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 community shape culture yesterday, today, and in the future.
I get on the game, have a good time, talk to chat, and just enjoy the moment.
It's what the kids enjoy these days.
You cannot lay the next brick without the one that comes before it. I mean, it took me so much time. Time is the most valuable resource in the entire world, and I still want to collaborate with a lot of different communities and sort of be the bridge between them.
Hello, hello. Welcome to Let's Chat. I'm Dan Clancy, the CEO of Twitch. Joining me today is Deansocool. Welcome to the pod, Dean. Thanks for being here.
I appreciate you. Dan, you got to say it right: Deansocool. You can't say "Dean is." Is Dean so, Dan? Come on, you got—come on, can you do it?
Thank you, my guy. My guy, my guy, my guy. Thank you for having me, baby.
Thank you. So thank you for having me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Right. I, by the way, I was intentionally saying it as a sentence, right? You know.
Well, true. Yeah, you're right. You're right. "Is so cool," you know? A lot of people get that wrong sometime. I'm like, "Man, you know."
Yeah. So we should start with the name then, Dean.
How did you come up with your name?
Okay. So, you remember you—okay, you definitely remember the PS2, right? So, there was a game called SOCOM on PS2, and when I first moved to Miami, my cousin made me an online account and he was like, "Okay, we have to give you like a persona." And he just said "Deansocool." And I just ever—this was like 200—
Yeah, you're right. And it just stuck.
Yeah, I was like a kid. I was like nine years old.
I love it. And it just worked, and so you kept doing it. All right, so we got so much to talk about in terms of GTA RP. I'm really looking forward to this. I love GTA RP, but why don't you quickly just give us your background in terms of coming to streaming, when you started, and that sort of thing?
Okay. So, I joined the military in 2012, okay? And a lot of guys were getting kicked out for DUIs, right? So I was like, you know what, let me not go out and drink, and just stay at home and start streaming instead so I won't lose the only job that accepted me. And yeah, I didn't. And then yeah, I started streaming 2013, 2013-14. And then I blew up in 2020 during the Among Us wave.
Yeah. The Among Us wave was what gave me my shot, my first shot to be honest with you. Shout out—
And were you still in the—were you still in the military when—
Yeah, I was still in the military at the time. It was hard, it was hard. You know, we had deployments or training cycles that I'd be gone for six months and have to come back. And yeah, and then Felix gave me that chance, that opportunity to go on that one game against Soulja Boy, and then that clip went viral. Then I got signed to G2, and then the rest is history.
And so basically you left the military because streaming gave you—you were like, "Okay, I want to stream full-time." And that's what—
Yeah. I'm not going to lie, Dan. I was terrified, brother. All like my job in the military was a—it was a cool job, but I didn't know what I was going to do if I got out. So I was like, "Man." And then when streaming started working out, I was like, "Great."
Let's get to RP. And now I think we need to start with a discussion for—of course most people watching this will of course know what RP is, but hopefully we'll get other folks that are not deep in RP at some point to watch it. So just explain the magic of GTA RP and what is it as if, you know, for anyone that—and again, I don't know what rock they're living under, but describe the magic of GTA RP.
So GTA RP, especially on NoPixel RP, it's more of a—it's like you live, you know, you get to do whatever you want, right? The majority of us have played GTA. You get to create a character, you get to pick your route, whether you want to be a civilian, you want to work, you know, you want to be a manager at a restaurant, you want to own an establishment, you could be a banker, or you could be a cop, or you know, you could be a doctor. And then you just create your character and go about your path. You know, there's criminals also doing mischievous, you know, bad things, and then you have the cops trying to stop the criminals from doing the bad things. You know, you can do whatever you want. The possibilities are limitless.
Yeah. So the thing I love about RP is this whole world of doing improv, which really streaming has always been—
Improv at some level, right? It's improvisational performance art, and RP just makes it—and all these people that never think of themselves as actors in any way, suddenly they become doing improvisational performance art and doing improv all the time.
Yeah. It just happens because you have to like kind of—as long—I mean, a lot of people can't read the room, but some people that can read the room, like you know, you kind of just pick up on it like, "Okay, this guy's joking around. Let me just keep it going." And it's entertainment for everybody, right? It's entertainment for everybody watching. So it's awesome, man. It's awesome.
All right. So let's talk about your characters, okay? And tell me a little bit about your two main characters.
