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00:00:00
This is Giovanni Costa. He's a Pokemon Regional champion,
he's an editor on this channel,00:00:05
and he's also a good friend of mine. He also happens to be
a very talented documentarian. We've actually00:00:10
featured two of his works before on this channel.
Maybe you've seen one of them.00:00:15
Gio reached out almost 5 years ago asking if he could tell my story
and almost one year ago to the day,00:00:19
we sat down to make it happen. Now, there is
some important context you should know.00:00:23
This video was filmed in mid December 2024.
That means it was recorded before I won Toronto Regionals,00:00:30
the Global Challenge, and EUIC in the 2025 season,
so that entire chapter will not00:00:35
be included because it happened after we filmed. A lot can change in a year,00:00:39
and I'm now at a point in my career where
I'm thinking about sharing a bit less of myself online.00:00:43
So, it feels a little strange to be posting this, but at the same time,00:00:47
I do think that the work that Gio has done is really something special, and I think that00:00:50
it's worth having my story in one place just
for the preservation of the game's history.00:00:55
So, without further ado, I am proud to present Giovanni Costa's latest work.00:01:03
"Welcome back to the00:01:04
2016 Pokémon World Championships."00:01:08
Winning the World Championships has been a dream of mine my whole career.00:01:11
There were many years where I started to feel like maybe it wasn't attainable.00:01:15
"Wolfe looking for redemption after coming so close back in 2012.00:01:20
You really can't overstate how much it would mean to Wolfe,00:01:22
who has been spending so much of his time..."- "...and just falling short."00:01:30
I realized this may cement me as one of the greatest players of all time,00:01:34
or I would go down as the guy who lost in the finals twice.00:01:38
"You can't be world champion unless you're beating the best of the best,00:01:41
and Wolfe is the best of the best."00:01:43
I didn't realize it at the time, but that match would completely change my life.00:01:51
My name is Wolfe Glick and I am from Washington, DC.00:01:54
"I'll trade you this for a Gyarados"00:01:57
"Pokémon:00:01:58
It's the thing with the younger age set."00:02:01
"Parents should not let their kids have anything whatsoever00:02:04
to do with Pokémon, because the message is violence."00:02:09
When I was a kid, like five years old, I wasn't allowed to interact00:02:13
with Pokémon at all because my mom thought it was like, not appropriate for kids.00:02:17
It was kind of like the height of Pokémania,00:02:19
and my first time being able to interact with Pokémon was-00:02:23
I really hated getting my hair cut.00:02:25
I actually still get hate getting my hair cut,00:02:26
and so my mom would take me to this place
that was like "haircut place for kids",00:02:29
where basically00:02:30
they would have little TV screens with like children's TV on them00:02:34
that the kids could watch as they would sit00:02:36
still while they were getting their hair cut.00:02:37
I remember we went and they have this episode of the anime00:02:39
where Ash and the gang have to escape00:02:41
from a sinking ship, and there's this one line00:02:43
where Brock tells his Onyx to build a staircase and my mom thought00:02:46
that was the funniest thing ever, because, I mean, it makes sense,00:02:48
it's just like a big rock snake. But you thought that was so funny.00:02:50
She was like "oh, this is actually not what I thought it was,00:02:53
it isn't so violent; it is actually child-appropriate."00:02:55
That was how I remember kind of being introduced to the series,00:02:58
and I was just like obsessed from that point.00:03:09
My journey00:03:10
to discover competitive Pokémon was gradual.00:03:13
I actually initially was playing the Trading Card Game competitively.00:03:16
I wasn't very good, but I was on websites like PokéGym and PokéBeach.00:03:19
Our house got an updated router, and that's important00:03:23
because for the first time, my house's Wi-Fi worked with the game,00:03:28
and I discovered that you can play online against other people.00:03:31
So I remember I would go on forums-00:03:34
These were Trading Card Game forums,00:03:35
but there was a subforum of like battling other people,00:03:37
so I kind of started there,00:03:38
but I was clear pretty early on that I was better than the people there,00:03:41
because this was a Trading Card Game forum.00:03:43
So then I thought "well, maybe there are forums for Video Game players",00:03:46
and eventually I found, like the Smogon forums, and that00:03:49
kind of was at the time, the main place that people went for competitive battling.00:03:53
They had their own fan modes, and I kind of got into that.00:03:55
There was also a part of the forums that was like real life tournaments,00:03:59
and I thought "oh, a tournament in real life? That's so cool."00:04:01
And I went into this forum and one of the events was in Chantilly, Virginia,00:04:04
which is like 30 minutes-ish from where I grew up.00:04:07
And I thought "oh, like, I could go to this".00:04:09
But the thing was that they were playing a totally different format.00:04:11
At the time, I'd been playing single battles and this was VGC.00:04:14
It was double battles.00:04:15
It was totally different. And so I started playing online, went to that first tournament,00:04:18
and that was kind of the beginning of my VGC journey.00:04:26
I remember the night before this VGC tournament,00:04:29
my dad sat me down and he said, "listen, I know you're really excited.00:04:32
I know you've worked really hard for this,00:04:34
but I don't want you to be devastated when you lose.00:04:36
Like, I need you to know that you're not- you're not going to win this."00:04:43
And I went to this first tournament,00:04:44
and it was such a different experience than how tournaments are now.00:04:47
The tournaments back then were best of one close teamsheet00:04:50
single elimination, meaning you played exactly one game with somebody00:04:54
and if you lost, that was the end of your tournament.00:04:56
You would stand in line and you would go in kind of two at a time.00:04:59
And whoever was near you in the line, that's who you would play.00:05:02
So, there were something called "friend rule" where if you knew00:05:04
the person here, you could say, you know, "I don't want to play them",00:05:06
he'll play somebody else, which is crazy looking back.00:05:08
It was kind of like the Wild West; like, the game was in its infancy.00:05:11
Nobody really knew what to expect.00:05:12
Nobody really knew what they were doing,00:05:14
and I kind of just sat down and started playing, and I just kept winning.00:05:26
And I remember texting my parents every round I won.00:05:28
They were like, "yeah, good job".00:05:32
When I was like, "I'm in the Top 4",00:05:33
she was like, "oh, maybe that means there's like four rounds left?"00:05:41
There was no like, stream,00:05:43
but what they did have was an MC00:05:45
that would narrate what was going on, like over people's shoulders.00:05:47
Sometimes I remember just being so overwhelmed.00:05:54
"And then we have Mitchell with his quiet confidence.00:05:59
On the other hand, we have Wolfe Gli-"
There were a lot of things that kind of00:06:02
had made it look like it might not happen along the way- "5, 4, 3..."00:06:07
So I was up against like one of the best00:06:08
established players and like the whole crowd was behind him.00:06:12
"...2, 1... let's battle!"00:06:15
I had a Pokémon sleep for six turns in the finals in a best-of-one finals.00:06:25
I definitely was nervous and stressed,00:06:26
but I believed that I was going to do it.00:06:33
Like, I thought that I was good enough to win,00:06:35
and I believed that.00:06:43
It's like00:06:44
it was this thing where I wanted it so bad I'd made it happen.00:06:47
"Your 201100:06:49
Regional Video Game Regional champion, Wolfe Glick!"00:06:54
My mom-00:06:55
She was walking into the hall to come get me after I won.00:06:58
She was like asking people; she was like, "who won?"00:07:00
and they were like "some kid I've never heard of named Wolfe",00:07:07
Yeah, it was it was a really incredible experience.00:07:17
You know, it was so long ago that I started00:07:19
thinking about being the world champion; in my first ever event,00:07:22
I won.00:07:23
It was a Regional-level event, but then I won Nationals as well,00:07:26
my first ever National event, and I knew that I was one of the best.00:07:28
And so I at that point, it was my goal to become the world champion.00:07:36
"I really like the prediction element,00:07:37
how it's more about like, outsmarting the person;00:07:39
it's really satisfying when you've done a good move00:07:41
and it gives you an edge or like an advantage."00:07:43
It's a feeling00:07:44
that I didn't get anywhere else- at Worlds, I think was the height of that,00:07:48
so it only happens once a year,00:07:49
and like this is kind of it.00:07:54
The team that I brought to my first World Championships was similar to the team00:07:58
that I'd been using all year: Scrafty, Cofagrigus,00:08:00
Reuniclus, Conkeldurr, Thundurus and Emboar.00:08:02
It was a Trick Room team that was dedicated to setting Trick Room up00:08:05
and then winning the game while in Trick Room.00:08:07
This worked in part because the way the meta worked is00:08:09
that the goal was to hit faster and harder than your opponent,00:08:12
and my strategy basically used
slow and bulky Pokémon that could KO00:08:17
the fast and frail Pokémon if I got Trick Room up;
it was a very effective strategy.00:08:21
I think a lot of people weren't really ready for it.00:08:30
I almost believed that, like I was destined to do it.00:08:33
Like, really believed that it was going to happen.00:08:34
Like I'd come in as the underdog of Regionals,
like, in my first tournament ever,00:08:37
and I won, and then I came into Nationals.00:08:39
Now people knew who I was, but they still thought it was kind of a fluke,00:08:41
and I won there.00:08:42
And then I made00:08:43
top cut at Worlds, and I was like, "well, I mean, I won, and then I won;00:08:47
