GAMETECH: Meet the new face of YouTube

HIS name was Felix Kjellberg, once. Just an everyday games enthusiast from Gothenburg. Unremarkable, unknown, unlikely. He was studying industrial economics at Chalmers University, before the change. Before PewDiePie was born. 

In 2010, Kjellberg began to fade into the background, and PewDiePie began to take over. It all started with a YouTube account, created in 2010. The account was christened PewDiePie (pronounced like ‘Cutie Pie’) and Kjellberg used it to promote vlogs and Let’s Plays. Kjellberg was following in the footsteps of thousands of other gamers, enthusiasts who wanted to share their opinions in video, denizens of YouTube who had been born pushing the ‘subscribe’ button. PewDiePie was a bombastic, cartoonish, effervescent persona that was deteremined to entertain the world.

In 2011, Kjellberg lost his first battle with that persona, quitting university to focus on YouTube full-time. It didn’t matter to PewDiePie that Kjellberg had needed straight As just to enrol in the university. It didn’t matter because PewDiePie was on a mission.