I don’t have a regularly scheduled gaming column, but a few days ago Trevor Noah dropped a Fortnite joke on one of the most celebrated daily comedy shows in the nation and I thought, ‘okay, I gotta say something.’
This is that something.
Fortnite represents the latest reach from the realms of cyberspace into the meatspace mainstream. In the gamer world youtube and twitch replace CNN and Fox News. Game Informer is the NYT of it’s genre. Channels like Syfy are already reaching out by airing reality tv shows centered around gamers and occasionally dropping one-off airings of Street fighter tournaments. Gaming is here. Gaming has always been here, but it has been avoidable, fringe, even juvenile. It is no less these things for the majority of mainstreamers, but the so-called fringe is getting bigger. At this exact moment there are close to 94,000 viewers watching livestreams of Fortnite battles. There are even more, 147,000+ watching livestreams of Realms Royale–a game I never even heard of until this moment (it looks pretty dope though). 105,000 of those people are watching one guy, Ninja, play the game.
Ninja is their Lebron. The 27 year old Tyler Blevins has captured the hearts and streams of most gamers out there. He topped out at 667,000 concurrent viewers once. They were watching him play a freaking video game! So, he has all the sponsorships and even has the prefunctory trophy wife. Yes, that line sounds sexist, but it is meant to showcase the similarities between the gaming world and the sports world. They are plentiful. In truth, the gaming world might be more sponsor friendly, because the gamers are watching and listening for tips. The gamers think they can be Ninja. The sports buffs know they are not Lebron.