Photo illustration by Bráulio Amado
By David Marchese | New York Times Magazine
Tyler Blevins — Ninja, to video-game fans — is the closest thing gaming has to a crossover mainstream star. Largely on the back of his skills playing Fortnite, as well as his puckish commentary while he plays, the 29-year-old has amassed 16.5 million followers on Twitch, 14.4 million on Instagram, 6.5 million on Twitter, 24 million subscribers on YouTube and gobs of money. (He has said he makes $500,000 a month from streaming. And by the way, I fully admit to envying Blevins’s success; would that esports and streaming had been such a big deal when I was probably the world’s best at GoldenEye 007 for Nintendo 64.) All that, and Blevins is wondering what’s next, or least how to achieve more while spending less time at his desk. “Physically, sitting and streaming in one spot for eight hours a day, it’s a lot,” he says. “We’ve talked about fading out of that slowly. But I’m never going to go cold turkey. I love video games too much for that.”
Being watched live for hours day after day by tens of thousands of people while you’re playing a video game is a deeply new and also deeply unnatural activity. It must have some effect on a person’s sense of self. How do you think it affects you?
Streaming makes you super self-conscious. You have to be the most sure person on the planet if you’re going to get into this and not be completely torn apart. If I didn’t have my wife and my family to talk to — everyone’s like, “Don’t listen to what people say.” All right, but when you’re reading “You suck [expletive]” 20 times in a chat, it’s going to get in your head. Like, for example, when we came back from Mixer,1 I knew that I wasn’t going to be the biggest streamer in terms of viewers anymore. You don’t be the No. 1 streamer, leave, come back and you’re No. 1 again. I get people coming in my chat, and they’re like: “You’re falling off. LOL. Good Mixer move, man.” The Mixer move was smart. I don’t regret anything I’ve done. I could teach all these kids talking [expletive], but when you reply to them, they’re like, “He said my name!” Their name is 69fartsniffer, and you read their name, and their next comment after they roasted you is them giggling like a little schoolgirl. Like, “You noticed me!” It’s the worst.
