Posted on March 2, 2022 by Tooniversal
4 Years & Counting
As I sit here on the eve of my fourth year of streaming on Twitch, it's nice to step back & reflect all that's happened during my career. It all started with a friend suggesting that I should give game streaming a try. At that time, I had never viewed a Twitch stream. I knew about Twitch & knew that it seemed to be primarily about creators doing "Let's Play" streams. I had no idea what was in store for me or how much I would grow to love this path of creativity & content creation.
Just Me & an XBOX
On one Saturday in February of 2018, I went to a friend's "PUBG Birthday Party". He loved gaming & had three XBOX One's hooked up to three TVs in a living area of his rental unit. I had never played PUBG but had enough experience with FPS games to get one Chicken Dinner during the evening. Through the course of the evening, I found out that I could stream directly from the XBOX to Mixer or Twitch. At the time, I'd been considering game streaming for a few months & planning on what I wanted to do as a live streamer. I spoke with my wife about it & went out & purchased an XBOX a couple of weeks later. On March 3rd of 2018, I did my first Twitch broadcast under the channel name "Tooniversal". It was a few rounds of PUBG, & I had no idea what I was doing as a live streamer. I didn't even know that I needed to interact with viewers! A friend texted me while I was streaming & told me they were chatting with me on Twitch! I was under the assumption that people would just watch me while I played, & that that was enough for what I was doing. As I began to find my time slot (which ended up being late mornings at the time), I picked up games that I'd wanted to play, but hadn't been able to because of my lack of the relevant console or system to play them on. I chose Fallout 4 because of my love for Bethesda games & my desire to try another single player IP from them that wasn't an Elder Scrolls game. This was the game that helped me to start connecting to the Fallout community on Twitch, as well as Twitter.
Character Creation
One of the things I planned for moving in to streaming was to find ways to set myself apart from other channels. To this day, I still try to wear clothing that is relevant to the games I play, so I decided to take it a step further. I had planned to stream in character as part of a role-playing experience that was funny & unique. It started with my character "Firefly". Firefly is a Cobra Saboteur in the G.I. Joe universe & had a Twitch Prime skin called "Havok" that resembled him. I thought "What if Firefly played Fortnite because there was a skin that resembled him, but he was really bad at the game?". So I made the character always make excuses for the instances that he was killed or had a poor experience. This led to the character "Two-Eyed Willy" in Sea of Thieves & "Wyatt Burp" for Red Dead Redemption 2. Then Fallout 76 was released.
Fallout 76 Changed Everything
When Fallout 76 was announced at e3 2018, I was very excited. A new Bethesda IP based around Fallout with a multiplayer aspect was very appealing to me, so I spent the coming months hyping it up & looking forward to its release. Fallout 76 changed my streaming career for the better. Through Fallout, I met some of the kindest, generous, & dedicated community members that I could never have rallied on my own. When I was able to acquire a streaming laptop in January of 2021, I was finally able to realize some of the creative aspects of streaming that I had planned months before my first broadcast. Through Fallout 76, I’ve had the opportunity to participate in Bethesda’s annual QuakeCon events, join Bethesda community managers on Bethesda’s official Twitch channel, & Twitch Partnership in June 2021. I could not have accomplished this without my incredibly generous community. Through the years of streaming, community members come & go. Life gets busy, interests change, & people move on to other things. But many members of the Tooniversal community have been engaged for years, which is quite humbling for me. It’s been incredible to be a part of the Fallout community & I’m a better content creator because of it.
So, What’s Next?
As I reflect on four years of streaming, one word comes to mind: Grateful. I’m grateful for every opportunity that I’ve had tossed at me over the course of my career. It’s truly a privalidge to be able to wake up & do something I love every single day. My hope is to continue to innovate, set trends & create meaningful, unique & engaging content for others to enjoy. Will you join me on this crazy ride? I hope you will.
