53

at the melbourne uh... australia's

28:55

largest and he

28:58

ended up with a slice with like to gravity rifters

29:00

arboric and i've been a certain one from home

29:02

and had to run to rest and in round

29:04

one the very first by show actually

29:07

came up uh... with the one or two feeling

29:09

the carrier on the way to bear glitter and

29:12

in chat all of a sudden somebody goes out there twenty

29:14

dollars if you get to reroll and i would

29:16

carry a lot of it yes i would agree that

29:18

any of the reroll any live and

29:20

funny enough is second capacity ship also

29:22

rolled up thing and nobody would pay the nanny died

29:25

yeah the rules

29:27

that they changed up as well we each round uh...

29:30

round two lost pic got to

29:32

strategy cards and you know that they're coming

29:34

so you could plan for it to selling speaker all of

29:36

a sudden was like no no don't tell me figure out a lot of you

29:39

that's hilarious i love

29:41

and did that round

29:44

was and a full time was all

29:46

gravity rifts are adjacent people's

29:48

home systems so just had a student to

29:51

gravity rifts he does take the time to but it really encouraged

29:53

that and in round five was

29:56

at status zero when you come to scoring

29:58

if you control somebody's home system a

30:00

home system not yours gain one point

30:03

instead of zero so kind of human inverted yeah yeah

30:05

and all of a sudden the math just changed it

30:07

with that small change really changed

30:09

this last time but no he actually win

30:12

say this person but now he's winning on zero

30:14

status and but

30:16

again to go back to Nes the Nuzlocke I want

30:19

to play Nuzlocke with my IRL group I

30:21

walked away from that actually quite a

30:24

twist but I think I want to say

30:26

I loved it for

30:28

that intrigued yeah

30:31

I really think that Nuzlocke could be a crazy

30:33

format yeah and and made nice and one

30:35

as well was really good I love the weird

30:37

bear exhibition stuff because of those for the most

30:40

part minor little twists and turns I'm like

30:42

dying to do more Absol mod obviously

30:45

it's getting it's

30:46

into async now and I think my next set of

30:48

async games is gonna be some Absol stuff but yeah

30:50

I just love the little the little shake-ups

30:53

even though the game already has so

30:55

many little shake-ups kind of embedded within

30:57

it I think you know from people like your perspective

30:59

you can see so many regular games that you start to go

31:01

you know a little home brew would go down

31:03

just as smooth I'm interested to

31:06

see what happens to this to this do

31:08

I also think what happens is a lot of

31:10

us hid from casual play novice

31:12

play into feeling comfortable into competitive

31:14

play this is a natural progression

31:16

same will be kind of go from friendly play

31:18

to more aggressive play and then it's about optimal

31:20

play which might come back to both floating depending on your table

31:22

mix but we can

31:25

end up playing too much competitive

31:27

and we forget that this is a board game

31:29

and by doing things like Nuzlocke it

31:31

just brings back the fun it just

31:33

brings back that let's have crazy

31:36

shenanigans together aspect I

31:38

think the memes keep that alive I think people doing

31:41

the seminal you know gigs and all that

31:43

and people going on about 69 Jolene

31:47

it kind of it keeps it fun and playful

31:50

but but so do those other things and then look there's

31:52

some home brew out there that is as passionate

31:55

and you know the discordant stars

31:57

I bought the physical one it's amazing

31:59

what that group has done. It's amazing. And

32:02

I talk about consuming TI, that people

32:04

consume it in different ways. I tend towards playing.

32:06

I don't have the head space for homebrew.

32:09

But there's people who do homebrew but hardly

32:11

play. For them, that is how

32:13

they consume it. And they just relish it, and

32:15

they get excited. And for one,

32:18

nobility. And I mean, I can't wait for it to be ready.

32:20

And he's like, test it. I'm like, I'm just finished.

32:22

I'm just going to play it. I don't want to test. Just let

32:24

us see the thing. Well, big

32:26

out. Obviously, we have to also thank

32:29

you for keeping the fun alive. I think a lot

32:31

of people have experienced the tournament through

32:33

your lens and through your streams. So

32:35

we have to push all those things right back to you

32:38

for keeping the fun at the forefront

32:40

and keeping the storylines of each game at the forefront

32:42

and giving space, a little space for salt,

32:45

but accepting that it's a part

32:48

of the whole ecosystem of playing.

32:50

So thank you so much for being

32:52

one of the many great streamers of

32:54

Twilight Imperium. It's an absolute privilege to

32:56

be a part of this amazing thing and this little

32:59

adventure we're all on. And may it long continue.

33:01

No worries. And thank you to you guys. See everything

33:03

you do. Of course.

33:14

Well, first of all, how are you doing? You doing good?

33:16

I'm good. I'm doing good.

33:18

Hell yeah.

33:19

It's another day to be alive.

33:21

Yeah. Another alive

33:23

day. Yeah. I'm curious, like how

33:25

did you get into like commentating

33:28

because y'all obviously y'all have your YouTube

33:30

project, which is TI

33:32

Junkies, where y'all do

33:35

like, it's like you play the game

33:37

and then you kind of chop it up into a story

33:40

and it's very edited and it's charming and

33:42

it's good. And by the way, I like it. I just want to say

33:44

it's a good project and I love it. Oh, I'm

33:45

glad you are the target demo after

33:48

all. TI Junkies.

33:50

Yeah.

33:51

Yeah. If anybody's a TI Junkie, it's

33:53

got to be me.

33:54

For streaming, we

33:56

started last year. So it was our first time playing

33:59

in the SCP T-turn. and we decided

34:01

we'd stream each other's games because why not

34:03

that would be fun and then TI

34:05

Junkie's viewers can also watch the games

34:08

happen. So that's

34:10

how we started and Nikko commentated on

34:12

both my stream and Henry's stream and

34:15

that was the beginning of a fun hobby

34:18

I've picked up.

34:19

Oh that's good that you call it a fun

34:21

hobby. What

34:24

do you like most

34:26

about it? Well

34:27

I like engaging with chat and seeing

34:29

their perspectives on things

34:31

and really what I like is seeing how different people

34:34

play TI and kind of just

34:36

like I don't know I feel like up until

34:39

this world my view of TI

34:41

players was very limited it's like oh it's

34:44

these whatever 10 people that

34:46

we play with and that's how people play

34:48

TI but uh starting

34:50

to like stream all these different games it's like oh

34:52

wait that's how people can play TI and that's

34:55

how people can play TI very interesting. What

34:57

do you feel like are the the major differences

34:59

between like your group and

35:01

then like the larger TI universe?

35:04

Oh my god definitely people

35:06

very very subscribed to the meta

35:09

here you know the SCP-T meta but

35:11

people treating it like it's like the rulebook

35:14

and how to go about. When you

35:16

start playing TI without like awareness

35:18

of that you develop like a side meta

35:20

and then it's interesting seeing like

35:23

now that I'm exposed to this like grander meta

35:25

what I've what I'm adopting and what I'm

35:27

like rejecting and stuff like that. That's

35:30

the biggest shocker of like everyone

35:32

being on the same page that like okay let's

35:34

eliminate winu round one for existing.

35:37

It's like wait what? Nothing's happened

35:39

yet.

35:40

Yeah I like that so what

35:42

are what are some things that the I hate calling

35:45

it the SCP-T meta by the way don't

35:47

don't make me call it that but what

35:49

are what are some things that that struck

35:52

you about that like besides

35:54

the winu thing like what what are the things that

35:56

you're like ah it's weird that everybody does this I don't

35:58

like that.

35:59

Yeah, I think the biggest one is for

36:02

sure determining factions

36:05

and determining what level each

36:07

factions are. Like, oh, this is a top

36:09

tier faction and we need to get... It's heat. It's

36:12

like heat... The heat is mitigated based on

36:14

predetermined things and

36:16

not how the game started. Because

36:19

to me, it's like, well, each

36:21

faction thrives under a different set

36:23

of random objectives. So you

36:25

really can't know who to

36:27

mess up first. I had developed

36:30

like a X-minus 2 for commodity

36:33

faction meta before discovering

36:35

the FCP team meta.

36:39

And then just seeing X-minus 1s and people reacting

36:41

to the proposition of an X-minus

36:44

2, like it's the craziest thing they've ever heard.

36:46

But you

36:46

know, it could happen. You

36:49

know, I spent like a year doing X-minus 2s

36:51

and then I just got tired of it.

36:54

I think I got to a point

36:56

where I'm definitely not... I

36:59

think it's completely reasonable to do an X-minus 2. I

37:01

just think it's not worth the trouble.

37:04

You know what

37:04

I mean? Yeah, yeah. The outbursts.

37:07

My money.

37:10

Yeah, it's like, I don't know, it's

37:12

not worth having a bad diplomatic

37:16

relation and then all you get

37:18

is one more trade good. So I'm like, well,

37:21

I'd rather just keep things

37:22

as smooth as possible.

37:25

Especially because I feel like when I play, there's

37:27

a lot of... You know, I've talked

37:29

about this before but I am a secret

37:31

objective just on the table. It's

37:33

like if I troll him, then

37:35

I will unlock a... You know, I

37:37

will score a point that is not

37:39

visible only to me. Do

37:42

I know... Soul point. Yeah, yeah.

37:45

Yeah, a soul point. You're correct. Well,

37:49

so when it comes to streaming

37:51

and commentating, what do you feel

37:53

like your style is as a commentator?

37:55

Like how do you like to do it?

37:57

That's a good question. I think I'm a lot

37:59

more... hands off than a lot of the streams

38:01

and commentaries that I've tuned into.

