There was a time in the world when gaming was just seen as a “toy”, or even a “fad”. Something to distract kids and young teens for a while, but not anything you could make a career off of for the most part. Now, gaming is not only a worldwide event, it’s a place where you can earn money for winning tournaments, making games, or even just streaming on services like Twitch and Youtube. The biggest of these streamers is Fortnite‘s Tyler “Ninja” Blevins.
But, while making an appearance on Jimmy Fallon the other night, Ninja was asked about why streaming is so popular these days. Why do people watch streamers when they could just play the games themselves? Here’s what Ninja had to say:
“Why do you want to watch, you know, the best of the best play football, soccer, you know, hockey?” Ninja said. “It’s like – why don’t you go outside and you do it right now? Like, if you love it so much, right, you can do it.”
He went on to explain some of the skeptics and the questions they ask:
“There’s so many people [who] are like ‘Well, why do you watch people play video games if you can go play video games yourself?’” Ninja said. “It’s like, can you do that? Can you compete at that high level and like, you know – it’s entertainment, right? So you watch the NFL and things like that because you want to watch people do things that you can’t. It’s kind of the same thing with gaming and streaming.”
To an extent, he’s right. They do watch Twitch and Youtube streamers for games like Fortnite and PUBG because they want to watch top-class players. Other times, they do it because they love the personalities of the streamers, which is another thing to liken to pro athletes. Regardless of the reason, it’s still popular, and that won’t change anytime soon. Especially with Fortnite.
