'Fortnite's' Top Streamer, Ninja, Talks About His Insane 12 Hour Schedule
"Fortnite" streamer and Twitch mega-celebrity Tyler "Ninja" Blevins is earning half a million a month while playing his favorite game and chatting with fans. Behind the scenes, however, is a man with a grueling 12-hour workday that, sometimes, just want to get away from it all.
Blevins, better known as Ninja to his legions of fans, is an online celebrity in every sense of the world. The 26-year old used to be a professional "Halo" player before switching to Battle Royale full time, and he makes around $500,000 a month as he revealed in an earlier interview with CNBC.
His numbers are nothing short of astonishing. On YouTube, he has five million subscribers, not to mention the tens of millions of other viewers. His Twitch account has 3.7 million followers, the tip of the iceberg of the millions of fans that tune in to see him play.
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Of course, his social media accounts are followed by millions of fans as well.
A recent stream where he played "Fortnite" with rapper Drake broke Twitch records, and near the end of that day, 635,000 concurrent viewers have watched him play with American rapper Travis Scott and Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster.
It's a lifestyle that's also been grinding him down lately, as he shared with the H3H3 podcast show. It's an insane 12-hour work day that he has to carefully plan out in between spending time with his wife and family.
"The schedule is: 9:30 is when I start in the morning and then I play until 4, so that's like six, six-and-a-half hours," Blevins said, as quoted by Polygon. He added that by late afternoon, that's the only time he can take a three or four-hour break to spend with his wife, the dogs and the family before getting back in the saddle by 7 p.m. local time.
From that, it's non-stop gaming and streaming until 2 or 3 in the morning. Every day he spends at least 12 hours a day online, with little room for everything else aside from six or seven hours of sleep.
It's a routine that he's already used to at this point, and the hours are not what occasionally bring him down. Sometimes, the pressure of constantly making sure that his viewers are having fun gets to him, too.
"My worst days where I'm also taxed the most are when I'm not doing well. I think that's because it just sucks, but it's also mentally draining. I'm worried about 'Oh, I didn't perform today,'" he admitted.
"But those don't happen often," he assured the hosts. It's his love of streaming and "Fortnite" that helps carry him over the low points, he adds. All that streaming revenue certainly helps, but if there's one thing Ninja has over other streamers, it's his ability to stay upbeat even 12 hours into his stream.