38:04

I find that like more so than

38:07

summarizing like what the game state

38:09

is and where the game's going, I like commentating

38:12

on like players play styles. I

38:14

remember being blown away in a stream that

38:17

I did when like someone in round

38:19

one was very, very heavily extorting

38:22

another player via like what's

38:25

it called, cripple defenses to like point block

38:27

them. And it's like, wow, I've never seen

38:30

something so aggressive in like round

38:32

one and they're just going to accept that they're like the bad guy

38:34

of the tape. So really it's just like seeing how tables

38:37

interact with each other, like the social element

38:39

that comes out of each table is what I

38:41

find most engaging. So that's what I try

38:44

to focus on when I'm commentating. Yeah.

38:46

When

38:48

it comes to like describing, I don't

38:51

know, like what a player's position

38:54

is, like how concerned are you with like capturing,

38:56

you know, if we're talking about

38:58

round five, for instance,

39:01

how concerned are you with determining

39:03

who has the path to 10 or is

39:05

it more about just their vibe and

39:07

their style?

39:09

Yeah, I personally

39:12

don't cover that too much. I mean, I do because chat

39:14

wants to know and stuff like that. But I

39:17

appreciate it when I'm tuned into streams and

39:19

other people are mapping it out for me, but it's a lot

39:21

of work. Yeah. It's a lot of

39:23

work to like really look at the

39:25

bigger picture and see everyone's path

39:27

and kind of maintain that vision for like an eight

39:30

plus hour game. So

39:32

for longevity, I don't break

39:34

my brain in that way of like, here's the

39:37

really, really nitty gritty of this gate round

39:39

five and how it's going to go down.

39:41

Yeah. And the overlay, I feel like the overlay

39:44

helps so much because like there's nothing I can

39:46

say that like chat can't really

39:48

determine from the overlay themselves. Yeah.

39:51

Who am I? Who am I to say that Joel

39:53

Narr is in a better position than the Mahak?

39:56

Do you know?

39:57

Who am I? Right. And at the

39:59

end of the day, I mean, the. chat even

40:01

someone with the spreadsheet it they

40:03

still do not have the perfect information

40:05

so nobody really knows.

40:07

Yeah

40:09

I feel like a lot of the times if you

40:11

could see everything if you could look at every card

40:14

you might be able to determine who has

40:16

won the game like hours

40:19

before the game is over just because of what

40:21

all the things you can see.

40:22

Right you'd be like oh this guy has political stability

40:25

there's no sabotages that's

40:27

a good thing. Exactly

40:32

you could just know it but what's the thought of that that's

40:34

not fun at all.

40:35

Also I don't want to say something and then it not

40:37

happen and I'm an idiot now. Right.

40:40

So let the events play

40:43

out how they play

40:43

out. I would hate

40:46

to my personal hell would

40:48

be to just be locked in a supercut

40:50

of every time I've been wrong on

40:53

stream and that it would be I mean

40:55

it would be hours it would be hours and hours

40:57

it'd probably be a hundred hours of just different

41:00

moments where I said like oh I think this

41:02

and it was completely incorrect.

41:05

That's part of the

41:06

beauty of TI is there's so many possibilities

41:08

of how things could go. Yeah. You know we're

41:11

all we're all bound to be incorrect

41:12

most of the time. Even though

41:14

it's a it's a very random game. I'm

41:16

curious as to like what's like the

41:19

best game you feel like you've commentated and

41:21

what was it like what made it what made it great.

41:23

Well

41:23

there was a game and

41:26

I wasn't actually heavily on the commentary

41:28

since Darryl's auto stream I've been setting up

41:30

a lot of just auto camera

41:32

streamer stuff which is also really fun

41:35

because then it's getting streamed but I

41:37

barely have to do anything.

41:37

Right there you go. So there

41:39

was this one game that I was auto streaming and every time

41:41

I tuned back in I was really concerned because the

41:43

ghosts were like four points

41:45

ahead of everyone had custodians

41:48

were getting Imperial even though they were not speaker

41:51

and I was like what is I'm

41:53

like what is I have to go back and watch

41:55

this game because how are we in this position

41:58

like what it was very much the table

42:00

like not doing anything when

42:02

there was a very very clear like lead

42:04

and then the ghost player ends up winning when

42:07

everyone was at like six and it's

42:09

like ooh I think that could have been prevented

42:12

I can't say for sure because I was in and out

42:14

but that was a very very interesting

42:16

game to like be tuning in

42:18

to like every hour or so just like oh

42:21

there goes flying.

42:23

Yeah are there any commentators

42:25

that you've watched that you want to highlight

42:27

as far as like things they do things you

42:29

things you like about their style?

42:31

Yes. Cardinal I have recently

42:33

tuned in actually was your game hunter I was

42:36

tuned into carnal's commentary for almost

42:38

the entire time and carnal really really

42:40

covered all the like the

42:43

details and the paths and the points

42:45

and what's going on I felt like even if I was

42:47

to step away and like come back a few

42:49

hours later it's like I know exactly what's

42:51

happened and what's gonna what's possibly

42:54

could happen in this game so shout

42:56

outs to you carnal you're

42:58

good. Yeah yeah I

43:00

agree it's also like I mean it's

43:02

such a challenge just to stay engaged

43:05

for that long I don't know if you struggle with

43:07

that but I personally struggle

43:10

to just like not

43:12

let my mind wander to literally

43:14

anything else I mean yeah

43:18

watch for that long and not get like distracted

43:21

by I don't know I mean I've

43:23

definitely sifted through my fair share

43:25

of like negative YouTube comments because

43:27

I started having a conversation

43:30

about something unrelated in round three

43:32

and I found that

43:34

it's wild how people

43:36

are able to just focus on the game and describe

43:39

the game and not get distracted in any way

43:41

do you feel like you ever struggle with getting

43:43

distracted whatever you are commentating or? Oh my

43:46

god for sure for sure

43:48

all

43:48

the time and that's probably why I don't

43:50

like heavily give my

43:52

like this is what might happen in round five

43:54

because I'm like I don't know what if I missed that like political

43:57

stability it was played ages ago you know

43:59

like I'm like, I don't trust

44:01

myself and like my focus to like accurately

44:04

state something when like

44:07

I haven't been 100%. It's

44:09

definitely really hard, especially when you're not playing to

44:11

like, and there's a lot of like five

44:14

players, six players staring at each other

44:16

thinking for a while and it's like, okay, I

44:19

still have to be engaged because it might start

44:21

happening. Yeah. But

44:24

yeah, I definitely struggle with that for sure. And that's

44:26

why I have been doing more of the

44:28

auto stream ones because that's like, well,

44:30

there's a stream, there's no commentary and

44:33

that's bad. Right.

44:34

Yeah, it's definitely less complicated

44:37

that way. And people are getting like, I

44:39

mean, oftentimes there's definitely like

44:41

a silent group of people

44:43

I would say that sort of seem to prefer

44:45

there being like no commentary. I

44:48

kind of want to swing the other way with it

44:51

and say like, what do you think about it just

44:53

being as entertaining as possible? Like,

44:55

do you feel like there's value in that for commentary?

44:59

I do, I do. I think

45:01

it's fun because the

45:04

chat and the viewer can kind of like

45:06

hang out with the commentators as opposed

45:08

to like there's just this wall that they're

45:10

watching the game happen through. Right.

45:14

I think it's more engaging that they can hear people

45:16

also say what they're thinking is going to happen and

45:18

like chime in via chat and like I

45:21

think there's a lot of value to it

45:23

for

45:23

sure. I feel like it's just

45:25

a fun space to like kind of

45:28

project your ideas

45:30

of the game onto and just

45:32

kind of see not only just how people

45:35

play the game, but also I feel like people read the

45:37

game completely differently as

45:40

well. And I feel like,

45:43

you know, I definitely have learned a lot

45:45

from just seeing how other people evaluate

45:49

different like player positions and

45:51

also just like what their values are like

45:53

what they think is important in any given

45:56

TI game. Yeah,

45:58

for sure.

45:59

I was wondering too, do

46:02

you feel like, because you're not

46:04

just a streamer, you're also a

46:06

content creator outside of that. So I'm curious

46:09

if you have any advice

46:11

for any would-be Twilight

46:13

Imperium content creators out

46:15

there, of things you feel like

46:17

work. What

46:18

works is what you find fun, right? I

46:21

mean, if you find TI fun and you

46:23

find something specific in TI to

46:25

be fun, the odds are other people will also

46:28

like that. Right. For

46:30

us specifically in TI Genki's, the highlight

46:33

is the inter-player drama.

46:36

That's what we find really fun when we play TI. So

46:38

that's what we're focused on capturing. And it seems

46:41

like there are people out there who enjoy

46:43

that. So I think that would be my blanket

46:45

advice. If you're obsessed

46:47

with tech, then create content

46:50

about tech. I don't know what that looks like, but

46:52

that's for you tech obsessors to find

46:54

out. Yeah.

46:55

Yeah, I like that you emphasize

46:57

that. And I also just want you to know, Rand, that

46:59

if I ever was in an episode of TI

47:02

Genki's, what I promise you is that I would

47:04

also emphasize the interpersonal

47:07

drama. I would not play a strong

47:09

mechanical game. It would be about

47:12

stirring up drama. Hey,

47:15

you'd be in good company. Yeah. I

47:17

want it to feel like a reality TV show

47:19

as much as possible. So

47:22

yeah, I just want you to know, I see what you all

47:24

are doing. And I absolutely would

47:27

want to play along with that. And who cares

47:29

about

47:30

winning the game? The game sucks.

47:32

I care about winning. Well, you

47:34

care about winning the game. And that's part of your dramatic

47:37

arc as a character. Yeah, that's true. That's true.

47:41

I'm so thirsty for the win. All

47:44

right. Do you have anything you want to throw in

47:46

here at the end?

47:47

There was this one game I was commentating.

47:49

And there was Joel Narr handing out research agreements

47:51

left and right and an early maw of worlds.

