Exclusive Interview with SVE Ambassador: DifferentFight!

If you've played Cardfight Vanguard, you'll have heard of the name DifferentFight. Well-known as a card game connoisseur, DifferentFight covers a wide variety of different card games (including the Digital Shadowverse CCG) and is one of the largest content creators in the space.

Not only is DifferentFight a prominent Youtuber, he is also a shout caster, tournament organiser and community leader, having more recently hosted the Vanguard World Invitationals. Currently based in Japan, he is in a unique position to bridge the gap between the Japanese and English cultures, bringing everyone closer together through the magic of card games.

SVE Master had the exclusive opportunity to interview DifferentFight about his humble beginnings in content creation, his journey in Japan, and his various experiences as a card game professional.

How did you get into card games? What got you into Shadowverse in particular?

So I’ve been playing card games virtually all my life – one of my earliest memories is being admitted to the hospital as a kid (I had really bad health in my earliest years) and my dad bringing me a Pokémon base set booster pack when he came to visit after work. For the longest time I just played casually and collected Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh!, but Cardfight!! Vanguard was my first proper card game where I went to locals and travelled around the continent competing back when I was 15 in high school. 

As for Shadowverse, I remember when the beta was happening, one of my Vanguard mutuals shared a screenshot of the game and it was a field full of Snowmen. I had played some Hearthstone before this (as everyone does in their first years of university), so I was like “Wow! Anime Hearthstone! Finally!” and immediately downloaded the game on my phone. Been playing ever since!

As a successful content creator and shout caster, what type of advice would you give to people looking to follow in your footsteps? How have your experiences shaped who you are as a person today?

I think treating content creation as a game is always a fun way to go about it. YouTube in particular is fuelled by an algorithm, so when you think about it as experimenting with different strategies and approaches to see what works, it’s quite rewarding. I think it helps that I have a relatively good competitive mindset about things, so when something doesn’t give me results or is underperforming, rather than being down about it I try to think of where I went wrong and what can be improved.

Overall, for people wanting to get into it I always tell them to look at their watch history and look at the type of videos they enjoy watching. If you start by making the kinds of videos that you, yourself, enjoy watching, you’ll at the very least have the motivation to keep going, and there’s a high chance that others will find it interesting too! I constantly watch and analyse content creators from other genres and games and try to see how I can apply their ideas to my content – even if it’s something like fighting game content creators. I think in this regard the biggest factor shaping my content is that most of the content I consume myself is in Japanese, so oftentimes if I see some interesting topic or approach, I can just cover it in English with my spin on it, and it’s immediately something novel for the English viewer. 

As some people know already, you're a Ph.D. student studying in Japan. What made you decide to take the leap of faith into a new country?

So I lived in Japan very briefly back in 2017 as an exchange student, and back then I remember enjoying my time but wasn’t sure if I would enjoy living here for longer than that. I went back to Luxembourg where I’m from, did my Master’s, and then worked for a while. This was the pandemic era, so while work wasn’t particularly bad and I was just spending time with family all the time, I felt that if I spent the rest of my life like this I would regret it. I started to look for jobs in other countries at this time so that I could at least make life a little more exciting for myself, but while working I got an e-mail from the Japanese embassy saying that they had a scholarship on offer for Ph.D.’s. As someone who works in research, your job opportunities are incredibly limited if you don’t have a Ph.D. So, I decided to try and apply, managed to pass the tests and interviews and somehow got the scholarship! This felt like perfect timing since I wanted to switch things up, and honestly, it might be one of the best decisions of my life. Life has been very exciting these last 2 years and I feel like I’m happy to stay in Japan for the long term, because I feel like I can constantly find new exciting things to do and live life every day to the fullest.

Having lived in Japan for many years, what are the top three foods you'd recommend to people visiting for the first time?

