Thank goodness: On Friday, gaming star and YouTube creator Seán William McLoughlin, better known as Jacksepticeye, debuted his latest edition of annual charity event Thankmas at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles.
Filled with fellow online stars joining, the drive raises money for the nonprofit Crisis Text Line with the donations for the 2024 show having already crossed $280,333.54 of McLoughlin’s $1 million goal just over an hour and a half into the live stream.
Ahead of his biggest project of the year, McLoughlin spoke with Variety about his plans for the future of his YouTube channel, what more he wants to do with his Jacksepticeye brand, and if he’s still considering retirement in a couple years.
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What are your goals for Thankmas this year?
Pretty similar to what we did last year. We’re keeping the same format of doing it live, but streamed at the same time, because that was such a success last year. But we were also bumping up against timings and everything last year, and it was the first time doing it, so we weren’t as comfortable as we are with it now trying to figure it out. So now we have a plan of what we’re going to be doing during the show, and it’s just playing games, having guests on and whatever makes the most fun for the people who are watching. That is always our plan. I don’t really try and make it bigger and bigger and bigger every year, because I think that’s an unsustainable thing to do, and you’re always kind of chasing your tail at that point. I just want to make sure it’s solid and we can raise a bunch of money, and that’s all I really plan for every year. As long as something doesn’t horribly go wrong, where it impedes us, I’m happy.
What can you say about your first video game, “The Overnight Watch,” that you are working on right now?
It’s based in the universe that I’ve created myself already, but it kind of has an “Observation Duty twist.” It has like a “Five Nights at Freddy’s” sort of vibe to it in terms of the structure and the format of it. Our goal for this is to build out this universe and show some of the background. It’s more about vibes and feeling and world building than it is just about straight mechanics and story.
Do you have a launch date set?
Not yet. I was just glad that we were able to get the teaser up on Halloween. It’s very hard to make video games now. I completely understand why nobody says when their game is coming out, or they say it’s coming out, but it’s in two years, because it just takes a really long time. Even to make a small game.
What content do you want to do outside of your own videos and now gaming? Would you like to try TV or film?
I’d like to get involved in every piece of media that I can. I’d love to do an audio story, where you just tell a story through audio alone. And there’s a bunch of those these days, especially with the rise of audio books, too. I’m such a sucker for good audio anyway, that I’m like, how do you tell a story through audio cues only? And I think that’s a fun idea. And I’d love to do a TV show at some point, or a movie at some point, or animation — but they’re all such hard things to get into, and they all cost so much money, and there’s such a barrier to them. It’s not impossible, but it’s just the idea has to be right for me to want to tap into those. And I feel like we have a bunch of ideas that we could, but time will tell.
What genres would appeal to you most for projects?
I think horror and sci-fi. Fantasy is also something that I’m really into, but that’s more in the novel and game space. But I would love to do something horror/sci-fi, kind of crossover tand blend that genre. I mean, there’s a ton of them already. Being a fan of “Dark” and “Lost,” I feel like TV shows like that are exactly the type of stuff that I would like to make. It would probably end up being a lot worse, because those are geniuses at the top of the craft, but it’s just a cool thing. I miss when TV shows were kind of like that, because “Lost” came out, and I was such a theorizer, and I’d go online and go to forums, and I remember the water-cooler moments of every week. And these days, you kind of just get everything thrown at you at once, and then everyone’s rushing to watch it, because no one wants to be left behind. And I miss that sort of old-school format.
Where do you see yourself in the next few years? Will you still be making the content you make now on YouTube?
I did a video earlier this year because every YouTuber was retiring, and I was like, yeah, I think I have two years left of me. But I think I was also just kind of burnt out in everything that I was doing, and since then, I felt like putting it out there made it easier to go nicer on myself, in a way, and then the audience realizing like, oh, this is something that’s finite and fleeting and it can disappear. And I think since then, the mentality around my channel has changed. And I feel like maybe two years, I don’t know, it was kind of silly to put a timer on that. And I’m enjoying it a lot more now than I was earlier in the year. I want to whittle down what I’m doing to just the essentials and just the stuff that I’m really passionate about, so I’m not taking on too much and then half-assing all my content. But I really do enjoy making videos and playing games and seeing people’s reactions and interacting with people in that regard. So I think I’ll probably just be doing this for a while. I mean, it’s one of the best jobs in the world, I just get to sit down and play video games all the time. So I don’t really want to take that for granted or lose it any time soon.
What do you think retirement would look like for a creator?
I mean, what does creator even mean? Making things? I think a lot of the people who retire from this version of it probably just want to do other things. So you’re not really retiring, you’re just shifting focus. But because the YouTube system is all about consistency and uploading and regularity and everything, I guess you kind of have to say you’re retiring from this idea of yourself. But I feel like, for me, it’s just trying to create more artistic things outside of what I do now. Because uploading games and everything is fine, but I don’t really see that as artistic, from my point of view. Maybe this is a bit too pretentious to be saying it this way, but I always like doing stuff that kind of goes beyond what I’m doing now, and make stories. And I’m really into filmmaking, but I just don’t really take the time to do it as often as I would like. So I probably want to do that. Maybe make some more games, shift into more narrative things, and I think I’ll always just be creating something. But whether it’s on the Jacksepticeye banner or a different channel or a different ecosystem, I don’t know. I am very lucky that I get to just take my channel and do whatever I want with it, so I can shift it into something entirely different, if I wanted to. And I’ve been doing this for 12 years now. So it’s one of those things that I’ve gotten to a point where now I feel like comfortable enough to shift gears whenever I need to, and I’m not really worried about the grind, and I’m not really worried about the relevancy of what I’m doing. And not everything has to be about bigger numbers all the time, and I think that that’s an important shift that is going on on YouTube right now.
This interview has been edited and condensed.