Streamer Spotlight: DataDave
Welcome to a new Streamer Spotlight where this time, the spotlight falls on DataDave!
Voice actor, college professor and content creator, primarily focused on MMOs, RPGs, and more, DataDave does it all! He runs an interactive stream, reads webtoons with guest voice actors, and enjoys broadcasting story games.
I sat down with DataDave for a chat about his stream life and his life outside of streaming with voice acting and college professor-ing.
Hey Dave, thanks for stopping by! When and why did you start streaming?
I started streaming summer of 2016 when I heard about Twitch from gaming with a close friend of mine and his coworker. He was streaming on Twitch and I checked out his channel and found it cool that he was interacting with people through streaming and chat online. He told me I could do it too with a webcam, laptop and mic so I decided to give it a shot. My laptop was pretty weak, so I decided to stream the indie game, Undertale, and I got my first viewer during my first stream and loved it. We chatted about anime, gaming, and he helped me navigate the game. Before I knew it, I started streaming daily which is where my catch phrase “Day to Day with DataDave” because I do some form of content daily from streaming, game development, voice over and more.
What games do you prefer to stream?
I love strategy games, RPGs, and MMOs so you can find me oftentimes playing Final Fantasy XIV, Pokémon, and one of my new favorite games to stream in an unique way, Super Mario World with only voice commands.
What can people expect from your stream?
You can expect an engaging stream both through the community and myself where we chat and let conversations naturally flow. There are countless times where we go from talking about things such as our favorite games to what’s the best anime out right now, predictions on future Marvel movies, or anything that as a community we discuss. It’s fun flowing and interesting conversations combined with entertaining gameplay.
How do you find being an out LGBT streamer?
I really love it and found a community through being an LGBT streamer. I came out roughly two years ago on Twitter to my entire streaming community for the first time and everybody both within and not in my personal circle saw it. I was pretty nervous about what kind of reaction I’d receive, would I lose views, friends, etc, but what I found is that everyone accepted me and nothing really changed. I’d say now that my community is even more LGBT friendly with how open I’ve been and given people a comfortable space to do the same especially within my own stream.
What do you enjoy the most about streaming?
I love the conversations that come from chatting with viewers and the fun moments that come from broadcasting games. The amount of silly comments, hilarious moments, and experiences we have during streaming has always and continues to be a joy. A lot of times, we bring up older games, watch previous clips, and reminiscence about fun moments through streaming while we create more.
What have you learned about yourself through streaming?
I’ve learned that I can be a really positive influence on people by just being myself around them. I’ve heard a lot of times that, by sharing my goals and people seeing how hard I work at what I want and dream about, has inspired them to do the same. I would love it if each person pursues their passions and goals headfirst, and I’ll help anyway that I can to those goals, but it seems the best way to encourage someone to do those things, is to do it for yourself too. It’ll inspire someone to see your work ethic, passion and how you deal with the ups and downs when going for your goals.
Alongside streaming, you’re also a voice actor. What got you interested in that?
What got me interested in voice acting is that I started to watch more content creators that did voice over during their live streams and I loved it. I was looking for something to do alongside live streaming that I enjoyed and after watching them, I figured it might be fun. I looked online for a voice over coach, some classes, and I have been taking classes for some years. Since then, I’ve gotten roles in video games, and commercials and continue to build my portfolio to one day do voice acting full time. Voice acting went from an interest quickly to a passion and a dream is to one day be in bigger anime titles and some of my favorite video game series.
What might we have heard you in?
So far, Rune 2 as a few characters, Epidemic Sound commercial on YouTube, and a few Stereo app ads on various platforms.
What would be your dream role or character to voice?
I have a few answers on this, but the biggest things to me would be to be a playable party member in a future Final Fantasy and in a future Persona game. I love those franchises so much.
What’s the game that defined your childhood?
Pokémon for sure. From the trading card games to the many different versions I’ve played with friends and cousins. I still stream it to this day.
Away from streaming, what games are you currently playing?
Off stream, I’ve been playing a lot of Genshin Impact and strategy games like Final Fantasy Tactics. I’ve been learning game development recently and another goal is to make my own style of tactics games so really studying and looking at how different mechanics works helps me.
What game are you most looking forward to coming out this year?
I can’t wait for Deathloop, it looks really interesting and I always like series where they are inside some type of time loop trying to break it. It’s a tangent, but one of my favorite anime series is Re:Zero and without spoiling, it definitely has loops in the series.
What does the future hold for you?
I hope the future holds for me a future where I am able to voice act full time alongside streaming while continuing to pursue creative venues that interest me. Some of those include game development, writing and maybe even casting voices for games one day. So I’ll keep working, learning and going towards those goals.
To find out more about DataDave, head on over to his Twitch channel.
About The Author