47:54

And something happened where literally

47:56

half the table had fleet logistics

47:58

in round two. Well.

47:59

I've never seen anything

48:02

like that before. I was like, so it's the fleet

48:04

log half of the table and then the

48:06

rest. Oh my God.

48:08

And that's how it was all game. My

48:10

brain would explode if I had to evaluate

48:13

five other players that could all potentially

48:15

do two actions in one

48:17

turn.

48:18

Yeah. Yeah. It is early

48:20

as round two. Like it's what, I think the first person may

48:22

have gotten it in round one somehow. I don't even

48:25

know. It

48:27

was very unique, unique situation.

48:30

That is ridiculous and I love that. Yeah.

48:33

No, that is a wild game state. I've never

48:35

seen, I don't think I've ever even really seen

48:37

like half the table, half fleet

48:39

logistics. You know, like generally speaking,

48:42

I'm just thinking about one person that might be able to

48:44

do two actions. But yeah, the

48:46

idea of thinking about several people with that

48:48

is I'd quit. I'd be like, I don't even

48:51

want to play this game right now. I don't want to think

48:53

about this too much.

48:54

It's like you're playing against like double the

48:56

amount of players.

48:57

Yeah, exactly. Well,

49:00

I want to say thanks a lot, Rand. Please

49:03

everyone, if you have never checked out TI

49:05

Junkies on YouTube, please check it out.

49:08

It is an excellent project. It is hilarious.

49:11

And yeah, you just have such a great group of people, by

49:13

the way. They all seem like so

49:16

sweet and really

49:18

funny too.

49:20

Yes, it's true. Love the

49:22

group. Love everyone.

49:23

Except for that Nate guy. He's not very

49:25

funny, is he? You know, he kind of sucks, right?

49:29

I can't go on record saying anything

49:31

about Nathan.

49:32

We can fight.

49:41

All right, I'm joined now by Clawforce.

49:43

Clawforce, you hopped on

49:46

to the streaming scene like

49:48

two years ago with Memory Serves. And

49:50

I hadn't really known much about you even

49:52

prior to that. So

49:54

were you playing in tournaments pretty actively

49:57

before you started streaming or did you just start hitting

49:59

the stage? streaming scene? I think

50:02

I played in maybe one

50:04

maybe two tournaments before the streaming scene.

50:07

Yeah.

50:07

You know not not too much

50:10

obviously not too much before that. I've

50:12

been playing this game for God

50:14

knows how many years. I've heard of second edition.

50:16

Gotcha.

50:17

Way way back. So awesome. But always you

50:19

know home games home groups.

50:21

So the tournament kind of drew me into the broader

50:23

internet community of Twilight Imperium and

50:26

obviously the the streaming

50:28

part of it I

50:29

found very enticing. Yeah. That's a way

50:32

you can view the whole game and and

50:34

talk big picture about it. Yeah it's it's

50:36

been an interesting thing to me to see

50:38

how the biggest

50:41

reason I was excited to see other people

50:43

take on streaming really actively

50:46

is to see the various kind

50:49

of methods that people could take on and

50:51

you are I would say a part of that group where

50:54

we didn't have as many things set in place. Nowadays

50:56

there's even more just like here's the tutorial

50:59

how to do it here's all the resources you need to just stream

51:01

it like TTPG has upped the game so much

51:03

obviously. But you were kind of a part

51:05

of the class right before that or was like I

51:07

don't know we're all sort of making

51:09

it up and seeing what works and seeing what good

51:11

systems are and I think a lot of like really

51:14

kind of brilliant ideas were born

51:16

out of that you know it's like Hunter and I can come up with some

51:18

things but we're just two people and and having

51:20

kind of a channel where a bunch of you were bouncing

51:22

ideas off of each other. I don't

51:25

know is this beautiful little community of people coming up with

51:27

ways of how do

51:29

you get across ideas in this huge

51:31

massive game to like a live audience.

51:34

It's a tricky puzzle. Yeah and

51:36

it was I remember it was fun in the early days because

51:39

you sort of threw out just

51:41

some vague templates and they were like

51:44

they were a little bit half baked.

51:47

Yeah and you had to sort

51:49

of make it work in your own way but I kind of

51:51

think that was a benefit to all of us. Yes. Because

51:54

each of us had to make it work in our

51:56

own way. Right. And now I feel like you

51:58

know I... Listen. I'm not going to ever

52:00

complain about the work that Daryl has

52:03

done to create a magical streaming

52:05

body that gives us all of these

52:07

incredible feeds on top

52:09

of it. But there was a little bit of magic when we

52:11

were just like, hey, let's just try

52:13

to hack this together and see if we can get

52:15

a torque, right? Can we make something look

52:17

good enough? Exactly. Or

52:20

some different displays,

52:22

or my aspect ratio on my computer is so

52:24

weird that I had to reframe everything.

52:27

And yeah, I

52:29

think it turned out kind of well in its own ways. And then

52:31

obviously, you know, the thing

52:34

that I think initially I was known for was I

52:36

figured out how to do the Telestrator on

52:39

the screen, you know, copy and rip off John

52:41

Madden. Yeah, talk us through that. Absolutely. The

52:43

John Madden of TI is Claw Force. And

52:46

I want to hear more about it because I never set it up. I never

52:48

got it working. But I want to hear kind of like

52:50

how you utilize that tool

52:52

that you got working. So I

52:54

think it's really a useful tool

52:58

in a lot of ways, right? Because

53:00

you can reduce a lot of what you're

53:02

saying to a visual on the screen

53:05

in a way that, and again,

53:07

you know, a lot of this is borrowing shorthand

53:09

from other broadcasting mediums. Like

53:11

all these sports broadcasts, they use this. So people

53:13

already in their heads sort of have a sense of,

53:16

oh, okay, I know what I'm looking at. I

53:19

know what I'm doing. And it's as simple as,

53:22

you know, drawing lines around things

53:24

in different colors to identify

53:26

what you're speaking to. So

53:28

the screen matches the sort of thoughts

53:30

that are going in your head. So the stuff

53:32

that I was using, I mean, come on, it was dead simple.

53:34

I would circle stuff. I would draw arrows to

53:37

different places. I would, you

53:39

know, sort of box your color, various

53:41

things. I would write little notes on the screen,

53:44

which was sort of, you know, one of my ways

53:47

when you don't want to talk over someone else's conversation,

53:50

which I know is a constant word.

53:52

Or gripe or whatever. No

53:54

one, everyone is watching, but love to find different

53:56

ways to complain about what you're doing. There's

53:58

no perfect way, obviously. But

54:00

that let me be a little snarky sometimes,

54:04

while people are talking. So,

54:06

and some of these players are my good friends, but

54:08

a player like Alvi, who's a known liar,

54:11

if he's out and out just lying to someone, I don't

54:13

wanna talk over him, but I can write liar on the screen

54:16

and everything that's happening. You can just write BS and move

54:18

on and let them do their

54:20

little thing, have their little stick. Yeah, I

54:22

loved it too, because I think obviously

54:25

my issue always is this

54:27

sense of like, I don't know, give your mouse cursor,

54:30

which nowadays we even have TGBG, you can

54:32

like hide your mouse cursor so the players can't

54:34

see it and everything. But before then it was like, you

54:37

as a commentator, you couldn't like

54:39

use your mouse to signify things, because it was like

54:41

the players could look at that too. So if I'm hovering over

54:43

so-and-so's, you know, gravity

54:45

drive or something, then like any

54:48

astute player might look at that and

54:50

kind of be mindful of it. So you kind of had this

54:52

extra window, but I'd add

54:54

to that the idea that it could linger on screen

54:57

for a big amount of time, I think

55:00

is of huge value to TI, because

55:03

you brought up sports and how this stuff is, you know, it's like

55:05

a common language, but obviously in sports, they sort

55:07

of like draw it up there on screen and then they pop it off

55:09

really quick. But we move at a

55:12

much slower pace than

55:15

any of those things, which means letting those things just

55:17

be on screen for kind of like the duration. I

55:19

think the biggest advantage would be something like, I'm

55:22

always trying to find opportunities when it's like some

55:25

prolonged trade deliberation or

55:27

something, I always wish I could set up the right

55:29

camera angle to signify

55:31

like who's talking to who.

55:34

And knowing what your system was, I

55:36

always wish I could be like, okay, I could even just like draw

55:38

an arrow between the two people and like, this is who this conversation

55:41

is between or whatever, there's so much, like you said, the

55:44

visual can become like the center stage

55:46

of everything as opposed to the audio.

55:49

But I wanted to ask you on the audio side,

55:52

I think everybody has a different sort of commentary style.

55:55

What was always, you know, what's always your sort

55:57

of focus when it comes to the commentary?

55:59

and trying not to talk over the players

56:02

a bit, but beyond that, what's your broader sort

56:04

of focus?

56:05

So the style that I generally

56:07

adopted over time, I think, was, you

56:10

know, the beginning of the game, I think, is

56:12

largely more formulaic, right? You have

56:14

limited objectives, there's limited public knowledge,

56:17

people aren't really moving into each other or

56:19

doing things. I mean, obviously,

56:22

big mistakes you make in the early game can screw you

56:24

up. But for the most part, people are just sort of moving through.

