Hello and welcome to Let's Chat. Let's Chat is a live podcast where I talk with creators about live streaming and the ways that streamers and their communities shape culture yesterday, today, and in the future. So, I'm Dan Clancy, the CEO of Twitch, and I'm happy to speak today with Creek. He has millions of followers. He's one of the most recognizable creators in the Roblox community, in the ecosystem with high energy live streams, community-driven gameplay, and commentary on platform news and culture. Welcome. Let's see some of that energy, Creek.
I'm doing very well, Creek. And I think we'll have to have an energy off today. How about that? We'll see which one of us can bring more energy to the stream.
You know, as I've gotten older, it's actually gotten lower. I've had to start drinking coffee to keep that up. Yeah, I'm normally not a coffee drinker, but I, you know, before a big stream, I might have a cup of coffee.
I myself am not a coffee drinker either, interestingly. Although I do drink caffeine and coke, unfortunately. But that caffeine sometimes comes in. All right. Well, we're going to start pre-rolls, Creek. Okay.
So go back in time and now I know you're getting a bit older, okay? So, it might be hard for you to remember way back when. But talk to me about when you started as a content creator.
Yeah. So, I had just graduated high school and I was looking for like a job and every place I applied to, they said I didn't have enough experience, which like how am I supposed to get experience without experience?
So, up until that point, I was just making Minecraft videos on YouTube and, um, I had a video kind of pop off and someone at YouTube, I got like a partner manager and they're like, 'You should try streaming. We just launched streaming.' And I was like, 'Okay.' And at first it was actually funny because I thought I was going to hate it because the idea of it being live and like, 'What if I mess up?' You know, it's scary. And then I started streaming. Loved it. People started loving it. Audience loved it and it just kind of immediately blew up and then I got like the first paycheck and I was like, 'Mom, I got more than $5 this month. Like, I might be able to do this.' And yeah, it just kind of grew from there.
And so were your parents like did you think about college or was college always something like no, I don't want that.
So yeah, I was originally going to college for computer science. I actually went to an online high school before it was cool to do that. Just so that I could take programming classes that weren't available in my local area. And when I started streaming, I was I think like one year away from getting not the bachelors. What's the other one called? The first one you get?
Not the bachelors. It's the two-year degree.
Yeah. An associates degree.
Yeah. Associate. I was a few credits away.
I heard bachelors and I was thinking of the bachelor, you know, then I was like, what does that have to do with [laughter]
Yeah. Yeah. And it was kind of like do I keep balancing both or do I put all my energy into one and give it the best shot? And it was like this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I can always come back to this. I'm gonna take the opportunity and risk and family was pretty supportive.
It worked out. Yeah. It's interesting because like I come from like an older family so a lot of my family didn't really understand the concept of you can play video games and make money.
They're just like he's just staying inside all day wasting his time, you know. My mom got it though because she lived with me so she kind of got it a little bit. But yeah, once I got my first paycheck, that was when the rest of the family was like, 'Oh, okay.' It was cool then. It was cool.
Finally, finally, finally, we don't have to worry about him. You know, he's going to be able to do something with himself.
Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And now, you know, my cousins go to school. They're like, 'Hey, you know, Creek, that's my cousin. It's my cousin.'
Tell me what you're thinking about besides sitting in your house and playing Roblox. Something I think would be really cool is like doing IRL streams with like, you know, the close friends and stuff. I guess the big thing is it's such a departure from what I already do that there is kind of that risk of is it worth putting all this time and effort and energy into something that might not do as well. But also a big struggle is since I stream every single day and cover all these games, it's hard to get out of the house to do something exciting for an IRL stream. So, it's kind of that back and forth.
