Foreword

Back in June this year, I had the amazing fortune of being interviewed in an Edge magazine article alongside Hidetaka Miyazaki about online communities filling in the blanks for games they love. The journalist, Ben Maxwell, asked me: “Why is it important for you to do this?”.  My reply was:

Back in 2008, when Demon’s Souls first launched, Japanese fans were lost as to what to do, or where to go in the game world. The stubborn amongst us decided not to give up, and started recording our findings on the Livedoor-hosted Japanese wiki.
Slowly but surely, we created a resource that took a difficult and mystery-shrouded game and documented the whole damned thing. I find myself 7 years later with an accidental mission: That any gamer can feel welcome in the RPG they want to try, and they feel there’s a community there for them with ideas, support and simple or in-depth explanation to complicated or obscure concepts.

In these 7 years I have been introduced to, discovered and met amazing individuals and teams who create exceptional content around the games we love. Fextralife would like you to meet them too.

In this series we will be showcasing members of the Souls community, who through their passion, dedication and hard work have become a bigger influence than most. Some of these individuals are already well known and others have been operating quietly behind the scenes. We hope you’ll get to know all of them, learn some things about them and gain some insight into the pillars of the community. You can find Episode I here, Episode II here, and Episode III here.

Click on the tabs above (or watch this video) to get started meeting Zombieheads and LobosJr.

Fexelea

Meet: ZombieHeads

Our first interview is with Zombieheads. This rising uploader is known for creating unique fashion looks, and most famous for his moveset videos, that have over 2,000,000 views. You can find him on Twitter  or visit his youtube channel.

Zombieheads: My name is John. I am known pretty much everywhere online by the name : “Zombie Headz”. I’m from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I’m in school full-time and technically work 3 jobs. When I’m not making videos, I’m spending a lot of time with my daughter. Pretty much after she goes to bed is when I get to do in sort of gaming. I’ve a couple of nights off in a week but pretty much I work till 11-12pm. I’m up usually till 2am, when I stream especially since everyone is having such a good time.  I’ve been riding motorcycles since 2006 and I might squeeze in an hour here and there to do that for fun.

On weeknights, I deliver pizza but it works with my schedule because I get to study while I’m at work so that actually frees up my time afterwards so that when I get back I can do a little bit of gaming.

On the weekends, typically a day in the summer since I do construction (remodel homes), I’d probably start around 7.30am, and then go deliver pizza after that and may not even get home till midnight. That is pretty much a typical day.

Zombieheads: I wanted to have a gaming channel but I wanted to do zombie games (survival types), but I never got into it because I started playing Dark Souls and then never played anything else. I do have a couple of zombie-themed games I played over the years. But in comparison I’ve been playing Dark Souls pretty much exclusively.

Zombieheads: Dying Light. – I really wanted to do the PvP. I had a couple of posts on Reddit how I only bought it for the PvP and pretty much everyone thought it was the stupidest thing they had ever heard. It was really good for a while but then it died off but the PvP in that game was pretty cool.

The Last of Us – The story of TLoU was probably the best I’ve played in a game.

Zombieheads: I was 6 years old when I got an Atari. But I really got into games on a PC in the 1980s.
I had a Tandy 1000. It’s like a dinosaur compared to nowadays, and all the games came on a (floppy) disk. You actually had to tell the computer to run the game, but at the same time you could see all the programming of the game there and I used to try and tweak things (similar to what people would call Save-editing nowadays).

When I was 8, i learnt MSDOS. I was a computer whiz back then. We used to have computer classes back in middle school but I was such a nightmare for them because I’d lock out keys or make computers “beep” randomly during class and they could never figure out how to stop it.

When consoles came out, it just seemed so much easier. I bought a Nintendo (NES) and the first games I got were “Ultima Exodus”,”Final Fantasy” and “Dragon Warrior”. That how I really got into RPGs and from then on its been my favorite type of game to play.

Zombieheads: Another content creator and best friend of mine, OOZIEE, recommended I play dark souls. I just happened to come across a used copy at GameStop and once I played a little bit, I just couldn’t stop playing. A few days later, I took a day off work and just played it all day. That was it, I was just so hooked!

