How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online - The New Yorker

[Pluvious]

Each month, a hundred million visitors watch their favorite personalities play video games on Twitch, spending an average of nearly two hours a day there. This audience is large enough to make the site one of the twenty most trafficked in the U.S., yet it’s perhaps more apt to measure Twitch against a different medium. With viewership numbers that rival those of MSNBC or CNN, Twitch is less like a conventional Web site than like a kaleidoscopic television network: thousands of channels at once, broadcasting live at every hour of the day.

Garcia makes several times that amount on a good day. Since 2011, he has been one of Twitch’s “partners,” an élite group that includes some twenty-five thousand streamers, of the 2.2 million active on the site. Between his thousands of subscribers—who pay a monthly fee for access to perks such as ad-free viewing—and his sponsorships, appearance fees, and tips, he earns a “low- to mid-six-figure” income. His streaming schedule has become more manageable, though it remains arduous: sixty hours a week, no days off except occasional Saturdays. He has devoted nearly thirty thousand hours to World of Warcraft. “I’m a grinder, man,” he told me.

“This year, Towelliee’s viewers have watched five hundred and ninety-four years of his content,” Dariani said. In 2016, Garcia sold nearly three million dollars’ worth of his sponsors’ products through links on his Twitch channel.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/20/how-to-get-rich-playing-video-games-online

[Gothmog]

1. ESPN.com to cover e-sports with same 'rigor' as it does the big leagues

I am amused by the coverage by ESPN of the Esports area http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-espn-esports-20160113-story.html

ESPN has announced plans to aggressively cover the sport of playing video games, beginning on its website and apps.

E-sports competitions have surged into a $500-million global industry over the last few years, as millions of people watch online or turn up at arenas to see players go at it with game console controllers or computer keyboards.


On Thursday, ESPN.com rolled out a section devoted to articles and videos about professional leagues and tournaments for video games such as “League of Legends” and “Counter-Strike.”

Given the passionate fandom, the organization and the drama around e-sports, “the storyline was so compelling that we decided there was no reason we shouldn’t be doing this on a daily basis with the same rigor we cover the National League Football or other sports,” said Chad Millman, editor-in-chief of ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine.

ESPN has been covering both the new Overwatch league and the League of Legions NACLS leagues.

[Gothmog]

2. Overwatch: Bigger than the Premier League?

Overwatch has a way to go to catch the premier league but I found this article to be amusing Overwatch: Bigger than the Premier League?

Unlike most e-sports competitions, each team will be based in a different major city to help owners attract home crowds.

And they will pursue the world's biggest consumer brands as sponsors, rather than the kind of games-related businesses usually associated with e-sports.

"If you want to reach 18-to-35-year-olds, you really need to be where they are, and they are playing games," Activision Blizzard's chief executive Bobby Kotick told the BBC.

"The other thing that we offer uniquely is that Overwatch is a very family-friendly game experience. It's a teen-rated game; it's super-colourful, super-friendly.

I am rooting for the Houston team

[steve2470]

3. yep, I read this, watching Twitch right now

https://www.twitch.tv/richard_hammer

This guy. He's playing Player Unknown Battleground (PUBG). He's pretty good and keeps up a good conversation too.