Hi, I'm Robin.

Recently, I got the chance to interview YouTuber and indie game publisher Graeme of TwoLeftThumbs. Known as Noodle here on NewGrounds, Graeme has done quite a lot. From making flash games to giving you the history of them in his series Flashlight, Graeme has been around the block in the world of web-based gaming. On top of this, he's also published several games recently, such as Dead Estate and the upcoming Alice Is Dead: Hearts and Diamonds, the later of which I have interviewed the creator of here. Due to his busy schedule, I wasn't able to sit down in one afternoon and sent batches of questions instead. However, it was good to talk with Graeme and hear him talk about the old and modern times of NewGrounds regardless. So without further ado, here's our conversation!

(Artwork from Dead Estate from the TwoLeftThumbs Website.)

Robin.: "What made you want to make videos?"

Graeme: "Honestly, I got into it for the wrong reasons. I started making let's plays after watching a bunch of Game Grumps, and thinking, 'ppht! I could do that. I'll even make animations out of my own content like they do to help spread the channel around.' That never really caught on the way I thought it would, and the time required for even 'quick' let's play videos is still more than many people would probably expect. By the time you've recorded, edited, made a thumbnail, uploaded, put in the tags, and written up everything you need for a single video- it's a lot of work! Especially when you want to upload daily! I stopped making let's plays after a few months when work got busy, but I found my way back to it because I realized it scratched the same creative itch- and urge to share new things- that I got as a teenager uploading to NewGrounds! But now I could create and share something in the span of a day, rather then spending weeks animating! Ironically, I drifted into making video essays, which now easily take as much- and often more- work than many of those old animations did. I still makes let's plays on occasion though, because I like the quicker turnaround. I enjoy sharing indie games, and it's often a good excuse to play something new and different with friends."

Robin.: "Back in the day, you made a couple of flash games. What was it like making flash games back in the day and even being sponsored by companies to make them?"

Graeme: "I imagine that every teenager on NewGrounds experienced the same thing. You are suddenly tossed in the mix of 1000's of creative people, all trying to impress one another, while also improving for your own sake! I loved the feeling of uploading something new, and refreshing the score a hundred times to see how people have rated and reviewed it. I think things stay in the Under Judgement segment a lot longer than they used to, so you don't get that near instantaneous feedback anymore, and I think the NewGrounds Review section has drifted to something closer to a comments section, which is too bad. That feedback and encouragement used to be invaluable! The Flash sponsor market was a wonderful thing. It was a way for teenagers to make anywhere from a couple $100 to a couple $1000 for their hard work! That was a big motivator to try and improve, and make your games as unique and memorable as possible.

The funny thing is that it also encouraged people to make nine sequels and spin-offs to their hit game- and I think may have encouraged creators to imitate the styles and genres of other successful games out there. So there would be these waves, like everyone creating Launcher games. Then everyone creating Tower Defenses, and so on. Without the market, there is this untethered creativity, where developers are simply making games for the sake of experimenting and challenging themselves. I wish these devs still had the option to easily monetize their work, and get paid for these free creations they're sharing! But I am impressed every single day, because web-games are now dominated by a new generation who are doing it without a monetary incentive, and I think they're creating some of the best web-games we've ever seen!"

Robin.: "What artists and creators in general have inspired you throughout the years? "

Graeme: "That's a big question, haha! I always laugh when friends tell me they like my drawing style because to me, all I see is the 20 different Flash artists I borrowed from and slowly amalgamated into my own work. My earliest work is likely the most true to myself. I started with stick figures, which had no real stylistic influences, then movies like Microsoft Sam's Life and Link's Theme Song also had no real influences. It probably wasn't until I started doing collabs that I began to borrow from others more heavily. Each person I worked with would show me something new that inspired me to test things out on my next attempt! But there are some very specific early influences.