Zombieheads: I had just gotten to Andre, and I was making my way back up from the Undead Parish to where the Channeler enemy is, and as soon as I entered I had my first invasion message pop up. At the time, I really didn’t get it because I had bought the game without even looking up anything about it. All I know is that some Red guy jumped down and I swung at him, but he just chain-back stabbed me to death. I thought it was part of the game, so i spent about 30 minutes going back and forth trying to recreate it until I actually looked it up and realised it was another human. Then I was like, “Oh my God! Some other guy is actually playing somewhere….he totally ruined my game…but it is so exciting”. The whole online element is what drew me into it.

Zombieheads: When I started out, I wanted to be different so that if somebody watches something of mine hopefully they would remember it. So, I tried to do some creative characters. I think my first Dark Souls 1 video was me dressed up as a Coal Miner and then I did the Fashion Souls series. I always try to thing outside the box and make something that only people who have played the game would be able to relate to. For example I had done the “ABCs of Dark Souls” where each letter stood for something in the game that would kill you. Then I did a Dark Souls Football video based off an old Nintendo game “Tecmo Bowl Football”, because I always felt [Dark Souls] is like a football game in that you had to pick a play, run it and hope you make it to the fog gate.

Zombieheads: While I was making the weapons videos, I happen to notice there there was a lot of information online that was still incomplete. I felt like I had all this knowledge sitting here and  as if I had a duty to make it acessible to other people.

The weapons-set videos were actually unintentional. I really liked dual claws and hand-axes and thought it would be cool to make a video about it. However I got such a positive response that I thought I’d do a couple more of my favorite ones and that just lead into more. It became such a big project by the end that I was getting burn out of making these videos…but I really liked the way they turned out in the end so I was always happy and surprised I even accomplished that.

I’d say the drive in Bloodborne was just the excitement of it. I speed-ran the entire game trying to get everything I could get my hands on and then add it to the Fextralife Wiki. So that anybody who’d get online and want to search for something, it was already right there for them. I actually thought it was pretty exciting to be a part of that.

Zombieheads: A lot of it is actually just a random thought. Something might just trigger it, for example, I was watching an episode Star Trek and I saw a weapon there that sort of looked like the Sorcerer’s Twinblade weapon and I thought I bet I can make a video about that!
I never write anything down. I just sit down, shoot footage and start editing. I guess the layout sort of comes naturally how I want to set it out. Rarely if I have to, I’ll send myself a text message so I dont forget a certain part to it. Basically its in my head the whole time.

Zombieheads: For Dark Souls, a video I made with Vendrick, Velstadt and Raime. I planned it like a reunion where Vendrick summoned the both of them and they went to fight Nashandra.
When I was done, I think I really outdid myself. That actually let to a point where I could not think of a better video to make. I really had for a good couple of months a feeling like I’ll never make another better video.

The other is when I let my daughter play PvP, and she actually does pretty well nowadays but at the time I put on a Jester’s top just to be safe. She beat a couple of guys in duels and she was 3 years old at the time. I will always remember that because its something I got to do with my daughter that I enjoyed and she happened to enjoy. It was really a bonding kind of a situation there.

Zombieheads: I always liked games that aren’t a pushover, games that I have to work my way through and not be able to beat easily. I always enjoyed the difficulty. One thing that I hope they never consider changing is the fact that there are so many weapons and armor sets. Most of the armors you can even mix and match stuff so you could have an infinite combination of set ups. I really liked the fashion element of it and I could just sit there and play dress up for hours just to find a combo that i thought looked awesome.

The other thing is the online experience of it. I’ve never played another game after Dark Souls that I really got into. I played LoTF but the whole time I just missed being able to run into somebody online whether it is to duel or help them. Other games feel empty compared to Dark Souls.

Zombieheads: I look forward to the smarter enemies since alot of the enemies currently are easy to handle especially once you learn their moves. It would be cool if they could stop what they are doing and turn around and change direction. There is one thing alot of people would disagree with, but I hope they they bring back DS1 poise. I’m definitely looking forward to the new lore and the whole story beind NPCs in DS3.

