With Pokemon Day wrapping a series of announcements forPokemongames, including spin-off and mobile titles as well as two expansions planned forScarlet and Violet, it’s interesting to take a look at a YouTuber whose content revolves around this franchise entirely, and that is Duwiol. Duwiol, whose real name is Matt, has been craving a full-time content creation career for a long time, and back when he was an English teacher he would find the time tomake YouTube or TikTok videosin his free time. Not long ago, Duwiol finally made his dream come true, and he decided to dedicate his channel toPokemon.
In an interview with Game Rant, Duwiol talks about what led him to pursue this specific career path and what the challenges for him were, but also what the highlights are and how they made his content go viral. Duwiol is currently doingplaythroughs of all the mainlinePokemongameson YouTube, from Gen 1 to Gen 8, withPokemon Scarlet and Violetlanding betweenPokemon Brilliant DiamondandShining PearlandPokemon BlackandWhite. With a passion for community-based challenges and interactions, it’s no wonder that Duwiol’s numbers went from a few views to thousands - and they still have room to grow.This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
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Q: What is the origin story behind your YouTube channel and content creator career?
A: I tried to make a channel in 2016, 2017, I think. I had a proper go at it because I was posting every single day on YouTube, but it was any type of gaming at all. I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea, but I thought that doing videos ofindie gamesand games no one had heard of was a good idea because algorithms love that. Just have this game that nobody plays. Not my smartest decision, but I had a lot of fun with it, I enjoyed it, even though I wasn’t growing very much. I think it was a year of doing it. Then I thought of Twitch, so I started streaming and filming at the same time. In 2017 and 2018, I was doing both.
Because the job I had was very demanding on time because I was a teacher, so every evening I was marking papers, doing that sort of thing, I had to drop one, so I said “I’ll just go with Twitch, Twitch is doing better.” But life got in the way, so I was stopping and starting. I got to a point, just over a year ago, closing in on two years now, I had a big change career-wise, so I had to make the decision to just stop streaming because I just didn’t have time for it. I stopped, but I still had an itch to just keep going back to it, but I didn’t have time to stream or film for YouTube.
During the lockdown I did what a lot of people did, so I downloaded TikTok, and I was like “Yeah, I could just post a video every now and again on TikTok just to scratch the itch.” It was the stupidest choice I could have made because I started doing what everybody was doing, which wasopeningPokemoncards, and it was all I saw on TikTok. There was a moment when I started using a filter off of Instagram where it would randomly select six Pokemon for me, and I would challenge the people watching my videos in 6v6 battles. It went really well. I went from getting a few views to getting thousands.
Then there was this moment where a parent said “My son Oliver was to challenge you specifically,” and I did a video where I was challenging Oliver themselves, and it just exploded because people realized “Hang on, he’ll battle me specifically.” People would ask me to battle them, and it sort of evolved, with just short of one thousand individualPokemon battleswith people on TikTok. I started to grow a lot, income started coming in, and I wanted to go back to YouTube because I really enjoyed the community aspect of it, even on Twitch, I liked having the community decide what I would do.
For example, I playedSkyrim, but I only did what people in chat told me to do. It’s also why I loved the community battles, as I enjoyed engaging with them and them with me. What I’ve done since coming to YouTube, it’s been 8 months now, I’ve been playing my way through every generation ofPokemonto sort of go on the journey “This is the game I started with, and here’s where we are now.” Every single time I’ve done a playthrough I let the community decide what to do. I’m doingPokemon Whiteat the moment, and I started this poll online where people could vote for thePokemon typesthat they wanted on my team, so I had to pick Pokemon based on the winning six types.
I really lovePokemon, so I decided to have this channel that’s justPokemon, and then I have another channel that is me just playing other games and I can do more with the community. I started aMinecraftserverwhere anybody who’s been a member of the community for a while can play. I want the community thing because it’s what gave me the boom. The whole reason why I started YouTube seven-odd years ago was that I had just turned 25, and I was like “I’ve surely missed my chance at this, but I want to have a go.”