I think it’s best if I list the places that I take first-time visitors the most, and one of my staples is a meat bowl place in Ikebukuro called Niku Gekijou! It’s well priced, you can order any kind of meat you want and the sauces they use will add so much to the flavour, so you’ll always enjoy your meal.

Similarly in Ikebukuro I really recommend Uobi Fujina, it’s a hidden spot that will cost you a bit more, but they do grilled tuna which I’ve never had this well served anywhere else, and I don’t even like tuna that much. Walking there might look like a bit of a shady area but trust me it’s worth both your time and your money.

If you’re into Tsukemen, I can also recommend Yasubee – they have it in a few places in Tokyo and it’s one of the better ones in my opinion. My list goes on and on, but I hope this provides a good mix!

Not only do you spend countless hours creating content for your viewers, but you also play a large amount of different card games competitively. How do you balance all of your various commitments, especially when considering you are also doing a Ph.D.?

I get this question a fair bit, but generally speaking I tend to only focus on a maximum of 2 card games competitively at any given time. Usually, this always includes Cardfight!! Vanguard as it’s my main game, but then the 2^nd game I always keep on rotation based on what events are coming up. Is a Shadowverse Evolve Grand Prix coming up? All in on Evolve. Managed to win the lottery to play in one of the more popular games’ events? Let’s play a bit more of that. I do like to learn the rules of games and maybe own 1 deck of other games too, but those I don’t necessarily play to compete, but more so just to be able to communicate with people from those communities. I see card games as a communication tool that brings people of completely different backgrounds together, and even if you have a cultural or language barrier, knowing the rules of a card game can become a language that brings you together, so I try to keep myself informed at the bare minimum of the rules of some of the more popular games.

Outside of card games, what are some of your lesser-known hobbies and major likes?

I think sports have always been relatively consistent throughout my life – in high school, I was in the basketball club, in university, I started working out at the gym and still do to this day, I had a big swimming phase in school as well, and during the pandemic I made it a habit for a whole year to run 10km every day since I was stuck behind screens all day. Nowadays it’s been mostly gym though!

I also really love watching volleyball, even though I don’t play it much. I feel like competitive volleyball is by far the most fun sport to watch, and I even travelled to see some of the Volleyball Nations League games live last year. Especially if you watched Haikyuu and enjoyed it, I recommend checking out the real deal.

As someone who plays the Japanese edition of Shadowverse: Evolve, how does it feel "travelling back in time" with the English edition? How has this impacted you as an English edition Ambassador for Shadowverse: Evolve?

It’s always an interesting process, because especially from BP05 onwards I started to take Japanese Evolve very seriously as a competitor, so some of the metagames before that were a bit fuzzy in my mind and I’d have to backtrack results from CSes and unofficial events to try and find lists. Even now, I sometimes look back to deck lists from a year ago and think “Wait, what matchup was this tech played for again…”

I try to always treat playing the JP edition as an advantage of sorts, but it can also be a disadvantage. There’ve been several cases where decks that were super popular in Japan don’t pick up in English at all or aren’t as common, so then my suggested techs against those matchups end up being kind of pointless for the English players. Learning to balance this and always stay critical of the decks I present has been a constant in this process.

Overall, I think living in Japan gives me a powerful opportunity to be a bridge between the Japanese and English communities, so I hope to continue to connect these communities as much as possible going forward as well!

Not only are you a Shadowverse: Evolve Ambassador, but you are also one of the major community leaders of the Cardfight!! Vanguard community. How did you feel when you saw the announcement of a collaboration between Shadowverse: Evolve and Cardfight!! Vanguard? 

[Editor's note: If you haven't watched DifferentFight's reaction to the SVE and Cardfight!! Vanguard collaboration, the first 30 seconds of the above YouTube video is a must-watch for context]

Every time I play in an Evolve event here in Tokyo in this last month, people often start imitating my reaction – I think my excitement definitely got across to both communities LOL

I’m ridiculously excited about it as a fan of both games, but more than anything it just feels surreal that two card games are collaborating together. This has been a common staple in fighting games with stuff like Marvel vs Capcom, Street Fighter x Tekken, etc., but I always thought that card games companies are way too competitive and would refuse to collaborate on something like this, so ever since Evolve was announced to be a joint project between Bushiroad and Cygames, I was holding out hope that one day something like this would happen too. I hope everyone enjoys the collab, whether you play the JP edition or are waiting for its eventual announcement in English!