Zombieheads: Coming into the world and feeling almost like an archeologist. You are coming into this long abandoned, ancient world and all the world-changing events have already happened and you are there picking up the pieces, discovering what has led to the world being the way it is by the time you get there. That, to me is the most fascinating thing.

Zombieheads: I do like when they add armors or weapons from previous games, some sort of throwback. So I hope something out of DS2 that we will all appreciate the guys throwing it in for us.

Zombieheads: I see it as sort of being a scout and running out there when the games come out to learn everything I can and try to share with everybody on a wiki. I think I’m good at spotting on youtube new persons that come through and have a lot of talent. I like to spread the word and get people to check them out and hopefully get their uploading career started.

Meet: Lobos JR

Our next interview is with the very popular streamer Lobos Jr. With a Twitch following of over 100,000, this challenge runner has earned his status as one of the top streamers in the community. Find him on Twitter to get in touch.

LobosJr: My name is Mike Villalobos Known as LobosJr on twitch and youtube. I do alot of DS Speed runs and challenge runs and also play other games, mostly on the twitch front. I live in Austin, Texas and just this year streaming became my full time job and that is my focus during the day.

LobosJr: I think the first game I played was Winnie the Pooh on Apple II, but I dont even remember. My favorite game of all time is the Legend of Zelda, A link to the Past on the SNES.
I like retro games alot more than modern games. Dark souls has those aspects of challenging but fair gameplay and not holding your hands throughout the game, which kind of harkens back to the earlier games on the SNES. Those are the aspects that appeal to me.

LobosJr: Dark souls I’ve been playing all week long. I also play different games like World of Warcraft which I’ve played for the 10 years it has been out. I also play Hearthstone. I’m a fan of the Blizzard games so I stay very true to them.  I play alot of Binding of Isaac too. Basically games that are quick to play but hard to put down and kind of hold your interest for a very long time.

LobosJr: I first played Demon’s Souls because my friend whom I lived with at the time told me to try it out. So I sat down for a couple of hours, found this Red Eyed Knight in the first Boletaria level and I spent an hour or two trying to beat him. By the end I was just like “well, I’m bad at this game or I don’t really like it”. So i put down Demon’s Souls and then years later a couple of my friends showed me Dark Souls and I had just been streaming for a year or two at the time and so we decided to stream my first playthrough. My friends were just sitting with me the whole time and helping me when I got stuck somewhere or giving me tips. That pushed me long to play through the entire game and by the time I finished it, I was already in love with the entire thing and ready to play it 100 times more!

LobosJr: I think a lot of people would have the same moment – that is the first time you finally beat Ornstein and Smough. The first time you enter the fight, it seems absolutely hopeless and that there is no way to defeat these guys…but you just keep kind of grinding on it. It took me 14-15 attempts to defeat them but it was right when I had used my last humanity and summoned Solaire, it was my last attempt and I felt like “damn, now i have to do this solo.” But at the very next attempt I beat them and you just get that sense of reward for sticking with it and honing your senses. Everything after that was just more of the same and it was something I hadn’t felt in a long while and craved more of.

LobosJr: When a newer souls game comes out, I look for any new functionalities that they have added. For example, DS2 added in torches and the idea of limited torched time, so that gave me the idea to do an Olympic Torch Run where we just had torch lit the entire time running through the game.  So alot of the time I’m looking at the mechanics like that and build runs of that or taking something that people really rely on  (like Estus Flask or Shields or Rolling) and take that out of the equation and just do a run that way.

I rarely ever test my runs unless I have to see if its something that actually works, but I like going into runs blindly so both myself and my viewers aren’t prepared for what’s going to happen and we’re both equally surprised at the same time.

