'I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy, because they know what it's like to feel absolutely worthless, and they don't want anyone else to feel like that.' - Robin Williams
Who is chEfnEgAtIvE?
Sooo, backstory history time! I know you were born in Puerto Rico and moved to the states at a young age. Do you remember living there and do you ever visit? Where do you live now and what brought you there?
So I was born in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, which is basically the opposite corner of San Juan, the area most people are familiar with, and I grew up in Lajas for about 5 years. We moved to south Florida when I was just under 5 years old because my dad was offered job opportunities in the US that offered a lot more than the jobs in Puerto Rico, and he wanted to give us that better lifestyle stateside. We frequently flew back to Puerto Rico throughout my childhood, once or twice a year until I hit my late teens, so I distinctly remember the houses I grew up in there, my grandparents houses, the playground I used to play on, the arcade I used to go to there, and all the local spots my parents would take me to.
I sadly have not been back to Puerto Rico since 2019. Ever since Hurricane Maria did some damage there resulting in an even less stable power grid than before, the increased cost of travel and car rental, and the thought of having to go through that with my kids we just haven't made it happen yet, though I hope to soon!
I currently still reside in south Florida, we only ever moved once when my sister was born but never out of the state. I bought a house about 30 minutes north of where I grew up and went to elementary, middle, and high school, where I live with my wife and two kids. It's a super family friendly area with good schools so I don't see us moving out of state any time soon, but life always throws curveballs so never know. My wife and I for sure wouldn't mind living somewhere cooler someday, but for now we are keeping the kids close to the grandparents, aka free babysitters.
You’ve been together with your coop buddy for 18 years! That’s incredible. Can you tell us how y’all met and who proposed and where? ^_^ I love a good love story! What’s something goofy/cute you love about her?
It is incredible and awesome and I am one lucky dude. We were actually acquaintances/friends for a few years through some mutual friends and overlapping friend circles, but the timing on more than friends wasn’t right until it was 😀 It was one of those things were we ended up seeing more of each other through that friend circle kind of randomly, then and hanging out and chatting more online (RIP AIM), and ultimately just started seeing each other differently. So no cheesy love at first sight story here haha was just a mutual evolution of feelings over time which honestly I do think helps build something stronger than acting on impulse 🙂
I proposed on our 5 year anniversary, after several not subtle hints from her over a solid year or so 😅 She didnt want to be in public for it or have too much attention drawn to her, so I decided to just set something up back at the condo we lived in at the time. I gave some friends of mine a key to the condo so while we were out on our anniversary date, which I miserably failed to properly plan because I was planning a proposal, they snuck in and set up a bunch of pictures of us from over the years; they also scattered some rose petals on the ground and around the pictures. They left me the ring in a quick easy access spot at the front of the condo hidden so I quickly grabbed it while she was looking at the set up and popped the question 😀 Not the flashiest, or craziest, or most romantic, but I like to think it was perfect for her which is really all that mattered and she said yes. 😅
Man goofy/cute things I love, would it be super cheesy to say everything? We're the kind of couple that compliments each other more than being super similar, so honestly everything about her completes everything I lack and it's pretty great. I will say one of my favorite things in recent years is her passion for baking and experimenting with all kinds of desserts which I have been directly benefitting from 😀 If you type !jamie in my twitch chat it takes you to her instagram for her baking and crochet projects, though lately much more baking, so you can see how spoiled I am 😀
Being so into music and a freaking musician, I wanna hear all about it! What age you were when you picked up your first instrument (I tried the cornet in 5th grade but wasn’t for me then bass in highschool), did you have parents that were into that stuff too, what do you enjoy playing the most? Ever write your own songs/tunes?
My parents were not really musicians so I didn't grow up around people playing instruments much, other than an uncle in Puerto Rico who I'd see around the holidays playing some Spanish holiday songs at our parties. I had some friends over the years that played guitar and stuff, but for whatever reason I never actually thought about learning for myself and jamming out until I was older.