maybe... you know, maybe, maybe."00:08:56
The first opponent I would have to play in the top cut00:08:58
was Ray Rizzo, the defending world champion.00:09:06
This whole time I've been beating people who were the established,00:09:08
you know, who were the people who were expected to win.00:09:15
This is it. Like I'm going to beat him00:09:16
and then I'm going to win the whole thing, and it's going to be great.00:09:18
I think that I was maybe less stressed than I should have been00:09:21
given the opponent, given the match up.00:09:26
I won the first game.00:09:29
So I was like, "oh, this is great".00:09:31
But the second game I ended up losing.00:09:33
Ray had a Pokémon called Escavalier, which I'd never played against before,00:09:37
but he added, just as a counter to my team;00:09:39
it was really hard for me to beat because it was00:09:41
basically the only Pokémon in the game that was slower than my Trick Room Pokémon,00:09:44
so if Trick Room went up, it still was able to like, be a real nuisance.00:09:48
We weren't allowed to take notes back in the day,00:09:49
you couldn't have a notebook, and there was also no way to check00:09:52
what was going on in the game.00:09:53
Nowadays, you can press a button and click on a Pokémon that will say00:09:56
Tailwind turns left: two; this Pokémon is at -1 attack;00:09:59
rain is up on the field...00:10:00
Back in the day there was none of that, so you had to keep it all in your head,00:10:03
and I remember in the third game I got so nervous00:10:05
that I thought my Trick Room had expired, and so I went to set it up again,00:10:08
but it was actually the last turn of Trick Room,00:10:10
so instead of setting it up again, I ended up reversing it.00:10:13
I suspect that even if I hadn't reversed the Trick Room by accident,00:10:16
I probably would have lost anyway, but it didn't help that-00:10:18
I had done it, you know, basically sealed it on the spot.00:10:24
Losing to Ray was definitely eye-opening for a number of reasons.00:10:27
Ray had a Escavalier just to counter my team.00:10:29
Like, I was the only Trick Room player who was using this type of team,00:10:32
and Escavalier was added like as a way to hard counter me,00:10:36
and so like, I never thought about the game in that way before.00:10:39
I never thought about, you know, countering, you know, one specific player00:10:43
"Gentlemen, we have00:10:46
a two time world champion:00:10:50
Ray Rizzo!"00:10:55
It was a really smart call, but it helped him win the World Championships.00:10:58
Without a Escavalier in his team. I think I would have been able to do it.00:11:00
And I remember being really frustrated because00:11:03
I knew that I was good enough to win, but I hadn't done it.00:11:06
It really made me motivated to do better.00:11:07
Like, it's something I can do, and it's something that I will do;00:11:09
I'll do it next year.00:11:13
Philadelphia Regionals 201200:11:14
is a Regional that lives in infamy00:11:17
in the minds of those of us who were there,00:11:18
because it was huge, to the point where they ran out of seats00:11:21
so people had to play on the floor.00:11:23
This year, they changed the format to no longer be single eliminations,00:11:26
so you were allowed to play even after you lost.00:11:29
I brought a weird team that had Regigigas,00:11:31
but it wasn't an offensive Regigigas;00:11:32
it was this weird support one:00:11:34
It had Thunder Wave, Confuse Ray and Rock slide, where I wanted to use00:11:37
the good bulk that it had to just like, basically paralyze and flinch everything.00:11:41
I mean, it worked.00:11:42
It got me all the way in the finals; then, in the finals,00:11:44
I lost to a player who I'd go on to become friends with-00:11:46
because I made it all the way to the finals,00:11:48
I won a stipend to go to Nationals,00:11:49
so I was able to go to Nationals that second year as well.00:11:52
Somehow I ended up winning the whole thing again.00:11:54
It was kind of surreal.00:11:55
And actually Aaron00:11:56
and he won his first Nationals as well, and he won the second one too.00:11:59
We both won Nationals back to back together in different divisions.00:12:02
We'd worked on the team together and then we both won, side by side,00:12:05
sitting on this stage together; it was a really special experience.00:12:11
"No guarantees,00:12:12
there's some luck involved in this game;00:12:14
but you know, we'll try and play our best00:12:15
and you know, we'll see where that takes us."00:12:17
"I'll tell you one thing:00:12:18
his team was very Hawaiian-like."00:12:20
I started becoming kind of fascinated by the idea of defense, these Pokémon00:12:23
that you just couldn't get rid of,00:12:25
and I think that 2012 Worlds was where I hit the platonic ideal of this concept.00:12:29
I was looking at moves00:12:30
that I thought were underrated, and I came across this move Skill Swap,00:12:33
which switches the ability of the user and the ability of the target.00:12:36
And I saw that Cresselia got Skill Swap.00:12:38
So that was the kind of starting concept; I added Thundurus,00:12:40
because it was just one of the best Pokémon a time;00:12:42
I added Hitmontop, because of Intimidate, and Fake Out support was really good.00:12:45
I had a Choice Band Terrakion for burst damage,00:12:48
and then I added Exeggutor,00:12:49
because I was looking for a Pokémon that had good synergy with Heatran,00:12:52
Heatran being weak to Ground, Fighting and Water, and Exeggutor resists all of those,00:12:56
and so I was like, oh, Exeggutor has perfect synergy with Heatran,00:12:59
and it has this really cool ability, Harvest, which basically gives it00:13:02
unlimited HP.00:13:03
And so I added Exeggutor to the team,
and it ended up being the star of the show.00:13:15
It's one of my favorite teams I ever made,00:13:17
and it was this like, yeah, weird out of the field Pokémon00:13:19
that people weren't prepared for and weren't using,00:13:21
but it was really, really good,00:13:23
and it basically carried me all the way to the top cut.00:13:34
So the first player to play in Top Cup was Sejun Park,00:13:37
and I had lost him the day before in Swiss and it wasn't even really close.00:13:40
So I'm trying to figure out a plan in the lobby of the hotel,00:13:43
and I see some of the German players walking by and I'm like,00:13:46
"welp, I may as well ask for help because I'm kind of stuck,00:13:48
and I already lost to this guy once, right?"00:13:50
And one of those players happened to be Markus.00:13:52
He and his friends agreed to help me out,00:13:54
and right away Markus and I just, like, clicked together really well.00:13:57
We had really similar views on00:13:58
how to play the game and we became friends almost immediately.00:14:01
So Markus helps me build this really, really good gameplan00:14:04
that I don't think I would have figured out on my own,00:14:05
and then the next day I go00:14:06
and I play against Sejun, this player who I lost to, and I was able to win.00:14:10
But the problem was that the next round in the semifinals,00:14:12
I was up against a player from Spain, Abel; I lost to him,00:14:15
he was my other loss the day before,00:14:17
and so I found Markus and he was like, "okay";00:14:19
we sat down and we made a plan00:14:20
and I beat Abel as well, because of Markus' help, 2-0.00:14:23
And the first day I didn't bring Exeggutor00:14:25
vs either of those players, and I lost, and in the top cut,00:14:28
I played both of them again, and I brought Exeggutor and I won all four games.00:14:31
The true strength of the team was the Skill Swap Cresselia00:14:33
+ Heatran, in all honesty,00:14:34
but Exeggutor was the thing that was really memorable.00:14:37
And I also like that it's really goofy; for me,00:14:39
it was always important to not take myself00:14:40
too seriously, and I thought that Exeggutor00:14:42
was like a good representation of that because it's such a funny Pokémon.00:14:48
I remember00:14:50
going into the finals; I believed that I was going to win00:14:53
because it was what made the most sense from a narrative standpoint.00:14:56
If I had this incredible first season,00:14:58
I lose to the defending champ in top cut,00:15:02
and then the next year I come back,00:15:04
I make it all the way to Worlds' finals,
and the final person I have to beat is,00:15:07
you know, now the two time defending world champion.00:15:11
I was like, "wow, what an incredible story",00:15:13
"I had kind of my failure and now I have my redemption."00:15:15
"Yeah, like, of course I'm going to win."00:15:35
I think it was a lot more pressure than I was expecting,00:15:37
and I also think that00:15:38
when things started to go awry00:15:39
awry, I wasn't, like mentally prepared to deal with them.00:15:43
"Close Combat?" "Critical hit! Oh, my God-"00:15:45
"and Metagross goes down..." - "Electric Gem, so that's a one time use";00:15:48
"Oh, and the critical hit really put the damage into him."00:15:51
In the first turn of the first game, I think I got two critical hits,00:15:54
and by the end of the first game I lost and I was like,00:15:57
"oh my God, I got so lucky and I still lost."00:15:59
I had to, for the first time, consider that I might lose,00:16:01
and so I think that's a bad time to be doing it in the finals, mid-set.00:16:04
"Wolfe's like, stunned."00:16:06
"Well, I guess, you know, it's one of those you can't help but be stunned there"-00:16:10
"right" I wasn't used to being on a stage like that either.00:16:12
The National-level stage was much smaller, and so00:16:16
it was not an experience I was used to.00:16:19
"And we just saw Cresselia take weak damage00:16:22
against a Fighting type attack- Fighting types are...00:16:26
Fighting attacks do not do well against Psychic type Pokémon."00:16:30
The memorable moment from Worlds 2012 finals is using Hitmontop00:16:33
Close Combat onto Cresselia.00:16:35
It was just a missclick; like, I think I was just like moving too fast,00:16:38
because I was too nervous.00:16:39
I just made a mistake.00:16:40
Like I don't think there was a deeper reason behind it.00:16:41
I mean, I'm sure the deeper reason was the pressure00:16:43
and like the game slipping away from me.
