I know there is youtube or creating letsplay videos, but lets be honest everyone does that and it dont pay the bills unless you meet requirements of the YouTube gods.
Im a casual gamer and im just wondering if i can turn this hobby into something like a job? Or should i prepare myself for a actually job in life?
So is it possible to earn real money as a gamer?
also im not sure where to put this sense there are not any money related communitys from what i know.
They’re not gamers, they’re entertainers playing video games. Gamers who earn money are really pros, in which case they’re comparable to athletes.
Im a casual gamer
No. You have to be dedicated to this and push for years to maybe, just maybe make actual money. Not only do you have to be a gamer, but you also have to have a personality people like.
And talk about games critically, playing for personal enjoyment is different compared to playing for game reviews, walkthroughs ect. its a job now, not a hobby.
That’s not true. Plenty of personalities on YouTube just play games and provide it as an experience that others can follow along with. Granted, not all of them make much money, but a number of them at least make some supplementary income from it.
Ya thats fair. My comment came from my point of view which is channels like skillup and dunky, they work their asses off and have teams that cover breaking news and stuff. I used to watch a few streamers but would rather spend my time playing than watching, its just personal preference.
Don’t ruin a hobby with money. You will lose all enjoyment of it. Something changes when you get paid for it.
Myke Hurley said in some episode of Cortex podcast, that he doesn’t want to turn his new mechanical keyboard hobby into a jobby. He wants to keep some things as just hobbies. He has enough jobbies as it is, and he doesn’t want to ruin something he enjoys.
Although, it sounds more like OP has no jobs or jobbies, so having at least one should be ok.
This right here
No. The people making money are content creators. They are churning out multiple videos a week or streaming for hours and hours, gathering thousands of followers/views and sponsorships on top of the YouTube/twitch ad streams.
You don’t make any serious money from a casual hobby. These people treat it as a job, because it is one.
Essentially, no.
Basically every job in gaming is going to be a shit job. Because everyone likes gaming, so there is a massive applicant pool, so companies can pay you terribly and treat you terribly. There are a tiny, tuny handful of actually good jobs in gaming - top level streamer, game storyboarding, pro gamer - that actually pay at least somewhat decently and have their enjoyable moments. But to get these jobs, you’ll truly need to be the best of the best. You cannot be “casual” - you must be beyond excellent, and charismatic, and lucky. And then you will always be stressed that someone will dethrone you as top dog.
The best way to turn a gaming hobby into a job is to start modding games. This itself wont really make you money either, but it is a good way to learn software. Then you can get a software job.
If you want peace of mind find a job that you toletate well. You don’t need to love it. You’ll develop a deeper interest for whatever it is as time goes on. The important thing is that it’s something you don’t find completely overwhelming. The other important thing is that you can leave it at the door when you go home. Every hour of your free time you spend thinking about work is an hour of unpaid overtime.
Just try different things until something sticks and don’t forget that you can still fine-tune your career or do something else entirely if you wake up one day and realize that’s what you want.
You’ll develop a deeper interest for whatever it is as time goes on.
This is so insidious. Working a job and one day you realize you actually care about something you don’t understand why you should care about it. I know I it’s stupid for me to care about something in my with and yet I do.
The reality is that they don’t. Only a small percentage of them gain a big enough following that they can get by with streaming payouts, donations, and sponsorships.
There’s so many people to watch and hardly anything unique about them to make them stand out.
If you look at most popular streamers today you will notice that they have years of doing it, and the reason is that it’s difficult to gain followers, and even if you to viral for some random reason it’s difficult to maintain the followers engaged. And without followers ads or sponsors are not going to give you too much money, and trying to charge your followers is more likely to lose you followers than earn you money.
In short, take a “normal” job that’s okay with you doing that as a side gig, and with time you might earn enough on your streaming that you might be able to quit your job. Good luck, it’s a hard market to get into.
You should prepare yourself to get a real job.
You can game on the side. You can even try to build up a following and turn that into something that replaces your job. But you probably won’t get that off the ground before needing a real job.
IMO gaming is in the same category with art, music, racing, football, photography etc—fun things to do, only very few can make a living out of them.
My sister streams MMOs and JRPGs as a hobby. She has a very modest following and doesn’t do much to promote herself. She gets a check of $100-$300 every few months. I think it’s a pretty good deal for the effort involved. I tried it for a bit but found out quickly I have nothing meaningful (and barely anything meaningless) to say.
If she is streaming what she’d be doing anyway and gets paid for just being online, that’s a great way for a bit of extra income for just having fun. Don’t get burnt out that way, and if you decide to do it less or stop, not a huge loss either.
I think the only game where you can make IRL money is Eve Online.
At that point you’ll have more fun working for a bank. You’ll be looking at less spreadsheets at least.
I assume you’re young?
Big streamers can make okay money, but to be honest it’s not really something to aspire to generally speaking. It’s not nearly as glamorous as it sounds. When you spend all of your time doing something that’s supposed to be relaxing/fun as a job and you can’t even necessarily do what you want anyway, it’s not really fun anymore. And beyond that, only a very small portion of people that attempt it actually make money from it and it’s much more about how you can manipulate social media platforms than it is anything about gaming.
For the most part they work normal-ass jobs like everyone else.
If you’re really good at a competitive game like Counter-Strike, you could do tournaments for money. But unless you’re in Asia, the payouts are absolute shit and it wouldn’t be enough to be your only job.
The better option would probably be trying to get a job in QA as a game tester. But I don’t think that pays a lot, probably just above minimum wage. It also takes more than just playing games. You need to be good at documenting your findings and communication. As well as doing things that might be counterintuitive to the average player.
translated: “I’m a game tester”
I wish… That would be dope. As long as my boss isn’t J. P. from Grandma’s Boy. Unless he also stole my game and my grandma has to beat his ass in said game to prove it’s mine and not his. That would be fun.
Game testing is a shit job. It’s incredibly tedious and the pay sucks.
If your goal is to work in game design and you want to use that as a way to get your foot in the door, that’s one thing. But the career of game testing is much less interesting than gamers might expect.
Coaching Streaming (game is just a medium to perform, like if you are singer, you performed it via a song, …) Go pro (competitive esport) for prize, or sponsorship (which your team pay you maybe percentages or fixed salaries or both) Farmer (play for stuff in MMO and sell it) Sitter, booster (login someone account and play for them)