So my two main characters: I have a cop named Denzel Shy. He's based off the character Denzel Washington in the movie Training Day. He's kind of like the—not corrupt, but he toes the line of corrupt and just kind of bullies criminals around, talks smack, you know, just the way he is. And then you have Dean Quincy, which is my legal first name in real life. He's the criminal. He kind of just—you know, he does whatever he wants. You know, he'll rob you, he'll do all types of things just in the aspect of the criminal world. Those are the two characters, but then I do have a bunch of one-life characters that just kind of—
I know we're going to get to the one-life characters. When you—so listen, when did you start? Were you early on one of the early RP players? Have you been doing it since it started?
Okay, so I started way back when on Tee Grizzley's server. I don't know if you've heard of Grizzley World. So Grizzley World was one server, and then I went to SSB, which is another server, and then after that I got accepted. Then Koil invited me to NoPixel. And then after I tried NoPixel, brother, that's like a life-changing server. The effort those devs and the admins put in on that server, it's actually insane.
Well, and one of the things—the reason I say RP is so magical is one of the challenges when you stream, and the foundation of streaming I've often said, is collaboration. One reason that live streaming became popular with gaming is gaming is inherently collaborative. In fact, every time you're gaming, unless you're playing a single-player game, which in general is not what dominates Twitch, you actually are collaborating with whoever else is in the game world with you. Even if they're not on stream with you, they're helping you create content because whatever they're doing is part of your content. And the beauty of RP is you can show up whenever you want and there are people there to collaborate with.
Yep. And yeah, it's insane because you've got to think about it. Like, for instance, somebody the size of ODPixel, right? He was playing NoPixel at one point, right? I'm pretty sure I arrested him. And within his world, he does CS:GO, all the little tournaments. There was no way for us to ever meet each other unless it was RP, to be honest with you, because we're like in two different bubbles. So shouts out.
Two different worlds, and now you're collaborating on stream together.
Right. And you can show up whenever you want, because I've always said I think the biggest challenge—and in fact, you blew up with—oh, let's see now, the game you blew up on—
Among Us, right? Among Us also is this thing where people just showed up and found people to play with, because coordinating a collaboration just takes way too long.
And having where you can just show up and start collaborating is great. All right. So with your two characters, did you start with one and have it for a while? Have you kind of been managing both for quite some time?
So I did start with one. I started with Dean Quincy, which is once again my first name. That's crazy that I named him that. So I started with him because I just wanted to be like—you know, I'm like, "Man, I can't do none of these activities in real life, so I'm just going to do them in the game," you know? I'm going to rob people, sell drugs, whatever. And then after that, I got tired of that. I was like, you know what, one thing that would help me because of my military background, I was like, just try to be a cop, see how that goes. And being a cop on that server on NoPixel is probably the funnest thing you can do because I always played the cop as like I would lose on purpose, right? And I would do things to just look like an idiot. For instance, somebody's like, "Oh man, my license is right there in the bush." I'll turn away, and then they'll drive off and the guy's gone, right? So it's just better entertainment for viewers, if that makes sense.
And now explain this to me in terms of being a cop, because you had to get a job as a cop. You couldn't just decide to be a cop, right?
So how did you do that? Talk to me through that. You created a character and you wanted to be a cop, but you couldn't just do it right away, right?
Yeah. I mean, just like real life, right? You want to be a cop, you've got to go to the department, you've got to fill out the application, you've got to have an interview, you've got to hopefully pass the interview. And then after the interview, guess what you've got to do? You've got to train, right? You can't be a dumb cop. So you have literally weekend off-stream training. It's like two days, it's like two, three days sometimes. And then you could become a cop at that point.
Wait, wait. And you had to do the training off—
Yeah, off-stream, because in RP you don't want to break the fourth wall, right? You don't want to say, "Oh, I'm pressing F1 to do this." You don't want to break the immersion, if that makes sense. So there's portions of it you have to do off-stream to learn the mechanics of being a cop in the game. And then you're like a cadet, what they call it on NoPixel. Then you're on probation, basically. You can still get fired if you're a bad cop.
Yeah. In terms of getting fired if you're a bad cop, since my understanding is you are a bad cop, how does that work?
Okay. Well, within the game I was wrongly fired multiple times. I would say you do get fired. Luckily, I don't know if you know who MOONMOON is. MOONMOON played the mayor at the time, who was Max Thoroughbred. My character, the cop, was really close with his character, right? So when I got fired—
And by the way, are y'all close off-stream or not?
No, we're not even close off-stream.
Okay, so y'all became friends in the game?
Yeah, we became cool in the game, right? And then once I got fired, MOONMOON then went to the command chain within the police department because he's the mayor, and then fired them, and then I came back as a cop. So I mean, it's all about your networking within the game, to be honest with you. See where you go. So it was awesome.