I think my biggest mistake was believing00:16:47
that the thing that was the most fitting for my story was going to happen,00:16:51
not realizing that there's nobody writing the script.00:16:53
Like, that's not how this works.00:17:05
"...a three-time world champion: Ray Rizzo!"00:17:10
I definitely viewed Ray as my rival.00:17:15
Like, for sure.00:17:16
He was the player who I like, really cared about beating-00:17:18
especially because I'd had such dominant performances my first two seasons.00:17:21
Like, to have a player who had beaten me twice-00:17:23
It definitely felt like we were rivals.00:17:25
"The Masters Division runner up from the USA, Mr. Wolfe Glick!"00:17:31
Second place at the World Championships is obviously00:17:34
an incredible performance.00:17:35
I was so mad; I was- I was so upset.00:17:39
I was like- I lost to the same guy twice, like- like, in the finals.00:17:43
So I don't think I handled it with the most grace that I could have.00:17:45
I was also a kid, you know, like,00:17:46
I wasn't like a kid kid, but I was like 16, 17 at the time.00:17:50
So I think that I wasn't, like, as good at dealing with new and complex emotions00:17:53
as perhaps I would like to be now.00:17:54
"We're going to see you in Vancouver."00:17:58
At the same time, I had won the trip and the qualification00:18:00
to the next year's Worlds, which took a lot of pressure off.00:18:02
The only way you could qualify for Worlds back in my first two seasons00:18:06
was to finish Top 8 at a National Championship or better.00:18:09
There was one other way in,00:18:10
which is you could show up to the tournament and enter00:18:12
something called the Last Chance Qualifier,00:18:14
where you just played until there were only four players left,00:18:16
so it was a huge gamble.00:18:17
You'd booked very expensive flight00:18:19
across the country to maybe have a chance to play on the actual tournament.00:18:23
So by getting second at Worlds,00:18:24
I knew that I won the trip to Vancouver00:18:27
and I qualified for Worlds there, so I was really upset00:18:30
and I was really frustrated, but I was also motivated00:18:31
at the same time; it didn't make me want to win Worlds any less,00:18:34
it just made me want to do it even more.00:18:39
When I was younger especially, I had a really hard time making friends.00:18:42
I was really awkward, I was really shy,00:18:44
and I think because of the way that I look,00:18:46
just the way that my features landed on my face,00:18:48
like I came across as like maybe uninterested or or Intimidating,00:18:52
but really, I was just really shy and didn't know how to approach people,00:18:54
but because of the way that I looked, people wouldn't approach me.00:18:57
And I remember being at Worlds and like, I didn't really have a group.00:19:00
Like, a lot of people in Pokémon00:19:02
had a friend group back then because there weren't that many people,00:19:04
so you kind of clustered up00:19:06
and I didn't really have a group of people to, to be with,00:19:09
and so I was like a little bit lonely,00:19:10
but like going out and trying to like, make friends.00:19:13
And I remember being like,00:19:15
this is so wonderful because I never have to worry about00:19:18
that I don't know what to say because we can always talk about Pokémon.00:19:20
Like, I know that we all have this shared interest, a shared passion.00:19:23
I don't need to worry that I like.00:19:24
I'm saying the wrong thing, or that I don't know how to talk to people00:19:26
because I can just talk about Pokémon, and then that makes it easier.00:19:30
"No. No strategy;00:19:31
just go out there and have fun" - "No strategy is also a strategy"00:19:33
"It's all about becoming friends with your Pokémon"00:19:36
I remember being really amazed at how much easier it was to talk00:19:39
to people than I was used to.00:19:43
I had other friends in Pokémon before,00:19:45
but Markus and I were just so in sync, and we clicked so well00:19:48
and so easily that it was an experience that I'd never really had before,00:19:51
so we started talking like, it was legitimately every single day.00:19:54
Like I remember,00:19:56
I was always aware of what time it was in Germany,00:19:58
and I sure he was always aware of what time it was in DC,00:20:00
but we were just like spent all day talking about teams,00:20:02
talk about Pokémon, talk about the game.00:20:04
And it was really fun.00:20:05
It was interesting being friends with somebody and being so close with them00:20:07
and also knowing like, at best we get to hang out for less than a week a year,00:20:11
and at worst we don't get to see each other this year.00:20:13
It was interesting that our friendship was so strong00:20:15
despite that, because it's hard for me to imagine being friends with somebody,00:20:19
knowing that I might not see them for potentially 2 or 3 years00:20:23
if things don't go well.00:20:25
I already was having so much fun00:20:27
in Pokémon and being able to have somebody who I was attached to at the hip-00:20:31
It was a really, really special experience.00:20:39
"Video Game players..."00:20:43
"Oh, I really want it this year, I've worked very hard;00:20:45
it means a lot to me to try and finally get it.00:20:47
I just I feel much better with it.00:20:48
It's kind of a new playstyle, a new way of playing the game,00:20:51
but I have so many tricks up my sleeve that I can just throw at my opponents,00:20:54
and I think,00:20:55
I think it'll change the way people look at the way we play the game."00:20:58
It was a disaster. It was- it was-00:21:00
The team was a disaster,00:21:01
like, my mentality was a disaster...00:21:03
The whole thing was- it was a a horrible, horrible mess.00:21:09
I was so, so dumb.00:21:11
I was so stupid.00:21:13
Like, I basically was convinced that, like, I could play the game00:21:16
any way I wanted and just by being me, it would be the right way.00:21:20
That's not how it works.00:21:21
That's a lesson that I learned.00:21:22
I had all these people in my life from Pokémon, who were trying so hard00:21:25
to get me on the right track.00:21:26
It was a moment where I thought00:21:27
that I knew better, and it was so apparent that I'd been a little arrogant.00:21:31
"I'm so much more prepared.00:21:32
I built my team in about maybe ten months00:21:34
this year, spending so much more time, and last year I had about a month."00:21:37
I knew at the beginning of the season that already qualified.00:21:40
So my little, you know, teenage brain was like, "oh, if I spend all year00:21:43
working on one team, that team will be so good00:21:46
because I'll have a year's worth of experience on it",00:21:48
not realizing that like the meta changes and like you have to learn things00:21:51
about the format before you can really start building.00:21:52
So I spent all year on this one terrible team with all these awful Pokémon.00:21:56
I was so focused on Pokémon that were so incredibly tanky00:21:59
with lots of recovery, and I basically just wanted to like00:22:02
toxic stall everything and then outbulk them to win the game.00:22:06
It doesn't work very well. Here's the lesson that I learned.00:22:08
You're always going to be00:22:09
susceptible to critical hits, to like really offensive teams...00:22:12
And yeah, it just didn't didn't work at all.00:22:15
Are you going to beat Ray Rizzo with this team?00:22:18
I am absolutely going to beat Ray Rizzo with this team.00:22:21
I think, ironically, I did end up outpacing Ray by one placement,00:22:24
as I recall; I think I was 25th and he was 26th.00:22:26
So, that was kind of like, how the mighty have fallen,00:22:29
except that I think Ray was kind of joking around, not taking it seriously,00:22:33
and I think that I would not have said the same about me.00:22:35
That was the first moment where I realized, like, "oh, I'm not invincible";00:22:39
like, oh, I'm not-00:22:40
It wasn't just like there's one player who is my Kryptonite.00:22:45
My first two seasons I attended six events.00:22:46
I went first Regionals, first Nationals, sixth at Worlds,00:22:50
and then I went second at Regionals, first at Nationals again, second at Worlds.00:22:54
Two incredible seasons.00:22:56
But the problem was that I took the wrong lessons from my success.00:22:59
I thought that I was doing well because I was able to find these, like,00:23:02
weird Pokémon that nobody else was, was, you know,00:23:04
believed that nobody else could use and that that was the secret sauce.00:23:08
And because of that, I made myself worst.00:23:11
But, you know, I was a kid, I didn't know any better.00:23:13
And there were no resources,00:23:14
there were no- there wasn't really anybody even
who could serve as a mentor for me00:23:19
because the one person who was, like, consistently00:23:20
better than me in the US was like, my rival.00:23:23
And so I didn't really have any external resources,00:23:26
and frankly, knowing my personality, I probably wouldn't00:23:28
listen to anyway, like, I wanted to do things my way;00:23:31
and because of that 2013, I feel like I built all of these terrible habits,00:23:34
and then in 2014, I had to start unlearning them.00:23:37
I had to start figuring out the process of getting back to a good place.00:23:45
So, 2013 was the00:23:50
season where they introduced Championship Points for the first time, where-00:23:54
Now, it wasn't just about making Top 8 at Nationals,00:23:56
it was instead about earning points over the course of the season to qualify.00:24:00
And because of that, rather than there00:24:01
being four slots from the US, there were far more.00:24:03
So in theory, it was the easiest year to qualify thus far,00:24:06
and that's important because 2014 was the first and only year ever00:24:10
that I did not qualify for the World Championships: the Regionals,00:24:14
I had good performances, but not great, but ultimately came down00:24:17
to the National Championship for me, where I was one win00:24:19
short of advancing to the- to the next day, basically.00:24:22
And because of that, I didn't earn enough Championship Points to qualify, which felt00:24:25
really, really bad for a couple of reasons.00:24:28
The first being that not qualifying for Worlds00:24:30
after such a disappointing finish last year00:24:32
meant I wouldn't have a chance to redeem myself.00:24:34
The second being that Markus had had a great season winning Nationals,00:24:36
it felt like I was falling behind; and third, and I would say00:24:39
most importantly, Worlds was in DC that year.00:24:43
So it was in my hometown and I didn't get to play-00:24:46
like, I had to sit in the sidelines and watch,00:24:48
as in my city, I didn't even have a chance to compete for the crown.00:24:52
However,00:24:53
back then, because qualifying was so much harder,00:24:56
we still had the Last Chance Qualifier, that tournament where however00:24:59
many people wanted to show up00:25:01
and the last four standing would make it into the tournament.00:25:04
And so everything for me kind of hinged on this00:25:07
Last Chance Qualifier.00:25:20
The team that I used for the Last Chance Qualifier I really liked;00:25:23
it was a team built around the combination of Gothitelle and Mawile,00:25:27
which is a really strong emerging duo.00:25:29
Mega Kangaskhan had dominated most of the format.00:25:31
However, Mega Mawile was the Mega Evolution at the time00:25:34
that seemed to match up the best into it, with its Steel typing00:25:36
that wasn't weak to Fighting, and also had Intimidate in its base form,00:25:39
it hit super hard- so Mawile + Gothitelle was a really strong combo,00:25:43
and I paired this with some of my favorite Pokémon, like Politoed with Perish Song,00:25:47
so I could use the Perish Song + Shadow Tag combination, as well as Scrafty,00:25:50
one of my all time favorite Pokémon00:25:51
that now had access to Intimidate to kind of enable a more bulky Trick Room mode,00:25:55
also allowing me to use double Intimidate with Shadow Tag, which is really scary,00:25:59
and then I also had Ludicolo with Assault Vest as another Fake Out user00:26:02
to help set up Perish Song and to take advantage of the rain;00:26:04
and my final Pokémon was a Life Orb Hydreigon, which could do tons of damage00:26:08
to Pokémon like Aegislash, which was a huge counter to Perish Trap.00:26:11
Just like my first tournament,00:26:12
