Mythpat on GTA 6, GTA 5 Mod Takedowns, Minecraft’s Popularity in India, and the Future of Content Creation

In a country rife with Battlegrounds Mobile India and Free Fire content creators, Mythpat stands out. Known for his YouTube videos that merge Minecraft and GTA 5 gameplay with his talent for mimicry and comedy, he’s garnered over nine million subscribers in roughly three years. Mythpat, whose real name is Mithilesh Patankar, is now looking beyond video.

The Mumbai-based creator has partnered with Spotify to launch a podcast on video games. Called The Mythpat Podcast: A Spotify Original, we spoke to Patankar to find out more.

Born with a talent for mimicry and being able to modulate his voice well, Patankar’s parents wanted him to get into dubbing and radio jockeying. However, his YouTube channel picked up and worked out well by his own admission.

“The whole dubbing thing was just left behind and I never got to pursue that,” he says. “But when Spotify approached me to do a podcast that sounded like an exciting opportunity for me because I like playing with my voice…That’s something fun for me because I’m making video content and this is something else.”

Working With Spotify

In addition to giving him a platform, Patankar views Spotify as a collaborator. The company helps him decide topics, assists with artwork and music too in addition to promotion (or “making it big” as he terms it). While the partnership is in its early days, he feels it’s working.

“Right now this is the number one podcast and I’ve been refreshing it daily to check and the top episode in the category is also mine,” he says. “It’s something I didn’t expect honestly. I was a bit worried because I only make content on YouTube, will the audience actually appreciate audio content? But they did and I was surprised.”

The podcast itself is billed as a mix of gaming and timepass. A part of the reason for this likely has to do with Patankar’s respect for his audience as well as his learning from YouTube. It seems to have paid off.

“I recently put a poll on my YouTube channel to ask if it was a gaming channel or a timepass channel,” he explains. “And 1.8 million people voted that it’s a timepass channel. So the goal with the podcast is the same thing that this podcast will also be about everything…It’s like friends talking. You’ll feel like there’s somebody there in the room. Basically there’s no topic in my podcast, there’s just random stuff we’re going to talk about along with a few guests. We’re going to get guests whenever possible but mostly the podcast is going to be about random topics.”

Mythpat on GTA 6

One topic close to him though, is GTA. GTA 5 is one of his favourite games and his videos around it have played a large part in his success. With GTA 5 having first released nearly eight years ago at this point and PS5 and Xbox Series X|S version on the way this November, we had to ask what his thoughts are on a potential sequel that would probably be titled GTA 6.

“As soon as GTA 6 is going to come out, people are just going to go for it,”he says. “All of YouTube is just going to be filled with GTA 6 videos. I remember getting GTA 5 on the first day when it launched on Xbox 360. Even till date I play that game. It’s so relevant even right now that imagine what GTA 6 is going to be? And I hope it comes out in the next two years. That’s the best thing about Rockstar, they take time to make a game but when it comes out after so much time, there’s a lot to play.”

Speaking of GTA 5, publisher Take-Two has been on a ban-spree, taking down mods — programs made by fans of a video game to alter aspects of how it plays — for the game on PC.Considering a lot of Patankar’s videos are based on GTA 5 and have mods, we wondered if this would impact him.

“No,” he says. “I feel that even without mods, the basic version of GTA 5 is really fun to play. There are so many videos I have done which didn’t even require mods. For example: recently I did a video showing if you can stop the train in GTA 5.That video did really well. You just have to stop the train in GTA 5 — which you can’t do anyway, there were a few others like following traffic rules in GTA 5. Such ideas can be executed even if you don’t have mods. It hasn’t really affected anything. But yeah, mods are fun.”

The Minecraft India Audience

The conversation shifts to Minecraft, another game that Patankar’s channel is known for. While the Microsoft-owned sandbox-survival game is a massive hit globally, it seems to have a vocal community in India too. Fascinating when you consider that sales of the game at retail have been middling at best.

“BGMI is of course a very big game, as is Free Fire but even Minecraft because it is on mobile too thanks to the Pocket Edition, it’s huge in India,” he says. “Everybody has access to Minecraft on their phone so the audience really likes watching Minecraft content.”

While his GTA 5 videos usually have an element of challenge such as trying to steal a jet from a military base with no weapons, his Minecraft viewers have a different set of expectations.

“They expect you to play the game really well,” he says. “People expect speed runs because the entire game can be finished in one hour. But I enjoyed playing the game so I played it very slowly and I played it for two years before finishing the game some time back.”

That said, it’s a younger crowd that isn’t afraid to school Patankar on how to play the game.

“The limit is probably 20 max, and that too rarely,” he says. “Usually around 14 year olds and they know a lot about Minecraft, they explain it to me in the comments section.”

How PUBG Taught Mythpat an Important Lesson

Although Patankar found success with Minecraft and GTA 5, he feels diversification is important. It’s something he learned the hard way. When Battlegrounds Mobile India was known PUBG Mobile back in 2018, developer Tencent released the much hyped Vikendi map for it. Like everyone else at the time, Patankar thought it would be a good idea to ride the hype train and stream it.

“I woke up at 6am just because the Vikendi map in PUBG came out so I can stream it,” he says. “I had nine watching. Out which five were my mom, dad, Android tablet, iPad, and laptop.”

The experience taught Patankar a valuable lesson of playing to his strengths.

“I tried growing a little bit through PUBG streams but I realised my thing was about making fun content like mimicry in PUBG and GTA,” he says. “Viewers started enjoying that so when PUBG got banned at that time, a lot of people lost their viewership because they had the PUBG audience entirely. But at the same time my viewership did not go down for the same reason that I did not make much content on PUBG but as soon as PUBG came back as BGMI their viewership is again up, I feel that people should diversify because that’s the only way to get long-term viewership. Otherwise anything can happen.”

The Future of Content Creation

To him, diversification is the future of content creation. Particularly for those on YouTube.

“People are going to get bored of you after a while,” he says. “Unless you decide to change your content so much that you’re relevant for a long time. Even if you look at PewDiePie even his views are down right now. I feel you have to diversify no matter what.”

With that in mind, he sees himself doing more content “somewhat like” Mister Beast, who he cites as a source of inspiration. He left us with this tease on what’s next.

“What I want to do from my heart is crazy vlog type content,” he says. “I feel that’s the thing I really like to do.”

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