I didn’t start playing any instruments until late high school, maybe like 2003? I honestly wish I had gotten into it earlier and taken it more seriously because I would be way better by now. My sister was the one that asked for a guitar and lessons, and my parents asked me if I'd be interested as well so I decided to give it a shot. After about a week or two she dropped it and I ended up with two acoustic guitars and kept going 😀 I stayed in lessons for about two and a half years with some different teachers. Of the teachers I had there is one guy that stands out to me the most in terms of helping me learn and progress after I got through the basics. Once I got decent enough to play some songs he actually had me bring in CDs of songs I wanted to learn and he would figure them out by ear on the spot, teach me the guitar part, and teach me the music theory behind the guitar part. It was honestly a really cool way to learn the theory side of things so I was able to pick it up and retain it as well as improving the playing.
During that era of learning I was listening to a lot of Coheed and Cambria, so they forever hold a special place in my heart as the band I learned guitar with since I would have him teach me their songs. To this day playing Coheed songs is still one of my favorites. Another one I really love to play is a pretty heavy metalcore band called Every Time I Die. I usually try to play their songs at the beginning or end of my stream because usually the room completely clears out as they are a pretty acquired taste, even my wife peaces out of the stream when ETID plays 😅 Warped Tour bands in general is my vibe so I love playing all sorts of Pop Punk, Emo, Screamo, Metalcore, etc, but taking requests to find new music and just practice different styles can be fun too!
After several years of playing guitar, the era of Guitar Heros and Rock Bands came and I found myself really enjoying playing Rock Band Drums. I got to a point where I was getting full combos on expert and thought to myself: “this doesn't seem that far off from actually just playing drums, I should really learn.” Around 2010 I had my parents stockpile my birthday present, college graduation present, and some Christmas present budget and I went in on the drum set I have in my room today with my dad 50/50. A year or two after messing around on that kit by myself I signed up for lessons where I learned to clean up some of my bad habits, and some fundamentals you don't get from Rock Band. Favorites to play on drums would be Dance Gavin Dance, Every Time I Die, and A Static Lullaby. A Static Lullaby’s “Rattlesnake” album is my drum goal. If I could play that clean start to finish I’d be content with my skills 😅
From knowing how to play guitar, I was able to figure out Bass pretty easily, and from the theory I learned on guitar, I was able to apply that to learning a little bit of keyboard. At that point I had a decent foundation of Guitar, Bass, Drums, Keyboard, and I definitely did start writing my own stuff. I'm familiar enough with everything to compose and layer it all, however the big piece I am missing is actually recording it all together. While I have written tons of songs I’ve never really recorded them in a way that was worth sharing with people, other than some myspace era songs my friends and I would make for fun that were incredibly unserious. Claim to fame though something like 20 years ago my BS incredibly unserious myspace emo band was in Brie Larson's top 8 on her page so 😎
Where is a dream vacation you’d like to have? Give us 3 things you’d wanna do there. Ever traveled to a place you’d suggest and why?
I've never been a big traveler and being married to someone who's afraid to fly has kept travel pretty off my radar. We never even did a honeymoon because we just didn't want to go anywhere! I have thought about this though and I think my dream trip would be somewhere drastically different from what I've been around all my life. I've honestly never seen snow in real life and in my head Colorado seemed like a solid place to experience that. Hang in a cabin or something and maybe try some snowboarding and other things I've never gotten to really be around. Other than that PAX West is my favorite event I've ever been to and I really want to go back because it was just 5 floors of video games and board games to play. Would definitely recommend that to anyone who enjoys playing different types of games and indie games and board games 😀
You have a pretty fierce beard! Have you ever had to shave it all the way off?!
Hah! I trim it back every four months or so, we don't let it hit the level of fierce I hit during Covid/Quarantine 😅. It's been YEARS since I went fully clean shaven. It works out that I'm lazy about shaving and that my wife and daughter both like the beard! I actually dressed up as Ernest P. Worrell from the Ernest movies for Halloween years ago and I went fully clean shaven. When I showed up to work in costume the people that I talked to every day completely ignored me and had no idea who I was. I can't imagine going fully clean shaven again but maybe ill make it a subathon thing one day 😂
What do you do for a living? I feel like when you lurk on twitch during the day, you’re always on the phone! Did you have any fun jobs as a kid too? I worked at a donut shop (paid in cash under the table lol), gamestop and babysat!
