Submitted 14 hours ago by GrumpyCat@leminal.space to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
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.
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.
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.
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.
And in most cases don’t make much
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.
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 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.
In any entertainment business the top 1% takes home most of the money. The rest gets a few dollars here and there.
Most people are better off with a normal job and just do it for fun on evenings.
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.
Personally, I wait tables.
I wait chairs.
I just wait.
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)
For the most part they work normal-ass jobs like everyone else.
I’m a master mechanic and Indy edm producer. Most my money comes from my mechanic job. 15% maybe is from music
streamers, make it to advertisements, promotions, brand deals, much like content creators, also they may not be true gamers, and only game as a way to get views.
you have to have a personality that people like, and thats the non negotiable part. the rest is work ethic. other than that, do not go into the field expecting to make money playing games, unless you live in a place with a low cost of living and you happen to collect bounties on difficult challenges which no one should be doing for a living.
short response: you will take a real job
Howdy.
I was paid to help people in games for a while.
In non online games I would win quite a lot at Warhammer/ Magic tournaments.
But none of these will entirely pay the bills.
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.
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 best his as in said game to prove it’s mine and not his. That would be fun.
The 3 ways to make money in gaming are to a) be exceptionally good at games, b) have an entertaining personality, or c) do something that nobody else does.
For a) either you’re good enough to make it in esports, or you’re good enough that people want to watch you stream. For b) gaming is really just a small part of what brings people in. c) might be doing things like challenges or other niche gaming related stuff.
It takes time to grow an audience, and if you’re very lucky maybe 5% of your audience will actually give you money to do what you do.
Even if you manage to stand out in what is a fairly saturated market, it will be years before you have enough people following you to make enough to live on. And to grow that audience you will have to put in constant steady effort all those years while seeing little to no return for it. If you waver, if you stop putting in that effort, the audience will start to go away and any momentum you had going will fade. And even if you do keep it up, there’s no guarantee that you will make a decent living from it.
It is not impossible, but keep in mind that turning it into a job will mean that it is a job. You will not spend most of your time playing video games and having fun. Most of it will be spent doing things to manage and grow the business - all of the technical details that go into setting up a quality stream, all of the social media aspects of interacting with your fans, all of the bureaucratic details that go into running any business.
If you want to make money in games, then start MAKING games. Learn python, C, or some Unreal engine. Playing games is just entertainment, like going to an art show.
You can try to stream, but you have to be funny, really amazing or female showing off your body. If you start to play around with making games and learning code. You can get a real job using it and make games on the side.
Game tester will kill your love for games. You get a small segment of a title and play it probably 5k times. Walking around, finding bugs, and recording what you found. It’s not “fun”.
Code. It’s the best option.
Work hard, learn to code, master the fundamentals, excel beyond your peers and you might have a real chance at… being laid off by embracer, microsoft or ubisoft. Sigh.
Sounds about right. 41% of game devs got laid off last year, and there have been more since.
Statistically, this is a terrible time to try and join the industry.
It is not easy, I’ve made little over $1k in about 6ish years of doing it as a hobby. It takes time, dedication, and an amount of knowledge about different systems. My advice, if you want to do, do it! But keep it as a hobby unless you get a winning ticket. Also important, don’t fake it (viewbots / chatbots) and dont steal it (art or assets). Making online media content is pretty fun and can help flex the creative muscles!
They get a job.
Its possible but with all youtubers they basically have to establish an audience and they have to hit tiers of subscriber levels. So basically it was easier to do back when. Its possible you could do it casually and if folks liked you enough you might get to the point where you get some payment and then if it continues to grow at some point you might be able to quit your day job. As you said its a crowded field though and all the established folks will show up higher in searches for games.
I agree with the general trend of advice in this thread, but I’m going to go one step further: monetizing your hobbies is a very good way to get burnt out on those hobbies. Finding good work that you enjoy is important! But you should also have some things that are just for you.
Since*
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
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.