Q: What did you expect from going full-time as a content creator? What made you decide to go full-time now?
A: I noticed I was growing, but I always had it in my head that “I have to have this much income,” the amount I was supposed to be earning, because with every job you need that security of income, so I was always panicking, worrying about it, like “Will I be earning enough? Will I not be able to pay my bills?” and things like that. I was always raising how much I had to be making to do it, and when I got to the amount that I decided I was like “Ah, but that’s not enough,” and I kept raising it.
But then, I got to a point where the work I was doing beforehand, my teaching job, I was just done with it. The more I was succeeding at this, the worst that job was looking in my eyes, so I was like “Why am I letting this hold me back? Just have a go, just do it,” and I decided to just take the plunge regardless of whether I think I’m earning what I think is enough or I’m the size where I think I’m big enough. I feel like if I took too long I would never do it.
My family has always been very supportive of what I do, but I had so many times when I thought “Oh, but I don’t know if I can do it, it’s not stable.” I always had it in my head that you need stability, but I don’t think you ever get stability with this kind of thing, or if you do, it’s much, much later on. I always had the mindset of “Do what you enjoy, even if it’s paying a bit less than what you want,” but reality gets in the way of that quite a lot when you need to pay the bills.
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Q: What was the hardest challenge that you committed yourself to since you started this content creation journey?
A: When I started, one thing that I underestimated, was just how much my workload would increase. I thought that if I could do this while having a job, then removing the job would make me have a lot of time. No, just no. That’s now how it works. As soon as this became my job, twenty, thirty more things went “Hello, you need to do us now as well.” So I’m always, always at my desk doing something. One of the things I set out for myself was to get myself to a point where I’m far enough ahead on what I’m making to have a lot of content in advance so that I can work on other stuff, expand in different ways, or do whatever.
It didn’t really work out that way because the amount of stuff I’ve had to do increased because I want to ensure I’m ahead to an extent, but I also want to work on expanding what I’m doing, so it’s not justTikTokand YouTube, but do variety content as well, then bring in streaming, and bring it to a place where I’m happy with the size of what I’m doing, but it’s pretty difficult to keep up with it. As soon as I went full-time with it, I was like “Ok, now I’d like it if I could improve my audio quality,” so I went looking into it, and next thing I know it’s 12 hours of research later, and I only figured out how to kinda make it better.
I thought “Oh, this is so much work. I love it, but it’s so much work.” I feel like it’s one of the biggest things that people don’t consider - just the sheer amount of work that goes into content creation. I have so much respect for the super-large creators who are just pumping out content. The amount of work it takes behind the scene is ridiculous.
Q: What inspired you to do a marathon of all the Pokemon games?
A: One of my friends suggested it. I wanted to start making content on YouTube, and I like watching people who do this one particular challenge in one heavily-edited video, but I also prefer to watch the whole journey. So one of my friends said “Well, why don’t you play through all of them? Start with the first you ever played.“Pokemonwas the second game I ever played, but it was the first I ever owned. My dad had a SEGA Mega Drive and hadSonic, so that was the first I played, but my uncle bought me aGame Boy withPokemon Redfor my birthday, so it was the first game that was ever mine.
So I thought “Ok, I’ll start withRedand work my way through,” and I thought it would be fun because a lot of people that watch my content are quite a lot younger than me, so they’ve not seen these older games. So I was like “Hey, look, this is wherePokemonstarted and where I started withPokemon,” and then work my way through and see all the things that changed, things that improved or got worse, maybe, and just enjoy the journey from Generation 1 throughGeneration 9. It’s literally been a big part of my life since I was 7, so going from the beginning to the end was cool. One thing that I didn’t plan for, but it’s ended up happening is that the last time I played a lot of these games I was a kid, so I’m going in with nostalgic viewpoints on these games, and they’re being shattered.
