DjSoundStorm - Sweet music drinks & gaming

00:00:00Then we say hello and welcome to Spelfarsan med Vänner. Today is going to be a special episode on gaming music or gaming music games. And we are rocking it in English today, my good Sir Peter. You know what? We never actually paraphrased our Swedish name into an English one. We had a few English shows by now. So what would be like the English name for people that stumbled upon our English content? Would it be... gamer dad and friends yeah probably hopefully hopefully not gamer daddy because i think that sounds no that's why i yeah exactly let's let's stay well away from that stuff daddy and let's just focus on like the singular gamer dad and friends so um yeah but anyway super super cool to have have this uh show have this guest and have this topic so just are we like

00:00:58dropping the drinks now or are we doing that later like how how do you want to ballpark this well we can it would be rude not to kind of not invite our guest first yeah so let's do that and then let's head straight to the drinking and the talking so so directly from chicago we have the man the myth the legend the dj soundstorm with us hi there guys how are you very well we are terrific i would say we're happy to have you here You're very welcome. So it's a great way to kick off the Friday night, at least here in Sweden. We are on like slightly different time zones, but it's Friday for everyone, right? Yes. So that's cool. Slightly different is a little bit of a stretch, but yes, much different for the time zones for sure. Yeah, yeah. Like how much of a difference is there between Chicago and the time we're rocking? We're like...

00:01:56Seven hours, I think. Oh, seven hours, yeah. Yeah, that's like a working day, so yeah. Wow, yeah. So, should we take the most important part, what we are drinking, before we make a proper introduction? I mean, yeah, let's go with that. Let's start in the upper corner with Linda. Okay, so I'm having the Destil Brewery. Right. Might be from Chicago. I don't know. It's Haze of the Dead. That's a cool looking skull. It's a hazy double API. Yes. And I remember that maybe one time in the podcast, I actually had a beer called Hawaii Five-0, which I talked about. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right. You're right. And I think that was from actually from Chicago or somewhere. It definitely is. It's the same brewery. Yeah, it is. Oh, cool. Good. So it's an homage to, what is it? Windy City? Windy City, yes. I tried my best to find a beer from your area. That's very cool. So I'm actually not sporting cider today, but it's a bourbon-based drink. Sweet.

00:03:23It is pretty sweet, yeah. Because it's bourbon. Yeah, me myself is going for... It's called hard lemon. It's basically... What is it? It's a lemonade with licorice. I mean, that sounds reasonable. And you, what are you drinking in the blue corner? So... Currently, I am actually drinking Maw Energy because I do have to work after this and it is 2 in the afternoon for me. One of the sponsors for our Twitch channel is actually Maw and I've switched to a sugar-free alternative to energy drinks and this actually kind of sets my day up properly. Is it good? Like the sugar-free version? So all of the versions are sugar-free. In my opinion, this is not to take anything away from one of our supporters for the channel, but the Rest in Peace Harambe flavor is one of the more intricate fruit punches that I've ever had. And they just released a sour line as well for people that want more of a sour flavor. And it's very nice. Oh, I know I do. The sour, that got me going. Oh yeah, for sure. Peter has tested them all.

00:04:35I brought it to you. That is true. That is true. That was some good stuff. That's a very sensible sponsor to have, I would say. Yeah, it's nice. But should we kick off with you having... Let's have you introduce you, give you a bit of background, who you are, what you do, what you have done and what you're doing now. So I'm DJ Soundstorm, first and foremost, and thank you guys so much for having me. I'm a 13-year military veteran for the United States Army, and I've been DJing and producing for well over a decade. all over the north central part of the United States. And I am currently a Twitch streamer, a partner content creator on YouTube, and just a growing streamer at this point. Very cool. So how did you end up in the streaming world? So I'm not going to say it's completely because of COVID, because I have been streaming for about two and a half years now. But I had always had a love for playing classic

00:05:34video games and i believe that's also the reason why i've met one of the members of this podcast is because of my love for final fantasy 7 the final fantasy series the mod work that's done around those classic games so when we started our twitch channel we started our channel because we noticed that a lot of people that were enjoying or ingesting content were very drawn to the larger streamers that were either speed running or making perfect runs And I was like, you know, there really is a space on Twitch and for people that are just normal humans that don't have superhuman gaming ability to sit and enjoy the content. And then we were introduced to Suna from the Echo S team, and we started actually being thrown into the group of people that are responsible for modding games in the Final Fantasy and classic RPG genres. And that has morphed into putting me against the most grueling hard modes available worldwide for each of these classic games.

00:06:27And seeing me struggle throughout all of those fun encounters that they come up with. Yeah. I can definitely relate to that. Just enjoying the struggle. Not trying to be a pro gamer, but just having a good time with a game that you really like. That's good content in itself, I would say. It is definitely... It's interesting to see people struggle. The realistic part of our... Our market in people consuming content is that a lot of people don't want to see, specifically, it's not as heartwarming or interesting to see them succeed at something that they feel is easy. But overcoming strife, dying close to 270 to 350 times throughout a platform, and then finally getting the accomplishment that they've been working so hard for just shows that perseverance that I think is missing on those platforms. Oh, yeah. I mean, I remember when the, it must be like a couple of years back now, when the Getting Over It game was like...

00:07:24really popular for a while and people like really really struggled and some people almost like had a breakdown on stream and chat was just loving it all over the place like your pain is our game it's kind of like the motto very much yeah and it was like yeah this is really really great entertainment for everyone not playing the game obviously but and then with the arrival of the issue with the pandemic um that actually took away a lot of the being live getting to do what i had done for years as a job as a dj and we were um lucky enough that one of my uh my channel moderators which is actually strife large shout out to my team for finding some of this stuff had found the game called fuser and all of a sudden it was a game from the team that was responsible for rock band

00:08:14that was creating a dj platform that was turning a video game into a almost a micro digital audio workstation and letting people tinker with these songs in a new way from a very very tried and true company that was very good about it so that's kind of the leg that we're on right now and that is quite easily the biggest draw to my community right would you say that future has been like a broader gate for people that might not have found like soundcloud or something more of the producer tools that were more original is more of a lightweighted platform for people to create music. Yes, and gamifying anything I think raises interest and easier understanding right off the first taste of it. So making it more of a gaming platform as opposed to what I have done where it's sitting in front of the DAW like Ableton or Fruity Loops and starting from zero and spending eight hours throwing sounds the way that you made that you thought were cool to first for.

