Big thanks to Bosslogic for another great banner! http://www.dabosslogic.com

Hi guys, this episode has been a long time coming, and we’ve finally convinced one of the most hardworking men in the fighting game community to sit down with us. Justin “Bugsimus” Creed has pretty much pioneered the entire business of streaming fighting games in Melbourne over the last three years from his own pocket and expertise. Without him there would be no SNL streams, much less world-class streams such as the BAM or Shadowloo Showdown streams. (SS2012 had near 20k viewers during the finals.)

Bugs is just a rock solid good dude, and is one of the biggest pillars supporting the Melbourne fighting game community. In this episode I managed to get Igor to return for just one episode to co-host, seeing as Igor was part of Bug’s staff for the BAM and SS streams and understands a fair bit about the technology. I figured that I would need his help, being an AV noob.

We talk about a fair few topics in this podcast; such as the blood sweat and tech behind his streams, how he grew from Forza recordings to creating his own stream team “Team Bugs”, streaming SS and Diablo, cameras and microphones, how much he hates certain big screen TVs, Shadowlogic, the community in general and just how he manages to keep his passion going.

I hope you guys enjoy the interview, and let us raise a glass (filled with alcoholic beverage to butter Bugs) to one of the silent heroes of our community.

You can find Bugs at:

Twitter: @Bugsimus

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bugsimus

Team Bugs Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tb.teambugs

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Don’t be a Scrub Podcast Episode 24: Bugsimus

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Don’t be a Scrub Podcast Episode 24: Bugsimus

Muttonhead: Alright, so today we have Bugs with us. Aka Justin Creed, the mastermind behind everything stream-wise in Australia.

Spidercarnage: I just wanna call you Sabertooth.

Bugsimus: Why? (Laughs.) Where does that even come from?

S: Creed! Sabertooth.

B: Ohhh.

M: But he’s Justin Creed!

S: Creed is Sabertooth’s last name…

M: I know but…

S: I believe it’s Jason…

M: Isn’t it Victor Creed?

S: Nah, Victor Creed, that’s right.

M: Don’t you wear a Wolverine shirt sometimes?

B: Yeah I’ve got one, yeah.

M: Do you have a Sabertooth shirt?

B: No Sabertooth. Heh.

M: Heheh. But yeah.

1)      Tell us about Bugs. How did you get your name and how did you get started in fighting games?

B: The name actually came from playing MMOs.

Well actually it probably originally started when I was an apprentice, when I started in the printing industry. And I was doing my apprenticeship and learning from the tradesmen there.

And they just started calling me like Bugalugs. You know, just to…I dunno. Because I was like the young kid in town. It was like “Go on Bugalugs. Do this. Do something… whatever.”

And during that time I started playing an MMO. And I had to name a character. And it was a medieval game.

M: What was this, EverQuest or?

B: Nah, nah. It was…Dark Age of Camelot.

M: Ah.

B: First MMO that I played. And the character, I just ended up calling him Bugsimus Maximus.

M: Oh, sharp. Transformers reference. Cool.

And that carried on to your…

B: And that just carried on through to the next MMO which was like Final Fantasy XI or something. Whatever I played after that.

S: Was he more than meets the eye?

B: (Laughs.)

So yeah, the name kind of just stuck, really. I used it as my gamertag for Xbox and that. I used it…and people just obviously shortened it to Bugs, naturally.

M: Right. And from what you’ve told me, people at work call you that to this day right? They don’t call you Justin, they call you Bugs right?

B: Yeah. There’s a few people who came across with me to my current new job. But everyone in my previous job all called me Bugs. There was people there that didn’t even know my real name. They just called me Bugs heheh.

M: Does your family call you Bugs?

B: Ah no.

S: See, that’s when you know you have a good nickname. When people don’t even know your real name. And just call you by your nickname.

B: (Laughs.)

S: That also nicely ties in for his streaming. Because he fixes all the…bugs.

B: (Laughs.)

M: (Laughs.)

S: Oh that’s bad.

M: Dad joke!

S: We’re going to have to edit that out…that’s a James Chen joke right there.

B: (Laughs.)

S: We’ll have to edit that out.

M: But yeah, how did you get into fighting games? I first saw you in what? Vanilla…2010?

B: Yeah, I came in late in Vanilla. I played…so when Street Fighter IV came out, I just saw all the characters and like [said], “Ah, they’re all the ones that I remember from as a kid.” I didn’t play seriously at the arcade, but I liked Street Fighter when I was really really young. Like Street Fighter II and that.

And Street Fighter IV came out, and I tried playing that. And I had no idea how to uppercut or how to fireball or anything, playing Street Fighter IV.

And then when I finally learned how to do a special move, I thought that was like the best thing ever.

I played online for a quite a while, and then I met… I think playing online; I just talked to people a lot from Sydney originally. And then they showed me the Ozhadou forums.

M: So who was the first people that you kind of met online. Was it Shane (Gamogo) or those guys?

B: Nah, nah. I think it was Will.

S: Because Bugs was an IRC monster.

M: Ahh.

B: A little bit.

So anyway, I played that for a while. And I haven’t really gotten much better; I picked it up really slowly.

M: So then you were also known for being with the Whirlpool group right? So…

B: Ah yeah. I was already on Whirlpool anyway. Just talking games in general. Tech, and stuff like that.

But yeah again, there were also a few people on there who were also from the Ozhadou forums and stuff like that. And again they showed me these events and I always thought it would be cool to go out to an event. But I never went to one. And I said one time that I was going to go to some event that was in Knox. But then I never showed up. That was going to be my first event.

But then it ended up being not too long after. A Box Hill event.

M: Oh so your first tournament was a Box Hill event. So what character did you pick and how did you do?

B: And it was actually Ali who brought me in. Like talking to him…probably on Ozhadou. He was on there, and he’s like “Oh no, come down, come down!” He’s this very community driven person.

And I did, and I met him, and it was a pretty accommodating scene.

M: Ali was the guy to show me around when I first started as well.

S: You know, we should really do a poll to see how many people Ali sucked into the community. No pun intended.

Because he’s one of the reasons that I also stuck around as well.

M: The first point of contact is really important. For building a community.

S: Well yeah. He’s…yeah.

M: Yeah. I’m pretty sure a lot of people here would have a similar story to Bugs and myself. Just saw something on Ozhadou and came in, and there’s this big asshole- Arabic guy…

B: (Laughs.)

M: …Started being friendly. Heh.

S: The red gloves! You always remember the red gloves.

M: Yeah, yeah.

So yeah, that was your first tourney.

2)      Speaking of that, when did you meet your second-in-command, your love of your life, your Django- the one and only Rossco?

S: Rossco unchained?

B: (Laughs.)

Ah I met him on Whirlpool. He was on Whirlpool as well. And we talked about a lot of that. And it was again, I think it was going to a CouchWarriors event. And we were organising it, it was me, Rossco, and…

Well me and Rossco at first. And then I think Ryan?

M: Oh, Impakt?

B: Impakt, that’s him.

And then later on, Nick.

M: Killbox.

B: Killbox, yeah. Came on board. And we pretty much all just travelled together. Because we were all from like the Southeast.

M: The same area, yeah.

So did you guys like, know that from the start or it was…

B: Nah, again it was just discussed on like the forums and that. And it’s like; I’m coming, blah blah blah. And it’s like we’d get there but I’m stuck in Cranbourne or something. I don’t drive.

And I’m like, ah that’s not too far from me. I’ll pick you up, and let’s go. Because you know, having company and blablablah. Because I’m just one person going to a fairly large event. And if you come across with some friends or people that you know from online even and you go together…

S: It’s easier to mingle and break the ice.