I have a Masters Degree in Computer Science so I’ve been a software developer for about 15 years now. When you first started streaming I was a Senior Software Developer and I just sat at my computer all day cranking code out, making it really easy to chat and hang out on stream, but as time went on I kept getting moved up the ladder and taking on overseeing teams and more responsibilities. I'm currently a Senior Director of Software Engineering and oversee like 5 teams of software developers on and off shore for different tech stacks and things like web dev, back end dev, etc. My day basically consists of meetings in the mornings with my teams to make sure they're all good and their tasks are unblocked, and meetings in the afternoons with clients and stakeholders to clarify more things for my teams to do. I also get random unscheduled calls throughout the day as things come up for me to talk through with people, which is why I'm constantly on and off mute 😅
While the current gig isn't the coolest most exciting thing, my first job was super fun. When I turned 16 I got a job at a local arcade and I got to run all kinds of attractions like mini golf, a rock climbing wall, the prize counter, bumper boats, etc. They had a batting cage people didn't seem to really know about or use and when I got scheduled there I was beating games on my DS it was great! I also got to run laser tag quite a lot which was super fun. I would blast all my emo jams through the speakers and put on a vest and beat everyone from the entrance door 😀
Are there any new hobbies you’ve been wanting to try and why? Or ones you used to do that you want to go back to? Like golfing, knitting, catching grass hoppers?
Oh yeah I have two big ones. As I mentioned before, over the years I learned how to play guitar, bass, drums, some simple keys, and enough music theory that I can compose, but I never learned to put it all together and record something. I had it on my radar this year to try and learn simple techniques for recording so I can actually record music, even something like simple loops for my twitch channel. I've made very slow progress because it turns out I really don't enjoy that process as much as I enjoy just writing and playing the music but im still slowly working at it ☠️ My hope was to get that figured out this year and then next year the one I really want to go back to is game development.
Many years ago, in another life, I tried to make a game with some friends and I really liked where it was going, but the project sadly fell apart and never ended up getting released; fun fact the intro, brb, and ending songs on my twitch are songs from that game that my friend made. I've had some game concepts I’ve been sitting on for a long time that I would love to finally make, and I would love to build the skills up to make more. My kids really like to draw so I've actually been practicing up my drawing skills to see if I can handle dev, art, and music/sfx for a game sometime in the next two years. I would want to make SNES era 2D indie type stuff which I think I should be able to solo, or maybe I’ll contract my wife and daughter since they can draw way better than me 😅
What’s a fun fact we may not know about you that you’d like to share with the L337FL337? Any fears you are willing to admit? I used to collect dead dragonflies as a young kid in the back of my bike pouch… I hate pool drains and blue toilet water!
Alright so ill give a little for each of these.
For fun fact that we didn't cover in the other questions I’ll throw out there that rather than a comfort show I always fall back to, I have a comfort movie genre. I love cheesy, bad, campy horror movies. I just watched Zombeavers and I can't recommend it enough, the dialogue was just off the wall ridiculous and so was the whole movie. Anything along those lines of ridiculous bad horror like Syfy shark movies always puts a smile on my face. I would love nothing more than to land a role being killed by something ridiculous like a Zombeaver in a movie some day. Fun fact to the fun fact: Through a series of really random events, and some luck, I actually ended up in a pilot for a video game version of ridiculousness so I do have some acting experience. Maybe one day I’ll do a subathon and make it a goal to watch that thing on stream 😅
For collection I got a weirder one for ya. I used to keep a box of chewed bubble gum in my room that I filled almost like a guest book when people would come hang out at my house. It started with Fruit Stripe gum so people would chew for like 3 seconds before they wanted to spit it out and add it to the collection; this is part of what inspired me to have my wife make the giant fruit stripe zebra that hangs in my stream/music room! After I moved out my parents for whatever reason didn't toss that thing for years and when I last saw it it was moldy, dusty, and gross AF!
Fears I’ll admit to? Balloons. Fucking hate balloons. Popping noises in general just make me really uncomfortable.