I went intoPokemon Redthinking “I love this game, it was so difficult,” but I beat it with no issues and I thought “Oh, this is not as hard as I remembered.” Then I went into Gen 2, and I loved Gen 2, but I went into it thinking “This is one of the best games ever made. The fact that you can go back to Kanto in the post-game and do that is so good,” and then I went back to Kanto and realized that because the memory space on these cards was so small, they stripped Kanto to its bare bones, so it was really underwhelming. But then I went into Gen 4, and when I was younger I didn’t like Gen 4, but going in I thought “Hey, this is not as bad as I remembered it being.” It’s been fun reevaluating each generation as an adult.
Q: How was it for you to play Gen 5 games right after you finished Pokemon Scarlet and Violet?
A: I mean, as a content creator, a brand-new game from the franchise I specialize my content in comes out, I have to play it. But yeah, to go fromPokemonGen 1through 4 and then to Gen 9 was jarring, but I really enjoyed it. I loved the fact that it was open-world, and I loved the story. But I heard loads and loads of complaints, and I was like “Well, I mean, I’ve had some issues, but it’s not that bad.” Then I went back to Gen 5, and it runs so smoothly. It’s such a well-made game, and ever since playing it I look and Gen 9 and think “Oh, you were so good, and now I’ve tainted my view of you.”
It was so weird to play Gen 9 and have so much fun only to play a game that’s so well-crafted that spoiled my view afterward was disappointing. Like, I love Gen 8, I genuinely do, it’s one of my favorites, but only because it got me full back in love withPokemonbecause I had a weird period of time when I didn’t want to make the effort to buy a3DS to playPokemon. I had adoredPokemonall the way up to Gen 5, but then I playedPokemon XandY, and I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I hate Megas. I felt it was favoritism.
Only these particular Pokemon can have a Mega. And so many Pokemon who had a Mega, does that mean they’ll never get an evolution? This is why I have a bit of a running joke in my community which is “Justice for Pinsir” because Pinsir got a Mega and so is basically sealed away from being allowed to have across-gen evolution. I think looking back Gen 6 was in my experience a step-down from Gen 5, which wasn’t anything amazing or innovative, but everything was rounded off nicely and was smooth, whereas I didn’t find myself enjoying Gen 6. It was the first Pokemon game I didn’t complete.
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I can’t remember where I got, but I had unlocked Megas and then just sort of put it down. I was living abroad whenSunandMooncame out, and I had just moved back to the UK with a foreign 3DS when I boughtSunandMoon, but I didn’t realize my 3DS was region-locked. I couldn’t play it, and I didn’t want to pay for another 3DS just to playSunandMoon, especially after my experience with Gen 6. Gen 6 almost made me not want to playPokemon. So when I sawSwordandShieldwere coming on Switch I knew I had to do it, it was the first mainline set of games. It brought back all the love I had forPokemon.
I think Gen 8 was testing out whetherScarlet and Violetwould work. I felt like they were testing out newPokemonaspects, and then they really tested it withPokemon Legends: Arceus. While I love Gen 8, I feel like a lot of it was testing stuff out because, like, Raids came across from it.
Q: Do you think Gen 5 needs remakes on Switch?
A: I never understood why some games are remade to play the same and just look better, but only so much is completely changed. I asked myself if it was a remake or a remaster because if it’s a remaster they just make the graphics better and maybe iron out some bugs. With a remake they’re using the same world and story but approaching it in a different way, so likeLet’s Gowould be a remake, butBrilliant DiamondandShining Pearlwould be a remaster. That’s the way I’ve always looked at it.
In terms of a remake, no, the game doesn’t need to be changed in any way. The story is fantastic, but I would like to see it with modern graphics. I think a big issue withremakes ofPokemongamesis that they were made to work with that type of graphics, so when you turn 2D into 3D suddenly a lot of the puzzles don’t work. I’d like to see a remaster, or at the very least I’d like to be able to play it on the Switch. One thing I’ve said multiple times is that I’d love it if they released the first four or five generations ofPokemonon the Switch. But yeah, inevitably they will end up doing one.
