This is an exclusive interview with VR content creator Azeal. Azeal is a YouTube creator that makes interview content for his channel where he records conversations with people with interesting stories to tell. Azeal has interviewed all kinds of people and covered many subjects throughout his interviews. Some of these interviews cover very intense and traumatic experiences that the interviewee has gone through. I wanted to ask Azeal to see what it’s like being the creator he is and get some insight as to why he enjoys what he does. The full interview will be posted on my personal YouTube channel.
Here are a few snippets from our interview!
Azeal has amassed a 280K subscriber channel over 2 years. He’s given a platform to victims of the war in Ukraine, VRChat’s Rave scene, and prison guards.
Interview With Azeal
Noah: “Hello everyone, my name is Noah. I’m a writer here at KeenGamer and I’m here to interview Azeal who is a VR content creator on the platform. Azeal, go ahead and say hi.”
Azeal: “Hello everybody, I am Azeal. I make [YouTube] videos where I interview people in virtual reality about their real-life experiences, and I’m happy to be here.”
Noah: “That’s great. So what’s your history and what made you want to pursue the type of content that you create?”
Azeal: “So the origin of the channel is actually really interesting because it’s a lot less intentional than you might imagine. My channel started because I was running Nvidia Shadowplay in a VRChat public lobby (which records gameplay footage in the background that you can clip)…and I started meeting these really interesting people. Some of which were part of the National Parks Service or ex-military. A lot of them just went through really intense stuff in their personal lives, and what I would do is hear them talk about their experience and then ask them afterward ‘Hey, can I save that as a recording and put it on the internet because I think people would really like it.’
Azeal: “I didn’t really have much of an intention of it getting as big as it did. I mean, I had dreams of doing a YouTube channel but they were dreams, right? And then I started posting this stuff on YouTube, and my first video had a couple of stories, it was about fifteen minutes long, it was a compilation. And…it didn’t do very well as you might expect from a YouTube video on a channel with a hundred and seven subscribers. It got about 73 views in two weeks. And then I met someone in a public lobby I was talking about my YouTube channel with them, and they said you should try posting on TikTok and I decided to give it a shot.”
Azeal: “I posted a clip of one of the stories on TikTok, and went to bed. I woke up about 9 hours later and it had forty thousand views and I had a thousand followers. And that’s where it all started.”
One of Azeal’s interviews where he talked to a person with Synesthesia, a condition that causes the person to see colors while listening to music.
Noah: “I followed your channel for I’d say probably a couple of years now. I remember one of the first videos I saw of yours was about where you interviewed that SWAT officer and he was talking about his day-to-day life on the job and such.”
Azeal: “So I started back in May of 2021. I’d say since then, not only have I met a lot of amazing people but I’ve gotten better at doing it. I’ve given people a safe platform to talk about their experiences since day 1. I’ve never really done anything I would call discomforting or unsafe for someone and I take pride in that. But I’ve gotten better at doing things like asking questions and helping people really get the words out of what they want to say. Because as I’m sure you know from your job, interviewing someone can be an art. It’s really about making a person feel like what they want to say is being heard in the way they want it to be…”
Azeal: “…and that’s before the editing process, oh my gosh, not everyone is a public speaker I’ll say that. I have had to do a lot of editing magic in my time on YouTube.”
Noah: “I was curious what your inspiration was because I remember coming across your channel through another channel I was watching called Syrmor…and I managed to stumble across one of your videos as a result of that.”
Syrmor has been interviewed by Vice about his VR content. He’s posted some of the most popular VR content on YouTube and was an inspiration to Azeal’s YouTube channel.
Azeal: “Yeah so Syrmor was actually the first time I was introduced to VRChat. It was probably mid-2019, I don’t remember it very well because it didn’t have much of an impact on me but I did see his video [‘guy in vr talks about his worst day as a soldier’]. It is to this day the most popular VRChat interview on YouTube and it’s a really good one. Syrmor is someone I highly respect, he was doing this long before I was, and he was doing it really well. I’m actually friends with him on VRChat and Discord, and we’ve talked about it occasionally and I feel like kinda have his blessing to continue this because he doesn’t do this much anymore. He has his own life…he has bigger aspirations than this VRChat stuff and I respect him for that.”
Azeal: “But the work that he did was revolutionary. I mean he got interviewed by IGN, and people realized that what he was doing in bringing real people into a virtual world and giving them this space of anonymity and security to talk about their life experiences. He recognized long before anyone else, and that is powerful.”
Noah: “So a more casual question to end things here. Do you play any other games outside of VR by any chance?”
Azeal: “I saw this question on the list and I was like oh god I’m gonna have to answer truthfully. There is literally one other video game that I use my PC for on a regular basis and it is such a dumb choice. If you’ve even heard of the rhythm game platformer Geometry Dash…”
Noah: “Oh yeah, that one!”
Azeal: “Yeah, it’s a little…it gets pretty hard. Basically, you click with a single button…and you jump or fly or wave up in whatever character mode you’re in, it’s all controlled with one button. It tends to sync to music but it’s not perfectly synced because the player decides where stuff goes, almost all the levels are player created. I fell in love with Geometry Dash when I was a kid. It’s had an impact on my life to the point where I still play it to this day.
Azeal enjoys playing Geometry Dash while he’s not hanging out in VRChat.
Azeal: “I think it’s kind of a release for me because it has a level of simplicity that allows me to understand what’s happening and not get overwhelmed, which might be hard to believe if you’ve even seen Geometry Dash but trust me. But it also has a skill cap that’s basically unmatched. Outside of speedrunning, I don’t know of a game that’s as challenging as Geometry Dash and that’s why I find it fun because I can find Zen doing the same thing over and over till it works.”
Noah: “Yeah, I kinda get that vibe when playing Bloons TD 6. I remember back when I was a kid in elementary school that used to play tower defense games, and then I’d play Bloons TD in middle school during my economics class. So it’s interesting how…”
Azeal: “The memories are there…”
Noah: “Yeah and I’m playing the same type of game like fifteen years later.”
Noah: “Alright Azeal, I think that’s all the questions I had for you today. I’m very glad that you responded and we had this interview, it was really fun chatting with you.”
Azeal: “Yeah, thank you so much for having me on. Feels very…I think the word is validating to have an actual journalist come to me and have some interest in what I do. This has been really cool, thank you.”
It was a fun time interviewing Azeal, he was a very modest and respectful interviewee. VRChat is an intriguing place that has interesting people lurking around every corner, having a story to tell. Perhaps in the future, we can go inside the communities within VRChat to discover more about this place. You can visit YouTube if you want to see the full video interview with more content.
Featured image provided by Azeal, made by artist Luyorin
Azeal’s profile pic is made by Clio