56:27

So that's, in my mind,

56:29

where the most value gets added

56:31

from the commentary. Because you can

56:34

talk through people's openings. In

56:37

some ways, they're standard openings. In some ways,

56:39

there aren't. But you can see sort of how those changes

56:41

happen. And what I

56:43

really like to do is use

56:45

that beginning,

56:48

especially that round one, where, you know,

56:51

truth be told, not a lot is happening. You do want to track

56:53

what's going on a little bit. But there's not much

56:55

conversation. The stuff that's happening is in

56:57

whispers. It's the most awkward round,

56:59

right? So

57:01

what I like to do there is a combination

57:03

of things. First, I'm

57:05

always obsessed with, and you know, in

57:08

these tournaments, it can differ because they're

57:10

more fixed slices. But I'm

57:12

always obsessed with how the sort of geography

57:15

of the board gets set up. Where are there empty

57:18

holes in the board? Where are there a bunch of planets

57:20

put together? Is one side of the board richer

57:22

than the other? How do the wormholes connect

57:24

to each other? So I think pointing that out

57:26

at the beginning is really helpful to

57:29

people who are watching because they can see, oh, you

57:32

know, I may have thought these

57:34

are separated, but actually they're totally connected

57:36

because wormholes, everything else. I

57:38

love that. Yeah. And the other

57:40

piece to that is when you see how a player opens,

57:43

right, it's not quite like a chess opening. There

57:45

are some standard openings. But

57:48

for the most part, it's a little bit because you don't

57:50

really know what your board's going to look like in front of you. What

57:53

I'd like to do is you can sort of draw arrows out and be like,

57:55

well, they could go this way and try to pursue this option.

57:57

They could go this way. They could do this.

58:00

And then as you look, and

58:02

this is something I like to play with with the camera too,

58:04

right? If you set an angle where you're sitting

58:07

in that player's chair, I

58:09

feel like sometimes that gets lost when we just have

58:11

these overhead, like sort of I Oh God

58:14

type views. If you put yourself into

58:16

that player's chair and I'm like, let's say I'm

58:18

them. What am I doing here?

58:21

What am I thinking about? That's

58:23

the thing that you're able to do as a commentator

58:25

that no player can do because the players freak it out. They're

58:27

like, Oh God, how am I going to get these objectives?

58:30

What I've already lost this game, right? And

58:32

so you're in that head of I have to win

58:34

this game as this player. In the commentator,

58:36

you can hop into any of those players seats

58:39

and sort of think about what are they doing?

58:41

What are they thinking? And by the time you

58:43

get into, you know, round three and beyond,

58:46

it's evolved so much and so much chaos

58:48

is going on that I like to step

58:51

back and sort of let the players dictate

58:53

it. Maybe draw a little on the board, maybe offer

58:55

a little commentary during the side pieces. The

58:58

game sort of tells itself at that point,

59:00

right? But early on, the game could be anything.

59:03

And so sort of laying out those opportunities, especially

59:05

for people, you know, with less experience,

59:07

you jump in and watch, which sometimes you do get them.

59:10

I think it's very, you know,

59:12

educational, elucidating. And

59:14

sometimes I like doing that too, where

59:17

I'm like, OK, this game I'm going to end. This

59:19

is something, you know, maybe

59:21

I'll be godfather of all three. I

59:25

did occasionally that I really liked

59:27

and that I tried to pick up on, which is OK,

59:30

I'm going to talk through

59:32

how to play this faction in

59:34

light of how this game goes. And they're sort of going to

59:36

be the main character for my commentary

59:38

because

59:39

we can talk through sort of what their

59:41

strategic choices and decisions are and

59:44

how this game evolved around what they can do.

59:47

Yeah. And that can be a really interesting story to tell.

59:49

What I love about that is I think

59:51

it's really easy. You see it in Twitch chat, you see

59:53

it in our streams all the time.

59:56

It can become too easy to get

59:58

obsessed with that god's eye. of the game

1:00:01

and be seeing through all of the things. But

1:00:03

the refocusing on one

1:00:06

person's perspective and an opportunity

1:00:09

to look at where are their blinders?

1:00:11

Like what could they be missing? What are the easy

1:00:13

little miss- this game is mostly as you'll

1:00:16

hear many commentators say, you

1:00:18

have to get permission to win and

1:00:21

you can play a perfect game and still

1:00:24

lose, right? A

1:00:26

lot of things also come down to just like

1:00:28

the weird mistakes that come down. That weren't even mistakes

1:00:30

at the time, they just turned out to be in the wrong

1:00:32

direction. But when you put those blinders

1:00:35

on of that specific player, I like

1:00:37

the idea of empathizing with,

1:00:40

well listen of course they missed this

1:00:43

thing that would happen. I think there's a

1:00:46

lot of thought in

1:00:48

people that watch GI that

1:00:50

they can have their eye on the prize

1:00:53

because we are all sitting in that stream seat of

1:00:56

like, well we do kind of like, we see the tempo for

1:00:58

what it is and we see the bigger picture. But

1:01:00

you forget about that sort of personal

1:01:02

aspect of like, well listen, I got focused on

1:01:05

I needed four hazardous planets, I forgot to care

1:01:07

about so and so needing to brave

1:01:10

the void or whatever. I'm not thinking

1:01:12

about those little things that would obviously step

1:01:14

in my way. Fully agreed. I

1:01:17

would build on that with a couple additional

1:01:19

points. The first is when people watch

1:01:22

the game,

1:01:23

the thing that they don't realize that you pick

1:01:25

up on when you commentate a number of these is

1:01:28

that

1:01:29

you are basically living in

1:01:31

sort of a hive mind with all of Chats ideas.

1:01:34

It's hard for you to separate the stuff that

1:01:36

you're constantly reading and being bombarded

1:01:38

by from what you're actually thinking.

1:01:41

So there's an external

1:01:43

source of thoughts, ideas, things to watch,

1:01:46

things to catch that a player in the game

1:01:48

doesn't have. And so yeah, it's not at all

1:01:50

surprising that they miss

1:01:52

stuff or that little things are allowed to slide

1:01:55

that can sort of snowball up. But

1:01:58

the second point that you raise that I'm... think is like absolutely

1:02:01

critical is that everyone

1:02:03

is operating in a fog of war

1:02:07

including us watching the game. We don't

1:02:09

know a bunch of secret information

1:02:12

that occurs through it

1:02:14

and personally I find you

1:02:16

know for a lot of people a lot of the fun of watching

1:02:19

a TI game is sort of playing the guessing game can

1:02:21

I determine who has what when can I solve

1:02:23

the puzzle. For me that's kind

1:02:25

of less interesting because the

1:02:28

more interesting part of the game is you know

1:02:30

it's kind of like poker in that way that people

1:02:33

have this asymmetry of information

1:02:35

they don't know everything everyone else does they're

1:02:38

trying to piece it out as they go but

1:02:40

how they negotiate and how they handle

1:02:42

each other the sort of above the

1:02:45

table play that informs the on the table

1:02:47

play it's as interesting to me as

1:02:49

anything else and that's one of the coolest

1:02:51

parts of the commentators that you get to watch it you

1:02:54

get to say you know all of

1:02:56

these look what they're doing right

1:02:58

yeah because you've seen enough of these games

1:03:01

at this point you've watched them play out that

1:03:03

you sort of understand the gambits

1:03:05

and moves that people are making just negotiating

1:03:07

between each other and that is

1:03:10

utterly fascinating changes every

1:03:12

game and some people are

1:03:14

so good at it that you

1:03:16

know that that's another

1:03:20

guy who I like playing with Teddy Jans

1:03:22

for you yeah that's his superpower

1:03:24

right and if no one calls him out

1:03:26

on it yep he will get away with it which

1:03:29

is the thing you learn watching all of these games

1:03:31

that someone almost has to be the

1:03:33

commentator in these games right as the defacto

1:03:35

commentator is a player like that

1:03:38

absolutely yeah well clockwork

1:03:40

brilliant insights all around you've always been very

1:03:42

helpful at just adding

1:03:44

new resources and ideas into

1:03:46

the streaming community so I appreciate everything you've

1:03:49

you know you've given us and thank you for taking

1:03:51

the time and hanging out on the show with me absolutely

1:03:53

man thanks so much

1:03:59

And now by the venerable bad

1:04:02

boy of Twilight Imperium

1:04:04

streaming, Hunter and I are here with

1:04:07

the one, the only, E.J. Sanders.

1:04:12

What's up? The chosen one. Hello.

1:04:15

Hello. I'm happy to be here. I

1:04:18

feel like this episode

1:04:21

was a long time in the making. Oh

1:04:24

yeah? Or

1:04:26

kind of my whole thought. You

1:04:30

guys have a whole thing going on. Once

1:04:33

I heard this episode was coming out, I was like, well, I gotta

1:04:36

be on that one. Here

1:04:38

I am. Expound on that, E.J. So

1:04:41

you are probably the most famous

1:04:44

streamer of them all within the Twilight

1:04:46

Imperium community. I just want to say overall,

1:04:48

everyone has been very humble. It's

1:04:51

just a bit of a change

1:04:53

of pace here.

1:04:55

Wait, has everybody been very humble? Everyone's

1:04:58

been pretty humble. I hear what

1:05:00

you're saying. That's really nice for

1:05:03

them. I'm

1:05:05

here now. I

1:05:09

don't know, dude. We

1:05:12

like to show up and talk about Twilight Imperium.

1:05:14

I'm an esports pro broadcaster.

1:05:17

I like to talk about that a lot. It

1:05:20

is an esport. Since it's an esport,

1:05:22

I think it's important that my voice be heard.

1:05:26

A lot of my style is non sequitur.

