7 Transferrable Skills of Video Game Content Creators
Once upon a time, very few adults took playing video games seriously. The general consensus was that video games make you violent and lazy (explain that one) and are all around useless. Fast forward to 2020’s Forbes 30 under 30 list with esports players Olof Kajbjer Gustafsson, Nicolai Reedtz, Marcin Jankowski, and Niclas Mouritzen as well as YouTuber Sean McLoughlin, aka Jacksepticeye, Enrique Cedeño, founder of League of Legends franchise team Origen. They are more than esports players. They are content creators.
Playing video games on an esports team isn’t the only way to make money, as evidenced by Jacksepticeye and many, many other Youtubers and Twitch streamers. And it takes a lot more than just setting up a Twitch or Youtube account and just playing video games, waiting for viewers to donate or subscribe to your channel. Content creators become knowledgeable in various disciplines to create exceptional content and present it to their communities. The skills content creators learn through trial and error are transferrable to many different industries. And if you can pair that knowledge with a degree in Esports Business from a top school like Drexel University, then the sky’s not even the limit for what you can do.
7 Transferrable Skills that Gamers Learn to Hone
We’re living in a crazy time, where unemployment is at an all time high due to coronavirus and the need to socially distance in order to help prevent the spread of the virus. Work from home jobs are also at an all time high, with many companies requiring or allowing their employees the option to telecommute. But with this high unemployment, many are turning to play video games, seeing the possibility of making money streaming, and are deciding to make streaming a full-time job.
Even before life in the time of Covid, aspiring professional streamers struggled to get and retain viewers. That’s because there were a few basics they did not understand about content creation, and to be frank, a career in content creation just isn’t for everyone. Still, far be it for me or anyone else to tell another person what they can and can’t do. What we can do, however, is share the skills that content creators use and hone in order to become successful in their craft. Here are 7 transferrable skills that gamers learn and hone.
Marketing
In order to garner interest in your channel and content, you need to be able to market yourself and your content. This requires more than an “I’m going live” status and a link to your Twitch or Youtube channel. If you notice, one thing the most successful streamers have in common is using creative tactics for social media marketing to, not only drum up interest in their content, but to engage their audience.
Marketing also encompasses who you are to the people you present yourself to. Who do they see? What do you want them to see? What is your brand? Your brand’s voice? Are you authentic in what you bring to your audience? The gaming community is notorious for being able to sniff out what they consider “fake”. And they can be merciless. So think about who you are and who you want to be beyond the really cool logo you had made on Fiverr. Once you’ve figured your brand, you need to be able to read and interpret analytics and come up with tactics to boost those numbers.
Community Management
Speaking of community engagement, content creators need a community to be successful. That means a content creator needs to be able to grow a community around themselves and their content. You have to foster the fans by understanding them through engagement. Content creators have to be able to manage their time wisely, communicate with people from all walks of life, organize events, and do so much more.
Managing a streamer’s community often entails managing multiple social media accounts as well as a Discord community.
Video Editing
One of the cornerstones of marketing for a streamer is creating highlight videos, intro videos, and gameplay videos to share with their community. Twitch has a fair easy-to-use Highlight feature in the Creator’s Dashboard, under Video Producer after selecting a video. Other tools content creators use to edit videos include Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro from Apple. Content creators have to cut, edit, and shorten videos. Then, they have to edit, mix, apply, or delete audio to their videos.
Public Speaking
Keeping an audience engaged can be tricky, especially if your personality prefers that you be behind the scenes. As a content creator, you have to keep your audience engaged, intrigued, and interested in what you are doing. Unfortunately, just playing a game well isn’t enough to do that. Fortunately, however, you don’t have to be a pro gamer to be a video games content creator. You just have to keep your viewers engaged by talking to them. Most streamers start out by practicing carrying on a conversation with themselves while playing because, when most content creators start, they are streaming to 0-3 viewers. Content creators learn to narrate their gameplay, explain what they are doing as they are doing it, and communicate with people from diverse cultural backgrounds.
Team Leadership
As a community grows, a content creator will need a team to help them manage their community and handle various tasks. Content creators leverage the skills to prioritize, delegate, and lead their team to achieve specified goals and objectives.
Business Management
Understanding the business side of content creation is a necessity. From reading your contracts to negotiating brand partnerships, it really does pay to be business savvy. Here’s the thing enthusiastic gamers looking to make money streaming can forget: if you want to make money streaming, no matter how much you enjoy gaming, you have to treat it like a business. You are now a business—a brand. You’ll need to manage your money wisely, know what a 1099 form is, how to file taxes as an independent contractor, what items can be written off on your tax forms, and other aspects of accounting and bookkeeping.
Tech Support
Content creators use various software to get their content out to the world. And sometimes—a lot of times—there are technical difficulties. From low to no sound, the dreaded black screen, and drops in video quality—content creators need to be able to fix everything. Otherwise, there is no content. You can’t be a content creator without content.
These skills aren’t just relegated to content creators, obviously. But they are skills that content creators learn to hone in order to create better content, grow their communities, and make themselves marketable. Unfortunately, too many content creators and the team members who help them don’t understand the value of their work. And in the same token, people looking to make quick money as a content creator but not seeing results don’t understand the work that goes into creating content.
And employers, don’t overlook someone who has content creator in their portfolio. They have acquired so many transferrable skills that will be invaluable to your business and brand. Content creators, when you are applying for a position, don’t be afraid to include your time as a content creator, even for jobs outside of the gaming industry. Value the skills you’ve learned. Remember this also, if you are a content creator and also working a traditional job, you can most likely apply those skills you’ve learned and soar higher. Know your worth, gamers.