By the way, here's my thought on that. Okay. And I think this is one of the challenges that a lot of streamers run into and they talk about burnout, right? And now you have this benefit that Roblox already has a lot of variety of games. Okay. But a common problem in gaming is you keep playing this game. Everyone loves the fact that you play that game. And if you are going to play a different game, some of your community is going to leave. Yeah. And your numbers are going to go down. So you don't do it. And every day that you don't do it makes it harder to do it because you're conditioning your audience by your total consistency. And if someone asks you the question of okay, are you going to be streaming Roblox 20 years from now every day? Right? And if the answer is that's hard for me to see, okay then the answer is what day do you do something else? It doesn't have to be right now, but if not now, when? And what will change a year from now? What will change two years from now? What will change three years from now? And my general feeling is nothing will change, right? And that's where eventually you built the box, if you will.
Exactly. Yeah. Like you get like this does really good so you keep doing it and you keep doing it, you keep doing it and then you're stuck in that box.
Yes. And people think that everyone else built the box. No, you're sitting there hammering in nails every day, right? Making it a better and better box because you're a slave to whatever is like what they want right now. And so like my advice is it probably won't do better. You won't make more money by doing it.
Yeah. You have to bite the bullet. And like this is actually something I've been doing on Roblox. So like back in 2020, I was all in on Piggy. Everything was Piggy. And then Piggy ended. I was like, 'Oh crap, what now?' And so now I intentionally am not a single one game on Roblox guy.
And so you're right. What that's done is allowed me to do kind of whatever to a degree on Roblox. And so now it's just kind of taking that same thing and taking it outside of Roblox.
Yeah.
Yes. Because in the end what they're attracted to is you as a person.
Right. And so then as soon as you start doing something, you start realizing, oh wow, there's all sorts of things I want to do with my life and I can keep my streaming career while doing these other things that I've been thinking I'd like to do that I never get around to doing because I'm always in my room. I think another thing and I've gotten better at this, but I think another thing is like as a streamer and especially after years of doing this, there's that constant need like you want to be at the top of the mountain and like you know for years you crawl and scratch and stream for hours to get to the top of the mountain and once you're there it's like I'm not leaving the mountain. I want to be on top of the, you know, and so it's like at some point you've got to just be like, I don't need to be on top of the mountain 24/7. I can, you know, like it's not healthy. It's unhealthy to be caught up with being at the top of the mountain when you and by the way I think it's human nature.
But then it's also human nature to reflect
and say, no, I mean I often think about the idea of you go back in time when we were cavemen or whatever. You know, how much did someone want to be at the top of the mountain as a berry picker and always need to be at the top of the mountain as a berry picker? And you're like, well, I'm pretty good at picking berries. I don't know. Like, I'm really a good hunter. Like, most people get over the fact that do I really need to be the best hunter? I get enough food for my family.
Yeah, this is something that I'm very glad I have my fiance for because it's so easy to get lost in that mindset and she definitely helps keep me grounded. Because so many streamers, they just get caught up in like I'm this super big, super famous celebrity and you know, it's like at the end of the day I'm doing this because eventually I just want to play video games for the rest of my life, you know? Well, [laughter] no. The interesting thing, by the way, I don't think you want to retire and just play video games. I don't buy that.
Yeah. I do like I have I want to write a book. I would say at some point I think that is another goal of mine. Like growing up, I was really into writing and reading and so there is an element of like I do want to try other stuff there. I definitely don't want to be a streamer forever. But I guess the question is like at what point does that transition happen? What does that look like? I don't know. Here's the way I would think of it as saying I don't want to be a streamer forever. Think I don't want to be a full-time streamer. That defines everything of who I am forever. It doesn't mean you won't always be a streamer, right? Because you can stream three days a week. You can stream one day a week. My money says you will enjoy streaming.
Okay. You just don't want to be only a streamer forever.
Yeah, I think that's the right way to look at it.
So then the question is when do you start not being only a streamer?
Yeah, you are a streamer. You'll always be a streamer.
