Career Crush: I Want to Play Video Games for a Living

For most video game lovers, myself included, gaming is just a hobby. It’s something you do after work to relax, connect with friends, or feed your competitive side. But what if you could make a career out of playing video games? Is that even possible? Short answer: Yes. Long answer: It’s complicated. One way to make money from playing video games is to live stream on Twitch, a video platform designed primarily for gamers. Well, I consider myself a gamer. I have a camera, a headset, a microphone. Is that all it takes to turn my love for playing video games into a career? To find out, I interviewed one of my career crushes*, Steve Sarumi, to get to the bottom of what it takes to be a professional Twitch streamer. How do you make money? Is it actually as fun as it seems? What’s the trick to building a community? In our interview, Steve shares why he started streaming, how he grew a following of almost 45,000 people, and what it took him to start making a six-figure salary. * Career crush: A platonic crush you develop on a person in your work life who has a really cool job and is doing really cool things. Full Interview Kelsey Alpaio: Tell me about your Twitch channel. What kind of content do you make there? Steve Sarumi: The majority of the time, I stream Pokémon. There’s a category on Twitch called “Just Chatting,” which is literally what it sounds like. You just hang out with your audience. And I think Pokémon really is mostly “just chatting,” but with Pokémon in the background. I do anything from shiny hunting (searching for rare Pokémon), to battling, to playing through games, to doing weird challenges, and collecting. Over the years, my community has grown into a pretty humble group of people that just come to watch and hang out. It’s almost like a person going to a coffee shop. It might not be the world’s best coffee, but they go there because the atmosphere is good, it’s convenient, it’s nearby, it feels very warm to them. I feel like that’s what I’ve created on Twitch. When did you start streaming on Twitch? I started a little over three years ago, and it was pretty casual at first. I wanted to add more content to the weekly podcast I was making called It’s Super Effective. And I was still trying to find ways for people to discover my podcast. If somebody goes to iTunes or Spotify and they type in “Pokémon podcast,” they’ll find my show. But if they type in “video games,” they’re not going to find it. They have to specifically be looking for it. So I’m always trying to find outlets to push people to the podcast or to my website. And then I was thinking, people are probably always looking for Pokémon content on Twitch. So I started streaming with the hopes of grabbing new audience members, and hopefully creating more content for my existing user base. Oh cool! Tell me more about your Pokémon podcast. That’s how I started making content. I got really into podcasts at the end of my senior year of high school, beginning of college. And I listened to a ton of different video game podcasts from Nintendo, to Playstation, to just general tech podcasts. Most of those podcasts would cover general video games — they would talk about the new releases and stuff. I remember the new Pokémon games at the time were HeartGold and SoulSilver, and I was like, “Oh great, they’re going to talk about it. I love Pokemon, can’t wait for this.” And then they skipped over it that week. And I was like, “OK, a lot of games came out this week, maybe next week they’ll cover it.” And again, they skipped over it. And I was like, “Pokémon is huge, how are they not going to talk about it?” Pokémon wasn’t one of the games that they enjoyed, so they didn’t talk about it on the show. I went to search for other Pokémon podcasts, thinking there had to be somebody talking about Pokémon. There were a couple, but none of them were really active. Then I was like, well I love podcasts. I love Pokémon. I’m clearly — at the time I wasn’t that knowledgeable about Pokémon, but I thought I was. So I decided to start my own Pokémon podcast. I taught myself everything about recording, editing, how to network, and how to get people to listen to my show. Over the years, it’s grown. We have 10,000 unique listeners every week, so it’s pretty exciting. I mean, it’s no Serial, but I like it. You taught yourself how to do all of that? How did you go about learning those skills? Mostly Google. Just searching, figuring it out — a lot of trial and error. I started off with just a Rock Band microphone, the microphone you get when you bought Rock Band for the Playstation 3. I also worked at Apple for a short period of time, and from there, I was able to talk to people who actually did work professionally in music or editing, and they were able to give me tips. I went through a lot of different microphones and a lot of different headphones to figure it out. So you were still working at Apple while you were developing your podcast? Yeah, I was still at Apple when I was podcasting. I’m still podcasting. The podcast has been around for almost 11 years now. I was at Apple for about five years, and then I left to join a startup company in the Milwaukee area. They hired me to be a full-time web developer, which was more than I could chew. But they had faith in me because they saw the website I had built for my podcast. Some of the people that worked there used to work at Apple, so they knew me and took a chance. That job was also a lot of me teaching myself how to do things. I was there for about four years, and they closed because they ran out of money. Startup problems — they filed for bankruptcy. We had a team of about 26 