A Game That Can Make Money

Every now and again you read an article, or see something on the social media, bragging about making money playing video games.

1. This guide is a simple guide of how to make a little extra cash to put into your steam wallet.
2. Want to make money from gaming?
3. Dota 2: $28 Million-plus Awarded in Prize Money The amount of money being won in Dota 2 is astonishing. In just two short years the game has become a cash-generating machine. The top players, such.

Sometimes you hear about it through word-of-mouth.

But is it really a thing? Can you really make money?

It is possible, but there are some caveats. First, banish any idea from your mind that you’re going to make a fortune doing it. Second, it may not be quite as fun and exciting as it sounds on the surface – making money rarely is. And third, you have to be able to separate the real opportunities from the many scams out there.

Sep 10, 2020 Payouts from games-for-cash sites and apps can range from a few cents per hour to an entire $50,000 jackpot. On average, you can consistently make around $2 per hour playing games online. Games-for-cash sites aren’t much of an income generator, so I don’t recommend that you play them for the money. The real truth is the streamers should be paying the developers and publishers of the games they stream. They should be buying a license like any real business and paying for the content they use.

With those warnings in mind, let’s take a look at some ways you really can make money playing video games.

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Become a Beta Tester

Every video game needs to go through beta testing before it hits the general market. This can be an interesting and fun way to earn some extra money. But be aware you probably won’t be working with popular video games. Instead, it’ll be ones that haven’t hit the market yet. Companies are looking to test their games with real users before bringing them to market.

You may find some of the games you’re working with aren’t terribly exciting, or they may have serious glitches. But that’s why companies look for people to test them out first. Your job will be to identify flaws or ways to improve the product before it goes to market.

The upside of becoming a beta tester is that you can make a lot of money doing it. The difficult part is finding companies who will hire you. The best approach is to develop a strong social media presence, complete with a large following, that might get you noticed by video game companies. If you do, they’ll be coming to you.

Video Game Tournaments

Video games often develop communities, and they can be quite active – and competitive. The competitiveness leads to tournaments, and that leads to prizes. It’s not the same as getting a steady income, but if you have the fortitude to engage in ongoing tournaments, the prizes can be quite generous.

One example is Call of Duty. Thousands of people play this game, but for some, it rises to become very competitive. That’s where the potential payoff is. You get involved with teams and meet up online and either play together as a team or “every man for himself.”

Call of Duty has several different gameplay modes, including online multiplayer as well as zombies. Some of the new games allow for multiplayer campaigns. Whether you work with a team or by yourself, you can go into the playoffs and move on to the championships. If you get into the finals, video game tournaments work very similarly to the regular sporting events. Winning tournaments can result in cash payouts. Exactly how much you can make will depend on the interest in the tournament, and it varies from one to the next.

Take OpTic Gaming (on YouTube) as another example. It’s one of the top performing game teams available, and they are known for winning multiple awards and having some of the best players in the industry. There are a plethora of prizes including small prizes such as gift cards. But cash prizes can run as high as $10 million – if you can believe it.

Become a Video Game Reviewer

If you have an interest in many different video games, you can earn money by becoming a video game reviewer. This is similar to blogging – in fact, you could even create a blog for this purpose. But you can also do it through YouTube, or on popular selling sites like eBay and Amazon.com.

The basic idea is to become a respected review source of video games. As you build up a following, people will come to rely on your opinions. You can earn money by selling the video games you review on an affiliate basis (the manufacturer or distributor will pay you a percentage of each sale you make from your website or video).

There’s no guarantee how much money you’ll make. It depends on the popularity of your site or videos because most of your income will come as advertising. If you’re able to grow your audience into the thousands, you may get video game companies advertising directly. If it reaches that stage, you’ll have a steady stream of passive income.

“Farming” Gold

You won’t make a fortune with this strategy, but if you like playing video games, and you play a lot, it can be a way to earn at least some money while you’re having fun.

Not all video games allow this to happen, but there are a few that do. Two are RuneScape and Counter Strike.

