Career Opportunities as an Esports Streamer
One of the various positions and career paths one can think about pursuing in the expanding Esports industry is that of an Esports Streamer. The following sections attempt to provide a brief explanation of what an Esports streamer is, what their tasks and responsibilities are, and the many platforms where the most well-known streamers can be found.
What is Esports Streaming?
Esports streaming is the practice of athletes broadcasting their live performances to viewers online, with Twitch being the most widely used platform.
Twitch was the first website to make esports streaming commonplace. Other platforms, such as YouTube Gaming, Facebook Gaming, Mixer, and other services, quickly followed suit after becoming popular in the middle of the 2010s.
With hundreds of millions of users accessing streaming services on a monthly basis, it is currently one of the internet traffic groups with the quickest growth rates.
Who are Esports Streamers?
Professional Esports Streamers are gamers who videotape themselves playing video games in front of audiences (often done live) and frequently offer interesting in-game commentary in between competitive play.
They are a crucial component of Esports because many players began as professional Esports athletes competing in different events and then choose to switch to live streaming their gaming after giving up competitive play.
How to Become an Esports Streamer?
To join the ranks of the Esports streaming community, all you really need is a decent gaming PC or laptop, a steady internet connection, and a working webcam or separate recording device to stream your gameplay. We will go into more detail about this in another article, but to give you a quick overview:
However, the most popular path to Esports streaming typically involves switching from competitive Esports to personal streaming, as accomplished by athletes like TF Blade.
How do Esports Streamers Earn?
Streamers sometimes use affiliate marketing, where they advocate other products or services and receive a commission for doing so, to supplement their sponsorship, subscriptions, and contributions money.
Why become an Esports Streamer?
Being able to perform what you love professionally is without a doubt the best part of becoming an Esports streamer. Given the top Esports players' extremely brief career spans, it makes sense to continue working in the sector and doing so in a position that pays well.
Since they are essential "their own bosses," streamers experience a tremendous sense of independence in their employment. A streamer also gains a great sense of self-accomplishment and achievement after they have enough experience and skill, especially if their fan base grows in line with their competition ranks.
The capacity to influence people and bring about social change is another advantage. This includes promoting one's own causes or those of others, as well as raising awareness of video games.
Twitch and Other Platforms for Streamers
The main streaming site for Esports is still Twitch.
Since the mid-2010s, when streaming first started to gain traction, Twitch has dominated the Esports streaming business, surpassing HBO's online service in terms of web traffic and rising to the fourth-largest source of peak internet traffic in the US by 2014.
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In June 2011, Twitch launched after splitting from Justin.tv.
Twitch was purchased by Amazon for $970 million following its meteoric rise to fame in 2014, and Twitch was later integrated with Amazon Prime, the company's own subscription program.
Twitch has 100 million monthly viewers at the end of 2015 and 1.5 million active streamers on the platform.
Esports Streaming Technology
The main streaming site for Esports is still Twitch.
Typically, two or more participants are connected to a local area connection via a router for Esports competitions (with an internet modem connection optional but usually also installed).
After then, the router is linked to a network switch, which in turn connects to each individual PC and assigns each player a special IP address.
In addition to the gaming PCs used by the players, there is typically an "observer" PC that monitors and controls the streaming as well as a "producer" PC that does the actual game broadcast.
Apart from the traditional medium of using PCs for streaming, many dedicated gaming laptops have nowadays been developed with more powerful graphics cards, webcams and microphones, and higher quality network connectivity as well to ensure smoother latency.
Gaming consoles have also taken the initiative with consoles like PlayStation 4 and Xbox One having in-built streaming and optional camera integration modules available to support the streaming of games.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Esports streamers and streaming, in general, are now integral parts of the larger Esports movement and are only expected to grow in popularity in the next years.
The eSports streaming community will inevitably grow in number in the days to come and, with it, promote Esports streaming and Esports in general more. This is because more and more individuals are gaining access to less expensive computing technologies and internet connections.
You can also head to Tournafest's YouTube channel to watch videos related to the Esports Industry.
If you enjoyed reading this blog, you might also like to read about other blogs from Tournafest from varying genres of the gaming industry.
If you enjoy playing video games, you might want to download the Tournafest app from Google Play or the App Store to compete in Esports Tournaments and Scrims for games such as BGMI, Free Fire MAX, Pokemon unite, CS: GO, CODM: MP, Valorant and Call of Duty and win exciting prizes! You may also organize tournaments and fetch unmatched perks.
Stay tuned for more and we will see you later!