games, so usually bad things hap-
pen which makes good content!”
Making narrative-driven content
without a script seems difficult.
Over the years, however, they’ve
developed a system that works
for them. “Whenever we go into a
video—say it’s Ark—we’ll have some
goals. We don’t really have a begin-
ning and end, [instead] it’s like ‘I
wanna do A, B, and C’ and we just
kind of play and see what happens.”
The free form nature of the
content itself doesn’t mean
there’s no structure to capturing
it. As Schnur describes, the team
normally divides into two groups
(an A and B group) while play-
ing. There’s also a Spectator who
bounces around the map without
actually playing, which allows
them to get cinematic shots; giving
their videos that movie or televi-
sion show quality.
They aren’t locked into any spe-
cific role, however, as they all wear
multiple hats throughout produc-
tion. Schnur himself handles all
the music on top of dealing with
social media, but “Whoever’s run-
ning spectator is the showrunner,
in a way. They’ll let us know, ‘Okay,

I’ll probably cut right here, you guys hold, we’ll move

on to [the next] group.’ So whoever’s running the

Spectator cam is usually acting as the director.

“We each have our strengths in certain areas. I sort

of ducked out of the Minecraft world, I’m not a big fan

of playing it. That’s the nice thing [in our group]; if

you don’t have fun playing something you don’t have

to play it. No one’s forcing you. We want to be very au-

thentic and not fake it, because our audience can tell.”

All five are involved in each recording session,

lasting roughly an hour and a half to two hours. All

this footage is used to develop 20-25 minute videos.

Unused content winds up on the cutting room floor

rather than being turned into additional videos. It’s

not the norm for gaming channels and speaks to

their desire to ensure only their best makes it into an

episode. “Sometimes you just don’t have that great of

a recording,” Schnur says candidly, “which you rely on

the editor to punch up a few things to make it better.’”

Cutting episodes together, adding in the cinematic

elements and sound design falls to the crew’s three

editors: Alex, Anthony, and John. “Patreon pays for

our editors, so those three are being supported by

our patrons who have been awesome. We have a very,

very solid and supportive Patreon group and we try to

take care of them the best that we can.”

THE “HACKENING”

Managing a major YouTube channel with millions of

subscribers brings plenty of challenges. Their biggest

and scariest hurdle, however, came earlier this year in

the form of a giant hack to their channel. It’s not an

uncommon occurrence for many creators, but as one

of the bigger gaming channels out there, Neebs Gam-

ing treats it as something of a cautionary tale.

One of their editors, “I’m not throwing him under

the bus!” Schnur quickly remarks, “Has his own chan-

nel and somebody reached out to him with a sponsor

deal that seemed a little bit too good to be true.”

The “offer” was to review a new photo-editing soft-

ware, which he jumped on quickly. The company sent

a link to download the software...A link that contained

malicious software. Unfortunately, he was logged into

the Neebs Gaming account at the time of download, “It

NEEBS GAMING

COMEDY, COMMUNITY AND SURVIVAL

THEIR

SCARIEST

HURDLE

CAME IN THE

FORM OF A

GIANT HACK

TO THEIR

CHANNEL.

“