How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online

#81

Post by snoman » Tue, Nov 14, 2017, 5:42 PM UTC

xchaotic wrote: post #6

This is very much like sports - very few make it to the top, and it's kind of subsidised by the ones coming up or just idly watching. Unlike actual sport, the disciplines here change rapidly, in spite of Blizzard's best efforts, World of Warcraft numbers are rapidly dwindling so a WoW start will pretty much have to start from scratch in another game or quit streaming as a career move. Game developers or even petty mi…

> ... if one was to put equivalnet amount of time in another field, say learning how deep learning works...

I see what you're getting at, but these are two different things. The vast majority of humanity as a whole is just not capable of sitting down and chewing through a deep learning textbook or anything of the sort.

What you're ignoring is just how accessible streaming is as an income method. Up until recently, all you needed was the equipment (Add in the promise of big money and 'superstars' and now every kid wants to ~be in a band~ be a streamer.

Re: How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online

#82

Post by stevenwoo » Tue, Nov 14, 2017, 5:43 PM UTC

petercooper wrote: post #36

The bit I'd be interested to read about is the psychology behind the "donors." Why would anyone throw down random $100 or $500 without a quid quo pro to someone receiving many other such donations? I understand streaming, generally, and have paid to subscribe to a channel before but the random throwing around of not insignificant amounts of money gets me scratching my head. (Should make it clear I'm not criticizing t…

A few years ago some videos of women getting $5,000 tips in video chat made the front page on reddit - I had never heard of it but stripping/performing sex acts on camera in chat rooms for tips is a sizeable business. Some people were tipping just for acknowledgement of their typing in a comment to the performer. Reddit probably was being used as viral advertising for it back then and now.

It actually seems better for the performers than stripping in a club - they don't have to risk contact with patrons, more control of working conditions and I assume they get to keep a lot more of their income.

Re: How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online

#83

Post by zitterbewegung » Tue, Nov 14, 2017, 5:48 PM UTC

tomschlick wrote: post #30

olegkikin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shroud is the real high-roller. He regularly gets $100, $200, $500 tips. I think the highest single tip he's got was like $5000.

He also takes in a lot through Twitch subscriptions. He has 30k+ subscribers from what he last said and each would pay him $2.50-$10 / mo. Of course Twitch would take their cut but thats insane.

Twitch negotiates cuts at 30k and they scale it back a bunch at that level also.

Re: How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online

#84

Post by Strom » Tue, Nov 14, 2017, 5:49 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #42

chrisper wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big chunk of those 2,000,000 players are Chinese no?

What does that have to do with... literally anything?

The article seems to be all about Twitch. Chinese people don't really use Twitch, they have their own clones like Douyu. So while the percentage of Chinese players doesn't mean much from a global viewpoint, it matters a ton if we're looking at Twitch's role.

Re: How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online

#85

Post by huac » Tue, Nov 14, 2017, 5:50 PM UTC

EA wrote: post #16

No mention of Dr. Disrespect - a Twitch persona who recently won "Streamer of the Year" at the Esports Industry Awards. Just a passing mention of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, a game which according to some is growing faster than Minecraft did. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) is the most popular streamed game on Twitch right now. The game regularly has over 2,000,000 concurrent players, has sold over 13,000,000…

> Some digital items obtained from loot crates have sold for over $1,000.

That's been happening for years. Hats in Team Fortress 2 sold for ~1500 (Burning Kabuto was around there IIRC), and a knife in CSGO went for 24k (apparently, http://read.navi-gaming.com/en/team_news/Rarest_and_expensiv...).

Re: How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online

#86

Post by romaniv » Tue, Nov 14, 2017, 5:52 PM UTC

olympus wrote: post #9

What I think is crazy is that this industry exists at the scale it does. It has replaced reality TV for a segment of the world population. There are legions of people that watch these streams, just to watch someone doing something that they could do themselves (but maybe not win as much). This isn't like F1 racing where I'll never be able to afford a racecar, or football where I don't want to exercise. Most of the ki…

>There are legions of people that watch these streams, just to watch someone doing something that they could do themselves (but maybe not win as much).

This is an interesting comment. I watch couple of streamers regularly, but not in real-time. I just watch their content on YouTube.

Why?

Some of them actually put good effort into creating interesting in-game situations and running entertaining commentary. It's less of a reality show and more of a comedy/talk show. Maybe.

