How TimTheTatMan won Fall Guys victory

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Earlier this year, Tim “timthetatman” Betar appeared in a Super Bowl LII commercial featuring a young boy running with a soccer ball across the country before finally reaching Hard Rock Stadium, the site of the big game. . As the kid runs away at first, Tim sits up yelling, “Take him home, kid!”

Fast forward six and a half months, and over 300,000 people are on the edge of their seats, watching Timthetatman play the viral video game Fall Guys on his Twitch stream, waiting for Tim to “finally take him home.”

After several days of testing, multiple losses and fits of rage, Tim finally scored a victory in Fall Guys on Wednesday, much to the delight of players and fans around the world.

“I was just on cloud nine,” Betar told ESPN in a telephone interview Wednesday night. “I can think of another time I played a video game and I had this feeling. It was when I was playing World of Warcraft, which I played for years. My guild and I had one of the big bosses And I don’t know what it was like when I was 20 or under, and I just remember that moment, I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s incredible. I’ll never have that feeling again, we finally did. And I had exactly that kind of feeling today, where I am, it’s amazing. I finally did. “

Fall Guys has become a gaming phenomenon since its release on August 4. The principle is simple: 60 people playing customizable bean-like characters per game go through a series of levels including obstacle courses, team games and survivor challenges. On each level, people are eliminated until there is only one bean (or pigeon, or dinosaur, or milkshake) standing. The game is inspired by the Wipeout game show and the Japanese game show Takeshi’s Castle. It is one of those “easy to learn, hard to master” games that has captured the attention and hearts of gamers around the world.

It is still the most watched video game on Twitch, on heavyweights like Fortnite, League of Legends and Call of Duty: Warzone, sometimes even the “Just Chatting” category, always in the lead. Fall Guys’ Twitter account has over a million followers. Big brands (including fast food chains Wendys and KFC), in-game personalities, and organizations are constantly vying for the attention of the game. They publish clips of the game and lobby for cosmetic skins for the game. There’s even a bidding war going on right now over a charity auction to get an in-game skin, which is currently at $ 420,069.69, where bids have come from everywhere from Tyler “Ninja” Blevins to Jimmy “MrBeastYT” Donaldson at the G2 esports organization at Tushy, a bidet fixing company, the proceeds of which are donated to Special Effect, a UK-based charity that helps physically disabled gamers.

To put it another way, Fall Guys became an overnight sensation.

Betar attributes two key factors to making Fall Guys a great viewing experience.

“I think it’s a really simple game, it’s really easy to understand. And it’s really unpredictable,” says Betar. “You’re a little guy. And your goal is to beat other people in a race and get to the checkpoint, and it’s like a battle royale style. It’s really easy to understand. that a lot of people can just sit back and watch it and understand.

The chaotic nature of Fall Guys also produces some extremely memorable moments.

“There was a (stage) where I think 39 people qualified,” Betar said. “Seven people had qualified and I was right there in the peloton. I’m like, Oh, it’s simple, right? I’m just going to jump over the lines. And then at random, a guy came up. Turned over, grabbed me. I was like, okay, it slowed me down. And then all of a sudden, behind me, someone else tipped forward, me flipped over and I fell and I’m like what the heck? Then my guy gets up And I got hit by a bullet and I fell back, then just like that I got knocked out. And I’m setting there, like, What just happened? I was two feet from the finish line. And now my discussion is heartbreaking and roaring. They all got a kick out … I think l ‘unpredictability is something a lot of people love to watch. “Did you see what happened to Tim, can you believe that?” I think that’s what makes it really, really entertaining to watch. “

Betar started playing Fall Guys last week and admitted he struggled with the game from the start. Gradually he would get better, but it seemed that the more he progressed, the more he couldn’t quite “take the crown”. What started with her cat’s playful ribs has grown into a keen interest from all corners of social media. Coinciding with the rise of the game in tune with the times, the pursuit of Betar for a victory has become inescapable in streaming. With him came equal amounts of support and punches.

