Have you heard of Maximilian Christiansen? You probably haven’t; though, if you watch the streaming platform Twitch or love browsing YouTube then you’ve probably heard of the streamer/YouTuber Maximilian_Dood. Maximilian, over the years of his YouTube and Twitch careers, has gained a massive following. On Youtube, Maximilian has gained 1.1million subscribers and over on Twitch, he has gained 687.3K followers and 43.5M views. With this level of a following, on both entertainment platforms, there is no way to not believe that Maximilian has some kind of influence over the fighting game industry. However, his rise to popularity was not quickly obtained and, like most YouTubers and streamers, Maximilian worked hard on both platforms to gain such a following.
In The Beginning
Maximilian_Dood actually started his YouTube video making career posting Call of Duty videos on the site back in 2008-2009. You can still find these videos on YouTube, like the one below:
However, this changed in 2011 when Maximilian started posting his ‘Online Warrior’ series and the ‘Assist Me’ series. Both of these series were specifically meant to help his audience get better or understand all of the different elements within fighting games. They were also there to introduce newcomers to the fighting game genre, as well as the fighting game community in an easy and digestible manner.
The difference between the two series is that the ‘Online Warrior’ was just Max fighting other players in online match-ups. This gave viewers the chance to see how certain characters faired against others, truly helping viewers that were not used to certain match-ups. He would also explain the outcome of matches if he lost, explaining why some things didn’t work for him and why they worked out for the opponent. Also, the ‘Online Warrior’ series featured a tremendous line-up of games as Max branched out. It first featured Marvel vs. Capcom 3, then Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Marvel vs. Capcom Origins, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition, Street Fighter IV, and Injustice Gods Among Us; that’s a lot of information for fighting games and a wide variety of ways to play them all. In regards to his ‘Assist Me’ series, Maximilian’s main focus was to break down a specific character for each episode. Most ‘Assist Me’ episodes focused on Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 characters since the roster was massive; however, with that game being a 3-v-3 team-based fighter, having ‘Assist Me’ episodes focus on one character at a time allowed players to learn characters that they wanted to learn, faster. All of the character’s mechanics were explained, even their “assist” moves and how they could be better suited for certain teams rather than others. This series has branched out to other games like Injustice Gods Among Us and Mortal Kombat X (in more recent years). If you want to learn more about the ‘Assist Me’ series and how it began then we suggest you watch Maximilian’s interview with the YouTube channel Hold Back To Block from EVO 2012.
As The Career Flourished
As Maximilian gained more and more popularity his YouTube channel grew and even expanded to a second channel, YoVideogames. With the expansion of his YouTube channel, Max needed to upload a wider variety of content. So on his channel, Max developed the ‘Hype and Rage’ videos, with the series starting from YouTuber The Hawke. These videos featured, as the title of the series suggests, all of the hypest moments from his online fights and some of the hilarious moments of his defeats; however, it was his reactions within the videos that truly made them entertaining for everyone to watch.
In fact, the ‘Hype and Rage’ series is so popular that it doesn’t just contain all of Max’s best moments but the YoVideogames crew as well. The channel, YoVideogames, is where Max and his friends Simmons (who plays as ‘Doom’ in ‘Assist Me’), Steve, and Kenny all get together on the weekends and just play video games. These videos could be fighting games, full-on ‘Lets Plays’ (Max being solo or with the YoVideogames crew), or random game selection; either way, it’s all shenanigans and laughs with those guys together.
Beyond ‘Hype and Rage’ and YoVideogames, Maximilian went on to create other series as well. These series were the ‘Boss Rage’ and the ‘Weeks Of’ series. In ‘Boss Rage’ Max would put himself against a chosen fighting game’s classic arcade ladder on the highest difficulty and, eventually, duke it out with the boss of that game. Highly infuriating, if the game featured a secret boss battle, with seemingly impossible requirements to get to it, Max would battle it out and come to a victory. The ‘Week Of’ series was very similar to ‘Online Warrior’. ‘Week Of’ would feature a set character that Max would play as for that week; learn all that he can about the character and explain all of the specifics to his audience. This series truly helped boost his Twitch streaming career and his popularity within the Killer Instinct community.
