If you have more than the slightest interest in Hearthstone and frequent YouTube and Reddit, the name "Trolden" should ring a loud bell. In under ten months after his channel was created, Trolden has become synonimous with the "funny and lucky" side of Blizzard's card game, entertaining fans every week as he collects memorable moments and edits them for his audience's pleasure.
Today, Trolden's YouTube channel boasts more than 230,000 subscribers. His 92 videos have amassed almost 40,000,000 views. Each time a new video is released, it skyrockets to the top of the Hearthstone subreddit, his most popular one scoring at 840,000 plays. In between all that, there's a lot of travelling involved too, as Trolden recently provided commentary for the BlizzCon EU qualifiers and Viagame House Cup, working with other prominent personalities like Artosis, Gnimsh, Savjz and Reynad.
It is during said House Cup that I first meet Trolden and we seclude ourselves for the longest interview I did that weekend. Spanning over an entire hour, we talk about not just Trolden as a YouTube brand and what he deals with on a daily basis but also who's the person behind the alias, why has he fled Russia, what he wants to do in life. What makes Trolden and Andrey Nolden different.
This is the second part of my interview with Trolden, which goes into more personal topics including moving to the Czech Republic, goals in life and mottos. We also talk feminism, bisexuality and homophobia, sexism in gaming and more.
The first part of the interview can be read here.
I want to talk something other than Funny and Lucky. Most of the community knows you for your work but I'm more interested in who's Trolden after he's done editing, posts his videos and goes offline. Who were you before Funny and Lucky and how has your YouTube work affected you in real life?
I'm Andrey Nolden, 19. I've been living in Czech Republic since I was 16. My mom has been helping me with the money but other than that I've been doing everything by myself so I'm pretty responsible person. I always know what I have to do, what I need to do, and I will break myself but I'll do it.
I'm really lazy but I with the YouTube channel I have a lot of motivation, same with my girlfriend. She doesn't realize it but that's the case. I'm working to get money and bring her to Czech Republic and that's motivating me a lot.
Would you say you'd be a different person had you not moved to Czech Republic?
Completely different. The Czech Republic changed me a lot, opened me up to new cultures. Russia is really - I don't want to say anything offensive because I respect my home country - limited in some ways. They think certain things are bad, some are good and they don't usually accept the ideology of others.
And this is the difference from the European culture - they don't give a shit what you do. They don't care about your race, your sexual orientation. When you end up in a society like that, you just feel good.
The country helped me a lot, the level of life is on a completely different compared to Russia. I want to stay here, do a lot for Prague. There was a flood one year ago and they were asking people to help and clean the city. I gave them my number but they ended up not calling me in the end but still - I would've liked to wake up early and go help the people, because this is the country and city that became my home.
Why did you move to Prague in the first place?
The reason was my mother. I was stupid, I didn't want to go at first, I've been travelling my whole life. And the problem is I didn't realize Czech Republic and Europe in general was much better and I didn't wanted to go. I've lived in Ukraine and in Iran and in different cities in Russia and I moved so many times in my life that I was getting tired.
"I didn't want to move to Prague at first. I've been travelling my whole life, moved so many times that I was getting tired."
I found my girlfriend in Moscow and I just didn't want to move. So we had a lot of struggling but when I eventually arrived in Czech Republic I realized how stupid I've been, especially to my mother. This is another thing I also learned - even though I have a lot of experience for a 19 y/o and more responsible to some people in their 30s, I still want to try and grab all the most valuable information from the people around me. Bruno for example is such a great guy, he's achieved so much and talking to him helps me do well in my life.
It's inspiring listening to that, especially because I can relate. Working in eSports means drilling for yourself most of the time and there's a lot of pushing to be done before you can establish yourself.
Absolutely, and listening to others helps!
What's next for you? Obviously, you're 19 still, so is there university coming? Do you want to get a "real" job outside YouTube?
I don't care that much about school. I'm in gaming and you don't actually need education as much as you do in other spheres. So for me, the most important thing is getting into the gaming industry and doing something for myself and if I get hired by a company to do something for them... that would be my future. My perfect imagination of life is getting shitload of money, buy flats and then stay in Prague and rent them.
You're becoming a slumlord then?
Yeah and then just travel.
You've been travelling your whole life and you still want to do it more?
Yeah, I love travelling, that's t he best thing about my life, probably. Seeing other cultures, meeting new people - that's exciting, right? The more people you meet, the more lessons you learn because every person is different.
Which person and/or nation left you the strongest impression? If you have to look back, say five years, who or what shaped you the most and create the current Andrey Nolden?
I would say my mother but I generally try to live my life a little bit different. Many people try to idolize someone and aspire to be like him but I want to be my own guy, my own person and just get as much good stuff from life as possible. When I talk to a person, I want to learn about their good and bad experiences, what they went through in their lives and this is what makes me a strong person. I want to become a person other people look up to. I'm still not there yet, of course, because the more you improve the higher your standards go. And that's how everyone should live like.
I don't want to have a mediocre job that's stable and that's good enough for me. No, I don't give a shit, I just want to do as much stuff as possible, achieve as much as I can and I will never reach the point where I should just stop.
