Creator Spotlight 👾 Ninu Chan: “Streaming really helped me get out of my shell.”

Welcome, Ninu! Let’s start with your story! How did you get into streaming?

My story (smiles)… I actually started streaming, sometime in 2018, I was at university doing my masters. In my free time, I played games. And I saw a lot of clips on YouTube. And that’s how I got into Twitch, watching other people play. At some point my boyfriend was like, “Oh, you know, you should stream, people like your voice and face!” So I thought I might as well try! But I’ve never done my face, no camera. Occasionally just change my profile picture on Discord. But that’s about it. But people still enjoyed it when I started, so I continued.

Initially, it was on and off. In fact, my laptop wasn’t really good at the time, there was so much lag. But viewers [on Twitch] would come by to say “Hi!” and help you out in the game if you’re stuck. Last year it started to get more serious: having schedules, making sure that I’ve tested the equipment in advance and so on.

So, the community was really welcoming from the start, and you liked that?

Yep, absolutely. The community’s really lovely and supportive as well. If you’re not having a good day, they are always there for you. It’s quite different compared to having friends in real life.

Sometimes not knowing the person on the other side of the screen is actually better. They tend to provide a true insight into how to deal with things.

It works both ways. They can also ask questions or advice on what to do. So because I teach psychology, and there’ve been some viewers studying that, I’ve even helped some of them write their personal statements for university. It’s really cool.

Fascinating! And as you started to stream more for your community, you had to get better equipment, right?

Oh, yes. Now I do have a good computer, so everything runs better. I only got it this year actually! (laughs) So for a very long time, I’d been running everything on low quality, making sure that I don’t get any new games because the laptop won’t be able to hold it. I didn’t even use an avatar at that time. I was just my voice, sometimes with images and still people enjoyed that! And when I got my new computer, it was almost painful to the eye because all the graphics just ran so smoothly! (laughs) That was amazing, and everybody was so happy for me to finally get a computer that could actually play things and people say, “Oh, Ninu, you should play this game, or no, you should try this one. Or I bet you can’t do this one on hard difficulty.” (laughs)

Ninu’s landing page on Twitch.

Sounds like you’ve had quite a few people that followed you throughout these years! How big is your community currently ?

Yeah, absolutely. Quite a few started from when I was non-existent. Well, I still am kind of non-existent (laughs). But I still have all these people! On my Discord, there are around 100 members. I’m also on the VTuber community and there are like billions of them from different countries, different worlds.

You stream exclusively in avatar now. How did you come up with your unique visual identity?

I knew about the VTuber (i.e. a virtual YouTuber) community and I enjoyed the content they produced. My friend, who’s an artist, said, “Oh, you should be like those Vtubers! Because you’ve got this chaotic energy (smiles)”. And she’s the one who made my avatar, and I’m so thankful for it, because everybody loves it. I guess it’s just really me.

What is an avatar for you? Is it just a fun way of expressing yourself or does it serve as a ‘shield’ in some way? Like an alternative identity?

People were always interested in the voice behind the stream. And I suffer from anxiety. So if I’m on camera, I get quite shy, and I can’t be myself. But because I have this avatar, I’m able to overcome it.

Some VTubers try to play a character, whereas I just play me. An avatar simply gives the viewers something to look at.

Do you manage to be expressive in your avatar? Does it move?

The camera reads my face, and my avatar currently is able to move the head and mouth thanks to that. It’s a free software I use. My friend is currently working on a new version of the avatar, which will be a big surprise for the community. You can actually do so many things with avatars. You can animate expressions and stuff like that by just hotkeying it. And that is super exciting!

Comic about Ninu by Tai Porto (credits: @TaiPortoArt).

Are there a lot of people who actually stream with avatars, or is that still more of an exception?

In the Western countries, it’s becoming more and more the case. In Japan, for example, it is very common to see avatars. There is hololive production, for instance, which is a big organisation that offers this management and has a lot of VTubers there. But yeah, there’s a whole community out there.

In real life, do you feel like streaming as an adult is something that has been misunderstood by people around you?

My friends and boyfriend have been very supportive of streaming — they’re the ones that actually encouraged me to do it. But my family does not know I stream. My parents are a bit “‘old school” in that sense. They’d get worried that I wouldn’t be able to support myself [financially], they think that, as a female, I shouldn’t be wasting my time “playing games all day”. While I actually played more games than my brother growing up! So that’s what stopped me from telling them. They’d get worried. Even though I teach [as a job] and have income coming in from that.

You touched upon an important topic when you said that you play more games than your brother but still had that prejudice. How does it feel to be a female streamer? Is there much discrimination still?

As a girl, if you are as good of a player as a fellow guy, you’re still seen as less skilled.

Not by everyone, but there are definitely people that still think like that. And so you need to perform exceptionally, much better than your male counterparts. I guess it’s just culture and gender bias in life itself as well, where women have to perform much better to be given a promotion than their male counterparts.

And overall, how exclusive is streaming today? What does it take to succeed and how difficult is it for streamers?

There are two types of streamers out there. First, those that stream for fun whenever they have time. Then, there are those that really want to make it. And that requires a lot of dedication, a lot of heartbreaks — because it’s really hard to reach.

And one of the main barriers is cost, because you need to invest to stand out. If you just have a screen of your gameplay, people might drop in, look and then just leave. So it’s really important to have the right technology to support yourself.

You also need the skills to communicate with people. It’s totally about personality, it’s what draws viewers in. And obviously, everyone is not the same. But if your personality is not very bubbly or talkative, it could hinder you. Humans really like voices and faces. And that could make a huge difference. Even if you mute a streamer, and watch their face and their reactions and how their face and hand moves, you can kind of see if they would be a good content creator to watch or not.

Beside that, if you’re streaming, you also need to support the way you live [on the side], which can make it really difficult. People don’t imagine how much time streamers put into it behind the scenes: planning the game to play, burning and checking the audio works, making sure the hardware is capable of handling certain games, checking if it’s okay to stream in certain places, maybe even making content to post on YouTube. There’s like a lot of things going on in the back.

What about you, do you create any content around your streams?

I’d love to, but I never have the time. I’ve always wanted to make a YouTube channel of all things I do in stream, but I don’t get the chance to even look into making a video and editing, or what software or hardware items I’d need to get. There’s not enough time.

The other day, I was using some online editor for videos. And that took me like two days, and the clip was only three minutes long, so I don’t know how others do it! (laughs) But people were happy, so it was worth the sacrifice.

To finish our conversation, how would you say streaming has changed your life?

It made such a big difference. When I was at university, I was so depressed, suffering from anxiety and having eating disorders.

And when I got into streaming, it felt like people finally understood me.

There’ll be some people that might even share their problems. Together, we kind of help them understand where they’re coming from. People come into my stream and say, “Today, I’m feeling like this and this, I kind of give them an insight into the disorder, and how to seek help for it. And then there’ll be someone else in the chat saying, “Oh my god, I feel like that, but I didn’t know that it wasn’t normal. Something that I should look into.”

I suppose with certain disorders, like personality disorders, it might not be understood well by the doctors, because they haven’t experienced that. But when there’s someone out there in the world that has experienced the same thing as you, there is some sort of connection, and they can give you concrete tips and coping mechanisms.

And streaming really helped me with my confidence and talking. If I didn’t do streaming, I totally would have not done my current job. I would not be out there talking to students. It really allowed me to come out of my shell.

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