Welcome to Streamers on the Rise, where we find streamers who are growing their channels, content, and audiences in extraordinary ways. Each week we’ll talk with a creator about what goes into livestreaming–both on and off camera.
GavynXP didn’t think gaming content could work out for her.
When she first got on social media in 2015, she launched an Instagram account and a YouTube channel. Gaming was her passion–had been ever since she was a little kid and her parents gave her one of those child-safe tablets with preloaded games. But “I didn’t see a lot of Black women gamers,” she says. “There were a couple of people who were doing Sims content and things like that at the time when Markiplier was coming up and even the early stages of Jacksepticeye.”
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Looking back, she wishes she’d pursued gaming anyway, but at the time, she thought no one would watch her. So, she went into other niches, like lifestyle and fashion, all while pursuing her day job as an actor.
Then the pandemic hit, and her day job was off the table. She put the full force of her attention into content, and in doing so, realized she wasn’t making things that made her happy.
“I just stepped away from the consumer heart of content creation and started focusing on the things that I felt brought me joy and I thought would bring other people joy,” she says. “That was actively sharing my gaming experience.”
She made a Twitch channel in 2020, but didn’t start streaming until 2021. She spent months before that first stream researching, learning about Twitch’s audience engagement tools, and figuring out OBS, the streaming software she’d use for things like subscriber notifications and other chat interactions. She also spoke to friends like Xmiramira, bettynixx, and KiwiOnTheSticks, who were already experienced streamers, and took the time to join their communities and see things from both a creator and viewer perspective.
All of that is why, when she hit “Go Live” in September 2021, her first stream was pretty rockin’. She was raided by a couple friends, including bettynixx, who encouraged their viewers to help get her channel rolling. She now says that raids (where streamers can send their entire audience over to another creator’s stream) are a vital part of Twitch’s community-building and collaborative atmosphere.
These days, Gavyn’s back to acting, but she’s also full-throttle on streaming, where she switches between games like Tomb Raider and Jurassic Park and shows like Game of Thrones, plus does a regular news segment keeping her audience up to date with gaming, pop culture, and entertainment news. She recently rebranded her Twitch presence, and is coming up on 10,000 followers.
Here’s what she’s up to next:
Allow me to reintroduce myself… pic.twitter.com/2VFiFqPEq8
— GavynXP (@GavynXP) May 2, 2024
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tubefilter: Very nice to meet you! I’d love to start with, imagine somebody’s reading this and they have never seen any of your streams, they don’t know who you are. Give me some background about you and what you did before streaming.
GavynXP: I am GavynXP, and I’m a variety streamer on Twitch, but I’m also a variety gamer on other platforms as well, like YouTube. I focus on story-based and adventure games, but I also cover gaming and entertainment news and a segment on my stream that we call, “What the fuck happened?” It’s basically the news for just regular everyday people covering gaming and pop culture and entertainment but on a layman level. We’re not very official about it or anything.
Outside of that, I’m an actor. Before I started streaming, I actually was doing a lot more lifestyle and fashion content. I’d always wanted to be a gaming content creator. When I first started fashion and lifestyle content, I psyched myself out of my initial idea because I didn’t see a lot of Black women gamers on YouTube. There were a couple of people who were doing Sims content and things like that at the time when Markiplier was coming up and even the early stages of Jacksepticeye.
A lot of the names that you know now were really prominent. It was very much more white male content creators in that space. I think it was a naive mind where, instead of saying, “You know what? I don’t see someone in this lane doing it. Let me start,” I just was like, “No, one’s doing it. No one’s going to watch. I’ll defer to other things.” Sorry, this is a very long-winded answer.
Tubefilter: No, that’s perfect. Keep going!
GavynXP: Then the pandemic happened and I’d been doing fashion and lifestyle content for a really long time. My conscience was tugging at my heartstrings where I didn’t feel comfortable saying, “Why the stress? Let’s do all these things,” when people were losing their jobs, people were losing their lives on a grand scale in such a way that I think most of us haven’t experienced.
I just stepped away from the consumer heart of content creation and started focusing on the things that I felt brought me joy and I thought would bring other people joy. That was actively sharing my gaming experience because I’ve always been a gamer. That’s how my streaming career began.
Tubefilter: How did you originally get into gaming?
GavynXP: I’ve been a gamer since I was a kid. My parents had kid tablets where there was…what was it? It was a worm. He had his very own video game. Then I did…What was the other one? It was Putt-Putt, their various computer games. I have an older brother, he’s a lot older than I am. I used to watch him and his friends play Street Fighter and they would give me the unplugged controller and let me play along.
Gaming has always been a part of my life, both educational and scholastically. My parents gave me video games that were focused around education and then that grew into just a love for video games in general. I just grew up with it.
Tubefilter: Were you a full-time content creator before you got to Twitch?