LegendaryFrog and The Super Flash Bros were the gold standard of how to make engaging, funny cartoons based on characters talking. Yotam Perel also made these character-based animations, but did it with frame-by-frame animation instead of tweening. His continuous growth over the years has been a massive inspiration! He was making Adventure Time-like stuff years before that show aired. David Firth presented these oddball animations that were equally gross and artistic, and really pushing boundaries. The Demented Cartoon Movie taught me that random could be funny, without being totally stupid. Egoraptor had this hyper-active energy that nobody else has ever really captured. The Vad Flaaten twins took this simplistic, amateur-like character design and presentation, and somehow made it feel polished in a way I'm sure every young creator wished they could achieve. Edible Castle was operating on a level of creativity that belonged on television. And that's not even game design influences, that's just art and animation! The list in either case is far longer than what I've shared. It's really hard to capture it all, haha."

(Salad Fingers, David Firth's horrifying creation.)

Robin.: "I remember in your Riddle School video, you mentioned your old character Goatman actually cameoed in one of the games. How did this come to happen? Do you and JonBro still talk?"

Graeme: "It's genuinely hard to remember how the heck that started off! I looked through old DM's and other posts. I had known about Riddle School for a while at that point and had kept up with his work. But I did reach out in about February 2010 to ask if he wanted to take part in 'Did You Hear That? vol 2.' I hand picked the participants for that collab and was eager to have him on board! He has 'Goat 51' on his favorites list, and it's unclear if he discovered Goat 51 because of that message or if I messaged him after he became aware of my work, but Goat 51 and Did You Hear That were major in connecting us. We even made a full game together! I did the character work, and he did the backgrounds and music! It was a part of a game jam. We missed the deadline unfortunately, Jon actually dropped out after that. The subject matter was pretty dark, and he didn't feel comfortable having his name attached to something more than a game jam if we were going to continue on with such an oddball game. This actually relates back to an earlier question. I re-did all his backgrounds after that and never did quite get the tone he achieved right. That process taught me a lot, and definitely majorly influenced my style! We talked quite a lot around the time I made Return to Riddle School and he informed me he was making Riddle Transfer 2 in secret. That felt really cool, to have an 'insider' secret like that! We've kept in touch here and there. I know he's not the internet's favorite person these days... I can't really speak to any of that, as we never really discussed personal lives. But I sincerely hope he's doing well, and is taking care of himself."

Robin.: "You’ve been on NewGrounds since late 2007, correct? How has the site changed since then? Do you think things were better back in the day or do you like how things are now?"

Graeme: "2006! I joined on August 15th, Clock Day. I uploaded my first animations, and thought I was the best animator of all time because my stuff scored like 4.44/5! But that's just what Clock Day was all about: Voting 5 on literally anything, haha. But my old account is long defunct. I really wish I didn't delete everything off of it. I only uploaded a few things from that time onto the new 2007 account, so a few small animations are lost to the ages. Generally, I think the community felt more engaged. Nothing stayed Under Judgement longer than a couple hours. Now it can often take days and feedback on even a stupid little animation would be a full-on essay! Now people barely leave two words. So I do miss that. We were all in it together, working to help each other learn and improve! NewGrounds has always been filled with spam, that's nothing new, but it seems like recently things have taken some weird shifts. People now upload these 3 second work-in-progress animations that they seem to genuinely think will be accepted or there are 50 things a day called 'test.' I wish people would share that stuff in the forums for feedback. The entire site has also taken a pretty large shift into being driven by recognizable characters and names. Truly excellent works still gets noticed! But the good or great stuff can easily be drowned out by a low effort throwaway that features Pico or Tricky. I love Madness too! But I miss when the all-time Top 50 was a more diverse selection, and represented the best of the best rather than 50 percent of it being everything Krinkels has ever done. Those creators have no control over that, but I wish the community would shift back to putting greater stock in originality when it comes to dolling out their ratings."

Robin.: "Oftentimes I’ve noticed some recent games on NewGrounds have a 100% completion medal that references you. How do you feel about your reputation amongst the NewGrounds community?"