00:09:12Instead of doing that, they have a template of things that are comfortable for them that they get to play with and start making their imaginations run a little bit, which has been really cool to see. Would you say that if you try to define your community, is this the same crowd that shows up for your future games, or is it another crowd that is more involved, for example, in Final Fantasy or the RPGs or in the Warzone or whatever, or is it the same community overall? So I believe there is a very large distinction between the classic RPG community, which are more, I'm 34 years old, so more my age and a little bit older, obviously, that were around and did have platforms and could understand how good Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VI, Tactics, Chrono Cross, Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, games like that, that accompanied group just ended up being people that were...

00:10:07of age had jobs and could go to music festivals when the edm was very large starting with you know spring awakening and edc and ultra miami so i think there maybe isn't a synonymous connection between the classic rpg gamers but the timing was good and i've noticed that guys like strife guys like dark ranger but people like yourself if i'm not streaming very late as we said the seven hour difference makes it kind of difficult but i do think that that love of music and that love of electronic music was shared from that age of folks and i think that's it's really nice and fuser does stem that by putting in tracks just as recently from the offspring from anthrax and other options that aren't necessarily considered electronic music but giving you the option to make it electronic music

00:10:52so on the topic of electronic music where is your heart put it is it in like in dub or in hard style or in trance or do you have like a preferred um slice of the genre so i i not to be nuanced because that goes back to the guys from the 80s that say it's all about your brand of jack and sure jack is the legendary like creature that is house music and that's kind of where i find my roots in was a 128 beat with very well thought out loops and making something sound much more elaborate and interesting to control a dance floor from something very basic i i grew up listening to a lot of um the prodigy a lot of pendulum when they were still pendulum and not branched off into knife party. Daft Punk is a huge inspiration for me. So that's kind of where my roots are is in 128, maybe up to 135. And having that drum and bass and house background is very helpful. So just out of curiosity, what do you think of the Swedish artists like Avicii, Swedish House Mafia, and so on? So I think that we wouldn't be where we are now if it wasn't for those three artists that you just mentioned.

00:12:09and for much different reasons um tiesto cultivating his version of trance music and then from from our digital strings and controlling the american market from overseas the way that he did and influencing everyone in chicago everyone in miami the way that he did was a massive massive help to edm in general swedish house mafia showed that you could be popular and be mainstream and you could do it as a business and do it properly and be at the highest level And Avicii is just Avicii. We'll never probably be that lucky again. No, he was like a phenomenon. That's definitely like larger than life kind of a guy. There's been a few of them, but he was like the guy in that genre, I would say. I know that our jealous neighbors try to say that Alan Walker is a Norwegian Avicii, but I'm not really sure that's correct. Again, this is not to... I will never...

00:13:04aim any weapons of verbal destruction at any dj in the market because i feel like everyone's hurting right now with covid and i know they're all in a very terrible spot but i love alan walker that's not avicii that's not a 16 year old kid that i saw in front of 50 60 000 people in chicago and being proud of what he's putting out and changing music while he was doing it that's not the same no it's always kind of tough getting like um compared to someone that was yeah unique figure. So if I was in the same profession as someone like that, I would try to stay away from the comparison altogether. I'm doing my own thing. I'm trying to do the best I can and be the best I can. Please don't compare me to this genius guy who did his own thing. I'm just trying to do my own thing. No, I guess, especially with Avicii, since he was young and really big and he's not with us anymore. So it's hard to... Yeah, that makes it...

00:13:59So much harder. People that are not with us anymore almost always go to the legend status immediately. And that makes it even tougher. But we were briefly mentioning it a couple of times. COVID has obviously been a big impact on any type of live performances. It has to do with theater, cultural life, and music, obviously. Did that change of how you could perform, so to speak, make you go more... not professional because you've mentioned you've done this for a couple of years already, but did it make you focus more on how you do your streaming work? Or is it kind of like it always has been with that? So for, and I will say this, Mog has been a massive supporter of our channel for a very long time. And at one point in time, it was a, I wonder if he's going to stream this week.

00:14:49This literally didn't just change how we perform live because I'm not one of those DJs that is constantly going to be on a big stage all over the United States or other areas of the world. I've been a grinding DJ, corporate events, weddings, smaller venues. And every once in a great game, we'll get a chance to be on those stages because we've been in the business for so long. But based on my income coming solely from those other types of events, it didn't just change it. It completely stopped it. And it made it where it was impossible to do so. Even for something as much as a small wedding, when your normal margins are around $1,000 a show or $2,000 a show, you cannot charge somebody in good faith. If you have any ethical or any human capabilities to understand these people, how are you going to charge them that kind of money for 25 people to be in a venue and they have to be eight feet apart? It's not a realistic business venture anymore. So in terms of what it did for streaming, yes, it very much made it where I needed to learn to

00:15:45plan i need to learn to cultivate content and be more focused on not just the classic rpg community but branch out into giving myself an avenue to still be attached to music so branching out on that topic how what was the biggest um i would say obstacles going from having it as one of the venues that you had as an income or as an a way of reaching out to your community to like have it being the main one what was it what was the biggest challenge for you to adjust to filling your schedule with much more streaming than you had previously. I know a lot of streamers have mentioned, for instance, that when they haven't streamed for a couple of weeks or a couple of days, it puts a real strain on their voice all of a sudden having to do that nine to 10 hours a day. Was that something you noticed that it was much more physically demanding to be a more active streamer, so to speak? The physical part, and I apologize if you guys start hearing some dogs chirping in the background. Oh no, that's cool.

