No. And you just pointed out why. The people you see on YouTube and Twitch rolling in the dough aren’t playing games, they are producing content. These are two different things to do.

Im a casual gamer

No. You have to be dedicated to this and push for years to maybe, just maybe make actual money. Not only do you have to be a gamer, but you also have to have a personality people like.

If you’re really good at a competitive game like Counter-Strike, you could do tournaments for money. But unless you’re in Asia, the payouts are absolute shit and it wouldn’t be enough to be your only job.

The better option would probably be trying to get a job in QA as a game tester. But I don’t think that pays a lot, probably just above minimum wage. It also takes more than just playing games. You need to be good at documenting your findings and communication. As well as doing things that might be counterintuitive to the average player.

It is not easy, I’ve made little over $1k in about 6ish years of doing it as a hobby. It takes time, dedication, and an amount of knowledge about different systems. My advice, if you want to do, do it! But keep it as a hobby unless you get a winning ticket. Also important, don’t fake it (viewbots / chatbots) and dont steal it (art or assets). Making online media content is pretty fun and can help flex the creative muscles!

My sister streams MMOs and JRPGs as a hobby. She has a very modest following and doesn’t do much to promote herself. She gets a check of $100-$300 every few months. I think it’s a pretty good deal for the effort involved. I tried it for a bit but found out quickly I have nothing meaningful (and barely anything meaningless) to say.

The reality is that they don’t. Only a small percentage of them gain a big enough following that they can get by with streaming payouts, donations, and sponsorships.

There’s so many people to watch and hardly anything unique about them to make them stand out.

You should prepare yourself to get a real job.

You can game on the side. You can even try to build up a following and turn that into something that replaces your job. But you probably won’t get that off the ground before needing a real job.

If you want to make money in games, then start MAKING games. Learn python, C, or some Unreal engine. Playing games is just entertainment, like going to an art show.

You can try to stream, but you have to be funny, really amazing or female showing off your body. If you start to play around with making games and learning code. You can get a real job using it and make games on the side.

Game tester will kill your love for games. You get a small segment of a title and play it probably 5k times. Walking around, finding bugs, and recording what you found. It’s not “fun”.

Code. It’s the best option.

The 3 ways to make money in gaming are to a) be exceptionally good at games, b) have an entertaining personality, or c) do something that nobody else does.

For a) either you’re good enough to make it in esports, or you’re good enough that people want to watch you stream. For b) gaming is really just a small part of what brings people in. c) might be doing things like challenges or other niche gaming related stuff.

Its possible but with all youtubers they basically have to establish an audience and they have to hit tiers of subscriber levels. So basically it was easier to do back when. Its possible you could do it casually and if folks liked you enough you might get to the point where you get some payment and then if it continues to grow at some point you might be able to quit your day job. As you said its a crowded field though and all the established folks will show up higher in searches for games.

Personally, I wait tables.

They’re not gamers, they’re entertainers playing video games. Gamers who earn money are really pros, in which case they’re comparable to athletes.

It takes time to grow an audience, and if you’re very lucky maybe 5% of your audience will actually give you money to do what you do.

Even if you manage to stand out in what is a fairly saturated market, it will be years before you have enough people following you to make enough to live on. And to grow that audience you will have to put in constant steady effort all those years while seeing little to no return for it. If you waver, if you stop putting in that effort, the audience will start to go away and any momentum you had going will fade. And even if you do keep it up, there’s no guarantee that you will make a decent living from it.

It is not impossible, but keep in mind that turning it into a job will mean that it is a job. You will not spend most of your time playing video games and having fun. Most of it will be spent doing things to manage and grow the business - all of the technical details that go into setting up a quality stream, all of the social media aspects of interacting with your fans, all of the bureaucratic details that go into running any business.

Don’t ruin a hobby with money. You will lose all enjoyment of it. Something changes when you get paid for it.

I agree with the general trend of advice in this thread, but I’m going to go one step further: monetizing your hobbies is a very good way to get burnt out on those hobbies. Finding good work that you enjoy is important! But you should also have some things that are just for you.