Drawing Lessons In Airsoft Content Creation From Those Who Failed

I was reading the comments on a podcast with Zulu 24 and my pal Greg aka Captain Airsoft, and someone raised an interesting point about creative content in airsoft and how things have changed over the years.

The comment was about editing. Specifically, about how creators today can openly admit they “only die once” in a video, cutting together the highlight reel instead of showing every death and every mistake, and nobody bats an eyelid. Back in 2013–2016, that same editing style got you dragged through the mud. The commenter remembered Matt the Musketeer catching hell for it, remembered someone who’d played against him making an entire debunking video, using their own footage as evidence, showing every cut from one life to the next. The forums lost their minds. People called it cheating. People said it was setting unrealistic expectations for new players. People said it wasn’t “real” airsoft.

Interesting point. What a time that was on the forums.

But the biggest takeaway from MTM’s demise isn’t about editing styles or standards, or what’s acceptable now versus then. It’s this: don’t be a weakling, and don’t give in to the rantings of airsoft trolls. MTM flaked. He didn’t have the character to stand in front of the hate and keep making content. And that’s a lesson for anyone creating content online, not just in airsoft.

He’s not the only one. That whole 2013–2016 era is a graveyard of lessons, so let’s take a look at why people left instead of just mourning that they’re gone.

Bodgeups: Don’t Eat Yourself Up Over Vanity Metrics

Another creator who gave up from that same era was Bodgeups, a UK airsoft sniper who fell short of achieving his 100k silver play button (during a time when the silver play button meant something). In his own “I’m giving up” Reddit post, and on a podcast he made at the time, he admitted the real reason. He hated that Novritsch was pulling in more subscribers than he was. He got obsessed with the numbers, comparing his growth to someone else’s growth, and he lost the entire reason he started making content in the first place. When his videos failed to go viral it made him sad, and the slower his subscribers went up the more miserable he became.

The lesson here is obvious. Don’t worry about vanity metrics. And whatever you do, don’t compare your vanity metrics to somebody else’s. That only ends one way, and that is you hating a hobby you used to love because someone else’s number is bigger than yours. Sad. Don’t do that.

The Level Cap Lesson: Being Recognised Is Not a Problem

Then there’s Level Cap Gaming, who packed it in because, in his own words, he hated that kids recognised him and started following him on the field. He made an entire video whining about it, about how worthless he felt when he had camera problems or gun problems and couldn’t produce a video at the end of the day.

Imagine becoming miserable because people recognise and appreciate you for doing the thing you love. That’s weird. Really weird. If you’re building an audience and the audience actually shows up in person to say they enjoy your work, that’s not a burden, that’s the job creators dream of. Falling apart over it is a character issue. Have character and appreciate your fans.

Now, this is a bit of a swerve ball because another creator who quit is a Dutch guy called Cleanshot. He went half mad and stopped making content because he got sick of every other person on the field asking him if he was Silo Entertainment. And then when he faked a cheater video and the community turned on him, while Silo got away with faking cheater videos of their own, that was it for him. That’s a different kind of pressure. Pressure that is self inflicted by making the same kind of content as another creator, dressing up the same, sounding the same… And then the community only noticing that he faked a cheater video and not Silo. That was it for Cleanshot, he was done.

Interestingly, Cleanshot also fell for a similar mistake that Bodgeups made, he was obsessed about vanity metrics. If he produced a video that did not hit 100s of thousands of views he would delete it. Wild.

The main takeaway from Cleanshot’s demise is to be yourself and to be transparent with your audience about who you are. Don’t copy other creators and send yourself mad when people recognise you as somebody you are not.

But your own fans wanting to be around you? That’s not the same thing. That’s just a weird melt from Level Cap Gaming.

The Takeaway if you are a creator.

Creating successful, entertaining, and educational long form airsoft content is incredibly hard. Way harder than people who’ve never tried to do it realise. And it gets exponentially harder if you fall into the same traps the people above fell into: flaking under pressure instead of building the character to stand your ground, obsessing over someone else’s numbers instead of your own reasons for filming, or resenting the exact recognition you were presumably trying to earn in the first place.

The industry side of this equation is broken too, and I’ve written about that at length previously. But this post isn’t about the industry. This one’s about the creator’s side of the ledger. Because no amount of sponsorship money or fair compensation is going to save a creator who doesn’t have the character to survive contact with an audience, or the discipline to stop measuring themselves against everyone else’s subscriber count.

You need character to do this. That’s the lesson from that entire era. Learn it, or you’ll end up another name on the same list.

Good luck Greg aka Captain Airsoft. You got this.