[Jotaku]

There are already a ton of video games out there in the world, some of which may be competitive video games that you like.
You really liked the video game, and of course you've played it incredibly hard at a pro gamer level.

Still, if you couldn't be a pro gamer, then why? it can be following reasons:
1. Your livestream didn't thrive because you focused on playing games only.
2. Despite thriving your livestream, basically the game's population is so small that there are no tournaments, or the game company fails to thrive their tournament.
3. You took a fairly high rank in a famous game, but you were gradually forgotten by the public because it was not the highest level such as Top 1~100 range.
... and so on, there will be many reasons for that.

You may say, "Gaming skills are the most important!" and focus on gaming only. However, the reality is somewhat different.

Well, Intel says followings on their "How to Become a Pro Gamer in 10 Steps" blog article:


By the standard, this is a truth. However, training for many years to become a pro gamer will not work for everybody, unless such a person enters into any contract with any eSports organization and get paid regularly. Basically what it says is spending years of life into playing video games all day long and hope to be a pro gamer someday. There are very few such people and that is highly depending on lucks and personal connections.

In this article, we will find out more practical way than spending your many years into playing only games all day long to become a pro gamer.

There are many pro gamers who have already deteriorated their skills as they age, but still makes good profit. The secret is livestream. They had a lot of fans in their active days, so that's possible.

As people age, their reaction speed and thinking ability gradually decline. By the time you are in your 30s, a job as a pro gamer can already be difficult. Importantly, until your gaming skills diminish with age, you should be able to have as many fans as possible. That way, even if you are over your 30s, you can live a safe life as a retired professional gamer. What this means is that it's important to grow your livestream to the fullest. I mean something like Twitch or Youtube.

Of course, if you're trying to get the most out of your heyday by winning famous games like Blizzard or League of Legends, where the prize money is huge, you don't have to focus on growing livestream. Because you can just save those huge prizes into bank and focus on winning in such big leagues. But if the game you're playing isn't such a huge game, there are a number of different ways to try.

So, how can you make your livestream thrive?

1. If you don't get into the Top 100 in the game you're playing, try to get into the Top 100 in a tournament in a less competitive game.
Again, growing a livestream is a very easy task if you have a tremendous skill enough to be in the top 100 in a very popular game like Fortnite.
However, even a very popular game is very difficult if you are not in the top 100.

Take one of the most popular games in the world, Fortnite, as an example.
Fortnite is a popular game that currently has around 6th highest viewer number on Twitch as of April 2021.





Let's look at the top 100 PC players based on fortnitetracker.com's WINS leaderboard (as of April 2021):
Top #1: Prospering - 92.3K followers in Twitch
...
Top #48 : Faria - 20.5K followers in Twitch
...
top #67 : FaZe Funk - 103K followers in Twitch

Within the top 100, you can see players with quite followers. 

Now, let's look at the players after the 100th place of Fortnitetracker.com (as of April 2021):
Top #107 : Zaccubus - 17.3K followers in Twitch
...
Top #112 : ttv FlyHolland - 849 followers
...
Top #119 : Twitch Maik4life - 114 followers
...
Top #142 : yogartFart - 614 followers

You can see that the number of subscribers has declined significantly on average compared to the Top #1 to 100 groups.

You might ask why I use fortnitetracker.com as an example, but that is actually not important here and we will use the same tracker system in the next comparison. What's really important here is the fact that even if it's a popular game like Fortnite that has a viewer number in the top 10 on Twitch, the number of followers on average can drop significantly on average as it goes beyond the top #100.

So, now, using the same Tracker system for Apex Legends, let's compare Apex Legends' Top #1~100 group with Fortnite's Top #100~200 group. Of course, they are the same PC Players. The reason I chose Apex Legends is that the game is a bit less competitive, with about 2/3 of the people watching it on Twitch than Fortnite.



