The pay isn't great (on par with, or slightly better than, minimum wage). Playing in such a way as to intentionally break games becomes boring fast, especially if you have to keep checking the same places after every game revision. These days, it isn't too difficult to become a video game tester, but it can be mind-numbing work. Why It's Difficult to Earn a Living by Testing Games 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. Near the time of completion, developers need outsiders to playtest their games with fresh eyes. Games go through various phases of development before they're released. You won't have to entertain people live for hours, but you still need to commit to a regular schedule and routinely come up with ideas. You could dedicate a channel to gaming news about a specific genre, for example. 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 need the knowledge and insight of a guide creator, plus the diligence and charisma of a streamer. In a way, this is like a hybrid of guides (#3) and live streams (#1). If it's boring, shallow, has poor production quality, or is inconsistent, the show won't succeed. Your show must be compelling enough for people to tune in. You'll need to build a sizeable audience before you see any revenue. Why Earning Money With Gaming Shows Is Tough In particular, this format can also be supported through Patreon subscriptions. Podcasts and YouTube videos can be monetized with ads, sponsorships, and other forms of YouTube monetization. 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. Have a lot to say? Try creating a daily, weekly, or monthly show related to gaming. But when you factor in the amount of time you'll need to spend mastering the game and explaining every little aspect of it, you'll earn well below the minimum wage per hour. Most of these guides pay at least $200, which sounds great. Formatting skills are imperative, whether you're publishing ebooks or writing for the web.Īs one example, the GameFAQs "Bounty Program" rewards you with cash for being the first person to write a comprehensive walkthrough for a title. Guides need to be dense and comprehensive, but also entertaining and comprehensible. On top of that, you'll need strong writing skills. To set your guides apart, you'll need to offer more insight than others can provide, which means investing a ton of time and setting yourself up as an expert. To make any kind of money from it, you need to create guides for popular games-but the more popular the game, the more competition you'll run into. Why It's Challenging to Earn Money Through Gaming GuidesĪnyone can write a guide. The first two are often monetized with ads and/or donations, whereas the ebook route earns revenue through sales. You can take several routes for game guides, such as creating a website for written guides, uploading video guides to YouTube, or publishing guides as ebooks. And in general, writing every day can be a huge drain on mental energy. Reviews and interviews take a lot of time to do properly. For news writing, you'll need to tap into all kinds of sources around the clock to get scoops before others do. When starting your own site, it'll take years to build an audience from which you can earn enough to live on. Lots of people want to write about games for a living! If writing for an existing site, you'll likely have to work for next to nothing while you establish a portfolio and prove your skills. Why It's Hard to Make Money Writing About Video GamesĪs with most kinds of journalism, games journalism is competitive. If you're starting your own site, you can monetize your traffic with ads, Patreon subscriptions, or similar. If writing for an existing site, you can get paid on a per-article basis as a freelancer. Fancy yourself a writer? Either join an existing site or launch your own and start writing news, reviews, and interviews for a specific game, genre, or industry.
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