Professional Gaming: A Legitimate Career?
Video gaming and esports, in particular, has absolutely exploded in recent years. From celebrities such as Drake, and Steph Curry, to business moguls like Robert Kraft, everyone wants a piece of what esports has to offer. With all this excitement surrounding esports, a big focus in the media and the gaming community has been on how lucrative gaming as a career has become. What was long seen as a childish activity with no career prospects has turned into a legitimate career path, and one with serious money to be made.
A common misconception is that placing high in tournaments and winning prize money is the only way to make money as a professional gamer. The truth is, it is only a small slice. When pro gamers sign to an organization they are typically offered a salary along with other benefits. Along with this, they have their personal brand and the endorsement deals that come with it. Finally, we have streaming.
With the rise of Twitch and other streaming services developed with gaming in mind, streaming yourself playing video games has become perhaps the best and most consistent way to make a living as a professional gamer. With streaming, skill isn’t the be all end all. Plenty of top streamers aren’t near pro level but raking in just as much money as the top professional players or even more. This is appealing to many who aspire to make a career out of gaming, as it provides an option that isn’t reliant on consistently placing well in tournaments at the highest level. One can simply stream themselves playing casually to their fans and make just as much as they would winning a tournament. This could not be highlighted better than when professional Fortnite players and streamers Tfue and Cloak skipped the recent international championship ESL Katowice Royale. Prior to the tournament, Tfue and Cloak were ranked number one and two in competitive earnings in all of Fortnite with over one million dollars in prize money between the two of them. Despite this, they decided to skip this major tournament with over $500,000 in total prize money because they “believe they would earn more money by staying home and streaming instead of trying to go for first place in ESL Katowice Royale”.
At the top, these streamers are making money that rivals that of actors, rappers, and professional sports league players like those of the NFL and NBA. As of March of last year, professional gamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, largely known as the face of Fortnite, was making over $500,000 a month from Twitch subscribers alone. This does not include his contract with esports organization Luminosity, his endorsement deals with major corporations such as Red Bull, and the countless donations he receives from his fans every stream. It’s safe to say he was pulling in far more than just $500,000 a month. With all these success stories, the other side of pursuing a career in esports and streaming is often forgotten. The ones that don’t make it.
For every Ninja or Shroud, there are thousands who dedicate months and years of their lives to the same pursuit and never see results. You don’t need me to show you any examples, just look around you. I’m sure most people reading this know someone who wants to go pro or be the next big streamer. Someone who dedicates what most would consider way too much time to playing video games, all in the hopes of making it a career. If you want to see examples for yourself, one can simply head over to Twitch. Sure, at the top you’ll see the names everyone’s heard of, the Tfue’s, the summit1g’s. Streamers pulling in enough viewers to make a healthy career off of it. What you won’t see are the streamers at the bottom. People who stream every day to the same 5 or so viewers, hoping one day they’ll break through to the next level. Unfortunately for most that day never comes.
Streaming isn’t easy, it isn’t simply sitting down and playing video games all day. You need to entertain, you need to perform at a high level, whether it be your gameplay or personality. You can play for 12 hours a day every day and you won’t magically start to make an income and grow on Twitch. To succeed as a streamer you have to be unique, people need to want to watch you play. Faze Pamaj who has a following of 3.2 million subscribers on Youtube said in a video that being a Youtuber/streamer is the “world's hardest job but It’s the world's best job” and while he got some backlash in the community for this comment, many YouTubers and streamers agreed with him.
One specific case where this dream did not work out was with a Youtuber and streamer by the name of “Yuber”. In a video entitled “What streaming on Twitch has done to my life” Yuber goes into detail about how he dedicated his entire life to becoming successful on Twitch, sacrificing almost everything, just to fail in the end. This isn’t a case of someone who didn't put the effort in or do what it takes. “After three years I only have around 6,000 followers...that’s with 5 days a week, 7-hour streams, doing multiple different things to try and stand out”. Yuber pours his emotions out onto video and you can feel the pain in his voice, “don’t attempt to do full-time streaming while having a full-time job... you’re going to lose your girlfriend like I did, you’re going to lose all your friends like I did”. This is a tragic story of what can go wrong when chasing the idea of playing video games for a living and unfortunately it is becoming more and more common.
Making a career off of content creation such as streaming and Youtube has become extremely competitive. Just like how everyone wanted to be a professional football player or basketball player years ago, every kid’s dream nowadays is to be a pro gamer. KEEMSTAR, known for creating “Fortnite Fridays” along with his Youtube channel DramaAlert, made a two minute Twitter video to address the many fans that asked him for advice on making Youtube a career. His advice? “Trust me when I say this, you're not going to make it”. In the video, KEEMSTAR says “I’m going to give it to you straight, the market is saturated, I mean everybody is trying to be a YouTuber. Everybody." KEEMSTAR has been a part of the Youtube community since the early days, dating all the way back to 2009 when he created his first channel. He has seen and been a part of this evolution firsthand and is qualified as anyone to speak on it. While harsh, his video has truth to it and applies to streaming on Twitch as well. It’s the economics of supply and demand, there are too many aspiring streamers and YouTubers for the market to support.
Not only has this field become intensely competitive, but success also isn’t entirely in one’s control like in many jobs and careers. Luck plays a major factor in whether a Twitch or Youtube channel gains exposure. CouRageJD, one of the top streamers on Twitch, said in an interview on the Eavesdrop Podcast that success on Twitch was “75% luck”. He is not alone in this view, countless other prominent streamers have expressed the same opinion. When pursuing the dream of playing video games for a living, it is difficult to put everything aside and continuously grind and work at something that relies so heavily on getting lucky.
Taking all this into consideration, a career “playing video games” is not nearly as easy as it seems. Success in this field is arguably one of the most difficult pursuits available in today’s age. You can be extremely skilled, upload videos and stream every day, consistently grinding and working on your craft, all to not make it in the end. This realization is hard for many to swallow and can leave aspiring professional gamers and streamers in a state of utter depression when they come to terms with the fact that their dream job might not become reality.
While gaming is most certainly a legitimate career, the difficulty in making it one should not be taken lightly. I am certain we will read and hear about hundreds if not thousands of stories similar to Yuber’s when this new generation of aspiring pros and streamers face this truth head-on. This is not meant to discourage anyone from chasing their dreams but to merely serve as a notice for those hunting this remunerative career that it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Though success is possible, it is often a long, grueling road with no guarantees. Few make it, but for those that do, they get to live out their dream; playing video games and getting paid for it.