B: It’s less nerve wracking I guess.

M: The good old days man. CouchWarriors…and…

S: Where we used to ruin people’s weddings!

B: That was at the convent right?

M: Yeah! That was an amazing place.

B: And it wasn’t too long after that that I met Brendon and stuff like that and started talking to him and watching him setup events and things like that.

M: Right. So when was the point when you transitioned from just being a player to being such a community guy? Was it talking to Brendon that it happened?

B: Yeah it was talking to Brendon…I think it was in one of the threads. There was a call out to bring equipment, because it was all community driven. I’ve got an Xbox, and blablablah, and I’m driving. I’ve got a car so it’s not too much hassle. So I just came and brought my Xbox and stuff.

But I didn’t have a monitor at that stage. I was only just playing off my LCD TV. So I’m pretty sure the first time I bought that, I went out and bought a monitor. So that I could have a whole complete setup with me.

So I bought my monitor and I get there…and they’re all BenQ. And I’m like ah! I’ve got a BenQ monitor too and blablablah. And that’s when he explained to me; that doesn’t-and it like’s 2 milliseconds…

And that doesn’t mean anything [to me], I had no idea, I didn’t know anything about lag at that stage.

S: Actually at that point I believe there were huge discussions about lag and LCDs on those days anyway.

B: Yeah.

M: I remember on the forums weren’t you one of the main guys who were actually manually testing all these screens out? You were testing the lag with your camera?

B: I’m pretty sure I was the only one doing that. As far as I can remember. I don’t know anyone else who was specifically testing…

M: So basically the whole Shadowloo and Couchwarriors love for BenQ is because of you?

B: Yeah.

M: Heheh.

B: Well they just happened to have BenQ screens that are…Brendon did some research on that just from forums. He didn’t test them himself, he just found someone who’d been using them and said that these were good monitors, or something along those lines.

S: Yeah there was also a thread on SRK. Going; if you can’t get an EVO monitor, here is a list.

B: I believe it derived from that. And the one I bought was almost the same, but it was an E series monitor. Not a G series monitor.

But he’s like, oh but we’ll use it anyway.

S: Which actually turned out to be better.

B: Yeah. Heh.

And obviously in the end for that one, it ended up being a really good monitor.

M: And is that now the flagship model that we use these days?

S: Nah we moved on.

B: Nah. It’s not…it’s because it’s a discontinued model.

M: Ah okay.

B: We’ve just moved onto their latest gaming [monitors.]

M: So how did you discover this process of how to test these monitors? You came up with this yourself?

B: Nah nah it was on the internet. There’s some testing sites that have timers and counters built in to refresh like 60 frames per second refresh screen and stuff like that. And then basically having a high speed camera and counting the difference between milliseconds and frames.

M: Right. So after that, the monitor thing, so how did you move onto to…I think the next thing I saw you doing was recording YouTube for them right?

B: Yeah. I was capturing stuff for YouTube. And that all started because of Forza!

M: Oh yeah yeah! Tell us about your love for Forza and everything.

B: Yeah!

I really loved playing that game. And you could make your own little video clips in the game. So you could go in and move the camera about and set up blablablah and then play it and capture certain scenes that were really cool.

But there was limitations in it. Like you could only do thirty seconds, and the quality would be not cool. And in order to retrieve your clip backwards it would upload through Xbox. And you go to the Forza site and you download it.

And then if you wanted to do anything that was longer than thirty seconds, you would have to do it like thirty seconds at a time.

M: Oh my god.

B: So that was really really annoying. So then I looked into how to record. Because I knew about FRAPS and stuff to record for PC. But I wanted to do something for Xbox. And I looked around and found a card that I thought- it’s 200 bucks, it’s pretty pricey, but I thought I’d give it a shot and try it out. And it ended up working out.

M: So then you had the gear to record…

B: Yeah. So I had the gear and I was at a Couchwarriors event and I told Loki I can potentially capture this. Because I’ve obviously seen the other US streams and Youtube videos and stuff like that. And I said we can record these finals and whatnot.

So I just brought in the whole PC, which was quite heavy at the time heh.

I had like a whole trolley and everything. Because I had it all set up. And I had the PC and everything. And I kind of set up to the side and just recorded top 8 vids.

It was a bit…

M: Wasn’t it really labour intensive?

B: Yeah. Um…

S: Well that convent walk was a bitch as well.

B: Yeah heh.

S: From the parking lot, you had to drag it all the way.

B: That’s why I ended up getting the trolley. Well I borrowed one. And then they took it back. And then it became hard again. (Laughs.)

S: So this would’ve been what? 2010?

B: Yeah, pretty early.

M: I think early 2010. Yeah.

S: So Super would’ve just come out.

M: Yeah Super. And then you did this for a while, and I remember it must’ve been a hell of a pain…like when you go home and upload the videos, like how much space are you talking about?

B: Yeah. Especially since I was doing it in an I guess, sort of an unconventional way. I was capturing uncompressed. I set up all the drives in that machine. That’s why it was so heavy. It was full of hard drives. And I had them all set up into a RAID to do high speed data writing. And I was able to capture nice uncompressed files. And I’d shove them into a program, and it’d take a while and then I’d compress them heaps just so they could upload to YouTube!

S: Well I mean, the thing with uncompressed format is…it’s really nice to edit. You have no restrictions.

B: And I really wanted to kinda get into like some video editing and stuff like that. Because I’ve seen Dave do it and that. And I thought it’d be pretty cool to learn. But then it just became really really labour intensive to learn and try to get these videos up in a timely fashion and stuff like that so.

So it didn’t really work out.

M: So what was the next stage of your evolution?

B: Well then we had access to the internet at venues and stuff like that. And then we moved onto streaming.

M: So when was the first venue that we had internet at? That would have been…

B: Mmm good question. I wonder if it was at BAM.

M: I think it would’ve been BAM right?

B: Probably BAM, the second one.

M: The second BAM right? But so was that the first stream, or had you done something previously?

B: Streamwise…I don’t think so…

M: So the first BAM was your first time ever streaming a live stream? And how did you put together? How did that come about?

B: I would’ve been testing at home and stuff. And I had this massive desk, and it was just sprawled with like mixers and stuff…

My biggest issue was always sound. How am I going to get all this sound? So that’s why I went out and bought this big mixer. Or small mixer, for the first one actually.

Because I really didn’t want…Because I’ve seen on some earlier streams at that time that a lot of audio syncing issues would happen and stuff like that.

M: Which mixer did you buy?

B: It was just a…not even sure of the brand. Some UK brand.

S: Was that second BAM that was a stream?

B: Second, yeah.

I didn’t go to the first BAM.

M: The first BAM wasn’t streamed. It was at that uh…

S: Ah okay. I don’t remember there being a stream for the second BAM. I mean I was there but…

M: Ah gee was it streamed? I remember there was YouTube videos of it.

S: There were YouTube videos. I thought the first stream was Shadowloo 1.

B: Maybe.

M: Our memories are fuzzy.

S: Pretty sure that Shadowloo 1 was the first stream that we did. Well, that you did. Because the second BAM was the one with the text file with the upcoming matches. And I’m pretty sure that wasn’t streamed.

M: So it would’ve been Shadowloo Showdown 1, which would’ve been in December of that year right?

So a few months after that.

B: I can’t even remember if I did any smaller events either.

S: No I’m pretty sure that Shadowloo 1 was the first stream that we were gonna do.

Because that was announced…because remember they announced Shadowloo in October. At that CCH. And basically it was like, are we going to stream it or not, and Bugs said yeah. And basically that was the one where Valle gave us a shout. And we got two and half thousand views.