00:16:41Um, the more physical part was actually, um, trying to schedule out the schedule that I had with the little jobs I was trying to fill before I landed in my current one for a day job. And then all of a sudden I don't have the freedom to go to the gym when I usually do, or I'm on stream for six hours. I have to grab a bite to eat really quick on my break. What's the fastest thing to do? So I noticed that the effects that it had were out of convenience and out of focusing on the content. the how to make that transition and what to do when you start actually setting content together is actually a really neat balancing act and that's when you find out who your real supporters are going to be in six and seven months as opposed to are they going to be here the next stream because a lot of our final fantasy community and the classic games in general

00:17:24They're pretty versatile and they're understood. They'll come and check new things out if you're trying new games, but they don't follow variety streamers because they would like to see the games that they are in love with cherished and kind of frozen in time where they're still being reminded of how awesome they were. So you kind of take a gamble when you branch out from that. But in the modding community, I cannot expect modding teams like Echo S with Tsunamods or Makindis with Lunatic Pandora or Alternate Fantasy with Final Fantasy IX. I cannot expect those guys to, okay, guys, I'm done with this title. What's your next mod? You guys, are you getting ready? You've been working on one for five years. I know it's got to be close. That was kind of the strain. And it's like, okay, we have to find another avenue.

00:18:05There has to be something else I can do besides trying to copy someone, a respectable streamer like CoCarnage, where it is consistent variety. And then you find out real quick who actually likes you or who actually is just there to support the game and the team. Yeah. I mean, actually CoCarnage, I think yesterday spoke about how Twitch as a platform has been changing and he didn't even know if he would be. successful on the platform in five years from now because all the IRL streams and the flavor of the month hot tub streams that have been hitting like the platform and also the VR guys so and he's probably the definition of a variety streamer so I think that you are dead on when you say that you have to know your crowd and really know how much of a risk you are under when you try to branch out

00:18:51It sounds like you really took that into consideration when you padded your schedule with new content. And that was kind of the and it has been kind of an ongoing struggle with if I want to be successful as a content creator on platforms like YouTube and on Twitch with the day job that I have. Is that going to maintain its consistency so that I can continue with the schedule? And it would be awesome just to one day decide. just like any other job, you want to jump into a new field and make it a career. But if CoCarnage is saying that there feels like there's a gamble and there's a shelf life, guys like me that haven't quite gotten the check mark on Twitch just yet as a partner, but have partnered on YouTube, and then YouTube is just a much larger pool of talent. It's like, am I sure? Is this actually going to sustain? It is essentially a gamble for all of us right now in the digital entertainment area, I guess. Yeah, yeah.

00:19:44I mean, as much as it is like a very, very exciting spot to be in, the digital frontier, if you will, it is very much loose and it's still not a place that is set. The rules change. I mean, Twitch have a lot of rules that are constantly in motion. So I don't think there's any other workplace that's quite like it. You can have content that gets banned one week and the next week they've kind of switched the cards on you and it's the hottest new topic. I mean, it has to be a place that you, I mean, when you find that gold seam and struck gold, so to speak, I guess you just have to feel in a way you're lucky, but then again, you kind of make your own luck. And I think Twitch as a platform really defines that, that you can bring whatever you want in there, but if you make it or not, kind of has to do with you being.

00:20:32how flexible you are how able you are to adjust to the people coming to look at you is that something that you've run across that you've had your mindset on something like i want to do this game and i want to do it in this way and then you just found that it didn't kind of vibe with your community and that you had to change it up So there's two answers to that question. And the first of which is because I don't ever foresee myself being in a hot tub and having to worry about crossing any potential lines for that. Because that's not really my market. That hasn't ever really been a concern. Watching some of the other things that happen around Twitch is kind of baffling. I try to avoid making comments on it as much as possible.

00:21:12If you are entertaining in that way and you are making money and putting money in your pocket and food on the table, then congratulations for finding a capitalistic way to get yourself paid. No problem with that. There's no shame in that game. However, the biggest problem with doing something in music, because I do feel like, and this is no disrespect to my Final Fantasy or any of the guys who have supported us from Classic RPGs, that is still considered a niche. Unless you are speed running, you're picked up by Games Done Quick or another larger platform, you are still playing to the certain amount of people that A, find you, and B, if there is another mod, because you can't just do one Chrono Trigger playthrough, get done and be like, all right, guys, you ready for the next one? Doing that for three years, people would eventually be like, okay, is he going to try something else? You can deadline yourself by backing yourself into corners. And the biggest problem that we've had as I explore more of my musical background on

00:22:10open source platforms like Twitch or like YouTube is that the DMCA has been a problem for musicians since the late 80s and it still remains a massive problem for us today. So more of the concern for me is how much time do I have to produce my own music to attach it to these things and how much music can I play with without answering to emails from DMCA lawyers that are trying to get other artists money out of me. The DMCA has become such a huge thing on Twitch. I guess now it's been a couple of months since that bombshell email was sent out to all the content creators that you had. Was it 48 hours to purge your channels on any music that would probably fall under the DMCA rules? And it's been on the...

00:22:51on the up and coming for years and years and no one really took it seriously and all of a sudden they just started to enforce that. And I think it's like a three strikes and you're out kind of a deal right now, if I'm not mightily mistaken. And that has to be a major thing to get a hand on when you... actually streaming music content you have two options in that situation um there are content creation licenses that you can get from companies like monster cat who have always been streamer friendly and there are other labels i don't know that spin and has just yet but i know that and even encounter with dmca but for a lot of other content creators they cannot and yeah being on both the live music side and the electronic music side for a long time depending on

00:23:34The size of your reserve funds arguing with them and landing in court could completely end your career. So for a lot of other content creators, they have really had to change the way that they do things. And for a lot of the guys that are at the larger level, it was, am I really going to try to go through a lengthy court battle with a company like Sony who doesn't have a stop to how much money they can keep you in court? So that becomes a huge problem. And it's a gamble to play with other people's music in general. But now that. dmca has woken up to how much that content is being like monetized then they're kind of like a slug they just slowly creep from one media orifice to another and realize how much money they can vacuum out i'm not a fan of dmca i think that the dmca laws have been archaic since the late 80s and early 90s and they've needed a revamp for a long time and i i i just feel like it really put a lot of content creators in a really bad spot yeah i mean even

00:24:30I blank out on the name now, but there was one major artist that, as yourself have done, transferred his... He doesn't really need to work anymore because he's that big of an artist, but he still wanted to have a creative output. So he moved to Twitch and started to live produce music. And as he did that, he also played a lot of his own music. And I think he actually got DMCA'd with his own music. On his own music, yeah. Yeah, from his record label. Was it Linkin Park? Yeah, it was the guy from Linkin Park. Yeah, that's right. But I made this music. Yeah, but you're not the Linkin Park band right now. You're just you as an artist. So that's going to get you in the hot water. And he also went into how diverse the rules are for DMCA across borders. So it's like, yeah, I know that I'm cool right now here in the States, but if I do this and some European country have a problem with that, with their rules, I might get into trouble with that. And it all comes down to me just trying to play my own music.

