MrKravin Interview

MrKravin recently sat down with me vis Skype to chat about his life and YouTube career. I had a lot of things to ask him and he had a lot of things to say! Go ahead and check out his YouTube channel and subscribe. Add him on Twitter and Twitch!

Don't forget to add me on Twitter as well!

To support more interviews like this, Go ahead and visit my GoFundMe page! Give it a share on your social media pages and don't forget to donate if you feel generous!




Q: How did you get into making YouTube videos?

A: It actually kind of started with me and my friend Scott(Who has actually moved away since I started doing YouTube), We would always co-play games together. It was like a couch co-op kind of thing.  The entire time I would just make fun of everything, And Scott loved it. It was a lot of fun because he thought it was hilarious. He told me that people record this kind of stuff and put it on YouTube. At the time, I was kind of like "Yeah, I guess they do". He really encouraged me to do it, Saying things like "You should do it, You're really funny".  So I just started trying it and 4 years later, It kind of just stuck.

Q: Who are some of your favorite YouTuber's out there?

A: A lot of my favorite YouTuber's are actually kind of my friends. Like, I love "Bowlingotter". I think the Bowlingotter show is great. My friend John(HarshlyCritical). I love his cynical attitude towards a lot of stuff. I guess the biggest "Let's Play group" that I watch would be "GameGrumps". Other than that, I watch a lot of "Game Theory" and their other channel "Film Theory". "ComicBookGirl19", Just channels like that.

Q: You don't follow any of the main stream YouTuber's that a lot of other people do?

A: I try not to watch other big YouTuber's that do let's plays, Because I don't want to have their style infect mine. Because when I first started out, I immersed myself in the idea of let's play's pretty hard. It started infecting my commentary style, It felt like I was comparing myself to them. Kind of like "I'm not being enough like PewDiePie or I'm not reacting good enough like Markiplier". So I had to stop doing that completely and start to focus on my own thing and hone my own craft. So, I have to kind of shy away from watching the bigger guys. Just trying to be myself. It's more of a cartooney version of myself, But it's still me.

Q: What are some gaming genres that you can't stand to play? I know you mainly play Survival/Horror and I know you've done s"Survival Sundays", Playing games like "Subnautica" and "7 Days To Die". So what genre do you just hate playing?

A: I've played a few of them on my channel but I don't like visual novels at all. I know that they can be well written, But I think for the most part they are not. And that's like, The whole point of them. And also games like "ClickBaity" and "HuniePop" and stuff like that. I don't know, It just feels icky and gross. I never really understood the point of simulators. Like "EuroTruck Simulator" and "Farming Simulator", Like why? How is that fun? Just stuff like that really.

Q: For people who don't know, You play some of the worst indie horror games out there. People like to gift you really bad games. Like you said "The Bottom Of The Barrel". What is the best of the worst that you have played so far?

A: Oh man. Oh jeeze.That's hard because there's so many gems. Can I look at my list real quick? I have a list of bad indie horror games(Proceeds to look at an actual list of bad games). Let's see here. I have lots to pop in my head, Some are just charming in my mind because of how awful they were. Like, There's this game called "Retaliation". Which, You play as a guy who wakes up in the back of a truck. You've been drugged and taken to this abandoned town in Seattle. The game is just a mess. Whenever you're walking, You can't walk up a curb. You have to jump over it because it acts like an invisible wall. You can't walk up stairs, You have to jump up them. Like, It's just a mess. Let's see, I'm looking at my bad indie game horror list right now. "Hotel Remorse" is a good one because their idea of scares was throwing flat .PNG images at you that looked like that got them from a Google Image search. I'm pretty sure they actually searched "scary face". God, Some of these are so awful. It makes me wonder what I'm doing with my life. There's a game called "Strangers", Which attempted to be a home invasion/horro game. Instead it was just hilarious because they couldn't do it right. Honestly, I would have to say "Strangers" because it was so charmingly bad. They have actually taken it off steam now. I think I'm one of three people that have a video of it up on YouTube.

Q: When you're picking a game to play, Do you know instantly if you're going to put it up on your channel?

A: Yeah, I can usually tell right away if it's going to be a short "What is this" kind of game, Or if I'm going to stretch it to a full play-through style. If it's an hour long game, Let's just see how far down it can go. There are other times when I get tricked, Like when the game ends up being so bad that it's unplayable. Like, I'll have five minutes of footage. It's like, How do I post this? An example of that is "Sophie's Curse". I thought that game was so horrendously awful that I couldn't finish it, So I didn't even post the video. I get a few comments a week saying "If you don't like bad games, Why do you play them?". I love bad games. I think they're hilarious. Sometimes they cross the line from being charmingly bad to infuriatingly bad. It's those kinds of videos that I can't post because my content won't be good in it. It will just be me yelling at the game. I don't think thats fun or funny. Those are the ones that I have to avoid.

Q: Do people ever tell you that you have a voice that would be good for voice overs or doing voices in games?

A: I have a bad habit that whenever I read something, I put it in kind of a barvioso kind of voice. I try to make it epic even though it's really just an awful note in a horrible indie horror game. I don't mean to, I just slip into it automatically.