Have you ever pulled off a (harmless) prank on someone? Clifford placed a bunch of fake dead roaches around our house once and I hated it so much haha. In the fridge, under the toilet seat, on top of the washing machine…
Definitely a few in my day but one that stands out was actually at work years ago. My first job as a software developer was in a relatively professional cubicle environment. A large portion of the team and leadership were very traditional Chinese individuals and they were pretty strict; I’m talking clocking in and out to a salaried position kind of strict. The office was usually pretty quiet, mostly just head down coding from start to finish, but I did not let that stop me from messing with a coworker of mine.
One day a buddy in a different department showed me that he had this little prank noisemaker that would make configurable noises at a random time interval; it was designed to mess with people. I decided I had no choice but to mess with my QA buddy that sat on the other side of me, and while he was away from his desk I set that thing up behind his drawers. I set it up to make the sound of children laughing every 5 to 10 minutes or so and it went beautifully. After a few times of the sound playing my friend started losing it, asking if other people were hearing kids laugh. Most people worked with headphones on so he was the only one hearing it because it was right at his desk and as time went on he was sure he was hearing children laughing and going nuts.
After about an hour of that sound going at random intervals I look over and he is DISMANTLING his desk and taking out everything inside looking for the source of the sound. It took him about 30 minutes to move his cabinets out and find the noisemaker taped to the back of it and he made a huge mess 😂 I was dying laughing but needless to say the bosses only reaction was “ooof, how long was he looking for that on the clock?”
What are some of your most fun concerts you’ve ever been to? Who would you want to see that you haven’t? Seen any bands more than once?! Ultimate Q: Have you crowd surfed?! I have! Hahaha
This is such a hard question to answer because I have been to a TON of concerts over the years. If you ever tune into one of my drum streams my wife actually took all my saved concert tickets from over the years and put them in some full size movie posters I hung up behind the kit; and that's not even all of them with how many digital tickets you get now!
I went to a lot of Warped Tours in my day that created a lot of great memories. I think I went to maybe 12-13 of them in different years and it was always my favorite festival. The bands were always from genres I wanted to check out and discover from, and just bands I wanted to see all day 10am-10pm. I was there at the last date of the last Warped Tour before they went on hiatus from it being an annual thing and it was epic. To see one of my favorite bands, Every Time I Die, put the nail in the coffin to my favorite festival was pretty up there in terms of favorite and most memorable concerts. One of my favorite songs to close my guitar/drum streams on is Map Change by ETID because that was the last song I saw performed at that last Warped Tour!
There's definitely a lot of bands I haven't seen that I want to see. My more likely to happen smaller act would be Rain City Drive, they for whatever reason never come to South Florida. My bigger bucket list artist that I really want to see that I've never seen is System of a Down, that would be a hell of a show. The problem with them is I wouldn't want to travel for it and I don't want to be in a sea of people for it. I want to be able to see and hear well so not sure how that will happen but hopefully one day!
There are so many bands I have seen tons of times. I think New Found Glory holds the crown because they are from South Florida and they would just show up whenever a band called in sick for a concert, I've likely seen them like 13-14 times. Other than them I have definitely seen Coheed and Cambria in the double digits as well and I would go see them again. I really just love live music. It's always a different experience when they are touring a different album or era.
No crowd surfing for me. I think I saw too many people get dropped on their heads and come out bleeding. I never trusted randoms to keep my 6’2 ass up without dropping me 😅 Mosh pits are another story though I have been in a few of those. My favorite I ever jumped in was for Scary Kids Scaring Kids 😀
NERDY QUESTIONS
Let’s start with gamertag/username. What exactly does chefnegative mean?! Are you a chef that likes to cook and be negative about the outcome? ;P jk but I am curious
Hah so to clear up this common misconception I am not a chef or even close, I don't know that I can actually cook anything 😅 This is going to be a two parter because I actually started off with CHEF and the negative was added later for my AIM screen name; dating myself hard with two AIM callouts in this interview ☠️
On the Nintendo 64 I had this basketball game called NBA Hangtime, random because I am not a sports guy at all, that was super arcadey and fun sort of like NBA JAM. I would always fire that game up and get destroyed after playing against like 3-4 teams in the campaign but it was fun to keep trying to see if I could beat it. One day I decided to create a character in that game and I needed a four letter name for that character, because that's all the game would accept, so I ended up using CHEF from something I saw in my room; I think from a South Park thing I had of CHEF. For the first time ever I actually beat the entire game using my newly created CHEF character and from that triumph was born the nickname CHEF!