by the way, this was single elimination, so if you lost a single game you were out.00:26:15
No information, closed teamsheets... It was really hard.00:26:23
In the end, I just barely made it00:26:28
through the Last Chance Qualifier to qualify for the World Championships.00:26:31
Out of all the tournaments I've ever played,00:26:33
this is the one that I personally consider to be the hardest.00:26:35
Being able to go and compete at Worlds, it was just an incredible-00:26:39
an incredible feeling.00:26:59
I finished ninth.00:27:00
If a couple of my opponents had won one more round,00:27:02
I would have made it into the Top 8 and that really stung.00:27:05
And it also stung, in part00:27:06
because there were some unfortunate things that happened there.00:27:08
The first was that the Pokémon Company made the decision to publish00:27:12
the teams of the players who made it through the Last Chance Qualifier online,00:27:15
so while I was playing closed teamsheet for the whole tournament,00:27:19
every one of my opponents, they could look on their phone00:27:21
and see everything about my team while I was going in completely blind.00:27:25
It was a huge disadvantage.00:27:27
And on top of that,00:27:28
there was a player who I played against who beat me, who had cheated.00:27:31
So back in the day the tournament was played on the 3DS00:27:33
and you made all your moves on the bottom screen, while the top screen displayed00:27:37
what was going on.00:27:39
And so there were a couple players who realized at the time00:27:41
that if you kind of positioned yourself properly and you leaned forward00:27:45
and you had the right angle, you could see what was going on in your opponent's00:27:48
bottom screen.00:27:49
You could see what moves they were selecting,00:27:50
and then you could pick your own moves,00:27:52
and you would sometimes catch people doing it, but it was hard.00:27:54
It was midway through game two when I realized what was going on00:27:57
and it was too late, like I'd already lost game one.00:27:59
They did like made some ridiculous read game two,00:28:01
I looked up, I saw them looking at my screen and it was too late.00:28:05
Like, what was I going to do? Be like, "hey, they were looking at my screen"00:28:07
and then the opponent's like, "I wasn't looking at the screen", and that was it.00:28:10
And so not only did I barely miss out on resistance,00:28:13
not only to my team published online, putting me at a huge disadvantage,00:28:16
but also I was cheated against00:28:18
to lose one of my two losses that ultimately knocked me out.00:28:21
And so it feels like if any one of those things00:28:23
had gone differently, I might have been able to do it.00:28:25
Although I knew that that was a year that I could have won Worlds,00:28:27
and where my team matched up really well against the eventual winners.00:28:30
I also knew that I was lucky to have made it in the first place, so00:28:34
kind of both emotions were powerful, both the gratitude00:28:37
at being able to play and also the frustration00:28:38
that these things happen that were out of my control.00:28:50
In 2015, I started figuring out some of the bad lessons00:28:54
that I had taught myself, and I started being able to overcome them in small ways.00:28:57
So I had an amazing season.00:28:59
I won Regionals with Mega Banette of all Pokémon.00:29:02
Then I won Regionals with Perish Trap.00:29:03
I also finished second place at Regionals as well,00:29:05
where I lost to Aaron Zheng in the finals.00:29:07
And then I made top cut at Nationals00:29:09
despite not having a team going in-00:29:11
I think I figured out my team on the plane ride to Nationals,00:29:13
it was very stressful.00:29:14
"I had a lot of CP going into this tournament,00:29:17
and I think at this point I should have locked up the,00:29:19
the flight and the Day2 invite, which is a really-00:29:21
I'm really happy about that"- Top 8 was an incredible finish.00:29:23
It put me at first and Championship Points in the country.00:29:26
That being said, this is a point where I think my mentality was at its lowest.00:29:30
I remember00:29:31
finishing Top 8 at Nationals after I hadn't had a team, after00:29:34
it was super, super close and being like upset about it,00:29:37
and being like frustrated that I didn't win the tournament.00:29:41
I think that like looking back, this was a moment where I can say,00:29:44
like my relationship with the game00:29:46
and my mentality around the game was not healthy.00:29:48
Feeling like I had to win or it wasn't worth it...00:29:50
It was not sustainable.00:29:51
And I remember Markus being really- he never said anything about it,00:29:55
but I could tell that he was upset when I after I finished Top 8;00:29:57
I was upset and I could see Markus like, disappointed that I felt disappointed00:30:01
when I had had such a good run, when it was so close to being a disaster.00:30:05
Yeah, like that's something00:30:06
that's really stuck with me, is the feeling of like making someone who,00:30:09
you know, care deeply about me and I cared deeply about, like,00:30:11
not feel good because I wasn't, like, happy with my good result.00:30:19
"It is my great honor and privilege00:30:21
to welcome you to this year's Pokémon World Championships."00:30:28
"We're going to jump right into this match,00:30:30
though, as we're going to see Wolfe Glick and Nikolai."00:30:33
So, at Worlds 2015,00:30:34
the team that I brought was a bunch of Pokémon00:30:36
that I was familiar with, that were kind of classics of mine.00:30:38
I had Scrafty, who had become like a real staple;00:30:40
I had Milotic, who I had used at Nationals00:30:42
and I really liked as a Pokémon- "Thunderbolt, though,00:30:44
going to go into the Milotic, and it's going to be super effective00:30:47
doing a huge amount of damage and the paralysis off of the Thunderbolt."00:30:51
I had this like defensive Aegislash00:30:53
I had Landorus Therian for a double Intimidate-00:30:56
"Thundurus is going to avoid the Rock Slide!"00:30:59
"That's exactly what I said, potentially00:31:00
because I just wasn't sure if the favors were going to be in Wolfe's..."00:31:04
And then I bet on Charizard X as my Mega Evolution, the idea being that it was fast,00:31:08
it could hit hard... It had recovery, which I was interested in, could burn Pokémon00:31:11
like Mega Kangaskhan and opposing Landorus...00:31:13
So my strategy was kind of shut down the opponent with Will-o-Wisp,00:31:16
recover with Roost and then do big damage with Flare Blitz was the idea.00:31:19
"But unfortunately, Charizard gets fully paralyzed00:31:21
when something in the sun might have been fun for Wolfe"00:31:24
- and the last Pokémon was Zapdos, who also had recovery00:31:26
and also was just an annoying Pokémon to deal with,
gave me a Ground immunity, etc.00:31:29
"The Charizard X is going to be fully paralyzed again,00:31:32
unfortunately for Wolfe, kind of rubbing salt in the wound there,00:31:34
but I think that is going to kind of turn it over to Nikolai"00:31:38
I once again missed out on top cut via resistance, which was definitely frustrating.00:31:42
However, Worlds 2015 was the worst mental state00:31:46
I've ever played a tournament in, in my life.00:31:47
I was really not in a good place.00:31:49
I had, just the week before, gone through a pretty00:31:52
serious breakup and I could not think about the game.00:31:55
The game was happening and I was kind of clicking00:31:57
buttons on instinct, but like, my heart wasn't-00:32:00
my head wasn't in it, like I was so distraught that like, even playing in the World Championships,00:32:04
like, it didn't, like, move me in the way that it normally does.00:32:07
It's not a tournament where I have happy memories associated with,00:32:10
with one exception: "that looks like Shoma's most likely to pull this off00:32:14
and we see him run"00:32:15
"There it is guys:00:32:16
both players shaking hands, and Shoma Honami00:32:19
is your 2015 Pokémon00:32:22
Video Game World Champion, as he celebrates it, again,00:32:27
passes out;00:32:28
no shoes; knocks his shoes right off"00:32:31
I remember being with my friends and like, looking at the standings00:32:35
and walking away from the tournament00:32:36
and realizing like Japan smoked us; like, not close.00:32:40
Japan finished first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh00:32:44
and I don't remember who initiated it.00:32:46
It might have been Billa, it might have been Markus,00:32:47
but somebody was like, "hey, next year it's going to be one of us."00:32:52
And we were like, oh!00:32:53
And we were like, "okay, we'll make the promise: next year,00:32:56
one of us is going to win."00:32:57
That's a moment that really stuck with me because next year it was one of us.00:33:26
Because of this team called Big Six,00:33:27
it was a much more stale format with a lot less innovation than normal.00:33:31
Because this team was so strong, it ended up winning00:33:33
almost every major event throughout the entire year.00:33:35
And even when players thought they had found a counter to it00:33:38
and it didn't win a tournament,00:33:39
then the Big Six team would just adapt and then beat the counter,00:33:43
and so it was it was always dominating tournament for the entire season.00:33:46
Xerneas is a Pokémon00:33:47
that's just ridiculous: being able to double its three most important stats00:33:51
in its speed, special attack and special defense made it difficult to deal with,00:33:54
and because Xerneas has perfect synergy with Primal Groudon00:33:57
in that Fire, Steel and Poison types, that resist Xerneas' Fairy moves,00:34:01
Primal Groudon hits all of them with its Ground moves.00:34:04
The real issue, though, was like less about the restricted Pokémon, though00:34:06
that certainly didn't help, and more about Smeargle.00:34:08
Smeargle back in 2016 was a complete menace.00:34:11
It has access to every move in the game, and what that meant at the time was that00:34:15
it could use Darkrai's signature move, Dark Void, which hits both00:34:18
opposing Pokémon and puts them to sleep for up to three turns.00:34:22
And on top of this, Smeargle also gets the Moody ability,00:34:25
giving it a random stat boost every single turn, and getting something00:34:28
like a speed boost or an evasion boost,00:34:29
or even a defense boost on occasion would like completely swing the match,00:34:33
and we were playing in a format where you couldn't know what moves00:34:36
your opponent had until after they already used them.00:34:40
It was just- it was it was so horrible.00:34:53
"Good afternoon, everyone,00:34:55
and welcome back to the 201600:34:58
Pokémon and National Championships here in Columbus, Ohio."00:35:02
"Our first battle here on the mainstream is going to be, Ray, your old rival,00:35:07
Wolfe Glick, still playing, while you're back here behind the desk.00:35:10
I hope there's no commentator bias here."00:35:12
Going into Nationals, I was primed to get the day one bye, starting immediately00:35:16
on the second day of Worlds- I had another really strong season.00:35:19
I won a Regional after Worlds,00:35:22
and then I also won a Regional in Florida with my stupid00:35:26
Dialga Kyogre team, where Dialga was not a very good00:35:28
restricted Pokémon, but I just got really good matchups,00:35:30
so it worked.00:35:31
And then at Nationals I used a really weird team with like00:35:33
Red Card Heatran, Scrafty, who wasn't considered very good at the time,00:35:36
Primal Groudon Dialga...00:35:38
"It is getting to the crunch time, Evan-"00:35:39
"Yeah, it's real close."00:35:41
"Their lives are on the line right now.00:35:43
They really don't have much room for error,00:35:44
they can't really drop too many more games, so-"00:35:46
I felt really prepared.00:35:48
I like had gotten number one on the in-game ladder.00:35:50
I got number one on the Showdown ladder.00:35:52
I was feeling super, super good.00:35:53
"Groudon does go for the Precipice Blades,00:35:55
so a lot of damage will be dealt to this Dialga-00:35:59
Oh, it's a OHKO!00:36:01
Critical hit!"00:36:02
Oh, no.00:36:05
"It looks like Wolfe is going to go ahead and
forfeit this match and the game here."00:36:09
I ended up having my worst finish ever at the time.00:36:11
That was really demoralizing.00:36:12
It didn't help as well that a player who I'd considered a friend had, like,00:36:16
maliciously sent out details of my team to many other competitors.00:36:20
