CaptainSparklez (Jordan Maron)'s famous gameplay series are Minecraft-based. He also posts gameplay of other games such as Happy Wheels, Garry's Mod, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal , Trials.
Evolution and occasionally Call of Duty , often playing in co-op with some of his friends. CaptainSparklez is famous for his Minecraft parodies where he changes the lyrics of a popular song to fit into the world of Minecraft.
These parodies are all sung by TryHardNinja. His channel holds the record for the top 3 most viewed Minecraft videos with his parodies "TNT" with over 50 million views, Revenge with over 121 million views (the most viewed gaming video on YouTube!), "Fallen Kingdom" with over 50 million views, "Minecraft Style" with over 30 million views, and "Take Back the Night" with over 20 million views (unfortunately, the video for "Minecraft Style was taken down due to copyright claims by Sony and Universal, but Sparklez re-uploaded it, and it's still up by 2nd of September, 2013).
Jordan occasionally posts videos with his friends Nick (NFENvids), xRpmx13, and other Youtubers. He is also the fourth most subscribed gaming commentator on YouTube, the first being PewDiePie, the second being SkyDoesMinecraft and the third being TheSyndicateProject (not counting Machinima, Rooster Teeth, or BlueXephos). He is also the 28th most subscribed person on YouTube after reaching 5,000,000 subscribers, although he now has just broken past 8,000,000 subscribers as of October 2014.
History of CaptainSparklez
CaptainSparklez was a director for Machinima. He had a channel called PROSdon'tTalkShit.On the 23rd of July, 2010, he created his new channel CaptainSparklez due to the explicit language in his other YouTube channel and kept with posting Call Of Duty gameplay. As Minecraft got mildy popular, Jordan posted a few Minecraft videos with SeaNanners and soon he completely switched his channel from Call of Duty to Minecraft. His first song parody, TNT, posted on the Feb 26, 2011, increased his popularity greatly and earned him many new subscribers. Jordan knew this song was a hit and continued to work on more. Later the song Revenge was posted and currently holds the record for the most viewed Minecraft video with 121 million views.
Jordan then started his Skyblock Survival series, which has more than 4 million views. His second most famous series, Happy Wheels soon gained popularity on his channel, advancing him to 800 thousand subscribers. Then came his Minecraft Survival Let's Play, generally appearing to be more popular among his other series. His third parody soon came along giving him the subscriber boost to almost a million. The song affiliated in this video is titled, Fallen Kingdom. The seuqel to Fallen Kingdom is Take Back The Night, following the life of the King's child.
Following this success, Sparklez accepted the invitation offered by the Machinima team to participate in the Survival Games, which he came 2nd in and competed in the other 3, known to be the dark horse and the one to always look out for, only ever losing to AntVenom. His popularity is still continuing to expand as of now and is currently working on more of his gameplay series. In December 2012, Jordan appeared in the inaugural episode of The Fine Brothers' YouTubers React and has continued to be part of YouTubers React, though he was not in Episodes 5 or 6. In his time on YouTubers react, he has spoken about "Gangnam Style", Fred Figglehorn and Rewind YouTube Style among many others.
Personal Life
Generally keeping private in regards to his personal life, little is known outside of CaptainSparklez's channel. Appearing to be his intention, additional insights concerning Jordan's personal history are somewhat vague. However, it is known that he resides in Santa Barbara, CA. On the 30th of May, 2011, an interview with CaptainSparklez was held with a popular Minecraft podcast titled as, The Shaft. During their discussion, Jordan did state that after a short time experiencing being in a gaming industry (from an outside perspective), this led to him switching from chemical engineering to computer science. Explaining that he to balancing college and YouTube commentating is somewhat of a difficulty, Jordan stated that a gaming company, such as Valve, suited him the most. The discussion leads off to a topic related to CaptainSparklez's channel, his videos, the making of his videos, development maps, etc
It is revealed in many episodes that Jordan has taken gymnastics, and in the final episode of Assassin's Creep, he said he would film a video of him doing a ground-off Backflip. He showed a video of himself doing a backflip in his video celebrating the fact that he had earned a million subscribers. He also did perform one on stage at Minecon 2012 at his panel in which when asked by a fan to do so he quickly cleared the stage and did it in front of a large audience. Also for one of his previous 'million subscriber milestones', he showed a video in which a younger version of himself did a backflip.
It has also been revealed that Jordan once was able to ride a unicycle. On 15 November 2013, he uploaded a video of himself attempting to ride his old unicycle in what is presumably the parking garage of his apartment complex. The video is entitled "Riding a Unicycle... And Failing, Too " and is filmed by Nick (NFEN or NFENVids). The first time Jordan attempts to go forward on the unicycle, he ends up hurting himself, but eventually is able to go about 30 feet and even preform a couple of "bunny-hops."