M: Right right.

S: The first ever stream that I ever watched was APAC. Which was done in Sydney. There was no other Australia streams until Shadowloo 1.

B: I was there for that as well. For EVO APAC. Yeah.

I’m pretty sure they were streaming off like 3G or something.

S: Yeah. It was really bad.

B: Yeah, heheh.

S: I mean, it wasn’t a bad stream, is what I mean. It was basically the breakout stream.

B: Well they didn’t have a choice for the internet, I think.

S: Yeah, exactly.

M: So all this time, all this gear’s been coming out of your pocket right?

3)      How much do you think you have spent on stuff since the beginning?

B: Big chunk of it…oh I don’t know…

Probably tens of thousands…

M: Tens of thousands! God.

B: Yeah. Heheh.

S: Because in those days I mean, that video capture wasn’t cheap.

B: The PC, the PC was a big chunk of that.

M: How much did you spend on the PC?

B: It’s probably easy onwards of four grand plus.

M: So if you could go back in time and tell Young Bugs this is how you do things, what would you tell Young Bugs?

B: Uhh…I didn’t really waste money per se. It’s just that…I just got what I could over time.

It’s just…

It was just really hard.

It was…

Because I wanted better stuff. That was the thing. And I was limited because I could only afford certain things. So even though it still sounds expensive, there’s always something way more expensive.

M: And way better as well.

B: Than what I’ve got, yeah.

So in the scheme of things, I really didn’t spend that much money compared to what you can spend on doing that sort of production.

M: Right.

S: So let’s just talk about the first Shadowloo Stream. For example, I remember what we had, webcams? We had a capture.

B: I don’t even think we had any normal cameras.

S: No. Exactly. There was the player cam for the web, basically.

B: Because I think both players were sitting next to each other yeah? So there would’ve been just the one webcam. And then the game feed I think. That was it.

S: And then the game feed. And that was basically it.

And then basically from Shadowloo 2, we moved up to two webcams. It was a crowd shot, and the same webcam on top of the monitor. And then we had the two mixer setup. Which was my mixer and your mixer.

One for the game mix, one for the headset mix. And four laptops.

B: Yeah because I was doing weird stuff because we were using their mixer as well. The venue mixer.

M: Ah.

B: I don’t why I had some of that wacky setup but I did.

S: The reason why was…

B: I think so that I could control game music individually from the sound system.

S: Exactly.

We had their mixer so we could actually pipe the game audio through the venue sound. We had my mixer for the actual setup for the headsets. We were splitting that for the headsets.

And that was all tied in to your original mixer which actually had the game sound, my mixer, so we had commentators on so we could actually listen in on the commentators and make sure we didn’t get any feedback.

B: Because I think we had that playing through the venue as well yeah? And so the trouble that I had was…

S: No we didn’t have commentators for the venue because we couldn’t.

The reason why is because we didn’t want people listening in. While they were playing.

B: I remember doing that at one stage though. And we might’ve stopped.

S: That was Shadowloo 1.

Because we had Loki on the sound announcing games that were coming up.

And then they basically said that was a bad idea because then people…

Because we didn’t even have commentators for the majority of Shadowloo 1. We only had commentators for top 16 once when Heavy and uh…

M: Pyro?

S: No, Yang.

Doing the commentary for Shadowloo 1.

M: Oh really? I didn’t even know. I was in the crowd. Heh.

S: Because remember, the way it was set up was; we had Heavy and Yang next to us. And we had the setup. And then Toxy and bomb or others were right in front while I was playing…while the stream was playing.

And then we…

That’s why we barred off everybody else at Shadowloo 2. Because we actually wanted our own space where people didn’t constantly walk in and out and stuff.

M: Which happened in the end anyway.

…Right?

S: Sort of.

B: Heh.

(M and B look at each other and laugh.)

S: My infamous meltdown moment.

B & M: (Laughs.)

S: When I yelled…who was that kid that I yelled at? And he…

M: I think it was Carlplight. That kid, Paladinknight or whatever his name is…

Yeah.

S: But that was the reason. Because we had Loki announcing the matches on the stream, but we had no commentary. Because Heavy and Yang were busy playing in the tournament.

And then we basically said, well no, because what we did was we had Loki coming on the stream and announcing for the actual venue as well. And we thought that was a bad idea. Might as well try to get some commentators on.

B: There’s been a lot of you know…learning, yeah.

S: There’s been a lot of evolution on this thing, yeah.

B: And it’s still going. And it still will go.

S: Yeah, definitely.

Because streaming is still one of those things…it’s still new. Nobody really knows what to do.

Like if you look at any of the…I hate using this term. E-sports stream. They’re all trying to do television based broadcasting.

To be honest with you, I don’t think that’s what people really want. I think the fighting game community has really the better idea. You get this more…this connection to the stream? You feel like it’s more of a…you get more of a feeling that I’m actually sort of there?

Rather than we have ten minutes of gameplay, five minutes of commercials.

It’s no disrespect to anyone. But I think the Spooky and the Levelup live streams are a lot better than the e-sports stream. Because you get that sort of…you get that vibe.

B: Yeah, the more connected part.

S: Exactly.

M: It’s more immediate.

S: [It’s like], okay I could make it there, but it still feels like I’m actually there.

M: Yeah you even have the annoying stream monster in the background with the iPad and everything heh.

S: Well, yes.

But recreating that feel I think is better than going one hundred percent TV. But I don’t really wanna watch a TV show, or a broadcast or a live broadcast.

M: Like a Superbowl or something?

S: Like a fundraiser or watching Kochie and Mel in the fucking morning and all that other bullshit…

B: (Laughs.)

M: (Laughs.)

S: I don’t want that, if I want that, I’ll go watch Koshie and Mel. I wanna watch my own shit, where I’m used to people and I know I can connect with the people. And they’re not some weird…fucking overly paid bald…

M:….(Laughs.)

S: Sorry I hate fucking sunrise…

M & B: (Laughs.)

B: I’m not that up early to find out!

M: Heheheh. So I’m just trying to think how we can make this easier for the viewers do you think…

S: We don’t have viewers, we have listeners.

B: (Laughs.)

M: Listeners, sorry.

4)      Which do you think would be easier to explain to our listeners, the evolution of your stream gear, or your current setup?

B: The evolution’s not massive at the moment…it’s probably like the two parts sort of thing. It just started off with a decent PC. And a small mixer…and some software.

And now it’s a bigger PC and a bigger mixer and more software!

M: (Laughs.)

B: And more cameras as well. And more cards.

S: So what software are you using now?

Because I know you used to use Wirecast.

B: Wirecast, yeah.

Now I’m using XSplit. Because of the flexibility, with all the plugins that are available for it. Just to make it streamlined.

I still like Wirecast more, there’s more production value in Wirecast. But it’s just putting myself through more effort. It’s a little bit buggy as well, Wirecast.

M: Did you use Adobe Flash Live Encoder?

B: I did, like for the very first one that I was doing.

I don’t know what sort of wacky setup I had for that…

But yeah I was running it through Adobe Flash Encoder one.

S: Yeah because you set up all the scenes through Wirecast and you send that to Flash Encoder.

B: Yeah.

And I remember one time!

I was green screening player names and typing them in Photoshop. So I had like a green screen background in Photoshop and I did the names in Photoshop and then I green screened that into the layers.

S: That was Shadowloo 2. Because remember constantly I had to alt-tab to put in the player names.

B: That was pretty weird.

S: That’s when TTC got really pissed at us because they put in Gamerfish instead of Gamerbee.

B & M: (Laughs.)

S: Fuck them they’re not a real sponsor anyway.

B: (Laughs.)