So once again, I was going in with an information disadvantage00:36:22
where people knew what my sets were, and I had all these crazy choices on my team,00:36:26
but it didn't matter because I'd been compromised when it came to information,00:36:29
so I was in my head a little bit because it's like I could consider00:36:32
this person a friend,00:36:33
and then they had like given out information of my team.00:36:37
In that moment, I thought about seriously quitting; the terrible way I feel00:36:40
after losing-00:36:41
It's not worth chasing this anymore,00:36:43
like I think, I think I might actually be done.00:36:45
I had been in position to get the day one bye00:36:47
and I was like, I had such an incredible season,00:36:48
and then I'd had one bad performance and I didn't get the day one bye00:36:52
so I had to start in the first day of the tournament.00:36:54
I wouldn't have this massive advantage00:36:56
in terms of information, in terms of everything else.00:36:58
And I think between like having such a bad finish, having the practice go so well00:37:02
and then the performance go so badly,00:37:03
and then also like feeling betrayed by somebody who I had like trusted00:37:06
and had considered a friend- like, it all kind of coalesced into this knot00:37:10
of bad feelings,00:37:11
and that's when the doubt started to set in, right?00:37:13
Like, and the feelings of "did I miss my opportunity00:37:16
because I was so concerned on how good it would feel00:37:18
when I did win, that I didn't take the time00:37:20
to actually make sure that I did win in the first place"-00:37:22
"Did I forever forfeit my dream because
I just wasn't good enough in one match?"00:37:31
It was tough, but at the same time,00:37:34
I was ready to kind of give Worlds a full shot as well.00:37:37
Markus had qualified, he was coming in and we were like, okay,00:37:40
we got to build a team, like that's- that's the most important thing right now.00:37:43
We have to figure out a team.00:37:51
The problem with 2016 was that you had two options with your team.00:37:57
You could either try and beat the Big Six team00:37:59
that was dominating and winning most tournaments,00:38:01
or you could try and beat the other teams, and no team existed00:38:04
that could do both.00:38:07
And so what Markus and I set out to do00:38:09
was to build a team that could both handle Big Six00:38:12
and could also beat everything else as well.00:38:13
We realized that the combination of Mega Gengar, Hitmontop, Bronzong,00:38:17
and Primal Kyogre together could beat almost all Big Six variants00:38:20
with like Lum Berry Safeguard Bronzong
to deal with the Smeargle and the Xerneas-00:38:24
you'd have Kyogre and Wide Guard Hitmontop to deal with the Primal Groudon,00:38:28
you would Mega Gengar to punish Xerneas in the lead and to deal with Mega Kangaskhan,00:38:31
and to some extent Mega Salamence; it also could like, Taunt Smeargle...00:38:34
So we had basically four Pokémon that together completely shut down00:38:37
almost all of the main pathways that the Big Six team took.00:38:42
The problem was that we hadn't dealt with the other teams as well,00:38:46
and we eventually realized that the other restricted00:38:47
that made sense to pair with Primal Kyogre
was Mega Rayquaza; that way, against teams00:38:51
with dual Primals, Mega Rayquaza could enable your Kyogre00:38:54
to beat their Groudon, and with its strong physical attack,00:38:56
you could also use it to beat Primal Kyogre.00:38:58
So it was really effective against those teams.00:39:00
Then, if we had Raichu's Lighting Rod ability,00:39:02
we could protect ourselves from Thundurus,00:39:04
we could protect ourselves from other Electric type attackers,00:39:06
and of course, the big thing was that Raichu00:39:07
couldn't really do damage; like, that was the main issue with using Raichu.00:39:10
However, there was an event that distributed Endeavor Pikachu,00:39:13
which you could evolve into Endeavor Raichu.00:39:15
And because 2016 had such powerful, restricted Pokémon,00:39:18
they all had such high HP stats00:39:20
that if you could hit them with Endeavor, it would bring them so, so low.00:39:23
We gave it the Assault Vest to help keep it alive,00:39:26
so Raichu could survive a lot of the big attacks from the format and if it survived,00:39:30
it could fire back with Endeavor, basically almost knocking out many of the00:39:34
main threats in the format.00:39:44
Raichu helped us kind of finish the team out,00:39:46
and it was at that point we knew that we had the really, really special team.00:40:03
"Good morning,00:40:04
everyone, and welcome to the 2016 Pokémon00:40:08
World Championships."00:40:13
We weren't sure what was going to happen-00:40:15
On day one, players are incentivized to do really weird, crazy stuff.00:40:18
"The Eject Button- Hello!"00:40:20
So it was a lot of tough matchups.00:40:21
I had to play against Xerneas + Kyogre,00:40:23
which is something that I had never played against before.00:40:25
Justin, who would go on to become a good friend of mine00:40:27
after this tournament, he was using it and so I had to play against him.00:40:29
I played against a Dialga, which was just a nightmare00:40:31
for the team to play against because Rayquaza, Kyogre, Raichu,00:40:35
Bronzong, Mega Gengar...00:40:36
None of these Pokémon could really damage it;00:40:38
some of them couldn't damage it at all,00:40:39
and so the only Pokémon that could damage it was Hitmontop,00:40:42
who was forced to switch out whenever it took damage.00:40:45
So it was a really hard matchup, and I had to play against Weavile00:40:48
Mega Rayquaza team, which was something we were worried about00:40:50
and I beat that as well.00:40:51
So it was a lot of tough matchups, but I beat everybody that I played against00:40:54
and it felt really good.00:40:55
Markus only lost one game on day one; because Markus00:40:58
and I had both made it through, we both had done it very well...00:41:01
I wasn't sure if we would be counter-teamed;00:41:02
I wasn't sure if people would spend a lot of time preparing for our teams...00:41:06
Like, I knew that even though the first day had gone well,00:41:08
it didn't necessarily mean anything for the second day.00:41:11
"Wolfe Glick will be playing for his top cut-"00:41:14
I was so focused, I was so concentrated during this that I was applying pressure00:41:21
and reacting to pressure in ways that, like I hadn't done before-00:41:26
"Origin Pulse connecting on both of Blake's Pokémon00:41:30
will be able to pick up the double KO, and with that double KO00:41:33
Wolfe advances into the top cut."00:41:36
I think one thing that I did well was I didn't want to get ahead of myself after00:41:40
what happened in 2012, I wanted to take it one day at a time, one game at a time.00:41:43
"15 rounds of Pokémon have been played over the course of two days.00:41:46
We have cut down to our final top 32."00:41:49
All of us who were using the team were still in the tournament;00:41:51
the three of us.00:41:52
On the one hand, it felt great00:41:53
that we were all still in it, but also the job wasn't done.00:41:56
"Markus has advanced to the Top 8 of the 2016 Pokémon00:42:00
Video Game World Championships."00:42:01
"Is there anything that you're really00:42:03
a little bit nervous about facing with your team?"00:42:05
"My best friend."00:42:06
"Wolfe Glick is still in the tournament, so facing him would of course00:42:09
be really, really good on the one hand, because it would mean that we made it00:42:12
really far."00:42:13
"There's a reason that all three of them are in the Top 8, right?00:42:16
That's actually incredible."00:42:17
"Time has ran out, the battle is over."00:42:19
"Oh, Portugal advances to the Top 4!"00:42:23
"Wolfe Glick really looking to win Worlds because that has been his dream..."00:42:26
"Wolfe Glick advances to the Top 4 at the 2016 Pokémon00:42:30
Video Game World Championships;00:42:32
he is back in the Top 4."00:42:34
"Markus and I are like best friends.00:42:35
We built the team together and so to think that00:42:37
like we both making it this far is phenomenal."00:42:39
"Markus Stadter has moved through to the Top 4 of the World Championships."00:42:50
Playing Markus in the Top 4-00:42:53
When I realized we'd have to play, I was like, oh,00:42:55
I wish I could have been in the finals.00:42:57
And he was like, no, this is the best that it should have been.00:42:59
Like, this is better.00:43:00
We have the exact same team, so it's going to be a little silly,00:43:02
and the finals of Worlds should be something special.00:43:05
It should be something spectacular.00:43:07
And I was like, okay, he's actually right.00:43:08
"Both of these guys making it through day one,00:43:11
now they're playing in the semifinals.00:43:12
Once again, these are two of the best guys you could have in the community."00:43:15
I think I realized that, like, all I could do was try my best to like,00:43:18
treat Markus in the moment like he was with like any other opponent,00:43:21
and like that was the way that I could honor and respect him,00:43:23
and I kind of trusted that he would do the same for me.00:43:26
"Game one is beginning, right?00:43:28
Raichu and Gengar will be the leads for Markus;00:43:31
Raichu and Kyogre will be the lead for Wolfe."00:43:34
I think that Markus, going into our semifinal match had a different mentality;00:43:38
I think that he was more willing to accept that, like whoever won,00:43:41
he was going to be happy with,00:43:42
whereas I really wanted to win- "Kyogre actually going to protect itself as well,00:43:47
and Raichu00:43:48
with the Fake Out onto Kyogre into the Protect; Gengar with the sludge Bomb... Raichu?"00:43:52
"Gets poisoned?"00:43:57
"Well, that was a play"00:43:58
I think that he attacked himself to try and set up for an Endeavor,00:44:01
and Markus has a really high rate of reading my plays,00:44:06
and in most circumstances, he calls out when I play it safe,00:44:08
he calls out when I take risks...00:44:09
This time his really risky play d idn't pay off.00:44:12
"Wolfey Glick is one game away00:44:13
in this best of three to advance to his second World Championship finals."00:44:17
I think he was more willing to make plays that were like a little bit less standard00:44:21
and to take a bigger risk,00:44:22
whereas I was still trying to play00:44:24
as if, like Markus, as any other opponent, I think Markus was trying to play00:44:27
as if it were me.00:44:28
"Rayquaza should be able to pick up this KO..." - "Oh, it does pick the OHKO!"00:44:33
"It's not looking good for Markus; it's still doable,00:44:35
but Wolfe has outmaneuvered Markus consistently00:44:37
the first couple of turns."00:44:38
I gave it my all and I had to be at peace with whatever ended up happening.00:44:41
"The Rayquaza could have targeted down that Kyogre;00:44:42
that should pick up the knock out".00:44:48
"What did you guys say to each other after this match?00:44:50
It must have been hard to to fight each other."00:44:52
"It was, Markus said00:44:53
'I don't know if I've ever been so happy to lose before'"-00:44:55
At that point, I felt like, okay, like I need to win tomorrow because otherwise00:45:00
there will always be the question of, "oh, what if Markus had won?"00:45:03
Would had he finished the job?00:45:04
"Wolfe now has a chance for redemption, a chance to make it back to the finals00:45:09
and get that world Championship title that he lost to Ray Rizzo."00:45:14
I was very aware of the fact that I was either going to redeem myself,00:45:18
or I was going to be the first player to lose in the World finals twice.00:45:25
"Welcome back to the00:45:26
2016 to Pokémon World Championships."00:45:30
Between making it to the finals and playing the finals,00:45:32
there was like 16 hours, and so there was a lot of time00:45:36
there to think about the matchup, but also to think about what this match meant.00:45:39
I've been here before and I didn't do it, you know, like I know that I am fallible.00:45:44
I know that I can leave this not as the world champion, but as the runner up.00:45:48
"Wolfe looking for redemption after coming so close back in 2012."00:45:53
"You really can't overstate how much it would mean to Wolfe,00:45:55
who has been spending so much of his time, and just falling short."00:45:59
I knew that it was a difficult matchup.00:46:01