1:05:31

I would say maybe not even relevant

1:05:33

to the game. It's funny to

1:05:36

me because actually, nobody

1:05:38

in the community is more qualified

1:05:41

at commentary than you. You

1:05:44

call hockey games. You

1:05:47

are very tuned in and focused

1:05:49

and fast. We invite

1:05:52

you onto our stuff. You're

1:05:54

just like, so anyways, I was making

1:05:56

mac and cheese last night and the

1:05:58

whole dang microwave is gone. Exploded

1:06:00

let me talk about that for an hour and then

1:06:02

hunter and I have to deal with the YouTube

1:06:05

comments for the rest of our Lives yeah,

1:06:07

yeah, it's really cool. How like I don't

1:06:10

get The negative feedback

1:06:12

yeah, you don't know but insane

1:06:15

but actually Matt you don't because

1:06:17

when he Generally, we don't

1:06:19

get negative comments even though he

1:06:22

is not very well behaved. He's a

1:06:24

naughty boy And we and

1:06:26

for some reason he doesn't get in trouble for it And

1:06:28

I wish I understood because I do anything

1:06:31

and I get in trouble for it Yeah,

1:06:35

I think it's like a je ne sais quoi that

1:06:37

I have Really hard to

1:06:39

say I think most of it is that I

1:06:41

think people know like if you give off

1:06:43

an air of You don't really care

1:06:45

right yeah people know that like if they

1:06:47

say mean stuff about you that you just

1:06:50

not gonna care about it Yeah, yeah, that's really

1:06:52

where it's at like I I

1:06:53

don't care What any of these people think

1:06:56

about me or about my life

1:06:58

and I and listen and there's a lot of people in this community

1:07:01

That I love and so yeah, that's right.

1:07:03

That's the other thing you do have to you have to

1:07:05

compound it with some love But

1:07:07

I get the same time like if you're gonna be mean to me.

1:07:09

I don't have I don't get I don't get time for that My

1:07:12

daughter I got my daughter my daughter My

1:07:16

daughter I've got my me you mini plus

1:07:19

You are so obsessed with that thing I

1:07:23

Did you have a favorite streaming

1:07:26

memory does anything come to mind for you,

1:07:28

or is it all a blur? It's

1:07:31

mostly a blur. I think the

1:07:34

the time hunter and I sang a lot

1:07:38

In one stream was is probably

1:07:40

my favorite like singular memory Yeah,

1:07:44

just like we like made song I

1:07:46

don't even remember what the songs were but we just like

1:07:48

we're saying enough songs Yeah,

1:07:50

the entire the entire stream and the

1:07:53

chat was like in on it It was like one of the most

1:07:55

bumping streams we ever had was just us

1:07:57

kind of like humming songs and

1:07:59

yeah

1:07:59

Yeah, that was in on it. We did not know what

1:08:02

was going on in the game I would definitely

1:08:04

categorize an EJ stream as for

1:08:06

the live viewer is the big big

1:08:08

thing It's got nothing to do with

1:08:10

the VOD or the the people watching

1:08:12

after the fact It's about being right there

1:08:15

in the moment with the people Yeah,

1:08:17

I love living in the moment

1:08:20

like and that's that's something and I do feel bad

1:08:22

for YouTube because they don't get that experience They

1:08:24

don't get the live feedback. Yeah, and they

1:08:26

don't know energy that we

1:08:28

get from the chat, right? Like a lot

1:08:30

of the energy that I glean a

1:08:32

stream comes directly for from

1:08:35

how interactive people are in chat Just

1:08:37

some of the things that we say, you know

1:08:39

when we when we go off on tangents

1:08:42

Part of it isn't because we are

1:08:44

trying to

1:08:45

be engaging for the YouTube audience,

1:08:47

right? Because we are engaging currently

1:08:50

with people who are in there and there's like five ten people

1:08:53

Chatting us up about the thing that we're talking.

1:08:55

Yeah. Yeah, honestly You

1:08:57

show up EJ and twitch chat gets naughtier

1:09:00

to twitch chat out there feeding tangents

1:09:02

Like you'll see it and it's like, you know They'll just

1:09:04

be like the EJ you you watch any hockey

1:09:06

yesterday And it's like we're just we're trying that we're

1:09:09

trying to get EJ off, you know

1:09:11

I think so if anybody's gonna yell at us in the YouTube

1:09:14

comments They need to be yelling at twitch chat because

1:09:16

I think they're complicit I need to stream more

1:09:18

with EJ because I do find that

1:09:20

EJ is protective like

1:09:22

fire Sort of like shields

1:09:25

even me because I think I get a lot

1:09:27

of permission To be silly

1:09:30

and say whatever I want if EJ is around

1:09:32

but if EJ isn't around and I

1:09:34

go on a tangent I'm gonna hear about it

1:09:36

for years and years to come. Yeah,

1:09:38

I just need to work with EJ more Yeah,

1:09:41

it's like a stay. It's like I'm like the box

1:09:43

art for like a really bad

1:09:45

VHS You

1:09:48

know Know what you're getting, you

1:09:51

know, like you turned on the stream

1:09:53

and you see my face You know

1:09:55

what you're getting like and

1:09:57

that, you know when you pick up, you know

1:10:00

Jaws 5, a $10 bin at Walmart. You

1:10:04

know what you're getting. You know what you're getting. You're

1:10:06

not going to write a letter to the people that

1:10:08

made Jaws 5. Jaws 5? Yeah.

1:10:12

Right. Because you knew you got Jaws 5. You got

1:10:14

Jaws 5, dude. You were already

1:10:16

digging in a barrel of movies. You

1:10:18

were choosing your line in the bin. You

1:10:21

were literally in the bin. Right. You

1:10:23

stuck your dirty little hand in there and you just pulled

1:10:26

out a random one and you ended up with Jaws 5

1:10:28

and this is what you got. That's

1:10:29

what you got. I mean, what do you want? What

1:10:32

are we supposed to do with that? What are we supposed to

1:10:34

do with that? So yeah, I feel like the expectation,

1:10:36

it's just like, I love low expectations,

1:10:39

man, because it gives you

1:10:41

the ability to just kind of blow it all out

1:10:43

of the water. Eventually

1:10:45

something funny is going to happen on stream,

1:10:48

whether it's me or Hunter or

1:10:50

Matt or one of the players doing

1:10:52

something that we can riff

1:10:55

off of for a minute. I mean, the

1:10:57

greatest moment in TI history is

1:10:59

still that was the plan and we

1:11:02

can't replay that audio on

1:11:04

this family friendly show, but

1:11:06

it lives as the single greatest

1:11:09

moment in a TI stream ever. It's

1:11:12

pretty good. It's fun to

1:11:14

think back on. I love that people

1:11:17

enjoy it. I'm glad. Obviously

1:11:21

it's a complete mishap and misinformation on

1:11:23

my part because that's how little I pay attention always.

1:11:27

It perfectly encapsulates

1:11:29

my style, which is, I didn't

1:11:31

pay attention to what happened up to that point. You're

1:11:33

yelling at their plan that you're misrepresenting.

1:11:36

Right, but it was because they

1:11:39

were kind of misrepresenting themselves, all

1:11:41

of them. So it was like,

1:11:43

for me, it was the conversation had gone on so

1:11:46

long that my little dumb

1:11:48

brain that can't keep up with all of it was

1:11:50

just like, is this really? All I heard was

1:11:52

somebody say, oh, well, we need to draw unexpected

1:11:55

action. I was like, dude, that cannot be it.

1:11:57

This can't be it. Just

1:12:00

when I heard that I couldn't contain

1:12:02

myself any longer. I had a 35

1:12:04

minute conversation about how they were going

1:12:07

to wind-slate somebody that they couldn't wind-slate.

1:12:09

None of them could wind-slate. So, I don't

1:12:11

know. It was just very frustrating and

1:12:14

I'm glad that there's a funny Twitch

1:12:16

moment out there that we can all look back

1:12:19

on and laugh and think about.

1:12:21

You sound like you're still frustrated

1:12:23

a little bit about it. I'm

1:12:25

mostly frustrated because as Matt said,

1:12:28

I'm a commentator at heart. One

1:12:30

of the things that frustrates me

1:12:33

is getting something wrong.

1:12:36

Matt has done

1:12:38

plenty of hockey games with me before

1:12:41

and he can sense my frustration

1:12:43

when something on

1:12:46

the production side isn't going right

1:12:50

or something that I've said on the

1:12:52

actual broadcast itself isn't going

1:12:54

right. It's very frustrating. I'm frustrated

1:12:57

by the fact that I actually got it wrong

1:12:59

but I'm even more frustrated at those players still

1:13:01

to this day because of the

1:13:03

fact that they did not set me up

1:13:05

for that moment. Their

1:13:07

game didn't set you up for success, EJ. How

1:13:10

dare they? That's what I'm

1:13:12

saying. It's okay. It's

1:13:15

fine. It's a funny, funny moment and

1:13:17

I'm glad that it exists. That's

1:13:20

the only thing that frustrates me now is that it was

1:13:22

ever, ever misinformation in the first

1:13:24

place. I think that my favorite thing

1:13:26

about that clip is that you give me an order

1:13:29

in it. The clip is

1:13:31

you tell me to mute the players and

1:13:34

it's just that you're so

1:13:36

exasperated that you're just giving

1:13:38

me orders. You are in charge

1:13:41

of the stream and you're just telling me,

1:13:44

mute the players. Mute them. I

1:13:46

got to go on one right now. I'm about to

1:13:48

go off. I

1:13:51

don't push back. I'm like right

1:13:52

away, sir. I got you. I

1:13:54

don't even say anything. I

1:13:56

don't even acknowledge it. I just do as

1:13:59

you order. Yeah, yeah, I

1:14:01

do get in modes like

1:14:03

that sometimes where if I feel like I

1:14:05

have this really bad Tendency if I feel like

1:14:08

somebody's not taking the lead I'm

1:14:10

bleeding now like your yeah time It's

1:14:12

time for EJ to take over like I'm happy

1:14:15

being a follower I don't mind following people,

1:14:17

but you got to know what you want. You know

1:14:20

yeah You've

1:14:22

got caboose energy I know how

1:14:24

I did that babe. Big caboose energy dude.

1:14:27

Caboose? I mean the caboose is at the back,

1:14:29

but if it's

1:14:29

got to drive this train it will it's

1:14:32

strong It is strong and

1:14:34

you know what it's probably it's probably

1:14:36

best that I have caboose energy. Yeah

1:14:39

big old dumpy energy Yeah,

1:14:44

it's a kind of dump truck type situation.