The Negative part of the name came in later when I got a pc set up and I needed a screen name that was longer than four letters. I don't remember what prompted the conversation but at some point a friend of mine started listing off all kinds of names with CHEF in them and I remember two were chefnegative and chefpositive. I ended up really liking chefnegative as a nod to the villain from Darkwing Duck, Negaduck, and I used the screen name chEfnEgAtIvE with Negaduck as my little profile icon. I can't remember why I capitalized all the vowels but that is the full origin story of that 😀
Hi fellow Pokémon fanatic like me!!! What was your first introduction to Pokémon? Was it the tv show, movie, card game, video game? I’m going to date myself, but I played Red and Blue on Gameboy with my twin brother. I had Blue. I’ve been told I had to catch them all nearly my entire life and keep trying. Haven’t done it yet ffs! Did you ever play pokemon cards matches at events as a kid? We used to go to Books-A-Million as kids haha! Not sure how you’ve gone this long without an auto catcher for Pokémon Go!
Pokémon for me started when the tv show aired in the US. I remember I kept seeing the commercials since I always watched cartoons before school, so I gave that one a shot the day it aired and never looked back. That day at school I was talking to a friend about it and some other classmates who I hadn't really talked to before joined in and it immediately brought us together. That group of pokebuddies went on to play through the video games, the cards, and eventually to make up my groomsmen at my wedding!
Red was my first game and I am proud to say I was the first at my middle school to catch them all! Shout out to my one friend for deleting his save file to give me the bulbasaur I needed; though it wasn't to help me as much as it was to prevent our other friend from being the first I still appreciate you. I've caught them all in a few of the titles, most recently in Violet before the DLC dropped.
I played the card game a lot in middle school but never really took it to any events. A few years ago right before covid I was playing with a friend casually and we started doing the prerelease events which were the best! Every time a set drops Pokemon releases these 20$ kits that come with like a 30 card premade deck and 3 booster packs to basically draft cards and make something on the fly. I loved that model because there was no meta and it was hard to know what you were doing, it just really let you get creative with what you had. Ever since those days though the market has gotten crazy, those kits aren't easy to come by, and the events fill up and require being on site when a shop opens, so I haven't been able to do any in years. I have friends that I could definitely go to events with again, but were waiting for the craze and scalping to die down. I will for sure go back to one of those prerelease events some time. They were a blast and a fun way to open some packs and I honestly did pretty decently at them, I think I got second place a few times!
Shoutout to you, twitch streamer! Tell us what motivated you to start streaming, your current schedule + game lineup, and any fond memories and or goals you’d like to share.
What motivated me to start streaming was actually my wife kicking me out of the bedroom when my son was born and he was sleeping in our room. My kids' rooms are adjacent to each other in this house and once we brought him home we didn't want to leave him crying in his room and waking up the first kid, so we let him sleep in our bedroom for a bit. I was playing a good amount of Apex Legends at the time with a friend or two and the rage got me booted out of the bedroom because I would wake my son up yelling about trash footstep audio. I set up to game in my music room, now music and stream room, but my wife still wanted to watch me play, so I fired up the stream. She mentioned it was better watching me that way because she could actually hear my friends talking to me so I kept up with it!