It was actually a player who I'd played earlier in the tournament00:46:03
and had managed to win, but with a full day of preparation00:46:05
with more information, I knew that it would be a different match00:46:09
than what I'd played earlier.00:46:10
"Wolfe has all these expectations."00:46:12
"He is supposed to win this matchup, right?"00:46:14
"He's been in this exact position before,00:46:16
multiple years ago, and you can't be world champion00:46:19
unless you're beating the best of the best,00:46:20
and Wolfe is the best of the best."00:46:30
It was just so intense.00:46:31
Like, the lights, the cameras,00:46:33
and I basically had spent all of the time that I'd been awake00:46:37
thinking about the match,00:46:38
anticipating how my opponent would adjust, how he would expect me to adjust.00:46:41
Also, the added pressure of, you know, carrying my friends' hopes and dreams00:46:45
with me was a crushing weight of pressure for an extended period of time.00:46:57
But I had a general idea of what his gameplan would be,00:47:00
but there was this Manectric, which had the Lightning Rod ability,00:47:02
and a lot of my strategy focused around using00:47:04
Volt Switch to break out of the Shadow Tag lock,00:47:06
and eventually I came up with something that I'd never used00:47:08
in the entire tournament before of Rayquaza Kyogre lead.00:47:10
"Wolfe will go ahead and lead both restricted Pokémon, while Jonathan00:47:15
will go ahead and lead his own Kyogre and the Gengar here."00:47:19
"Rayquaza Kyogre lead, which is definitely
something I don't think I've ever seen;00:47:22
both of those Pokémon out as a lead"- it was not very common00:47:24
and didn't make sense in most circumstances,00:47:26
but worked here because I wanted to ensure that he didn't00:47:29
switch Groudon in on the first turn.00:47:31
As soon as the battle started, it went exactly as I had hoped;00:47:33
like, he led with the Pokémon I expected,00:47:35
and I knew that he wasn't going to be prepared for what I had done.00:47:37
"I remember, like Gengar, who could just, you know, be hit00:47:39
by a huge Water Spout or Origin Pulse; Rayquaza actually going to swap out"00:47:43
"Wolfe doing what Wolfe does best and switching his Pokémon around"00:47:47
"Mega Gengar now trapping the Raichu, and00:47:50
Kyogre actually- Sludge Bomb into Kyogre,
actually weakening this Water Spout a little bit,00:47:54
not going to deal00:47:55
enough to Kyogre, so Gengar actually will survive because of that,00:47:58
and Thunder-00:47:59
is going right into00:48:00
that Raichu switch in- Raichu will take that Thunder for Wolfe"00:48:03
There was one turn that was a little bit messy towards the middle, where I tried00:48:06
to cover for Manectric switch in, I think I went for like an Endeavor,00:48:09
expecting like Manectric to switch in, when I could have just Volt Switched00:48:12
to maybe take a KO, but I think especially with my lead00:48:14
and my good, like, prep,00:48:15
and putting him on the back foot, I was just so much further ahead.00:48:18
"Is the Extreme Speed;00:48:19
so no Protects; Extreme Speed will connect with Kyog-" "Does it survive?!"00:48:22
"No!" "It will go down!"00:48:25
I remember at the end of the first game I looked down00:48:27
and both my hands were shaking, and I feel like I'd done00:48:29
a good job of managing the pressure up until that point,00:48:31
but then I was like, okay, like, it's starting to affect me.00:48:33
Like, I really need to win this one in 2 games because, yeah, clearly00:48:36
my body is starting to kind of like feel the extent of the stress and the pressure.00:48:39
"If Wolfe takes this game, he will be the new world champion00:48:44
and he is so,00:48:46
so close to finally achieving the goal that he's been working for for so long,00:48:49
ever since he's been playing this game"- game two was definitely harder.00:48:51
There was a crucial point early on, but also I was able to KO his Mega Gengar00:48:54
right away on the first turn due to like a very favorable damage roll,00:48:58
and so I immediately got out of the Shadow Tag lock, but "Origin Pulse00:49:02
coming back out from Jonathan's own Kyogre will deal a good amount of damage to the Raichu,00:49:06
but I'm pretty sure we've seen it survive that.00:49:08
Yep, I feel like I kind of made things a bit00:49:10
messier than they should have been in the mid game.00:49:11
There were a lot of ambiguous plays, and I wasn't sure exactly00:49:14
what the best option was to punish them,00:49:15
and so I tend to just to play pretty safe until we ended up in a spot00:49:18
where Trick Room was able to go up,00:49:20
but I had to find a way through.00:49:21
"It's all coming down to these last two Pokémon for Jonathan;00:49:25
Jonathan Evans needs these two Pokémon,00:49:27
this Bronzong and this Groudon to come up huge in this match."00:49:30
My opponent kept trying to talk to me or he was like asking me questions00:49:34
during the match;00:49:35
he was a player who really like to try and gain every advantage00:49:39
he could, especially out of game,00:49:40
he was willing to do stuff, and I realized like,00:49:42
"okay, like you want to do, you want to do out of game stuff?"00:49:44
"I'll show you some out of game stuff"00:49:46
"Groudon Protects. Oh, whoa.00:49:49
What did Wolfe do?00:49:50
Did Wolfe attack that Groudon?00:49:52
Hitmontop goes for the Fake Out onto the Bronzong!00:49:54
So Bronzong is not going to be able to move"00:49:56
"But nothing else-"00:49:57
"Oh, he calls it!"00:49:59
"Oh, he goes for the Swords Dance"00:50:02
"Can't play passive against Wolfe or he will just set up in your face."00:50:05
"And now that Rayquaza is back to being that monster threat."00:50:10
When I looked at the camera, I definitely didn't think the match was over,00:50:12
but like, you know what? Fine.00:50:13
You want to play this way? I'll play this way.00:50:14
And so that ended up being a pretty famous moment, looking back.00:50:17
"Precipice Plays doesn't hit the Rayquaza,00:50:19
"Oh, and Kyogre avoids!"- "Dragon Ascent from Rayquaza after its-00:50:24
"Kyogre avoids the Precipice Blades, and Dragon Ascent00:50:27
coming out from the galaxy."00:50:29
"Does it knock it out?"00:50:30
"Oh no!"00:50:31
"It sticks around with 13 hit points."00:50:34
"Wolfe must be able to taste the World Championship right now."00:50:36
"He's so close."00:50:37
Was that turn that keeping the momentum00:50:38
that allowed me to finally, for the first time00:50:40
this game, I have a real lead and I got a huge turn kind of for free,00:50:44
and I can probably turn this into a win.00:50:46
And so in that moment I realized, like, this is it.00:50:48
"Wolfe Glick must be able to taste that World Championships"00:50:52
"He is a minute and 37 seconds away."00:50:55
I didn't feel like the game was over until I saw that last Pokémon go down.00:51:11
"Wolfey Glick00:51:13
is your 2016 Video Game World Championship!"00:51:23
I just felt so much relief.00:51:25
That was the emotion that I felt.00:51:27
I'd finally achieved this goal that I thought I might never reach,00:51:31
and I kept my promise to my friends00:51:33
last year, I felt like I'd kept the promise00:51:35
I inherently made to Markus by knocking him out of the tournament,00:51:37
and I'd kept the promise that I made to myself00:51:40
that I would one day become the world champion.00:51:42
"I see that you are holding your trophy here.00:51:44
This has been a long time coming,00:51:45
how does that weight feel in your hands?"00:51:47
"Like, I don't know, 10 pounds, but also very good."00:51:50
Everything after I won is kind of a blur, honestly.00:51:51
I don't really have memories of that closing ceremony.00:51:55
I feel like I was just so on cloud nine and it all happened so fast.00:51:58
I think they were behind schedule,00:51:59
so I feel like we were just kind of rushed around one thing to another, to another.00:52:03
"The 2016 Pokémon Video Game world champion:00:52:09
Wolfe Glick!"00:52:14
I think00:52:15
I was just so, so overwhelmingly happy that everything is kind of a blur.00:52:19
Like, I don't really remember any specific things00:52:20
except for worrying about dropping the trophy.00:52:29
"Okay, so now you're the world champion.00:52:31
Now what?"00:52:33
"What's up guys?00:52:34
Welcome to the very first episode of Wolfe Gets Rekt.00:52:36
I'm Wolfe Glick,00:52:37
and for those of you who don't know me, I'm a competitive VGC player.00:52:40
So this is my sixth year playing competitively..."00:52:45
It's not - So far it's not that bad.00:52:46
Like it's not worse than I remember; it's not good,00:52:48
I wouldn't- I wouldn't upload it nowadays.00:52:53
Initially,00:52:54
I just started doing VGC videos on a whim, honestly.00:52:57
My friend Aaron Zheng, he started making videos on YouTube00:53:00
a couple years ago and it looked fun.00:53:02
Like, it looked like he was having fun,00:53:03
he was doing like cool stuff.00:53:05
And you know, VGC content wasn't huge or anything,00:53:07
but Aaron was doing very well for himself and especially for the scene.00:53:10
He was like bringing new people in.00:53:11
So I reached out to Aaron and I was like,00:53:13
"hey man, like what you're doing looks kind of fun.00:53:15
Like, I might want to give it a shot,00:53:16
but I don't think I'd be a very good YouTuber."00:53:18
And Aaron was like, no, dude, I think you'd be like, really good.00:53:20
I think you could be a natural at this.00:53:21
You should give it a shot. And he helped me get set up with like equipment.00:53:24
It was kind of off to the races from there.00:53:26
"For those of you who haven't figured it out, I am starting a YouTube.00:53:29
Yes, the video..."00:53:31
The audio is so bad.00:53:33
This is what I used to do. I would click record;00:53:35
I would record one take,00:53:36
I would stop recording, I would upload, I would never watch the video back,00:53:40
and then if it didn't work, I would find out after it was posted.00:53:49
I mean, my first upload is a product of its time, and I think00:53:52
it is representative of a lot of how my channel was back in the day.00:53:56
It wasn't good content in the traditional sense,00:53:58
but I think it felt genuine and it felt like me,00:54:00
and I think people liked that, and they connected with that aspect of it.00:54:02
"Hey guys, Wolfe Cybertron Glick here,00:54:06
and today I'm bringing you another episode of <i>My bed is really great</i>"00:54:10
I can look back on it fondly, though I can see many ways00:54:13
in which it was unoptimized and perhaps, unprofessional.00:54:17
"So basically, you do you take credit card and you put it in the doorknob00:54:20
and you kind of just see if you can, like, bend00:54:22
a little bit, and then you take it out and then you just, you know,00:54:24
you just kind of kind of, you know, just- just use that."00:54:27
You know, that was the way that I did things, you know, I had my own style;00:54:29
I did things my own way, and-00:54:30
I admit defeat.00:54:32
"I'm never getting into that apartment again. I live here now."00:54:35
It kind of worked for me, even though it wasn't how other people were doing it.00:54:38
It was- It was the way that I was going to do things,00:54:40
and it worked for me for a long time.00:54:41
Yeah, I don't know. That's, that's that's the first episode, guys. So,00:54:45
let me know, like, if you like this, if you like we saw.00:54:48
Why did people watch this?00:54:49
How did this turn into a career?00:54:59
There's a Vaporeon that spawned right there, so everyone's running.00:55:01
With the new game release, and then also Pokémon GO,00:55:04
interest in Pokémon was at an all-time high,00:55:06
so even though I was still in college,00:55:08
I still, like, wanted to make time for making YouTube content,00:55:11
so I really buckled down and just did as much as I could.00:55:14
"So it's going to be Video City."00:55:16
"Welcome to Video City, population: growing"-
the prevailing wisdom at the time00:55:20
was that all of the growth for a new game happened in the first couple months,00:55:23
so I wanted to do whatever I could to capitalize on this new game release,00:55:27
even though I was you know, really busy and had a lot going on.00:55:30
"It's really big news, I'm really excited; I just woke up,00:55:32
so that's why my hair looks like this, I'm really sorry."00:55:34
I did take it more seriously, but it wasn't like00:55:36
