An Interview With the Hardest Working Man in the Fighting Game Community

Mr. Victor Fontanez, more widely known by his handle “Spooky” is a very successful streamer and widely known figurehead in the Fighting Game Community. He’s the man responsible for streaming a lot of the biggest events and tournaments in the world of fighting games, including the grand daddy of them all: the Evolution World Championship Series.

Spooky stopped by the Philippines this past month, and we were lucky enough to sit down and have a chat with the Hardest Working Man in the FGC.

Could you give a quick background about yourself?

My name is Victor “Spooky” Fontanez and I run a small broadcasting company called Team Spooky. We’ve been broadcasting since 2009 between Youtube, Twitch.tv and some other websites. We mostly broadcast competitive gaming, but we do try to branch out to all gaming in general.

How did you get the handle Spooky?

I got the handle a long time ago, as a teenager. It came from skateboarding. I used to skateboard a lot but I was really bad at it. One of my friends one day was like “Man that guy’s so spooky, he’s gonna kill himself skateboarding!” and that name stuck on me ever since.

How was it like growing up and how did you get to where you are right now?

I lived in the USA, specifically in New York City. I’ve lived in the area for most of my life. I came from a poor family and a poor background. I have not seen my father for how long and my mother passed away when I was 18.

Ever since then I have been fending out for myself for most of my life.

God bless my mom, she tried her hardest to take care of me. For all my life I never knew if I had a certain talent or anything like that. I was good at school, I would always get good grades, but academic smarts doesn’t necessarily translate into the real world. What I found that worked really well for me were jobs involving anything about computers and helping people. IT was really good for me. For example, someone comes to me and mentions “My screen’s not working” and I would ask “what does that mean, is the screen flickering, is it blank, are the colors not right”. By asking the right questions, I was easily able to find the fix. That kind of thing seems to have happened all my life, even now when it comes to streaming. I watch a lot of people broadcast, and sometimes they have problems like using the right cameras, or getting the audio of the sound just right, or when someone tells them the stream looks bad they don’t understand how to fix the problem. But with me, when the problems come I tend to fix them easily. I find that I have a natural talent when it comes to these kinds of things. It’s really translated well to what I’m primarily doing now, which is broadcasting.

You’re mostly known by many as the Hardest Working Man in the FGC. How’d you get the moniker?

The Title was given to me by Marvel Player and commentator Michael “IFC Yipes” Mendoza. The main reason was that I attended the most events out of almost anyone in the FGC to stream them. Maybe there are a few guys that go to more events than I do, but if they do, then they’re pretty godlike.

What’s your personal history in fighting games?

I started out when Street Fighter 2 was first released. I was never really a competitive player for the game, since I was only around 13 or 11 years old at that time. That was a very difficult time in my life. Although I was doing well in school, I didn’t really like my family situation then. Even my mom was kind of difficult. I ended up spending a lot of time in the arcade. Usually I would get my ass kicked by the players who were way older and better than me. I’d stay until around 10 or 11’o clock at night, then my mom would come looking for me because I didn’t come home again.

She would beat me.

Even so, I’d still go back to the arcade the following day. That’s kind of where I got started, and the more I did it, the more I noticed that I didn’t just go for the games. I was going because I was used to seeing certain people there.

I was starting to develop relationships with them.

Only later did I figure out they called it the FGC or the fighting game community specifically. Up until then, I guess I kinda noticed that there was a community, but I didn’t really think about it then. I just really liked hanging with these people.

What’s your favorite fighting game?

Personally, my favorite game is still the Melty Blood series. Yes I’m biased because I did really well during that game’s era. I was placing very high in pretty much any tournament I went to. I met a lot of people while discussing the game and we grew to like each other. Like how it was back when I started, the more I learned about the people I was playing with, the more I got invested in them.

I began to care about them.

How did you get the idea to start streaming tournaments?

Originally, around 2008 to 2009, I still had a job at that time and I was working in IT for a stock brokerage firm. I didn’t really like most of the people there. Even though they had tons of money, they hated each other. They would talk bad about each other and employees were treated pretty badly. At this time, there was no Twitch.tv yet but there was Ustream and Justin.tv. I had already used those sites just a little bit to test them from a technical standpoint.