You recently hosted the Vanguard World Invitational, which you played a major part in organising and promoting. What prompted you to undertake such a gargantuan task, and what were some of the major highlights from that event?

This will be a loaded answer, as there was a lot that went into me wanting to do this event:

1. I watch a lot of Wolfe, who is a Pokémon (video game, not TCG) content creator and one of the best players alive. When their Worlds was held in Japan last August, I went to check it out and it was an incredible experience, but right after that, he held an invitational with a bunch of the top Japanese players to highlight the Japanese scene to his huge international audience. At that moment I thought damn, I should be doing a better job of highlighting the Japanese scene – maybe I should think about hosting something like this.
2. Japan has an incredibly rapidly growing Street Fighter scene right now. The scene’s been around for ages and a lot of the top players like Tokido, Daigo Umehara, and Fudo are very well known worldwide, but Street Fighter 6 signified a huge shift to entertainment and promoting the game to more casual audiences. One of the biggest contributors to this is the Crazy Racoon Cup, or CR Cup. CR is a huge eSports organization here in Japan, and they organize these cups for various games like Valorant and Pokémon, but the Street Fighter one was special. They invited famous Japanese streamers, cosplayers, and Vtubers, and each of them were coached by a famous fighting game player – and then they’d make teams. In each team, the skill levels would be matched – the Vtuber would play against the Vtuber, the cosplayer against the cosplayer, or at least try and match things similarly like that. This event was so huge in blowing up the SF6 scene, and now all the existing fighting game pros got a huge boost to their fame just from being involved in this, and now we’re seeing non-stop events like this happening in Japan. Some people like Sajam, who is a famous commentator and content creator in the States for fighting games, have applied this approach with Tekken in the English scene, and it’s been working out too. I think if you’re a community lead in any industry, you should be thinking about how you can apply this approach to your game, because I think we’re living in an era where raw eSports competition is becoming less “generally appreciated”, and invitational-style tournaments like this are becoming the de-facto way to grow a game.
3. I’ve been constantly thinking about how I can feature people that might have smaller social media followings, but have a lot of achievements and I feel that they should have more eyes on them. Being able to feature and highlight players like this, I felt that hosting an invitational was the obvious play.

I really enjoyed hosting it, but there were a lot of shortcomings and things I could’ve done better. I greatly underestimated how hard it is to operate two streams in two languages at once, how much equipment and management it takes, and just how much more work it would take if I wanted to truly achieve my dreams with this event. Next time, I plan to properly build an organizational team to make sure that I get closer to what I wanted to see out of this event.

That being said, it proved a great place for players to meet and communicate despite the language barriers, as we even had top players from Europe or the Americas writing out things in Google Translate to Japanese players to tell them that they’ve been fans of them for years and exchanging exclusive cards between their versions as well. It was a really beautiful environment overall, so I want to make sure this is present next time too.

I’m planning to do more events like this, and maybe even something for Evolve in the future, so please keep an eye out over the coming months!

The Omen of the Ten will soon be upon us in the Physical Card Game, which Omen is your favourite and why is it Galmieux?

I like a girl that can kick my ass.

Jokes aside, looks and personality aside, they made the Disdain deck insanely fun to play in Evolve, and it just fits my playstyle like a glove. Legit no other deck I’ve played in this game has had me feel as comfortable in the driver’s seat as Disdain, so I just have a very strong personal attachment to her now.

You're stranded on a desert island and have 20 play points available to call upon powerful followers, spells and amulets. You must survive on the island for 2 years before help arrives. What cards are you bringing to survive and why?

