Celebrity Gamers on YouTube and Their Influence on the Gaming Community

Video gaming was once seen as a pastime of the young and the unsuccessful. Still, now that gaming has hit the mainstream, these beliefs are now laughable—many people, including celebrities, game on YouTube. By celebrities, we’re referring to people who became famous in pop culture outside of YouTube, names that generations probably recognize. Let’s look at five gamers on YouTube and explain how they’ve influenced the gaming community.

Remember celebrities do not rule YouTube’s gaming sphere, with most popular gaming YouTubers rising to power from gaming alone. Therefore, you can be among the greats if you have a good personality, know how YouTube works, and invest in advertising, such as buying YouTube likes.

Conan O’Brien

Conan is a well-known late-night show host, hosting Late Night With Conan O’Brien from 1993-2009, was briefly the Tonight Show host from 2009-2010, and hosted his successor, the late-night show Conan from 2010-2021. He began uploading clips from Conan on his YouTube channel, and one YouTube-only skit was Clueless Gamer. This involved Conan playing video games as someone who is not a gamer and adding his commentary.

Being popular with the Millennial generation, Conan’s Clueless Gamer segments gave his audience a good laugh seeing their favorite games played by someone who didn’t know much about gaming and showed that a late-night host could adapt and appeal to younger generations. Conan has not done his segment since his Conan show ended in 2021, but he may one day make a comeback. He’s also had roles in video games such as Halo 4 and Death Stranding. We may see Conan more in the future in other games, and who knows, maybe Kojima will ask him to come back for Death Stranding 2.

Freddie Prinze Jr.

Freddie Prinze Jr. is an actor whose fame was most popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with some video game voice work under his belt, including Mass Effect 3. His channel, GEGGHEAD, involves gaming, including tabletop and live streaming.

At 16k subs, it’s one of the smaller celebrity gaming channels. It shows that fame doesn’t necessarily translate to instant popularity on YouTube, but he has built a dedicated audience there. Sadly, he has not live-streamed a game in a couple of years, but perhaps one day, we can see him play again.

Jack Black

Jack Black is a comedian, actor, and musician who isn’t afraid to let his nerd flag fly. Recently, he voiced Bowser in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which has become the highest-grossest video game movie of all time as of this article. Black’s channel has gaming-themed content, including a recent Tenacious D song about video games, streams with his family, and some funny skits based on popular games such as Red Dead Redemption 2. For decades, many people have loved Black for his wholesome silliness, and one look at his YouTube channel, and it’s easy to see why. Recently, he was in The Mandalorian with Lizzo, and together, they did funny TikTok together. As a gamer at heart, he’s a man who loves nerdy things and isn’t afraid to show it off as an avid gamer. 

Ronda Rousey

Ronda Rousey is a wrestler and MMA fighter whose name is quite recognizable. But what some fans may not realize is that she’s an avid gamer, too. She’s passionate about video games and loves to stream them. 

Rousey’s YouTube channel has live streams of games such as Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, God of War: Ragnarok, and much more.

One stereotype about gamers is that they’re out of shape and that it’s a male-dominated field. Rousey manages to disprove both of these in one go through her channel.

Chandler Riggs

Chandler Riggs is best known for playing Carl in AMC’s The Walking Dead, where fans watched him grow from a child to a young man until his death in Season 8. Also, he has a gaming channel where he uploads clips from his Twitch streams.

At 23, Riggs is part of Gen Z, a generation where nearly 90% play video games. Even though Millennials and Gen X grew up with gaming, gaming has never been more accessible. This is why we expect many more celebrities to get into gaming as this generation ages.

Final Words

This is but a small sampling of celebrities who are gamers. There are many more, often on Twitch. We wanted to focus on celebrities who had an official presence on YouTube. Interestingly, celebrities are people with hobbies, just like you and me—many love to play a good game after a hard day of work. Many of them like to talk about their favorite games with their fans too and are not afraid to show that they’re people of many talents.