Graeme: "Really? This is a phenomenon I was totally unaware of and I've love to be shown a few examples of it haha. Back in the day, there was a strong feeling of wanting to inspire others and hopefully be one of the names that was in people's mouths when they talked about their favorite creators on the site. I was never good enough for that and it bums me out that I was never in a position to attend any of the meetups or anything. But I've never fully let go of NewGrounds and have made it a personal mission to upload at least 1 thing to that site every year since joining! Even if I'm light years away from the most talented person on the site, it's an absolute honor to know that I may have incidentally achieved that goal of being a name people associate with the site "

Robin.: "What inspired the Flashlight video series?"

Graeme: "And I spent a LOT of time on NewGrounds, but I also grew up with only a PC and GameBoy. No consoles! So a large majority of the games I grew up playing were actually Flash games. I tried my own hand at it, and loved the process! Making my own Flash games also shifted my perspective to wanting to play more and more to see what others were doing, admiring them, and trying to learn from them. Once I started making things on YouTube, I noticed how popular certain lets plays of the all-time best Flash games would be. Henry Stickmin, Alice is Dead, :the game:, The Last Stand, and so many more! I noticed a gap in people talking about the history of Flash games and series and realized I was in a perfect position to discuss that side of things! I grew up playing those games, knew what goes into making them, and have lots of the history baked into my brain, allowing me to pull in loads of other random examples for any given Flash subject, and simply felt confident I could do that subject justice when nobody else was. By the time I started the 2 Left Thumbs channel, I had refined the format into something more like a mini-documentary. I covered things more comprehensively and leaned on existing contacts (like JonBro) to do some of those earliest interviews. For example, my remade SoulGame video went from about 11 minutes to 40 and my eventual Madness Flashlight remake will leap from about 12 minutes to well over an hour. The more I did, the easier it seemed to be to get in touch with developers as I had a portfolio to prove I was taking this seriously! I've come to really enjoy seeking out the corners of the history that feel forgotten, things I never knew or that were buried in some old forum post that even the developer forgot about. I want to be the Sean Evans of Flash game interviews, haha. Tracking down Brian Kendall was tough, but so damn rewarding! It's great to remind these developers their games mattered to so many people!"

(An edit I made of Sean Evans.)

Robin.: "What video didn’t take off that you wish more people would watch?"

Graeme: "It's tough, because at this point there are so many that I wish would find their audience! I have a few video essays that I think touched on some cool trends I've seen in recent years, like my video 'Is TV the future of video game adaptations?' I still hold strong on my opinion that, Mortal Kombat (1995) is the best video game movie adaptation, and I would love if that video could break out and convince the masses that I'm right about that! But more broadly, I would love if the Flashlight videos had more of a guaranteed audience. I've had success timing some of those alongside series reboots as- many of the series I've covered were made to coincide with major new releases and announcements- and I've had the strongest views when talking about Friday Night Funkin'-related series. Now I just need to find a way to convince the viewers who are watching a Pico or Tankmen video that a video on a game that might literally be older than them is also worth watching! And secondary to that, my comic book movie reviews. That's just something I really enjoy talking about, but it's a difficult space to break into. I'm hoping that if I keep making them, and stay true to myself and my own style, people will find value in watching those in addition to whatever other comic book movie creators they already watch!"

Robin.: "Recently, you’ve produced some indie games like Dead Estate and Alice is Dead: Hearts and Diamonds. What made you want to start producing indie games?"

Graeme: "I've wanted to make games for as long as I can remember! I kind of wish I never heard the advice, 'never turn your hobby into a job,' because it deterred me from putting more time into Flash and trying to make something out of that. Maybe I'd never have made it to where I am now if I did take that path, but it always lingered in my mind. I wanted to be making games! As things got busier with school, then work, then school and work and YouTube, there was just never time to get back into that. I instead had to shift my focus to lifting up and supporting indie games through let's play's YouTube videos, and whatever else I could manage! The longer I spent in that space, the more I wondered why I had never seen a YouTuber make the leap to publishing. I know games. I know the market. I know YouTube. I had connections! It was seemingly all there! I had a bit of money set aside, looking for the perfect project to put some money behind. I think the talks for Dead Estate started at a time when I really didn't have that much to spare. It was a gamble for sure, but a small-ish, measured one! After a few good months on YouTube- funnily enough, through videos like my Pico and Tankmen history videos, Binding of Isaac lore, and Among Us and FNF Easter egg videos, all NewGrounds related stuff- I sought opportunities to continue expanding that catalog! I still hope to someday produce a few games where I am more involved as a developer or designer, rather than just publisher. But for the time being, it feels like a dream come true to be in a position to lift up these fellow Flash creators and to keep that NewGrounds torch burning bright!"

