Minecraft Twitch star Tubbo on living the Dream SMP

Toby 'Tubbo' Smith, famed for his entertaining Twitch streams and being part of one of the biggest Minecraft SMP servers ever (The Dream SMP) is currently doing a massive subathon. This is where the more subscribers gained during the stream, the longer it goes on for. He’s set a hard cap of 90 days, when he’ll eventually get to relax without a camera on him at all times.

As I’m writing this, Toby s currently sleeping while four thousand viewers chill in the chat - Imagine trying to explain this to someone born in the 1800s.

I recently spoke to Tubbo live on stream and had a great conversation about Minecraft, streaming and his streamer friends.

A huge part of gaming and Twitch is community. How important is your community to you?

Yeah, that's pretty damn important. It'd be a bit rude to badmouth them while they're here! Yeah, but no, that that's really important.

It's through Twitch that I've managed to get the chance to speak to you today. What are you most looking forward to for TwitchCon later this year?

TwitchCon! Oh, I don't know. They offered me a stage slot with friends, and we're trying to figure out some kind of cool show we can put on.

Yeah, I'm sure that'd be really good fun. So you were part of one of the biggest gaming phenomenons online in the Minecraft Dream SMP. Can you tell me a little bit about the time that you were initially invited to that and how that felt?

I was just messaged by my friend Tommy who I knew for like a year beforehand, being like: "do you want to join this Minecraft server? You'll have like 1000 viewers." I'm like, "1000! That's like 10 times more than normal." And then I said yes!

And do you think you've probably made some friends for life because of Minecraft?

Oh, hell yeah. All of my best friends today. My best friends, actually, right now have just gone on tour. They left yesterday. And they've gone on tour around the US with their stage show. And I met them all through Minecraft.

Tommy's [Minecraft YouTuber Tommyinnit] tour, right?

Yeah. With Jack and Freddy. They're my best friends. Also Aaron. He's here. He's in another room.

And a lot of that content blew up while COVID and lockdowns were going on. Do you think that was a coincidence, or do you reckon it would have happened anyway?

Oh, no way would it have happened anyway! No, the majority of growth on Twitch is like driven by environmental factors. COVID was probably the biggest reason for new people to sign up to Twitch.

There was a spike for Minecraft in general, right?

Minecraft was coming back like early 2020 late 2019. Well, Minecraft kind of has like a trend. Every four years it falls out of fashion and then four years comes back. Four years in, four years out. It kind of goes on that like, up and down curve. So it was really just crazy timing with COVID Starting at the real blow up of Minecraft when it was just getting to its peak at the start of 2021. Then the world shutting down really exaggerated that quite a lot.

Minecraft is eternal.

It's just the ultimate sandbox. Nothing comes close. It's so simple. And yet so complicated.

I love it!

There's yet to be another game for me that's come close to that. Terraria is cool, but you can kind of finish it. Whereas Minecraft, you can't really finish. Space Engineers is a game that I think for me personally comes a little bit closer, more open-ended. Yeah, but no, I just can't think of a game that comes anywhere near to close to Minecraft. You know what I mean?

I've noticed you doing a lot more real-life content on your channels lately?

Yeah, doing a lot more of that because I just felt like, I don't know... I felt like everything was getting a bit stale on Twitch. I'd open the app because normally I'm a massive Twitch watcher.

I watched like, hundreds of hours of Twitch a year. And there were a few things which I'm like, that's really cool. But there's nowhere near as many of those things as there used to be. So it kind of feels like, well, someone's got to do something interesting, man. So I thought I'd start doing something interesting.

Do you have any fun stories from meeting fans at TwitchCon?

I'm not gonna lie to you, sir. These events are literal fever dreams for me. Yeah, like when I look back, all I can think of is the chaos, the rushing, and the stress. But no, it was quite cool. I did a booth at VidCon where I gave out 5000 free hats and 10,000 free lanyards. Which was quite cool. I did that for a little bit.

Where do you see yourself as a content creator going in the future?

In the future? Well, I've been doing this for like six years now. I reckon I've got like, four or five more years of like full sending it and doing cool stuff. And then I'll probably just wind down and just stream what I want and chat and do whatever I want. I guess be kind of retired, I guess.

Yeah, sounds good. Because a lot of this job is absolutely fantastic and great, but burnout is a massive thing, right?

I don't really get burnt out at all. Like, yeah, literally at all. I don't know. It just doesn't hit me. Whenever I feel burnt out. I just start a new project and it gets me just so hyped to make more stuff. And then I go back to the other stuff that I left because I felt burnt out and I'm like when I'm ready.

We'll finish with a simple gaming question: what's the greatest game of all time? You know, other than Minecraft.

Counter Strike or Factorio or Space Engineers. They just come in waves, man.

TwitchCon Europe and America tickets are on sale now.