Thanks to our friends over at Twitch ANZ, we had the pleasure of sitting down with /x5_PiG to ask him a few questions around his success with streaming, content creation and his involvement around Starcraft. Here’s how it went. Enjoy

1. What was the initial draw to gaming for you?

Growing up reading fantasy and sci fi novels, and then being able to jump into those worlds is still an incredibly magical experience for me today, but to the fresh eyes of my childhood self, it was irresistible.

2. What are some of your best memories in gaming?

My subathon stream on Twitch in 2021 was a real journey. I thought it would last for 1-2 days but ended up lasting 34 days of 24/7 streaming. Having all the boundaries broken between you and the audience in that sort of experience is a bit surreal. After it finally ended I would be out with friends and would be unusually quiet. I would just soak up the human interaction and loved not being the person doing all the talking and being in the spotlight. It was a stark contrast to being on camera for over a month. As crazy as it was, it was a memory I’ll never forget.

3. What was it about StarCraft that initially caught your attention, and how did it keep you hooked?

My Dad brought Command and Conquer home one day in about 1996. Warcraft 2 was soon to follow and in no time I was hooked on RTS. I played a lot of online Warcraft 3 in school but then it was more shooters and DOTA for quite a few years before SC2 came out. A few months before it came back I happened to be on a Korean Air flight and when flicking through the in-flight entertainment sports tab I noticed there was a “Starcraft” section with a collection of some of the most exciting matches. It was maybe 1-2 hours of content at most, but it was riveting. I’d always played these games but now listening to the subtitles for the Korean commentary it was bringing an immense amount of hype and explanations of the subtle strategies. The speed of the players, the amount they were all over the map at all times fighting for control, and the frequent close ups of the players’ faces showing the immense focus and effort they were exerting. I rewatched the whole selection a second time during the same flight and loved every minute of it. A few months later SC2 came out and it happened to coincide with HD streaming becoming more commonplace. Finally, regular people outside of Korea could easily tune in to pro Starcraft, and millions got hooked, myself included.

4. Why do you think StarCraft is still such a popular game within the community?

Once you’ve played it a few times, you instantly realise just how hard it is to do what the pros do. The speed, precision, planning and strategy all intersect for a competitive experience that is incredibly diverse and challenging. There’s an appreciation for how impossible it is to ever be perfect in this game, and instead a commitment to just enjoy the struggle of trying to improve and enjoy flowing through the chaotic situations the game throws at you.

5. How did you get involved with the competitive side of gaming?

I started playing a lot for fun, watching lots of tournaments and soon was signing up to any local events I could. Soon enough I was playing any online tournament I could sign up for and once I started winning some small local events I started devoting more time into it until I decided to take the crazy gamble of trying to make it as a full time pro player.

6. Have you been involved in any other tournaments? Are there any games you’d like to compete in?

Only SC2 tournaments for the most part. I really enjoy a lot of other games though and have enjoyed playing the occasional showmatch or invitational for different games. I was lucky enough to win a streamer invitational 2v2 AOE4 tournament along with my French mate PtitDrogo when it first came out. Obviously we’d be smashed by actual Age of Empires pros but it’s always exhilarating competing in anything new.

7. When Blizzard stopped sponsoring StarCraft tournaments, you smashed your goals and went on to raise a significant amount of money to help keep them going – how did it feel knowing you had that much support from your community?

When we raised money for PiGfest 3 the whole community was reeling from the news that blizzard had dropped support. There was pain, outrage but also a coming together that was very special. I threw in $1000 to get the prize pool started and put all stream donations from the 3 weeks leading up towards the event. It takes a lot of time and work to prep an event and I host a series of showmatches to drum up support for it but we felt the community deserved an epic event and were happy to throw ourselves behind the event even though it was likely to lose us a bunch of money. We were shocked when we got it to $10K AND raised another almost $8k for the next event. It was really great to see the generous response from the community allowing it to grow way bigger than I’d ever expected. I felt really overwhelmed, but am so glad the community has such trust in me.

