Interview
The main section of the interview is about 80 questions, which usually takes an hour to get through.
In general, just talk as much or little as you want, answering the questions. You can give long answers, you can give short answers. You can even not follow my questions at all, but just talk about stuff that you think is important, stuff that you think our viewers would be interested in hearing, both about yourself as a streamer and streaming in general.
At any point in the interview if you get tired or if you need to go, just tell me that you have to go soon, and I will switch to my closing questions and we will end it there. So, just do what you’re most comfortable with. No pressure :)
If you need to take a break at some point, just tell me and we’ll take a break.
It would be great if you could record your part of the conversation, like, on your phone on even on your own stream, so that if there are some issues with your sound coming through during the interview, we would have a backup source of audio on your end.
Also, please feel free to stream this interview on your channel, feel free to respond to your chat while we’re doing the interview, feel free to play games during the interview. Be as comfortable as you can.
Finally, if you want, you can ask me questions as well - we can turn this into a podcast.
Here is the list of questions that I usually ask the streamers I interview. During our interview I may skip some of these questions or I may come up with new improvised questions on the spot, depending on how our interview is going.
Primary questions
1. (Optional) What is your name, age, location and day job, if any?
2. What do people on Twitch call you? What name do you go by on stream?
3. How long have you been a streamer?
4. And how many followers do you have? How many viewers on average on your streams?
5. Are you satisfied with those numbers? If not, how big of a streamer do you want to be?
6. How large of an audience do you want? How many followers, how many concurrent viewers? Follow-up: what numbers would you feel comfortable with, what numbers would you feel good about?
7. What made you want to pick up streaming?
8. What are some of the things you wish to accomplish from streaming?
9. What do you like the most and the least about streaming?
10. Do you want streaming to be your career?
11. Do you consider streaming a job, a hobby, a passion or a project?
12. What is your current streaming schedule? Do you do it full-time, part time? And why that schedule?
13. If you could have any schedule, without it affecting your viewership and growth, what would that schedule be and why?
14. If you could stream for shorter streams or longer, without any change to your desired trajectory, which would you choose and why?
15. Approximately how long do you think it'll take to become successful as a streamer? What types of obstacles do you think are going to be the hardest to overcome?
16. Are there any instances where you feel like you should have started streaming sooner?
17. If you could go back in time to when you just started streaming and start all over again, would you do anything differently this time? If yes, what would you differently and why?
18. If you could no longer stream video games, would you still stream something else?
19. And if for reason you had to start over, start streaming from scratch today, would you still do it?
20. Before you took up streaming, did you read up on any advice for streaming? What was that advice and did it help?
21. Apart from streaming itself, do you promote yourself on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram reels? Why or why not?
22. Do you edit your own videos to highlight the most entertaining moments? If yes, how long does the editing take? And do you consider it a chore?
23. Which is more important for you from viewers? Lurking, chatting, subbing, or donating?
24. What do you feel your main appeal as a streamer is? And if you were able to add to that appeal, what would you choose to add? Why do you feel these things are important over other things?
25. Is there anything hindering you from being more successful as a streamer? Perhaps something you’d like to change?
26. Do you feel comfortable streaming? And if yes, how long did it take you to find that place of comfort? And what did it take to get comfortable streaming?
27. Triad of questions. What is your biggest fear about being a streamer? What are some of the obstacles you face as a streamer? What are some of the insecurities you feel as a streamer?
28. Are you an introvert? Does that make streaming easier or harder?
29. So far, the overwhelming majority of the streamers I’ve interviewed and met turned out to be introverts. Why do you feel that is? Why do you feel streaming is especially appealing to introverts?
30. Do you feel that the individual nature of streaming can potentially harm society? Why, or why not?
31. Do you feel that online communication like talking to people in chat or in voice chat is a good enough substitute for real life socialization? Especially, for introverts.
32. How do you balance real life and your streaming life?
33. Approximately how much time off stream do you invest in thinking about streaming?
34. For some people streaming can be a positive influence on their life. Like it can give you more discipline, more purpose, a routine and stuff to do, keep you active, productive. My question is: has streaming helped you balance your life in any way?
35. If you could give up streaming to live a successful life, would you do it? What would the parameters for this form of success be? I mean, what is success to you, and would give up streaming to have it?
36. When you stream, do you keep an eye on how many viewers you currently have? Does it motivate you? Would you advise others to do the same?