WithBrilliant DiamondandShining Pearl, I just went in with the mindset that I wouldn’t like them. In terms of a remaster or remake of Gen 4 it’s good, but the graphics were a weird choice. The thing that threw me with it was that graphics changed as soon as you entered a battle. With Gen 4, I wish they’d redonePlatinuminstead because it was the better version of the games. It fixed a lot of the issues they had. It’s kind of the same issue I had with Gen 9 because I couldn’t overlook the bugs. But I didn’t finishBrilliant DiamondandShining Pearlbecause I knew I had Gen 4 coming up in my playthroughs anyway.
I wasn’t really enjoying it, and I didn’t want to play something I didn’t enjoy twice. But then I playedPlatinumand I quite enjoyed it. I don’t mind if they take a risk with things, it’s ok to experiment, but I think a lot of people didn’t want it with Gen 4. I always say “Play what you like.” For example, I’ve gone back toSwordandShieldbecause you can get shiny Legendaries that you can’t get in Gen 9. I hope they do bring something likeDynamax Adventures, but you can’t currently do it, so I’m playing Gen 8, and I’m streaming. A lot of people come and go, and they ask why I’m playing this and notScarlet and Violet, and the answer is that I want to. I think baseSwordandShieldhave the same issues as many if not all Pokemon games, which is when you’ve beaten the game what do you do?
you’re able to shiny hunt and do competitive, but nothing substantial. I love that they released DLC because it fixes a bit of that, so I really hope they do that forScarlet and Violet. I never cared aboutcompetitivePokemonand making my IVs and EVs perfect, and thenSwordandShieldmade me want to do it, and thenScarlet and Violetmade me really want to do it. I never playedSunandMoon, so a lot of things from Gen 7 I don’t know about them until I get to it in my playthroughs, but I love the fact that you could use Mints and you could use Candies to level them up quickly, then there are Ability Patches, Ability Capsules, and all those things. Then they made it even more accessible in Gen 9.
Q: What do you like about Pokemon Scarlet and Violet?
A: The fact that they made the shinies visible and noticeable in Gen 9 made me very happy. IplayedLet’s Go, Eevee!and I loved that I could see shinies. Then I playedLegends: Arceus, and I know some people complained it was too easy to find shinies, but I liked that they had the sound effect, so you can stop everything you’re doing when you hear it and look for the shiny. The fact that they removed it inSwordandShieldthrew me off because I assumed I had never seen a shiny. I think they have to keep that now. I feel like they found a nice balance with shinies, though.
They’re visible, but you’re not guaranteed to see them. One thing I liked is that they made them the right size. I know for a fact that I’ve probablymissed a few shiny Pokemon. I like that Primeape got an evolution, and I have this thought in my head that it got so angry that it died and then became a Ghost type. I’ve loved the Mankey line since Gen 1, and I’ve hated how underrated they are. They don’t get into many of the games. I was really happy to see that Mankey was in the games and that it has a third stage now.
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Q: Have you considered trying competitive Pokemon?
A: I’ve had a few people ask me that. I think competitivePokemonhas always interested me, but it takes so much dedication and time and effort - you have to figure out what’s the best strategy and build your team. I like watching it, but I’m not sure how well I’d do that kind of thing because I would always want to bring my favorite team, not the best team. I’ve never really done that well in the games that I play with competitive things because I just want to have fun with them. I know a lot of people find it fun, but I don’t like doing competitive things.
Maybe in the future, but for now, if I wanted to do it I’d want to learn everything about it, and so I’d have to spend so much time looking into it and researching it, and I definitely don’t have the time right now. Like, Gen 8 was my introduction to shiny hunting, and I’ve only been doing it for a few years, but shiny hunting takes so much time. I’ve seen people going for rare shiny hunts and that’s impressive on its own, but I’ve watched people enjoy shiny hunting so much that they won’t even go for theShiny Charm.
Hats off to you, but I can’t do that. The dedication is super impressive. That’s the thing I love aboutPokemon- there are so many things you can do and so many little communities within the one big community. I think it’s really cool. I have a couple of people in my Discord who were talking about how they’re trying to get ashiny living dexfor the entire franchise, all 1,000 and something. They’ve been doing it for years. There’s one guy who’s only one hundred away, and that’s so impressive.
