The world of gaming has evolved at an exponential rate. We’ve seen its evolution go from field games to video games to virtual reality games; the list goes on, but what we can’t miss out is how gamers have been able to monetise this form of leisure.
While you can make money playing games, it’s not always an easy feat and so here is a comprehensive list of ways you can earn money in gaming, understand which method would work best for you and lastly, know the steps to take to set yourself up to win.
Get Paid to Live Stream
Anyone can stream their gameplay in real-time for the world to see. Aim to build a large audience (which you can monetise with ads) or a loyal audience (to monetise with donations and subscriptions). Some of the biggest platforms for streaming at the moment are Twitch and YouTube.
The main difficulty with this method to earn as a gamer is that it can take a long time to build a live stream audience. You may not have 10 concurrent viewers for several months, and you may not get 100 viewers at a time for years. So you may be wondering why someone would watch your live stream when there are plenty of other popular streams to watch? The trick is to set yourself apart with your own brand of humour or personality and also by being a world-class player, or by playing games no one else is playing.
Getting Started
Fortunately, the barrier to entry for streaming is relatively low. All you need is a decent computer, some games that viewers want to watch, a fun personality, and streaming software. Make sure your internet upload speed is fast enough to handle the stream, in addition to whatever game you're playing.
Games Journalism
If you consider yourself to be an avid writer, you can join an existing site or launch your own and start writing news, reviews, and interviews for a specific game, genre, or industry. If you’re writing for an existing site, you can get paid on a per-article basis as a freelancer. If you're starting your own site, you can monetise your traffic with ads, subscriptions, and or provides a number of other services.
As with most kinds of journalism, games journalism is competitive. Lots of people want to write about games for a living! When writing news, you'll need to tap into all kinds of sources around the clock to get scoops before others do. For reviews and interviews, they tend to take a lot of time to do properly. And in general, writing every day can be a huge drain on mental energy so that’s something to also bear in mind.
Getting Started
Look for open positions at small to medium sized gaming sites and make sure you have some writing samples on hand. Send in your application (with writing samples included) and hope for the best! If you don't have any past work to provide, consider volunteer writing for smaller sites first.
Create Video Game Tutorials
Many newcomers to certain games love reading guides and watching tutorials, especially for multiplayer titles. Thus, there’s a market for earning money by providing useful information to people who want to learn. You can take several routes for game guides, such as creating a website for written guides, uploading video tutorials to YouTube, or publishing ebooks. The first two are often monetised with ads and/or donations, whereas the ebook route earns revenue through sales.
The great thing is that anyone can write a guide but that can also be a disadvantage. To make any kind of money from it, you would need to create guides for popular games—but the more popular the game, the more competition you'll run into. To set your guides and tutorials apart, you'll need to offer more insight than others can provide, which means investing a bit more time and setting yourself up as an expert. On top of that, you'll need strong writing skills. Guides need to be dense and comprehensive, but also entertaining and comprehensible. Formatting skills are imperative, whether you're publishing ebooks or writing for the web.
Getting Started
Find a popular game, figure out what the players are having trouble with, learn the ins and outs of that problem, then teach others how to overcome it themselves.
Host a Gaming Podcast or YouTube Channel
Have a lot to say? Try creating a daily, weekly, or monthly show related to gaming. It could be an opinion-based roundtable discussion, a series of interviews with high-profile players, tips and tricks for a specific game, or anything else that's interesting.
Podcasts and YouTube videos can be monetised with ads, sponsorships, and other forms of YouTube monetisation. In particular, this format can also be supported through subscriptions. In order to do this well, you'll need to build a sizable audience before you see any revenue and your show must be compelling enough for people to tune in.
To host a podcast is similar to preparing guides alongside live streams. You need the knowledge and insight of a guide creator, plus the diligence and charisma of a streamer. On the plus side, podcast content doesn't have to be as deep as a guide, and your personality doesn't have to be as distinct as a streamer. You could dedicate a channel to gaming news about a specific genre, for example.
Getting Started
There are a number of credible podcast resources and platforms to use to create content and one of the easiest places to start is by creating your own YouTube channel.
Get Paid to Test Games
Games go through various phases of development before they're released. Near the time of completion, developers need outsiders to playtest their games with fresh eyes. As a playtester, your job is to check over everything the developer wants you to look at, which includes finding and documenting bugs and other issues.
These days it isn't too difficult to become a tester, but it can become mind-numbing very quickly if it is not something you have a genuine interest in. Playing in such a way as to intentionally break games is not appealing for most, especially if you have to keep checking the same places after every game revision. Also, most game testing is for mobile games, which aren't as exciting as full-blown console and PC releases.
Getting Started
For on-demand playtesting, look into services that offer it on behalf of other companies. Becoming an internal tester at a company is also an option but may be a tougher route to take as you’ll have to go through the usual job application process before beginning testing.
So, should you go down the route to earn as a Gamer?
Games are fun because they give us a way to escape reality. When gaming becomes a means of earning money, that aspect of escapism can disappear, and likely so will the element of entertainment. However, if you still want to forge ahead, the opportunities discussed here are some of the best ways to make a gaming-related living right now. There are a number of other careers in the gaming industry, but they don't involve as much actual game play as those mentioned above. Of course, there's always the option to create your own game and earn money through sales, as well as in-app purchases or ads to generate revenue.
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