Gaming skill Aditya Sawant aka Dynamo, is one of India’s most popular streamers with over six million subscribers on YouTube. Once known for being an emulator player — playing PUBG Mobile on PC via an emulator — he recently made the switch to mobile-only streaming, and his popularity continues to grow.
PUBG
Sawant has also expanded his interests to owning a gaming clan and encouraging up-and-coming gamers in India. At Paid for Articles Aman Network18 Digital Videos, Head Ragini Verma sat down with him to discuss the impact of gaming in India. They talk about how life had changed for him after becoming a gamer, how one can make gaming a full-time career, and how gamers maintain their physical and mental wellbeing. They also discuss his ‘philosophical’ Instagram captions and the origins of his now-famous catchphrase, ‘patt se headshot.’ Below is the entire exchange:
Ragini: At 1UP gaming, when we had first reached out to you for an interview, you (Aditya) were at 400k subs; by the time we shot it, you already reached 800k, and when we rolled it out, you had touched the magical one million mark. Today, after a little over a year, you are 6.3 million strong. What does that number mean to you?
Aditya: Basically, I have been working hard on this. When we met, we were just 400k; a lot of things happened in life. We worked on content as well, streaming, games, and many other things. Timing is key for me. I had set the timings of morning, evening, and night. So, three times a day. So, obviously, if one person does one thing at a time, I was doing three things simultaneously, so I am reaping three times the benefit.
Ragini: There was no shortage in your hard work.
Aditya: Yes, obviously. My life changed upside down, totally. I was like an outdoor kind of guy, football, table tennis. I have played football at the national level, table tennis at the state level, badminton at the state level, and basketball. I was an outdoor games guy. I tried streaming but didn’t find much success. But, when I saw there was potential in YouTube with the increase in views and subscribers, I started to structure my content. I started studying content, how people react and respond to it. That really helped me a lot. As I said, my life totally changed after that.
Ragini: I think people might look at gaming and say it is so easy, you just play games, and you do that as a profession. You touched upon how much hard work went into getting a huge following. Why don’t you talk about the kind of daily investment that goes into this? What kind of things do you need to sacrifice, the skills you need to develop and hone to make this your bread and butter?
Aditya: I am a business management student. I know how to manage time. If you manage your college and studies well, you are left with a lot of time if you don’t have extra classes. If you can manage all of that well, you are left with lots of time to work on YouTube. If you are a content creator or a streamer, you get a lot of time at night, probably 2–3 hrs to do streaming. I have tried streaming at night, so from my personal experience, I can say that. From morning to evening, if your schedule is packed with classes, then at night from seven pm to ten pm or eight pm to eleven pm, you can do streaming depending on your schedule. If you can manage your time well and focus on the streaming carefully, results will appear automatically.
Ragini: So hard work really pays. Adi, we have to talk about that really bold move you have made. You moved from emulator to mobile at your peak. Talk about what prompted this move and made you finally decide to bite the bullet.
Aditya: At first, I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it. When we met and filmed the video, back then, I was playing on an emulator. I had given one year to it. After one year of practice, suddenly, I moved to mobile. You observe everything drastically. There were many problems as well. Suppose you are used to a particular screen resolution for a year now; you can see your enemies clearly, then if you shift to a 5–6 inch phone, that gives a lot of problems. Then your hand movements. If you’re playing on PC, you have just to use 3–4 fingers and your mouse, which is very easy.
Aditya: So, technically, it has no meaning. First of all, I had a friend whose surname was the same and the rhyming was gaucho. So I used to tease him, wherever he used to go. I don’t know how it came out during the stream.
Ragini: I think you need to connect with him and make your fans meet the real ‘gaucho gacho.’
Aditya: Yeah
Ragini: And we will reveal that at some other stage. When did you realize that ‘patt se headshot’ would become such a thing? Do you recall the first time you used the phrase?
Aditya: Uh, I guess no…but, then the sound of the gun. Like, if you are using AWM, the sound is deafening. So if you are using it with a suppressor, it doesn’t make that sound pretty..; one can say that. So I don’t know why; whenever I get a headshot or firing randomly, I give the word to that. It is working great.
Ragini: It has become a thing, and how.
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