In 2018, the popular Fortnite streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins revealed this streaming room that had cost over $200,000 to build. 

One might ask, is it really necessary to have all that stuff just to stream or play video games?

The answer is most certainly no.

Take popular streamer, Felix “xQC” Lengyel, for example. In one of his most famous moments, he goes on ranting about a huge amount of streamers having a variety of random and useless stuff in their setup, and states that “I don’t want to go in an office, and feel like I’m going to work” while he starts his stream every morning.

Here’s the clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuERcyUwpZk (there is profanity).

In fact, many people take this same philosophy as xQC. A lot of streamers don’t have any set-up room that they go into just to stream. After all, it is extremely easy to start a stream, as I covered in one of my earlier blog posts. And most streamers just stream in their bedrooms or living rooms without any fancy hardware at all.

Now of course, Ninja probably has a differing viewpoint. I’d say that many streamers that have such a huge setup like Ninja or organizations like TSM that recently built a $50 million dollar facility for its streamers and players want to have a philosophy that gaming and streaming is, in fact, their full time job. It’s not a laid-back mentality that other streamers like xQC have – in fact , it’s the polar opposite.

There obviously isn’t a right or wrong to these types of, I guess you could say, streamer ideologies. Organizations like TSM would much rather have their players play in a facility because it’s honestly the esports player’s jobs to go to work every day, and make a name for TSM in both streaming and potentially winning trophies for their organization.

Personally, I agree with xQC in his philosophy. I think that streaming should be something that someone does for fun, and that money is a side-product of what streamers actually enjoy. After all, unless you become extremely lucky and extremely famous, streaming will never have the same economic benefits that going to college, getting a degree, and actually finding a job has. Going down a normal tract in life offers stability, in the forms of a stable income and insurance, which streaming, at least currently, doesn’t really offer. 

However, I do concede that huge personalities like Ninja and big organizations like TSM do have insane amounts of money to spend, and it’s plausible to use it in order to better the lifestyle or experience for themselves.

Yet, ultimately, I believe that the moment streaming becomes like a job, is the moment that streaming shouldn’t happen anymore. If streaming becomes less and less fun for the streamer himself, it ultimately hurts the viewers’ experiences as well. And the viewers’ experience is really what matters the most.

-DZ