GavynXP: I was, yes. I had been already content creating for maybe five years before I even came around to Twitch. I was mainly focused on fashion and lifestyle. I had a YouTube channel that was great. I’m going back to those roots now that I’ve rebranded. My name used to be Kleopatra Jones on Twitch, but I just switched it over to more myself. Now that it’s GavynXP, it’s me and all the facets of who I am.
I’m going back a little bit to, not so much content creation in fashion and lifestyle in terms of “I’m showing these things for the consumer aspect,” but I just want to share other parts of my life that aren’t just gaming-centered, if that makes sense. I was doing that for about five years before I started streaming and it was fun. I really enjoyed it. I feel like I was there at a time when a lot of people were doing it and it was a good learning experience. It was a good launch pad for me to seamlessly move into streaming and content creation with more gaming-focused content.
Tubefilter: When you got into Twitch, what year was that? Do you remember? You said around the pandemic.
GavynXP: 2020. Literally, I think I made my account in August of 2020 and then I think I did my first stream September of 2021. What are we in? ’24? I’ve been doing this for about three years. Literally, the pandemic happened and I was stuck at home in my basement. A friend of mine was like, “You would be a really good streamer. You’re good at gaming, you’re great on camera. You should try it.” I did. I put a lot of my savings into creating my ideal stream room. My first stream went up in 2021, I think, but I had actually been watching streamers and researching streaming probably a year before I even started.
I said, “If I’m going to stream, I want to do it right.” I researched. I watched a ton of YouTube videos. Literally, for eight months, it was all learning about OBS, learning how to use OBS, learning what Bits were and subscriptions. Just learning the Twitch jargon and how to stream because I’m a perfectionist and I need to work in therapy on that.
Tubefilter: Tell me about your experience of first going live.
GavynXP: Ooh, my experience first going live, it actually was pretty good. I was very nervous because I had never done it before. I’ve been on camera before but in such a live, immediate feedback way…I think I was very lucky because I had been in the Twitch space and I’d been talking to people about starting streaming and I had a lot of support on my first stream. People showed up and were supportive because they knew that it was something I was working toward. I still am a part of a lot of people’s communities that were just super supportive, like Xmiramira, bettynixx especially was someone who just really has been a part of my streaming career from the beginning and was super supportive. They brought their friends over to my community and to my stream, basically. They were like, “Hey, this person who is a part of our community is doing something. They’re doing their first stream. Let’s show them some love.” They did. I was really grateful.
Tubefilter: That’s huge. It’s also a very consistent theme through all sorts of streamers. There’s a big emphasis on community and helping each other with growth and discoverability. Lots of people are like, “I got into streaming because I had a friend who was an established streamer and they helped me out.” Or, “This big streamer rated me, and then people stuck around and that’s how my channel took off.” I feel like there’s so much more community support on Twitch. Other platforms can feel more siloed and isolated. YouTube, even.
GavynXP: I think it really does depend, but YouTube is very oversaturated now. Everything on YouTube is content creation. That’s what it’s for. On Twitch, it’s garnered toward community. There is the livestreaming aspect and then you get to raid someone else. YouTube doesn’t have that in their programming yet. I think small options and tools like that allow creators to support each other in a collaborative way that doesn’t always necessarily mean you have to be their buddy-buddy and be in their content, if that makes sense.
You see a lot of streamers that are friends with other streamers and they’ll stream together, but then they can also go and raid someone that maybe they don’t know. On YouTube, a lot of the creators who know each other or get to know each other, they’ll create content together, but it’s usually just a video that’s posted. It’s not a livestream and you can’t always direct your audience to them. You can link their information, but there’s something about, I think, the immediate interaction, the accessibility to say, “We’ve done this stream here and this is great. Let’s go over here and show this person support.” That is something I really like about the Twitch platform. I hope that YouTube will begin to utilize that in the future as well.
Tubefilter: Me too. So it’s been three-ish years now. How have things changed for you in terms of streaming? Has your streaming schedule changed? Has anything that you do changed? How have things progressed over the years for you?
GavynXP: I think I evolve into something new every year. The more I find fun things to do with my community or I get a lot of inspiration from other people. One of my biggest inspirations is KiwiOnTheSticks, she’s my best friend. She works so creatively. We’re literally like the left side and the right side of one brain. She just thinks of something really creative and interesting. I am the one who can execute it. I am all hands down. I can figure out how to make things work.
I’ve evolved a lot in terms of the ideas that I have. It’s easier for me to find ways to implement them. I think I’m caring a lot less, which is an interesting way to put it, but that’s been a big evolution. When I first started streaming, I really wanted to keep up with the big names. I wanted to do what a lot of those people were doing, but it wasn’t authentic to who I was. I think that’s how I’ve grown. Just being more authentic to the type of content that I want to create.