Current stream schedule I fire it up when the kids go to sleep so my time slot is 9:15pm - 11:15pm EST. The games and nights may switch around, but the time slot will remain the same. I'm pretty good about keeping the schedule on my twitch profile up to date. I stream variety so all week its different things but the current lineup is:
Monday: Fight Night! I always loved fighting games growing up and kind of fell off of them over time without a group to play with. This is one of the great things streaming has brought me is a crew of people who also have a passion for fighters to try out different fighters and just mess around learning together. 🥊
Tuesday: Sometimes Spooky, sometimes just Coop with friends! This is where we throw in stuff like Devour, Content Warning, Phasmophobia, PEAK, REPO, Lethal Company, Plate Up, etc. 👫👬
Wednesday: Golf With Friends! Every Wednesday I open up a lobby in Golf With Your Friends and I download 3 workshop maps that none of us have ever seen or played. Collision enabled for better or worse so always a fun time ⛳
Friday: Friday Night Jams! I switch between Clone Hero Drums and Rocksmith Guitar taking requests or just playing whatever I feel like trying if I got new charts. 🎸🥁
Saturday: Solo Saturday! This is where I usually go through my backlog of single player games. This can range from silly dating sims, indie platformers, all the way to bigger releases. I just wrapped up the Silent Hill 2 remake so I will likely do some indies before jumping into Resident Evil 4 or Hi-Fi Rush
Fond memories really comes down to the people I've met along the way! I've met lots of people through streaming that have been awesome to talk to, and game with, and even a handful of helpful individuals who are much better than me at whatever I am playing, but will hang out and be all too excited to help me grow and improve. Definitely grateful for them all because that's really what makes streaming fun 🙂
As far as goals I've been slowly working on streaming to additional platforms so I'm live on Twitch, TikTok, and Youtube now! May look into adding Kick just because StreamElements supports it and why not? Other than the multistreaming I did want to make new songs for my intro, brb, and outro that I write myself as well as a channel trailer. Growth goals I honestly haven't set any because I am still just doing this for fun and to play games with people, but we'll see if I set any next year!
You’re very good at editing videos and posting to social media with your clips. Any tips and tricks you’d like to share with anyone out there that wants to start streaming?
Hah! I definitely disagree about being good at editing videos I am super lazy and minimalistic 😅 I honestly use CapCut because it is the easiest and just gets a clip with a little text out quickly. I keep the clips pretty simple, usually I just post something I’ve clipped while live or maybe a snippet of me playing a song from a music stream; so not a lot of editing or highlights because those take a bit more time to make and I dont think ive seen any large difference in views.
I try to post to TT and YT Shorts basically every day that I am going to stream and I try to upload a clip of that game from a previous session. For game clips I usually try to use the clip button on my stream deck if something happens that's worth clipping so I have all those on my Twitch. For music streams I actually download the VODs and grab snippets of me playing songs from every VOD that I keep in a folder to post eventually. It takes longer to clip those myself but I get plenty of clips from each stream to schedule for later so I have a folder to choose from if I want to post a certain band or something. Longer form content on YT I haven't quite figured out yet, I may need to actually make thumbnails and spend more time there 😅
Tips just make sure you get clips while you are playing because it'll save you the time of looking later! Elgato has a free stream deck app that gives you 6 free buttons, that's what I use currently, and just map one to take a clip so you can do it yourself if viewers aren't clipping. I honestly think TikTok is pay to win so no advice there; I find it really weird all my clips stop around 2-300 views and I get ads from TikTok to sponsor my posts if I want to break out of the 2-300 view jail; I actually got one last week telling me they could get my clip to 6k views for nine bucks. For TT I noticed no real difference in views if I just share straight from Twitch so I've just been doing that. For YT for whatever reason I found that sharing your clip from Twitch to YT directly seems to perform significantly worse than a straight upload of the same type of clip with the same hashtags. I think YT needs time to analyze your clip and make use of the other things you can set when you direct upload so make sure you upload directly to YT and try to schedule your clip several hours out at a minimum. Thats how ive been doing it and seeing decent numbers on the shorts at least for someone of my level 😅
Have you ever met any voice and/or actors at any events? What convention have you never been to that you hope to attend one day?
Oh yeah tons I love going to conventions. We actually have a movie poster from season one of the Walking Dead downstairs signed by a pretty large portion of the cast which was cool to get signed and meet all those people. Random fun fact I almost got in a fight with Claimer Joe from the walking dead when he was signing my poster, I don't think our humor was quite on the same page 😅 Other favorites would be Robert Englund (Freddy), Bruce Campbell, Adam West and Burt Ward, and Stan Lee 😀
I'm not a big traveler, and I don't think I would love being in a big super packed convention like comiccon, so I can't really think of any that I've never been to that I would want to physically be at. I'll just say PAX maybe at one of the other locations? PAX West with friends is my favorite that I would love to go back to some day.