So let's talk about the new NoPixel 5 release. And I know I spent some time talking with Rockstar about it, and so I don't know what is public about what is going to be part of the release or not. And you probably do, right? Like, anything you know is public, right? Or not?
In other words, let me ask the question: can you talk about what's going to be special on September 8th with NoPixel 5? What's added to NoPixel 5 that you're all excited about?
So there's—chat's making me laugh. There's a lot of new features coming out. Like, they just released a devlog probably like 30 minutes ago or 40 minutes ago—
And that's what—I know some of the features, I just don't know what is public, and so I don't want—
Oh, so you're just trying to send it to me so I get in trouble.
No, because I assume you don't have back channels, so you know what they—you know.
So yeah, I mean there's a lot of new features that was announced on the devlogs the last four to day, you know? For instance, yesterday's devlog, they had somebody—you're able to, for instance, when you get pulled over and there's somebody that the cops know is a bad person, they'll be like, "Yo, stop the vehicle. Throw your keys out the window." You could physically take your car keys out of the game, which has not been done on any other server at all, and physically throw your car keys out so your car won't start to take off, right?
Back then, prior, you weren't able to do that. You weren't able to physically take the car key; you had to act like you threw your car keys out.
But now you can physically do it, which is like that. And that's just one little thing out of the multiple massive things that's happening on NoPixel 5.
Yep. And now there's going to be some navigation stuff when they launch. Have they talked about that or not?
What do you mean by navigation?
To be able to jump around the map.
Well, the map is all—like all of that has been revamped completely, right? So the map looks—I mean, once again, from the devlogs, the map looks smooth. It looks very fluid. Even the vibrant colors, all of it looks amazing. I mean, just the details on the cars look insane.
Mm-hmm. Well, and one of the things that's so distinctive about this launch and going forward with RP, which I think is so great, is that Rockstar is really leaning into RP now, right? Because of their FiveM acquisition. And they're making it so you can just launch it from within the Rockstar launcher, right? Which is going to be great. So in terms of simplifying—
Man, that is insane. You've got to think about it. If FiveM was great—I mean, FiveM is still great, but FiveM had lag issues—or not lag issues, but frame rate issues, right? Now, if you're launching it directly from Rockstar's launcher, just imagine how fluid the game probably plays.
I know. So I—one of the things, you know, I mentioned to you that I played RP once and had a blast doing it. In fact, if I were a streamer full-time, I think RP would be what I spend 50% of my time doing. Now, you know, when I stream, I play the piano and sing, but if I really had more time to stream—because I actually was in theater when I was in undergrad, and so I created a character. My character, I told you briefly before this, is Nelson Jennings. And now I do do a voice in the character, okay, because I like doing voices.
Yeah, you're more talented than me already.
And Nelson Jennings is a washed-up country artist who used to be a big star, but now the bottle is kind of where he's just playing a little schlocky venues. And had a blast doing it. Spaceboy helped me do it, and I had all these plans to start trying to do it regularly, but I never did just because in general, since I have so much going on. And one of the things before is there are all these steps to get everything working right, and now you just launch it from—and I'm looking forward to as you have more servers, right, and it gets easier and easier to build servers, that's allowed different groups to form. Because of course, NoPixel is great, but of course only so many people can be on the NoPixel server.
Listen, Dan, I'm not going to lie to you: NoPixel is the best ever there. Dan, I've played a lot of servers.
For all the people listening, some of them are like, "Yeah, and I'd love to be on the NoPixel server, but I'm tiny, right?"
No, you see, that's the wrong—people have that thought process that you need viewers or numbers to make it on there. There's people that don't even stream on NoPixel, you know what I'm saying? There's people that stream—
Those people listening, how do they get on?
Just apply. It's on the website, you know what I'm saying? And it seems like this is like the biggest NoPixel ad. I mean, I'm probably one of their biggest supporters, to be honest with you. Just apply. Everyone has a chance, you know what I'm saying? You just have to respect the server rules and then apply, and that's it.
All right. So now let's talk about your one-life characters. Talk to me about what you do there.
Okay. So my one-life characters: basically in the game, once again, there's criminals, right? And if you kill somebody, you've got to catch a murder charge, right? Okay. So my one-life characters are if I cross the road wrong and I get hit by a car and I die, I permanently kill that character. So whoever hit that character, or strikes that character, or robs that character and shoots him, he's going to permanently die no matter what, okay? And I've seen so many people just catch murder charges, manslaughter charges, because they were just not paying attention. And they didn't want to act up, but then you do the crime, you do the time, you know? It's kind of hilarious.