people, and we all lost our jobs. At that point, the podcast was about seven or eight years old, and I had been streaming on Twitch at that point for about three months. I had always dreamed of pursuing content creation full time, but the only way the podcast brings in money is through Patreon. We don’t run ads or anything. And with Patreon, we didn’t have enough money to cover the bills. So around the time that I lost my job, my Twitch stream was gaining a little bit of momentum, and my wife and I talked about it and she was like, “Well I think this is really your only opportunity to go for it. You have all the time in the world now.” And I was like, OK, I’m still going to apply for jobs. But also, I’m going to stream a lot more. I’m going to really double down on the podcast, and I’m going to tell my audience — which I think was probably the biggest step for me. When I lost my job, I sent out a Patreon message saying, “Hey, just a heads up, losing my job today. Don’t worry about it, my wife and I have a savings account, we’ll be fine for a couple of months. I’m going to try to do this full time, and there’s going to be more content. If you want to support it, great. If you can’t support it monetarily, no big deal.” We doubled the Patreon revenue instantly that day. I had been making like $1,000 a month on Patreon, and it doubled overnight, just by telling people that I was going to try this full time. It was really cool to see my fanbase kind of champion behind me. Tell me more about what it was like to start streaming on Twitch. I was dabbling on Twitch right before I lost my job. I was only streaming maybe four or five hours a week. When the company closed, I went from five hours a week to 30 hours a week. It was a lot of trial and error. I tried playing a bunch of Pokémon games, I tried playing Monster Hunter and a couple of other games just to see what stuck on Twitch. I think I know this now because I’ve been on Twitch for three years, but just because you love a game or just because you’re passionate about a game doesn’t mean there’s an audience for it. I think of it like reality TV shows. Survivor was really big at one point, and Big Brother was really big at one point, and then those became less popular and sitcoms came back, and then those went away and game shows became really hot. There’s like this ebb and flow, and it’s kind of the same on Twitch. Two years ago, no one talked about chess on Twitch, and now chess is like one of the most dominant categories on the platform. Maybe it’ll be dominant forever, but I don’t think so. So I was trying different games because I understood that even though I’m a Pokémon guy, maybe if I try streaming something else, I’ll get a brand new audience or I’ll attract more people. For the most part, Pokémon seemed to be the dominant thing that did work for me. But even now, the current Pokémon game, Sword and Shield, has been out for a year and a half. And a year and a half ago I was pulling 400-500 viewers a stream. Now that it’s a little bit older, I’m only pulling like 200-300 viewers. And that’s because people have moved on. The hype of that game has kind of waned and people are watching other things. When another Pokémon game comes out, we’ll be back up to that 500 viewer range again. When did you start seeing significant growth on your channel? That was hard. The podcast had a lot of people, and the Patreon had a lot of people that were supporting it. But getting those people to move from an audio-only format, where they could listen to it whenever they wanted, to a video format that was live, was super difficult. When I started off on Twitch, I was pulling like 15 to 20 people a stream. And Twitch is very bottom-heavy, so most people have very few viewers. At first, my viewers were all people that listened to the podcast. And then every week, we would maybe increase by like two or three viewers. I kind of had these two audiences: I had this established podcast audience and then at the same time, I was growing this brand new Twitch audience. But it was cool because the podcast audience that was coming was really good at making those new people feel welcome and already showing an established community. Within a month of streaming full time, a new Pokémon game came out. So we went from like 15 to 20 viewers to about 50 to 60 viewers in a month. People came around for the new game. Sometimes, it’s hard to grow on Twitch because you’re so buried under already established people. When the new Pokémon game came out, there were 20, 30, 50 people above me in the Twitch directory that we’re pulling 1,000-2,000 viewers. But I had my core, small audience, and so I kept streaming and kept trying to be as consistent as possible. The day that really changed things was when I decided to stream on Christmas. My wife and I had already celebrated Christmas the weekend before with our families. And I thought there were probably a ton of people that don’t have anyone to spend Christmas with. I’ve spent Christmas alone before, and it is like the worst feeling in the world. So I was like, I’m going to stream just a couple of hours on Christmas. If it’s a complete bust, if no one shows up, I’ll just wrap up early. That was the first day that I got 100 viewers in my stream. The chat was just nonstop people being like, “Thank you so much for streaming. I wasn’t able to travel out to my significant other’s,” or “My mom wasn’t hosting Christmas this year.” Ever since that stream, I’ve consistently had 100 viewers or more. And it started to grow as I continued streaming. So when you were just starting out, how many hours were you typically streaming per week? Twitch was very different three years