Crom
Family
Crom has a wife (IAMThyDecoy) and daughter. He has two older brothers and a younger brother.
Gaming Origins
Crom grew up playing console games with his brothers. He switched over to PC gaming when his dad bought them Doom on a floppy disc. From there, he moved on to Diablo 1 and Warcraft.
He was introduced to World of Warcraft (WoW) by his friend in 2005, shortly before the PvP Honor System patch was introduced. His first character was a human warrior, because he loved the human race in the Lord of the Rings novels and wanted to RP as them in WoW. He unintentionally started playing on a private server. He didn’t really understand how to play properly but was fortunate to meet another player called ‘Thomas’ who turned out to be a game developer for Blizzard. Thomas guided him in RPG by providing him with links to RPG guides, as well as other tools.
Professional Gaming
Crom joined Justin.tv (now Twitch) in 2012, where he mainly streamed DayZ, as well as other RPG and survival video games. He took a hiatus from streaming in order to focus on developing his own games instead but returned as a part-time streamer a couple of years later. He was partnered with Twitch in mid-2015.
Income
Crom has ~1,200 subscribers. This should generate him at least ~$3,000 USD per month, excluding additional income from merchandise sales, tiered subscriptions, tips, Twitch cheer bit contributions, sponsorships and advertisements.
Streaming Hours
- Tuesday – Sunday: 12:00 onwards for between 9 – 13 hours per session.
- Monday: No stream
Quotes
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• Keep yourself constantly connected at all times. Every little thing that you’re doing, let your community be a part of it. Don’t let them decide it but let them be a part of it. Every great moment that you have, post it on the internet. Stay constantly connected. Like always stay connected with what’s happening. If you’re not keeping up with the social norms and social expectations on Twitch, you’re dying already. If you don’t know who the next big streamer is or what that big streamer did while you were offline, if you’re not watching streams, interacting in streams - and I don’t just mean like trying to get involved and being a part of projects and things - I just mean being a friend and watching their stream and promoting dialogue and being a part of that. [Then] eventually that guy’s going to be like ‘come play with us’ and if they like your personality, they’ll go along…
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• I did weekly/bi-weekly 24-hour streams to the point where my throat was gone at the end of every single week. I pushed myself to limits that I never thought were possible. I sacrificed time with my family, I sacrificed time with my friends, I sacrificed time at work, and I put everything into my streams. I stuck to a schedule that I never faltered on. I stayed positive as I could. I cultivated my channel specifically to the type of people I wanted and then I got partnered and the work got even harder. Then it was constant upkeep of the channel, constant updates on the computer. Making sure that I made every single event. Made sure that I was keeping my sub count up. Sticking to the content up, keeping my promoters happy. Playing sponsored games. Anything. And it never, ever stops. And once it gets to that point, once you think, ‘oh, once I get that checkmark it will be [so much easier,’ it actually messes you up a lot.} because then you get paid more and you pay more taxes.
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What really matters at the end of the day is how much money you’re bringing in to support you and your family, and are you still happy playing those games? Because if it’s just the money, your community will feel it and they won’t care; they won’t support you.
Gaming Setup
Streaming Setup
