Hello everyone, and welcome to Halo Spotlight. This piece is a content creator Q&A. As the name implies, we have a sit down with a Halo content creator and ask some questions.
In this Content Creator Q&A we’re talking with a YouTuber who’s love for the Halo Wars series knows no bounds. I’m of course talking about TeamRespawn.
This Q&A was done via Discord, so if you’d like to hear the full audio version of this Q&A, you can do so on our YouTube channel or at the end of this piece.
The Writing Spartan asked Andrew from TeamRespawn some questions. You can find the straight to the point answers below, so please enjoy.
Question: For those who don’t know, what exactly is TeamRespawn?
TeamRespawn is a Halo content creation YouTube channel. I mainly focus on Halo Wars and Halo Wars 2. It’s a series that I love to death. Of course we’re big Halo fans as well but there’s just something about Halo Wars and the strategy of Halo Wars and Halo Wars 2.
There was never anyone that made that kinda content when I started, so I found my own little niche in there. It’s just myself and a group of my friends and we record together, and just try and have the most fun that we can whilst playing Halo Wars.
Question: What were the goals when TeamRespawn was first established, and do those goals differ now?
When I started TeamRespawn I didn’t actually have any goals. The channel was created as an outlet for when I had too much free time in College, and friends of mine that wanted to record and play games and post it on YouTube.
We started doing walkthroughs and lets plays just for fun, and eventually we got around to doing Halo Wars. That caught on with an audience and we’ve kinda run with it ever since. It’s something that connects with an audience and something that I love making.
We were posting Halo Wars stuff since before Halo Wars 2 came out, for about 5 or 6 years now.
I like to set yearly goals. I like to set monthly goals. I’ve actually have become a big goal setter in my time on YouTube. I love that my channel is a good place of positivity and it’s welcoming to new players.
I don’t know if other content creators answer this question by saying they have a set amount of subs they want to reach or views they want to reach. I kinda just roll with whatever the channel gets and just go on from there.
Question: We’ve touched on the fact that you already make Halo Wars content. Is that the plan going forward or do you plan on shifting into other games or Halo Infinite?
I think about this question myself all the time. What’s next for the channel? What should we branch out with? My audience really loves Halo Wars and I love it to, so I think mainly going forward I’m gonna stick with Halo Wars.
When we get closer to Infinite, I’ll probably start doing Infinite stuff here and there. A lot of my viewers really like other RTS games like Command and Conquer, Age of empires, Company of heroes. I’ll dip into that content every now and then, but I love to have a recurring mix between mostly Halo Wars with some Infinite and other RTS stuff.
I think that kinda matches with my target audience and the people that watch my content. We’ll see what happens. I have another side project. It’s called Respawn shorts that I started earlier this year where I’m posting 1 minute videos.
Actually it was a complete coincidence. It’s a very similar to One Minute Halo from Ascend Hyperion. I didn’t even know it existed and I discovered it and I was like “whoops”.
I’m starting with Halo Wars characters, talking about the stories of them. Then I actually want to break out to other games with that, like Fallout and Elder Scrolls and that sorta stuff.
Question: Are there any areas that you’d like to branch out into for TeamRespawn (Podcasts, Streams, Collabs)?
I really would like to continue on my new Respawn Shorts project. I really wanna try and stick with it throughout 2021.
I wanna just see what happens and try different games and different editing styles and see what works. I’m not a good editor at all, so I think this is a good opportunity for me to get better at that. It’ll take time and that’s just fine.
As for my main channel, I really like sticking with what I’m doing because I’m comfortable and I’m good at it, and my viewers seem to like it as well. I’m still growing, so I really wanna stick with what I’m good at and what I know. I don’t want to do anything that will stagnate my channel or turn away new viewers or turn away new players to the game.
I wanna remain a welcoming community for new Halo Wars players and share our love for Halo Wars. I think besides Ed who I record with anyways, I think I’m the only Halo Wars content creator left that regularly posts, so I think someone has to do it.
It’s totally fine that none of the other Halo content creators don’t post Halo Wars (content). I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I don’t want this series to be forgotten in the Halo universe. It often gets shoved under the mat in a lot of discussions. I’d like to see it mentioned more from time to time.
Question: What’s your favourite video that you’ve created so far?
It probably would be the super turtle videos that I make on the channel. I don’t think I could pick a single video. If I could I’d probably pick my 4 and a half hour turtle video.
For those who aren’t aware, the super turtle series is where I play with my friend Ed and we will play defensively in a Halo Wars match for as long as possible, to where the opposing team will quit. We will refuse to go and attack, or we’ll wait as long as possible to attack, to make sure we’re not eliminated in a game.
The longest we’ve ever gone is 4 and a half hours in a single match. It was so funny because as the hours go by, the enemy team would message us on Xbox Live and say “please quit”. It was almost out of spite we’d reply “We literally have all night to play this match.”
It’s just a series that we enjoy. We throw around jokes. It’s almost like a podcast will happen within the video, because sometimes it’ll be 30 minutes in-between a wave of attacks and Ed and I will get stuck talking about various topics.
I think that’s probably my favourite to make as a creator. Is it the best edited content? No not at all, but it really connects with my fans. A lot of people will play it in the background. I think it’s cool that we can have a conversation and play Halo at the same time and it’ll connect with the audience.
Question: What are your goals for 2021 on YouTube?
If I had numbers I wanted to reach, I guess 30,000 subscribers would be awesome. I don’t have goals for view counts or anything like that. I’d like to double the size of my Discord server, because I think the Discord server is a great place to have Halo Wars players meet other people and get groups to play in matches together and stuff. I think that’s healthy for the game.
Other than that not really, I just enjoy my time making videos, enjoy my time with content creation, enjoy my time playing Halo Wars. Halo Wars 2 will eventually die off where it won’t be possible to find a match. I guess really to enjoy this game while I can and try out some Halo Infinite stuff when that game comes out.
Question: If people want to find your content where would they go?
https://www.youtube.com/TeamRespawnTV is my YouTube channel. You can find me on Twitter @TeamRespawnTV. I mostly just post about Halo Wars surprisingly. There is a Discord server as well.
A huge thank you to Andrew for talking with The Writing Spartan. A reminder that this written Q&A is only a bite sized version of the full interview. We really recommend checking out the full Q&A below.
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