making money from video games
making money from video games
Students describe their experiences making money within the gaming community
Alyssa Hui
Alyssa Hui
Senior Alex Woodbury started to play Clash Royale, a mobile video game, after his younger brother introduced him to it. He quickly became determined to be better than his brother and soon found himself playing the game for up to four hours a day and even making money from it.
“Other players who think that I'm a player worth learning from will contact me and ask me to coach them for a certain amount of money that is usually paid by the hour.” Woodbury said.
Woodbury first got into this business after seeing other gamers coach, but according to him, getting started was a struggle. In order to network with others and make his name known within the gaming community, Woodbury spent a year attempting to get featured on the YouTube channel CWA Mobile Gaming. He was eventually successful, and as a guest in the video, which now has over 200,000 views, Woodbury explains his gaming strategies and plays a few rounds of the game.
In order to further establish his reputation, Woodbury announced on Twitter that he was going to offer free coaching. Messages started to flow in from gamers interested in learning. Six months later, Woodbury began to make a profit out of it, making anywhere from $15 to $30 an hour for personal coaching.
According to Woodbury, each coaching session varies depending on the player. If the player is still new to the game, he goes over fundamentals. However, Woodbury believes this is a waste of money since most people can learn the basics just from playing the game. For more advanced players, Woodbury goes over more specific strategies.
“Other players who think that I'm a player worth learning from will contact me and ask me to coach them for a certain amount of money that is usually paid by the hour.” Woodbury said.
Woodbury first got into this business after seeing other gamers coach, but according to him, getting started was a struggle. In order to network with others and make his name known within the gaming community, Woodbury spent a year attempting to get featured on the YouTube channel CWA Mobile Gaming. He was eventually successful, and as a guest in the video, which now has over 200,000 views, Woodbury explains his gaming strategies and plays a few rounds of the game.
In order to further establish his reputation, Woodbury announced on Twitter that he was going to offer free coaching. Messages started to flow in from gamers interested in learning. Six months later, Woodbury began to make a profit out of it, making anywhere from $15 to $30 an hour for personal coaching.
According to Woodbury, each coaching session varies depending on the player. If the player is still new to the game, he goes over fundamentals. However, Woodbury believes this is a waste of money since most people can learn the basics just from playing the game. For more advanced players, Woodbury goes over more specific strategies.
“If I'm running a deck, there's a specific way to play each matchup,” Woodbury said. “So maybe I'm telling them how to play their deck and the generals on that, or maybe I'm teaching them this very specific set of interactions they keep having trouble with, or maybe I'm just trying to teach them how to generally improve their gameplay."
On occasion, Woodbury has also made money through “boosting,” where he plays on someone else’s account, pretending to be them. If he ranks in the top 200 in the world at the end of the competitive season, he receives $50. Although boosting is an offense that can get the account banned in most video games, Woodbury explains that in Clash Royale it is not completely unethical because he is only maintaining the ranking of the account rather than playing to raise the rank of the account.
Woodbury also enters tournaments where he can make money, but he notes that finding opportunities to participate and earn prize money is usually more difficult than coaching. He explains that a large name in the community will host the tournament and through the tournament feature in the game, the players will try to gain as many wins as possible in a set time. Whoever has the most victories will be the winner.
“The problem with those [events], for me at least, is a lot of times, say you're like the best player in a tournament undisputedly, there will be a lot of times where maybe you'll just get [a] bad matchup or maybe one of your games will take twice as long as it's supposed to,” Woodbury said. “So even though you're a higher caliber player, a lot of times you won't be consistently finishing at the top. And because there's not a lot of funding for these tournaments, there's only money for like the top three in like a 1,000 player tournament. It's extremely difficult to do something like that.”
Although he’s never entered into tournaments with the intention of making money, senior Tej Qu Nair has also noticed the instability of these tournaments.
“These things aren't so well established yet, so there's not such a big prize pool, or maybe all the prize money is concentrated towards the top,” Nair said. “If you're not in like the top 0.01%, you basically have no chance of making actual money.”
Nair has never won these tournaments, which he explains is because he doesn’t spend as much time or effort on games as other players.
Woodbury also enters tournaments where he can make money, but he notes that finding opportunities to participate and earn prize money is usually more difficult than coaching. He explains that a large name in the community will host the tournament and through the tournament feature in the game, the players will try to gain as many wins as possible in a set time. Whoever has the most victories will be the winner.
“The problem with those [events], for me at least, is a lot of times, say you're like the best player in a tournament undisputedly, there will be a lot of times where maybe you'll just get [a] bad matchup or maybe one of your games will take twice as long as it's supposed to,” Woodbury said. “So even though you're a higher caliber player, a lot of times you won't be consistently finishing at the top. And because there's not a lot of funding for these tournaments, there's only money for like the top three in like a 1,000 player tournament. It's extremely difficult to do something like that.”
Although he’s never entered into tournaments with the intention of making money, senior Tej Qu Nair has also noticed the instability of these tournaments.