Q: There are so many new YouTube channels that pop up every day. Do you have any advice for people trying to break out into the YouTube world?

A: Definitely. Do your research on how the YouTube algorithm supposedly works, Because they still haven't given out exact metrics on how it works. Go into the YouTube subreddit and read how tags and descriptions work. Because all these things matter in how you pop up in a search, It increases your SEO. Learning how that works so you're not sending out a video that's never going to get picked up by any search ever. Have realistic expectations. If you ever to to the let's play subreddit, There are always a lot of posts that say "I've had a channel for thirty days and only have two subscribers, What's going on?". It takes time. You have to be consistent with, Not only your upload schedule but also your quality of video. It's not going to be an instant over night success. I didn't see real growth on my current channel until it had been up and running for about two years. This is after I had already switched from my previous channel, Which had a little bit of success and bringing over a few subscribers from that channel to the new one. Try to be original, And most time you can be original just by being yourself. There are so many people trying to be "Markiplier" and "JackSepticEye". Everyone wants to be the top guy. But when you already have a million other people trying to be the top guy, It's just not going to work. One more thing. Take your content seriously. Have fun with it and joke around, But make sure that you're putting out good audio and visuals. Be engaging with your audience. Make sure whatever brand you're trying to represent, Make sure you're representing it the best you can.

Q: Where do you stand on the YouTube Copyright Strikes? Have you ever had a Copyright strike against made against you or any of your videos?

A: I have not been hit with a Copyright Strike, I get Copyright Claims all the time. Copyright Claims aren't that bad. Usually I can just fight them because they're fraudulent and shouldn't be there. Other times I just have to accept them because that's just how it is. I have never had a Copyright Strike myself, But I have seen a lot of YouTuber's get strikes for seemingly Innocuous things. Certain companies just don't want you putting their games up on YouTube, Period. This is this company called "Atlas" and they make JORPG's, They were tossing out strikes left and right. It's a very backwards idea of what we(YouTuber's) do. They see it as "This person's uploading a game play video. So that's X amount of people that won't by our game now because they just watched it". I see it as, This is X amount of people that weren't going to buy it at all, But now they know that it exists. Or, They didn't know it exist and now they want to play it for themselves. I see it as free marketing. Now they see and they're like "Oh, Maybe, Yeah!). As long as you're not uploading seriously copy written stuff like movies and full albums, Handing out strikes for game play videos is completely backwards. It shows how certain companies are stuck in the past of having to go to a big box store to buy a game. It's completely backwards.

Q: When you first meet people in real life, Do they recognize you from your channel?

A: Only when I'm at a convention. I went to Pax South earlier this year and I was stopped a handful of times. Not very many. I'm kind of an awkward person in real life. I got stopped a few times and asked "Hey, You have a YouTube channel?". I'm just kind of give them an awkward "Yeah..". But when I'm out at the grocery store, It hasn't happened and I'm pretty thankful for that. I say I'm awkward, But I actually think I've gotten better since starting YouTube. I've gotten better at speaking to people directly. When I first started, I was a mess.

Q: Is your husband understanding and supporting of what you have chosen to do for a living?

A: At first he was a little skeptical about it. I saw the trend of my growth, And in six months I can have a decent revenue. I can kind of start doing this. I just need to really work at it. He was a little skeptical like "I don't know. How are we going to do this? How does that work?". I started showing him month by month. Like "Here's how much I have more than last month. Here's my projected for next month.". He started seeing it as "OK, So this is an actual business model.". He's an accountant, So once I gave him actual data to look at he was like "OK, If you can meet these certain benchmarks each month, Then we can do this". How he's totally cool with it. He comes home and asks me how my day at the office was.

Q: Do you ever pull all nighters just to get a video up on your channel?

A: Yeah, That actually happens pretty frequently. Whenever a big games comes out that matches my channel or the genre that I'm trying to play, Like "Outlast" or "Soma". There's a little bit of a rush to try to get your video up first so that you pop up in searches better. This was especially true with "Five Nights At Freddy's". Scott Hawthorne always says "New Five Nights At Freddy's coming in August" and releases it in June. So, You have to be ready and waiting for it, Because you have to drop everything and record as much as you can and upload while you're recording. Now the Five Nights craze is done and I don't have to worry about it much. Next up would be "Outlast 2". That will be the next game that I'll be trying to play for 12 hours straight. Yeah, I definitely have stayed up until four or five in the morning a few times while recording.

Q: Is there anything that you want to say to your viewers and subscribers?

A: I just want to say thank you to everyone. Thank you to you for doing this interview with me, It was a lot of fun. Yeah, It's been an interesting two years. Two years ago I only had about 2,000 subscribers, Now I have around 41,000. Thank you guys so much!

You can go and find his YouTube channel on...YouTube. Search for "Mr.Kravin"(Without the quotes). You can also follow him on Twitter @Mr.Kravin. He also streams on Twitch every Friday and Sunday At Twitch.tv/Mr.Kravin

To support me doing more interviews like this one, Share my GoFundMe Link and donate if you feel that it's worth it!Just click on the "Support Me" tab!

Snapshot from the interview!

Scary Bear