Currently, with Max’s rise in popularity (as well as the YoVideogames crew), everyone involved with YoVideogames has begun their own Twitch channels as well. Simmons is ‘AssistMeDoom’, Steve is ‘INFINTE_SGE’, and Kenny is ‘UnRooolie’; even Max’s wife, Jessica, has her own cooking stream on Twitch, ‘Jae_Benny’. All, of course, entertaining to watch on there own.
The Influence
With Maximilian’s complete rise to popularity fully realized, we should understand that he is a massive influence on the fighting game industry. Now, we could find dozens of opportunities that Max had to showcase that influence but the most notable influence that he portrayed is through Killer Instinct. When Killer Instinct was announced at E3 2013, Max had a massive reaction and his choice on which next-generation console to get was instantly made and we agree with this reaction. The trailer is still amazing.
As you see above, we mentioned that Maximilian showcased a lot of Killer Instinct in his ‘Week Of’ series. By doing this, Max distributed awareness of the title to his Twitch and YouTube audiences. This helped make Killer Instinct one of the best selling games on the ‘Xbox One’ during the beginning years of the consoles life-cycle. In fact, the game was so popular that instead of only having one season, the game went on to have three full seasons (with each season changing how the game was played). With the flood of additional support for the game over the years, this also supported Max’s lifestyle as a streamer/YouTuber. Max continued to support the game in content creation and community connection. This, during season two of the game, eventually led to Max actually working on the game as a freelancer. Max’s work on the game was trailer creation for each character being released, advertisement trailers, story trailers, gameplay trailers, and he even worked on the game’s story. Beyond just working on the game, Max was a commentator for the game at multiple tournaments. These tournaments included ‘EVO’ and the Killer Instinct World Tournament. Though once the game stopped getting support from Microsoft, Killer Instinct grew quiet and nothing has been mentioned of the game since; that is, until recently.
Just this past week, July 25th-26th, Max published this video titled, “Bring Back Killer Instinct”, featuring #BringBackKI. The whole purpose of the video was to specifically target and bring awareness to all of the executives over at Microsoft Studios, especially Phil Spencer (the vice-president of the gaming division at Microsoft), that the Killer Instinct community is still alive and thriving; they want a new game. By creating the hashtag, #BringBackKI, Max implored all of his viewers and any Killer Instinct fans to tweet out the hashtag with a message to Phil Spencer.
With over 9K comments, 12K likes, and over 8.6K retweets (all targeting Xbox and Phil Spencer), this campaign certainly had some success of rallying the community. Though, this video and hashtag weren’t the only ways that Max used his influence on the industry and community. On July 26th, Max hosted a Killer Instinct live stream on his Twitch channel. During this live-stream, Max hosted an interview with Killer Instinct developer Adam Heart (also known as Keits). and commentated for matches played by top-ranking Killer Instinct players. Alongside the campaign, this live-stream was a success; it reached over 10K viewers at multiple points throughout the night. As of yet, no response has been made by Phil Spencer, you can check his Twitter; though, hopefully, fans of the game will see some kind of response from Microsoft Studios due to this amazing campaign.
And He’s Still Humble
We understand that Maximilian doesn’t like being called an “influencer” and he views what he did this past weekend as supporting a community and game in which he is a massive fan of. Over the years Max has said “thank you” countless times to his followers and supporters. Whether the “thank you” is on social media, streamed, or in a video, he posts, Max has never forgotten who his core fan-base is and that’s hard to say for a lot of “influencers”.
Max is humbled that, after all of these years, he still has a following and that it is still growing. Beyond that, he works with his fans to create new content and showcases a lot of their support during his stream through fan-art. Again, not many “influencers” have done this.
We hope that the Killer Instinct campaign will get some feedback from Phil Spencer or other executives from Microsft soon. Being humble from the start and continuing that idea has led Maximilian to where he is in his career now. As fans of Max, we thank you, Max, and keep up the hard work.