“He’s really terrible at Fall Guys,” Ali “SypherPK” Hassan told ESPN with a smile in a video interview Wednesday after playing the game with Betar streaming the day before. “I saw him play… he takes the losses and goes wild but he never stops, I don’t see him at least, I stop and I think ‘what could I have done better?’ ‘

Perhaps the most diligent with the “disses” was the Fall Guys Twitter account himself, who took every opportunity to remind everyone that Betar was still without a W in his game.

The affable Betar took it all in stride and was grateful to have what has become a cultural moment in the game, which started off completely organically – when asked how it all went and if all of this was staged, a member of the Betar team replied “that was all Tim.”

“I just think that ultimately it’s something quite fun,” says Betar, trying to explain how it became one of the biggest gaming stories of the year. “I think a lot of people know me in the sense that I don’t really take things personally. So like when Fall Guys started picking on me, everyone knows I’m fine with it. don’t mind. and that was just this funny little joke and it’s so simple, right? And I think that’s part of the reason people are so drawn to it. Like Tim, jump, (press) up, what are you doing? there is me struggling to do something that is so simple, right? and in the end everyone is backing me up. I got people tweeting me videos of them cheer me on. So I really think it got a lot of attention because it was so simple and so light. “

On Tuesday, Tim broke his own personal audience record, surpassing 150,000 viewers on Twitch. Betar said the longer it took to win and the more people started watching, the more nervous he got because he didn’t want to let them down. Victory still eluded him and so did time, as he had sponsorship obligations to fulfill for the rest of the day. Around this time, ESPN published a story covering the futility of Betar’s Fall Guys which included an ESPN app alert that many received on their phones, including Betar’s family.

“The first thing that came to my mind when I saw that ESPN had issued an alert for [me] on phones and people stuff my dad is going to be very confused, “Betar joked.” My dad is going to look at his phone and say, wait a minute, like, what’s going on here? Why is Tim showing up on my ESPN app? I think it was a bit surreal for me, because (as a kid) I’ve been in sports all my life. I’ve always watched a lot of different sporting events, you know, I watched SportsCenter and ESPN all the time and saw myself on ESPN. It’s not something I never thought would have happened. So that’s really cool. I was very humble. “

Then, Wednesday, the moment had finally arrived. With many major streamers rallying around him, including Ninja, Benjamin “Dr Lupo” Lupo, Jack “CouRageJD” Dunlop and more, Betar was eventually going to take him home. After days of screaming and screaming, putting his head in his hands, storming out of the room in pure anger, this time he looked directly at the camera and yelled “Let’s go! You said it couldn’t be. Done! THERE’S THE KING! ”His Twitter mentions have also exploded at an unprecedented rate.

“The number (of mentions) really shocked me,” Betar said. “Things were trendy, I’ve never seen anything like it for me. It was a first time for me.”

When asked wryly what he had to say to all his skeptics now that he finally did, Betar, much calmer with no camera in front of him, joked, “Look at me now, king. of the castle! my only crown. Meanwhile, you have (people) with 50 crowns. But i am proud [of] my only.”

So if that hadn’t happened on Wednesday, how long would Tim have been trying to win? One week? A month? Several months?

“I told Alexis, my wife I was like, I just gotta go until I win,” Betar laughs. “Like there’s really nothing else I can do right now. I was thinking about other games that I normally play like Call of Duty and stuff like that, and I love Call of Duty , but I was on my mind, I was like, I have to do this. There’s nothing else on my mind right now. I have to get this win. I have to figure that out. “

Although he eventually nabbed a voice over, the trash talk doesn’t seem to stop, especially from those around him.

“Hey Tim, glad you finally got a win in Fall Guys,” Action Jaxon, Twitch Streamer and Betar’s high school friend told ESPN in a statement. “Looks like things are going really well for you and you’ve had a lot of success. JUST KIDDING loser, it’s me High School PJ. You go through Tatman now? Looks like you can barely win anything yet. either. Remember Tirzah from math The girl you had a crush on? Well we’re married now. I make $ 200,000 a year and I drive a Jeep Wrangler. I guess some things never change, eh Tim Good catching up. Pathetic. “

It’s unclear whether or not Tim will continue to play Fall Guys at the same rate as last week, or if that will stay in the rotation of the games he streams, but naturally the question of many will be, he has one. . can he have two? For now, Betar may take a moment to savor the final chapter of the game’s biggest saga of 2020.



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