Q: Do you think Game Freak will be fixing Pokemon Scarlet and Violet’s issues?
A: There are issues, I can’t deny it. I really hope they do fix them because I don’t want to see them build bad faith with their consumers. It’s such a wonderful franchise, and I want to see what happened to a lot of companies where people grew tired of it happening toPokemonas well.Pokemonhasn’t really done that yet, releasing broken games, but it’s a risky path. Like, I went intoTera Raidsknowing one of a few things would happen: my teammate is going to one-shot it, somehow it’s going to be impossible to beat it, or it’s going to be so messy and jump around so that we’ve defeated it three times, but it gets its health back every time. It’s always one of those three.
This is what upsets me, as I loved Dynamax Adventures andDynamax Raids inSwordandShield. It’s sad to see that the Tera Raids don’t work quite as well as they maybe should. I always tell people to play the game they want to play, but also let others do the same. One of the things that I didn’t like about becoming a content creator was that I’m almost not allowed to not know what’s coming. I always like to go into a game and know as little about it as possible. I don’t want things ruined for me, I don’t want spoilers. It’s impossible to avoid spoilers on the internet, so I tried to shut myself off from the internet except for uploading videos and stuff for a couple of weeks beforehand, maybe even a month, because I was desperately trying to avoid spoilers.
I even have a section in my Discord that is the only place you’re allowed to put spoilers for anything. I get that some people are perfectly happy to know what’s coming and they want to be the first, but there are also people who don’t want to go in knowing. I didn’t go back to streaming until I hadbeatenVioletbecause I was like “I don’t want to stream and somebody spoils something for me.” I filmed the entire playthrough, and then I started streaming again, but I missed out on all these things, like item duplication, copying shinies, that sort of thing, which I’m not upset about because I wouldn’t do it anyway, but I keep hearing more and more things.
I even ended up having more people following me as a result of me not saying anything about the games, spoilers, and such because they said “I know this is the one place I know I can go to where I know I won’t have it spoiled for me.” It was interesting to me, but I wrestled with that a lot - do I want to make money off of content that’s easy to make money with, like talking about what’s coming and spoilers, or do I want to shut myself off? I always want to go in not knowing as much as possible. I want to know as little as I can, but I’d say it’s riskier to take that path than it is to take the path of knowing everything because if you want to know everything then you won’t have anything ruined for you.
Even if somebody tells you something you can go “Oh that’s cool, now I know something else.” But if you want and attempt to stop yourself from knowing anything, you’re constantly on edge. I was there for months. The fact that my job revolves around this franchise had me go “I don’t want to know anything,” but of course, people want to talk to me about it. While I was lucky enough to get away with it this time, should I be lucky enough to keep growing, I will not be so lucky next time. There will probably be a point where I just can’t have the pleasure of going in not knowing anything anymore, this may very well be the last time I go in not knowing what’s going to happen.
I’m fine with that. It’s weird now because IplayPokemonevery single day, and I love every moment, but I’ve found myself not playingPokemonoff-camera. I play something else because I want that “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” so I’ll play games I’ve never really seen people play, or I haven’t heard anything about it because I want to have that thing. It’s weird becausePokemonused to be the thing I do to shut off from my day, but now my day isPokemon, and so I do other things to shut off now. Maybe that’s the solution, I can’t have the surprise with the thing I love anymore, but I can have the surprise with other games.
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Q: What was the idea behind having shorts on your YouTube channel?
A:Squirdlewas the idea of somebody who asked me to do it. I can legitimately claim five or ten percent of the stuff I do is my own ideas. I like to have the community I’ve built around what I do as involved as possible. Someone told me aboutSquirdle, thisWordleclone,and told me I should do it, then loads of people wanted me to do it. So I’ve done it, there you go, there it is. The wholePokemonbattles on TikTok, barely any of these were my ideas, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. It’s difficult to have your own ideas. I try not to do what most people are doing. I completely understand why people doing something becomes popular, and as a result, everybody does it that way. It’s the hot thing, it’s what’s popular.