M: Oh wow okay. (Making a mental note to edit this out later.)

Alright, so yeah…

5)      Did you want to go through a day in the life of Bugs. Say you’re streaming a major, you’re streaming Shadowloo Showdown 4. You wake up at what, 4 am in the morning.

Walk us through the day when you’re setting up the stream for…

S: Well actually, how much effort does actually go into streaming a major?

M: Yeah.

S: But I don’t think people really realise how much work it actually is.

M: How much work, how much money, how much time…

B: Well it depends on I guess, how complicated you’re gonna get with it. And the more and more feeds you add, and the more and more cameras you add, the more complicated it gets.

You have to have manageably audio sources for everything. It just gets out of hand at times. And sometimes there are some easy solutions to those problems, but they’re really expensive.

So then you’ve got to try to work around a more affordable [solution.]

S: (mutters under his breath) Goddamn HDMI splitters.

B: Heh.

And uh, sometimes the technology just doesn’t work like the way you think it should. So.

Some hiccups along the way.

6)      S: So what do you think is the biggest thing holding Australian streaming back?

B: Well originally it was the internet.

Now it’s not so bad. Now a lot of people have better internet now, like a lot of venues and stuff have more than…you know. Barely ADSL.

S: So, you know. I’m Johnny Donuts and I want to start a stream at home. What kind of internet do I actually need or would you recommend to?

B: You can do streaming just on basic ADSL.

I’ve done lots of stream before, even big events on like one meg upload sort of thing. Which is not great, at all.

Especially since you won’t get the whole meg, you’ll get 800k or something. And it’s even trouble, like a lot of servers, the streaming servers aren’t in Australia as well. So you gotta send all that data across to some other country, so.

You get limited in those factors as well. If the international lines are heavily flooded.

S: We only have three lines out of Australia.

One’s to New Zealand.

B: So yeah. That can definitely affect it.

S: So do you think once the national broadband rolls out, streaming’s gonna be a lot better?

B: Yeah. And probably a lot more common.

It’d be interesting to see what happens.

Because the actual stream itself would be watchable…but the content itself who knows. (Laughs.)

M: Right, right. (Laughs.)

S: Well yeah of course. Well we should probably differentiate there, because the stream itself is one entity, and then the actual content that you’re producing is completely different.

Now sometimes they might actually all go through the one channel. Or sometimes they might actually be completely separate.

B: But I mean, people stream for different purposes. Some people stream just for the hell of it. Other people just want to record all their games so they live stream it as well and use the auto record function in that.

S: Do you think there’s money in it?

B: Um. I dunno.

S: For Australia.

B: Yeah…that’s the same with anything in Australia you know? We’ve got limited audience really.

Within Australia, Australia cares for itself. But outside of Australia you’re not going to get people waking up at 3AM just to watch something that Aussies are doing.

M: Unless it has Tokido and Mago in it.

B: Yeah.

S: And I think that’s one of the things that also hurts us. Because we’re in such … an interesting time zone.

B: Maybe that’ll probably change. Like if we had bigger players and stuff like that who were just like…so famous internationally that if we run a stream at some godawful time for everyone in the world…that’s their problem. They’ve got to wake up whereas we can just do our thing.

S: Basically currently what we have, the problem is, every US stream starts around 3-5 in the morning, depending on the time zone.

M: So yeah. This might be a little laborious.

7)      Did you want to describe how your entire setup works? Your stream setup?

S: Just a brief overview.

M: Just a brief overview, yeah.

B: Well I mean, it pretty much starts at your game console, you got your HDMI feed which goes into a splitter. Which will then go out to the player screen, and then another signal will go back into the PC. And your PC will have the capture card which will capture that game footage, and you can use software to either stream to the internet or record locally to your hard disk.

M: And then is when you use XSplit right?

B: Uh yeah. XSplit, Wirecast. I mean there are other ones as well. There’s some free ones as well.

S: Open broadcast software.

M: So how do you get in the player cams, the crowd cams, and all that sort of thing.

B: Well because they’re just webcams, so it’s really easy. Just USB webcams, just plug it in and that’s the way you go.

I mean some of the webcams are pretty good. I’ve got this one, a Microsoft webcam which I used to stream a Diablo event. They wanted to use their cameras and stuff, because I dunno, they had their cameras and they thought that they were good.

But they had some issues, they weren’t that good. I ended up using our camera. But then I also hooked up a secondary camera that was just sitting in front of the players so you can kind see their hands on the keyboard and their face in the corner of the screen sort of thing?

And um, the guy who was running the event, he came around and looked at the screen. He was like, what’s that camera? He’s like, trying to find the camera, he’s looking around.

I’m like, it’s this webcam there.

He’s like, where?

And it’s this tiny little webcam sitting on the edge of the desk.

He’s like, that’s that camera?! Look at the picture of that!

M: (Laughs.)

B: He was amazed at the webcam quality! (Laughs.)

So on the setup the game software- generally recording and streaming software is the same. It’s a lot easier especially if you’re gonna include commentators if you split up your sound into a mixer. So then you can control individual levels separately.

Because sometimes the game volume is different per game, depending on the game. And then the commentators, they’ve got different voice levels, some are loud, and some are quiet. And if you had it all just channelled straight into the software you can’t really manage it in the software.

Well not as easy as you could with just the mixer, so you could just edit the levels on the fly.

M: And how many people do you need to run this setup?

B: You could do it with one. I mean…

M: Ideally? How many people do you need?

B: Two, two would be nice.

But then if you wanna start getting fancy, it’s nice to have some cameramen and stuff as well. If you’re operating like crowd cameras and stuff like that.

We haven’t really done much of [that]. Normally just someone’s who got a bit of free time will jump up and pan around.

M: So what are the biggest problems you’ve encountered so far while making your setup?

B: Well one of the biggest problems we had when running BAM and stuff like that was some of the old consoles. Especially before Third Strike came out on Xbox. And we’d get to use…

A lot of my gear that I bought was all just for digital. Digital signals. And then they wanted to include [the older games].

So while the capture card had the ability to record analog, I hadn’t bought any gear to support any of that. So no analog splitters and no…I guess testing analog resolutions and signals and stuff like that.

And then they just kinda and went aside and said, oh we’ve got this timeslot to fit Third Strike onto the main setup.

M: Heh.

B: And I’m like…uhhh yeah…

I could try!

I would like to do it, that would be good.

And they weren’t stressed. If you can’t do it, you can’t do it.

But I wanted to do it. It kind of became a challenge. Which is with most of this stuff, I kind of like problem solving and figuring things out.

M: So it seems to me the reason that you are Bugs, Lord Bugs, is that you have this part of your personality, you wanna problem solve, you want to solve the problems, even though people don’t require it of you, you wanna do it better you wanna do it…

B: Yeah.

M: And that’s kind of how you’ve sustained your passion for all this so far right?

B: Yeah. It’s a kind of self-satisfaction sort of thing.

I just like trying to figure these things out. And I just kind of have a general interest in technology as well. Um. I probably still…like even if I was like super rich or whatever…

M: You’d still wanna be doing this.

B: Yeah. I’d probably still be doing things, I’d just have a lot better gear than what I’ve got.

And probably a lot more of it. (Laughs.)

8)      S: Yeah, so how did Team Bugs come about? Actually, what is Team Bugs for starters.

B: Well Team Bugs…

Well obviously me and Rossco have been partnering up a lot to do a lot of things, and he’s been helping me out in general. Again, figuring [out things], problem solving and stuff like that as well.

I started Team Bugs basically as…

Because at that stage there was only Shadowloo and BAM which I was doing stuff for, and which was only fighting game oriented.