When are you not only a streamer? That's actually a really good way of looking at it because part of whenever I don't stream every day, let's say tomorrow I don't stream or I don't make a video or something, it feels weird. It's like I didn't do my job for today and I know that's an unhealthy feeling because sometimes you just have to, you can't do it every day every time. So part of it's also just kind of getting past that hurdle I think. All right. So, let's get to the persona. The character. Okay. And before you talk to me about the character, I have a little surprise for you here. Okay. This is all that I had in my closet. Okay. But I felt like for the show, I should have a little something.
Amazing.
Okay. So, I decided I'm going to wear this for the podcast. It is some type of furry monster. But so tell me about the character and when did the character
the hat. Yeah. So I would wake up really early. So when I started streaming it was December. I would wake up really early. It'd be really cold and I would always take a shower in the morning just to kind of wake up and so I would be freezing and so I would just grab it was a Dead Mouse hat like the music artist Dead Mouse. It was a random hat my mom got me from a Kohl's back in like 2013 or something and she's like, 'Oh, this looks cool. I bet he'll like it.' So, I had it in my closet. And so, every morning when I started streaming, I just put it on to keep my head warm. And then I started noticing that people would draw me with the hat and also the red flannel, which I'm not wearing the red flannel right now, but my grandpa would always give me his red flannel hand-me-downs. And so I'd always wear red flannels and people started drawing me with that. That was the fan art. And I was like, 'Oh, okay. So this is my thing. This is it.'
And then 10 years later, my dead mouse hat started ripping because wearing it every single day for 10 years is a lot of work on a hat. And so I had to come up with my own thing. Number one, so Dead Mouse wouldn't hopefully not sue me. But then also number two, because he didn't sell those hats anymore.
Well, and has your hair always been sticking out or the long hair sticking out? Did that only come over time?
So I've always had longer hair. I've always liked having longer hair. Mostly because when I was a kid, a lot of the guys had the short hair with the bangs sticking up, you know, in school. And I always wanted to be like the outlaw, I guess. I'm like, I'm going to have longer hair. And because when the wind blows, it flows, you feel cool, right? Like the Maybelline commercial or something. And so I always had longer hair and it just stuck. It's actually funny. I'll tell you a funny story. I dyed my hair blue for a sub goal a long time ago and I actually got backlash like don't you touch the hair. Leave the hair. Hair is an iconic part. So, I was like, I can't touch it now. You know.
You have that great red color. So, you may not realize this from my hair now, but I'm a redhead or was a redhead. And I always remember this story that once I told someone I was like 40-something. I said, 'Oh, I'm a tall redhead.' And they met me and they said, 'You're not a redhead.' And it's because by then all my hair had turned blonde and kind of faded out. So, enjoy the redness, you know, while you have it.
You know what's funny? I don't know if you know this, but this is actually a wig that's attached to the hat. Well, it's not attached to the hat. I just put on know that
the reason why I have brown hair. My hair is brown. It's underneath this. The reason why is I shaved my head bald for a sub goal. And what happened is the click-through rate on my thumbnails went down because I guess kids don't like clicking on videos of bald people. So, I'm like, I'm going to get a wig off of Amazon that's like $5 that just looks similar to my hair. And I did. And it became a running joke that Creek wears a wig. So now I
But you got a wig that was red, not brown.
Yeah, it looks a little bit reddish on camera. It's really brown. Yeah, it's like blondish. I don't know. I like the blondish kind of orangey red look. It looks good on camera, so I keep it.
It looks good. I like it. I like it. All right. So let's get to Roblox then.
Okay. Talk to me about when Roblox clicked for you and were you already playing Roblox personally before you started streaming it?
No. So it was like 2016, I was doing like Minecraft PvP and Minecraft mods and Minecraft kind of dipped a little bit in terms of interest and viewer interest. This was before the dream era and all that. And so I was kind of like, okay, well, what now? And Roblox was kind of on the rise. And my chat was always like, play Roblox. And I was with the stigma and everyone had this back then. This is a dumb Minecraft ripoff kids game. I'm never going to play this. And one day I decided to play it because someone said there's a game on there called Phantom Forces, which is similar to Call of Duty. And I'm like, I'll check it out. I played it. I was like, okay, this is actually kind of fun. And over time it just kind of shifted completely into Roblox. Yeah, I started playing in 2016 so this will be 10 years.