Robin.: "Why do you keep re-launching your gaming channel?"

Graeme: "Hahaha, yes this is well deserved! Here's the quick and dirty on it. 2LeftThumbs was started as a let's play channel for me and my friends playing games together GameGrumps style. Pretty quickly, that became tough to coordinate, so I added in Graeme Games for any solo content. I had to start leaning on solo content more and more as everyone became busier, both to be early to new games, but also because multiple people weren't often available at once. I love my friends who joined me for those silly little videos that never got any views! I eventually had some success with a random throw together video on Easter eggs within Deltarune. I made three more of those, all performing incredibly well! I jumped from about 3k to 15k subscribers in about a week! I thought, 'this is it!' Then everything sort of slumped off and nobody cared about the let's plays anymore and anything more than that just got buried in the daily lets plays. I decided to reboot, creating a second channel: Two Left Thumbs. This was where all my video essay and more heavily edited content would live. It was a risk to start over, but obviously paid off! Although doing variety content does mean very few subscribers are actually interested in everything I do, hence the spikey viewership! Hopefully someday I'll convince a large enough core audience to watch anything I put out. 2 Left Thumbs and Two Left Thumbs got incredibly confusing. I thought it was a big-brain move, but it was just a headache for everyone looking to watch more of the stuff they knew they liked. Two Left Thumbs was obviously performing better and I knew that if I were to ever get that 100k plaque, I wanted it to read 2 Left Thumbs! So the second channel adopted the original name, and the original channel became Graeme Games. It had drifted more and more to being a solo-gaming channel anyways, especially true with lockdowns that followed shortly after this name swap.

It didn't take long for me to accept that that channel was circling the drain, and I decided to follow suit with a plan that had already worked once: relaunch and reboot!! I'm certain it was massively confusing for everyone. But I now have 3 channels that serve specific purposes. 2 Left Thumbs- the second channel, but also my 'main' with all my researched, edited, and scripted variety content, Full Graemeplays- the original channel, with an archive of lightly edited lets plays, and a handful of other experimental things- although a lot of that was moved, or remade and moved to 2LT, and Graeme Games- the newest channel, that is exclusively highlight-style lets plays. Someone pointed out that unedited lets plays have largely been replaced by streaming, and my hope is that if I instead cut those gameplay videos to be more personality-driven, viewers will be more likely to stick around and watch any video, independent of the actual game. Fingers crossed this pans out, and I can use it to promote and share indie games that aren't getting enough love elsewhere!"

Robin.: "Are you really done making Gaster videos? "

Graeme: "Heck no! When I have the time, I need to make a Pieces of Gaster vol. 3, exploring all the new hints and connections introduced through Chapter 2 of Deltarune. The Gaster Eggs series will need to be picked back up from the Waterfall onward for Undertale, and as soon as the full Deltarune drops, I'll have like 20 more hours of stuff to talk about there as well! Not to mention other Undertale and Deltarune related videos I have brewing mixed in with all of that. To answer a different question entirely, I am trying to move away from Easter egg content. I like putting them together, and feel that I do it in a way nobody else does and I'm super proud of that! But really, I'm recognizing some similar patterns to when that original channel blew up, and crashed back down. The more Easter Eggs stuff I do, the less interest anyone has in anything else I do. I want to stick it through for games like Deltarune and FNF, since I'd rather not leave those incomplete, but it'll be very rare for me to do that type of video on other games and series. I'd rather focus on more analytical content, retrospectives, or big lore-based deep dives like I did with Isaac! Easter egg videos are more niche than I expected, and the people who watch them usually aren't interested in much else."