The process works like this…

You can create a character and “level” him or her (raise their skills). Some players will actually pay money for a high-level character that they don’t have to level themselves. In the case of RuneScape, the higher the levels, the more quests you can complete.

The easiest way to do this is to “farm the character.” This means you spend a lot of time leveling up the character, whether it be for a particular skill or for in-game money. You can actually make a lot of money doing this, as some characters can sell for over $1,000. Others sell for as little as $100. It really depends on how much skill you have at leveling, and how motivated you are to play the game.

Become a Twitch Streamer

Twitch is a streaming platform subsidiary of Amazon where you can earn money through the support of your subscribers. Most of the streams involve video games, whether it’s games like Fortnite or something that is played online like Chess, but you earn money through your subscribers.

If you get your subscriber count up and have a lot of views, you can get sponsorships and giveaway opportunities as well. Some of the top Twitch streamers do this full-time and the income opportunities are there. This is how much Twitch streamers make.

You can also post those Twitch videos to Youtube as an additional revenue source.

Work in Customer Service

If you’re a veteran gamer, with experience playing dozens of different video games, you may be able to use those skills to help others – and make some money while you do. Think of it as working on the helpdesk for companies that provide video games.

You can sometimes find these positions by contacting the manufacturers or distributors of video games themselves. They may even have work-at-home positions. You can also try various technology support companies, like Sutherland Global Services. Every now and again they have positions available on video game helpdesks.

Other Ways to Enter the Business

It can be difficult to find ways to make money playing video games.

You won’t find jobs advertised on the job boards.

But there are three general ways to get into making money playing video games:

1. Contact video game manufacturers and distributors directly, and offer your services. You’ll have to be a well-experienced video game player to even attempt this.
2. Become a very competitive video gamer, such that you can get involved in tournaments and other activities that will make you serious money.
3. Become a video game entrepreneur. This is really the business side of video games. You start a website, become active on the social media, or develop a YouTube channel. You become recognized as an expert in the field, drawing many thousands of followers. You can then sell video games on an affiliate basis, or even receive sponsorships from the companies themselves.

YouTube is especially important. In fact, it’s not an exaggeration to say that your YouTube channel is your resume in the video game universe.

So you can play video games for sure, but put your entrepreneur’s hat on, and be ready to turn it into a side business – or something much more.

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An indie developer’s life is far from glamorous. What the public perceives as a developer’s life and reality is very different. More often than not, indie developers have full-time jobs to fund their passion. Others might have someone supporting them whether it’s through a family member or crowdfunding. It’s not an easy job and so many aspiring developers give up because they lack the budget to create the game of their dreams let alone market it.

So the question becomes, how can you make games without little to no money?

Win Real Cash Online Instantly

Thanks to demand, many engines are free-to-use, with caveats. You don’t need to pay a dime into Unreal or Unity unless you actually start making money ($100,000 for Unity and $3,000 for Unreal). These free editions do have some limitations to them, but if you’re fine with it then you might as well jump on one of them. If you want something completely free then check out Godot Engine. It’s an open source software that allows you to make 2D and 3D games. While it uses its own proprietary language, if you know python you should be able to get the hang of it quickly.

There are several places you can download free assets but one of the most popular is opengameart.org. You can download almost everything from 2D sprites to 3D textures. While free, you’ll want to check out the licenses attached to the artwork before you make any changes as not all of artists allow you to modify their work. If you do end up using an asset from the site, make sure to properly attribute the artist in your game. You can also check out this article for more sites that offer free game art.

For music, there are a handful of options, but one of the best is Free Music Archive. You can browse hundreds of songs in 15 different genres. You’ll need to be careful when choosing which song to use as not all have the same licenses. If you intend on using the song for commercial use for your game, you’ll want to avoid CC-BY-NC-SA and CC-BY-NC-ND songs. These are meant for noncommercial use only. Like the art assets, you’ll need to properly attribute the artist of the song if you intend on using it for your game.

Sound effects can be a bit trickier to find. There are dozens of sites with amazing sound effects, but many of them require you to pay to actually download and use them. Freesound is a great resource if you don’t mind spending some time sifting through all of the user uploads. Look for sounds that have a Creative Commons 0 license as this means the creator waives all rights to the work and you can modify or use it as you please. It’s possible you won’t find exactly what you need here, but you might find something that is close enough.

