More people than ever before are playing video games. As gaming has become mainstream, it has inevitably led to opportunities for the avid gamer to make money doing what they love. This article will teach you how to play video games and make money.
Here are a few options that are available to you, as a passionate gamer, that you can use to make money.
Streaming on Platforms like Twitch and YouTube
You can create a channel on Twitch or YouTube where you can stream yourself playing games. And on YouTube you can also produce non-streaming content and upload videos. If you work at it, and produce quality content on a consistent basis, your channel will grow and you can monetize your channel.
Playing popular new games can lead to a lot of traffic. Or you can specialize and play a certain type of game that you like. You can also produce video reviews and walkthroughs for your channel.
Competitive Gaming and eSports
There are a lot of games that have eSports competitions. Games like Fortnite, League of Legends, and Call of Duty have regular tournaments where players can win cash prizes.
There are also collectible card games like Hearthstone and Magic The Gathering: Arena that are a good option as anyone can learn to play these type of games and become good at them, especially if your reflexes are slower.
Sponsorship and Brand Deals
As your gaming presence grows, either as an eSports professional or from running your YouTube or Twitch channel, you may attract sponsorships and brand deals from gaming-related companies. These deals can involve promoting products, games, or accessories for monetary compensation.
For eSports athletes, it can be sponsorships from major companies, just like athletes in traditional sports.
YouTube and Twitch creators might get access to upcoming new games directly from the developers that they can feature on their channel.
Game Testing and QA
Video game companies hire game testers to playtest their games and provide feedback on bugs and issues. Game testing is hard work, it involves a lot more than just playing games all day, you will have to file bug reports and feedback on a regular basis so the development team can prioritize their work. And playing the same game every day for months can get repetitive. But if you really love this type of work, it can be a great way to make money while being involved in the gaming industry.
The advantage to this type of job is they often do not require a lot of prior experience to apply for. This means they are a great way for you to get into the game industry. Many people have started out as game testers and gone on to become game developers.
You normally apply for these jobs using traditional job websites such as Indeed and other job posting sites.
Game Development and Design
If you have a passion for both gaming and creating games yourself, consider learning game development and design. You can develop and publish your games independently or work for game development studios. There are many success stories of indie game developers who have published games on Steam and either gone on to create their own studios, get hired by a big studio, or they’ve made a lot of money publishing indie games by themselves.
The best way to get into this field is to download a free game development tool and just learn to do it and start making a portfolio of games. You can publish them to itch.io and once you get proficient, you could publish them to Steam and start making money from them.
You can read this article on several options for free game engines you can get started with.
Game Coaching and Lessons
If you’re really good at games or one particular game, you can become a gaming coach and teach others how to get good at that game.
Gamer Sensei is a site that offers game coaching, you can hire a one-on-one coach to help you with specific games. You can also sign up to become a sensei and get paid to coach others.
Gameflip is a website for buying and selling games, but they also have a feature called “Play with Pros” where you can hire professional gamers to play a session with. You can apply to become one of those pros and get paid.
ProGuides offers both game training masterclasses and game coaching. They only work with the top 1{4fdcf0011c2b51217a6da6e48f6f23e1acd707e39ad22193cd3dec3e9a37cda7} of players globally, but if you rank in those numbers, you can apply to join their coaching roster. But if you want to just learn from one of the pros, you can sign up for their master classes for only $9.99 per month, which is a pretty good bargain. Once you learn all you can from those, you stand a good chance to become one of the best players and then you could become a coach.
Now if you aren’t an expert in one of the games those services offer, or you don’t quite match up to the skill levels required, you can always offer coaching services on Fiverr.com. Anyone can sign up as a seller and they provide free training for you to learn how it works.
Game Reviewing and Journalism
Consider starting a blog about games. You can review games that you’ve played, write about the industry, and if you do it right, you can monetize your blog and make money. There are quite a few very successful game review sites that started out as regular blogs and became big and make a lot of money per month.
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Conclusion
There is no magic silver bullet to make money playing games, as is true in anything you set out to do in life, but if you put in the time and hard work, you can do anything you set out to do. Just don’t give up!