Robin.: "What are some videos and projects you have planned for the future?"

Graeme: "I know this is going to feel boring to so many people, but right now I am building up a full Infinity Saga rewatch and reviewing all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies as I go. The Iron Man trilogy review is out now, and the Captain America trilogy review will be out right away! There are a thousand comic book movie channels on YouTube, but I find their reviews often lacking. They are often released the same day as the movie, with no context and bending over backwards to be spoiler free. I grew up with these movies and superhero media in general! So I really love talking about it. It's a space I'm trying to branch out into, and hope that my excessively long looks at these movies become the sort of thing that people love to come back to over the years. It seems only right to make videos on these topics I love to discuss, rather than forcing my friends to hear it for the 20th time over! But that will be balanced out with more Flashlight installments, video game theories and lore, videos essays, and whatever else I want to talk about. I always want the channel to be variety based, rather than focused on any singular thing!"

Robin.: "Is there any advice you have for upcoming content creators?"

Graeme: "It's funny, because I think that term could apply to game devs or YouTubers. What you're creating in either space is very different and are going to require different mindsets, but there are a lot of constants that apply to both. It also depends what you want out of it. Is this a passing hobby, or something you want to build into a career? Either way, I would say don't stick with it if you aren't enjoying it. You'll know quickly. Creating games or videos takes a lot of effort. It'll never be a quick buck, so don't go into it thinking that's the case. You'll have to give up many evenings and weekends without ever seeing a dollar in return. I made games for years, but was always casual about it, and never made much. I worked on my YouTube channel like it was a full-time job- on top of my actual job- and wasn't able to make a living off of it until something like five full years, and it was a full year after that before I felt it was stable enough to attempt to make it my actual job. With that workload in mind, only do it if you love it. It's too demanding a job to force yourself into just because it seems like an appealing lifestyle. You will burnout and even if you do love it, you need to find time for yourself. Things you watch, play and do that are disconnected from it, and not intended to be farmed for content.

And small tips, specific to each: For games, start small. Be bold! Experiment. Take part in some game jams. Don't be afraid to throw something out that isn't working. Apply what you learned to the next project. Seek out others to work with! The appeal of the solo developer is great, but odds are someone out there is better than you at whatever your weak point is and understands the game you're trying to make. Your game will be better for that collaboration. For YouTube, there's no small amount of luck involved. Understand that you will put 50 hours into something that nobody will see, but you can counterbalance that luck! I've never had my finger on the pulse of the algorithm the way some creators do and I often make choices that go against that, only because I'm in a comfortable place with it all right now. It took me years of being miserably bad at picking topics, creating titles, thumbnails, making use of SEO and improving my scripting and editing to get where I am now and I still think I'm bad at most of that! But if you aren't doing research, trying new things, and doing some heavy lifting to get your videos noticed you're doomed to fail. If you want it to be a job, treat it like one. There's no coasting in this field and something again that applies to both: Please, don't put your eggs in one basket. Once success doesn't mean you're set for life. Keep your regular job for as long as possible. Be responsible with your money if you start making some. Don't treat it as full time until you have enough saved up to live close to 1 full year without making any money. Both game making and YouTube are incredibly unstable, and you have to be prepared for that bubble to burst. If you don't think you can handle the strain of living with that much instability, neither is likely the right career path for you."

Robin.: "What do you consider to be the overall best thing about NewGrounds in the modern era?"

