As I promised yesterday, here is our exclusive interview with the man behind the hilarious Hot Pepper Gaming channel on YouTube, Vernon Shaw!
1. Hi Vernon! Please tell us a bit about yourself and the channel.
“Hey! I’m Vernon Shaw, the creative director of Hot Pepper Gaming. Hot Pepper Gaming is a channel where people eat super spicy peppers and then try to review videogames.”
2. Who are your hosts?
“We have a lot of different hosts, including some awesome gaming personalities. However our main HPG crew consists of myself, Erin Schmalfeld, and Jared Rosen. We’ve all been doing YouTube stuff for a long time, mostly behind-the-scenes.”
3. When did all of you meet?
“We all work in the new media business in some capacity and we’ve all been friends for a while. I think Erin and Jared knew each other in college. I met ’em at work!”
4. Why eat hot peppers before doing the reviews?
“There’s just something so magical about eating super spicy peppers and then trying to do anything. I think it adds something funny to what could be an otherwise run-of-the-mill review.”
5. What are some of your favorite YouTube reviewers that you have drawn inspiration from?
“Adam Sessler and Extra Credits are my absolute favorites. I think I’d die if they came onto the show.”
6. How did you manage to get over 35,000 subscribers in just one month?
“A lot of big gaming personalities on YouTube have been super helpful in helping us grow – anything from nice tweets about us to offering to appear on the show. Thankfully I think we have a really fun, shareable concept that a lot of people want to try.”
7. What do you hope to bring to YouTube that is different than other gaming channels that are popular these days?
“I don’t think we necessarily want to change the landscape of YouTube gaming with this channel. I figure it’s something fun that can make a lot of people laugh and bring a lot of gamers together.”
8. I noticed that the people from Ninjasexparty have commented on your videos. Are there any other notable people that have liked your videos that you can think of?
“The whole Game Grumps crew has been super supportive of our growth. Egoraptor even offered to be in a video, which was in-part responsible for why we’ve gotten so big so quickly. Other cool channels like BelatedMedia and ProJared have been awesome and shared our videos with their fans.”
9. When can we expect to see new videos posted?
“We always upload a new video on Mondays at 9AM PST!”
10. What kind of games will you be reviewing and will you include indie titles as well?
“We’ll definitely try to include something for everyone in our reviews!”
A big thanks to Vernon for doing this interview with us and we look forward to more fun game reviews in the future! Be sure to check out Hot Pepper Gaming and if you like what you see, subscribe while you’re there! You can also follow the team on twitter @HotPepperGaming .