What’s the goofiest thing you have ever done on your stream before? How did it all happen and is it clipped?! I got to pie Clifford in the face and playing Celeste with socks on was pretty tough!
Haha I dont think anything like that has come up for me yet. Maybe if I ever do a longer stream or subathon or birthday thing, but so far I keep the streams to my 2 hour time slot which doesn't leave a lot of room for craziness. I think the worst thing I've had so far was I stabbed my fingertip with a rogue string switching guitars and started bleeding. It hurt a bit and I still had like 30 minutes left of stream so I played through it in pain, just constantly checking for blood that I didn't want on my guitars or anything really because I’m pretty squeamish when it comes to IRL blood 😅
Do you ever pay attention or keep up with any game devs/companies and which is your most go-to type of genre of video games?
Oh absolutely. I loved watching E3 back in the day and I even got to go once! I love watching any conference I know is happening from the bigger ones like Nintendo down to the Devolver Digital or more indie ones. I actually took inspiration from Shank in your discord and started doing little writeups for them in my discord whenever I catch any with my thoughts on the games and trailers for any friends interested.
For most go-to genres I think Nintendo has been really knocking it out of the park for me. There are a lot of Switch 2 games either out or coming soon that I really want to play. Other than the Nintendo IPs I love any indies that honor the SNES era of gaming. Whether it's a faithful SNES style game, or a modern take with some upgrades, that's the stuff that always gets me excited. The two most recent ones I saw that got wishlisted right away were Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound and Shinobi: Art of Vengeance. Action games like that I always really enjoy, The Messenger still remains one of my favorite indies I’ve played to date for any Ninja Gaiden fans that want a great modern love letter to those games! I haven't seen any new platformers recently in conferences I’ve watched, but I love tougher platformers like the Super Meat Boy games, Celeste, and Bzzzt that I think you caught me playing one night on stream. Those games are super satisfying to clear tough areas in 😀
Do you finish a lot of the games you start? Or tend to put them aside and never go back to them? I used to finish almost all my xbox360 games, but I feel like I’ve lost my interest in finishing a lot of games but it could be because of streaming tbh. Next one I’m ready to beat is Lost in Random… on last boss fight! Ughhhh
I definitely try to finish everything I start, unless I start it and find that there's stealth. Fuck stealth. Stealth is a kiss of death for a game; I once deleted a Spongebob game I was playing because I had to use a tiptoe mechanic to catch a jellyfish. No tolerance for that ☠️
Aside from that I am usually pretty committed once I start something. I just finished Mario Wonder off stream and plan to start Mario & Luigi Brothership next. I try not to start new single player games if I'm in the middle of one and I usually just make playing through them part of my stream schedule which keeps me going through it. I do like that sense of accomplishment of seeing the credits roll, and I like having the full playthroughs of the games I beat up on my youtube; it's fun to look back 🙂
Were you more on team Nintendo or Genesis growing up? Xbox or Playstation? All of the above?! My twin brother got a PlayStation 1 and I got the Xbox so he went down the final fantasy route where I went down the halo one… never had a genesis, so I missed out on all the sonic days!
All of the above. Video games were a big part of my childhood and I locked myself up in my room and left my parents alone so I guess that made them want to encourage it 😀 I started on the NES but I also had SNES, Sega, N64, PS1, Xbox, GameCube, PS2, PS3, X360, PS4, X1, and PS5. I fell off of Xbox after the Xbox One because they kinda stopped putting out exclusives that I enjoyed as more things went cross platform so I never got motivated to pick up a Series X or anything else from them.
For the modern console wars I often picked what console to buy the game for based on the controller. For me Xbox is where I want to play games that use two thumbsticks (FPS), and Playstation is where I want to use the Dpad (fighters, 2d platformers, etc). The covid era got me set up on PC though and that's where I do most of my gaming now and just use a controller as needed on there; same logic for ps controller or xbox hooked up to pc.