I want to do different things as much as possible because you’re never going to be unique, so I like to do things that are as unique as possible, but I always find somebody who’s done it before me. I wanted to do the playthrough of all the generations because I saw that out of all the creators that at least I knew of at the time, I didn’t see many people who would do unedited,full playthroughs ofPokemon, and I was like “I’d love to do that, I love to see the whole journey and everything.” Inevitably, of course, I would do a whole playthrough and there were three or four or five people doing it. It’s still fewer people than those who do the edited single videos thing. It’s hard to be unique, but you can have the occasional idea.
It may not even be a good idea, that is the problem - or people don’t watch it. I have the perfect example of that. I always wanted to do a “choose your adventure” sort of series withPokemon, so I did a thing where I had a green screen, me acting parts, like a little show on TikTok or whatever, where people choose from a few options at the end and that decides the next path of their adventure. Kind ofD&Dstyle, but notD&Dstyle. I loved it, and I had so much fun with it - for four videos, until I dropped it because it just wasn’t getting the views. The people who were engaging with it were loving it, and I was loving it, but the harsh truth is if it’s not getting the views it’s not worth the time. It was so much time to film it and to edit it.
As much as I enjoyed it, I can’t do something that’s not getting the views or not getting as many views as you need it to get. I never would have thought that my just using arandomPokemongenerator filterto do battles with random members of the community would be as popular as it was. Sometimes I just put a lot of effort into something, and it flops. I don’t think it’s always down to how much effort it takes to do something. It’s more about trying different things, and if you see something that’s working just go for it. It’s ridiculous what people want. Sometimes I’m like “I want to read this, I want to watch this,” or whatever, and it’s so wrong compared to what the general public wants.
I’ve had so many suggestions or ideas of my own that I’ve been insistent it’s a great idea or the person who suggested it thought it’s a great idea, and then it’s awful. People don’t like it. And then I have this stupid idea or one that I think “Oh, this will never work,” or someone suggests something to me and I’m like “That’s a ridiculous suggestion, why do you suggest that?”, and then it blows up. I don’t get it. I’m not going to complain about it, but you know. I’ve had so many people suggestPokemon Showdown. I’d love to do it, but I think I’d have to sit down and understandShowdown. I love watching people playingShowdown.
I’ve seen the videos on YouTube and TikTok and everything, and I’m like “This looks fun, but I don’t know if I’d enjoy it.” Inevitably, it’s going to be something that works. I love the community aspect of being a content creator. I almost don’t have to worry about coming up with ideas because I know someone will come to me and say “I think you should this or that.” It’s easy to say things like “I think this will be a good idea,” but at the end of the day, if people watch you and tell you that you should try something, you should probably do it.
Q: What’s your favorite piece of content you put out?
A: You said it, and I immediately had it in my head, and I was like “I can’t say that.” That is probably the cringiest, worst thing I’ve ever put out, and yet I still giggle when I watch it. It was so early on with me posting on TikTok, but I was looking through Instagram, and I found this one filter where it literally puts your face on aPikachu. I know, it’s so cringey, but I made this video. It was like 30 seconds where it’s just me going “Pikachu, I choose you!”, and then I throw the Poke Ball at the camera, and it goes into a Pikachu with my face on it saying “It’s me, the Pikachu,” something like that.
It’s the cringiest thing I’ve ever made, and yet I still laugh at it every single time I watch it. Every single time. It’s the sort of thing where you’re rolling the dice there and either people are going to find it funny or they are going to go “I’m never looking at this man again. I’m going to bleach my eyes out now.” I have some amazingPokemonvideos that I love and stuff where I come in clutch at the last second,beating the Championor that sort of thing, but that one video will always make me giggle, so it’s probably that one, as bad as it is. It’s easily in the top 10 worst videos I’ve ever made, but it’s still one of my favorites.
