Why would talking about b4nny's beef on Twitter / past trashtalk and how clockwork dated his ex "[represent comp TF2] to a wider audience"?

Well, with the research I have done so far it is seeming like a full documentary on b4nny would be the most accessible way of introducing a wider audience to competitive TF2 on YouTube. Though, that is not set in stone, there is still potential for a more broad video about competitive TF2 but this is where my research has lead me presently.

The situation with clockwork displays to me his absolute insistence on victory. Ignoring the potential awkwardness of a relationship like that because clockwork was his best chance at picking up championships is, to me at least, pretty indicative of his victory at all costs mindset towards the game.

Trashtalk/Twitter stuff is also important in unpacking his personality with other high level players. I think most people would agree that he has a very big ego when it comes to competitive TF2 and I want to make sure I don't miss any key examples of him feuding with other people in my analysis of his character.

Again though, not even sure if my video about competitive TF2 will necessary be a full on documentary about b4nny, but right now that seems to be the most captivating way of introducing people to this side of the game. (I'm thinking of EmpLemon's documentary on Hungrybox which pierced into a mainstream audience)

Although I see where you're coming from with the character analysis, treading very lightly on these events would be the only way to do so without harming the scene. unfortunately doing that itself seems unlikely when you consider that mentioning them will almost certainly lead to a non-competitive fanbase reigniting old drama, and breathing notoriety into b4nny's name. That's a horrible thing when you consider how integral he is to NA invite

Perhaps I didn't do a good job of phrasing my initial post. It's not that I want to exclusively focus on these bad parts of him, I myself have a huge amount of respect for b4nny and would want this to frame him in a positive light due to his sheer dominance over the competitive scene. It's more that these niche beefs/interactions with other players are very hard to find relative to his long list of achievements. I have already gone season by season documenting his dominance as that is all very accessible through places like comp.tf and Liquipedia.

I have nothing to contribute but I wanted to thank you for making entertaining Tf2 content.

Thanks for your hard work and hope the research goes well!

Please rethink your approach. He is a human being, why do you want to publish a video about shit that happened almost a decade ago to your 240k subscribers? Especially shit as personal as romantic relationships?

I understand that people criticise him a lot here, because he’s such a prominent figure, but this is a dangerous idea. Your subscribers will dogpile him and make his stream a hostile place, this will do no good.

The way you came across in your initial post makes me very concerned that your delivery will be way off.

I would advise you to think about your comparison to Michael Jordan. The Last Dance was a fantastic documentary, but remember how it was built. It was Jordan’s product. Everything was built around what he said and didn’t say. Cooperation with Jordan was how the narrative was constructed. What you’re proposing sounds like something that would encourage him to be defensive, facing evidence of VERY old history sourced from elsewhere, rather than a narrative that he can engage with and discuss openly.

I would strongly recommend you speak to him about all these matters first, and base your research and story off that rather than the other way round. That’s how most documentaries go. Remember he is a person. He is not Bing Soy, he streams very often and is very much a known personality. He deserves a say in what is and isn’t discussed about his past.

I think if you wanna show like beef/interactions with people, you can just show clips of him pugging and getting mad for some reason instead of bringing up 8 year old drama. There’s some semi recent drama related to him but that’s prob also a bad idea to include in the video.

x

I appreciate the feedback. I feel as though I haven't done a great job communicating my question given the response it's gotten but that's entirely on me. I did not intend to frame it as though a potential video would focus on these negative/drama-focused topics exclusively, I only posted here because his excellence and dominance of competitive TF2 has been documented so well and I haven't had any trouble recording those aspects in my research so far. I just wanted to ensure there weren't some major parts of his history I was missing out on as I have been trying to construct a comprehensive timeline, but I see how the way I worded my initial post could be interpreted as a very drama-oriented and uncharitable dissection of b4nny's legacy.

Apologies for it coming across poorly, as I have been treating my research with a lot of care thus far. I personally have immense respect for b4nny, and if I did ultimately follow through on this idea I would 100% want him to be involved in the creation process, would do a proper interview and would want him to be happy with the final product.