I loved playing all kinds of different games and genres on all the consoles, but if I had to pick a favorite it would be SNES. That era is honestly my favorite era visually and mechanically and I love finding and playing modern indies that honor that era of gaming!
What video game characters would you like to go golfing with? Would any one of them be good or bad at the game and why? I feel like Sonic for example could potentially cheat and zoom to place the ball where he wants it without us even knowing!
Frank West (Dead Rising), Augustus Cole (Gears obviously), and Handsome Jack (Borderlands 2). I think we would all suck and rage differently, but equally. Would be a fun crowd 😂
Favorites
Guitar brand: My Gibson Explorer is hands down my favorite to play. It just feels the best in my hands no question and sounds fantastic for whatever I’m trying to play with it.
Pokemon from Gen 3: oh man this is a tough toss up between Gardevoir and Sharpedo. I'll give it to Gardevoir just because I use the Mega more for Go Raids.
Childhood toy: Video games played a massive part in my childhood so the easy answer would be all the consoles, especially the SNES. I was a big action figure kid so I had tons of Ninja Turtles, Transformers, Power Rangers, etc that I would play with all the time, but if I were to pick something that stands out and isn't a video game console, I think I’d go with the Creepy Crawlers machine. I think growing up in the era of Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark just put me on a path towards creepy stuff, so being able to make my own little creatures to play with was always really fun. I remember I had a set where you could make parts of monsters and mix and match the arms/legs/bodies/heads/etc to make different creatures which I definitely made a ton of!
Sushi roll: I have nothing for this one. I don't eat any seafood or sushi. Catch me at Popeyes if I’m eating out 😀
Instagram reel: You may regret asking me this… This is hands down my favorite content creator and I honestly can't help but laugh every time his reels come up. My wife even got me his official calendar autographed made out to me for our wedding anniversary this year which hangs behind me on stream. If you're ever in my Twitch chat and type !daddy this is what you get: “In an alternate universe this is the content I would be making https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1reS39pEQ-”
Drink of Choice (alcoholic or non): Non alcoholic I know this is boring but I’m a water guy, that's my go to with my meals and on stream tbh. If we were talking about alcohol I’m not a heavy drinker that ever really likes feeling it, but there's some great brewers out there making some fantastic beers and ciders. When I go out with friends I like to do 5oz samples of two stouts, something desserty like chocolate/coffee/vanilla, and two ciders, also desserty. Key lime pie cider is a recent home run.
Scary Game: I really like the weirdness and vibe of the Silent Hill games so I would most likely say that series is my favorite but I’m going to give a special shout out to The Dark Pictures Anthology games. I got to co-op this series with one of my best friends and with our powers combined we got almost everyone in the cast killed. It's a blast with solid jump scares and some violent deaths.
Animated Movie: When I was younger I would have said Who Framed Roger Rabbit. As a kid I thought it was the coolest thing in the world to have cartoons and real people interacting. Lately though I've been really into the animation of the newer/modern Mickey Mouse cartoon they have on Disney Plus. If you haven't watched the Duck The Halls Christmas special it's unhinged and the animation is hilarious and awesome and I love it and wish I could draw like that.
Video editing tool: I'm such a lazy minimalist. I am a CapCut guy because it gets the job done, has an easy to use UI, and doesn't overwhelm with features I won't be using for my current needs.
Swear word: I tried so hard to answer all this without swearing and here we had to end on this one 😀 So I swear a lot on stream and off stream. I think too much attitude era WWE, South Park, and that KoRn NuMetal era I got into rock music with got us here. I choose to believe that meme that people who swear a lot are smarter/more intellectual because I just want it to be true. I’m big on ‘Jesus Titty Fucking Christ’ and ‘Fuck Me’ I want to say. Before my daughter turned 2 I actually left for work one day and she dropped her pacifier in front of my wife and let out a ‘Fuck Me,’ which while contextually accurate my wife was not amused. TLDR; nothing beats a good Fuck.
THANKIES <3 L337Lauren