Graeme: "The best thing NewGrounds has going for it is it's front page! Tom has curated that with the top movies and games since the earliest days of the site and now it's better than it's ever been! It really feels like animations, games, art and music are all given equal weight. You can even play music tracks directly from that front page! Layer that together with regular updates from Tom, a calendar of upcoming events, an automated list of the Daily top 5 submissions, a large splash image to promote something cool happening on the site and you have hours of entertainment available to you every single day. If you open Facebook, it'll be clogged up with ads and other garbage. On YouTube, they'll be pushing Jimmy Fallon clips and things the algorithm wants you to see, rather than anything you're subscribed to. Not only does NewGrounds still care about sharing quality, they've also made 'following' users more and more relevant. It used to just be a way to add an artist to your 'favorites' list, which wasn't all that functional. Now when you log in, the front page adds a feed of new creations coming specifically from those you follow, being presented to you above everything else! It encourages you to visit the site often, gamble on checking out new things, and attempt to build up a list that will be catered to your specific likes. There's nowhere else on the internet doing it in such a user-friendly way! But I think there's a major drawback, that such an enticing front page has steered people away from taking part in the Under Judgement voting. Why gamble on a lot of spammy, low quality submissions, when you have like 50 new and certified things to check out first? I honestly don't see a real solution to that problem. But each visit to NewGrounds feels like it has more to offer than ever before!"

Robin.: "Do you think NewGrounds will ever reach the popularity it once had?"

Graeme: "Sadly, I don't think so. There was a time on the internet where there were like a thousand popular sites, all getting reasonable traffic. It came down to people recommending sites to one another and us selecting where we wanted to spend our time. Nowadays, the internet is basically like five websites. Everything else has been pushed into a fringe territory. I think NewGrounds can remain viable on those outskirts indefinitely- especially if people continue to support it through their in-house Patreon-like crowdfunding- but it sure did zap away a lot of that previous stability. I think how people use the internet would have to completely change for it to return to that peak popularity. Maybe as Facebook becomes more nefarious, and more sites like Tumblr drive away their core audience, NewGrounds will find new and stronger footholds. Large tracts of the YouTube animator crowd have come to realize how little google values them, so it's been great to see some of them returning or coming for the first time to NewGrounds. Even Ruffle making web-based mobile gaming viable for the first time could make a difference! So it's not hopeless, but it's hard to imagine people setting aside their comfort shows on YouTube, binge-able TikTok, and light mobile gaming for long enough to see what NewGrounds really has to offer. I get the appeal of those other platforms and options because I use them too, but I grew up before any them existed, so it's sometimes hard for me to understand why someone would want to put their 5000th hour into an idle clicker when they could watch a Happy Harry cartoon, play the Alice is Dead series, listen to the new ConnorGrail tune, or peruse the front page for something completely new and different."

Robin.: "From one guy who interviews people to another, who are some people you'd like to see me interview in the future?"

Graeme: "Yikes! That'd be a long list haha. I mostly just start thinking of the people I hope to interview someday for Flashlight. Maybe if I sick you on them first, you'll come up with questions I wouldn't and shake loose some answers I otherwise wouldn't have! I saw you just did Hyptosis, so that's great! Creators like Philljc, MindChamber, toge-games, James Lee, or the creators behind Kongregate. It's a long list. NewGrounds is also old enough now that there are so many influential creators who have seemingly moved on and we don't hear from anymore. I'd love to know what they got up to post-Newgrounds, but I'm also curious to hear from some awesome new creators like Stepford, plumfot, Tombdude, LeviRamirez, larrynachos, and like a hundred others. They are crushing it out there and are doing so much to keep the spirit of NewGrounds alive and well! My brain is filled with my own old-timer perspective on the site and culture of it. I'd love to know what this new generation thinks of it all!"

(Two Left Thumbs Channel Icon.)

I'd like to once again give a big thanks to Graeme for agreeing to this interview! It was awesome getting the chance to talk to someone I've followed for a good year now about this site and it's history. A good deal of creators got mentioned in this interview, and I might just take Graeme's advice and reach out to some of them! If you're interested in watching some of Graeme's videos, try watching some of his videos on YouTube. Thank you all for reading and until next time, I'll see you all later.

-Robin.

(If you like what I do and you want to see more, consider making a one time or monthly donation on my Ko-Fi. Every little bit helps!)