00:25:37And I mean, if he has that problem with his own music, then I can just imagine the kind of problem you would get into if you had other people's music. Even if you had a verbal contract, so to speak. If someone said, like, it's totally fine with me if you play my music. You're not sure that you're okay with it anyhow, because it might be some big corporate label that gets in touch with you and want to have all your money. That is actually, that has been a problem with a lot more names than people are. I guess they probably don't make the news as often, so TI has had the same thing happen. Darude had the same thing happen because of Sandstorm. Noisestorm had the same thing happen with Crab Rave. Matt Heathie, who is a massive streamer on the platform, has been DMCA'd for his music, and he creates and makes that with Trivium. And Joel, that's one of the reasons why Deadmau5 had left Twitch in the first place, because he was tired of getting DMCA struck for all of his own work. It's so weird how they can't have a handle on that.

00:26:35But I guess as long as you're with a record company, then you don't really own your own music. Yeah, I guess that's... I mean, I'm not sure how that works, actually. So that is a jungle. That is a problem. And that's one of the reasons why the verbiage for DMCA laws are not the way that they should be. Because back in the 60s and 70s, when they started putting out MTAs and started making those record... contracts you're correct the artist didn't own any of that intellectual property in deadmau5's case he owns his own label in skrillex's case they own their own label but because of how stringent and wordy those dmca laws are they can still get copyright strikes because of their own music when they even own their own label and intellectual property

00:27:23That's what the problem is, is there's not a very well-defined metric by which they can let up on that or step on the gas for it. It goes back to the Lars Ulrich and Napster thing. A lot of what actually is owned by content, and that's where some of it started to get really dicey. But how does Fuser do it? Because you can stream Fuser. You can. There is also a stream-friendly crate within Fuser. that you are told if you are streaming that they recommend and they literally just have gone down the list of things in dmca that they have to tell everybody and then give them the game and say if you're going to stream this a platform uh youtube will not let you monetize and twitch is going to give you red flags here or there depending on if you have your alert box on so people can see when you have subs donations or bits thrown and they

00:28:14They literally get past the red tape because we have informed our base. What they do with that information is completely up to them and take their hands off. But on another topic, because I have followed you for quite some time now, and I know when you started out for quite some time, you were sitting in your kitchen and you were drinking heavily amounts of booze. no worries about that i like to drink myself but do you feel but with your community growing and your channel growing have you have you become more kind of professional or boring or what what you call it like no not boring but like trying to be more strict in order to get a bigger crowd or you still think you're feeling true to yourself so um the lack of drinking a full um

00:29:06seven five milliliter or 0.75 milliliter of vodka a night on stream um the only reason why that doesn't still happen is because there is a odometer on my internal organs and some of those were starting to tell me that the mileage was getting a little high um that homie feeling and i don't feel that i've changed the way that i do my content or approach anything that i'm doing in game any different I do think that the comfortable feeling and Mog has been around long enough that like, like you said, we were in either my kitchen at one point in time, I was in a living room. I've transitioned a lot from just making it feel like it's a very casual, comfortable situation to kick it with a friend that's on stream, as opposed to a professional streamer doing professional streamer things. And people are there to watch. I've been able to maintain, even though I'm not completely blackout drunk every single night that I stream.

00:29:59I have continued to maintain where I dislike the thought that people are there to watch somebody on Twitch as the entertainment that's on stage and they're sitting in the amphitheater. I much prefer and will always maintain that I am streaming in the crowd and we are all having conversations about what's going on on stage and how bad I am and having jokes at my expense before any of that will change. I guess there's never really been a lack of professionalism if you don't start with a whole lot of professionalism in your streaming career. I kind of get what you're saying. You're trying to be true to yourself, basically, but just tone it down a little bit because of things that just happened to you. So, I mean, that sounds like you're still kind of doing your own thing, which is great. You mentioned the retro games and the classic Final Fantasy games. I have to ask, which one?

00:30:51is your Final Fantasy favorite among the bunch? I would imagine it's VII, but I still have to ask. You would imagine wrong, and that because we played VII the most on the channel because of the hard modes and the hard work that the friends of the community that we have from Suna are a part of, but Final Fantasy VI is actually my favorite front-to-back story. I'm so happy to hear that. I love that. Oh, yeah, I can imagine how happy you are. I absolutely love the transition that they made from... Like Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII, whether people want to argue with me about the draw system or not, I get it. That's fine. The systems were a thing. But Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII were the new thing. And a lot of people have to realize that was the first time those polygons hit the screen. And then with Final Fantasy VIII, that was the first attempt at the realism that was coming from it.

