NINJA is the most popular streamer on Twitch with over 18million followers, but it wasn’t always guaranteed that he would be a successful gamer.
Before he was born, doctors told his mum that he would be born with spina bifida or down’s syndrome, and encouraged her to abort him.
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A Catholic woman, she fought against this decision, and gave birth to a healthy Tyler “Ninja” Blevins in 1991.
Before the era of the internet, gaming was nowhere near as popular as it is now, and pro gaming was not a career path worth pursuing.
His two older brothers are a biology teacher and a Catholic minister taking relatively stable career paths in line with their middle class, religious upbringing.
Ninja’s grandparents gave him $20k (£17k) to go to college, which Ninja “blew through” in his first year, before he was forced to move back home.
However, he quit in his second year to take on streaming full time.
He started off his gaming aspirations as a professional Halo player, with his dad taking him to his first tournament in Ohio.
Ninja finished in the fifth round of the losers bracket, a position he calls “great for a first event.”
Streaming, attending college, and also working at the fast food restaurant Noodles & Company, Ninja said he didn’t have time for anything else.
In an interview, he said: “I gave up friendships, I ruined relationships, I completely cut my family out. It’s sacrifices.”
He’d made a deal with his family that if he could make minimum wage streaming, he would pursue it full time.
However, the moment that he dipped below that threshold, he would go back to college.
He told Jimmy Fallon: “Money talks, right? When I started streaming, that's when I started to make a proper living.”
Once he began pulling in minimum wage with his stream, he wasn’t out of the woods yet.
While playing Destiny, Ninja dislodged a retina and had to quit gaming for a number of months to recover.
His viewers went down into the hundreds, and he thought that his channel would never recover.
Then the battle royale boom took off.
Ninja first took up H1Z1, before moving on to PUBG, and finally finding his home on Fortnite.
Streaming up to 18 hours a day in order to be one of the best in the game, the momentum was slowly building.
However, he claims this is what it takes if you want to become a professional gamer. You have to be the best.
When giving advice to young fans he said: “It’s not easy… Do you want it? You have to work your a** off every single day.
“You have to be better than millions of people to hit that level you’re dreaming of.”
Of course, streaming for 18 hours a day isn’t healthy or recommended.
Even recently, he has said the fear of failure looms over him.
He once took two days off to take part in — and eventually win — a Fortnite tournament.
In that time, he dropped 40,000 subscribers from his channel.
The future is hazy for Ninja. After a meltdown on stream he decided to take a break from gaming.
Deleting his Twitch and Twitter pictures, he posted: “I just need a break. I don't know when I will be back, or where”
He has admitted that he doesn’t think pro gaming is a viable career option for most people.
When asked, he said: “Until it’s accepted on a global scale, I don’t think parents should ever be okay with kids not doing well in school.”
Though he admits the tides are turning on people’s opinions on the profession.
In 2018, rapper Drake, who is co-owner of esports giant 100 Thieves, asked if he could join Ninja in a game of Fortnite
Quickly breaking the record for the most concurrent viewers on a live stream at over 600,000 people, he thinks this could have been the turning point.
Talking about the moment, Ninja said: "That one game with Drake made it okay for everyone to play video games"
Ninja’s success was down to a number of factors, none of which can be singularly credited with his popularity.
He grew up with a financially and emotionally supportive family who allowed him to pursue a then unimaginable career path.
Ninja spent thousands of hours playing games to become one of the world’s best players, sacrificing all social aspects of his life.
And eventually a very famous celebrity noticed him and gave him his big break.
While Ninja was recently valued as being worth roughly $50million (£45million), not every god gamer can achieve the same — or get tens of thousands of dollars from their family to “blow through”.
Written by Georgina Young on behalf of GLHF.
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