I was trying to turn it into a career or anything.00:55:38
It was just like, this is the smart thing to do:00:55:40
New games are out, there's a ton of good, easy content to make,00:55:42
people are really interested...00:55:44
This is the time to kind of push and work hard when it comes to making YouTube content.00:55:52
"Let's get to that00:55:53
real meat and potatoes."00:55:58
"What is going on guys?00:55:59
Welcome back; today I'm doing something a little different.00:56:01
I'm starting a new series where I kind of walk you guys through,00:56:04
my initial thoughts on the Pokémon and VGC17
and just kinda want to think about it00:56:08
and give some suggested sets."00:56:09
I remember that I started doing different types of content,00:56:12
like instead of just doing battle videos, I started doing guides and like,00:56:15
"hey, here are these new Pokémon here"00:56:16
I use them00:56:17
and I remember being made fun of a lot,"00:56:19
"Even though it doesn't have a ton of competitive use,00:56:21
I wanted to kind of showcase Eevee because Eevee's super cute and I like it a lot."00:56:24
I don't know if it was like an elitist thing,00:56:26
but I remember like, the competitive Pokémon community was not very nice to me00:56:29
because the content I was making was more like00:56:31
beginner-friendly and I got like, made fun of so much that I stopped00:56:35
making these, like really viral videos;
like, my most watched videos at the time were like,00:56:39
"how to use Mimikyu", "how to use Alolan Muk"... stuff like that.00:56:42
Then the growth slowed down00:56:43
a fair bit on my channel, so that was unfortunate for sure.00:56:46
Looking back on that period of Sun and Moon, I realized like, oh,00:56:48
I let people who don't care about me dictate what I do with like my content,00:56:52
and like, I ended up not growing as much as I could have because of that.00:56:55
Yeah, back in the day, I remember it was like00:56:57
this thing that you like, wouldn't watch- myself or Aaron, for that matter,00:57:01
like- Like, if you were a "serious player", you wouldn't watch the YouTubers,00:57:04
even though the YouTubers were also serious players;00:57:07
I don't know, I think that like the community,
especially back when we were younger,00:57:11
had a tendency to kind of look down on the people who did well.00:57:15
And then when I started making YouTube content,00:57:17
you know, I was I was an easy target.00:57:18
"Oh, here's this guy that we already don't like that much,00:57:20
and he's doing something that I can paint as, like, lame."00:57:23
Or I was being, you know, regularly harassed00:57:25
for stuff that I hadn't done in the first place,00:57:26
and like, it just made me feel very alienated and like,00:57:29
it's kind of always been this thing that has bothered me.00:57:33
There's many wonderful people in the VGC community,00:57:35
and I really am so lucky to have such incredible friends,00:57:38
but within this space, I've never really felt very welcome.00:57:43
"What is going on guys? Welcome back.00:57:44
I'm here today to talk about my channel and kind of the lack of activity00:57:48
that you've probably noticed going on, and just to give you guys some context00:57:51
for what's been going on in my life and my plans moving forward."00:57:55
And then also it was a really busy time.00:57:57
I had like final exams, had all of these like difficult classes that I was taking...00:58:00
I was also getting two degrees00:58:02
at the time, in my acapella group getting ready for the winter concert...00:58:05
But also I was like trying to learn this new game to compete.00:58:08
Even so, trying so hard to make sure that I didn't drop the ball anywhere.00:58:11
It was- It was a really big push that that semester; it took a lot out of me.00:58:14
"For me,00:58:16
I think I value,00:58:19
I think the thing that I get the most value out of Pokémon00:58:21
from is competing at the moment, and it's not actually content creation.00:58:25
I realized that, like, if I'm not performing in tournaments,00:58:27
like I don't feel fulfilled in what I'm doing with Pokémon,00:58:30
and so I realized that because of that, I need to prioritize00:58:34
not only the content creation part00:58:35
of what I do with Pokémon, but also the competitive part.00:58:38
Like, making sure that when I show up tournaments, I do well,00:58:42
and I do well by my standards."00:58:45
I really felt so tied to my results.00:58:49
Every loss felt personal, and this bled over into my like,00:58:53
non-Pokémon life because whenever
anything bad would happen to me in any context,00:58:57
I would personally feel like it was my fault.00:58:59
And when I would make these mistakes,00:59:00
I would be extremely, extremely hard on myself-00:59:03
I wasn't willing to accept any excuses, and so I really just like berated myself00:59:07
and beat myself down- "Stakataka does hit Rock Slide, it hits into that00:59:11
Salamence's Protect-" "Oh, it missed!"00:59:12
"It dodges it!"- "Oh, that's so huge"00:59:16
Being this hard on myself00:59:18
was not doing me any good,00:59:19
and so I had to really00:59:20
reevaluate my relationship not only with the game, but also with the community.00:59:25
"I just want to say thank you guys so much for sticking with me.00:59:26
This is still new for me. I'm still learning balance.00:59:29
I'm still learning how to include this in my life while still being...00:59:33
being able to do the other things that I value."00:59:35
But I feel very fortunate that, like, there are things that I pull00:59:38
my self-worth from that are not related to Pokémon at all,00:59:42
and it's nice to have reminders in my life that make me feel like I'm living00:59:46
a good, full life that I can be proud of,
because I think when that's not the case,00:59:50
when things go bad, it can be really, really all consuming.00:59:54
"...is that going to knock out with the- Oh, my God!"00:59:57
It was not an instantaneous process,00:59:59
it definitely took a lot of work over the years.01:00:01
But now I'm at a point where this is the best I've felt about my relationship01:00:04
with the community in a long time, maybe ever, honestly,01:00:06
to the point where now01:00:08
I really have no qualms about how I interact with Pokémon.01:00:11
I think I have a very healthy relationship with competing;01:00:14
I give it my all, I do my best, and when I fall short, I fall short01:00:17
and I can live with that.01:00:21
"What's going on, guys?01:00:22
Welcome back to another video on YouTube.com/WolfeyVGC;01:00:27
I'm really excited for today's video.01:00:29
I am joined by the wonderful Alpharad"01:00:32
"Hi! That's me!" - "Hello".01:00:34
I did a collaboration with Alpharad,01:00:36
and we did this video with Dracovish and like, Lucario and Whimsicott,01:00:41
and the video really, really exploded.01:00:43
I remember I was seeing subscriber growth that I'd never seen before.01:00:46
All these people were coming over and I remember kind of realizing, like,01:00:50
I gotta run with this, like, I gotta,01:00:51
I gotta do my best to kind of capitalize because I have this opportunity01:00:54
I've been building towards,01:00:55
kind of hoping for it, to show all these new people how great Pokémon is.01:00:59
"It's like, high barrier to entry,01:01:01
but once you're over that01:01:02
and once you kind of know what most Pokémon are going to do,01:01:04
it becomes a lot simpler to break down the problem."01:01:06
"He's going to turn me from an idiot to less of one."01:01:09
That felt like an opportunity.01:01:10
It felt like, oh, like,01:01:12
get in while you can get as much of the pie as you can,
because it's another new game release,01:01:15
and like, you know, you only have so much time.01:01:17
People's interest will wane and you have to, like,01:01:19
get them hooked before it's too late.01:01:20
"My name is Drake Oscar Vish, but, my friends call me Mr. Vish."01:01:26
I was trying out new forms of content.01:01:29
I went to posting every single day,01:01:30
which I don't think I've ever really done before;01:01:32
at least not with that kind of intentionality.01:01:34
"Real YouTubists rank the Pokémon games!"01:01:37
"Oh, howdy there, partner."01:01:41
"I don't think I could beat a regular dog in a fight, let alone a fire dog,01:01:44
and definitely not a legendary fire dog."01:01:45
My goal has always been to really just make the best videos that I can.01:01:49
Maybe not the best videos.01:01:50
I think at some point I wanted to make videos that I thought were funny.01:01:52
"I'm Hydreigon, I'm Hydreigon;01:01:54
I try to pick things up, but also I eat them; I'm Hydreigon"01:01:57
When I first started doing YouTube, I had a goal01:02:00
that seemed completely unobtainable: 100,000 subscribers.01:02:04
To me, that was the ultimate milestone.01:02:06
That was the thing that was out of reach,01:02:07
that was not possible01:02:08
for a competitive Pokémon channel to get,
but that I wanted to try for it, right?01:02:12
"This is not a video that I ever thought that I would make.01:02:15
We today broke 100,000 subscribers on YouTube.01:02:20
I've been creating content for close to five years01:02:22
and I honestly can't believe it. I'm honestly in disbelief."01:02:25
I remember it was really exciting, and it was also kind of scary01:02:27
because I was like, how long could this possibly last?01:02:30
You know, it felt like every day where I woke up01:02:31
and I saw subscriber number going up, I was like, damn, like,01:02:34
this could be the last day that I kind of see this kind of growth.01:02:36
"Thank you so much for watching.01:02:37
I'm really, really excited for what the future holds.01:02:39
I kind of feel like everything from this point is extra credit.01:02:41
I didn't ever expect you at this point.01:02:43
I don't think we'll get to like a million or 500K or anything, but,01:02:47
let's see how far we can go together."01:02:58
Making01:02:59
the decision to quit my kind of stable government job and all-in on YouTube01:03:03
was like, one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make.01:03:07
I think I ruminated on it for like, 2+ full months,01:03:11
like going back and forth; because on the one hand, I had this, like job01:03:14
that I hated, and then I wasn't doing a very good job at it because I hated it.01:03:18
But it was safe and it was comfortable and like, it was a big company01:03:21
and they needed people and like, I could have just kept doing it.01:03:24
But on the other hand,01:03:25
when I quit, like that was when Sword and Shield01:03:28
kind of had like helped blow up my channel,01:03:30
and I really wanted to give it this full, like proper chance01:03:33
where I wasn't distracted by anything else,01:03:34
and so it was it was a really tough decision.01:03:36
I reached out to a lot of people who are mentors,01:03:39
I spent a lot of time talking to my family... because I also knew that01:03:42
if I quit, it would be a much harder to01:03:44
to go back into the field that I was working before.01:03:46
So if it didn't work out, it would be really hard.01:03:49
My initial plan actually was quit my job01:03:52
for six months and then go back into the working world.01:03:55
And I figured a six month break wasn't like so long that it would, like,01:03:57
permanently derail my career.01:03:59
I could take six months, try and build01:04:00
YouTube up to whatever I could, and then go back into the working world.01:04:04
But the pandemic really made things change for me,01:04:07
because the whole world was different from when I was still working01:04:10
a conventional job.01:04:11
So I think if if there hadn't been a pandemic,01:04:13
I might have actually followed up and gone back to work after six months.01:04:16
Which is crazy,01:04:17
because if things got even a little bit differently,01:04:18
I don't think that I would have ended up here.01:04:20
I never like had aspirations of being a YouTuber full time,01:04:23
and so it's definitely- it's unexpected to have ended up here01:04:26
when it wasn't something I was ever chasing.01:04:29
"Hello guys! It's me, guy who disappeared for like a month.01:04:30
I'm back,01:04:32
and I want to talk to you about kind of the state of the channel and,01:04:35
going forward and kind of my goal and my vision and what I have planned for-01:04:39
for this channel"- I had quit my job, and I'd made it01:04:42
the goal of posting a video every single day01:04:44