But wait, so since you actually—meaning suppose this wasn't a one-life character, okay. Then you might get hit, but then you don't die, so then they don't have to face manslaughter charges.
Exactly. They won't get those manslaughter charges because I won't die. For instance, if I get hit by a car, like, "Oh man, my knees really hurt." I'll be walking with a cane, right?
Right.
As a cop—let's take your cop character. If your cop character got shot, you don't want the cop character to die.
So it doesn't matter that he got shot, you're going to choose him not to die, so whoever shot the cop isn't in trouble for killing a cop.
Exactly. But the thing is they'll still get the attempted murder charge, you know what I'm saying? But if I got shot, I would RP it as like I got shot in the knee and it was a through-and-through. That's like my default go-to every single time I get shot. Like, "Oh my god, he hit my knee," you know, just so it won't be like, "Oh, how did you get shot in the head and you're talking to me right now?" That makes no sense. So yeah, that's how I play around. It's awesome, man.
Right. So you decide, if you get shot, you decide where it ended up hurting you.
Okay. Talk about some of your favorite one-life characters then.
His name was Donald. Donald would just—once again, I'll choose any preset-looking character, right? There's these preset characters like you look like a chemist, you look like a fisherman, you know? I take one of these presets and I just go around and I'll talk a little smack to some people, like to gang members and people I know that do crime, or like somebody at a restaurant. And I'll go there and try to antagonize them to the point where they get mad and they rob me or they stab me, and after that point I kill them, and then—
Yes, egging them on. I'm egging them on because I know once they rob this guy or hurt this guy, he's going to die. So then of course there's cameras, there's witnesses, right? Then people are just going to be like, "Oh my god, this guy's dead."
And I assume most people don't have one-life characters in there.
Yeah, not a lot of people have one-life characters.
And so most of these people, they don't necessarily know that it's you doing this one-life character, so they're reacting to you just like they would to anyone. And now suddenly it's like, wait, they actually died.
Yeah, exactly. It's the best reaction because once I permanently kill them, if the person's streaming, I just go to their stream and watch the reaction to them finding out that the character is completely gone. And it's like because now you have to get a lawyer, you're going to go to court, you're going to get a trial, and then you're going to get found probably guilty of manslaughter or these charges, and then you're going to go to prison for like a day or two. So it's hilarious.
Now talk to me about besides playing RP, right? So with the NoPixel 5 launch, you'll be doing RP predominantly, but over the last six months, how much have you played RP versus other stuff?
I haven't played RP in almost a year and a half because I was waiting, you know? Patience is the key, you know? So I just kind of waited. I did my Just Chatting. I've been covering topics in the morning because I stream in the morning at 8:30 in the morning. I stream for people that are stuck in traffic going to work, at work tabbed out, you know? Those are my—that's my community. My community is always at work or doing something or just chilling at the house. So I stream super early. So I didn't play RP for like eight months to almost a year.
And do you mostly do Just Chatting?
Yeah, right now Just Chatting. I'm not going to lie to you, IRL is amazing, but brother, IRL is the biggest money sink possible, Dan. I'm not going to lie to you, I don't know how some people do it.
Well, wait, but that's because everyone thinks they have to get all this equipment that they don't really need.
Yeah. Listen, I don't like living outside my means. All I need is my cell phone.
Right. So with IRL, do you IRL just with your cell phone?
Yeah, IRL my cell phone. I don't have a LiveU backpack like Nick, you know, NMP. Nick's got the whole rig. Cyr too, like they're—
Oh, I think what it is is look, gamers all love their gear, right? Because they always get more gaming gear they don't need. Streamers, god, streamers love their gear. They love their cameras, they love their mics, they love their—and IRL streaming, it's like I have a backpack, okay, but when I IRL stream, most of the time I just use two cell phones.
Yeah, I think the cell phones are better. Listen, sometimes people have it, Dan. If you got it, by all means spend the money. Like Agent 00, he's got the bread, he's got the money, that's nothing.
Well, he also has someone—by the way, I do think if you have a cameraman—
Yep, I don't have a cameraman.
Right. If you stream with a cameraman, then a backpack kind of makes sense because you're probably going to have a better camera. If you have a cameraman, you're not going to have a cameraman with your phone, okay? So what I always say, if you're at the level where you're going to have a cameraman, a backpack probably makes sense because you're probably going to have a better camera.
Backpack makes sense. You know how much a backpack is monthly?
Well, no, but you're paying a cameraman.