ago than it is now. I felt like I could stream long hours back then, and I did. I would stream six days a week and eight hours a day. And the only day I took off was Sunday, because that’s when I recorded the podcast. And that was three hours of recording, three hours of editing, and one hour of post-production. Back then, streaming for long periods of time helped me get more followers. But in the last year or two on Twitch, that hasn’t really been the right approach. There are so many people trying to stream that it’s really hard to stand out. So now, streaming long hours on Twitch is — it’s fine if you just want to be there for your audience, but if you want to grow, you have to put more effort into things like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. People will discover you there, and then come to your Twitch. Or in my case, people still discover the podcast and then they come to Twitch that way as well. When I was first starting out, I didn’t do any YouTube, Instagram, any of that. I just did the podcast and Twitch. But now, I stream five days a week on Twitch, six hours a day. And I make three YouTube videos a week, I do daily Instagrams, and I’m doing TikToks. In the long run it’s worth it, because if Twitch ever goes away, I won’t lose everything. That happened to people who were really big on Vine. Vine just disappeared one day and they had to start over again. Oh interesting, so a lot of the work you’re doing weekly is actually happening off of the Twitch platform? I’ve changed the way I think about Twitch content with how Twitch has changed over the years. I think Twitch is still important for having that community and having people feel like they have a consistent place to go where they can be themselves, they can talk with you, tell you about their day, and laugh. But I structure Twitch almost like a TV show. I have a game plan of what we’re going to do in each stream, and I plan for a couple of points that I want to hit. And when those moments happen, I can take the recordings and put them onto YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok. And hopefully, those moments will be good enough to bring people to Twitch. I’ll even have streams sometimes where we actually spend the whole stream making a YouTube video. You could just watch the 10-minute YouTube video, but if you watch it live, you get to see every step. My audience feels like they’re helping me make something, and they’re also asking questions to make me think of how to make better content. It’s always a give and take with your audience. That’s the most important part of Twitch I think. People want to feel like they are a part of something instead of just watching a TV show. I’m making a TV show that they can feel like they’re a part of. How many hours a week are you spending on all of this content creation? Oh, it’s probably close to like 80 hours a week. I pretty much do everything. I don’t edit every single one of my YouTube videos — I pay an editor for that. But otherwise, I’m the one doing Instagram, TikTok, Youtube, Twitter, planning out the streams, doing the streams, recording the podcast, editing the podcast, emailing people — pretty much everything. It’s a lot of work, but I think there’s probably a point where if my Twitch keeps growing, or the podcast keeps growing, both in audience and in revenue, then hopefully by the end of 2021 I can hire another person to help edit or help alleviate some of the work I have. And I’ve expressed that to my audience. While it’s always nice to get more money, it would be nice for me to have a small group of people that I could pay to help me. I could make more content, I could have some free time, and I could also give those people the opportunity to do what they love. I’m very fortunate to do what I love, so if somebody really wants to edit videos for people, or really wants to help somebody build an Instagram or something like that, it would be cool that I would be in a position to help those people do what they would love to do. And it would also give me like one night a week where I could just watch Netflix with my wife. You brought up money, which is something that I’ve always wondered about Twitch streamers. How does making money on Twitch work? Twitch is really good at giving the streamer opportunities to make money. When you go to Twitch, there’s the “Follow” button and then there’s the “Subscribe” button. Following is completely free — you follow a channel, and you can follow as many channels as you want, and then if you go to your homepage you see all the live channels you’re following. Then there’s the “Subscribe” button, and subscribing to a channel costs $4.99 per month. Half of that money goes to Twitch and half goes to the streamer. In return, the person who is subscribing, they don’t have to worry about ads, they’re supporting the streamer, and they get that streamer’s emotes, which are like personalized emojis you can use in chat on Twitch. The other way to give the streamer money is bits. Bits is a currency on Twitch that you buy with real money. So for around $12 you can get 1,000 bits, and one bit is one penny. So when you’re paying that $12, you’re getting $10 back but that $10 can fully go to a streamer, and then the $2 up front is what Twitch is taking. So if somebody gives me 1,000 bits, they’re giving me $10, and I get it all. There’s also the old-fashioned streamers that still have tips through PayPal. Then there’s ad revenue, although I think the ad revenue on Twitch is — no one ever depends on it. But the best way to make money on YouTube is ad revenue. And then the last way to make money on Twitch — purely on Twitch, because obviously you can