We’ve got the next instalment of PiGFest coming up September 20th-24th – all supported through crowdfunding! The lineup of players is stellar so I’m super pumped for this one.

8. Do you feel that being involved with the tournament scene influenced your decision to livestream? If so, in what way?

Livestreaming was just a bit of fun in the early days. I watched a lot of streams, so I tried doing it myself and enjoyed having a little community of 15 or 20 viewers. Then it became 50 and then it really exploded for me in late 2017 / early 2018 when I decided to make live streaming on Twitch my main focus. It coincided with SC2 going F2P so it was a bit of lucky timing, and a lot of grinding. I was live on average about 225 hours a month for the first 6 months and the viewership really kicked off as a result. As times gone on I’ve done a lot more hosting of my own events though.

9. What advice could you give to up-and-coming livestreamers who want to focus on one or two games, rather than a variety livestreamer or someone who follows the new game hype?

As long as you’re passionate and keep looking to improve your craft, you’ll grow over time. Don’t constantly look for outside validation, just stay true to your own vision of what you want the content to look like and have fun doing it. There isn’t immediate feedback in this industry, so you have to stay the course when you know you’re doing things right. But also be hungry enough to be critical and keep looking for ways you can improve and make your content better. I always think of the millions of people that watch a person make swords on Youtube. None of them really care about blacksmithing, it’s just amazing to watch that level of skill and passion for something, so long as it’s presented in a digestible format. Likewise with Twitch you don’t have to stick with just one game, as long as you bring a consistent vibe, your community will grow.

A mixture of proactive improvement and FAITH in what you want to deliver will give you a good shot at making it work.

10. What advice would you give to someone wanting to enter the tournament scene?

Hmm… think of it like joining any professional sport. It’s a crazy gamble that only an insane person would spend their youth on trying. You will need to grind for years of effort and training before you get to the level where you can make money doing this. And that’s when the hardest part of your journey will start. Getting from beginner to rank 200 seems impossible, but getting from there to top 20 is even harder. And the money difference is massive between 200 and 20.

Now that the warning is out of the way, at least you’re unlikely to cause permanent physical injury to yourself like professional sport, so that’s one big advantage. Another is that you also will have less competition than in say Football. There’s just less people competing in each video game than a traditional sport so you have a bit more of a chance, even though the money is less. You can tap into incredible online communities and learn from players all around the world whilst improving, as well as have amazing life changing experiences following this. Just learning the game teaches you so much about HOW to learn. But you’ve also got the chance to travel all around the world competing, exploring all sorts of different cultures that is amazing. At the end of the day most people will fail at becoming a successful pro in any sport, and it’s the same in esports. But my attitude is that as long as you developed skills and work ethic on the way, you’ve still developed as a human and come out the other end with huge advantages in life. The number of ex pros and competitive players I know that now run SUPER successful businesses is insane. I’ve talked to a lot of ex pros who retire, go to law school or some other career and when I chat to them about how hard it must be they’re like “actually, nothing is anywhere near as hard as competing. You just put in the hours methodically and you get the result. That doesn’t always happen in competition. Sometimes the other player just catches you with something even though you played your best”. At the end of the day if you’re passionate enough about it, you will learn loads and find success either in competing or your future.

After writing this it dawns on me you might have meant in terms of running tournaments? Alas that’s something I really can’t give much advice on as my business partner (and wife!) does a lot of the planning and admin and we run a relatively small event as part of my existing stream, which is vastly different to starting out hosting tournaments without already having a platform.

Once again, a HUGE thanks to /x5_PiG for his time, and many thanks to Twitch ANZ for allowing us this opportunity. If you’d like to check out more of /x5_PiG, you’ll find all his links below.

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/x5_PiG/ 
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pigsc2/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/PiGstarcraft/featured
• TwitchTV: https://www.twitch.tv/x5_pig
• Facebook Gaming: https://www.facebook.com/PiGSC2/