OCTOBER 9, 2021 – Nobody knows who Smokey Massacre is. That’s kind of the beauty of it. Video games create alternate worlds for gamers looking to escape the routine of everyday life.
Smokey Massacre creates Halo Ninja Warrior obstacle courses and hosts online tournaments challenging gamers around the world to compete for a chance to win total victory. Tournament results are edited with commentary and posted to Smokey Massacre’s YouTube channel.
The real mastermind behind it all is Staff Sgt. Samuel Burns, American Forces Network-Tokyo radio host. It’s a hobby that combines his passion for filmmaking, love for American Ninja Warrior, and pleasure of playing video games.
“When I was a kid, I was making war movies. My friends and I would always get dressed up in war gear and we would have our toy guns and go running around pretending to shoot each other. I was able to learn how to make some stuff that looked pretty cool,” Burns said.
Burns enjoyed making videos, but found it hard to get others to participate in the filming process. The challenges that came with movie making forced Burns to come up with other solutions in order to keep making videos.
“I quickly realized that there were two types of videos I could make that didn’t require me to know a lot of people in real life. I started making stop motion army men movies with the little toy army men,” Burns said.
His second idea involved creating videos through video games and that’s how the Halo Ninja Warrior tournaments came into existence. More people were interested in playing videos games than acting out scenes in real life.
The process of hosting tournaments and putting the videos together still brings its own obstacles.
“I have to get all 100 competitors to compete, I have to record them all, I have to make the video themselves and then upload them and do the commentary. So, there’s a lot of steps to the process and doing just one tournament takes a very long time,” Burns said.
His first tournament was uploaded to YouTube in December 2012. Since then, Burns says he’s hosted 21 tournaments with 1,100 attempts and only three competitors have beaten all four stages to earn total victory.
One neat thing to look back on is how his videos have evolved over the years.
“The biggest thing that is a noticeable change in my videos is my commentary. I finally learned how to use my voice. I figured out how to slow it down and how to have the proper pace and just control my commentary a little bit more,” he said. Both his hobby and Air Force career complement each other in different ways.
Hosting a daily four-hour radio show for AFN Tokyo has helped Burns find his voice for video commentary. On the flip side, spending hours at home editing has made him more efficient at producing videos for work.
He has no vision of what the future holds for his videos and YouTube channel, but he has no plans of stopping anytime soon.
“It’s a hobby, you know, I don’t get paid for it. There’s no one that I’m reporting to for these videos. It’s just my channel and I can do it whenever I want so I’ve learned to just be patient with it, not rush it, and whenever it’s convenient for me I will do it,” Burns said.
Each Halo Ninja Warrior tournament allows Burns to escape his daily routine, enjoy time online with friends, and be himself.
“My videos have become a way for me to express some of my emotions,” said Burns. “People will watch my videos and they don’t even recognize me. I am very different in my videos than I am in real life,” Burns said.
Story by Tech. Sgt. Courtney Chapa
Media Center – Japan