LobosJr: Until I started playing Dark Souls, I played alot of the older console games and speedran them in particular and that got me a descent following of 1000-2000 followers. So at one point I decided with a friend to play through the game blindfolded while he would guide me vocally. At the time, I hadn’t seen anyone else do challenge runs with Dark Souls. So people saw that was a unique way to approach the game and that definitely helped grow my popularity. So i just kind of rolled with it and it brought in alot of viewers and it eventually got to the point where I got a partnership with Twitch and I could even monitise my Youtube videos. Eventually, it was lucrative enough for me to leave my full-time job and pursue this as a full-time career.

LobosJr: I worked at BioWare Corp, on Star Wars the Old Republic MMO as a QA Analyst. I joined a year before the game launched and helped them test features and give feedback on new features they’re going to put into the game. It was a fun job and it was hard to step away from that but I was essentially doing 2 full-time jobs. I was working at Bioware from 9-6 and streaming from 7pm or 8pm till 1am. Eventually it became obvious that going full-time streaming would ultimately be more successful and also its easier to track your success on Twitch because there’s always a Follower-Count which is always increasing whereas at a job maybe you’d get a raise every 6 months or something. That is great as well, but it is much easier to track your success through viewer / follower charts.

LobosJr: I haven’t looked into the legality of things but I have heard that if you are a Twitch partner you are contractually obligated to not stream on Youtube. I’m not a 100% sure on that, but I do know you’re not allowed to stream on Twitch and Youtube or any other site at the same time.

I’m personally far too embedded into the Twitch side to even go and try Youtube gaming. While I do have a slightly larger following on youtube, the ratio of how big my Youtube channel is to that of my Twitch channel is just way more in favor of Twitch.

So, I dont think it would be a wise decision for me to jump into Youtube and completely abandon Twitch. I’m also already signed up go to TwitchCon and Pax Prime to hangout with Twitch people so I’m a bit too far in myself.

But I think its awesome that somebody has joined into the Livestream world and I think Youtube is probably the one service that could actually compete with Twitch and competition is always good so hopefully both sides will keep getting better.

LobosJr: Its certainly alot harder than when I started since Twitch has become a more popular media for watching content. What I always say is that when you’re streaming, first and foremost is to stream something that you would normally enjoy. If you’re playing Dark Souls, you should want to play Dark Souls on your own even without a Twitch stream behind it, because if you’re having fun, the viewers can see that and they’ll latch onto that.

Trying to fill some kind of niche also helps certainly; I always say you have to create some unique content, have a really great personality or be really skilled in a game. Any combination of those helps more but those are basically the recipe for success in the livestreaming business.

LobosJr: The blindfolded Dark Souls was probably it since it kicked off my stream as going full on Dark Souls. It had some fantastic moments that are unique to that style of gameplay because the player has no idea whats going on and the person guiding is just yelling and screaming to input A or input B and so you can only guess whats happening.

I’ve just started something similar where I play Dark Souls by watching my own stream which inherently has a 20secs delay to it. So every time I perform actions, I cant see what I’m doing, but 20secs later I can see it on the stream. So it makes it sort of a more feasible way of doing that sort of run.

LobosJr: I really hope Miyazaki has infused his level design goodness into Dark Souls 3 as he has with his previous games. I’m always a huge fan of the boss fights. I love fighting the same boss over and over again to learn all the mechanics and how the AI functions. So I look forward to providing some kind of difficult, but fair bossfights where you have to observe their animations or distance from them in a room to defeat them.

Some more new weapon ideas would always be welcome ofcourse.

LobosJr: I’d like to meet one of their QA persons since I did that job and also because it would be interesting to see what their testing plans are all about. Considering the fact that I do all these crazy challenge runs, I dont know if they acknowledge these and change the game based on how me or other speedrunners play the game.

LobosJr: I think I’ve definitely set down a foundation for challenge runs in the Souls Community. I would love to see more challenge runners rise up and handle all these channel runs. There definitely have been some, like Bearzly who has been published in Kotaku articles here and there about Guitar Hero Souls and Bongo Souls with different peripherals. I see myself a challenge runner mainly. I do speedruns but I’m certainly not at a competitive level with the other speedrunners. Competition is not nearly as important to me as challenging myself and having fun with the game. So I feel I have founded that Challenge Run part of the community and hopefully it can grow from there.