00:31:41We didn't get that feeling again after VII and VIII until, no offense to IX, Suna is going to hear this and he's going to try to light me on fire. IX's art style was not even close in terms of the awe-striking performance that Final Fantasy X had when it finally hit screens. But Final Fantasy VI, in terms of story, in terms of what I think is the best Final Fantasy bad guy ever, the only one to ever win, and then trying to overcome that strife after you have had the crushing defeat, is something that we haven't had in final fantasies where it was here is hero here is heroes internal conflict here is princess or objective we have to save and here's the overwhelming time traveling bad guy and yeah six did have some of the time traveling stuff in it did have some of the backtracking but in my opinion it was just more you had your your your letdown you had your heroes have met instant defeat there is no way forward and then they have to find a way

00:32:37to get back and set things right. And I don't think that that concept was used very well in other games moving forward in the franchise. And it's still and always will be my favorite Final Fantasy VI. VI is still my favorite. Yeah, I'm so happy to hear that. For me, I've always maintained when anyone asks me, it's like, oh, you probably were one of those big Final Fantasy VII fans. Yeah, I liked that game, but I loved... Final Fantasy VI. Nah, never heard of it. Because a lot of people found the series, like the mainstream audience found the series with game number seven. But VI for me is the epic home of awesomeness in that series. Because if nothing else, the huge cast of characters and the way they switched the world after it hit the world of ruin, I don't think that ever been done again. And I also tried to ask Nobuo Imatsu on...

00:33:31And if he had that as his favorite, because I think that's one of his best soundtracks, talking about music. I really love the soundtrack he did for that game. And I tried to ask him that question on a fan festival, but I think I lost something in the translation because my answer was basically that he loved all this music. It was a lost in translation. And since I'm the only one from this gaming podcast, I haven't really played. Final Fantasy that much. I still enjoy the music a lot. Oh yeah, it's great. Beautiful. Such a great guy as well, Nobuo Matsu. A really, really weird little guy. He had like a big old bow tie and he, what I could tell, he was very come and go as you please. As long as you create great music, I'm okay with it. A very non-corporate Japanese guy, which took me by surprise for sure. That's good.

00:34:27one of the the two osts that stand out for me throughout the entirety because we play a lot of classic games on my channel we have played plenty including the fallout series and there's there's two composers that stand out to me he is one of them the second is actually the composer that was responsible for the music for the silent hill franchise silent hill one two and three may have some of the best osts that i've ever heard my god yes And the fact that that ambient music, a lot of people take that for granted, but those composers did things with not the technology that the guys have at their disposal now, but still to this day, if I hear those sounds, they're uncomforting. And that's how you know they did such a fantastic job. Yes. Oh my God, yes.

00:35:09I love that music. So the Silence Hill franchise is Linda's favorite by far. She just mentioned that, I guess. I would not get into a freight elevator in Fort Bragg and also at Fort Drum. We had freight elevators to move things around in stockyards that we were getting stuff in for supply or anything moves around. And I was the only person as an E5 in the army, a grown human that would not get into a stock elevator and didn't want to tell them why. Oh my God, I love that. I have my reasons. Yes. You know, I have my reasons. It's not because of pyramid heads, I promise you. Exactly. There's nothing to do with that. That's awesome. So I would say stream any kind of horror game and Linda will be your biggest fan.

00:35:53No, yes, we have. We thought we've tinkered with the idea a lot with some of the horror games that I think kind of identify the genre, because I mean, just like every genre, there were games that were just terrible. And then there were games like Silent Hill two, which even game critics like Yahtzee Kroshaw, who are, in my opinion, some of the most to the grain, very analytic and very specific content. reviewers silent hill 2 is still his favorite game and it is one of the favorite games i've ever played outside of like my classic rpg genres but with the problem with some of those horror games and i've found is that uh they after about the second or third time that you die and some of the harder ones games like clock tower games like um i could think of a few other ones uh fear older games like that

00:36:40have a little bit of a hard time to keep people engaged unless they are just in love with the franchise. And for as much as Silent Hill kind of changed horror games for us, the longevity for that crowd kind of stops around the time you start playing into anything past Deadpool 2. No, I'm sorry. Dead Space 2. I'm sorry. Deadpool 2. Deadpool was a great game, though. Kind of a different genre altogether. And a good movie. Oh, yeah, for sure. I was actually thinking about that because seeing as you are playing these long, very long games, how do you keep the general crowd, so to speak, engaged? I mean, you have the diehard fans, obviously. They'll probably be there to see the game in its entirety or they're there to engage with you because they enjoy it. Or pledge to get you drunk. Yeah, I mean, there are probably three or four subgroups that would be there anyhow. But how do you deal with the people that...

00:37:36just stumble upon your channel. How do you keep them engaged 20 hours into any Final Fantasy game, for instance? So actually, I can't take credit for that because I would play the classic renditions and the vanilla versions of all of these games just fine and enjoy them. Um, the shout out for that actually goes to the modding community that is still very much alive and well from the Kim forums and the guys working on these titles. If it wasn't for, and I honestly believe this, if it wasn't for, um, creators like Sunamods and his team with Uprisen and Christian and the rest of these guys doing completely voice acted versions of Final Fantasy VII and doing the graphic work that they did, or Mackendis with Lunatic Pandora, Project Angel Wing.

00:38:18A lot of these guys do that for me. When people stumble onto a Final Fantasy VII stream and they see the models from Remake in the original game and they think that it's a controversial argument on if Remake was classic to the original or if it was a good idea, bad idea. I'm not going to jump into that and open that can of worms. But a lot of people have so much love for the original game when they see all of these new... magic spells, or they hear Bones' soundtrack for that, or they see Tsuna's work that he's done with each individual NPC and bad guy in the game, that actually keeps the retention up, and then it's just up to me as someone who, I wouldn't call myself a perfectionist or a master at Final Fantasy VII, but I have well over 170 completes for the game, and I know the game inside and out. So, pitting someone who knows the game against a hard mode, and then...

00:39:12Making it look the way that those guys have been able to do, it really is a 50-50 deal because the modding community is making it visually engaging. It's my job to explain why that boss just killed me 36 times in one stream and how I'm going to beat it. I would also say that things like Interactive 7 has done a lot of interactivity with the chat, basically, that you can pay for. bringing out weapons or adding weapons or effects or whatever. That's a great stuff to engage the community. What people don't realize, and to Mog's point, Brandonius and his team making Interactive 7 a thing and letting the community take a hard mode and step it up to 11 out of 10. where it's like okay well yes it's kind of expensive but we'd really like to see the streamer who's had a really good couple of hours he's gotten items he hasn't missed a single thing let's just delete every piece of gear all of his accessories all of his weapons and all of his materia and then see how he can figure that out you know things like that have really made

00:40:11Because Twitch is interactive TV. A lot of people need to remember that at its basic foundation, giving chat the option to even so much as change the color of the menus is an engaging facet that, again, it's just more credit to the modding community for coming up with these things and making something old feel like something new. Oh, yeah. Twitch overlays have really become a thing in the past. This year, definitely. But I think it started a little ways back. But I've seen a lot of people can stick around just for that chance to either help out if... if they feel like it. But most, more often, trip up the streamer. Take away stuff, as you mentioned, or there's been, I think Disco Elysium has a Twitch overlay that can, the community can either take away points from intelligence, dexterity, karma and whatnot, or add. And I've seen, it's about a 50-50 spread on people either trying to help out or just devastate a scenario.