Let it be, man.

s

https://i.imgur.com/xxudxXe.jpeg

Why not do an interview with the man himself? If you want to bring his story forward, not doing an interview with him and asking random nerds on tftv to factcheck instead seems a little odd. Surely b4nny wouldnt ignore someone as big as yourself.

it would be a better idea to highlight his achievements and what hes done for the community in instead of his 8 year old beef w people who dont play the game anymore

I think elmaxo made it clear he has enough to talk about the good things he has done for the community (winnings in RGL/ESEA, resupp, etc). If you wanna talk about controversies, I get that, b4nny isn't a holistically favorable figure, but avoid things that are just gossip. Tftv can only give you gossip I won't lie man, I would reach out to other larger figures in the community and just ask their experiences and thoughts in a non biased way (i.e don't ask "what beef do you have with b4nny" ask "what are your experiences with b4nny"). Tftv is not a good place for this.

an objective video essay doesnt sound like a bad idea if its in good taste

Check his friends list and ctrl+f nursey, ask him about his history of prioritizing the optics of the scene over the voices of victims, watch him pug for literally 20 minutes and see how he speaks to people. The concerns in this thread are valid, but I'm of the opinion that there isn't really a way to objectively represent b4nny without harming the scene. The rabbit hole goes deep and the more accurately you represent the man the worse he is going to come across.

The scene is cool and good but b4nny is a deeply flawed person. He is a bad representation of the scene. Not necessarily a terrible guy, but holding any piece of b4nny's out of game behavior up as a representation of comp is going to backfire. I love the idea of giving a history of his in game accolades, diving into past seasons etc. but if you're going to cherrypick his behavior in the last 15 or so years that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

So long as the conversation surrounding this guy stays firmly planted in his gameplay you'll achieve your stated goal. Stray outside that and you'll make him look bad because there have been many, many incidents in which he looks very bad.

i think drama is good for views and u dont have to be worry about hurting our scene

If I were b4nny, I don't think I would want this documentary made, at least from what I read in the original post. Documentaries about b4nny have already been made, why not do something different? If there is a person that pubbers know from the 6's scene, it's b4nny. If you really do want to represent the game to a wider audience, why not provide spotlights on some of the people your audience might be less familiar with? When I watched the smash brothers documentary (often cited by melee players, including #1 player zain, as one of the reasons they got into the game), one of my favorite parts was seeing all the unique characters at the top level and how they interacted with each other and told recollections of the same event from different perspectives. You could focus on a specific event, for example when in RGL s6 Witness Gaming beat froyotech in grand finals. This was the first time froyotech had lost in ESEA or RGL grands in something like 6 years, with one of the Witness Gaming players winning invite in his very first season. Both options are infinitely more interesting than focusing on drama that is literally coming up on 10 years old.

second this. you mentioned you wanted something similar to emplemon’s hbox video, so why not make something like the melee documentary instead of glorified highschool gossip with a hint of gameplay? it’ll bring a lot of attention to the scene without coming off as bad taste to the people who actually play comp.

Setting aside the feedback people have given already, I think there a few ways you could go with this.

Option 1: A series of "player profile" style videos that you can work on and upload periodically. For example, the first video could be about b4nny, the next about a different player, and so on. Shorter interviews (if the players are still around/you can get in touch) interposed with highlights, stream clips if there are any, etc. I think showing a career highlight or two and having the player explain what they were thinking could be really interesting. While casual players know about b4nny, I think a lot of people don't grasp that the 6s scene goes way, way deeper than froyotech. I also think focusing not just on, like, top15 all-time players, but also low invite players, well-known players in general, etc. in order to get across the breadth of the scene. So it would look like this:

• TF2 Player Series 1: b4nny
  
• TF2 Player Series 2:
  
• TF2 Player Series 3:
  
• etc.

Option 2: You could do a longer player documentary series (10+ minutes each) focusing on all-time talents. Of course many of these players are no longer active, so getting in touch might be impossible; the overall feel of these videos would be more historical/documentary-like than option #1. Explain their careers, what made them so good at 6s, you could interview other players who are still active (i.e., "what was it like playing against clockwork?"), etc. This might align more with what you had in mind originally.