1:14:46

Yeah, dump truck sort of thing.

1:14:48

Yeah. Yeah Well EJ.

1:14:51

Thanks for the gifts you've given us over

1:14:53

the many years of streaming you you've

1:14:55

really changed the community You've

1:14:58

really you've really made this something you know

1:15:00

I mean we kind of owe it all to you You know what

1:15:02

I'm saying

1:15:03

we really don't Really

1:15:06

no no we don't and I do

1:15:08

think to you know as everybody's

1:15:10

been humble. I guess from what I've been

1:15:12

told I don't know. I haven't listened

1:15:14

to this episode yet, but from what I've been told

1:15:17

everybody's been humble It really is this community.

1:15:19

I mean all these folks who come out

1:15:21

and Want to do

1:15:24

things for the community itself so

1:15:26

that we can all put on a really

1:15:28

awesome Product yeah in the

1:15:30

end is is it's so incredible

1:15:32

And you guys are so so lucky to have

1:15:35

all of those people that you've been before

1:15:37

me because they are they literally

1:15:39

like I don't Do anything anymore like?

1:15:42

Get told to show up and do a commentary

1:15:45

and I'll do it But like you

1:15:47

know it's it's all of them that are

1:15:49

in the chats every single day organizing

1:15:52

things right It's such

1:15:54

a group effort these days that it's

1:15:56

just like it's so heartwarming to

1:15:58

know that you've built community that

1:16:01

wants to do those things because

1:16:03

the thing that they're doing is so fun for

1:16:05

them

1:16:06

and I just

1:16:08

I just can't say enough about you guys

1:16:11

being able to create something that is so

1:16:13

wholesome and so fun for

1:16:15

everybody to the point where they basically

1:16:18

make it their job. It's

1:16:20

really scary. It is scary but it

1:16:22

is like I said we appreciate

1:16:25

all those folks and especially

1:16:28

I do because now I call like maybe two

1:16:30

or three TI games a year and that's

1:16:32

like yeah

1:16:35

you've kind of graduated from the like you

1:16:37

know rolling we used to have you

1:16:39

like on the primary cast and

1:16:41

now it's like if we can get EJ to show up

1:16:43

that'd be kind of a mirror.

1:16:54

I'm here with

1:16:56

Duke Lucum and Duke we just we talked

1:16:58

to you very recently but we

1:17:01

get to really hone in on a specific subject

1:17:03

today and something I'm really fascinated

1:17:06

by is of course your brother

1:17:09

Flat Tomatoes was your streaming

1:17:12

partner in tournament 3 the

1:17:15

year after your victory. The

1:17:18

two of you tackled the kind

1:17:20

of European time zone games a

1:17:22

lot of you know UTC 8

1:17:25

am kind of start games but

1:17:28

what talk to me about the two of you

1:17:30

becoming like a streaming team and maybe

1:17:32

a little bit about your brother's like start

1:17:35

getting into streaming TI. Yeah

1:17:37

so when I

1:17:39

was playing in the tournament

1:17:41

my brother

1:17:42

Flat or I'll just call him Joel because

1:17:44

that's his real name and that's kind of how

1:17:47

I refer to him and it sounds really really weird

1:17:50

calling him by his online name. So

1:17:55

Joel is kind of watching and he played

1:17:57

TI a couple of times. At the time I was

1:17:59

away for years. so we didn't like live

1:18:01

in the same location at all. But

1:18:05

he played a couple of times TI in person

1:18:08

and a couple of times like online with our

1:18:10

group.

1:18:11

And

1:18:13

after that tournament, we were just like,

1:18:16

we could do some

1:18:18

streaming, that'd be quite fun. And

1:18:21

then you asked us if we wanted to stream

1:18:23

some time zones that

1:18:26

were not very good for you, but it was quite

1:18:29

best for us. And we were like, yeah, sure.

1:18:32

We'll stream 12 prelim games every Saturday for 12 weeks. Yeah,

1:18:38

you really dove in head first there. So thank you

1:18:41

and sorry. Yeah, so we

1:18:43

kind of just became the stream team where

1:18:48

Joel would run the stream, do the camera

1:18:50

work, and I would mostly just

1:18:53

waffle on for hours and hours

1:18:56

and take really like the

1:18:58

lead of the commentary. Yeah, I was

1:19:00

always jealous of Joel because honestly, that's

1:19:03

kind of the job I've sort of dreamed of within

1:19:07

this TI space. I have

1:19:09

no issue with commentary, but I

1:19:11

love just producing more,

1:19:14

like just being at the helm of the thing. And

1:19:16

I would really much prefer only

1:19:18

do that. And so when Joel got to do a lot

1:19:20

of that, the biggest reason

1:19:23

I became jealous of it is because you

1:19:25

could see that focus from him because

1:19:27

he had screen transitions.

1:19:30

He added all of this pizzazz to it that

1:19:33

I never had time to dedicate to. And

1:19:35

so he was like the first person that

1:19:38

like really inspired me of like, oh my

1:19:40

gosh, you can like, if you focus on them, you

1:19:42

can really elevate these broadcasts. And

1:19:44

I was just always so proud of you two

1:19:47

and what you guys were doing on your

1:19:49

set of the prelims games. So

1:19:52

the funny thing is he would have, so

1:19:54

the reason why he didn't like commentating is, so

1:19:58

he would just have on his main monitor. he'd

1:20:00

be doing the camera and then on his side monitor he'd

1:20:02

just be watching like all of the sports taking

1:20:04

place across like the entire weekend And

1:20:16

then I'll be there like yeah talking to

1:20:18

chat making like I

1:20:20

I'm not as interested in you know watching the other sports

1:20:22

I don't want to TI I was there Fascinating

1:20:25

so the two of you just got to have sort of

1:20:27

bonded pseudo bonding time while

1:20:29

the two of you partake partook in both of your

1:20:31

separate hobbies Well

1:20:39

so talk to me about kind of your takes

1:20:41

We've been hearing from everybody about

1:20:43

sort of what it means to do commentary

1:20:46

and what makes for your preferred kind

1:20:48

of commentary So what are the sort of things

1:20:50

you focus on in game

1:20:52

that you like choose to highlight or whatever? my

1:20:55

commentary position is I want to make sure

1:20:57

that if you're in the

1:20:59

chat and You're watching

1:21:02

the game you kind of get the gist of what's

1:21:04

going on Without having to be

1:21:06

paying attention For the entire

1:21:09

ten hours right because there are

1:21:11

some people that do and I don't like

1:21:13

this isn't a dig at the people That watch for all ten

1:21:15

hours intently. I can't watch a

1:21:17

TI stream for ten hours in either sitting

1:21:20

there Yeah, like I might my

1:21:22

head would explode my light and if you've

1:21:24

ever watched the stream where I've been commentating for ten hours

1:21:27

You see in real time

1:21:29

my head explodes how I lose it So

1:21:32

I think the best viewing experience

1:21:35

for TI is where you kind of like checking in on

1:21:37

like what's happening And then you're like you just

1:21:39

put in chat like hey can someone just catch me up and like what

1:21:42

happened in the last hour? Brief notes and

1:21:44

then as a commentator. I'm happy to see

1:21:46

that and be like, okay these crazy

1:21:48

things happen Yeah, these are the positions the players

1:21:50

are in now and like just be

1:21:53

able to say the relevant information But then

1:21:55

also a thing that I really like doing is

1:21:57

with chat going on like a deep dive

1:22:00

I'm like, what could this

1:22:02

player have in their hand that has made them play

1:22:04

the way that they have played in this past

1:22:06

like round? Like what's

1:22:08

the craziest combination of six action cards?

1:22:11

Yeah What

1:22:13

secret objective is this like

1:22:16

how have they just forgotten to do something or

1:22:18

are they actually setting up for the craziest secret

1:22:20

objective? Reveal that you've ever seen I

1:22:23

love this because actually this is a perspective We've been lacking

1:22:25

if anything hunter and I lean the other way of where we're

1:22:28

kind of like I don't want to just sit here and like math

1:22:31

out every possible Contingency

1:22:33

this person could have but you're

1:22:35

saying I mean that's the fun of me sitting here at this

1:22:38

table is like Yeah, talk

1:22:40

through every viable option

1:22:42

of why they might be doing each action and work

1:22:44

out extrapolate from that Everything

1:22:47

that might be in their hand that they might be working to

1:22:49

pull out as their big play or whatever when

1:22:51

I'm watching And I notice a player do something

1:22:54

that I wouldn't have done myself Like

1:22:57

maybe they they're moving to take

1:22:59

a planet and they take like, you know to

1:23:01

inventory and I'm like, huh I wouldn't have taken that second

1:23:03

inventory. What are they thinking? Like where

1:23:06

is their thought process differing from my thought

1:23:08

process? yeah, and then that just leads

1:23:10

to like Learning

1:23:12

more about the game and exploring

1:23:14

the game more from different perspectives,

1:23:16

which I quite like. Yeah Well, so where's

1:23:19

where's Joel at these days with

1:23:22

regards to the TI community? I I

1:23:25

Maybe my stuff is out of date, but his name still

1:23:27

shows up as blue on the SCPT discord

1:23:30

So he's at least somehow contributing, but I

1:23:32

wonder if he gets in rounds of TI

1:23:34

much anymore No,

1:23:37

I don't think he plays He's

1:23:40

been really busy because he's been doing his

1:23:43

master's degree while he's also working four

1:23:45

times So he's he's yeah.