Some of them are very good at the game, and watching the stream is an opportunity to learn something new. If the game is competitive, it sort of makes sense.

But overall, I agree that streaming and YouTube are becoming the new TV. Maybe the motivations I outline above are somewhat pathological in the sense that they don't justify the time spent on such simplistic entertainment.

A lot of videos are about competitive online games, and come to think of it the direct experience in those games isn't always great. For example, when you're watching a game on YouTube it's effectively per-selected. This way you can "skip" the games that are boring or have something broken or have annoying/rude players. You can cancel/pause at any time without loosing rank or annoying other people. In some ways it's a sad state of affairs. Games should be entertaining in their own right.

Re: How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online

#87

Post by gozur88 » Tue, Nov 14, 2017, 5:54 PM UTC

petercooper wrote: post #36

The bit I'd be interested to read about is the psychology behind the "donors." Why would anyone throw down random $100 or $500 without a quid quo pro to someone receiving many other such donations? I understand streaming, generally, and have paid to subscribe to a channel before but the random throwing around of not insignificant amounts of money gets me scratching my head. (Should make it clear I'm not criticizing t…

I suspect it's the sort of "telethon" mentality. Some people see the donations as a competition (not intellectually, but emotionally). They want to win, so they donate way more than is reasonable.

Beyond that, wasn't there kind of a scandal a few years back where people would donate huge amounts to twitch streamers to make a big splash, and then cancel their donations so it didn't cost anything?

Re: How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online

#88

Post by xchaotic » Tue, Nov 14, 2017, 5:57 PM UTC

snoman wrote: post #81

xchaotic wrote: post #6

This is very much like sports - very few make it to the top, and it's kind of subsidised by the ones coming up or just idly watching. Unlike actual sport, the disciplines here change rapidly, in spite of Blizzard's best efforts, World of Warcraft numbers are rapidly dwindling so a WoW start will pretty much have to start from scratch in another game or quit streaming as a career move. Game developers or even petty mi…

> ... if one was to put equivalnet amount of time in another field, say learning how deep learning works... I see what you're getting at, but these are two different things. The vast majority of humanity as a whole is just not capable of sitting down and chewing through a deep learning textbook or anything of the sort. What you're ignoring is just how accessible streaming is as an income method. Up until recently, al…

" The vast majority of humanity as a whole is just not capable of sitting down and chewing through a deep learning textbook or anything of the sort." they don't currently, and probably we don't need millions of data science major, but somehow grinding through the game for thousands of hours is doable. I'd say let's gamify learning and we will have a whole new supply of world class scientist streaming their research on sci-twitch.tv ;)

Re: How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online

#89

Post by rabbitonrails » Tue, Nov 14, 2017, 5:58 PM UTC

petercooper wrote: post #36

The bit I'd be interested to read about is the psychology behind the "donors." Why would anyone throw down random $100 or $500 without a quid quo pro to someone receiving many other such donations? I understand streaming, generally, and have paid to subscribe to a channel before but the random throwing around of not insignificant amounts of money gets me scratching my head. (Should make it clear I'm not criticizing t…

Because the streamers are a big part of their days and they want to help them succeed. And for shoutouts.

Re: How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online

#90

Post by bllguo » Tue, Nov 14, 2017, 6:01 PM UTC

Jemmeh wrote: post #47

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Working seven days a week as a professional gamer is pretty brutal. I'm gonna throw some shade towards gameplay streamers. Streamers who do focused content and actually produce shows as you would in a TV/Radio studio have a real job which I've actually done, so this doesn't include them. Playing a game and running a stream, technically, is not hard. Engaging with viewers is not hard. There's a bunch of solutions out…

Of course "streaming isn't hard" in the same way that playing football isn't hard. It's when you do it at a professional level and have to put in mad hours every week to keep up that it becomes brutal. All without guarantee that you'll even get paid if you're just unlucky that week and don't get enough viewers.

Streaming requires little commitment to try out. You can easily have a normal job and stream at night to ease into it. The skills required are to just be entertaining. You can quit immediately if you want or need to, without dropping a beat. The commitment required is orders of magnitude less than something like playing sports professionally.

The actual comparison to football is "esports," where people play games competitively. There, you actually do have to put in large amounts of hours to compete at the highest level, without being guaranteed prize money or competitive wins.