00:41:09that brings a lot to gaming for sure uh i i can i can say for my community it's about 95 and 5 for the people that would love to see the suffering increase and that would like to guardian angel my my playthrough we have our developers and our mods have actually tinkered with things so much because our our fans enjoy the interactivity that we even have models set up and we have third-party programs set up for games like dark souls or bloodborne where we will chat can actually donate bits and it makes us do a heavy attack or start running towards an enemy as opposed to running away and controls what we're doing in game and it is is a really fun feature and it's something that i think a lot of other third-party developers

00:41:51should be taking notes from Brendonius and those teams on how to be interactive with some of those games, because they're a lot of fun. I did watch the Blacktastic. He has something similar for Castlevania for the whole franchise, so there's support for Castlevania 1, 2, 3, I guess, and maybe others also with the same, like adding whip power or removing whip power and so on and so forth. Yeah. I mean, it kind of makes sense that you try to bring the crowd into it, because it's a great way to... make them feel involved, but also a great way to keep them staying around. If they know, especially if it's a game they've seen several times, they know like, oh man, in about 10 minutes, this boss is going to show up. If I take away this dude's entire weapon stash, he'll be boned. That'll be super fun to watch. Let's do that. I'll pay $5 to see that happen. Plus, it's also like a meta, meta thing, because if you're just watching like a movie,

00:42:50You can't interact at all. And then if you're playing a game, you can actually do stuff that affects what happens. And then if you're also watching someone playing a game, you can make that person do something that will affect the game. Yeah. And in games that have been out for a while. It's even more of a risk because they know the games so well that even something like the curse ring, which a lot of people don't realize is in Final Fantasy VII, veterans will come in and spend very minimal amounts of bits and just end your playthrough. And it will be a slow, painful, and torturous conversation throughout that entire death. With Dark Souls, it's even much worse because putting something on that increases damage by two times.

00:43:39and running into a boss like Gale in Dark Souls 3 or Mid-Ear, you're not killing that boss. The stream is effectively over. It's up to me to see how much of it I can tolerate. Does this increase or decrease the fun that you have while playing it? So I think a lot of people ask me about the fun aspect of things in terms of my stream. And because of the, again, my 13 years in music and dealing with, especially with weddings, my 13 years of dealing with the most high stress and high anxiety clients on the planet, which is a bride before her wedding, and then also dealing with the United States Army. And yes, I'm comparing my work with the Army with dealing with brides because it's very, very close in stress level.

00:44:23the fun that i have is actually seeing people be captivated in my chat i i enjoy when they are starting to get feisty or they are extremely excited or they know that something's coming up and that's what makes it fun for me if i was just playing the games for my own entertainment then i feel like there are other platforms i would like to explore and new things i'd like to enjoy but in terms of these games that i know my community loves I'm more or less I'm playing them because I want to see how they are enjoying it. I'm making content for them, not for myself. So I do enjoy streaming and I do enjoy these games. I love these games. But in terms of the enjoyment, it doesn't really sink in that I'm doing a great job or it doesn't give me any any positive side of coming off of the stream and saying that was a good stream unless I see chat being like, you know, this was just a trip. This was awesome. Yeah, that's very cool.

00:45:14We haven't mentioned this, I think, earlier in this episode, but what is your vision going forward? Where do you see yourself in like, just say five years? So our realistic goal is because we set on, and I haven't lost that part of who I am as a streamer and who I am as a content creator, is showing other people that you do not just have to be a speed runner or a perfectionist that can pull off a no-hit run in a very hard game to be an entertaining streamer. So for me personally, a five-year goal would be to have this be a full-time job have the time to make you know specific content to youtube because content from twitch a lot of people with the way that people ingest content they don't necessarily want to see those interactions that i have with people in my chat the entirety of the time they would like to get right to the meat and potatoes of how many times did he die how many times did he screw this mechanic up and did he overcome it that's the meat and potatoes of a youtube in our our perspective and based on our analysis that's the difference between youtube and twitch um

00:46:10My whole looking forward is I really, really hope to at some point in time be able to fully substantiate as a content creator on both platforms. I hope to have run into some sponsorships that make it look and feel to a lot of other people that and the realization that they can also do this. I feel like the problem with a lot of other content creators is you have to spend. In some of these games like Warzone or First Person Shooters or something like that, you have to spend nine, ten hours to be a professional in this. And honestly, I've had uppers to 250 people on my channel watching me die to the Emerald Weapon in Final Fantasy VII. So I know for a fact that there is a place and people enjoy seeing a normal human being that doesn't have superhuman video gaming powers just be themselves. And I would hope that...

00:46:59I eventually am building that crowd that can substantiate globally where people are like, this guy is one of my favorite streamers because he's relatable, not just because he's fantastic at everything. And I really do hope that that message continues to reverberate as my crowd grows and as the followers continue to find the channel. Is that, I mean, you mentioned it very briefly here. Is going global a part of that vision? Yes, actually. um if i'm being very clear i i actually in certain ways and this is no disrespect to any of the guys in the us that are huge fans of ours and huge supporters but i feel like the eu markets the um asian markets and a lot of the other people that we have that are followers and supporters from those different places in the world including australia oddly enough which was very surprising to me the fact that they are at you guys specifically are much more loyal

00:47:55I don't think there's a better way to put that. There is a loyalty to people that are entertaining for the global market that with the United States, a lot of the clientele is, is he playing that game that we wanted to see? Is he still dying on this boss? No. Okay, let's go to the next streamer that happens to be on the exact same situation. And I feel like making everybody feel closer. I know a lot of people would like to stay in their lanes and stay in their countries and stay around certain things that are comfortable for them. But at one point in time in my chat, we can have somebody from Australia talking to someone from Ireland that is talking to someone from Canada. And then someone from Brazil is giving their two cents all at the same time. And I look at my chat and go, this here, this is why I do this. These guys are joining together in one place, agreeing and not disagreeing and finding common ground that they can all either have respectable conversations about and learn.