have outside partnerships — is the Bounty Board Program. Twitch will reach out to video game companies, or they had an Adidas one at one point. Basically, Twitch will ask you to watch like an Adidas ad with your audience, and if you have 200 people in your stream you will get this much money, and if you have 500 people there you’ll get this much money. When did you feel like you had made it on Twitch, and you were able to live comfortably off of what you were making there? Prior to me losing my job, I was making a salary. And so I took my Patreon pay plus my Twitch pay, and I told my wife that I wanted to get back to the salary I was making. My first month on Twitch, I think I made like $200. The second month, I made $600. And then the third month, which was the Christmas stream month, I think I made $1,000. I was like, well $1,000 is just paying rent at this point. But revenue was going up. In March, my monthly revenue was a lot higher — it went up to $3,000 to $4,000. And I was like, is this a fluke or is this just all the work I’ve done up to this point? My wife and I had a deadline of May 1st, where if I hadn’t hit the salary I was making by then, I should at least get a part time job or something to balance it out. But I felt that if I could make that much again the next month, I would feel like I’d made it. And then in April, we were able to do it again. So with Patreon plus Twitch pay, I was reaching my old salary within six or seven months. What’s interesting is, just because you have a lot of people watching you doesn’t mean you have a lot of money coming in. And I think that’s an important part of streaming that people don’t realize. My subscriber count as of this morning is 1,500 subscribers. So 1,500 people are willing to give me $5 a month every month, which is very flattering. But during the stream, I only pull about 200 to 300 viewers. I’ve seen streamers with 1,000 plus people with only 200 subscribers. And there might be a variety of reasons for that — maybe they don’t stream enough on Twitch, or maybe they are only creating content where people want to specifically watch but they don’t feel compelled to feel part of a community, or maybe they are just really bad at telling people to subscribe, I’m not sure. But viewership in itself doesn’t equate to revenue. That’s why I always aim to have a certain number of subscribers every month. And I incentivize my community to help me make that happen. I would say, “Hey, if we hit 600 subs this month, I’ll bake a cake in the kitchen.” And there would always be a couple of people in my community that would “gift” five or 10 subscriptions to other viewers, because they want to see that content. That’s really helpful in building up the subscriber base. What are some misconceptions about streaming? The biggest one is that you just get to play video games. There’s some truth to that, but the streaming video games part is the part that people see, and it’s the easiest part of the job. You have to work really hard to get to that point. I’ll sometimes spend two to three hours before a stream setting up all the content points I want to hit during the stream, and afterwards, I’ll spend time reviewing how the stream went. Is there anything from the stream that I could pull right now for my other channels? How do I prepare that content? Also during streams, I have a little button on my computer that lets me mark certain moments from the stream. So if I say something where everyone in chat laughs, I’ll hit that little marker. Or if something weird happens, or maybe I was inconsiderate or worded something poorly, I’ll hit the button. And sometimes, I’ll spend two hours after a stream going back and looking at those highlights and rewatching my stream and being like, “Ugh, I didn’t like the way I phrased that,” or “Oh, this person came in and I didn’t sound very genuine to them.” I use those opportunities to get better, and I think that’s a really important part of creating content. I am sure there’s probably a lot of streamers that are like, “Oh, I never watch my own content.” But I think that’s a bad sign. I get excited to post my content. I think that’s really important, whether you’re a Twitch streamer, or a YouTuber, or whatever, as long as you’re making content, I think it’s really important to rewatch your work. Because if you dislike your own content, then how do you expect other people to like your content? If I wanted to start streaming tomorrow, what would be the things that I would need, both in gear and also skills or mindset? The most important thing is a microphone. Most people can deal with a bad webcam, but not everyone can deal with a bad microphone. No one wants to hear you sound like you’re recording from your bathroom. Whereas if your webcam is super dark but you sound good — some people don’t even stream with a webcam. Some people are just game and microphone. I would also encourage people not to put a lot of money into streaming upfront. I’ve seen so many people go all out — they buy all the fancy streamer gear, they get a high-end microphone, they get a high-end webcam, and then they do it for two weeks and realize it’s not for them. Before you start, you should also ask yourself, “What do I want to achieve?” Do you actually want to make this a career? Or do you just want to stream on the weekend, or just stream to your three friends? That’s a totally different mindset. If your goal is to grow a following, the first thing you should think about is what you can do differently. If somebody comes into my stream and they’re like, “I want to stream Pokémon.” Cool, I’m super supportive of you. But what are you going to do differently to get to where I am