So I started Team Bugs because I got, because of doing those events, quite a lot of people come up and check up what I was doing and blablablah. A lot of the sponsors and the PR people or whatever.

And they seemed really interested in what was going on and they would think it was cool if they could apply it to an event that they did.

So I started Team Bugs as a separate thing to like identify the stream setup stuff to not just identifiable with like the fighting game community. It can be done pretty much for any game or PC event or anything.

M: Because I mean, you started out all this to record Forza right?

B: Yeah exactly.

M: So why not just branch out right?

B: Yeah.

So I did that and me and Rossco actually did end up getting a couple of other jobs outside of the fighting game community doing like the Diablo event and stuff.

I also had one guy inquire about…he wanted me to stream a local wrestling event.

M: Ah! Cool.

B: So it wasn’t gaming at all. It was live wrestling. And he says to me, I know you do all the game stuff, but instead of having the game, can you put in more cameras? And I’m like, of course I could.

And it didn’t end up eventuating, I’m not sure what happened there.

M: That would be cool. Heh.

B: That would have been interesting to do. But I would have like to have a lot better cameras, you know. Proper cameras and stuff like that. Some of those proper cameras are like twenty cameras by themselves sort of thing.

S: You can buy pretty good cameras for about a grand but…yeah.

B: Mostly the better cameras thought also have like better lenses. So you can do better zoom in and…

S: Yeah they also give you better options as well. Better quality lighting control…

B: Also the lowlight thing is a big problem as well. A lot of these venues you know, you get these dark and dingy…with not much lighting to it. You get a better camera and the picture quality is still better.

S: Getting a natural black is always hard as well. Especially black’s always an issue because you get pixellation as well.

B: It starts getting grainy and stuff.

M: So how have all these non-fighting game experiences turned out? Like you streamed Starcraft, Diablo…how did it go?

B: Well the Diablo yeah, the Diablo one was pretty cool. Starcraft…did we do Starcraft? We did do it..

That was in Monash.

Ahh!!!

And that was like the best internet connection I’ve ever used too! That one.

M: (Laughs.)

B: That was crazy! But, it was really disappointing at the same time. So we had like this…we had this almost like a direct line into like Australia’s internet.

S: Ah no, you would have a direct line to aarnet (Australia’s Academic and Research Network) basically, because that’s what most universities use for internet.

B: Yeah. So it was like this best connection, like you would do all your speed testing and blablablah, but then you still have to send that information to America.

S: So basically what you get is you get all the way up to Darwin, and that’s when the connection dies. Because basically you have to go overseas.

B: Well it’s still not too bad overseas, but then at their end, their servers can only accept so much. So they limit all their incoming connections.

M: Ah.

S: Especially for international traffic as well.

B: So it just progressively worse and worse. So you got at a normal quality rate. Which was really disappointing when you have such a good internet connection. This is why it would be good if we had a massive streaming service here. But I don’t know if that will ever happen.

S: We only really need one server, honestly.

M: So do you think there’s a space in the market? If let’s say you had how many million dollars you could start it? Start a service here.

S: If I had a hundred million dollars I’d probably do it. And then I’ll probably go bankrupt within about a week. Because Australia’s only got 22 million people.

M: Yeah you’re right.

S: Our market is pitiful.

22 million people in the States watch Jersey Shore every week.

B & M: (Laughs.)

S: Just look at it that way. That’s basically it. One of our biggest issues is one- time zone.

Two- we only have 22 million people.

B: That’s probably the best analogy ever. (Laughs.)

M: (Laughs) 22 million people watch Jersey shore…

B: But yeah, nah. Ah well. You do what you can work with.

I mean it’s not like you can’t do like a 720P stream. It’s just like…sometimes it gets a bit tricky.

9)      S: So let me ask you this then. 60 frames versus 30 frames for streaming.

B: Yeah well here you’re stuck with [30] really. Because you’re just gonna lose your bitrate running up to 60. So there’s really not much point in doing that. It’ll be nice, but…

30 is completely watchable. Absolutely. I think Blu-ray movies and that are only like 24 frames or something.

S: But yeah but it’s a … Let’s not go down that path. It’s a very long discussion.

B: (Laughs.)

S: A very long discussion.

Because then we’re getting into the territory of The Hobbit at 48 fps versus The Hobbit at24 fps.

And let’s not go there.

But the reason why I ask 30 vs. 60 is because for example Spooky’s stream runs at 60. Which is basically natively to what the game is running.

And when you look at his stream you can basically see the double of frame rate.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, because I watch Levelup Live and they only do thirty. And you can tell the difference.

 But as a casual viewer? You’re not missing out on anything. Because whether it’s 30 or 60, it doesn’t really matter. Actually 30’s probably even better because it gives you that more of a TV feel. Because TV only broadcasts at 24.

So you get more of that.

Or, especially because most of the cameras…

By the way I’m not taking a shot at Spooky or anything.

But all these other cameras are run on 24. Then your eyes have to readjust to the 60 full frames. When it switches to the full screen of the game, so.

B: Actually, speaking of frame rate, you know what really irks me?

Is the TVs that have the….they double the frame sort of thing. So they like freeze sections of the screen and include the next scene that’s part of it. And they just increase the frame count, like unnaturally.

S: Yep. Post-processing frames is really a bad thing.

B: And people have it on their TVs, I go to people’s houses and they have it on their TVs and I see it instantly. And it really bothers me. And I can’t even explain it….I’ve given up trying to explain to people how stupid this TV looks!

M: (Laughs.)

B: Because they bought it, it’s brand new right. It’s brand new, they’ve spent a lot of money on it and its really big. And I all can see is just…

S: It’s not even that. When you go to JB Hifis, they do this constantly. They basically turn all the contrast and all the brightness to max. And they basically turn up the hertz or the refresh rate to whatever highest possible it can be.

So it looks extremely unnatural.

And everybody moves in a…it`s in a unnatural speed and then your eye picks up on it. The quality looks good for about a second, and then you realise how bad it is because of all the post－processing that the TV does. Basically if you want to look at an example, go into JB Hi-Fi and  check out any animated show that they have on any on their bigger TV displays. Because you can really see the unnatural frame rate and the movement of everything.

M: That’s really interesting. So you walk into a store and your eyes just see these things.

S: Well this is what I was explaining to you. There’s no point in buying anything higher than a 120 hertz really. Or a two hundred hertz television. Because most of them will dumb down the refresh rates anyway.

B: And then if you’re just gonna watch digital TV, it’s not gonna be that [good]. And then even like Blue-rays and stuff like that…it’s just silly.

M: It’s just a number to suck in the consumer right?

S: Pretty much.

B: And the only thing that would make like good advantage would be gaming. But then it’s useless because it’s laggy.

M & B: (Laughs).

S: Exactly. Pretty much!

Because you don’t wanna see the guy move at 33 frames. You really don’t. Because it’s unnatural. It doesn’t make sense. Video games are okay because they don’t have the same sort of animation and movement. Well they have an animation but the animation is done differently.

10)   M: So uh, is Team Bugs recruiting? How do I join Team Bugs?

B: Hahaha. It just kind of formed on a spur of moment sort of thing. It didn’t really progress like a lot. I just wanted to make…I guess people who wanted to do streaming outside the fighting game community…just make it more…I dunno. Approachable.

I just thought it would be cool and different. So I just kind of went with it.

S: Well there’s not that many services in Australia who are even doing this. So you kind of, outside of yourself and Slapper from Queensland who does the OHN stream, I don’t really know too many other people in the gaming community who are doing their own streams.

And if you’re  within the sound of our voice, please come out, and we’ll share tech.

B: Hehehe.

S: Oh definitely! I mean, why not?

