Gaming’s newest sensation, Fortnite, has taken America by storm.  Fortnite is a battle-royale game in which players match up against 99 other players. The key to winning is to gather enough materials to build a base, and get enough loot to fight enemy players. The last surviving player is the victor. As the game takes over the lives of many Americans, many YouTubers and streamers on Twitch, the most popular game-streaming app, make videos of themselves playing. While many Fortnite players have become successful through Twitch and YouTube, none are nearly as successful as Ninja.

Tyler Blevins, also known as Ninja, has recently gained millions of followers and has played Fortnite with celebrities such as Drake, Marshmello, and Travis Scott. His popularity in the past couple of months is unprecedented, and it keeps on growing every single day. He averaged over 100,000 subscribers a day for the past two weeks and has earned over 3 million subscribers in the past month.  “Ninja already is the most successful gamer of all time,” said Ithamar Freund (’20). “I don’t know any gamer who has made as much revenue as Ninja in such a short period of time.”

Ninja has been in the gaming community for decades. Ninja started out his esports career as a professional Halo player and competed for multiple years. Ninja also competed in Call of Duty when Halo had a hiatus from the competitive scene. Although Ninja was not the best at either game, he was not a terrible player either. However, Ninja started to gain a fanbase from his skill in the game Player’s Unknown Battleground, also known as PUBG.  After PUBG, Ninja started to play Fortnite, and the rest is history. Now, Ninja is considered to be the best Fortnite player in the world, and his skill has helped his fan base grow. As Fortnite becomes even more popular, Ninja’s fan base increases. Ninja typically has over 100,000 viewers per Twitch stream, even if the stream is during school hours.

Perhaps the biggest point in Ninja’s career was playing Fortnite with Drake, Travis Scott, and Juju Smith-Schuster. Drake tweeted that he was playing with Ninja, which allowed Ninja to break the record for most concurrent viewers for a single-player stream. The stream amassed over 600,000 viewers, which crushed the previous record of 300,000 viewers. The most impressive part of the stream was that the celebrities did not play for a sponsorship, but rather because Drake has repeatedly expressed a desire to play with the world’s best.  

Ninja’s fans are proud of his success, and they hope that he’ll keep on growing. “Ninja’s success comes from his high-level gameplay and his personality,” said Miguel Garcia (’20). “We get to see the best Fortnite player play, while he makes many funny jokes during his streams.” Garcia often watches his streams and tries to learn from Ninja every time.

Ninja reportedly earns over $800,000 a month gaming. At this rate, Ninja would make over $9 million annually, and he has not even signed major advertisements yet. He could easily make over $10 million and change the perception that gaming is not a lucrative career.

Video games were once considered to be played only by “nerds” or “geeks,” but now it is the norm for teens to play games like Fortnite. Famous gamers can also serve as role models. With Fortnite on the rise, Ninja has used his platform in a positive way, sending a message to kids that they should work hard in school. However, he does admit that gaming may not be the safest career, but he does actively tell his viewers to dream to the top and aim for the best.