Daniel John Hardcastle, known online as Nerd³,NerdCubed and sometimes as Forsinain42, is an English author, YouTuber, Company Director and CEO of Nerd Cubed Limited. He is the author of Sunday Times bestseller Fuck Yeah, Video Games: The Life and Extra Lives of a Professional Nerd., his YouTube videos have accumulated more than 1.2 billion views.
Career
Online
Hardcastle rose to prominence through a scripted, story-based webcomic made within Minecraft. After creating his YouTube channel on 20 March 2011, Hardcastle initially began uploading a series of comedic vlogs before uploading his first Let's Play. His first series, called Nerd³'s Minecraft Buildy Thing, ran from 27 August 2011 to 22 August 2012. After creating videos on a few indie games, Hardcastle uploaded his first Nerd³ Plays video on 7 January 2012. In 2012, Machinma sponsored him to create the series 13 Ways To Die. In 2015, Hardcastle was nominated for a Golden Joystick Award for "online personality of the year". He has since amassed more than 2.5 million subscribers and 1.2 billion total views. He has previously collaborated on his YouTube Channel with Emma Blackery, Tomska, Hannah Hart, Stuart Ashen and InTheLittleWood. In September 2019, Hardcastle's YouTube account was unverified for being not widely recognised outside the platform. In December 2019, Hardcastle made the decision to demonetise his channel, to avoid getting caught out by YouTube's much-maligned algorithm to prevent a breach of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which they broke earlier that year, resulting in a $170 million fine from the Federal Trade Commission.
Books
Hardcastle began writing his first book, Fuck Yeah, Video Games: The Life & Extra Lives of a Professional Nerd, in 2017. On 4 June 2018, he began crowdfunding the book through the website Unbound. The book reached 100% of its target on the first day and 1000% by 11 June. Reaching a total of 1903% of its initial goal, the book is the most successful crowdfunded book in the UK. The foreword of the book was written by Tim Schafer, and a chapter was written by Stuart Ashen. It was released on 19 September 2019 and was a Sunday Times best seller. On 26 September 2019, crowdfunding began for Hardcastle's second book, The Paradox Paradox, a Sci-Finovel he has described as "a bit Star Trek, a bit Doctor Who, and a bit fucked up." It reached its funding goal within 20 minutes.
Personal life
Hardcastle is married to Rebecca Maughan, an artist who illustrated Fuck Yeah, Video Games. The couple have a number of pets including a German Shepherd, two budgies, a corn snake and four guinea pigs. Hardcastle's father, Steve "Dad³" Hardcastle, with whom he has regularly collaborated, started a YouTube channel in 2013; it has accumulated more than 300,000 subscribers and 23 million total views. Hardcastle studied astrophysics at the University of Leicester, but dropped out after the first year.