B: It’s alright. Yeah, I dunno. Maybe if it became popular and I had like…even enough work to sustain myself doing it full time. Becoming a job.

And then look at the possibilities and getting other to help, so.

S: Contact PAX, maybe they’ll let you stream that.

B: Yeah.

S: Hey it’s coming to Melbourne.

B： Yeah, I know, I know. And it would be really cool.

But I mean， outside of… basically it just turns into a mobile like TV show or broadcasting show or anything.

S: It’s basically going to kill off television for the next fifty years.

B: Yeah, it’s really weird. And that’s the other thing that’ll probably happen. Is like the people who’ve got money will just take it to next levels and let people who don’t…just stuck doing the same thing.

11)   M: Let’s talk about the negative side of streaming. Basically, the burnout.

I noticed that in the last year or so you’ve kind of stopped entering tournaments. Is this like a conscious decision to focus more on streaming? Or are you not having any fun anymore? Can you tell us about how the toll of your community work affects your playing fun or career.

B: Um. It’s not so much toil, it’s just…I like playing and… I mean I’ve even stopped at home, to be honest.

But I do like playing the games with friends and stuff. But because my progress level is really slow, because…

M: You’re busy doing all this other stuff.

B: Yeah I’m doing all this other stuff. Just entering a tournament and just going 2-0 all the time…

M: Is really depressing.

B: Yeah heh.

M: I know how you feel.

B: And especially…when you know people in the community and you know they’re better than you and you lose to them, it’s not a problem. But then when somebody new comes in and beat you and that, it’s even worse. (Laughs.)

M: Right, right. Because you know you could be better, but you just don’t have the time to invest.

B: And uh…yeah.

But I mean I also enjoy like doing all this technology and streaming and blahblahblah. And now recently it’s been like a lot of helping with their event management and stuff like that.

So I’m even kind of stepping back from streaming a little bit. I’ve got it all there [at Shadowlogic] set up to go. And I’ve shown a lot of people how to do a lot of things. And…

M: Because the problem with the streams last time was that it was totally dependent on you. If you were sick or you went down, then we couldn’t do it.

But now it seems like you’re trying to educate more people who could just operate the gear by themselves right?

B: Yeah. And the gear is pretty much all dedicated to streaming as well. So they can pretty much take it and run with it. But obviously as long they have like the confidence from…me. That I can trust him with the gear and everything.

M: Right heh.

B: But yeah it’s a lot better.

Because basically I’m interested in like the progression…I’m gotten at that level now where I just like know how to do all the normal stuff and that sort of thing. So it’s really of much interest to me. So as soon as I guess, we have access to more and better technology, or funds to get more and better technology, then I’ll be working again and stuff.

I mean I’m still doing it and it’s just going really slow.

M: Right, right. So what would be some of these things that hopefully you can advance in the future?

B: A lot to do with the camera and sound. Not so much with the software and the PC. I mean, that you’re kind of relying on like the software developers anyway. So there’s not much I can do, anyway.

Except for maybe putting in a feature request which could get ignored anyway.

S: It will get ignored.

B: Yeah it will get ignored. (Laughs.)

S: It’s basically like the first rule of buying a house. The first offer you put in gets ignored. You have to keep nagging them to get anything done.

M: Yes, yes.

B: And then get a hundred or so friends to do the same thing. Heheh.

S: Pretty much.

I mean look, if it’s just one guy asking for something and it’s not a bug fix, they’re not usually gonna bother.

Because that one request is gonna cost the company X and it’s not gonna be a feature which they can…unless it’s a huge selling point. But most of the time it’s not.

I was going to say, one complaint that we actually got after Shadowloo 3…And I came across this by watching The Show that Sucks. Basically Honzo Gonzo was bitching that all the post-Youtube videos didn’t actually have any of the commentary on them. Once when they were uploaded to Youtube.

So is that gonna be rectified this year?

B: (Laughs.)

Um. Yeah.

S: I guess what he’s saying is that he would get a 720p recording of the stream, rather than just getting the 720p video of the fight.

B: Yeah. And that’s why I’ve previously stopped doing the uncompressed high-definition captures anyway. Because again it’s just become a waste of time. And it’s a lot easier as well just to capture the stream footage.

So it’ll most likely be exactly the stream but better quality.

12)   M: So I was gonna ask you what hobbies you have outside of the fighting game community. But it seems that your hobby is this. Is tech, technology right?

B: Yeah. And Shadowlogic as well.

Trying to get this place up and running and successful and stuff like that, so.

I’ve put a lot of time and effort into this place. And trying to turn it into an actual real business. Been helping with that a lot.

13)   Well in the last year or so there’s been huge changes in the community. I mean, what are your thoughts on the changes and where do you see things going in the future. Especially in regards to Shadowlogic?

B: Um, yeah. A lot of the stuff I guess has been changed community wise? I think the impact on the community and people like running all these events maybe got a bit tiresome? I mean it was awesome at first, everyone loved it.

But then I guess apart from actually playing the games, there was just certain people that got left with a lot of work, you know?

M: Mm mm. Like yourself. Like Loki, like Chris.

B: Umm…well even you. Like organising CCH and stuff like that.

M: Well CCH is the least…least labour intensive event, I think.

B: But I mean you still have to get there early. And like time…

M: Yeah. Time is valuable.

B: Time is a factor.

S: it’s opening early, setting up, making sure that when people come in…after it’s done, cleaning up…

B: Yeah. Being the first person there and the last person there…is a pretty decent amount of work.

S: It’s like a second job basically.

B: And that’s what it’s coming down to. So um…I guess that’s probably one of the biggest benefits in Shadowlogic opening up. Is that it’s a dedicated venue, that everything’s there, ready to go all the time. So no one has to bother…

M: Bringing stuff.

B: Bringing stuff and setting up and organising blahblahblah. They just know it’s there. They can almost go any time they want.

S: It’s almost more like an arcade, basically.

M: Well I mean, that’s what I see as the biggest attraction of Shadowlogic, is that it cuts down the labour of the organisers, basically.

But I mean in the second half of the year you could still see there was a like a decline in attendance? Well not to say a decline, but things weren’t warming as quickly as I would have expected.

B: You mean to Shadowloo Showdown or?

M: To Shadowlogic, SNLs and things like that. Or do you think it’s just a natural decline of the…

B: I just think it wasn’t structured right. I think this year we’re gonna concentrate on a proper structure. Like set beginnings and ends, and ladders and stuff like that. Stuff that people have like a goal for.

So basically what happened before was that the place was open, there was an event running. And no one ever talked about it after that. No one had any reason to talk about it.

I think we just need to introduce a better structure for that.

M: So ladder, ranking points, blablablah and all these will…

B: But! It has to be like followed through. I know we’ve tried ranking points and stuff like that before. And it hasn’t really worked out.

S: So we’re going back to the nineties.

And basically you have the board with the top 20 players, people come in.

B: Yeah. And I think stuff like having trophies or names on the walls or plagues or something like that. Anything where I guess the players get recognition, I guess they will show more initiative to you know…

M: That would be awesome. To have your name on the wall. Season 1 winner.

B: Something like that. Something like “that was me” sort of thing, you know.

M: Right. So since you’re here; Igor what do you think of the Shadowlogic venue? Having seen it for the first time.

S: Ah, no comment.

M & B: (Laughs.)

S: No I have no comment because I’ve only been here for what, maybe two hours and forty one minutes. So…give me time.

M: Ah okay. Fair enough. (Laughs.)

B: (Laughs.)

B: What about first impressions!

M: Yeah first impressions, yeah.

S: It looks like a warehouse.

B: (Laughs.)