today? What is going to make you stand out? You also can’t be afraid to fail. During the pandemic, I started streaming Animal Crossing, and I asked myself, “What am I going to do to be different?” So I started an Animal Crossing podcast as well. The podcast was a huge flop. It probably didn’t help that Covid was happening at the same time, and so people weren’t going to the gym, and commuting — it’s weird to just sit on your couch and listen to a podcast. But I put all my effort into three months of an Animal Crossing podcast, and it just didn’t work. The other thing that goes such a long way, especially on Twitch, is confidence. I feel like maybe I would have grown faster if I felt more confident early on in my Twitch career. When you look at some of the top streamers, like xQc, Ninja, or Shroud, they’re all very confident in what they’re doing. There’s not a single doubt in their mind of, “I don’t know what to stream today, what do you guys think we should do?” They’re the ones creating the content, and I think that comes across. I know what I’m going to do next week, I already know what I’m going to do next month. And I think that’s so important — have some confidence not only while you’re live, but in what you’re planning. So what is next for you? What are your goals moving forward? For me, growing on Twitch is a slow burn at this point. I’m trying to grow more on YouTube and Instagram, and whatever other social platforms I can to push people towards Twitch. I wouldn’t ever call myself a YouTuber, but I understand the importance of it. If someone can discover me through YouTube and make it to my Twitch stream — they’ll probably find my Instagram, my podcast, and everything else. So it’s kind of pushing everyone to Twitch because I can have the most authentic and real experience with that person there, and then have them discover my other content. One thing that’s always in the back of my head is, what if Instagram folds, what if Twitch folds, what if Patreon goes away? I don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket. Growing elsewhere is important, but so is keeping a solid foundation on Twitch. One of the things that I personally want to do on Twitch is stream Pokémon Go at an “in real life” level. I really like streamers that will stream their travels. They’ll go to Japan, and as they’re walking down the streets of Japan, they’re showing you everything and talking. You’re eating lunch with them, and you’re seeing their entire day as they travel. I want to do that with Pokémon Go. So not only am I bringing you with me to, say, Australia, but you’re also seeing it as I’m playing Pokémon Go. I did a little bit of this over the summer, although it was very hard with Covid. But once traveling is back, I want to do it, because I feel like no one is doing that on Twitch. I always try to think about, what is something people would actually enjoy, or what do I think they will enjoy? Over the years, I feel like I have shown my audience things that they didn’t know that they wanted, but once they saw it, they were like, “Oh, I didn’t even know this was in the game, this is really cool.” A lot of the time, streamers, or content creators, just stick with what works for them. And I’m always willing to try something new, even though it may flop. Okay Steve, final question. Who is your career crush? I’m a huge fan of The New Day, a professional wrestling team in WWE. It’s Kofi Kingston, Big E, and Xavier Woods. They were tag team champions. I have always looked up to wrestlers, even though I lack the athletic ability to ever do it myself. And I don’t think I could ever be on the road for like 300+ days like they do. But sometimes I feel like Twitch is similar to wrestling. I have an intro song that I play before the stream starts and it gets people hyped — wrestlers have that too, like a theme song they come down to. And then they put on a show or a performance, and that’s what I’m doing. This is a side story, but one day, on an episode of WWE, Xavier Woods made a joke that his DMs were open. And I knew he was a big Pokémon fan. So I sent him a message. I was like, “Hey, my name is Steve. I run a Pokémon podcast. I know you’re into Pokémon, and Pokémon Go comes out in like two weeks. Are you interested in being on the show?” He got back to me instantly. We set up a time on Skype to record a podcast episode, and he completely ghosted me. I was super bummed, but I was like, he’s a huge celebrity, he has millions of followers — things happen. He got back to me five hours later that day, and he was like, “I’m so sorry, I’ll make it up to you.” So I pitched him the idea of playing Pokémon Go together and making a video for YouTube instead. And he was like, “I’m free this weekend if you want to come down to Atlanta.” I quickly texted my friend because I had no video gear, and I was like, “Xavier Woods from The New Day is inviting me down, and I need cameras and stuff.” I booked a plane ticket that night, and the next day I jumped on a plane and went to Atlanta. Next thing I knew, I was sitting in Xavier Woods’ house. We recorded a podcast episode in his house, and then we hopped in his car, went to a park in Atlanta, and we played Pokémon Go together. That experience has always stood out to me because of how genuine it all was. Even when I arrived at his house, he was so excited to show us his video game stuff. He was like, “I just got VR, I just got this new gamer chair.” He was so excited. I will never forget that moment. I hope that I provide that to my audience. I hope they can see I’m genuine and excited too.

Career Crush: I Want to Play Video Games for a Living

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