1:23:47

All right, he gets a pass. That's fine. He

1:23:49

can be done best chill Yeah,

1:23:53

so he's been working as a as

1:23:55

a teaching assistant while also doing a master's

1:23:57

degree in Wow in cybersecurity Yeah,

1:24:00

well that I mean that makes sense that

1:24:02

he has the skill set of you know

1:24:04

a teacher's assistant or whatever to be to be Involved I mean I

1:24:07

know that's a common job of just any grad student But

1:24:10

something else that I was always thankful

1:24:12

for that it took my myself forever

1:24:14

to get around to doing is Your brother

1:24:16

actually made the first like Streaming

1:24:19

ti tutorial video, you know you

1:24:21

guys got your setup working so well He put together

1:24:23

a video of just like here's what you could do to throw

1:24:26

things together You know he and I had

1:24:28

the scoreboard working pretty well in our OBS

1:24:30

settings But he was the one who sat down was like well This

1:24:33

should just be kind of shared with

1:24:35

everybody there's no reason not for everybody

1:24:37

that have asked to it And if anything

1:24:39

I mean I I credit that to being like

1:24:41

the reason a lot of extra people

1:24:44

Took on the task of trying to stream in is the reason

1:24:46

we have so many Streamers today

1:24:49

is he you know he provided the first resource

1:24:51

to like really make it approachable for

1:24:53

everybody else So we have to give a lot

1:24:55

of thanks to Joel and to you for both

1:24:57

kind of contributing to those early days I put

1:24:59

a lot of stock in People

1:25:02

like you two and root who are there

1:25:04

at more or less the beginning of all of this stuff

1:25:07

Before I feel like it's taken off Since

1:25:10

those first two to three years, and

1:25:12

yeah, I'm just really I'm really proud of everything

1:25:15

that kind of got the the Framework

1:25:18

that was put together in those years

1:25:20

is something that we I still see the

1:25:23

echoes of so you know I think your commentary

1:25:25

informs a lot of how people view commentary

1:25:28

and and yeah, I just appreciate the two of you so much thanks,

1:25:32

and I Feel like

1:25:34

the the community is in amazing hands

1:25:36

at the moment because you and I'm sure have been doing

1:25:38

an amazing job But there's also so many

1:25:41

volunteers now like shout out

1:25:43

to else bathroom. Hey, how do you do so much? It's

1:25:46

really truly wild how much they take on

1:25:49

and you know all of you are gift and and

1:25:51

that's that's why I'm just so Glad

1:25:53

well, you know we took the time to do this episode finally

1:25:56

honestly. It's been a long time coming so Luke

1:25:59

to you and to Joel, thank you both so much

1:26:02

for all the help that year and any, you know,

1:26:04

you've not stopped, you hop into streams

1:26:06

every once in a while and help commentating everything, so

1:26:09

thank you for everything and yeah, thanks for coming

1:26:11

on the show.

1:26:14

Yeah, have a good one, of course, we'll see

1:26:16

you next time.

1:26:17

See ya.

1:26:22

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1:27:00

the show!

1:27:10

Alright we are now joined by

1:27:13

the other absolute

1:27:15

workhorse of TI

1:27:18

streaming, we've had a conversation with Big Al

1:27:20

who is known for putting in the hours, but

1:27:22

Elspeth is here with just

1:27:25

as many hours I would have to say put

1:27:28

into the streaming of especially

1:27:30

qualifier games, but across the board, how's

1:27:32

it going Elspeth? Oh thanks for having me Matt.

1:27:35

Of course, I'm thrilled to get you on here

1:27:37

because not only have you

1:27:39

been a big part of streaming but you've

1:27:41

really become a bigger and bigger part of just the tournament

1:27:43

as a whole. We obviously

1:27:47

thankfully got your approval to

1:27:49

be one of our mods on Discord and I

1:27:51

would say if all

1:27:53

of the mods had like a different sort of job

1:27:55

or aspect they focus

1:27:58

on, yours is the tournament. You've

1:28:00

been doing so much of even just like keeping tabs

1:28:03

on qualifier games So so many people have you to

1:28:05

thank just for even making sure games

1:28:07

happen, you know I'm sure there's multiple people this

1:28:09

qualifier season that their game wouldn't have happened

1:28:11

if you weren't chiming in so I have to say Thank

1:28:13

you on the front end But let's get

1:28:16

into what the real discussion is about

1:28:18

which is streaming you started streaming with

1:28:20

TI Is it two years ago now?

1:28:23

Is that right?

1:28:24

I lost my qualifier

1:28:26

in rather spectacular And

1:28:29

I was watching and reached out to me because

1:28:32

I think he felt bad He

1:28:37

he asked if I wanted to co-comventate with him and

1:28:40

so that year I co-comventated several

1:28:42

times Yeah, and then last year I

1:28:44

started streaming games on my own, right

1:28:46

and I had different co-comventators

1:28:49

for every game pretty much Yeah, right. Yeah.

1:28:51

Yeah you you you definitely get the call out and

1:28:53

get a lot of people involved I remember you co-comventating

1:28:56

a couple games with hunter to that first year

1:28:59

That was really fun And yeah I

1:29:01

what I like about streaming and

1:29:03

all of the people getting involved and especially People like

1:29:06

you and big Al who just sort of like call on

1:29:08

someone are like you could commentate just come to it

1:29:10

I think a lot of people Get this sense

1:29:12

of like no the people that are doing it are like the

1:29:15

professionals at it and they don't understand how many Of

1:29:17

us are literally just winging it and trying

1:29:20

it out, you know And so when when you

1:29:22

you know when you call someone up and I was like, hey Do you want

1:29:24

to co-com with it with me? Like you might be

1:29:26

introducing a whole new hobby to them. So Would

1:29:29

you say like there's an

1:29:31

infectious bug to streaming?

1:29:34

Like you kind of build a community

1:29:36

around it So a lot of

1:29:39

the same people pop on whenever I stream

1:29:41

game, right? And so it's fun to like talk

1:29:43

to them over and over again Plus like the

1:29:45

entry barriers probably the hardest part of getting

1:29:48

everything set up I learned so much about computer sound

1:29:50

setting

1:29:50

Yeah, that

1:29:53

is a necessary aspect of learning

1:29:55

how to do this stuff is learning a lot about audio

1:29:57

hardware It's pretty grueling

1:30:00

stuff out there. My favorite

1:30:02

aspect of what I feel like is your focus

1:30:04

with streaming is so much of that community building.

1:30:06

I think a lot of people bring different

1:30:09

levels of how they like to talk about strategy

1:30:11

and everything, but I feel like your

1:30:13

streams are so focused on like,

1:30:16

what's up Twitch chat? What are we talking about today?

1:30:18

We're talking about the game, but what elements

1:30:21

do we want to get into? And I feel like you're a very present

1:30:24

streamer. So can you talk about

1:30:26

being live and in that moment while

1:30:28

streaming?

1:30:28

I just think it's really fun to just chat

1:30:31

about stuff. And I also

1:30:33

have all kinds of random thoughts that pop into my

1:30:35

head and then I say them and then they turn

1:30:37

into memes.

1:30:38

They're just completely

1:30:40

out of my control at that point. Yeah,

1:30:42

it's a very meme forward broadcast, I would

1:30:45

say. Definitely

1:30:47

a meme forward broadcast.

1:30:48

I do sometimes also have AFK streams

1:30:50

in case anyone is like, but yeah,

1:30:53

when I'm there, I just like to hang out with people

1:30:55

and I obviously can't hang out with the players because

1:30:57

that would be

1:30:57

cheating. But it's okay. Chat's always right. Chat's

1:31:03

always right. Yeah. Well, you mentioned

1:31:06

AFK broadcast. I feel like that's something that's become

1:31:08

a bigger deal. And I feel like

1:31:10

you and a couple of people last year, the ones who really started

1:31:12

to push it because obviously the last two years

1:31:14

there was this

1:31:15

big push by you and Big Al

1:31:17

and others to make sure every single game

1:31:20

got streamed. And sometimes what

1:31:22

that led to was like, nobody else is available.

1:31:24

We got to just get the stream up. And

1:31:27

this idea of AFK

1:31:29

streaming was born and now Daryl

1:31:31

has built an entire tool that makes it

1:31:34

functional and pretty good

1:31:36

in TGBG, which I think

1:31:38

is really, really fascinating. But

1:31:41

how have things been different this year

1:31:43

without that huge

1:31:45

push of like, we're going to get every single game

1:31:48

streamed?

1:31:48

The goal is still to get as many games

1:31:50

streamed as we can. Just because

1:31:51

there's something special about it. Like

1:31:53

this tournament, a lot of people are not

1:31:56

playing that many games of Twilight Imperium.

1:31:58

I'm obviously

1:31:58

playing a lot more games as well.

1:31:59

I love boom because I'm ridiculous. But, you

1:32:03

know, people don't necessarily get to play

1:32:05

that many games. So it makes it really special. Like when my

1:32:07

first qualifiers, you know, was streamed,

1:32:09

I went back and watched it and watched the commentary

1:32:12

and watch the chat. I thought that was like a really

1:32:14

cool thing to be able to do. And, you

1:32:16

know, even though AFK streams don't necessarily

1:32:19

have like the commentary

1:32:21

in the video, they

1:32:23

still have chat. Right. That's true. Go back

1:32:25

and watch it on, on the, on

1:32:28

Twitch. And it also

1:32:31

just lets people go and like watch, you

1:32:34

know, their games. It lets you go watch

1:32:36

other people's games that have legendary moments,

1:32:38

which are sometimes super exciting

1:32:40

and it's just a really

1:32:43

cool thing. Plus, you know, it's useful

1:32:45

for so many other reasons. Like if something,

1:32:47

you know,

1:32:48

unfortunately, if a dispute comes up,

1:32:50

we can look at it on the stream. So there's

1:32:52

a lot of good reasons to keep the games on

1:32:54

stream. I think that was maybe even the biggest

1:32:56

push of getting every single game stream was just this sort

1:32:58

of like historian aspect,

1:33:01

A, of just like, we want every game to be visible

1:33:03

so we can talk about them. But, but B,

1:33:05

that like literally like it's so much easier

1:33:08

to sort out questions and moderation

1:33:10

problems when we can just pull up

1:33:13

the video. It is infinitely more difficult

1:33:15

when we are just sort of listening to all the

1:33:17

stories the players are telling us and having to come

1:33:19

up with some sort of ruling. But when we can

1:33:21

just play back the tape, very often

1:33:24

our mod rulings are like, oh yeah, it's just this,

1:33:26

just do this and we can move on about our day or whatever.

