For my first post in this blog, I decided to interview Eladdifficult, one of the biggest Crypt of the Necrodancer streamers and one of the organizers of the biggest Crypt of the Necrodancer tournaments, CoNDOR (Crypt of the Necrodancer racing league), and it’s spinoffs.

1. Who are you, what are your games of choice, and how would you describe yourself in three words?

I’m Elad, I mostly play Roguelikes and I’d describe myself as energetic, engaged, enthusiastic.

2. How did you start streaming

Back in early 2012, I saw a reddit post that a Starcraft 2 tournament was ongoing. I had some time to kill and figured...why not? So I started watching, I remember it was a match where Russian protoss White Ra had an amazing comeback, it was really exciting even though I didn’t really know what I was watching. I noticed it was hosted on a website called twitch.tv. I created an account and started to follow the Starcraft 2 scene. Somewhere in my Starcraft 2 watching I saw “when cheese fails” mentioned in the reddit comments and checked it out on YouTube. This is the Youtube series hosted by MaximusBlack and Novawar. After watching a ton of those videos I started to watch MaximusBlack a lot. I enjoyed his enthusiasm and excitement. After a few months I realized that I could probably have fun streaming by being enthusiastic and excited about video games, which shouldn’t be hard since I’ve been playing video games since I could remember.

So once I realized I wanted to stream, I needed to figure out what I wanted to stream. I thought for a while, and one day while playing Batman: Arkham Asylum, and getting annoyed at how easy it was, it dawned on me that my channel will be dedicated to “difficult” games. I knew I needed to play a lot of classic NES games, but I knew there were other games out there too, games like Catmario.

Since my typical online name was JohnnyUtah14, I needed something new, especially since on steam people always thought I was from Utah (have you never seen Point Break people!?!). So I thought about a name that would be easy to read/remember, and that is where I came up with Elad. I thought...E-Lad...like...internet buddy. That is non-threatening...SWEET! Well, justin.tv/elad was taken (there was a non-gaming site called justin.tv where you could stream other stuff, but all usernames were from the same pool). So I decided to append a description of my channel, and EladDifficult was born October 2012.

3.How did you get started with necrodancer?

My brother (goes by TeamQuiggan online) is an indie gamedev who, at the time lived in Ottawa Ontario. He came down to Toronto (where I live) to go to an indie game conference called Gamercamp. I would come with him because even though I’m not a dev, I still enjoyed talking shop with the devs and playing all kinds of cool indie games. As I was walking through the area where all the devs were showing their games, a game with a dancepad caught my eye. I walked over and watched a little kid play. It was a game where you try to move your character to the beat using only a dancepad!!! But lookout because that red dragon is going to wreck you. There were 2 guys standing there helping the kid out, I realized later that they were Ted Martens (Crypt of the NecroDancer Pixel Artist) and Ryan Clark (Crypt of the NecroDancer Dev). I got a chance to try it, and got totally wrecked by a red dragon. I essentially threw my wallet at Ryan and told him to take my money. Instead he gave me a button with a pelvic thrusting skeleton and a card with the way to sign up for the alpha. I remember being drawn in by the clever mechanics and sweet tunes, then I found out they were by DannyB and I was sold!

Then I waited...and it was everything I hoped for.

4.You are one of the biggest necrodancer streamers, what do you attribute your fame to

Firstly… let’s heavily scare quote the word “””fame”””.

My channel was all but packed up by the time the Crypt of the NecroDancer alpha came around (Spring 2014). It pretty much ran its course and got kinda stagnant, I was a Legend of Zelda 2 speedrunner and kinda peaked my skill with that. But when I sunk my teeth into Crypt of the NecroDancer I realized that it was a perfect streaming game. I started streaming it pretty regularly and the game gained a ton of traction due to Ryan’s amazing marketing skills.

In July 2014 I took part in the Necrothon, which had me (who was now somewhat known as the Crypt of the NecroDancer streamer) teamed up with huge streamers like MANvsGAME and SuushiSam (now Sampai). That is pretty much all it took, my channel started to take off, I was the “good player” on the team, and so I gained notoriety through that, and raids from huge streamers.