Apex Legends' Top #1~100 groups (as of April 2021):
Top #1: NRG_Sweet_Rank_1 - 232K followers in Twitch
Top #2: xbaronful - 35.8K followers
...
Top #47: Ayybel - 4.3k followers in Twitch
...
Top #96: BlurrFlavorztv - 975 followers in Twitch

As you can see, the Top #100 group in a less competitive game can have more subscribers than the Top #100-200 in a more competitive game, on average excluding players in organization (You will see why later in Part 3).

In other words, if you are not in the Top #100 of the game you are playing, try to play an easier game to rank than that. And try to make more subscribers, who will be basically your fans.

Here is a list of some eSports tournaments and their difficulties as of April 2021:
League of Legends World Championship - Hard
Battle.net World Championship Series -Hard
ESL Pro League - Hard
Call of Duty League- Hard
...
META Open - Medium
Legend Series WTA - Medium
...
AEG Pro League - Easy

* You can visit this page to view all eSports tournaments. You can assume that it generally gets harder when prize pool is higher. We recommend that you visit here, find out tournaments that are easier to win. We recommend that for each games or tournaments you try about 4 months at most, and see if you can get a prize and get into top spots of leaderboard. Because there are so many games you can switch to, and mechanics that each game has usually requires several months to exercise. If the game requires more than 4 months, that means it is already a hard-to-win game where the game is filled with a lot of skilled players already or in-game mechanic is way to complicated to master. In that case, it's better to change much easier games.

2. Find a sponsor who can help you.
Just because it's a bit easier to get to the top, you shouldn't decide to play that game right away. Find a sponsor who can advertise your livestream.

For example, AEG Pro League has been massively advertising the winners' livestreams for 4 months using email/sns/website/etc marketing. Also we create many articles about them.

Find such sponsors. If you're in a good position in the ranking of a slightly easier game, it's much easier to find a sponsor who can advertise you rather than wandering around outside of top 100 box of harder games where such good sponsors never find you.

3. Join a team, or create a team and promote it.
Do you remember? FaZe Funk at top #67 in the Fortnite Tracker ranking above has more subscribers than Prospering, who is top #1.
Similarly NRG_Sweet_Rank_1, top #1 in Apex Legends Tracker, also has a lot more viewers compared to other livestreamers in Apex Legends Tracker.

This is because FaZe and NRG are organizations. Organization has more connections and fans than solo.
If you can get into such a top team, it will be so much easier to grow your livestream. Previously I recommended that you get into top 100 by playing easier games. The real advantage here is that if you keep good spots in the top 100, the likelihood of a chance to get contacted by the eSports organization engaged in the game is also increasing.

However, if that's not the case, it's better for you to create and grow your own team although it would be small, since you have friends and fans who basically follow you.

AEG is promoting the gaming team for free. Please check this page.

4. Write a guide to expose your own videos to help people practically.
This way you can increase your video views by about 3 times.

For example, please take a look at this page. There is one video for a guide on that page. 
If you look at the video and other videos around the date the video was created, you can see that the views are about three times higher.



If it's not your own guide, contact the person who created the guide, and ask them to kindly include your video since you've made a video related to that guide.

AEG advertises the best guides on the index page. If you create and add a video for a good guide, it will be of great help in growing your livestream.

Conclusion
eSports market seemingly and currently largely dominated by those top players, top organisations and top popular games.
That's because people who like eSports only play games that are highly competitive.
However, at the same time, many victims were occured during the entry level of eSports without getting any benefits.
It's still better to get some rewards from smaller tournaments than being left with nothing in bigger tournaments.
If it's impossible for you to get around 10k subscribers with your livestream within a year, especially when you tried to esports on a newly released game, a long term pro gamer will be a real challenge and may not be possible to become a pro gamer. In that case, I think it's better to quit pro gaming and play games as a hobby. You don't have to waste many years like Intel says. You really don't need to wander around biggest games while not knowing you would be successful or being dropped out after realising that you spent many years. One another option you have is to give less popular games and tournaments competitive scenes and cheer them up, and grow yourself up together with them.

Register on AEG Pro League, one of the easiest eSports league to win in the world!

Through this guide, we hope that you will grow your own livestream and team, and become successful pro gamers.