Yesterday Lirik was the special guest on Dropped Frames week 18. JP, Zeke, and Towelliee interviewed him and asked him questions that haven’t been asked before to Twitch’s top 10 streamer. We’ve created 11 things to take away from Lirik’s Dropped Frames interview, some you might have known already and some might be new to you. These are the 11 highlights we thought were most important, check out the out below.
1. The Origin of Lirik started on World of Warcraft. He came across Towelliee and got funneled into his live stream. Lirik started to watch and became addicted. After a year, he became a mod, watched for another year, and then began his own Twitch stream. Lirik played Battlefield with no microphone in the beginning.
2. Lirik’s degree is in computer science. By the end of his Sophomore year of college he was close to 2K viewers and realized he could do this full time as his everyday job. He will be graduating Friday May 15th and will be streaming full time (even though he technically does already).
3. When Lirik first started streaming, he “whored” himself out on Reddit and forums when he had close to 300 videos. He played the right games at the right time, like DayZ mod which he says established him as a streamer.
4. Lirik doesn’t see Twitch as competition, even though some people might. He believes it’s good to set goals for yourself, but him personally, he never got into broadcasting to be the biggest or to out-do a broadcaster. Lirik always focused on his own thing. He doesn’t want to be the biggest broadcaster, and wouldn’t mind if others surpass him.
5. Lirik has trained himself to not care about viewer count, he used to really care when he was around the 3k range. To him it makes it more fun to stream when he doesn’t care about viewer count. Chat does get irritating, but he handles that by giving his opinion without caring what they think.
6. Lirik can’t be bought to play video games by developers. He has had companies offer him lucrative amounts of money but he has turned them all down. Lirik rather stream and broadcast the games himself, rather than be paid to do so. He’ll take the free game, but will not take the game companies money.
7. Lirik mainly deals with all his business inquiries himself. He does have someone that handles the finances, he calls them a multi, who handles different aspects of his business. Lirik tries to keep it simple, wants to deal with all the business, and be as raw as possible.
8. Lirik broke down getting started on Twitch. He said it’s difficult to get popular on Twitch since anyone can hit the broadcast button. You really have to distinguish yourself and need to stream the right games. Nobody is going to watch you play old games. People like new and shiny stuff, even if big time broadcasters are streaming, eventually they go offline and people will still want to see the game. If you are really dedicated you can find the time slot no one is on and stream during those times. He also suggested promoting yourself heavily on reddit and other forums, even if 20 viewers come in, and 2 of them stay it’s worth it.
9. Lirik doesn’t feel like he’s “Made it” he feels like, “Wow I can actually do this for a living, balancing college life and streaming at the same time.” Livestreaming is addicting to him, and that was his drive. His grades suffered a bit but it was worth it to him. During his Sophomore year of college he realized he was making the same type of money he would if he graduated with his Computer Science degree at an entry level job. That is when he made the decision to keep pursuing being a streamer, to see how far he could take it.
10. Lirik likes where he is in his current state of being a streamer. He is very comfortable and does not want to branch out and take a lot of risks. Lirik likes where it’s going and doesn’t want to change anything in the future. His fall back plan would be his Computer Science degree, if anything ever happened he could rely on that. He hopes that broadcasting will lead him into the gaming industry.
11. Lirik keeps his personal life off stream. He thinks it’s weird when people ask those questions, and likes to keep his stream game related. Lirik has zero regrets and would not go back if he could to tell the younger Lirik any advice.