One day, I just kind of started doing it just for fun. I found out that I was getting really good viewership. Other guys would be doing what I was doing, and they’d have 5 viewers. On the other hand, I would have 500 viewers, which was a pretty big deal at the time. Outside of what level up was doing with Wednesday Night Fights, nobody was doing exhibitions for Fighting games.We had an 8 man exhibition for Melty Blood called Gladiator Matches which peaked at around 1,000 viewers. Then at the release of Super Street Fighter 4, we did a big 24/7 stream with a lot of popular players in the New York area. This stream also got really good viewership. It was at that point that I found myself liking this way more than doing my job.

I didn’t care that there was no real way to monetize it yet and just rolled with it.

How did you get your brand Team Spooky?

I just called it that because it was just me teaming up with a bunch of random people to do something. It turned out to be an ok name so we just went with it.

What’s it like being a known community figure?

I appreciate that a lot of people look up to me and they admire me. I kind of try to express that I’m just a regular fighting game guy like everybody else. People make it seem really big, but there are a lot people doing the same thing I’m doing.

Does Team Spooky stream anything else other than competitive fighting games?

We do from time to time. Like right now, Arturo “Sabin” Sanchez has a Madden series he started doing. The most popular stuff I do that’s not fighting game related would probably be let’s plays of other games.

Does Team Spooky have plans to branch out to any other Competitive Games?

The thing is we don’t have a foothold on other scenes like League of Legends, HoN, Dota 2 or CS:GO. Those are games I would not mind partnering with some time don’t get me wrong. I find that they are already well established enough when it comes to streaming in the same way I’m doing good when it comes to streaming fighting games. There hasn’t really been a reason for us  to cross paths yet.

How’s the Philippines been so far?

The people here are very friendly from what I could find which is very nice. I also like that the Philippines from what I’ve observed has some old school views and outlooks. Some people describe it as a third world country, but I don’t think that’s necessarily fitting. There are first world countries that look more or less the same.

Why are you in the Philippines?

I’m here to meet with my friend Louis “Offcast” Vigil and a few others. We were here for discussion of me doing more events in the Asia Region.

Could we expect Team Spooky in time for Manila Cup 2016?

It’s not guaranteed because nothing has been set in stone as of this moment. But I have a very strong desire to broadcast Manila Cup this year.

What do you personally think of Street Fighter V? How would you compare it to Street Fighter IV?

To be honest, though I covered Street Fighter IV, I only did it because I knew the community wanted it and was excited about it. I personally was never excited for SF4. As a player I was never good at it, so that’s the first turn off and second I’m mostly into anime fighters that had lot’s of option selects, similar to what SF4 had later on.

If I could make a comparison of SF4 with an anime fighter, I’d like to discuss a pretty obscure anime fighter called Eternal Fighters Zero. One of the things that the game was known for at high level is that if you get knocked down one time, it’s over. Even though there were so many defensive options like burst, just defending, reversals, invincible backdashes and the like, you still pretty much lost or won based on the knockdown. It makes you realize how strong certain tactics like safe jumps, reactions and option selects really are. They were just so good in this game that defense didn’t matter. I felt that SF4 suffered the same problem near the end of the game’s lifespan. Even with more options added like delayed wake up in Ultra Street Fighter 4, it wasn’t enough.

As far as Street Fighter 5 stacks up, I feel that right now, yes there are some cheap tactics. For example, R. Mika has unblockable setups in the corner that leads to a lot of damage. However, I find myself enjoying it way more compared to SF4. First off the game is fast paced especially when compared to 4, which is something I enjoy. Second, I find that there’s a good mix of offense and defense involved when playing the game in a high level. For example, you could get rushed down but you can still defend yourself just right if you can react properly. A lot of the time when you lose, it’s your fault.

This is just my take in the current, early era of SFV. Who know’s what people will find later down the line.

We know Street Fighter V had a very rocky release. Do you think Capcom could have handled it better? How would you have handled it personally?

First, let’s go back to the beginning. When Street Fighter V was announced, if you remember, the actual release date for the game was pegged originally for April this year. But what they did was they pushed it to February so that the players can get their hands on it to practice in time for Evo. I’m glad they did that. Even I’m playing the game a lot and I’m enjoying the fact that I can become a pretty good player early on in the game.

My biggest problem is actually pretty simple: If they were gonna release the game early in such a state, why did they not just make it an Early Access title?