Also just the smaller things too. I think I’ve grown. I got another PC, so I have two PCs now. I’ve moved. I was streaming from my basement in my apartment in New York to now I’m in a house and I’m in a three cameras-style studio that I’ve converted my garage into. There’s a setup for gaming. There’s a setup for when I do the news or I’m just chatting and there’s the couch area, which feels, like, podcast-y, we just sit and talk. That’s changed. I don’t know if that answered the question.
Tubefilter: That answered the question. Also, I interviewed Kiwi for this same column! She’s great.
GavynXP: I remember seeing it. I was talking to her earlier today. I was like, “I’m going to do Tubefilter too!” I love her. She’s the best.
Tubefilter: Are you still making lifestyle content as well or are you mostly focused on streaming?
GavynXP: No, I completely stopped there. I’ve just been streaming gaming content mainly. On top of streamer, I’m an actress. My day job is acting. I’m very grateful to have had a pretty decent starting career. I’m in acting. That’s part of the reason why I changed my name, because I wanted to go back to who I am. My name is Gavyn Taylor. When I was doing fashion and lifestyle content, I was Gavyn Taylor, and when I’m an actress, I’m Gavyn Taylor. Initially, I tried to keep them separate because I thought that would be better for me.
But I’m finding more and more that I just really want to share all the parts of who Gavyn is. That’s how GavynXP came to be. The XP is like, I’m leveling up in life. I think that’s this new era of my life. I want to get back into sharing those things about myself, which is why I want to do sharing my gaming stuff, sharing the behind-the-scenes of, I’m on set somewhere, sharing my lifestyle. I’m going to be gardening, people might be interested in that.
To answer your question, I am going back to more lifestyle fashion content, but not in a standard vlogger content creation way. I want to be authentic and share the different parts of myself in all its variations.
Tubefilter: Where do you see things going as you’re moving forward? You’re having this big rebrand, you’re consolidating. I feel like you have a really strong vision for what you want to do.
GavynXP: Where do I see it? I don’t know. I think just where I am right now, I’m trying to be more present. I’m willing to, I don’t know, just let the chips fall where they may. I won’t say I don’t have a plan. What’s the best way to put this? I hope that I will continue to be able to make content in all of the aspects of my life as a gamer, as an actor, as just a person living in this world. I would like to document my experiences as an actor for other people who might be interested in that.
I hope that I can get more jobs. I would love to be on somebody’s stage as a gamer. I would love to be on the TwitchCon stage or hosting an Xbox showcase. Those are things that I hope that my content will continue to grow. I’m known for my production. People always talk about my production and the type of content I create. I hope I can keep innovating and inspiring and find some new and cool stuff to do for the future. I don’t know. I feel like “Where do see yourself in 10 years?” is one of those questions and I’m like, “I don’t know. I just hope we live that long. The world is on fire, please.”
I guess I hope that I can continue to, in the future, just make really cool quality content in all the aspects of my life. In gaming, in acting, that’s what I want. If I had enough money, I would open a content creator space. I would do a studio that had multiple cameras and multiple sets that people could utilize. That would be expensive, but that’s a dream.
Tubefilter: Huge. That’s something we lost when YouTube Space went away. And I don’t think Twitch has ever had that. There’s a couple spaces out there for creators now, but they tend to have high membership costs.
GavynXP: I don’t want to do it with high costs if I can help it, but rent is too damn high. I would love to have a day where people can come in for free. Once or twice a month, people can have the opportunity to come in and just film or stream for free. That would be a dream because it’s so expensive. I want people to be able to create without having to worry about financial burdens.
Tubefilter: Absolutely. What has been your favorite part of streaming so far?
GavynXP: Oh man, it’s definitely been meeting the people. I really love playing games. I really love video games. Not only just experiencing really wonderful stories by myself, but being able to do it with my community. Playing The Last of Us for the first time and all of us, no spoilers, but experiencing certain things…That has been such a wonderful thing to share. It’s like sharing life with people. Then meeting other really dope content creators like Kiwi, bettnixx, BarefootTasha, ChelseaBytes. So many creators that I’m meeting that are also just really dope people and are my friends.
I feel like a lot of people say this, but for real, it’s so fascinating. The culture of streaming and the camaraderie. There is an ugly side to it, of course, but there’s so much positive, too. I’m in my 30s, I’m making friends in my 30s again. Not again, but I’m making friends in my 30s, which is difficult to do if you’re not outside. Meeting new people has been so rewarding and such a wonderful experience. I’m very, very grateful, actually.
Tubefilter: Streaming is such a unique ecosphere.
GavynXP: Just the culture. KiwiOnTheSticks, I call her one of my best friends. We’ve hung out in person maybe three times, but I’ve known her for three or four years. I’m sure this, too, is just the culture of the internet. There are people who are really close friends just from streaming who’ve never met. It’s such a cool thing to have.
