Ali-A

Alastair Aiken (born 6 November 1993), better known by his online alias Ali-A (or by his original alias Matroix), is a British YouTuber known for Call of Duty and Fortnite commentaries and vlogs.

He is one of the highest-paid professional online gamers.

His main channel Ali-A has a subscriber count of over 18 million, with its total views exceeding 5 billion.

His second channel, More Ali-A, has a YouTube subscriber count of over 7.7 million and a total of over 1.9 billion video views.

In 2013, Aiken wrote a guest blog post in Huffington Post UK.

The Huffington Post has also stated that "Ali is one of the UK's most popular and influential entities globally and is at the forefront of the online and YouTube revolution."

Aiken signed with the YouTube multi-channel network (MCN), Polaris, in October 2013.

Currently he is signed on with the MCN StyleHaul on both his Ali-A and More Ali-A channels.

Other notable YouTubers within the network include both of Daniel Middleton's YouTube channels and KSI.

According to Socialblade's statistics, both of Aiken's YouTube channels are within the top 50 in the network.

Aiken has made appearances on the television show The Gadget Show and was a guest speaker for them in 2013 and 2014.

He was interviewed by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on 10 May 2013.

Alongside KSI, Aiken discussed the new paid subscriptions that were coming to YouTube (YouTube Red) at the time.

Aiken was featured alongside KSI and other popular YouTubers in Britain in a BBC Radio 1 documentary in 2014 called Rockstar Gamers.

In July 2015, he was awarded the Guinness World Records for 'Most Popular Call of Duty Channel by views' and 'Most Popular Call of Duty Channel by subscribers'.

Aiken frequently attends the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) as well as other video game conventions.

In September 2015, Aiken, along with Tom Cassell and Daniel Middleton, starred in Legends of Gaming Live, with the trio being referred to as "[s]ome of the most popular YouTubers in the [United Kingdom]".

Redbull's eSports division has referred to his main YouTube channel as the "biggest Call of Duty YouTube channel."

Later that year, Business Insider listed him as the ninth most popular British YouTube star – the same ranking they gave him in 2015.

In 2015 BBC Newsbeat uploaded a YouTube video of an interview with Aiken.

Within the video, he gave tips to improve player's skills within First Person Shooter video games.

In March 2016, Clickible.com listed Aiken as the seventeenth "Most Famous Youtuber [sic]... on Earth".

During 2016, Aiken teamed up with other large YouTube content creators within the United Kingdom teamed up with Mattessons as part of a campaign to teach young people basic programming skills.

The campaign resulted in over 13 million views on YouTube and lead to over 24,000 youth learning basic programming skills in the programming language Python.

Aiken co-hosted NCS Yes Live 2016 on 29 March in the London Roundhouse.

The event celebrates the "impact young people's social change projects have had on local communities."

Aiken's sponsors include:

Scuf Gaming has released a themed controller, based around the Ali-A Game On for PlayStation, Xbox, and PC.

On 6 June 2017, the BBC referred to Aiken as a "YouTube megastar".

The main focus of Aiken's videos on his main channel is his commentaries and live reactions to video games as he plays them.

The video games that he usually plays on the channel are within the Call of Duty franchise, and Fortnite but that is not always the case.

On his second channel, More Ali-A, his content is typically around more family-friendly games such as Minecraft and vlogs about his day-to-day life and travels.

He does not consistently have the same introductions to his videos; however, he does usually start them off talking to the camera in a vlog-like fashion before moving into gameplay.

When new installments to the Call of Duty video game franchise are announced, Aiken covers known information about the games, giving viewers in-depth reviews.

Once the games are released, he creates video game walkthrough series on the games, demonstrating to viewers how to complete the new Call of Duty game.

On 23 April 2018, Ali-A created a new channel, titled "Clare & Ali" with his partner, Clare Siobhan.

The channel has since gained over 777,000 subscribers and generated more than 29 million video views.

In September 2020, he created a fourth channel titled "Ali-A Plays", where he uploads content relating to the Call of Duty franchise only.

Currently, the channel has more than 386,000 subscribers and more than 21.2 million video views.

Aiken often refers to his YouTube subscriber fanbase as the "Ali-A Army".