because I'd kind of been told, like, nebulously,01:04:46
like, this is what the algorithm wants; it wants you to post every single day,01:04:49
and it got to a point where I was posting just for the sake of posting,01:04:52
and my videos were doing worse01:04:53
over time, the initial hype from Sword and Shield had died down...01:04:56
"Today, I'm going to be auditioning for the role of Coalossal"01:05:02
I didn't feel like good about the videos I was putting out.01:05:04
I didn't feel like creatively fulfilled.01:05:05
I was really just trying to like,01:05:07
get the video out so I could meet this arbitrary goal.01:05:10
"We'll be together now, forever."01:05:13
And in December, I kind of just hit like a breaking point01:05:15
where I was like, oh, I, I can't do this anymore.01:05:17
Like, I cannot, I cannot keep like posting every day just to- just to- just to do it.01:05:22
These videos I don't feel good about.- "I took about a month off.01:05:25
The reason for this was I was feeling a little burnt out01:05:28
and I decided it's time for me to make some changes.01:05:30
So, what does that mean?"01:05:31
So when I hit this breaking point, I remember talking to my friend Justin01:05:35
and what he said was, there are not many channels on YouTube01:05:38
that are your size that don't have any editing.01:05:41
What I said was, listen, like I want editing, but I don't have01:05:44
that kind of skill to figure out how to identify good editors.01:05:47
And so Justin was like, okay, here's what we're going to do.01:05:50
I'm going to like help you figure out what types of content01:05:52
you're going to make with editing,01:05:53
and I'm going to find you editors; hire me to do this and like,01:05:57
I'll find you good people.01:05:58
"I'm adding editors, which should add a lot
to my to my content and allow for me to do01:06:02
a bunch of different, types of videos that I wouldn't normally be able to do, so-"01:06:05
That was when I first met Doug, and I first hired editors, to try and create01:06:09
edited content on the channel, which was a huge step forward01:06:13
from what I've been doing before, which was no editing, no revision.01:06:16
Like, I wouldn't watch the videos after I recorded them, I would just post them.01:06:19
So to go to scripted videos and like edit the videos in general was a huge leap.01:06:25
"I opened up the first real life Pokémon gym."01:06:27
"The specific quality of Pokémon Ash uses here is really high."01:06:30
"I competed in the 2022 Pokémon Video Game World Championships."01:06:34
It was the right step to take,01:06:35
I think, and it ended up really paying off in a big way.01:06:38
And I'm really grateful for Justin because I think if he hadn't been there01:06:41
to kind of helped correct the ship,
I don't know what would have happened, honestly;01:06:44
I don't know if I would have figured it out on my own.01:06:48
"That is easily enough to KO all of these lions."01:06:50
"I ranked all 153 type combinations in Pokémon"01:06:54
"A journey full of heartache, discovery, highs, lows..."01:06:58
People knew what Pokémon was, but they didn't know01:07:00
that you could play against other people.01:07:02
Many people don't realize01:07:03
that there is this whole competitive mode within kind of the classic game,01:07:07
and so I think the success was being able01:07:08
to take this thing that people didn't know about and find a way of having them01:07:12
give it a shot, and being able to show them, hey, it actually is pretty cool.01:07:16
There is a reason that so many people are so passionate about this.01:07:21
I don't know why you wouldn't want to use Quagsire.01:07:23
It's not very good, but hey, it's your choice; you do you.01:07:24
Pokémon has played a huge part of my life.01:07:28
It was a really good outlet for me when I was in high school,01:07:30
and I got to meet such incredible people who I'm still friends with today,01:07:33
and I got to travel all over the world, and so think that, like, I have played,01:07:37
you know, likely01:07:38
a small role, but a role in countless other people's journeys,01:07:41
it's a very full circle moment for me.01:07:45
"I have another encounter.01:07:48
We're going to cut- we're going to cut that one out;01:07:49
we're not putting that- that's not going in the final."01:07:51
The amount of growth that we've had has been just staggering.01:07:53
Like, I didn't think I was ever going to get 100,000 subscribers.01:07:55
Not only didn't I expected it, I didn't think it was possible, honestly.01:08:05
I remember I was at a friend's wedding when it happened.01:08:07
It was an encouraging statement that said, you know what?01:08:09
Like, this thing that I've spent so much of my life,01:08:12
especially at the time, believing to be so niche01:08:14
but has the potential to be so much bigger.01:08:16
There's this kind of validation or like reinforcement that you get01:08:20
when a million people say, okay, like, I like this channel enough to subscribe.01:08:23
My YouTube journey started when I sent a message to Aaron saying,01:08:26
"Hey, I think I'm going to be bad at this, what do you think?"01:08:28
I think there's a lesson in that01:08:29
I should be reminded of that: even those of us who know ourselves well01:08:33
are not always great at predicting what the future holds.01:08:35
"What's the most important lesson you learned as a content creator?"01:08:39
I think the biggest lesson that I've learned,01:08:41
in part from content creation and in part just from my life in general,01:08:44
is that the best way to have a good life, and the best way01:08:47
to have success in anything, is to surround yourself with good people.01:08:50
There have been many times where things have been on the decline01:08:53
and I haven't known what to do, but in most cases I've had some external01:08:57
friendship, guidance, mentorship that helped me kind of either01:09:00
put me on the right path for myself or help me figure it out how to get there.01:09:03
I'm only able to reach these heights because I have such talented, hard working01:09:07
people around me.01:09:09
That's kind of how I feel about things in general too.01:09:11
I have many, many tournament wins,01:09:12
but those tournament winss are almost entirely propped up01:09:15
on the shoulders of my friends, who have lifted me up and have helped me01:09:18
become a better player and a better person,01:09:21
and so if there's one piece of advice I can give,01:09:23
it's find people who you can say confidently, these are the best people,01:09:27
and yeah, listen to them when they what they tell you things.01:09:42
My main project right now is working on the Worlds video.01:09:45
I've been... it's been my main project for a little bit,01:09:47
I have kind of fallen behind on my other work, but it's a really, really massive video.01:09:51
I am nearly done at this point with the script.01:09:53
I have written everything that I wanted to write,01:09:55
and I just have to review Zane's notes on it,01:09:58
and then after that point, the next step will be to record.01:10:05
Okay.01:10:06
Oh, okay, let's do this.01:10:07
"I head to the venue with Aaron-01:10:09
I head to the venue with Aaron, as we get ready for what could very well be-"01:10:13
My goal was to make an hour and a half long video, and,01:10:16
the final product will be closer to three hours,01:10:18
and so pretty much every day for the last month has been wake up, get like,01:10:25
eat a banana for breakfast, sit down and work until like 8 to 9 or 10 pm.01:10:30
"I always, I always feel pressure before the first round of the day-"01:10:33
"...and playing against one of the best in front of the whole world01:10:36
certainly doesn't help.01:10:38
I realize there's no safe way to get through this."01:10:41
"I can't explain why,01:10:42
but I think he's going to lead with Chi-Yu and Flutter Mane"- for the Worlds video,01:10:46
There's a lot of people who work on it.01:10:48
There's me, that's one.01:10:50
Zane has been helping with the script.01:10:52
My wonderful editor/producer, Doug, who's doing the bulk of the editing.01:10:56
It's always like he's here with us now.01:10:59
Gio has done battle recreations.01:11:01
Thoth is doing illustrations.01:11:04
We hired a composer for the first time.01:11:05
We'll have three different people working on thumbnails for it,01:11:08
at the very least; the Iconic editing team who does a lot of the weekly videos.01:11:11
We handed off a small portion to Finland, too.01:11:13
There's also Scarlet, who's done editing,01:11:15
will do review and has also thumbnail concept ideation.01:11:18
So that's 11 people who are working on this one video.01:11:21
And this video is only possible because a number of very, very talented01:11:25
people worked very, very hard to make it a reality.01:11:28
So I would like to say thank you.01:11:30
I am able to employ many talented people who are able to then01:11:34
make working on the channel or, you know, working with competitive Pokémon01:11:37
in general.01:11:38
Either their full job or like a part of how they make their living,01:11:41
and it's not something that I take lightly,01:11:43
and I try to treat it with the weight that I think it should hold.01:11:46
First, to Whit,01:11:47
who was the main editor of this video, my producer and my right hand man.01:11:51
So much of the good work on this channel is thanks to him.01:11:54
I don't really have an explicit goal for the channel.01:11:56
I'm not like, "oh, we need to get 2 million subscribers",01:11:59
"Like, that's- that's the number", you know?01:12:00
My real goal is that I hope to continue being able to learn and to grow01:12:04
and to improve and to make better videos that bring more people into the scene.01:12:08
And last, but certainly not least, thank you to you, the viewer.01:12:12
What an honor it is to create a piece of art01:12:14
that means so much to me, and to be able to share it with you.01:12:17
I don't take it for granted.01:12:18
So if you made it this far, thank you for watching.01:12:22
Competitive Pokémon,01:12:25
it's given me a way to really feel confident, which was really important01:12:29
when I was younger and I really didn't have a lot of self-confidence.01:12:32
It allowed me to feel like I was like, good at something,01:12:34
when a time when I really didn't feel like I had that much going01:12:37
for me.01:12:42
I think the biggest impact is that it's introduced me to people01:12:45
who are some of the closest friends I have in the entire world.01:12:47
If I can only keep one thing that I've gained from Pokémon,01:12:50
it would be the people, no question.01:12:52
Competitive Pokémon introduced me to people01:12:54
who are some of the closest friends I have in the entire world.01:12:56
I think that I've become a much better, kinder, more thoughtful, more intelligent person01:13:00
because of the people that I've met through Pokémon.01:13:02
I think that I have had enormous guidance and friendship and camaraderie01:13:07
with people in ways that I'll never be able to fully express shaped my path.01:13:11
It's really wonderful to be a part of such a global game, and to have met so many wonderful01:13:14
people all around the world that I almost certainly would never have met otherwise.01:13:26
I could have never01:13:27
imagined the huge impact that Pokémon had on my life, ever.01:13:31
But I think that's actually a good thing.01:13:32
Like, I think it's good that as we go through life, things surprise us;01:13:35
that things don't always go according to plan.01:13:39
I think my life is better because things that I never thought would happen01:13:42
did happen,01:13:43
and I think the fact that something that was just something I loved as01:13:47
a kid could grow into something more than I could ever have even conceived of.01:13:51
I think there's something great about that.01:13:53
It's more than I ever expected it to be, and I could not be more grateful.Description:
This documentary was shot, produced, and edited by my friend Giovanni Costa. It's been in the works for almost a year - I hope you enjoy it. Producer/Lead Editor: https://twitter.com/the_one_gio Thumbnail Artist: https://bsky.app/profile/richlesbianceo.bsky.social Thumbnail Artist: https://x.com/spyggt Additional music by Jonas B. Ingebretsen open.spotify.com/artist/2jgWys0fCJxVjc8zJjRuq6
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