2020 has become a breakthrough year for gaming: the quarantine made everyone much more active when it came to watching video content on streaming sites and video hosting sites, allowing many content creators to greatly expand their audience. One of them was the 17-year-old Briton Thomas “TommyInnit” Simons, who has grown over the past six months to become one of the main streamers and YouTubers of Minecraft worldwide. Here's how he achieved it.
YouTube Minecraft boom during the pandemic
At the end of last year, YouTube Gaming reported on unprecedented achievement – reaching the mark of 100B hours watched in 2020! Of these, more than 20% came from the hosting’s most popular game – Minecraft – which is more than twice ahead of its closest competitors, including Roblox, Garena Free Fire, Fortnite, and Grand Theft Auto V.
As noted by the representatives of YouTube Gaming themselves, Minecraft streamers turned out to be among the platform’s fastest-growing streamers last year. One of the prime examples is the speedrunner Dream, whose number of subscribers has grown by 13 times over the year: from 1M to 13M. And by the end of April 2021, their number already exceeds 21M users!
All successful Minecraft Twitch streamers hail from YouTube
The regular collaborations of Minecraft content creators have happened for quite some time now, and, along with the recorded collaborative videos, have ensured the growth of their audience at a tremendous pace. This is why the well-known streamers often form communities and create content together – especially on the extremely popular role-playing servers which are currently favored by the viewers the most.
For some, getting into such a gaming community of streamers is already an achievement. But others would rather see this as just the first step in building a career on Twitch and YouTube. And TommyInnit belongs to the latter.
Studying YouTube algorithms and reaching fame
TommyInnit, like all other Minecraft content creators, started his career on YouTube. His debut video dates back to 2013, but the first fame came to him only five years later, when the British streamer became a regular on the Hypixel server, known for its various mini-games.
Just a year and a half ago, TommyInnit celebrated 5K subscribers on YouTube, and now his main channel has over 8.5M followers! At the same time, the young British streamer has several more channels with an audience reaching millions.
Tommy’s integration with Hypixel proceeded rather quickly, and he even came up with a regular rubric for his channel – a kind of Minecraft news, where he utilized much of his inherent humor and irony while talking about all the dramas that had happened during the week. This was merely a local success: there was no talk of a multi-million audience then. But the British streamer himself believed from the very start that he would reach success.
As Simons admitted on one of the podcasts, the issue of the subscriber count was something he was always extremely worried about. This is why, from a young age, TommyInnit devoted himself to studying the inner workings of YouTube: how its recommendations work, what methods are used to retain viewers and acquire new subscribers:
“Every day I check the number of subscribers and viewers of my streams. <...> I really got very interested in the topic of algorithms in order to make my channels as big as possible." Thomas “TommyInnit” Simons
TommyInnit combines all the qualities of a successful YouTuber: he is a good storyteller, he has a great sense of humor, his videos are dynamic, and he is a skillful video editor. However, all of this was not enough for earning fame – and Thomas became famous only after receiving invitations to SMP Earth, and then to SMP Dream – which are some of the most popular Minecraft servers worldwide.
For Thomas, new communities meant new opportunities: there was an increase in content, and most importantly, TommyInnit began to make videos with other popular YouTubers much more often. This resulted in the rapid growth of his audience, at such a pace that the streamers who were ahead of Thomas at the time cannot help but envy him now.
The most popular Minecrafter on Twitch
Unlike YouTube, Minecraft is not as popular on Twitch, although it is regularly included in the platform’s top 10 games. As a result, not all of the game’s top youtubers see the streaming service as viable for themselves. But that doesn’t include TommyInnit.
See also: Who keeps Minecraft in the Twitch’s top?
Over the past six months, the British streamer’s Twitch channel has risen from the bottom to the top of the platform: TommyInnit is already in the top 20 streamers by the follower count, while the number of his unique viewers on Twitch has exceeded 6.1M (during Q4 2020 - Q1 2021).
Growth of TommyInnit's key metrics on Twitch from middle of 2019 till Q1 2021
Right now, TommyInnit is the most successful Minecraft streamer in the world. He is the absolute leader of the corresponding Twitch category in terms of average and peak viewers over the past six months – with a total of 650K peak viewers on his channel! To compare, this is more than the co-broadcast of Ninja and Drake.
Lately, Thomas hasn’t been streaming that often. As admitted by the British streamer himself, he primarily sees himself as a YouTuber - he likes to edit videos way too much. Despite the sudden growth, Thomas even considered leaving Twitch entirely, but ultimately decided not to.
TommyInnit's unique audience predominantly watches Minecraft and Just Chatting streams
Despite being committed to Minecraft, TommyInnit occasionally streams other games as well. Naturally, the charismatic Englishman prefers multiplayer titles the most. As such, he can often be seen playing Valorant and Among Us with friends, and he was also spotted several times on the Rust RP server.
Audience overlap on Twitch with top streamers by intersection with tommyinnit during Q4 2020 - Q1 2021
When it comes to Twitch self-promotions, Simons adhered to the same tactic used on YouTube – that of collaborating with other streamers. Over the years, TommyInit has made several good Minecraft friends – with Tubbo being rightfully considered the closest of these: he and Simons tend to synergize with each other rather well on joint broadcasts.
A year ago, TommyInnit was virtually unknown in the larger gaming community – and now he is arranging a comic beef with Bruno Mars, with the gaming media writing about it. It can be said that Thomas Simons is already on a par with such creators as Dream and Corpse Husband: all of them are popular enough to be compared to cults by some of the journalists. And this seems to be not far from the truth, as some fans even get tattoos with the ‘TommyInnit” nickname.
Did you like the report? Follow us on Twitter or share your feedback on our Discord channel. Still have questions or want more information about the Twitch audience? Contact us at [email protected].