“These things aren't so well established yet, so there's not such a big prize pool, or maybe all the prize money is concentrated towards the top,” Nair said. “If you're not in like the top 0.01%, you basically have no chance of making actual money.”
Nair has never won these tournaments, which he explains is because he doesn’t spend as much time or effort on games as other players.
“I thought it was kind of fun,” Nair said. “We definitely did have a chance [at winning]. I thought we had a chance, but our team didn't have the motivation or work ethic. I'm not saying that's necessarily bad because it's not a good investment of our time, really.”
Senior Ethan Malone explains that in different leagues, such as SiVo and FACEIT, players can improve their ranking if they play well in certain tournaments and can eventually qualify for bigger tournaments in order to make more money. Competitively, Malone used to play Counter Strike: Global Offensive, and he was able to make money from tournaments.
However, according to Malone, the prize pools from tournaments were not enough to justify dedicating thousands of hours to the game, so many people in certain gaming communities fled to the gambling scene, where people would gamble objects like digital items. Even though Malone stopped gambling a few years ago, he had made a significant amount of money from it while keeping it on a relatively small scale.
“I won a little over $1,000 from a jackpot that I put only $5 into,” Malone said. “It's a really funny story because I was trying to snipe a live streamer. He was gambling on the website and I wanted to get my name in there, so I put in like $5 and I ended up winning the entire thing.”
Malone also explains that he is all for the idea of making money and careers from video games.
“[Some video gamers] are making a lot of money. It's to the point where you can make an entire living off of a single tournament, but the qualifications are huge and so many people are involved,” Malone said. “There's a lot of scummy things going on underneath with tournament organizers and stuff that I don't like, but overall, it's good to have all these tournaments. [...] I think big tournaments are very healthy for viewership and maintain the health of eSports.”
An example of a player who was able to make a substantial amount of money from video games through tournaments is 16 year old Kyle Giersdorf, who won the solo event at the Fortnite World Cup final over the summer, taking home $3 million. Nair also explains that those who make careers from video games through streaming, like Richard Tyler Blevins, more commonly known as Ninja, are very lucky.
“Streamers are a prime example of survivorship bias,” Nair said. “People get very lucky streaming. Honestly, you can't say it's all hard work. People just get lucky, essentially becausethere's not that many big streamers because the market gets saturated rather quickly, and there’s simply just not that many viewers and not that much headspace for all these streamers to fit into.”
Overall, Woodbury believes that making money from playing video games in general is extremely glorified, especially because he does not think that Clash Royale is the most entertaining game to watch, which means that there is not a lot of money to be found through streaming, YouTube and large competitions.
Woodbury also describes that many players who look to video games as a profession enjoy the game less because they’re sometimes forced to play when they don’t want to.
However, according to Malone, the prize pools from tournaments were not enough to justify dedicating thousands of hours to the game, so many people in certain gaming communities fled to the gambling scene, where people would gamble objects like digital items. Even though Malone stopped gambling a few years ago, he had made a significant amount of money from it while keeping it on a relatively small scale.
“I won a little over $1,000 from a jackpot that I put only $5 into,” Malone said. “It's a really funny story because I was trying to snipe a live streamer. He was gambling on the website and I wanted to get my name in there, so I put in like $5 and I ended up winning the entire thing.”
Malone also explains that he is all for the idea of making money and careers from video games.
“[Some video gamers] are making a lot of money. It's to the point where you can make an entire living off of a single tournament, but the qualifications are huge and so many people are involved,” Malone said. “There's a lot of scummy things going on underneath with tournament organizers and stuff that I don't like, but overall, it's good to have all these tournaments. [...] I think big tournaments are very healthy for viewership and maintain the health of eSports.”
An example of a player who was able to make a substantial amount of money from video games through tournaments is 16 year old Kyle Giersdorf, who won the solo event at the Fortnite World Cup final over the summer, taking home $3 million. Nair also explains that those who make careers from video games through streaming, like Richard Tyler Blevins, more commonly known as Ninja, are very lucky.
“Streamers are a prime example of survivorship bias,” Nair said. “People get very lucky streaming. Honestly, you can't say it's all hard work. People just get lucky, essentially becausethere's not that many big streamers because the market gets saturated rather quickly, and there’s simply just not that many viewers and not that much headspace for all these streamers to fit into.”
Overall, Woodbury believes that making money from playing video games in general is extremely glorified, especially because he does not think that Clash Royale is the most entertaining game to watch, which means that there is not a lot of money to be found through streaming, YouTube and large competitions.
Woodbury also describes that many players who look to video games as a profession enjoy the game less because they’re sometimes forced to play when they don’t want to.
“When you look at it as a profession, you have to be constantly playing enough to keep up with everyone else," Woodbury said. "That means there are going to be points every single day where you don't want to play the game, but you have to if you want to compete. So, playing at an extremely competitive level, it takes it away from being a hobby and [turns it into] a job.”