The Minecraft miner
Dan Middleton started to film himself playing video games five years ago. Now the world’s richest YouTube star, he tells Hilary Rose how he went global.
If you’re 15 or younger you probably know everything there is to know about Dan Middleton. If you’re a little bit older you may never have heard of him, and if your teenage years are a very distant memory – let’s say, for the sake of argument, north of 35 – then you are likely to find his fame and fortune utterly bewildering.
Middleton, you see, is a gamer. By making short films of himself at home, playing video games, then posting them online, he has, according to Forbes, become one of the top influencers in the games industry and the world’s richest YouTube star, earning about £12 million (NZ$23m) last year.
Billions have watched Middleton’s videos, making him a home-grown international phenomenon. And he hasn’t even had to leave the house. Small and slim with bright blue hair, Middleton, 26, looks a bit like a Smurf. His appeal is that of the cheekychappy boy next door, crossed with the obsessive gamer. ‘‘I treat it as sitting down with your best friend every day,’’ he says.
‘‘You play a video game as you would in real life, except instead it’s with me. My fans think of me as their friend and when I meet them on the street they already know loads about me. It’s like we’ve met before. It’s quite surreal.’’ A keen gamer from the age of 6, he grew up playing Super Mario Bros on his Super Nintendo games console.
His background was pretty unremarkable: his father was in the army and his mother worked for a charity. He went on to win a place at Northampton University reading music production.
He got a part-time job stacking supermarket shelves, and although he had always enjoyed playing with a video camera and making videos, he seemed destined for a career in the music industry.
Then he discovered Minecraft and that changed everything. Occupying a randomly generated universe, Minecraft , launched in 2011, took gaming by storm with its combination of survival and creativity.
In survival mode you start with no resources and have to feed yourself and keep on going. In creative mode you have almost godlike powers to mould the game however you want.
A generation ago, if you wanted to learn how to do something new you read the manual. If you wanted to learn Minecraft you watched videos of other people doing it on YouTube.
Middleton did just that and then, in his last year of university, started posting his own videos. Shot at home with the most basic equipment, they were just of him talking to camera while he played Minecraft .
What set him apart, and started pulling in the punters, wasn’t so much his ability at the game as the way he played it.
‘‘Instead of playing it as a game, I used it as a story-telling mechanic, so I have my own characters. For example you have animals like pigs and cows and I turned those into characters, giving them names and personalities and backstories.’’
He was an instant hit. Children aged 5 to 15 loved his combination of banter, expertise and tips. By the time he graduated he was making the same amount of money from YouTube as he was stacking shelves.
His wife, whom he met at school aged 11 and married when they were 21, persuaded him to ditch the supermarket and concentrate full-time on YouTube, which went down a storm with his parents.
‘‘It was a difficult one to explain,’’ he says, grinning ruefully. ‘‘When I started, it was less well known that you could turn it into a job. The difference between five years ago and now is massive. But I told them how much it earned compared to my supermarket job and they were, like, ‘OK, that makes sense.’
His YouTube channel, DanTDM, now has more than 17 million followers and his videos have been watched more than 10 billion times.
Middleton was good at the game, but he was also engaging company, a cross between the popular boy at school and a children’s TV presenter. A fair few of his fans are 20 years younger than him, but he says he’s a big kid himself. ‘‘I just love stuff that’s fun and silly and makes good videos. If I play a new game and people don’t like it I won’t play it again. Mostly it’s just organic growth.
‘‘A certain idea will spread through word of mouth, or the YouTube algorithm will pick you up and promote you for whatever reason. But for me personally it all happened very, very quickly. Within a year I was able to do it as my full-time job.’’
He won’t say exactly how much they pay, but every 1000 views is thought to make a YouTuber just over $2. In 2016 Business Insider estimated that Middleton’s earnings were between £150,000 and £1.5m – a year later Forbes said that his 2016-17 earnings were more than £12m.
‘‘That’s a guess.’’ Is it an accurate guess? ‘‘Fairly accurate.’’
He says the only thing he has spent any serious money on is his house, and that he has made his videos using the same computer, camera and microphone he has had for two years.
‘‘Then,’’ he adds, ‘‘you just have to pay for your internet access and that’s your overheads done. I’ve made sensible choices with my money. I’m not an extravagant person. I’m very modest.’’
For the first two years Middleton stuck to Minecraft. He uploads new videos every day, most of them 15 or 20 minutes long. His fans interact with him on social media and worry about him if he doesn’t post his usual daily update. He tells them if his dog has died and he’s too upset to post, he says, ‘‘and they understand how you’re feeling. There’s a connection. I’d say I play a fairly important role in their lives.’’
It cuts both ways. He dyed his hair blue because his fans told him to, which is a little bit odd. Most people, I suggest, would ask their mates or their wife. ‘‘It’s the same thing.’’ No, it’s not. You don’t know these people. ‘‘But, well, I kind of feel like I do. And they feel like they know me. It’s that whole best-friend kind of relationship thing.’’
The fan worship can get a bit out of hand – children have turned up on his doorstep wanting selfies, which he thinks crosses a line, ‘‘but they’re kids so you take it with a pinch of salt. It’s different when parents drive their kids to my house. That’s weird.’’ He’s trying to leverage his YouTube fame and turn himself into a brand.
He has just done a 15-month live tour, with 97 shows in the UK, Australia and America, the last being where 75 per cent of his fans are based.
There are DanTDM T-shirts, hats and, last month, advent calendars.
‘‘Anything,’’ he says, ‘‘that’s cool and that I think my fans would like too.’’
He says he’s too passionate about gaming to ever give it up, but that it isn’t money that motivates him, it’s ‘‘being able to create’’. – The Times
‘‘My fans think of me as their friend and when I meet them on the street they already know loads about me. It’s like we’ve met before. It’s quite surreal.’’ Dan Middleton