37. Do you have an ideal age group for your audience? If so, what is it and why?
38. What sort of setup do you have? PC or laptop? How many screens? Camera or no camera, and why?
39. Some streamers use a camera, some don’t, some use vtubing. What do you think the appeal is of having a camera? What do you think the advantage is?
40. What do you think about VTubing? What’s good about it? What do you think is appealing about VTubing to viewers? What is appealing about it to streamers who do it?
41. What games do you stream and why those types of games?
42. Do you do co-op games and if yes, do you feel co-op games help make your streams more appealing, more entertaining or just easier to produce?
43. If you could stream whatever games you wanted and still gain the same viewership and following, would you play many games, a few, or just one?
44. What do you think is the formula of success for streaming? What must one do to be successful? If not a formula for success, is there a to-do-list? A list of things you need to do to improve your chances of success as a streamer?
45. Would you advise other people to take up streaming? Why or why not?
46. Would you tell aspiring streamers that streaming is easy or hard? Why?
47. What key advice would you give to new aspiring streamers?
48. What questions would you ask a highly successful streamer if you could, and what wisdom could they share with you that you feel others cannot?
49. Are there any questions you would like to ask your fellow streamers? About streaming.
50. What do you think is the most important thing for the viewer about a streamer they are watching? Is it the game the streamer is playing? It is how good they are at this game? Is it perhaps the long duration of the stream? Or is the entertainment value of the streamer? Or is it the streamer’s personality?
51. Where do you see yourself as a streamer in a few years?
Secondary questions
52. What was you first streaming experience like? Good or bad?
53. Do you have any stories of overcoming difficulties and succeeding in streaming?
54. What is the most important thing to you about maintaining a community?
55. What would you change about streaming, if you could? Like, if you were in charge of Twitch, for example.
56. If you could change the way twitch places channels on the front page or how users are searched, how would you do so?
57. Have you had any negative or overwhelmingly positive streaming experience that has left you changed long term? If you're comfortable sharing, what happened?
58. In general, has streaming negatively impacted your life in any way? Has it impacted your life positively in any way?
59. What steps do you take to not take things personally?
60. What do you think you could change about yourself to immediately boost your chance of gaining a following, would you do it, why or why not? Do you think it is fair that a shallow or fragile change like that would be necessary to coerce people to consider your channel more?
61. How do you feel about revisiting older content? Why does it bother you, or why doesn't it bother you?
62. How do you feel about donations and monetary contributions to your channels as a whole?
63. Do you think it is important as a streamer to help facilitate healthy social interaction between members of your community?
64. If you were uncancellable, would you do anything differently on your streams, perhaps talk about topics that are otherwise off-limits to you?
65. What do you think the best way to advertise your channel would be if you could advertise anywhere?
66. Do you think quality or quantity is more important to you as a streamer?
67. Is there anything you avoid doing as a streamer because it isn't your strength?
68. If your channel was immediately beyond successful, what changes do you'd think you'd make if any?
69. Is profitability related to your channel success at all? Why or why not?
70. How do you feel about ultimately being in a position of authority as a streamer? Does the responsibility bother you?
71. If you could do anything with whatever authority you gain from streaming, what would it be?
72. If you were having a tough time in a game, and wanted to end the stream, but your community begged you to continue playing - on a lower difficulty perhaps - or change games instead, would you do it?
73. Has your community ever made you want to stream less, stop streaming a specific game, or want to read chat less?
74. Provided the opportunity, what are some of the things you would want to inform your audience of to make the world a better place?
75. What would be the type of community event you would host if money or time was no object?
76. What subjects as a streamer do you feel are difficult or impossible for you to consider delving into? Why is that?
77. What were some of the pressures you've faced from your fellow streamers?
78. Is it ever challenging to split your attention between playing the game and talking to people in your chat? How do you deal with that?
79. What are your preferable topics of discussion when streaming, and what topics do you prefer to entertain from your community?
Closing questions
80. If you suddenly had a million dollars, how would that change your life? Would that affect your streaming? If yes, how?
81. Are there any other questions you felt that I should have asked you?
82. Do you have any closing thoughts? Something you think our viewers would benefit from knowing about streaming?
83. Final question. What is the one thing in your life that you feel most fortunate to have? What makes you feel that you are truly lucky to have it?