S: I kind of expected pallets. But that’s okay?

B & M: (Laughs.)

S: Well look at it this way. I’ve seen places like this before. Where I used to unlock CDs and DVDs during my uni time. Because you know, I used to do some really dodgy work. So, that’s what it initially looks like, but again, it’s a work in progress. So I can’t really say anything.

I like the pallet space.

B: Heheh.

S: Worst case scenario you could always hire the space out for something else if you needed to!

B: Yeah, that was I guess an ongoing theme that we’ve had setting this up like that. Because it literally is a warehouse, like the actual building. So we just kind of ran with that theme. And set up the pallet racking.

S: But it’s not even that. It has that feel to it of…

It reminds me of what a modern arcade would look like.

B: Ah yeah.

M: Like a Next Level?

S: You walk in, you have your left, you have your right. You have your setups in the middle, and then you walk over to the left, you have your confectionaries and things…it reminds me actually of an old arcade in Geelong…Now what was its name. Wasn’t Timezone.

Las Vegas, basically. That’s what it was called.

And basically it had a similar setup. You walk in to the left, you have the cage where the money and the confectionaries are. You get your change and you basically walk down and you have this huge row of arcade machines to your left and your right. And that’s basically it. And at the end you had toilets.

B: That’s really cool, I like that.

S: That’s what it reminds me of. And I really like the structure of it, because basically this way you know what you’re getting into. So the first few machines are say DOA. Then you can always structure it that way if you really want to.

M: I agree.

S: And it’s also that the space is set up quite well. So. I like that. Yeah.

So let me ask this. So what about weeklies versus fortnightlies versus monthlies.

Because I mean, this has been a topic that’s been going on in the US FGC/Community for a little while. It seems that weeklies seem to burn a lot of people out.

B: Yeah.

S: So what do you guys think of…what’s your plan for this year.

B: That’s the thing. Now that Shadowloo is now Shadowlogic, it’s not solely about fighting games anymore. It’s starting to expand into FIFA and HALO and Call of Duty and stuff like that.

M: Which have been getting better attendance than fighting game events right?

B: Especially FIFA.

M: Yeah especially FIFA.

B: The FIFA crowd are I dunno…They seem to like that sort of thing. Maybe because…I haven’t really even seen or heard of [any other FIFA events] around, so maybe we’re the only people doing that really.

S: Well there’s been a FIFA community in Australia for quite a while. There’s been lots of communities, gaming communities. But the thing is, they’re all traditionally online. And now…with online, just like in fighting games, just like in everything else, unless it’s a first person shooter that’s done on a dedicated server, lag is always an issue.

And with Xbox with the way it’s set up with peer to peer, you always get lag. And people wanna prove themselves that they’re the best in an actual non-lag versus environment.

B: Just eliminate those variables.

S: Exactly.

And I can see that. And it’s the same thing, Black Ops and all the other first person shooters. Unless it’s on PC and unless you’re playing on a dedicated server where the only lag you’re gonna get from your connection…that’s basically [not the same], you know.

M: But yeah, to go to your weeklies and monthlies…

B: Yeah. With including all these other games and that, it gives us the opportunity to space out the games more. And not burn people out. So this is where the structure will come in, so.

It’s just gonna take some planning. The problem is that we’re not as familiar like we are with the fighting game community and that. And how I guess how we expect things…well we expect to run the events for them and stuff like that.

We started last year you know, we’ve run Halo events and Call of Duty and Fifa events already. So once we’ve familiarised ourselves with them and how we want to run things and just kind of meld together into I guess like a big gaming group.

S: Yeah you have to work with their communities and see what their rules and things are as well.

B: Yeah. Because if you do something that’s too different from [their rules] and it’s not taken [well], people won’t turn up.

14)   M: So what is your favourite part of travelling interstate? Since OHN is coming up. And you’re going to OHN right?

B: Well again I’m going to OHN, but I’m also not competing in that as well.

S: Neither am I!

B: You’re gonna to go yeah?

S: Yeah I’m going.

B: Cool.

Yeah I’m not competing, but the atmosphere…like I’ve been around the fighting game community for quite a while now. And the atmosphere is really good.

Especially ever since Marvel…that’s probably…MARVEL. I reckon is probably the thing.

It’s really going good just to watch Marvel! People just get so pumped over Marvel.

M: Yeah. (Giggles.)

B: And um, yeah just going to watch. Spectating is just really good when Marvel’s around!

M: Yeah I agree 100%.

B: (Laughs.)

S: Because it’s a ridiculous game.

B: Even like last night we were setting up here and we ordered a couple of pizzas and had a break. And Bernie and Ali were playing. So we’re eating pizzas…and we’re still like…you know there’s only a couple of us here. And we’re still yelling and screaming!

There’s only a couple of people here, but just because they’re playing Marvel and doing this and that and the other and…you know. I dunno, it’s just changes…the person! (Laughs.)

M: Right, right. It brings out the…

B: Excitement…or something,

S: It changes the atmosphere. Because like I said, it’s a ridiculous game. So with ridiculous games comes ridiculous games. And people get hype. 57:00

B: But I mean you could do like a lot of things in that game that are not really effective but look really cool.

M: Heheh.

…Are you talking about Ali Abdo’s style?

B: Ah no, swag combos is really…

Not all of them are the most damaging but they’re doing them just because they look cool and stuff like that.

M: I think it’s really interesting that you and Igor are going to OHN and I think you guys will have so much fun and you’re not even competing? It just goes to show that you can just go to these events and you don’t even have to be a competitor to enjoy the hell out of yourself.

B: And I wish like more people would do that you know? Just because…I know a lot of people who feel the same. Ah, there’s going to be top players there. I’m just going to get beat, you know, blahblahblah.

And for some people, getting to play against the top people is really cool. So they’ll go and play…

But um, going and watching is really cool too.

S: It’s not even that. It’s just being in a room with like-minded people. It doesn’t matter if you’re the best of if you’re the worst. If you just to hang out with somebody and just talk to them, you’ll usually find that you have a really good time.

This is the same reason why people go to soccer matches. Soccer’s not the most exciting game to watch, but if you’re there with somebody who you know you can talk to…share things. Then basically then you get to that whole point of: this is really fun.

M: And alcohol! Alcohol’s probably your second favourite thing after technology right?

B: (Laughs.) Yeah. I do enjoy a good beer.

15)   M: What are your top three favourite alcoholic beverages?

What did you have on Australia Day? What was your drink on Australia Day?

B: I was drinking Cooper’s on Australia Day. Cooper’s Green.

M: Why are you shaking your head Igor? Heh.

S: Naw.

B: It’s the South Australian unfiltered beer.

S: Mmm. It’s filthy.

B: It’s definitely filthy!

M: Heh.

B: But uh…

S: It’s also half an hour behind.

B: (LAUGHS.)

Oh my god. You just don’t stop with them do you? (Laughs.)

M: (Laughs.)

B: But yeah no, I like Cooper’s. Also like Asahi and stuff like that. Slightly dry beer. But probably my favourite of all is a New Zealand beer which is Monteith’s. Yeah. Monteith’s is really gold. Monteith’s golden.

M: Sharp.

16)   Tell us a funny Ali story.

B: Heh.

S: Ali, full stop.

B: Yeah. (Laughs.) Just begins and ends with one word.

M: Heheheh. Okay.

B: I dunno off the top of my head…

M: Just watch him, today probably another [story] will come out right?

B: Just…just come. If you’re listening and you haven’t met Ali just come.

S: Yeah come for the Ali experience.

B: Yeah. Just come and just watch him. And you’ll find something that you just won’t stop laughing at.

(Laughs.)