I also think that getting involved in a decent part with the Binding of Isaac speedrunning community really helped my stream grow since lots of great people in that community either joined the Necrodancer community (Wilarseny, Duneaught, MacKirby) or hugely supported Crypt of the Necrodancer (Richard_Hammer, CobaltStreak)

5. What convinced you this was the right step forward?

Pretty easy, I met a ton of GREAT people and was having more fun than ever streaming. I met so many awesome people through streaming.

6.What are your biggest achievements in life, gaming and streaming in your opinion

This is a tough question, I mean, no one is reading this for my life stuff, but meeting my wife and running a couple marathons were pretty big achievements in my life.

In gaming? Beating I Wanna Be The Boshy and Battletoads were both pretty huge, also maybe not rage smashing my computer getting through La Mulana blind.

In streaming? Well I guess that’s pretty easy, ever since I started streaming, all I really wanted was a community, I didn’t need streamerbucks or to streambig.net, I just wanted a community, and I feel like with CoNDOR (Crypt of the Necrodancer racing league. From here on out editor’s comments in prentices) and the necrodancing people that has been accomplished. Certainly running a “CoNDOR” race on stage at SGDQ (Summer games done quick) 2016 was a total stream dream come true, and also doing GDQ (Games done quick) hotfix and streaming 14 or so hours of content to thousands of people was a really amazing experience.

7.How were you introduced to condor and what, made it big in your opinion

I was brought onboard to CoNDOR before it had a name and before it ran its first tournament. RatRacing and Wilarseny asked me to host Crypt of the necrodancer racing pretty much because I was the largest purely Crypt of the Necrodancer stream going at the time. To be honest, it was a way to get viewers coming to watch the races. I was pretty excited for the opportunity, I still remember trying to solo cast the very first CoNDOR and being exhausted by the end and having a massive headache for the rest of the weekend.

I wouldn’t say CoNDOR is big, we have a long way to go, but I know that consistency has helped it a lot. Additionally, Ryan Clark has always supported us financially donating prize money to us, as well as consistently advertising our streams. Also having an amazing staff of amazing people, over the years: Wilarseny, RatRacing, Jakkdl, Arachness, Duneaught, MacKirby, AlexisYJ, and Gromfalloon.

8.Where did the idea to have spinoffs of condor, like Conduit and Memedor come from

Since the goal was always to grow the community, and we started to see the top CoNDOR players always win, we thought it would be a good idea to create a junior league to encourage more people to join in on the racing. I don’t recall whose idea it was originally, but I believe Gromfalloon came up with the name CoNDUIT (Crypt of the Necrodancer introductory tournanent). Then it is a matter of keeping it fresh by coming up with many new ideas, including memedor.

9.Who are the best players and and in that regard, racers in your opinion

This is a hard question for me to answer since dynasties rise and fall over time, additionally, some players came out of nowhere and dominate for one or two tournaments and disappear, like Mameppo, Maru_Kyu for example. But if I had to drop some names, I think the clear top names would be: JackOfGames, SpootyBiscuit, MudJoe2, Staekk, RatRacing, Oblivion111, Incnone, Pancelor. Sorry if I missed some <3 <3 <3​

10.What are your plans for the future (with this game and outside of it)

Depending on IRL stuff, I hope to get back into streaming more, being in school has been taxing on my time. Obviously streaming the DLC when it is released, as well as having season 5 of CoNDOR.

11.What are you expecting in the new expansion​

New zone, new character, new music, nuff said.

12.What in your opinion has made necrodancer have such a dedicated and nice community

Honestly I have no idea...luck I suppose, whatever it is, I hope it keeps up what it is doing.

13. What are your favourite highlights from condor, the spinoffs and streams

Again, I would have to say SGDQ 2016 and our GDQ Hotfix streams, but I also have to give spooty (Spootybiscuit, One of the most promenent CotN players) a shoutout for also having a huge impact on the NecroDancer community by his insane skills beating coda first, and then doing so at AGDQ 2016

14. What do you think is missing or should be changed in the necrodancer community and the game , what would you change in the development team

I don’t even know how to answer this. I wouldn’t change a thing.

15.If you had to spend a day dressed as a character, who and why?

Eli, because of the awesome shovel hand and hat, plus I think he has the best voice in the game and it would be great to talk like that all day.