A job playing video games? Here are the cold career realities, according to some in the industry:
— Don’t count on it. The odds aren’t good for making enough at gaming to cover typical living expenses.
— You don’t have to be the best player in the world to be successful. Some with their own YouTube or Twitch channel are good but not great players. Personality sells.
— It can take an enormous amount of playing time to become a superior player.
— Have anger issues? That doesn’t usually work if you play on a pro team.
— Great hand-eye coordination is key.
— It can take years to build a big enough online following to attract strong interest from advertisers.
A job playing video games? Here are the cold career realities, according to some in the industry:
— Don’t count on it. The odds aren’t good for making enough at gaming to cover typical living expenses.
— You don’t have to be the best player in the world to be successful. Some with their own YouTube or Twitch channel are good but not great players. Personality sells.
— It can take an enormous amount of playing time to become a superior player.
— Have anger issues? That doesn’t usually work if you play on a pro team.
— Great hand-eye coordination is key.
— It can take years to build a big enough online following to attract strong interest from advertisers.
John Salter graduated from college intending to be a cardiac rehab therapist. Instead, the 24-year-old from Cartersville is making about as much money playing video games as he would have in the health-care job.
And he could make far more this year. He and his four teammates competed in an international tournament in Cobb County in January that included a more than $2.4 million prize pool.
Gaming is embraced by most American kids and perhaps half of the nation’s adults for fun, not money. Few have managed to profit from people watching their play as Salter and some other local gamers have, industry observers say. Still, they highlight the growing ways that digital freelancers are turning the Internet’s funky and ever-spreading bazaar of alleys into at least temporary career paths.
Bloggers and YouTube personalities who specialize in everything from comedy skits to makeup tips, product reviews and pet tricks are pulling in money. The hunger to make a living online given rise to calculators like one offered on SocialBlade.com, that allows people to estimate their payday from YouTube traffic (example: 1,000 daily views could bring in annually $180 to $1,440, depending on ad rates).
Gaming is one of the hottest ways to grab viewers. Each of the top two dozen YouTube gaming channels has snagged more than a billion views, according to Social Blade.
“We are already in a very fractured media landscape with a lot of entertainment options. It’s only going to get moreso,” said Dmitri Williams, a University of Southern California communications professor who also heads Ninja Metrics, which does analytics for the gaming industry.
“As long as as there are people who want to watch entertainment, there is going to be a price to watch talent playing out that entertainment.”
It’s a long shot to make a living at playing video games, Williams said. “That said, it is real and it does happen.”
‘Kind of weird’
It stuns Salter that he can pull it off.
“It’s kind of weird,” he said. “But it is pretty awesome.”
He grew up playing video games, then struggled to get a job as a therapist after graduating in 2013 from Kennesaw State University with a degree in exercise and health science. That’s when his gaming skills picked up. He played on a series of increasingly good teams and started competing in tournaments.
Now, Salter specializes in one game, SMITE, that's the top performer for Alpharetta-based Hi-Rez Studios. The game's world championship was in January, and the team Salter plays on, "Cognitive Prime," was a contender. The one-man cut from a winning five-person team topped $240,000. Other placers get a share of the prize money, most of which comes from certain in-game purchases made by fans.
Salter said he earned about $40,000 from gaming in 2014. Most of it stemmed from his own channel on Twitch (Twitch.tv), a free website where people can play games and watch others do the same. Amazon bought Twitch last year for about $1 billion, getting access to more than 60 million viewers.
Salter signed up with Twitch to have ads placed on his channel. He picks when the ads air between his running commentary on games he’s playing. Spectators watch to pick up pointers and also because they feel a connection to the players, many of whom respond to fan messages even during a game.
Of the 1.5 million people broadcasting on Twitch, just 9,000 have signed up to make money through ads, subscriptions and merchandise sales, the company says. Twitch doesn’t disclose how much individuals make, other than to say that some top $100,000. On YouTube and other sites the payoff can be even bigger. A couple players have reportedly nabbed more than $1 million a year.
Salter estimates he pulled in $17,000 last year from his activities on Twitch, where he has about 18,000 followers. He got another $6,000 from team owner David Fry II of the Fry’s Electronics retail chain — yes, some pro gaming teams have owners. He also pocketed $7,000 in fan donations (which he solicits online), more than $1,000 from his YouTube channel and about $10,000 in tournament winnings.
‘Living the dream’
On a typical day he’ll play SMITE on his Twitch channel for three or four hours in the morning, stop for lunch, stream another hour, then scrimmage remotely with his tournament team for about three hours.
“I’m just kind of living the dream,” Salter said.
At tournaments, people ask for his autograph — he plays under the name “BaRRaCCuDDa” — and want photos with him.
Salter figures it won’t last into his thirties. He predicts it will be hard to keep up with a new generation of players. He worries ad-blocking software will cut into his revenue. And, believe it or not, as fun as pro gaming is, he said it comes with stress.
He dissects his tournament play the same way football players watch game tapes, looking for flaws and taking notes.
Eventually, he said, he’ll pursue a graduate degree once his gaming stats fade and his pro career is over.
But you don’t necessarily have to be an exceptional player to attract tens of thousands of video game spectators.
Ryan Malis, a 24-year-old Georgia Tech grad from Alpharetta, considers himself a better-than-average player, “but I’m not someone who could win a national tournament of a certain game.”
Malis’ specialty is showing viewers how he plays different games, exploring features with them and sharing commentary. He runs a YouTube channel, BrainScratchComms, along with a Philadelphia area player he met online.
Malis wants a full-time job in video production but said he and his partner pull in about $2,000 a month total from the gaming gig.
“I love playing games, and I like sharing that with people,” he said.
More than five years into it, he has topped 52,000 YouTube subscribers. It could take twice as many to consider the gig a full-time job, he said.
“The Internet is kind of a fickle business,” he said — and that’s OK with him. “I want to do other things with my life, not just record games.”