• 5 Harvest Festivals cause we be eating, 
• 1 Alchemist’s Workshop so the golems can be the workforce,
• 1 Elf Healer to make sure we have health facilities,
• 1 Galmieux cause I need my girl to stay sane.

For those that don't know, both Ignideus and yourself are shout casters for Shadowverse and have even cast tournaments together in the past. What are your thoughts on your fellow Shadowverse: Evolve Ambassador, and which one of you do you think is better at Shadowverse and Shadowverse: Evolve respectively?

Igni’s a fantastic guy and I’m glad I can call him a close friend – especially in the content creator scene it always feels that there aren’t a lot of people that completely understand the concerns and issues you often run into, so it’s reassuring to know that we can always talk to each other about our qualms and give each other advice.

I think he's better at the app Shadowverse than me 100%, he’s been casting for much longer and I feel that whenever I cast and watch the top players, I learn so much and have my gameplay level up a lot. Igni having a few years over me in that aspect immediately makes him a lot better, so I feel like if he took competing seriously he’d easily place at the top consistently.

For Evolve, maybe it’s the JP buff, but I do feel pretty confident especially in the English edition, since I have the chance to play the same meta for twice as long – especially if Galmieux is meta-relevant.

Can you tell us more about your dreams and aspirations for the future?

Both as a researcher, content creator and player I constantly look at methods of intercultural communication, and I strongly believe that card games are an incredible way to bring people together. I want to constantly challenge myself to find new ways to bring people of different backgrounds together, and for that, I must keep growing as a content creator so I can have the reach, and polish my research in education so that I can assess how this is being approached by educators in Japan with its rapidly growing foreign population. I feel like both of my “careers” work hand in hand in this aspect, which I feel very lucky and thankful for.

I do think that right now, physical card games have a huge wall in their way which is visibility. With fighting games, no matter the game, you typically see 2 HP bars, characters fighting, get excited when you see some big combos or crazy super animations, and the crowd goes wild when the HP drops to 0.

With card games, even if you play one, you tune in to one you don’t play and it’s still so hard to know what’s going on. I feel like Evolve takes big steps in solving this issue, as you see the sidekick app display the HP for both players, cards played are often popped up on stream, and dice are always used to display stats – some intuition will tell you that HP dropping to 0 means the opposing player wins. That being said, it can still feel less engaging to watch due to how card games are paced, so I want to work with card game companies and big actors that I’m close with to try and see how we can challenge the status quo to make card games easier to watch.

I think games like Vanguard, One Piece TCG and in Japan Duel Masters are particularly strong in the spectating aspects, because they have certain luck elements to them that make it very exciting as a spectator, really incorporating that “OH MY GOD NO WAY” aspect that you get in other video games, which also immediately makes a viewer lock back into watching. More methodical games like Evolve don’t have this aside from the top deck which all games share, so it’s really hard to find this balance I think.

Overall, there’s a lot I think about with the TCG industry in general. It’s been around for a good while now, and as I approach my 30s I think a lot about how to make this industry sustainable and introduce systems that will help the industry last for 100+ years going forward. Especially with how mainstream card games are becoming in Japan right now, I think it’s a good time to be thinking about this. That being said, I can go on for a whole additional article regarding what I think about this, so I’ll stop myself here.

Is there anything you'd like to say to your fans and the people reading this article?

Sorry for being so wordy LOL

I really appreciate everyone that supports me and helps me do what I do. I’ve been doing this for a while but it’s ultimately thanks to the kind community I have that I’ve been able to keep doing content for so many years, and it always makes me feel happy that whenever I approach people from other games, the most common reaction I get is “oh, you’re the Vanguard guy!” It’s thanks to everyone’s support that I’m able to represent a whole game in this capacity, so I hope I can keep spreading the good word about Bushiroad’s amazing card games and contribute to the growth of the industry as well.