My Story
My real name is Lily and I'm from Wisconsin, USA. Yes, the cheese state. And yes, that is a coincidence (sort of!).
I'm 34 years young and I've loved video games ever since I was a kid and my dad brought home our first crappy PC from work with a compilation of old DOS games that I played endlessly. I was absolutely awful at them, but I kept playing them anyways. Later on, when I was a teenager, I built my first PC (with the help of my dad) and never looked back. I couldn't get enough of video games, my favorite pastime was going to Best Buy and just literally staring at all the games I couldn't afford and dreaming about playing them. Once in a blue moon I was able to bring one home in the box and install it. It took hours to install but I didn't care, I'd sit there and read the manual and hype myself up about the game I was about to play.
Then one day.... World of Warcraft was released. *DUN DUN Duuuun!!*
It was really hard to explain to my mom why I wouldn't leave my room and I don't think she ever believed that I was talking to real people inside a video game online. Pretty sure she just thought I was losing it. She was right though, I played WAY too much of this game. My mid teen years were pretty much consumed by it, but I was having a great time! Looking back though, it definitely wasn't good for me or my social life. Sorry mom, you were right!
However, being a total nerd when I was young definitely shaped me into who I am today and I wouldn't change my past for anything.
Fast forward through school, various jobs that I hated and some college years... My mid 20's.... I discovered YouTube and began watching Let's Plays. My favorite channels were Veriax and Gopher at the time since I was absolutely obsessed with RPG's and I loved the immersive commentary style they brought to their videos. This is what influenced my to start my own YouTube channel. I was still working full time but I thought it might be a fun hobby to do on the side while I figure out what I want to do with my career (which, at the time I thought was completely separate from gaming).
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On October 5th, 2014 I started my YouTube channel. I wanted to play RPG's and roleplay as my character like Gopher and Veriax did so that is what I started with. My first big let's play was Skyrim and I still remember how much fun I had playing the game not only for myself but for other people watching. Mind you, I had about 10 viewers at the time but I didn't care! There was something completely different about more enjoyable for me to play and record versus just playing on my own. It felt sort of like I was cataloguing my experience and saving it forever and it didn't feel like such a waste of time to play. Instead, it felt rewarding, creative and like I was building something.
After playing RPG's for a while I realized I should branch out and play other types of games too because I was getting burnt out. I started recording every kind of game I felt like playing. This was great for my experience, and I learned a lot from it, but it also eventually labeled my channel as 'variety' and as I would learn much later on, the YouTube algorithm doesn't like that.
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Soon I started livestreaming more on Twitch. Since my YouTube channel had stopped growing, I decided to start focusing on growing my Twitch channel and community. This is one of the best things I have done with my brand as a whole. You guys (my little community) is my favorite and most proud aspect of my channel. I might be biased but I honestly feel like we have the best, most positive and cheesy community on the platform. Thank you all for being part of it!
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In 2017 I had an opportunity to try going full time working on my channel. To my surprise, there was enough support from my amazing community and enough success on YouTube to make this my full time job. I've been doing it full time every since and it's truly my dream job.
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I'd like to say that my YouTube channel is at a great place, but part of building a channel is learning new things all the time, and I still feel that I have a lot of work to do. I'm immensely proud of what I have built, and I look forward to the new exciting changes that the future will bring. At the time of writing this (Jan 5th, 2022) LiliaTV has 65k subscribers. My long-term goal is 100k, let's see if we can get it!
Lilia
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