"Many people try to idolize someone and aspire to be like him but I want to be my own guy, my own person and just get as much good stuff from life as possible."
We briefly talked the day before and I remember you told me that you're interested in - and let me try to quote you correctly - topics that don't have a definite answer. You mentioned the feminism issue then... Outside of that, is there anything else that interests you so much that you try to explore and read about on a daily basis.
I wanted to be a psychologist at some point so I read a lot of books about that. But like a topic of discussion that's interesting for me is war, for example, and what has been happening around the world. I don't want to discuss it that much, though, because it's difficult topic and as a YouTuber every word you say matters. Politics is not something I want to commentate on.
Other topics include racism and homophobia. Homophobic themes interest me the most because I'm bisexual. Now, I have a girlfriend so I don't really care but it's still something that interests me because I come from Russia and it's a really, really homophobic country. I often - maybe too often - go into discussions about it with people trying to prove my point and it's really impossible. And it's not like I go around and be like "hey guys, I'm bisexual" but if someone says something bad about it, I feel it's my obligation to make them shut the fuck up. You just don't talk about the things you don't understand.
Feminism, as you said is another thing, and the true feminists - the real ones that aren't just being dicks to men - they realize that men are what they are and if they become what women want them to be, they'll just be gay, when they have no attraction to a woman. But as long as sexes have attraction to each other, discrimination will continue and this idea would never work in any society. Maybe in Europe it would but that's because Europeans don't give a shit and it's free, maybe too free. Still, the only way I'd move to US, for example, is if I got a job at Blizzard.
What would you be doing for them?
Community management. As soon as you become community manager you can go deeper and study games and learn things from the inside and build up your way to become a game designer or a game director. Nobody becomes a game director just like that - you want to show you can bring something new to the company and I think I'm that kind of person, the one with crazy ideas.
"If someone says something bad about homosexuality, I feel it's my obligation to make them shut the fuck up. You just don't talk about the things you don't understand."
I want to get you just a back to the feminism and gaming thing. There was a controversy during Lord of the Arena 2. Hafu and Nadia were playing while Kripp and Reckful were commentating about "grills" and how TidesofTime should concede to score points with Nadia. After the tournament, Hafu went on stream to say how she wasn't comfortable about their commentary and felt offended.
This raised the old topic of girl gamers and girls in a men-dominated society. A week later I was listening to the Angry Chicken podcast where they discussed the issue and said the Kripp and Reckful did wrong. It's one thing, they said, to make jokes like this in an inner circle of friends but it's different when you're broadcasted to so many viewers.
So in the end, the question that resurfaced was "Will girls ever be equal to men in eSports" and "Should they ever be?"
So this is a really tough topic. I'd say I'm on the side of Hafu and Nadia and that Kripp and Reckful did wrong but to a small percentage. The thing is, people like to concentrate on something specific. People call Reynad salty all the time, Kolento is Pistoletov, etc. And there's way more offensive stuff out there.
People take it too closely when someone says something about girl, because they think they're that much different. If the same joke was made towards men, nobody would care, but because it's about women and there aren't that many of them in eSports it feels offensive, and it is.
That's why it's a tough topic. On one hand, you want to look at the girls as the same human beings as us but on the other hand - they're not, they're girls so they have different mentality and get hurt by different stuff.
Do you think that Hearthstone, being a card game of the mind makes it easier for girls.?You can argue that in reflex-based games like SC2 and CS:GO which are more demanding to one's physique women would be worse than men but it's not the case with Hearthstone, it's just about being smart. Can HS help women get integrated into eSports?
Of course, HS is one of the most girl-friendly games out there and there are a lot of legitimately good female streamers. As times goes by, more girls will play Hearthstone and maybe one day there's a tournament that's conquered by a girl and then even more girls try it.
What you're saying reminds me of Melissa DeTora, one of Magic's greatest female players. I remember an interview with her after she got top 8 at a Pro Tour where she said that because of her success, more girls get inspired to try and play Magic.
Yeah, and what about winning BlizzCon - that's another interesting topic on top of that one. Because whoever wins BlizzCon becomes the face of Hearthstone for a year. The better the person represents himself, the more successful Hearthstone will be, as stupid as it sounds. So a person who's more sociable can be marketed better and will be more profitable for the player.
You really want eSports to be open to everybody and not just something seen as a nerd-only thing. I want it to be like a social thing where the family sits with their 6 year old and they watch something like Hearthstone and cheer and buy tickets for events because it's exciting.
"Whoever wins BlizzCon becomes the face of Hearthstone for a year. The better the person represents himself, the more successful Hearthstone will be, as stupid as it sounds."
We mentioned BlizzCon so at the end tell me who you think should be the face of Hearthstone in 2015, not necessarily skill-wise only?
Hyped would be amazing but he didn't qualify. Right now, I don't know... This sounds racist but I wouldn't want someone from Taiwan to win because HS is so big in EU and NA that it would be anticlimactic. Look at WCA.
I'm going to leave an open mic for you at the end of this interview, because I'm hearing Pistoletov and I think Kolento just won HouseCup.
Watch my stream.
But seriously, thanks for watching my retarded videos. If you enjoy them keep watching and leaving comments - I read every one of them and take every little piece of feedback. And thank you for having me for this interview!