That would have in my opinion fixed everything. Steam has tons of early access games and you know when you buy an early access game, it’s still not complete. With Street Fighter V, they had the opportunity to say “The game would not be actually done till April, but you could play it online already, you could start farming fight money for the shop when it’s eventually relased and you could already see tidbits of the story.”

But they didn’t do that.

The reality is that they called it a full release and not an early access title. Going by that full release, one of the goals of Street Fighter V was to cater to the casual gamer.

You can’t cater to the casual gamer without casual modes. There’s nothing.

This is where I find Street Fighter V is lacking. They failed at their objective to cater to the casual gamer. As a hardcore Street Fighter or fighting game player however, SFV has been really cool for me right now.

Do you think that once all the updates hit, will it be enough to pull back the casual crowd?

I don’t really know at this point. The reviews are out and all of them say that the game is missing all these things. But the reviews have also been really clear about stating that these things are actually coming ,they’re just not here now. The problem is when it comes to a casual gamer, when the game first comes out is when you salivate for it the most. But when the game is out two months already and then the story mode comes out, I’m doubtful people will have the similar motivation to pick it up.

There’s a lot of people right now saying that Street Fighter V is tanking commercially. What are your thoughts on this?

I’m aware that there have been stats, but the problem is that no one has yet to measure digital sales properly. I’m willing to bet that digital sales outsold the physical retail copies by a lot on both PC and PS4. We’ll just have to wait until we get an official word from Capcom.

In terms of streaming viewership, how would you say Street Fighter V is fairing right now?

It’s definitely fairing better than the beginning of Street Fighter 4 did I’ll tell you that. At Next Level Battle Circuit, we’re consistently getting around 12,000+ people watching our weekly tournaments even when I’m not there. Usually the viewership tanks when I’m absent since people expect a certain kind of quality when I’m present. Even guys who are just streaming the game at home are doing pretty well. Known players like Snake Eyez and Justin Wong get thousands of viewers on their streams. People that are not as well known are also getting pretty good viewership ranging from 500 to 1000 viewers as long as they are doing good and playing well. When Tampa Bison was number one on the online rankings there were over 10,000 people watching him play. It’s definitely successful in my opinion.

Do you have any tips for people trying to get into/get better at fighting games?

One way to get better is to find people playing your character at a high level and try imitating what they do a little bit. Like for example, when they knock someone down, you see them tick forward and then walk back a step and then do something. Another one is looking at their block strings or what inputs they’re doing while playing. You could notice that they press buttons this kind of way, or they press them twice (double tap) during combos. Then you find yourself asking “why do they do that?”. When you start imitating them, you start understanding why they’re doing certain things. For double tapping, you find that it’s easier to do combos, or when you start imitating a certain input, you notice your special move or super is almost always guaranteed to come out. That’s a good way to start.

When it gets to a high level, the number one thing you have to understand that you’re not just fighting the character on-screen, you’re also fighting the player. When you understand that players have certain tendencies, then you start beating the player. For example, you notice your opponent keeps doing a certain move that’s hard for you to punish if you block it at max range. Then you start to adapt, you try and get closer so that once you block that move, you’ll be at the proper distance for a full punish. Alternatively, you could try keeping at a farther range so that when he uses the move and misses, then you could jump in to punish him.

Fight the player, don’t just fight the character.

What advice can you give people who want to make a career out of streaming?

First you convert your friends and have them watch you every time you broadcast. The reason for that is not primarily viewership, but to understand how your broadcast works. Your friends can tell you if something’s weird on stream while they’re watching it. It helps you get used to broadcasting and get used to how everything works from a technical aspect.

Second is consistency. You have to stream pretty often  so that people will be encouraged to follow you. Put your videos up on Youtube later maybe if there are highlights. Use social media to communicate properly with an audience. Give a reason for people to come back to your stream.

Examples of streamers apart from me that you could follow as examples are the Level Up Series, ShowdownGG and FunkyP. Those are just a few I’ll name for now. There’s lots more out there.

Any final thoughts?

Thank you for everyone who plays fighting games and games in general. Enjoy and have fun!

We would like to thank Mr. Victor Fontanez for giving us his time for this interview. To know more about Spooky, follow him on Twitter @teamspooky, like Team Spooky on Facebook and follow teamsp00ky on Twitch.tv.

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