Philza, also known as Ph1LzA, Dadza, Crow Father and Philza Minecraft, is the online alias of English YouTuber and Twitch streamer Phillip Watson best known for playing a single continuous Minecraft game on Hardcore mode for five years. In fact, he gained fame after dying in Minecraft on Hardcore Mode after so long. He went on to be the most-watched Minecraft channel on Twitch following this incident and became a part of the Minecraft groups Sleepyboisinc and Dream SMP.
Career
Philza created his YouTube channel on September 14, 2006 and started uploading videos in December that year. He was less active in the first few years and usually shared short funny clips covering a vast range of games, Minecraft being one of them. In February 2012, he started a new series about playing Minecraft in Hardcore Mode where the player doesn’t re-spawn after in-game death. He started uploading more consistently and made episodes after episodes of him trying to survive in the game world avoiding various kinds of threats. While he occasionally made videos about other games, did charity videos, and also made videos about other game modes and mods in Minecraft, his Hardcore series ran for a massive 100+ episodes over a couple years until his hard drive died. His Modtacular Minecraft series also ran for 70+ episodes. He later started a second Hardcore series in April 2014 that ran for a whooping 5 years until April 2019, when he anticlimactically got killed by a spider and a baby zombie.
Fortunately, this one in-game death changed his life forever. He had joined Twitch back in July 2017 and livestreamed regularly while also juggling a retail job but only managed to get about a dozen people to watch his streams. However, following his unceremonious death in Minecraft Hardcore Mode, he made a video about the embarrassing experience, which went viral and earned him the attention of Minecraft fans, the Twitch community and even the BBC. He subsequently did a 24-hour livestream with the goal of gaining 100 subscribers on Twitch and broke down in tears when it ended up earning him 350 subscribers. He revealed to PC Gamer that within a month, he earned more money than he did in two years at his old retail job. By April 2020, he had become the most-watched Minecraft channel on Twitch with more than 200k followers and each stream accumulating thousands of views. He went on to form Sleepyboisinc along with Technoblade, Wilbur Soot, and TommyInnit in early 2020 and also joined the very popular Dream SMP Minecraft server on November 16, 2020.
Family Life
Philza was born as Phillip Watson and grew up with a sister named Aimee. He met his wife, Kristin Rosales, on Twitch when she was trying to learn how to play Minecraft and Phil gave her a tour of his hardcore world. He eventually proposed to her on top of the High Roller in Las Vegas, Nevada, following which they got married on March 11, 2020.