If you want to try your hand at creating your own music, you can use tools like Tracktion 4, a powerful digital audio workstation (DAW). It allows you to mix or remix your music. This is a full DAW so you don’t have to worry about missing out on any features. If you’ve got the money, you can upgrade to the newest version which only costs $60.

If you’re an artist with no coding skill it might be a bit harder for you to find snippets of code to make your game. In that case, you might look into engines that have a drag-and-drop interface like GameMaker. The problem is that the free version of these engines usually don’t have as many features as the Pro versions. If you’re okay with these limitations then try it out. You might end up liking it so much you pay into it. Luckily many of these engines end up having a sale on the paid versions at least once a year. If you decide you want more features, keep a look out on Steam and the engine’s site for announcements.

If you’re not in any rush to push out your game, you can find plenty of free tutorials on YouTube that can teach you the basics of different engines. Unity and Unreal have great beginner tutorial series and even walks you through making your own games. If you can spare a few dollars, Udemy has some amazing online game programming courses that walk you through the basics from explaining the syntax of the code to how different code can provide the same outcome. Udemy often has discounts on their classes almost every month so jump on one during these times.

Adobe might be the industry standard for creating digital artists, but there are some free options you can check out. GIMP is the open source answer to Photoshop. If you’re familiar with Photoshop it might take some time to get used to GIMP’s interface. Once you do, however, you’ll realize it is every bit as powerful.

Inkscape is the answer to Adobe Illustrator. It’s a great tool for creating vector drawings and especially useful if you want to make create a voxel style game.

For 2D animation the Spriter free version has plenty of features to get you started. Rather than animate every frame by hand, Spriter allows you to rig up different parts of your character onto a basic skeleton and then move them via pivot points. It reduces the time you need to create a professional-looking animation. Just remember, you need to divide up your sprite into different parts in order to get the smoothest animation.

If you’re a 3D animator, there’s no better free tool than Blender. It’s powerful enough to create ultra-realistic renders and can do everything you can do in Maya such as: fast rigging, UV unwrapping, full compositor and more. It even has a full game engine, though you probably don’t want to publish anything you’ve actually made in there. With that said, it’s great for prototyping. The best part about Blender, besides being free, is its cross platform on Mac, PC and Linux.

Of all the necessary steps needed to successfully launch a game, marketing is by far the most time-consuming and hardest. This is especially true if whether you’re s solo developer or have a small team. Marketing requires forethought into your market and consistent, but friendly communication with them. You need to post something everyday on the right social media networks and interact not only with people who comment, like or follow you but with thought leaders and influencers. It’s a full-time job. The problem is most indie studios just don’t have the money to bring on a marketing firm or even consultant. If this sounds like you, there’s still hope.

The best way to stay organized and in the loop is to have one place where you can keep an eye on most, if not all, of your social media profiles. Hootsuite is a great service where you can do just that and the basic version is free. You can follow keywords that interest you, keep an eye on your feed and even respond to comments. Besides this, you can also automate your posts, which will save you a ton of time in the long run. If you don’t like Hootsuite, you can also check out Buffer, which offers the same service but also adds the ability to create your own image, complete with typography.

Besides social media, there are a few basics you should set up. These might cost you some money, but you’ll ultimately get much more by implementing them:

• A website: this sounds so basic, but there are still many developers who do not have one. You can get a domain and hosted server for under $20 a month.
• Business cards: you’ll want to carry some around to hand out. You don’t have to keep it limited to events. Hand it out to anyone you chat with. You never know what might come of it.
• Development fees: whether you’re submitting to Android or Steam, each one requires you pay a fee upon submitting your game. There are places you can submit for free like gamejolt or itch.io.

A Game That Can Make Money Fast

So if you’ve been interested in creating your own games, but were worried about the cost, take heart! Creating a game doesn’t necessarily require a ton of money. However, if you do end up going the budget route, it will take you much more time.