00:48:48Or they can just agree to disagree and still enjoy the content and coexist. That is one of the neatest things that I've had happen in the last two years of doing this, is seeing people from all over the world just enjoy something together. It's really cool. Would you say that your community as a whole is a wholesome and friendly place too? jump in and talk to people. I mean, from what you just mentioned, it seems like that's very much what it is. I feel, okay, there's two sides to this. There is how it is for the streamer and how it is for the community. For the community, I feel like everybody can find like a middle ground and can enjoy content together and can work together. And they have done this many times to pull things together to screw over said streamer and to like really like come together to accomplish something in my chat.

00:49:34However, from the streamer perspective and saying that my community would be wholesome and or supportive would be an absolute lie. They really enjoy watching me have to deal with a flaming dumpster fire. And that's one of the things that I welcome. So overall, you as you grow in Twitch. you do have a couple of people, and this is no disrespect to the Dark Souls community, but some of y'all are toxic. So insanely toxic. And we have to make that decision on if they are being toxic because it is part of the game and they went through it too, or if they're just being toxic to be toxic. And we've actually started... we've started to remove some of those people from our community that would make things either uncomfortable or unfriendly for someone to come in and jump into the banter. As long as the negativity is directed at the streamer on my channel, it's all fair play. The second they turn it on each other, we really don't have time for that. So do you have like a large mod team that work with the chat continuously? Or do you have just a set of rules and guidelines, as most streamers do, that people try to respect? Or is it a mix of both?

00:50:39It's a mix of both. For a streamer that is intoxicated a good 60% of the time. It is very important that not only do we have the rules posted, but we have guys from very different backgrounds, from the modding community, from our World of Warcraft raiding community, personal friends of mine. And I put together a mod team that is a very of all five of them are very different headsets from very different backgrounds and are responsible for helping different parts of my content. So we don't have all one agreement. We have different views all the time and all of them agree that there's very level of we should accept this and we should. not accept this and they all work together very well to get that done right i mean i'm not surprised to hear that because i think almost all the channels that work well have either a few really good modders a little team of modders that are part of the community have you that kind of a dialogue with people that if you break a rule are you out or is it like dude shale don't do that again i mean we're cool for now but you know that that wasn't the way to do it

00:51:40That really depends on the game that we're in, and that also depends on the mod that we're talking about. So I have mods that will, in terms of Final Fantasy VII with I7, with the interactive stuff, I have mods like Strife who will literally give people the bat to beat me with and say, no, if you want to take this away from him, it's this command. Here you go. We also know that when we get into games like Dark Souls or if we're in first person shooters that are battle royals like Warzone, some of the people are very they are jumping from channel to channel to channel and they are not intending on sticking around. And we can tell based on their words. And if they start to push in to being too excruciatingly toxic, it will snowball because that community is very, very resilient with that type of feeling. And they're very notable for that. So I feel like.

00:52:31We let a lot of things slide on my platform as is. And if someone crosses the line enough to make someone like Strife or someone like December Klar or Demise actually take action, that is, I have mods for a reason. If we let things go that far and they make a decision, it's definitely warranted. Right, right. Yeah. Well, I guess that's, if you have good mods, you kind of have, they are the extension of how you look at things. That makes a lot of sense. But if you look back a little bit, in your dreams, what would you choose? Either if someone would give you a global big time DJ contract or in the same time, someone else offered you to be a big time streamer. What would you choose? Honestly, I think before I had been doing this for about two and a half years, I think I probably would have chose streaming because it felt like I could reach more people with that platform. But now that we've gone through COVID, I think my opinion has changed on that.

00:53:28The idea of getting on a stage or getting in front of a smaller crowd and being able to captivate people with music because I miss it so much, I still feel like furthering my career in music and getting to share that type of happiness and experience with people that I miss so much, that feels like it would be something that I would more appreciate. Long term, however, if I'm making business decisions and not going with the fact that I think COVID has just robbed so many of us of so much, I still think that I... On a consistent basis, I think that if I had the opportunity to have a global, much larger streaming platform, I do think that the positivity, when I do have those one wholesome moment a week out of five streams, I do feel like my way of looking at things would kind of open people's minds a little bit to being okay with criticism, to being okay at failing. And I may actually do more good for the larger part of my community in staying in my lane with the streaming and then incorporating music into that. So how hard is it to be...

00:54:26global on Twitch? I mean, for example, we're seven hours ahead. Freedom of time. The hardest part about that would be the freedom of time. That's why we as a team and as a community have been talking about setting up a Patreon just solely to make it where there's another source of income. where I can substantiate because of the streamers that reach a more global aspect. Like for me personally, I've talked to Mog about this too. If I, for instance, was streaming in two, four hour blocks and was starting around 1 a.m. or I'm sorry, 1 p.m. my time or around noon, I would be reaching more of that global market. And that would open me up on the platform to being an available streamer that people could consume at that time because of a work schedule. If I'm not a full time content creator,

00:55:13You stream out of convenience. It's when you get home from work, when you have the availability, you've got dinner ready and you move forward with the rest of your night and it's that empty spot. So for me, that's why I am more popular with the time zones that are behind us. And then also with Australia, because we fit with their time zone and we fit with the time difference. So the difference between that, it sounds really simple and possibly oversimplified, but it's just time. But it's still going to be hard. I mean, being global is still going to be hard because people are not going to be awake when you're streaming. A lot of that, honestly, I think that comes to good content management and being a presence on YouTube as well. Yeah, and I also guess people want to be awake. I mean, to make people want to be awake when...