17)   Juri, Honda, Bison. Who do you actually main and why?

B: Bison?!? Where’d you get Bison from?

M: Remember you used to play Bison in Super?

B: No I played Bison once in tournament to…

S: (Suppresses laugh.)

M: Didn’t you beat me with Bison?

B: …To beat Berzerk.

Just because I didn’t want to play the Honda mirror! (Laughs.)

S: No no no, let me ask you this. At Shadowloo 1, you played on stream against Tokido. You had one round up on him, you hit him with an EX Dive Kick. He bounced off the wall and you missed the Ultra.

B: Ahhhh!

S: What was going through your head at that time?

B: That would have been spewing…God…

S: Heheheh.

Because I remember that moment! And Rossco was sitting next to me. And I’m like, he’s going to fuck it up.

B: (Laughs.)

S: Because I saw you drop that Ultra four times in practice. And goddamnit, I know he’s going to fuck it up. And you would’ve won the round too, because you had him over 50% life.

B: (Laughs.)

S: So what was going through your mind when you hit that EX Dive Kick.

B: Yeah. Probably…don’t fuck it up! (Laughs.)

Ahhh.

S: Because you would’ve been one game up on him then.

M: Yeah and destiny would’ve changed. Bugs would’ve become the best in…

B: Nah you know what would’ve happened? Even if I won that game I would’ve gone: Holy Fuck. I just won a game. And I would’ve gotten all nervous and I just would’ve been shaking the whole time!

M: Heheh.

B: Because I would be like: how did that even happen?!

M: That would have been amazing. It’ll be Team Mad Catz Bugs and Tokido would be…

S: Mmm. Yeah. Down in the gutter begging for pennies.

M: (Laughs.)

B: But now I’ve probably played Sakura way more than Bison.

M: Oh yeah, you do play Sakura now. But is she your main now?

B: Well I switch between…Honda….

Kinda Honda-Blanka-Sakura a lot.

Blanka I just started using online as like a troll character. But then I ended playing him that much that I just kind of break him out every now and again anyway.

And I thought about actually learning something and becoming a real…I dunno why, you can just get away with a lot of stuff with Blanka.

M: (Laughs.)

S: Yeah Blanka’s really underrated.

M: Such a dirty character.

B: And um…that because I played Honda I learnt to piano. So I can piano like electricity.

M: Ah you can do all the electricity combos right.

B: Yeah, so that’s not an issue. And probably because I do that  a lot, you know electricity’s safe, so.

M: Right, right.

B: Yeah, and same with Honda. Honda’s like sturdy and stuff. But I crack under pressure a lot so. And then I’ll also break out Ryu as well.

M: Yeah you do play Ryu.

B: I just switched between…I guess whatever I’m most comfortable with and I guess the other person’s play style so. A lot of times if I’m playing online, I’ll start with Ryu. And then like notice like their type of play style and then I’ll switch or branch out to another character that does make me advantageous.

M: Right. So let’s go through the process. You’re playing Ryu against me. You notice that I jump a lot and what do you do then?

B: Then I’ll probably like switch to Juri. Because I anti-air really good with Juri.

M: And get big damage.

B: Yeah.

M: But even staying with Ryu, you can just uppercut.

True, true. But what if you notice that I have really good footsies and I’m more of a defensive player then…

S: Then you go Honda.

B: Yeah.

S: Turn into the Rock.

B: Yeah Honda, and I like playing Blanka as well against fireball characters.

M: Ah yeah, yeah.

S: He has a lot of options.

B: I guess if you’re doing like a footsie war, I like using Sakura.

M: Ah yeah because of the tatsu and the low forward.

B: And even like the standing light kicks…and I’ve actually got setups with Sakura, whereas with the most of everyone else I use I don’t really have any real setups, or I don’t use them.

M: Did Sol teach you the setups or you…

B: Nah…Probably yeah. I would say so. I haven’t really learned from anywhere else. Just mostly from other people. And most of the stuff that I know from Marvel is all from Rossco as well.

M: Oh yeah yeah yeah Rossco, heh.

You two are the best Franks…Best level one Frank is Bugs!

B: And I started playing a new character only a couple of days ago: Hulk. I’m not sure how to fit him in with Frank West.

M: Are you still going to have Phoenix at the end of that? Or you’re gonna be Hulk, Wesker, Phoenix?

B: So far I’m trying to figure like Hulk, Frank West, Wesker.

M: I think that works fine.

B: I can’t drop Wesker anyway.

M: Because you’ve been playing him since Vanilla and he’s like your best character. Hulk, Frank…Wesker works fine right? So you get Wesker at the back for Dark Wesker, not that strong, but you still have his OTG assist…

B: He also does the combo extender for Hulk.

M: Yeah, for Hulk.

B: So that’s probably the biggest thing. I haven’t got any down into muscle memory yet. And I haven’t really gotten used to all of Hulk’s normals. I haven’t really been playing. Like I said, I’ve been working here the whole time.

S: C! All you need.

B: But I really wanna play. Like it seems like a character that would suit me.

M: I actually wanna Hulk too. Because Hulk is one of my favourite Marvel characters.

S: (Whispers.) I hate the Hulk.

M & B: (Laughs.)

S: I hate the Hulk, I’ve always hated the Hulk as a Marvel character.

B: I’ve been using Red Hulk!

M: Oh yeah, sharp. Did you like Planet Hulk? The series?

B: I’m not sure if I’ve seen it or not.

18)   S: I do have a question. Can you give us a sneak preview for Shadowloo 4? What’s in store this year?

I know nothing’s been on the cards yet, but let’s say from the stream perspective wise, what would you like to do this year?

B: I’d just like to have a lot more cameras, really. A lot more good cameras. So I’m probably looking into potentially hiring and stuff. Because it’d be hard to fork out a lot of money on cameras. But yeah, I’ll give it a test run.

S: So when you say cameras, are we talking about say photographic cameras, or we’re talking like digital recording cameras? Because you know a lot of cameras these days can do both.

B: Yeah but the limitations in them, like all the video, they won’t have the shutter open for very long. Like twenty minutes it’ll max out and then the shutter will close. I mean, so it will awesome if…

Because I’ve hooked it up to the stream before…

S: Mmm yeah, it’ll do 1080p.

B: …And it looks fantastic. Because you can have really good lenses on there. And it looks really good. And then all of a sudden your twenty minutes is up and shutter’s gone. And face black. And sometimes it won’t reinitialise or something.

Also I can’t get rid of some of the on-screen display items too. So they come across, that’s really annoying.

There’s people out there who have done firmware hacks and stuff like that to get around it. But I don’t really want to do that.

S: Definitely not to a $2000 camera. I’m sure Sol would get upset.

B: Well that’s my camera. The Canons, they do all the same thing as well.

19)   Where can we find you and Team Bugs online, and any shoutouts?

B: Yeah shoutouts to everyone at Shadowlogic. It’s just been an amazing effort from everyone working here to put it all together. And I really hope it all works out. And people come down and play and be part of the community.

M: Where can we find you? On Twitter or Facebook?

B: I’m on Twitter under Bugsimus. I’m pretty much under Bugsimus for everything. It’s a really uncommon name. That’s actually probably one of the things that made me stick with my name. Is that when I sign for something, that it’s never taken.

And now that I’ve said that, everyone’s gonna go out and take shit. (Laughs.)

But yeah no generally I’ve always got it, so I’ve kind of stuck with that. So I like having Bugsimus not Bugsimus1234 or something.

M: Yeah. I have 01, what the hell?

B: Heheh.

M: So yeah, we done?

Alright, thanks very much Bugs!

S: Thank you.

M: Cheers man.