Sir Swag is a Youtuber who’s gone from making memey video game tutorials to making monthly news videos. I had the pleasure of asking questions regarding the evolution of his content, his cautious approach to being a content creator, and the origin of his most popular video.
When it comes to the evolution of your content, how did we get here? You started making memey tutorials for Dirty Bomb and now make videos about the news without the bullshit. How do we get from shitposts to half hour long news videos?
Well it was just kinda a gradual progression. I went from Dirty Bomb to Overwatch, then Overwatch to Overwatch News. At that point I figured it wouldn’t be hard to transition from Overwatch news to regular news.
My goal was to create a news series which would be quick to make, easy to monetise, and could be reliably made every week. It turned out I was wrong on all 3 of those points, but after people kept watching, I felt obliged to keep making them. Eventually a weekly format was traded for monthly to be more friendly for sponsorship, and shortly after that, I hired my first editor to help me out. After that, it’s just kinda grown organically from there.
I imagine it’s a challenge to inject humor into a script when it’s read by a text to speech, but it seems you’ve found a way to do it anyway. Was it easy to be funny through the TTS or did it take time to find your footing?
You really need to lean into the TTS. A lot of different styles don’t tend to work with a TTS saying it, because you have very limited agency over how it says things. Dry humour works incredibly well, and that was kinda my bread and butter already, so it wasn’t too bad. TTS tends to amplify how funny that is, at the expense of cutting off a lot of other options. It’s certainly a lot easier now though. If you looked back at my super early work, the TTS is really rough. It’s night and day.
You’ve made such a wide variety of content. From the tutorials for Dirty Bomb, R6, Overwatch, and other miscellaneous titles to the X described in one sentence, the Gamepass analysis, and of course, the news. Has there been hesitation to branch out in these new directions or have you approached making videos with the mentality of “I put out what I want to make”?
I think my main concern was not tethering myself to a single fanbase. When Overwatch didn’t receive any updates for like 3 years, those creators really struggled. Unfortunately, a big goaI I had when getting into YouTube was for videos to be all about the content, as opposed to the personality behind it. This was good from a quality perspective, but it makes it a bit harder to consistently generate viewership from new idea. You have to work a lot harder.
Nowadays either me or another member of the team will come up with something, and it’s just a case of whether we think it’ll make a good video and whether we can make it work financially. I think lately I’ve been more hesitant to branch out much more, because viewership isn’t anywhere near the level I want it. That’s something we’ll have to address early 2023.
News based content doesn’t have the same return on investment as making 30 second memes. Despite this you’ve prioritized putting out these news videos first and foremost. What keeps you motivated when these meme videos get exponentially more views than these informative news videos that take way more work?
This does transition well into your next question. News currently takes me and the rest of the team around 2 full weeks to make. That’s a lot of time to not be working on anything else. How we justify it is due to its relatively consistent viewership, we’re able to command a pretty decent fee from the sponsor, as well as fairly consistent Patreon supporters who have kept the series running. These revenue sources can then be used to subsidise other more experimental videos which might not be as certain to get decent views.
Ultimately, I’d love to delegate the news to the rest of the team entirely, but with how heavily involved I’m still required to be, I think doing so without some serious changes would be impossible. Ultimately the less work I need to do on news, the more time I can put aside for videos that could potentially be performing a lot better. It’s just a tricky balance to strike.
One of your most iconic videos is the Sernando Unboxing GTA VI except it gets faster every time he lies. I know it’s dumb to ask ‘why’ when it comes to shitposts, but what was the inspiration to create that masterpiece?
I just watched the video and couldn’t believe how awful it was. The guy just lied to his audience for nearly 15 minutes straight, and got stupid money for doing so. I figured it would just be a funny way to fact check him on what he says, then all of a sudden it’s my most viewed video ever. Not something I expected at all. To this day, it’s still the most viewed Sernando video on YouTube.
For a solid 2 years you weren’t working the channel full time, you even kept it unmonetized until 100k subscribers. Since then you’ve built a team around yourself very slowly. I feel you approached Youtube and content creation as a career a lot more cautiously than you see other content creators do. Do you agree with that sentiment? If so, why have you been so cautious?
Well I think I was monetised quite a bit before 100k. It wasn’t enough to live off, but hey I wasn’t complaining. My slow transition to go full time was very deliberate. This gig is very risky, and a lot of people jump into it before they know they can afford to do it. My leap of faith in that sense was a 4 month break from my 3rd year of uni, where I would usually take a job over summer. Instead, I decided to just make as much content as I could, and see if it would be viable to go full time after I finished studying.
Very luckily, it turned out I could make more than my summer job, so it worked out in the end. These days I’m still pretty careful. With around 10 people on the team, I need to consider them, and generating enough revenue to get everyone paid. YouTube certainly doesn’t make it easy for us, but it’s working out so far.
You’ve always been a proponent for shooters that go under the radar, Titanfall 2, Get to the Orange Door, My Friend Pedro, and Ultrakill. A common theme is that they’re often high octane, movement shooters. What draws you to those kinds of titles?
I loved Titanfall 1 and 2, and just wanted other people to know about them. The other games were mostly just substitutes for when the player count had started to drop. I think their appeal is they’re pretty low stakes, and they make you feel very strong. I always struggled to get into something like CSGO, because you inherently felt very weak, and mistakes tended to be heavily punished. I suppose chemicals in my brain like it better.
Last Question: If there were another opportunity to bid for the Australian community representative in Overwatch, would you shoot your shot again?
I probably wouldn’t throw my name in for the Australian Overwatch community manger role. Overwatch isn’t what my channel is entirely focussed on anymore, and when you have a genuine King like Frogger making top tier shitposts on the daily, it’s hard to think I’d even be worthy of that role.