00:56:02when you are streaming there's a certain person in this channel talking with us right now who has had some really late nights on my channel just so he could come in and make my day a whole lot worse so yeah i could tell you that i actually didn't um didn't ask you but are you one of those like destructive dudes in the community oscar are you one of those that takes away all this all this good stuff are you paying bits for shots Yeah, I do heavily. I usually start when I see a huge cup of something, I say, how much spits to slam that one? I shouldn't have been surprised. He has very, very good vision and awareness of what is going on, especially in the kitchen. When we still had this set up in the kitchen, he could see me pouring a very, very large quantity of liquor into a 32 ounce or a 40 ounce glass.

00:56:49that was usually when oscar came in to completely train wreck my entire stream and it worked very well thinking thinking about it i'm not at all surprised yeah there are a couple of times that my mods have asked and we now have this in here and i said that it is the mog rule because all three of my mods now can turn a key on their sides and end my stream because when i start the stream off by destroying an entire 32 ounce glass of belvedere and energy drink by about hour six i'm not even i'm on autopilot i am so insanely intoxicated because it starts a trend that they're like yo you literally streamed the last hour and 30 minutes and we don't even know if you were there you were on stream exactly you were definitely on autopilot physically there but your mind is longer yeah i do need to have some kind of something that keeps me going when i'm pulling like an all-nighter i remember one time

00:57:47i know it was something special when you started with interactive seven i think it was like four o'clock in the morning swedish time when you start streaming or half past three or something And then I said, yeah, something needs to happen in order for me to keep awake to like six in the morning or something like that when I kind of fell asleep at the computer. I'm always going to claim the MAG rule now, from now on. Yeah, I mean, it's a thing now. I didn't know about it, but now that it's out there, I mean, it's definitely out there. I didn't know this morning when I watched your show. Yeah, but we do now. I just had a glance and we're almost at that one hour mark. Are we already? Yeah, I mean, it happens every time, right? When you're having a good time, it creeps up on you. Anyway, I just wanted to say, if there's anything that you want to add in before we sort of summarize the show and say goodbye to everyone listening in, now's the time. What I can say is that the support that I've gotten, and actually I can pinpoint this back to a time specifically, Mog is a very, very...

00:58:54charitable person and when he finds content creators that he i think agrees with stands behind or just appreciates that they're doing it he shows support in ways that a lot of people do not and if it wasn't for oscar i don't know that we would even have started to consider possibly doing content creation full-time and that was one of the first outside of suna obviously that was one of the first eu representation that we had on my channel I don't forget when people support me and I'm very, very privileged that people like Mog have found the channel and have made some of these dreams a reality. Getting to get a green screen, getting to get a better camera, upgrading my kit. People like that that come through and make it where we can be more professional, giving me a little insight on what he thinks possibly would help the channel out in the long run. And never really like, it's not like every single week I get a hold of Oscar and I'm like, hey, so it would make my stuff better.

00:59:44But every once in a great again, he will drop in some really interesting information and being open to that and him having the time to give us that information has done mass dividends of good for my channel. We're thankful for all of our supporters, but I don't forget the guys that have come through in mass and really made a difference and made it where this could be a real possibility that we become content creators full time. Very cool. We should probably just just mention that for anyone who's listening in that we can you can catch DJ Soundstorm obviously on Twitch. But there's also a YouTube channel. And yeah, for the EU crowd, Monday is the day, obviously. But I would imagine that you have your past streams up on your video section on the Twitch page. We very much do. And as of this point, because I am still in the search, we're waiting. We're in that gray area where we can't.

01:00:35honestly pay for someone to be making that YouTube content where it's a clipped version of the stream. But we are exporting almost all of our streams to YouTube so people can watch all of those in its entirety on Twitch and also on YouTube. Right. And your Twitch name is DJ Soundstorm, right? So that's like one word. Yeah. So people can find you easily. Very, very cool. Oscar, do you have any last question you want to squeeze in? Yeah. Yeah. One last question is kind of. Just for my own curiosity, what is your favorite brand of booze? I, okay. So I have two. I have two personally that I feel are just above every other in both. One's a bourbon and one's a vodka. Belvedere. is actually my absolute favorite vodka second only to kettle one being as smooth as it is and the fact that they haven't over filtered everything or left a lot of extras the hangovers are almost non-existent i feel i can function the next day and get right back on with my day after a night of enjoying myself in the bourbon department i have said this and a lot of people don't know this the company rabbit hole from the united states makes some of the best

01:01:43bourbon they have different versions of that bourbon and it's very hard to find anywhere but the united states but as a company that is relatively new they have a very old flavor that they've worked on for a very long time and it is fantastic for the dollar amount and those two quite easily are my my favorite spirits okay so those sounded like some great liquor tips for sure i'll have to write both of those down on a paper somewhere because i'm a fan of both whiskey and bourbon so i'll add those to my ongoing list i will also take this chance to thank you for a great show it's been an hour and the time just flew by as it usually does when we start jabbering away it's been very intriguing to hear you talk about both your djing career and also your transitioning from being a sort of live

01:02:37content creator to being a digital content creator it's also been very fun to hear about the type of community that you build for yourself and how they interact with you and how you kind of want them to interact with you and how you respond to interactions from them like um mog for instance also it's been very fun to hear how you want to grow your channel over time and and your vision for the future was also inspiring to hear about i should just once again mention that if you want to catch dj soundstorm it is easiest to do that on twitch but there's also youtube and there's also twitter and if you want to do that and you are located in the eu monday is the best day to do that if you want to catch some stuff from our podcast crew the best places to do that would be on spotify and also on soundcloud and if you want to catch some gaming content from us you'll find quite a bit of it on reggie's corner variety gaming but i don't think i have anything more of value to add so i'll just pass the bucket on to oscar to finish this up in style yeah and with that we thank

01:03:54the soundstorm for a really nice show and we hope to catch you soon live on stream well it is always a pleasure and thank you guys again so much for having me this has been an absolute pleasure and with that i would say thank you for tonight and take care and hopefully we hear you out soon so goodbye for now