The most popular figure in Starcraft II isn't one of today's top pros, or a team owner, or even one of the game's creators. Sean Plott, better known by the alias Day[9], has been obsessed with this series and its culture since the first game was released in 1998. And he knows why. "It's safe. It is one of the safest things you can do. You will suffer no bodily injury, break no arms. It's not like setting up a business where you can really upset and offend people. It's highly social. You're playing against very kind, analytic, sweet-hearted nerds. I mean, hell, even if you're playing against a murderous drug dealer – you're doing it over the internet! And no murderous drug dealers play a lot of Starcraft."

Blizzard's real-time strategy series has a long history beyond the scope of this piece, but suffice to say Starcraft: Brood War and Starcraft II are two of the leading lights in esports – competitive videogaming – with millions of active players and year-round global events with huge prize pools. Sean Plott was 11 years old when the first game was released and, along with his elder brother Nick, has been obsessed with the game and its iterations ever since.

It is hard to quantify exactly what Plott does to someone unfamiliar with gaming culture, and in particular the recent rise in popularity of video streaming sites. A singular figure in the evolving ecosystem of esports, Plott is focused on Starcraft II but has fingers in all sorts of pies; streamer, analyst, commentator (aka 'shoutcaster'), event organiser, community focal point and many more.

The internet at the tail-end of the nineties, of course, was very different. "Back when I was a wee noobie and had just got this game, I didn't know about competitive balance; the internet was fairly new so there weren't really any venues for that kind of discussion. The idea of community sites was a new thing, most players didn't even know about them. So [the reason I kept playing Starcraft then] all comes down to the way the game feels. Just the act of moving things around and building stuff, and the responsiveness is really crisp and snappy. It's the difference between riding a good bike and riding one with a flat tyre – it just feels wrong. Starcraft feels full, it feels great."

The Plott brothers shared a passion for the game, which soon enough saw the pair entering tournaments – aided and abetted by their mother. Sean first realised he was getting seriously good after immersing himself in the World Game Tour ladder (a league system for Starcraft: Brood War), obsessively downloading and analysing replays from the top players, and seeing a drastic improvement.

Pole position

"A year or two after this started, suddenly I'm the one at the top of that ladder, and I'm like, 'whoa, something's changed!' It's only then, around 2004/5, where I started to train really seriously and really hard." Plott was going pro, which meant a crazy schedule in the months before the biggest tournaments and re-scheduling his university work. "I'd wake up, play for two hours, eat lunch, then I'd play for six hours till seven, then I'd eat dinner and take a break till eight-thirty or nine, then I'd play till three in the morning. So it was two hours, six hours, and six hours. I'd sleep from three am to ten am every day."

It paid off: Plott won the 2005 World Cyber Games USA Starcraft tournament. It was a biggie. "[It was] one of the weirdest moments I've ever had. Because you get this idea when you're growing up about how great it's gonna feel to be the champion. You always see those dramatic shots of people winning where they burst into tears and champagne starts pouring out of the ceiling and it's awesome. And I remember playing against Yosh, Sherwin Mahbod, in the finals of WCG 2005, and being in that last game and thinking, 'I'm totally going to win this, there's no way I can lose.' Then I won and I remember thinking, 'What do I do now? Do I hug him? I guess so.' I went over there and hugged Yosh and he said, 'well played, man' and I said, 'thanks'. And I felt cool but it was kinda weird. The joy was delayed. Because you don't wanna be all, 'Yeah, I fucking beat everyone!' You don't want to be a sore winner. Yosh was one of my practice partners, he'd helped me get better!"

Plott in the Brood War days. ‘The second win in Cancun was satisfying. I beat Testie in the finals 3-2 and that felt fucking good, because I respect him so much, I really think he’s one of the best gamers of all time, and that one time I got him. But there was no-one there!’

Though Plott would go on to win the WCG Pan-American championship, held in Cancun in 2007, that first trophy led to an important realisation. "For me, far more so than winning an event, the joy was in learning and improving and feeling like I was solving a lot of problems. I almost think I'd have more joy in that winning spot if I played really intense dramatic games. But it's such a funky feeling when you work out what someone's going to do, you know the exact weakness, and you exploit it at the right time. 'OK there I did it, boom got 'im!'"

Plott kept on playing as well as contributing ceaselessly to Team Liquid, the internet's greatest Starcraft site. "Starcraft is like a culture, a lifestyle you can immerse yourself in. I was obviously into Brood War's competitive scene, and then I was running a little low on time in grad school. I thought as another thing I could be doing, let me try to talk about the strategy rather than play. So first I tried writing articles, then I tried audio podcasts, then I finally tried video streaming and it felt really good."

Building an audience online

The Day [9] Daily began in April 2010, coinciding with the beta (pre-release) phase for Starcraft II's first instalment, subtitled Wings of Liberty. The show initially looked at pro matches in great detail, and soon widened out into more general themes: how to deal with losing, analysing replays, fine-tuning builds – if you haven't seen one before, it's well worth setting aside some time for Daily #100. The show's audience began to build in the runup to Starcraft II's release, which in turn led to Plott becoming one of the most in-demand commentators at major Starcraft II events. Thanks to jetting around for such gigs while maintaining a punishing video schedule Plott was soon working 100-hour weeks – while he was still at university.