1:33:29

People have so many different perspectives while they're

1:33:31

playing. So having an objective view of

1:33:33

stuff

1:33:33

is just very useful. Yeah. Yeah.

1:33:35

And offering that too of the

1:33:38

playback quality, you think, I think that's the thing

1:33:40

maybe even Hunter and I overlook pretty

1:33:42

often is because I think we just don't we've

1:33:44

never had that feeling

1:33:47

of, you know, having one of our tournament games like

1:33:49

streamed and sort of that anticipation

1:33:52

of checking it out. I'm glad

1:33:54

to hear you like mention that as as kind of

1:33:56

a really

1:33:58

worthwhile aspect. I know certainly it.

1:33:59

It's the intent of the tournament

1:34:02

is like listen this is supposed to be an opportunity for

1:34:04

people to Check out more

1:34:06

people playing the game. I think that's the one area

1:34:09

Hunter and I've always wanted this tournament to be different is there's lots

1:34:11

of like Convention tournaments where people

1:34:14

are playing the game There's lots of tournaments that happen on discords

1:34:16

where the tournament exists But

1:34:18

the point of this tournament

1:34:20

is that it is a broadcasted Tournament

1:34:23

where you can check these things out and have people

1:34:25

comment on your game Because I think

1:34:27

it makes all of us better at

1:34:29

the game to see how we all play

1:34:32

So, you know I just have to I have to give you

1:34:34

as many thanks as I can else this for for

1:34:36

being a part of that push And being so diligent

1:34:38

about making sure Everybody

1:34:41

gets access to that because I think it's something

1:34:44

hunter and I can just like either

1:34:47

Pretend we're too busy or sometimes we're

1:34:49

too busy to like get every game done, but it's

1:34:51

definitely the thing we want So

1:34:53

I just have to thank you so much

1:34:55

for for offering that up to the community It's

1:34:57

it's such a gift and I hope people recognize

1:35:00

How much effort it takes?

1:35:02

Thanks, Matt It's it's really

1:35:04

fun for me And one of the things I'm most excited

1:35:06

about with this tournament is just the fact that because

1:35:08

everyone has to win a qualifier Take it in

1:35:10

we're gonna have such amazing storylines when we get to

1:35:13

the prelims

1:35:13

wherever he is gonna be stream Yeah,

1:35:15

I'm just so excited. Yeah Yeah The

1:35:17

storylines are really the big reason and kind

1:35:19

of the best aspect as you get into the laner Rounds

1:35:22

of seeing especially everybody's been doing the numbers

1:35:24

next to their name If people are not aware

1:35:27

you have a number in front of your name That is your number of

1:35:30

wins per this tournament and

1:35:32

then next to that the number of wins per total tournaments

1:35:34

but I think we are all already

1:35:37

rooting for those people that go into the prelims

1:35:39

and are like one and 14 or

1:35:42

whatever it is right the people who lost

1:35:44

a million times and then one like day

1:35:46

after Christmas or something That's who I

1:35:48

want to see go all the way

1:35:50

It's gonna be really cool to be able to

1:35:52

just even talk about that and see

1:35:54

that yeah people go on in the tournament

1:35:56

for sure well, so thank you for joining

1:35:58

me and hanging out and

1:35:59

We obviously look forward to your many more streams

1:36:02

I expect to see. I know you've been doing like

1:36:04

basically almost one or more every

1:36:06

single weekend. So you know, we

1:36:08

look forward to more streams on JL

1:36:11

Ear Cam, the Twitch channel.

1:36:13

Thanks, guys. Of

1:36:16

course.

1:36:20

Cardinal, I think the thing that

1:36:22

I'm excited to kind of talk to you about is you're

1:36:25

kind of newer at it. Like when

1:36:27

did you start commentating? I think

1:36:29

I did one last year where

1:36:32

I helped co-commentate a couple

1:36:34

last year. But this year,

1:36:38

we're over the course of these

1:36:40

qualifiers is the first time I've

1:36:42

kind of, I don't want to say taken the reins, but actually

1:36:45

like, hey, it's all my setup and all

1:36:47

that kind of stuff and kind

1:36:50

of just soloing it out. So yeah,

1:36:53

so this year has definitely been the first

1:36:55

year that I've been kind

1:36:56

of on the main stage, not just dropped in

1:36:58

on a game to talk a little bit. Yeah.

1:37:02

So what do you feel like drew you into

1:37:04

doing it? Like, because you were playing for quite a

1:37:06

while before you started being like, oh,

1:37:08

yeah, I'll try my hand at commentary.

1:37:11

Like what motivated you to like, why do people

1:37:13

do this? That's something I wonder. Why do people

1:37:15

do this?

1:37:16

Well, I think it actually

1:37:19

for me, and I would imagine

1:37:21

that this is a decent amount of Twilight

1:37:23

Imperial in players in general is,

1:37:26

you know, I'm in on this game hook line and

1:37:28

sinker from the first time before I even played

1:37:30

the first game when me and my group

1:37:32

of three friends, like I found

1:37:35

the game and I was like, well, what the hell is this?

1:37:38

And we read the rules. I, we played

1:37:40

the game so wrong. The first time

1:37:42

we played it, like it was unbelievable.

1:37:45

But just even like before

1:37:46

getting into it where we were

1:37:48

trying to just like pick the factions we were going to play.

1:37:51

And I was looking at, you know, and this was what, 2018, 2019.

1:37:56

And there were already like spreadsheets on like

1:37:58

what factions were winning games.

1:37:59

Games and different things like that

1:38:02

and I'm just like I guess I'll play nolu I have no idea

1:38:04

why they're good But people keep apparently winning with this

1:38:06

faction. I don't know why and Just

1:38:09

like I said all in on it and

1:38:11

I think for a lot of the people that

1:38:14

that happens to You're just kind

1:38:16

of consumed by this game. You're thinking about it all the time

1:38:18

You're you're you're wanting to be in

1:38:20

games a sink has been a blessing and a curse

1:38:23

not to go on a tangent on But the

1:38:25

idea that there's just like this arbitrary

1:38:27

game that you can kind of like visit on your

1:38:29

phone every single day and something's happening it's

1:38:32

it's like the greatest worst thing ever but I

1:38:35

I'm just drawn to it and love talking about it and

1:38:37

love seeing and finding out new

1:38:39

things for me when I first started I got Into

1:38:42

a group online. I was lucky enough to get in a group

1:38:45

online and it met every week like

1:38:47

every Wednesday It was just a split game that kept going

1:38:49

if we finished We played for like three hours of the

1:38:51

game finished. We just started the next one right up and

1:38:54

it was like me emu vampire

1:38:56

Rodesca Rolo and

1:38:58

all Rolo the ledger men of

1:39:00

the cones and spinners and

1:39:03

I didn't win a game in that group for

1:39:05

the first like year plus that

1:39:08

we played Yeah but it didn't matter because

1:39:10

like I knew I was playing with great people and I

1:39:12

love just being able to Experience and

1:39:14

learn new things so talking about the game

1:39:16

and I'm sure a lot of people also just love drafting

1:39:20

like I know that that emu and I especially

1:39:22

when we got into like Thinking about the

1:39:24

drafts for tournaments and things like that Like we would just we

1:39:27

would just get online We just like draft like

1:39:29

multiple times for like hours and talk

1:39:31

about it and why was this good and why was this not good? So

1:39:34

the idea then that there's a game

1:39:36

actually going on It's happening

1:39:39

right in front of me and I can just talk

1:39:41

about this game and what's happening in

1:39:43

real time Like it's super

1:39:46

cool to be like a part of that. Do I wish

1:39:48

I was kind of playing sometimes? I wish I was like,

1:39:50

oh man. I wish I was like in the game right

1:39:52

this time, but as

1:39:54

a close second just being able to

1:39:56

kind of experience and and think

1:39:58

and get excited especially the last couple

1:40:01

of tournament games with the round five that you

1:40:03

were just in. I was trying to make note

1:40:05

for that game for Matt when he edits it,

1:40:08

but it's like every two minutes there was something

1:40:10

else. I don't know how you edit that last round down because

1:40:12

just like every minute there was something else going

1:40:14

on, some other thing, this person now has

1:40:17

the best chance to win, now it's this person, what

1:40:19

is somebody thinking and trying to figure out what they're doing.

1:40:22

For me, it's just kind of like all of that comes together

1:40:24

and also kind of in an environment where

1:40:27

I have no pressure. I'm not like freaking out that

1:40:29

like am I making the right move, I can just talk

1:40:31

about what everybody else is doing. Yeah, oh that's

1:40:34

a really good point actually. Some of the

1:40:36

best, as far as growing experiences

1:40:38

I feel like you can have from the commentary desk

1:40:41

is that you are invested enough in the

1:40:43

game to really be thinking critically about it

1:40:46

but it's not your game, so

1:40:48

you are not in that heat. And

1:40:50

you also start realizing that when you are

1:40:52

in that round five experience yourself

1:40:55

that from your own position

1:40:58

you can't always see stuff that well.

1:41:00

It helped me and I wonder if you relate to this

1:41:03

is that once I started commentating

1:41:05

and paying a lot of attention to everybody's

1:41:08

game so that I could express it, so

1:41:10

that I could explain it to chat, I started