By: Adrian De Guzman, Reporter

Video games and other entertaining activities have always been thought of as an activity simply for pleasure. However recently, young adults have been able to make money off of playing video games.

Though some students would enjoy this job, it’s not easy to gain much money from it. The biggest way to get money in this field would be to take part in many competitions around the country. These include GorillaWars, Virgin Gaming, and GameDuell in the UK. It takes gamers hours and hours of practice to have even a slight chance of winning these competitions, even then, getting paid is not a guarantee.

Freshman Ryan Lam says, “The only way to win lots of money is to win the big tournaments.”

Playing competitively isn’t the only way that gamers can make money. Some gamers post youtube videos of themselves gaming alone or with friends. Youtube pays them through ads in two ways, through number of views and amount of ads watched, and how many clicks an ad receives. One of the biggest names in Youtube gaming is Pewdiepie, who has over 30 million subscribers and makes about $4 million dollars.

Freshman Zubair Niloy says, “There are lots of Youtuber’s who make lots of money off their videos. It all depends on the amount of subscribers they have.”

With this new application of video games, there is still some dissent as to whether it is the proper use of them. People believe that gamers aren’t truly part of the labor force, and that video games should stick to being a recreational activity.

Freshman Adishi Ranjan says, “Video games shouldn’t be something you do for a job. [Video games] are supposed to be something for entertainment.”

Even though the prevalence of “professional gamers” is rising, not all of them are able to make a living in this way. Though there are many ways for someone to make money with video games, they aren’t reliable and still take a lot of time and preparation to gain money, just like a real job.