Hey so I recently started a series of voice interviews focusing on players and their perspective and experiences in the tf2 community and sorta just giving people a voice; letting them say what they need to in an easily accessible audio sort of way. A lot of these focus on the experiences of staff and older players at the moment, and the majority of the people covered are highlander players.
That being said, I am very interested in giving 6s players more coverage but I don't know many myself. I figured I'd post here and see if it's something people'd be interested in. I'm mostly interested in the past vs the present, community concerns and things people think need to change and what can improve. We usually try to look at the root of any sorts of happenings rather than focusing on drama itself, and always try to reach conclusions together from it.
Some of the videos are more self contained than others, but a huge recurring theme is allowing for people to communicate concerns collectively, and laying down the groundwork for others to build off of. So an example of this would be with things such as senses of class identity in the past for highlander, and attempting to revive more cooperation between players of classes to do things like the old round tables. Another example would be covering a content creator and touching on their own experiences with rgl (Likely uploading this upcoming week), and going over that with other content creators to explore the possibility of leagues cooperating further with the community to make up for the shortcomings of the leagues.
The last main recurrence is building on the idea of cross-regional cooperation and the potential benefits of it; which usually is discussed with players regions with more issues and less resources available. All of this sorts of stuff frequently gets covered, but the interviews are always heavily individualized and not all of them are going to be inherently heavy when it comes to the tone.
The current majority is North American players, but I have interest in covering other regions, and do have content for other regions already up at the moment/on the upload schedule. As stated before, I would really enjoy getting the perspective of more 6s players, and European players out there. I do have Australian ones on the way covering concerns with the influence of their server provider on the administration of their league, one with an Asian covering Highlander league concerns and corruption on the way, as well as a South American one focusing on issues the region faces, the benefits of cross regional cooperation; and what it's like playing in North America as an out of region player. The more regions and the more perspectives, the better in my books. they all got their own unique sets of issues, experiences, and concerns to discus.
I know there's been some sort of stuff like this via series like the coaches corner in the past, and I feel like my approach is differentiated by my investment and concern for the larger tf2 community. I also think that the visual-audio format really helps when it comes to humanizing people, especially staff who don't get the chance to fairly lay out their reasoning without falling on deaf ears. A main goal with the series is comfort and I always try to work with the other person, without trying to conflict with whatever stories they have to tell.
I think that everyone is deserving of a chance to have their voice heard, and that people's chances are how they treat others in the community. If I do not believe someone has malicious intent in mind, I am complete fine with them expressing whatever they want to, and letting other people be the judge of them. That being said, please do not harass the people in question over their views, they have a right to them and have drawn their conclusions for a reason; reasons you get to hear right from them. By cutting out the larger community as a middle man, you get a much deeper level of insight into the other person.
I do get that the notion of everyone deserving a voice is cliche, but seriously a lot of the time we just never end up having the chance to express a lot of our concerns in a way that other people can actually understand and process. This especially applies across different regions, where in some cases a league's power is it's ability to control it's playerbase due to a smaller player size.
I think the biggest benefit to all of this though, is compartmentalizing all of these experiences and making competitive seem much more accessible and human to casual players, which could be a really good thing that helps to revitalize interest and build a better sense of community going forward. Regardless of this, it is interesting to have a centralized source covering a lot of these differing issues across leagues, in the eyes of each individual person. I imagine people at the very least would find it fun to watch ones covering their own friends.
I welcome any judgement you might throw my way, I recognize that I'm just one guy with some of my own biases, and that these are not that professional. I will say, the quality drastically picks up with the sixth episode and beyond, but I still think the prior interviews have valid experiences.
These are unscripted, and all it ends up meaning is that it's a challenge to myself to always be building on things and putting my full effort in, rather than ever having the opportunity to slack off at all. I really want to get people's stories out there, and so I am always glad to give it my all. As long as you don't have ill will in mind, I am more than glad to work with you and talk about whatever community topics you're passionate about. In the future, I plan on branching out to casual audiences. Overworking is no concern here, I am glad to do as many interviews as possible. I'd love to get your story out there.
New episodes come up every Mon/Wed/Fri at 12 pm EST, with timestamps prepared ahead of time. General sorts of information about what the interviewing and the process of it entails can be found below.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/875735363992305715/972668112577134633/unknown.png
Playlist of previous episodes: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdRm-mx1l55TcKUFPU-lKj9w1dnAm8f46
Guests include: Ire, Ac130, Darzie/Wolfteeth, And American/Danny. Next week you can expect to see videos about Maven and Baconblitz. If you don't know any of these people, you might find it interesting to hear about them and what they have to offer.
I would strongly recommend viewing the American interview as the best example of the what the soul of the series is, and I believe it to be the highest quality one yet.
If any of this interests you, feel free to reach out to me at
https://steamcommunity.com/id/Bliztank
Bliztank#1499
https://discord.gg/qZT7faBwbq