An interview with one of Ireland’s largest streamers and content creators, Chris O’Gara. On how his hobby became a long-term career with sponsorships from Virgin Media, Currys, and a feature on Netflix’s “House of Streams”.

By Alex Cloud

Streaming is still somewhat of an untapped and undiscovered niche to many, with platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Twitch dominating the scene and allowing creators to monetize only once certain requirements have been met. As a career, it is a new edition to the market and certainly quite unexplored.

“I remember I had expressed that I wanted to do content to my family, and they weren’t really for it. They told me, ‘You need to get your college degree’ or ‘get a job there’.” O’Gara explained.

“Eventually I told them, I know you don’t believe me, but I know I’m going to be successful,” he continued.

As it stands, O’Gara has 55,000 followers on the popular streaming platform Twitch and boasts over 100,000 on Instagram. However, this has all stemmed from his long love of all things gaming and technical.

“I studied computer science in college, and for a long time I thought that was my goal – to get into some kind of techy stuff. One of my modules was game development, and I used Pokémon’s Lucario as a character in the game I wanted to do. I spent all summer on it! Then, the college told us they didn’t have enough people to continue the module, and I was like okay, I don’t want to be here anymore,” O’Gara shared about his experience making the decision to drop out of college.

After having a few positions in retail and waiting tables, O’Gara explained he spent a short amount of time in a drill bit factory to make ends meet.

“I remember eating lunch and nobody was speaking to one another. There were six or seven people at the table and I was awkwardly just waiting for someone to say something and engage. Eventually, someone mentioned the bins being full and asked if someone could take them out – that was me. It was so pivotal, at the end of the day I gave back my key and thought to myself you know what? I’m not coming back, I’m going to make something out of being a streamer,” he said.

“I spent three years doing stuff I didn’t want to do. Then my brother came to me and asked if I wouldn’t mind doing some video work and recording some gigs – and I said sure.”

Without a doubt content creation heavily relies on having experience in videography and photography, whether it is done on your own time, or if you are fortunate enough to be paid for your work. Once you learn new skills like editing, it can be extremely rewarding.

“I used to play games with my mates on the PlayStation, and you can stream directly from the PlayStation straight online, so I started doing that. Then I realised people actually started watching, that’s when I realised. Oh! This is actually going somewhere…and yeah, it just turned into some beast of a job.”

Being a content creator and streamer requires energy and of course a consistent presence. Unlike a 9-5 office position, streamers often start streaming after completing hours of editing and creating during the day by going live in the evenings. It is a completely self-run full time position.

“I’m genuinely like a damn Duracell bunny, I have loads of energy and a great social battery. But even for me, as invincible as I thought I was, the burnout was a lot…at the start when I wasn’t as scheduled as I am now my whole day revolved around streaming and nothing else, 24/7. Over time, it really kicked my a**,” he said.

Of course, there is a curiosity behind the journey, and my main question was how he kept up. On an average stream, there could be anywhere from 20 to 70 active viewers and chat participants – and only one of him. On an even larger scale with his social media following.

“I feel like with social media, it’s difficult to keep up with every person and it’s hard to make that kind of intimate connection with every single person who interacts with your content. With streaming, you’re live. It’s like being in a shop where people are always walking in and out all the time but soon you recognise your regulars, then you get their senses of humour and they get yours…it’s like a big family now,” he said.

“I’ve been streaming for nearly nine years, and I still have some viewers who have been there since day 1 – it’s incredible.”

Throughout his streaming journey, O’Gara has dipped into a plethora of different games, hobbies and niches. Starting with majority Fortnite content, which is a massively popular free to download online game, he explained that his community stays for the general vibe of his streams, and that it has allowed him to explore various different types of content without the fear of losing viewership.

“I’ve never been in a mindset of ‘oh this game will get me more viewers so I’ll do that’–  you’ll have a portion of people who will come to watch specifically for a type of game yeah, but overtime I realised my core community and supporters don’t care what game I’m on. They know if they come on stream, I’m here, and there will always be a bit of craic and we have fun, you know?” He said.

“I think my best memory so far was being on ‘House of Streams’ on Netflix. It was absolutely amazing, I met all these streamers from all over the world and one of them was even at the Johnny Depp trial which was crazy. I was enjoying my time in Malta, with a little drink in hand during filming. Then it got to a point about a week and a half in where I was like, Jesus, I can actually win this – then I did! The winner got a Bitcoin and honestly it was just an unforgettable experience to go in the first place and then to actually win too,” O’Gara explained.

I made time to tune in to one of The Gara Show streams to understand how the concept of livestreaming as a form of likelihood worked and saw active viewers in the chat, gifted donations, subscriptions fly like confetti and viewership numbers go up and down constantly. Like O’Gara had said, it was like a shop, but from what I saw – it was more like a family built over years of consistency and of course, passion for his career.