Option 3: A series about the history of 6s in general. A single documentary about the history of 6s I think would be way too hard, so you could tell the story through videos on the different "eras" of the game (Ancient Era, Golden Era, Dark Era, RGL Era). I recommend reading through the NA Top100 series Tery did in 2021. You could explain how class compositions were established, the biggest changes throughout each and their effects, in what ways players improved or how the scene shifted, etc. Would really help if you could get a hold of some super old players/clips/stories to make it interesting. A series like this would really allow you to set the stage for clips. Showing casual players artist's bomb in s6 finals is cool and all, but explaining it in the context of strategy and the game's history I feel would have casual players on the edge of their seats when watching.

i like this idea but dont really like the smash bros comparison that gets thrown around so often. there's been multiple explicit attempts to do a smash bros documentary for tf2 like this and this and while they're nice and they're good videos they aren't really impactful
either way though i think if a 6s video reached a casual audience in a big way and garnered a ton of buzz that would still be wasted if there isn't a clear and easy path to start playing. a lot of people know of and even regularly watch b4nny but have never played 6s just because it can be a confusing and intimidating thing to get into

this thread fucking sucks

I feel this vid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHtmqtsRi3I&;

did a good job of explaining a lot of b4nny stuff as is and is pretty recent.
I think a cool way to do this vid is possibly talk about the development of tf2 comp as a whole if u want a take a more documentary perspective. While I think na would be the best region for it as historically it's been the biggest region, the na vs eu drama is def worth talking about. (im also na so skewed and biased perspective).

B4nny documentary outright has been done a few times already and none of them really make people want to play or learn more about comp tf2 (assuming that's what you're making the video for).

If you're doing research on b4nny here you obviously have plans for him to be a major part of the documentary itself. B4nny's past controversies in the scene play a role in his story within this community, but bringing them up in your video without directly talking to b4nny and working with him on this? You're just commodifying his life and person for your youtube video for profit.

its crazy you're the 4th person to suggest he works with/interviews banny, accusing him of "commodifying his life and person for your youtube video for profit." He's already addressed this in his original post and then he addressed it again after the 3 other people posted exactly what you posted.

I understand that the tf2 community wants to be sure that something being made about us has integrity to stand on, but this thread went from "I don't like the way this is going" to "here are my TOP FIVE youtube videos to make YOU go viral in 24 hours!"

i'm glad you decided to end up making the comp video after all! i have faith you'll do it justice given your passion for the game and your storytelling prowess ^^

this is unfortunately accurate. I had a lot of people approach me asking about how they can try out comp tf2 and both newbie mixes/pugs are pretty daunting unless you are really invested in learning the game.

i was the guy who made the last "best competitive game that no one plays competitively" vid btw! if you want someone to bounce ideas off of, feel free to hmu.

although I do think the b4nny thing has kinda been done to death, I definitely agree that he makes for a pretty interesting documentary subject

it's very easy to draw a throughline where his competitiveness and stubbornness are responsible for both his greatest failures (alienating certain teammates, his reputation nosediving once he started streaming and people outside of invite saw his pug conduct) and his greatest strengths (consistently performing at an insanely high level, switching mains and still reaching the top again, rebuilding froyotech back into a powerhouse numerous times after basically the entire team quit)

and then the overarching question of 'was it worth it to be the clear GOAT in a fairly niche game?'

then again, wasn't there already a b4nny documentary that kinda did this? idk just spitballing

Oh I want to add that my main concern is that you may cherry pick his personal life and accidentally make him look good. I'm not worried about slandering B4nny and the scene by extension. I'm worried that you will spend all your time focusing on irrelevant drama from 10 years ago, frame those incidents as quirky little competitive character flaws, and leave out his habit of shitting on victims to protect the image of competitive TF2 as well as his refusal to cut ties with or even acknowledge the actions of a known predator.

His dominance over the competitive scene is really the only thing worth respecting about the guy.