"I started not being able to do it on my own when I was getting so much email that I had to ask for help from my friend Eric. We'd heard about Blip.tv and that money could be generated straightaway, you didn't need a partnership like you do on Youtube, so we started playing there. Then all of a sudden money starts coming in. So I'm in grad school. I'm making all this content that people can watch for free, and I'm starting to be able to generate some revenue."

Hard work and willingness seem to define Plott, but in one respect he was fortunate – his own initiatives coincided with the wider popularity of streaming. Sites like Blip, Twitch and Justin.tv gave professional players and personalities the opportunity to not just broadcast live to a growing audience, but also to make money through ads and sponsorships. Plus, streamed content can later be edited and uploaded to YouTube.

"On the surface I make videos but then also there's… managing's the wrong word for it. There's cultivating the community that watches those videos. How do you not just make good content but how do you really truly connect with those people. Because people are watching live, and I can directly interact with them right now. How do you do that? How do you get the word out? How do you take those skills and dovetail them into other things?"

'Grad school isn't generating money'

This is perhaps the most important talent for great streamers, and Plott seized the day; organising a launch party for Wings of Liberty, commentating at countless shows, setting up a 'for fun' corporate league, and cross-promoting everything. "Gradually stepping forward on five different fronts. The big moment for me came when I was flying around to all these different events, coming home and doing the Daily, and had the thought, 'grad school isn't generating money'." Plott laughs – at this point in time he'd already produced more than 200 Dailies. "I want this degree. I love this program. I'm learning so much, I love my professors and all my classmates. But a business is happening without me even choosing for it to happen. It is just occurring naturally."

In terms of numbers, around 5,000 people watch Plott record each Daily live, but individual episodes then rack up anywhere from 60,000 and 3.5m viewers afterwards. In the other metrics that matter online, like YouTube subscribers (350,000) or Twitter followers (160,000), business is equally good. And one of the most impressive aspects about Plott is how seamlessly he combines being both Day[9] and the CEO of Day[9]TV.

Plott has shown careful judgment in how he's grown things; a not-inconsiderable talent when you're dealing with gaming communities, which largely consist of entitled young men. I recall when Plott started selling merchandise – something a chunk of his fanbase had been loudly clamouring for – there was cynicism and grumbling, which in the context of his main product being free seems especially crazy.

"Broadly speaking, people have no idea about the amount of work that goes into really anything. Some people think that I get a game and think, 'hey, let's do a show about it' and then just turn it on. I've had people interview me who say things like, 'Oh so the Daily takes an hour of your time, so what do you do for the rest of the day? What's it like having that freedom?' And I'm thinking, 'dude, are you fucking high?'"

Some of this surely has its roots in the informality inherent with streaming. While there's obviously an aspect of exaggeration to being on-camera (a good streamer will be interesting, alert and engaged for hours at a time), it would be too much of a stretch to say, for example, that Day[9] is Plott's persona. There's too much crossover for a costume.

Part of Plott's appeal, in other words, is that millions of people see him as a friend as much as a broadcaster. "There's a wide range of informality, from strangers saying, 'Hey Sean!' to 'Hey, did you pay your rent on time this month?' At first I was quite alarmed by it. I'd think, 'what does it mean?' Then after a while I thought, well let's just have a conversation with this person; I'm talking about these subjects on air I guess, so it's not that weird for them to bring it up. After the third time you're like, 'dude, I now have my rent on autopay, I didn't want to do it but I did' and they're like, 'No way! I procrastinate too!' Then I've made a connection with someone. And that's cool! So it's like... out of a hundred interactions with fans, maybe one of them is a little awkward or weird or even negative, but the other 99 are awesome."

'Opportunities are like pop corn kernels'

Plott's work ethic is the subtext for much of our conversation: he tells me how, when a child, he wanted to be funny so would memorise 20 jokes a day to repeat at school. When he wanted to get good at public speaking, he started doing it at every opportunity. During the early stages of the Daily the thought of being on camera made him flushed and sweaty, but he'd ignore it and barrel on. This seems a precocious maturity – even at a young age he never feared embarrassment, or getting things wrong, or losing.

"Here's my fundamental theory of life. Opportunities are like popcorn kernels. If you throw one into the pan and wait for it to pop you're gonna starve to death. But if you throw a whole bunch in there, you don't really know which ones are gonna pop but you know some will definitely pop. I credit Starcraft for a lot of it. You always think that losing is going to be the worst thing in the universe. Like the second place team that could have been the champs, but it all got ripped away! Now that makes for a good story, but in reality you give it your all, you sacrifice everything to try to win, and then you don't – and it's not that bad! There was a lot of fun along the way. You learned a lot. People talk about the fear of being an idiot, and when you get on stage and do that, yeah it's a horrible feeling, but it's not nearly as bad as your brain tries to convince you it is."

Which reminds me of something else; while playing Starcraft you will suffer no bodily injury, and break no arms. "I emphasise the safety because there are few more amazing feelings than really pushing yourself hard, farther than you thought you could, and achieving something. Starcraft is so complex, it's such a ridiculous challenge, and when playing you learn so much about yourself and your tendencies. And it's just great when you win at something because you won – not because you had money, or you were the best-looking, or your parents set you up. You won because of you and nothing else."

Sean 'Day[9]' Plott was first attracted to Starcraft because it seemed safe. He fell in love because it isn't.