Draw My Life, CaptainSparklez
On January 20th 2014, after long awaited time, Jordan uploaded his "Draw My Life". In it he finally revealed what most of us never knew or were wondering about. He informs us about growing up in Los Angeles, with his parents being divorced and visiting his dad. He lived with his mom, but later they moved to Santa Barbara to live with his grandma, as his mom thought it would be better for him. He always got good grades and did well academically, but social interactions weren't his best forte. Due to this, he spent most of his teenage years practicing skateboarding, in which he even managed to appear in the local newspaper. He told us he probably could've pursued a career in it, but due to a prior incident, he developed a fear that prevented him from continuing to skateboard. He also went to a semi-private school for a year, but realized he would be left behind in his education he decided to change and went back to public schooling.
He attended Santa Barabara High School and throughout his high school years, he worked towards his major goal which was getting into a good university. He was determined and studied hard to pass all his exams and get all the requierements needed, and finally graduated high school with a grade point average (GPA) of about 4.6 or so he tells us. It wasn't until his senior year that he started to make Call Of Duty gameplay videos while waiting for college application letters. He ended up having to choose between UC Los Angeles and UC Santa Barbra, but decided on UCSB because of his prior experience with their computer program with the help of his best friend Joshua George, who goes under the ailias of bigbadcreepa3.
During that same April he was also given the opportunity to become a director at Machinima which at the time had been the greatest thing any gamer could imagine and as he describes it, it was "a dream come true". The following summer after the conclusion of his senior year he started posting videos more frequently and towards the end of the summer he became a partern with Machinima and was able to start receiving revenue from ads. At the same time his mom became worried about how it would affect his education since he was about to start college but he promised to always prioritize school and he didn't really see YouTube as something that would ultimately take off anyways.
At the beginning of college, he was really enthusiastic, not only for being lucky to have a single dorm room for himself (which might've affected his YouTube career), but also that he could now focus on what he actually wanted to learn, but later became disappointed as he realized that he still needed to take other classes that might've not been of his main interest. Thanks to this and other factors he became frustrated and lost interest in school which led him to not do as best as he would've wanted to academically (during this time he also tried to ease his frustation by focusing more in his YouTube channel and making more videos). Luckily, he still managed to stay in the A-to-B range, but he knew in his heart that he wasn't happy with his current situation.
He made the decision to switch his major from chemical engineering to computer science knowing his prior experince with video games. He says that the reason he chose chemical engineering in the first place was because he was really great at math and science and believed it would lead to a good salary, but found out it wasn't what he wanted to do. He also said that looking back on it, he didn't choose any computer or gaming related majors because he thought it wouldn't lead him to any success but now he realizes thanks to his YouTube career and the people he met through it, that he was wrong.
He changed his major which for him was a step in doing what he actaully wanted to do and even decided to apply to other school, University of Southern California, since they had a computer program which focused on gaming development and he was accepted, but had to deny it since it wass too expensive for him. He decided to stay with the computer prgram UCSB offered, but had problems since he had to take some entry computer science classes to be able to change his major; most of those classes giving preference to those people with existing computer science majors. During the 3rd quarter of his freshman year, he attempted to get in, but since it was already packed with people, he had to wait to take the summer course instead.
That summer his YouTube channel was doing pretty well thanks to the TNT music video uploaded the previous February and since he had free time, he decided to take on a new project in which he wanted to do a video that was fully animated. He realized it wouldn't work as well without any help so he got in touch with David, BootstrapBuckaroo, and he agreed to help and together they created Revenge which was uploaded that same summer. Shortly after, it achieved many views and Jordan's channel grew rapidly. It is still, to this day, the most viewed Minecraft video on YouTube.
When school started again he was faced with the same problem; he wasn't really enthusiastic about school and the classes he needed to take. His YouTube career and school created a conflict in him on what he should do with his life. He talked about it with his family and even though they were skeptical at first, they supported him, but his mom told him he would be on his own after quitting school which made him nervous, but he also became confident becuase of his current YouTube revenue at the time. So when the first quarter of his sophmore year didn't improve, he took the risk and decided to pursue YouTube in the end.
In December of 2011, He finally made YouTube his full-time job and he said he was enjoying his life and everything he did. He also moved back to Los Angeles in May of 2012, which wasn't such a big change for him and in 2013 he convinced Nick, NFEN, to move to california and now he works for him, editing the daily videos.
Accomplishments
- Earned over 10,000,000 subscribers
- Holds the top 4 most viewed Minecraft videos ever, with Revenge at over 100,000,000 views. It is the most viewed gaming-related video on YouTube
- Minecraft Style is featured in Google's Year in Review
- Fallen Kingdom featured in Google's Rewind YouTube Style 2012
- More than 2,000,000,000 total video views
- Exclusive panel at Minecon 2012 (His songs also played most of the time)
- Appearing on national TV at the Spike Video Game Awards
- A "King of the Web" award recipient
- Has an amazing survival series Ultra Modded Survival
Also, according to Jordan, his real name is Jardon Maroon 5. Goodness, what an interesting name...