And have you ever thought about because it's one of those things that you know we make these decisions we have no idea where they're going because suppose you didn't make that switch and then what happened with Minecraft just like how different your world would be if you had never made that switch back then. There was a part of me that was so burned out of Roblox back when Fortnite came out that there was a part of me that was like you know what I'm going to become a Fortnite streamer and like I never did I almost did I made the switch almost but like I did it and it's like man if I would have done that my life would also be completely different but yeah I stuck with Roblox. It seemed like the nice thing about Roblox though that I'm sure has kept you there is just it's not one game and so you have this endless supply of games that you can play.
Exactly. So like there's always something new, something that's coming out that's interesting and exciting that kind of changes it up. It's not the same thing. Well, so how much do you think of yourself now as a trend setter with Roblox or as a follower in terms of what game you decide to play? I think it's kind of a mix of both because as streamers, I feel like we do have the ability to kind of set trends, but also at the end of the day, it's a matter of what does your audience want to watch? Because if I could do anything I wanted, I'd be streaming Halo and World of Warcraft all day. But most Roblox players like what is that? I've never even heard of that. But obviously you can't do that because that's not where the audience is these days. So you're kind of beholden to your audience a little bit, but it is a matter of you do get to pick and choose a little bit. Roblox does have a little bit of variety in terms of what you can do.
Right? Right. And so what are you playing now?
Oh, we're not talking about that. You know, still a brain, right? You know, stuff like that. It's not my proudest era I guess but it's what the kids enjoy these days, you know.
Well explain this because I think for some people watching this, part of the objective of this is to expose all that's going on to folks that may not live it. Talk about Roblox, explain Roblox to the person who hasn't played Roblox and why is it so big?
So you got to think of it like a platform. It's like Steam except most of the games are made by either kids or older teenagers or really young adults. And it's got a very large kid teenage audience. So, and all the games are free to play kind of. So you can get the idea of where that platform sits and stuff. And then over the years, the platform kind of moves along with the general trend. So like back when GTA 5 came out and the few years after, there were a bunch of kind of ripoff GTA clones because kids, they're not going to play GTA. So what are they going to do? They're going to play the best version they can on Roblox. It's free to play. And then there were other trends that pet games were really big and then asymmetrical horror games were really big. And now the big thing right now is like Brain Rod and Tong Tong Tong for her and all of those characters and stuff.
Right? Yeah.
And so it seems like obviously what you're trying to do is figure out what your audience is going to enjoy. And so as opposed to trying to shape it, you sort of respond to whatever is popular on Roblox now. Part of what you're doing because you probably do explore new games very often. How often are you just wandering around Roblox playing games that you haven't played or don't already know are pretty good?
Quite a bit. I like to think I have my finger on the pulse of the Roblox community. Like somebody breeds and I know about it kind of thing. So part of my job is also what comes next. And this is probably true for any streamer no matter what game you play, but if you're known for one game and then that game stops being popular or ends or whatever, then you kind of go down with that ship and so you have to be able to pivot to new stuff. And so part of Roblox is like okay, what's going to be the next big game? What's the next big trend? Because in 2020, I played this game called Piggy and I made videos on it and streamed it every single day.
I know. Piggy. Wasn't that one of the moments where things sort of broke out?
Yeah. I got like I think it was like 5 million subs in like a few months from Piggy because the pandemic happened and Piggy happened and it just lined up perfectly. Stars aligned. And then a year later the game ended. It was like this is the last update. This is the last chapter and I was like oh crap. What do I do now? And I was able to pivot. So I was lucky with that, but that's something that's always in the back of your mind.
