The YouTuber Maximilian “HandOfBlood” Knabe (30) describes himself as “a gamer through and through”. Besides League of Legends, one game has accompanied him particularly: The tank game World of Tanks. Now the 30-year-old has been immortalized in the game.
What kind of game is that? World of Tanks is an MMO from the Belarusian developer Wargaming.net. In it, players control a tank in battles against other players. The game is free-to-play but features microtransactions.
How does HandOfBlood come into play? The YouTuber has been a long-time partner of Wargaming.net. Even as a student, he played the game, which was released in 2010, from his father’s attic. He has since published countless videos about WoT.
On Twitter, HandOfBlood announced on March 26 that he has now been immortalized with his own character in the game that has accompanied him for so long (via Twitter).
If you want to zoom around in a tank on PlayStation, check out our video:
HandOfBlood yells at himself and the fans love it
What does HandOfBlood do in WoT? The YouTuber is available for real money in the World of Tanks shop as “Commander Knabe”. The cheapest bundle costs €23.99 and includes XP bonuses and 7 days of premium; more expensive bundles go up to €59.30. (via wargaming.net).
This is what you get for almost €60:
- Commander Knabe
- the tank RHM Skorpion G
- XP bonuses
- 7 days of premium
The YouTuber shares in the proceeds with his agency Instinct3.
What is a commander anyway? HandOfBlood can explain this best himself. In a YouTube video, he puts it this way:
When you enter the game in World of Tanks, you have a battlefield, you drive your tank, and you are continuously spoon-fed by the so-called commander who is sitting in the tank. Now imagine this commander, who is babbling you through the entire fight, every battle, any chop that he’s talking about, that would be me, and in character.
In over 500 takes, the 30-year-old has recorded nearly 300 voice lines to provide players with the right quip for each situation. He adopts an authoritative command tone but doesn’t take himself too seriously, as one would expect from HandOfBlood.
In the video, HandOfBlood plays alongside his virtual likeness and gets thoroughly yelled at. We’ve embedded it for you here:
How is it received? The viewers are happy for their favorite YouTuber. With his passion and commitment to the game, he has more than earned his own commander. The implementation also seems to be successful: The lines are said to be “a thousand times better than the dull, boring, mumbled CC voices that have been presented to us before,” writes viewer “Juan Zulu”.
This mix was probably intended by HandOfBlood as well. On Twitter, he describes the result as “a real fever dream.”
HandOfBlood is practically a method actor among German YouTubers and known for slipping into the craziest roles in his gameplay videos. He really gets into it: For his video on the cat game Stray, he drank milk from a bowl and snacked on cat food, which caused some trouble:
