Offline: Life After Live Stream with Pyroscythe

Graphic by Ailani Wong

Launched in 2011 and later purchased by Amazon in 2014, Twitch has become a popular streaming platform for people of all sorts of mediums. While some people stream to showcase their art and others their talk show skills, personalities like Jack Woodward are springing forward to throw their love of video games and charming energy into the mix. Jack, a Minecraft and Valorant variety streamer, sets the stage in his bedroom in Melbourne, Australia, where he takes on the persona of Pyroscythe. Woodward has curated a community based on friendship, communication, and a touch of unhinged (but charming) chaos that is bound to have space for newcomers of all sorts. As a long-time friend, I was given the opportunity to talk with Jack and ask him some questions that explore his career, identity, and what it means to be an up-and-coming streamer on Twitch.

Bucky Wolfe: For those who don’t know, who are you? Tell me about you who are both on and off camera and what inspired you to start streaming.

Official Pyroscythe illustration by strawbeeart

Photo of Jack Woodward (Pyroscythe)

Jack Woodward: When people first meet me, it’s Pyroscythe, then they cut it down to Pyro, then it’s just Jack. I’m a Twitch streamer and a general content creator attempting to branch out. Most of my content comes from live interactions with viewers who come by five to six nights a week for three or more hours, and we chat about what’s going on in our lives, what’s going on in the world, and whatever’s going on on-screen. The games I play are mostly supplementary content to the main content which is, well, me: my conversations and my ability to include people in the community. That’s what I get up to online, but offline I am so busy. I’m a full-time university student, studying international politics! I have a job at a grocery store to get some extra money on the side, and I’m in a relationship as well. It's a very busy life.

BW: According to Twitch.tv’s Partners FAQ, there are over 2 million active broadcasters. In such a saturated environment, what sets you apart?

JW: I think what sets me apart is a combination of things. Since the start of my streaming career, I’ve made it my goal to build a community that I can transfer to other mediums. I made it my primary goal to spot certain new people I know will interact well. I’ll even try to befriend them outside of the stream and try to bring them back in to introduce them further. In that regard, one thing that sets me apart is my personality. I like to think that when I go live I have an upped version of myself. Essentially, I capitalize on the Australian elements of my personality- I’m very abrasive but endearingly. I usually like to include people by insulting everyone equally and people seem to like that. They tend to like the banter and the emotion. They feel like I’m talking to and focusing on them when I insult them, I think? I’m not sure- I can’t get into the mind, that’s how the subjective nature of consciousness works. I’m pretty sure that’s how they would feel. Hopefully. That’s my goal at least.

BW: So, you’ve been in the game for about two years now. What did you expect going in and what’s the reality of it all?

JW: I went part-time in August 2020. I’ve known about streaming ever since I started interacting with larger online communities. Twitch is one of the forefront communities I joined, though I started watching highlights on YouTube back in 2013. At the time, Twitch streamers were mythical beings. It was a foreign concept to have thousands of people watching. I knew that esports was taking off in the West, so there’d be thousands of people watching these people play games online and sometimes even in person, but this concept that people who looked like me could chill in their rooms, chatting shit- it was like being in a group call with your buddies, but you’d have thousands of buddies. They’d all be laughing and you’d be making jokes, and everyone would think you were the funniest person ever. When I first started streaming, I knew it wouldn’t always be the case. It originally was just me streaming to a few buddies. I had five of my high school friends watching me play Minecraft and then all of a sudden people started coming in. I didn’t have a strategy at that point- I was playing games and being myself. It’s a lot less of a mythical feeling, but then again if you’re a more popular streamer in terms of viewer or community size, then that might be the case. I do have people I interact with where they get recognized in a game or a call and people lose their minds- it’s funny to watch. Where I’m at now versus what I thought it would feel like is not too different. I didn’t think I’d feel as satisfied with my community. I didn’t think that would be a big thing, because at the start I didn’t think about how big my Discord would be. I tried to bring my community outside of Twitch, and when people from my community meet up in real life, they’re forming friendships and relationships. These are lifelong bonds. I didn’t think this would happen when I started playing Minecraft and swearing at people all over the world.

BW: Let’s talk about work-life balance. I understand that you have a job and attend university outside of streaming. How do you balance the professional and personal parts of your life?

JW: I don’t, I’m struggling. I’m in a very fortunate position where I still live at home and I have a supportive family. I live a life of fairly decent privilege. I come from a lower middle-class family, but I have a mum who will work, do laundry and make meals. That’s probably the only thing that’s keeping my head above water - my mum. I’ll be waking up after having a meeting or speaking to people from overseas and I’ll go to bed at 6 am only to wake up at 8 am and go to university. I have to take a fifty-minute train ride to get to my university, so if I fall asleep on that train, it’s all over. I’d wake up at some random stop in Melbourne. I also feel guilty when I’m having ‘me’ time because that is a time when I’m falling behind. Not only will I be falling behind in my schooling, but I could be seeing my girlfriend, or I could be making a YouTube video. It’s tough. I know a lot of streamers struggle behind the scenes. I had this interesting conversation with a couple of other streamers about the initial struggle to push to Partner. Partnering with Twitch is the company saying they endorse a streamer and they give you a purple tick similar to that of Twitter’s blue tick. I’ve pretty much given up pushing for Partner, I just want to spend time creating a lot of fun content, but when I was pushing, I would stream seven days a week for about five hours a night. Viewers always said, “you need to take a break, you need to look after your mental health.” So then I’m in this call with these streamers and we were talking about this same thing and they were like, “no, you can’t stop now. You have to keep going or else the opportunity will never come again.” Every streamer understands that it’s not easy. I’d say most streamers are functioning on about four to six hours of sleep a night. It’s not fun, but it’s part of the life and it’s our choice to be streamers. It’s hard to balance. Some people do have it right. People who are full-time streamers- I envy them. I have a lot of friends who have gone full-time at my size. I couldn’t do it, I need cash flow and I don’t have that from my current audience size. I want streaming to be my main occupation, but right now it’s like I have three occupations: student, grocery store employee, and streamer. 

BW: If you’re comfortable sharing, I’m curious as to how you manage to push yourself so hard. How do you manage to fit this all in and set aside time for these things?

JW: I don’t necessarily set time aside. I have my set work hours. I’m a part-time worker so I get given the same hours every week which is handy. I navigate around that first. That shares almost even priority with schooling, so if I have an assignment, I’ll put aside the stream to finish the assignment. If streaming fails, I can hop over to doing what my professional academic career is. I can’t set aside my academic career right now, in favor of streaming. In terms of success rate, 99.99% of streamers fail within their first year and they don’t average over 5 viewers. It’s rough. One thing that keeps my stream going is this website that functions as a tracker and you can look at your percentile. In the first couple of months of streaming, I went on there and I was like, “Damn. I’m pushing it. I’m in the top 5% of all streamers.” Now I’m in the top 0.5% of streamers. I look at that now and I’m in the top 20,000 English-speaking channels on Twitch. That’s a lot of people and a lot of numbers, but as you said at the start: there are somewhere around two million active streamers. I generally stream late at night because it’s the only time that I’m free. It’s becoming a problem in my relationship, though, because my girlfriend wants to hang out or she wants to sleep and I’m at my desk like, “What’s up guys, how we doin’? Welcome to the stream!” One of the things I told her coming into the relationship was that I stream. She knew what it was, but I don’t think she quite got the extent of how much I needed to do. I’ll tell her I’ve got to go work on a YouTube video and then the video gets maybe 150 views and it’s shit, I could have spent more time with my girlfriend. It’s things like that. It’s a startup- I’m a one-man business. I have to decide if I want to put time into this or if I want to become an employer and every second I’m not putting time into this is like… I better be doing something else that’s worth it. That’s how I ration my time.

BW: On that note, if you were given an extra three hours per day, what are you doing with that time?

JW: Probably making YouTube videos. My free time of productivity is generally now dedicated if not to streaming then to YouTube videos. Recently, I found enjoyment in making and recording videos. I know that it’s not as successful right now, but the reception from my community is positive, I looked at my recently released video (as an anecdotal example) and it’s not that successful for the amount of effort that I put in. It is a horrific net loss of time, but it adds to my portfolio and my experience- I don't stream for hitting Partner, I stream for entertaining people and building a community. So if I can do the same with YouTube, why not? I’d love to profit from YouTube and I’d love for it to be my job. Twitch is dangerous- you have to set time aside to create content there- but with YouTube, I can come home, edit or record for an hour, maybe write some scripts, and talk to other YouTubers. Then I can leave and come back later, edit some more. It’s much easier for work-life balance. 

BW: So we’ve just talked about YouTube. Let’s talk about your other projects. Can you explain a little about the KaboodleSMP and what it is for those who don’t know Kab or what an SMP is? 

JW: SMPs are extremely popular within the Minecraft community. They’ve been around for a very long time. SMP stands for Survival MultiPlayer. It’s you, playing with your friends, generally on survival. There are a lot of different premises to the SMPs, you can modify them and change the game mechanics or you can play vanilla (base game). The DreamSMP has become the most popular server for lore and stories specific to its world and characters. The content creators don’t play themselves but can if they choose. There are certain streams dedicated to creating storylines. It’s a combination of improv and scripted points that they meet. It’s structured similarly to a live stream, you go live to an audience. The chat is there, it’s broadcasted, but it’s a show or a performance. Like theater, but you’re not in the audience. You’re watching from the eyes of the characters on stage. It’s a unique experience that a lot of people, especially young people, resonate with. KaboodleSMP was founded by Kaboodle, who is a large content creator. She’s incredibly talented and young, and she’s killing the game. She’s popular, driven, and she’s a student. It blows my mind how insanely good she is. My biggest regret in streaming is not starting four years earlier! She founded this SMP for it to be her take on lore. [It’s at this point that Jack cracks himself up because, with an Aussie accent, he can hardly say ‘lore’ without it sounding like ‘law.’] Everybody is playing a character. There’s a writing team, an art team, and we have a lot of promotional material that goes out on social media, where we’re hyping up these characters, the development, the tension, and the storyline. We all have a good time and make our content while playing on this Minecraft server. We play like normal but on certain days, particularly Saturday at 5 pm PST, we dedicate time to the story and lore. We get into character and there’s scripted development to push things forward. This SMP is a tale mixing all of the dimensions of Minecraft and how they and the people from them come together. In terms of other videos coming up, I’m working on something for Keplar [another SMP he’s part of!] where I’m causing mayhem, and I have something in the works where I narrate a story on a server called WynnCraft, which is similar to World of Warcraft. It’s this big fantasy world full of quests, dungeons, loot, lore, etc. You develop your character and get stronger as you play the game.

BW: Do you think that the worldwide lockdown impacted your stream or even how you go about it now?

JW: I think the pandemic was the best thing that could have happened to online entertainment. My most nuclear take is that I loved the pandemic. It was a great time for me. I was at home, in a well-done-up room with a beautiful setup. I upgraded it, had a new fancy chair, and I had nothing to do apart from playing games. One day I was at a friend’s house and I woke up and the news said there were 700 cases a day in Melbourne, and we were going into full lockdown. This is when I went part-time. I wanted to stream Minecraft, gave it a go and it was strangely successful. A lot of people were doing online school, so Australians were staying up late because they didn’t have school in the morning. I would go live at midnight AEST. That’s the afternoon in Europe, evening in the Middle East, late night for Southeast Asia, and America, slowly from the East Coast to the West Coast, they’d start waking up and they also weren’t in school. They’d be in online classes watching me instead. The reduction in lockdowns has harmed my business. I watched the numbers drop the weeks that schools started going back. Fall of 2021 in the Northern Hemisphere- that was when schools went back to in-person. My head admin, a lot of my mods, and a lot of my regulars had to go back to school. The American audience was decimated overnight. I had to change up my strategy and that’s why I started producing supplementary content via TikTok and YouTube. I know that streaming is unsustainable for my life.

BW: On the topic of your viewers, a large portion of your regulars are members of the LGBTQ+ community. What is this like for you? How does having such a large queer audience impact your life and how you view the world?

JW: I could take it back a bit by about two years before I started streaming. I started moving towards the progressive worldview, but I had a tough time interacting with the progressive left. I found this meme Instagram page that was run by a gay man and I joined his Discord server to see what the community was like. My community consisted of gamer bros, so I joined and I made a ton of lovely friends in the queer community. They’re normal people, honestly. My demographic is strange. I have talked about this with people in the past- I think it’s the Minecraft audience in particular. They’re very young and a lot of younger people statistically are coming out as members of the LGBTQ+ community. The primary demographic of that audience is already part of that community, but I started my stream to be a better influence on people like me: young, straight white dudes. I didn’t have a lot of great influence. When I was fifteen or sixteen I went down some bad paths, so I wanted to be a different voice for them. I’m someone who looks like them, a little bit older than them. Now I’m like… all of my friends are gay! I’m their token straight dude. [This is true. We love him <3] It was strange that they were all coming to me, but I think it’s that I’d be respectful to one person and then they’d tell their friends, then their friends would come to my stream. If my audience is predominantly queer, then let them be. They like my community which is as much their community as it is mine. I’m still hitting my original goal of being a good influence for people who look like me.

BW: In your mind, what does your career look like five years from now?

JW: Either I’m doing YouTube, editing, managing for someone, or I’ll be in a policy position in an international or domestic institution relating to foreign affairs. Maybe even a domestic political campaign, because I already volunteer for the political parties here. Nobody talks about it, but streamers have a shelf life of about five years. I’ve already been going for two years and I’ve not been having monumental success. I had this private conversation with my girlfriend where I told her that if by the end of next year, I’m not like… making it, I’m giving up. I wouldn’t even call it giving up– I gave it a fair crack. I didn’t fail, either, because I have this community. I have what I want. I have this beautiful experience. You don’t win in life- you take dubs, but there is no winning life. You have to weigh the pros and cons at the end of it all. This has been a huge pro for me. It’s been a lot of time spent, but I would have spent the time doing something anyway. I’m enjoying the ride while I’m on it. [As of November 2nd, 2022, Jack has announced that he’s going full-time in 2023. His message still stands– if he isn’t self-sustaining by the end of the year, he’s retiring from Twitch.]

BW: If you could go back and change up to five things about how you’ve operated over the last two years, what would you change and why?

JW: I would’ve not done a viewer SMP when I did. I would’ve started that a little earlier and while I had success with that, I would’ve transferred to something similar with YouTube-based content. Or I would’ve tried to do streams that could later be edited into YouTube content. Making YouTube content is the big regret of my career online because that content stays up forever. Even though the recent YouTube video only has about 200 views total, it’s got 8.4 watch hours total. If I put 20 hours into a video and then it gets 100 hours of watch-time, to me that’s a more monumental success because more people are enjoying that content for longer than they are with my stream. You can still get the same experience of a Twitch stream on a Discord server, only it’d be more engaging and intimate because you have direct communication. There’s no parasocial disconnect between viewer and streamer because now it’s a social relationship. So the first thing I’d change is starting an SMP sooner, the second is starting YouTube, and the third one might be… I would say that I wish I started everything earlier to learn things quicker. I wouldn’t change much. I think I’ve had a good run. If my life had been adjusted around it all, I could have started to get somewhere, because the time I go live isn’t that good. If I go live three hours later, that’d be better. However, the time I go live is bad for Australians and they’re my primary audience. I might also change the amount of Minecraft I play. I want to be able to play games and allow my audience to still transfer between them. The big trap that Minecraft streamers fall into is the Minecraft to Valorant pipeline. You play Minecraft for about a year and then get burnt out so you start playing Valorant. Nobody wants to watch it because you’re bad, you don’t know how to stream it, etc. Minecraft streamers turn into fish out of water when they start playing Valorant.

BW: Given all that you know now, what advice would you give to folks looking to get into this type of content creation? How should people proceed if they have a workload similar to yours?

JW: Start now. Right now. You’re going to get experience that is vital to your career. If I had started streaming in 2017 or 2018, I’d be learning how the meta works, how to edit, how to work the equipment, and how to interact with the chat. Then, I would have taken my break and come back in 2020 and just been boots on the ground. If you’re maybe 16 and you’re reading this now and you’ve thought about content creation, download the software ASAP and learn them. They’re free, there are tutorials all over YouTube. You learn the basics and then you can learn how growing the stream works. If you have my work-life balance, my advice is probably not to stream. I am digging myself a hole here in my life.

BW: Do you have anything else you want to add on the topics of mental health, your audience, or life on/off camera?

JW: Being a streamer, one of the most rewarding things that have come out of it is seeing the positive impact that I've had on individuals. Not all streamers have direct communication with their viewers. Many people come into Discord and talk in our general chats or they talk in my Twitch chat and we become friends. We share experiences. I’ve seen some people grow. I’ve witnessed some people’s entire youth, almost. I’ve seen sixteen-year-olds become adults. I’ve seen these people go through challenges like relationships and moving houses, losing friends and loved ones, and even COVID. I’ve seen these people at their worst and their best. So many of them are now at the best they’ve ever been and I enjoy seeing them succeed. It’s incredibly satisfying to have this positive impact on the world. It’s something I can tangibly say that I’ve done well. I have a lot of personal flaws and I’m very utilitarian in the way I view the world, and in the way that I want to do good. I think good is when we achieve happiness in cooperation with other people for the benefit of the most people possible. I think that the amount of work I put in and the lack of sleep I get- if that means I can stream for three hours and someone can make a new friend. Fuck, I’ve done well.

BW: And I do have a few questions just for fun: if you had an autobiography, what do you think you would title it?

JW: You know what? You’ve given me the title already: Unhinged but Charming Chaos.

BW: What would you say is your favorite shape of noodles?

JW: I don’t like spaghetti, that’s one thing I don’t like. I don’t like spaghetti. [It’s here that Jack doesn’t know the name of the pasta shape he likes, so he Googles ‘pasta shape list’] Conchiglie.

BW: If animals could speak, in your opinion, which would be the rudest?

JW: I was going to say seagulls but I feel like seagulls are very conniving and charming, or cheeky, but then they become… to avoid an Australian word… they become very rude. I think hyenas would be pretty rude. They’re kinda mean. Coyotes are cowards. They’re not shy unless you’re a baby. Then… then they become very, very passionate.

To learn more about Jack and become a member of his community, you can find him on Twitter @ttvpyroscythe, and on Twitch, Instagram, and YouTube under the user Pyroscythe.