Professional streaming gamers on twitch.tv - Part 5: The good ones are entertaining their audience

You may be one of the best gamers at Fortnite Battle Royale, but if you don't have an audience, you will not be a successful streamer on twitch.tv.

Good professional streaming gamers on twitch.tv are broadcasting their games six or seven days a week for a minimum of six hours and sometimes for up to twelve hours.

Let's take as an example the most successful of these streamers: Tyler "Ninja" Blevins. Here is a screen shot of Ninja playing on twitch.tv:

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Most of the screen is showing the game itself, that is what Ninja is seeing himself as he is playing.

On the left, there is a small insert showing Ninja playing.

There may be other secondary elements on the broadcast screen, but those two are the main ones: the game as it is currently played and the streamer himself playing the game.
Not shown here is the "chat" where spectators may send written comments to the streamer or to the other spectators.

The streamer may be playing "solo", as is the case here, or with one to three other gamers, who may or may not be streamers themselves.

When playing solo, a successful streamer talks to his audience, either commenting his game or replying to some of the spectators that have sent comments on the "chat".

When playing in a team of 2 to 4 gamers, the streamer will also talk to his teammates to coordinate their games, to comment on the way his teammates are playing, to tell jokes, etc...

The goal of all these elements (the game itself, the gamer as he is playing live and the voice(s) of the gamer(s)) is to entertain and/or educate the audience. It is similar to a TV channel, but with very few commercials.

If the streamer is not entertaining, as there are many other streamers on twitch.tv that broadcast their Fortnite games and that may be more entertaining, he will never get a large enough audience.

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On twitch.tv, there are two ways to make money: subscriptions and donations.

A spectator of a Twitch channel may decide that the streamer should be rewarded and so he will "subscribed" to the channel, for several months, at US$4.99 per month.

He may also want to give the streamer a small or large donation of US$ in addition to his subscription or even if he is not a subscriber.

Ninja have currently more than 100,000 subscribers, and he gets many donations every day. So, his revenue is more than half a million dollar a month.

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You may have noticed that I have use the masculine for the streamers and the spectators. The reason is that 85 to 90% of them are males. There are very few female streamers and gamers, but there are some that are very good.

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I could continue to analyze what makes a successful streaming Fortnite gamer, but I think I will stop now. I hope I have interested you about this new way to entertain audience without forcing the spectators to give anything, when the entertainer is interacting with its audience at the same time as he his displaying its craft.

-- End of the series

Part 1: Fortnite, the video game
Part 2: Why is Fortnite Battle Royale such a successful game?
Part 3: What does it take to be an excellent gamer?
Part 4: Skills you need to master to be an excellent Fortnite gamer