Now, one of the things I know that I've learned about Roblox for those who don't use it is that part of it is just hanging out with your friends. Because a lot of people that are playing Roblox are playing Roblox with their friends. So who do you mostly play Roblox with?
I have like a... So, it's interesting because there's so many different Roblox games, there's so many different demographics. So, just because you're a Roblox streamer or creator doesn't necessarily mean that our audiences will mesh together. Like if you play Dress and Press, you probably have a larger female audience. If you play Rivals, you probably have a male dominated audience. So right now I kind of stick to people that I know personally, shout out State, Kay, all those guys. But I don't know. I don't have a group of friends.
And were any of those folks were you already friends with or did you meet them all through streaming? Because many of the ones, let's take Sik as an example, many of the ones are also streamers. You met them all in your streaming life as opposed to them being real world friends that you know.
Yeah. Yeah. I met them through streaming. It's actually one sad thing about being a streamer and content creator is that a lot of times you're up working really late. So like people with normal jobs I guess you would say. All those normies, all those normies, like a lot of my friends pre-streaming, I don't get to talk to them as much because they're online at like, you know, midnight after work, before work in the morning, and it's like, well, I'm up editing, so it's tough. That's one of the tough things about the job.
Yeah. Do you still stay in touch with your because you... Is it public where you live or not?
Uh, it is. Yeah. Yeah, I grew up in Florida by Jacksonville. I didn't really have that many friends growing up. It was probably a little close-knit group of like four to five. And I try and stay in touch as much as
most of your friends now, most of your real world friends now come from your professional life, which is the way most people
most of your real world friends are all come from your professional life.
Yeah, I would say so. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, I know from Brandon it seems like one of the things they're always trying to do is get you out of the house. Yeah, dude. I look, man. My goal, people always ask me like, 'What's your goal from streaming?' I want to make enough money to where I can retire and just play video games for the rest of my life. Like, get like some remote house somewhere. A lot of people are like, 'I want this super fancy car, a super fancy house.' Like, I don't care about any of that. I just want to be able to retire and just play video games and I'm good.
But then you don't need to retire if all you're doing is playing video games.
That's true. That's true. Actually talk about this. I always think one of the reasons that streaming I think took off is of course playing video games is social.
Okay. Um, because you're playing with other people and then it's like oh and someone's going to watch me. So like it seems to me like if you're playing a video game like why wouldn't you stream? How much do you play video games where you're not streaming?
Quite a bit. I actually this is something I struggle with for a while. It's kind of like how much of my life is CRCraft and how much of my life is just the normal dude, you know?
And so like what I've done over the years is like I have like a set line like I don't play Roblox in my off time. That is a YouTube thing. That is a streaming thing. And when it comes like personal time, like that's me, that's, you know, Lights Out, Big Monitor, Red Dead Redemption 2, Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate, you know, traditional gamer.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 100% 100%.
Name a game I've probably like I literally just play video games. It's or my job out of my job.
But it doesn't fit your your online character, so you just do that on your own. Yeah, I've thought about like having a more mature channel where I stream games like Red Dead Redemption or Elder Ring or whatever it may be. But like part of it is also like I don't want to constantly be in streamer mode. Sometimes I want to just like stare blankly at the screen and play video games, you know?
Yes. Like when you're streaming there's some degree of commitment to your community and then when you talk about the feeling when you stop streaming it's like when you hit stop stream, you know, is it like an exhale?
I think it was at first. I've got it's become so like just muscle memory to me. You put a camera on me and I can just like switch into YouTube mode. I guess the thing to say too is like I wouldn't really say that CRA is like a character. It's more just like an exaggerated version of myself I guess. So like it's not necessarily like it's not hard to get into that or I'm not like you know it's not stressful or anything like that but there is an element especially after a long stream it's like I can go and like relax now. But the other thing about being a content creator is it's like well you're back live again tomorrow. You don't get days off. So, start planning.
Well, the way I decided it it's almost like it's a caricature of yourself.
