What happens when you combine theater chops, a lifelong obsession with video games and an unadulterated passion for content creation? You get Jirard Khalil, better known as “The Completionist.” One of YouTube’s biggest gaming stars, Khalil has amassed more than 1.5 million subscribers, thanks to his energetic, entertaining videos that cover games from the perspective of someone who won’t put the controller down until he’s explored every last nook and cranny a title has to offer.

Khalil’s lively on-camera presence and serious gaming bona fides recently landed him a gig at the newly resurrected G4TV network, where you can catch him co-hosting shows like “X-Play” and “Attack of the Show” — two programs that inspired him to be a gaming personality in the first place. With Khalil’s new G4 project, “God of Work,” on the horizon, we sat down with the popular YouTuber to discuss his journey, his favorite gear and his advice for anyone looking to become the next great internet star.

Kingdom Hearts 2 | The Completionist

After getting his college degree in theater and film, Khalil found himself working at a Best Buy while figuring out his next steps. The answer, it turned out, would come to him after a fateful fight with his manager pushed him to pursue his YouTube dreams full time (“It’s either my superhero or my supervillain origin, depending on who you are,” he says). Khalil had already been creating videos and helping his friends write and produce theirs, but now it was time to take a real shot at it.

“I got this burning passion to succeed,” says Khalil. “And I said to myself, what’s one thing I love doing? Completing games. How do I share that passion with the world and make that passion my identity? And I made my first video. It went somewhat viral, and 11 years later here I am, a host of G4TV and ‘Attack of the Show.’”

Take a quick look at any of Khalil’s videos and it’s easy to see why The Completionist is one of the biggest gaming channels on YouTube. His slickly edited videos are backed by his articulate, authoritative and entertaining narration, which make the channel’s deep dives on retro games and modern blockbusters accessible for even non-gamers. And as his nickname implies, Khalil truly completes every game he covers — meaning snagging every collectible, slaying every boss, exploring every difficulty option and so on. It’s borderline masochistic (and Khalil is quick to play up his tribulations for laughs), but it also helps give viewers a true sense of how much value a video game has to offer.

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Source: https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/electronics/the-completionist-jirard-khalil