Game Casters are online celebrities who inhabit unique pockets of YouTube — "pockets" may not sound large enough when the most popular of them has 38 million followers. To "cast game", as the activity is known, is for these people to play through a video game (say, Minecraft) accompanied by humorous, irreverent and sometimes swear-ridden commentary, and their whole subjective experiences are recorded and broadcast on YouTube channels for their fans to watch.
To those outside the circuit, game casting is an unknown triviality. But the practice has been popular abroad for many years (PewDiePie, the world's most influential caster, has 38 million subscribers), with casters able to make money through revenue-sharing on YouTube. In Thailand, game casters have grown in the past few years — each with several hundred thousand subscribers. Most casters are young and started in high school, and their semi-professional game playing can also generate income.
Fans follow game casters because, simply, it's fun — watching skilled gamers playing is sometimes more fun than playing the game by yourself, especially if you don't have a high-performance computer. Each game caster has his/her style that attracts followers — their skills include comic bantering as well as mimicking — while many viewers follow the casters because they have deep knowledge about the labyrinth of logic and narrative of modern games, such as Minecraft, Realm Of Tales or Starcraft.
Nerds, game addicts or young people who pursue their passion to the max? Three top Thai game casters share their views on the joy of playing games.
Pakawat Leupatnasuk: 'Lung P'
For Pakawat Leupatnasuk, 20, the only thing he has loved since being a kid is playing games. When he was 10, his dad forbade him to play computer games for fear of addiction, but to an extent, games eventually helped him through his teenage life.
Pakawat admits that he was never happy in school, while his father naturally tried to push his academic life, having him take extra tuition.
"I followed my dad's orders by sticking to school, but it was very hard. It was really not my way of life. I knew that the only thing I liked to do was play games," said the game caster who now has over 700,000 subscribers and who's known among fans as Lung P.
At that time, computer games were very expensive, so Pakawat started working for money as a meal delivery boy, even though the wage could never cover the price of computer games.
He started playing free games on the internet, from which he also practiced English.
"I always talked to myself. When I watched cartoons, I loved to imitate the voices of cartoon characters," he said. He acquired vocabulary and decent English from games. At 13, Pakawat discovered comic books and cartoons, and he started doing the voices of Japanese characters with a team of enthusiasts, a skill that would prove useful when he became a games caster.
At 14, he was one of the first Thai kids to video himself daily and upload it online — the practice was slammed as juvenile nonsense. Pakawat at that point quit school and switched to non-formal education at home; the rest of the time he learnt English by himself through games.
In 2010, the construction game Minecraft was introduced, and Pakawat started narrating the game and created his own style of Minecraft playing — his talent with voices allowed him to do voice-overs in several different ways, and shortly he had over 20,000 subscribers. He discovered that YouTube could enable him to upload his videos on a channel, so he contacted a YouTube partner abroad and became the first Thai person who earned money from advertising on the site.
Game addiction may be an issue that worries many parents, but Pakawat has proved that you can turn it to your advantage. Pakawat works two YouTube channels; one is game-playing, the other is the blog "Unclepakawat" to talk with young fans. Besides Minecraft, Pakawat plays Realm Of Tales — a first-person adventure game — and Ant Farm. The special style of Lung P is that he infuses dhamma, morality and five precepts with the games. The name of Lung P derived from a turtle character for which he does voice-overs.
"I would like to share the benefits of the games because I practice English from playing games, and would like to make an instruction video teaching the kids. If their parents don't understand them, they can come to talk to me," he said.
Pakawat always ends his game playing with a slogan, "How to learn English from games" and "Make benefits from games".
Pakawat's idol is his father.
"My dad is the person who I wanted to win over," he said.
Phutthanaphrom Phromma: 'Fab Gamer'
Phutthanaphrom Phromma, known to his fans as Fab Gamer, started casting in 2011 as he disliked the vulgar style of the existing Thai game casters. For many, to attract young viewers means to put in a lot of swear words. For Phutthanaphrom, fun can go along with politeness.
Some of the games that brought Fab Gamer to fame are Heavy Rain, an interactive drama action-adventure game, and Day Z, a multiplayer survival horror game.
Most casters become popular through crazy, expletive-ridden, fun-orientated commentary that hooks in teen gamers, but Phutthanaphrom belongs to a more serious type of caster: he primarily focuses on giving game content and information. It's fair to say the game videos he makes can be broadcast on TV as the content is as acceptable as that on television. He now has nearly 200,000 subscribers.
The 28-year old admitted that unlike foreign casters, the number of Thai game casters who can earn a living is very limited. He works not only as a game caster, but also as a game writer and video editor.
"To have a video viewed 10,000 times is not easy. Moreover, to be able to earn professionally you need to have 100,000 views. When the content is not international [Thai language], the number of audience members becomes smaller," he said.
The age group of his audience is 15 year olds up to adults because the content is not focused on entertainment only, but information as well. The clips mainly review the core of games for 30 minutes, like a game preview.
"Entertainment is already in the game itself so we don't want to focus on acting or entertaining. The game is comparable with a movie, and we would like to present its core content," said the caster, adding that it is the game titles, not the casters, that attract audiences.
He pointed out that the income of game casters is based on different models: number of subscribers, the growth rate of subscribers and number of views.
"Not all subscribers view the clips. Overall some 10-20% of them do and those who view us are those who really admire the content of games," said Fab Gamer, who is ranked in the top 100 on YouTube in Thailand.
Attapol Kaew-arsa: 'Xcrosz'
Attapol kaew-arsa, 19, has four years of game casting experience. Right now he can earn close to 50,000 baht a month from revenue-sharing on YouTube. In a good month, he can make up to six digits.
"When I was in secondary school, I was always at an internet cafe after class, playing all kinds of games. The first time I made money from game casting I got around 5,000 baht," said Attapol, known as Xcrosz, who started casting games when he was 16 years old.
The income from game casting depends on the numbers of viewers. For Xcrosz, there are three groups of subscribers: below 13, 13-18 years old (the largest group) and 19 years up. Today Xcrosz is ranked a top-five caster in Thailand with more than 600,000 subscribers and also hosts a programme on Online Station, a popular internet TV channel.
Attapol noted that working with an established channel has made him gradually adapt his style, toning down rudeness and swear words.
Even though he's a successful gamer, Attapol said he has reservations about online games, and he's particularly concerned about the way a lot of modern games lure young viewers with in-app purchases.
"It's kind of leading young people down the path of wasting money since they cannot make a living by themselves," he said.
