Who makes a living playing games. Can you make a living playing poker?

What gamer has not dreamed of making a living playing games? While this may seem like a great profession and a cool way to get your first job in the gaming industry, the truth is not all that attractive.

IGN reached out to testers around the world to get their take on the harsh reality. We have received dozens of letters from employees of numerous gaming companies. They told us stories about harsh working conditions, low wages and lack of morale among workers.

Their employers are a vast array of companies, including both traditional computer game publishers and newer mobile game development organizations.

Testers signed non-disclosure agreements with their employers when they got hired and can be fired or even sued for disclosure. All testers we contacted spoke to us under the condition of complete anonymity. We came up with pseudonyms for them to hide their real data. We also verified that all of these people are indeed game testers. We asked for comment this article, contacting many gaming companies, but never received a single answer.

Tiresome tasks

While a job may seem like a dream come true, Reuben says it's not like you play games all day and get paid for it. “Imagine your favorite movie. Now take your favorite 30 second segment from this movie. Now review this section over and over again, 12 hours a day, every day for two months. When you're done, tell me: can you say that what you've been doing is watching movies all day? I'm willing to bet that's not the case at all. You are given a certain area of ​​the game, this is your area and you test everything that comes across on it for several months.

In addition, testers do not get any pleasure from choosing the game they have to play. “It's very boring to play a game for kids over and over again,” says Rich.

Frank adds: “I've seen people quit gaming once and for all because of the frustration of working and the endless monotony of playing a game you hate and would never play it yourself. You just get jaded."

Low salary

While some boring and repetitive jobs can pay pretty well, game testers don't get paid well. And all because the games industry is almost entirely made up of wage workers, they have no advantages and no power.

Companies often pay employees higher basic wages instead of any bonuses or rewards, but Danny only earns $10 an hour. From this we can conclude that the average salary of a full-time tester is only $20,800 per year. The official minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, but game testers are information workers, not burger vendors. In order to test and make judgments about games, certain skills and knowledge are needed.

Let's say that newcomers with no experience in the gaming industry earn quite a bit, but what about experienced testers? Danny says: “I work with a guy who for the past eight years has been doing nothing but trying to please the management: he never argues, he does everything he is told. But in testing he is a genius! After eight years of work, he still receives only $14. Damn it, I think we deserve more than $10 an hour." He believes that game developers/publishers should "offer us some kind of bonus or promotion, as they do with the rest of the company."

We are not respected

Keith told a story about how his employer was greedy to give him a copy of the game he was working on. He wrote that "after two months of playing this game, 40 hours a week, I would never buy it myself."

While cash incentives are just one form of reward, Danny feels they are not being given the respect they deserve. “We deserve to be treated like ordinary employees of the company, and not like whoever you invite to your Christmas party. There have been such cases."

“I am absolutely not alone in my feelings,” he adds. “Perhaps most people like me would not voice their grievances for fear of being fired; and those who dare would have long since left the gaming industry because of the conditions I'm talking about."

Harsh working conditions

Unlike a normal working day from 9 to 17, recent months before the release of a video game, when all the efforts are thrown to ensure that the product comes out on time, the company calls it “critical”.

According to tester Pete, he was simply forgotten to be paid for the work a huge number of times. “They make us stay in the office, work overtime, but they never pay extra for it.”

Frank works overtime every day. “This is already on the verge of illegality. It got to the point that by three or four in the morning I was tired to such an extent that I lost consciousness a couple of times. The others did too, but we didn't bother such a person. We just let him rest and brought each other back to life only when it became necessary.”

Sleep loss isn't the only thing that physically affected Frank and company. “Our food was just awful! The only place that was open at night was McDonald's located at Chevron station, and we called it "Chevronald's" with derision. I felt like a piece of shit and just wanted to get this over with."

Reuben says to lead a healthy family life becomes extremely difficult. "As soon as it starts overtime work You feel like this will never end. The longest overtime period of my life lasted over 7 months, the shortest work week was 65 hours, and the longest was 92. Then we worked on two projects that just merged with each other.

Low level of stability

In addition to physical and mental stress to which testers are exposed, there is a complete absence of any kind of stability in the companies. “During training, we were told that it doesn’t matter if you get fired, it matters when,” says Kate. “They went out of their way to tell us that a good worker is distinguished by the number of bugs he finds, and based on this number, they will decide whether to keep you or not.” However, this methodology did not take into account the dedication with which the employee works on the project. “I was great at documenting bugs, going through the same scene over and over again, and yet I understood why the game constantly gets stuck in the tail of a helicopter! I would like other testers to give their opinion on how much they like the bugs I found, because I was one of those who was able to document what baffled the rest of the staff. But when it came to the final count, it turned out that my neighbor found more bugs, so I got fired, and he didn’t.”

If being fired was bad enough, then the job search that followed was even worse. “Everyone is trying to break into positions that are this moment are not available, and will not be released, ”says Phil. While this may apply to other industries, not just the games industry, he believes that the problem is only getting worse because testers are most often hired through recruitment agencies, and not on their own. Many publishers are simply not ready to make you an offer. Big share testers is not formally arranged.

Reuben explains: “Most people will get a job, say goodbye to their 'outer' life for six months, and then be told to leave. It's very sad to see the people you spent so much time with get fired."

While downsizing is an integral part of any profession, he adds that the process is rather cold. “Here’s how my employer did it: he mailed out a meeting notice. You come to a meeting and someone walks into our office, where employees who were not invited to this meeting are still sitting, and simply says: “If you were called here, then you are fired. Pack your bags, we'll show you to the exit... You always hope that you'll be one of the few who will be left behind.

You can't change anything

Since people mistakenly believe that a tester's job is to play games all day long, there is never a shortage of companies willing to take on this job. "Anyone in testing is easily replaceable," says Frank. Reuben adds: “If management doesn't like someone, they simply refuse to renew their contract, thus avoiding any difficulties. This leads to the fact that people begin to complain that their work has become more stressful or longer, they are called brawlers and simply do not renew their contract.

Frank says, "Once a product is released, you don't have a job. No encouragement, prospects or promises for you that you will be taken to full time. I've worked with so many really talented people that I'm embarrassed to see their talent depreciate." While some companies offer some kind of job retention measures, "there is no union for testers," he adds.

Can testers form their own union? Although theoretically possible, Reuben believes that this is unrealistic. “The formation of such a union at the level of testers is almost impossible due to the terrible treatment of employees. If you try, your contract won't be renewed. The most frustrating thing is that the gaming industry is so small that if for any reason you are fired, most companies will be aware of this and will not agree to hire you.

It's all the tester's fault

Even after passing all the tests and approving the game for release, today it is not uncommon that the game still has very large bugs and shortcomings. Take the Playstation 3 version of Bethesda's Skyrim, for example. If the testers really worked as hard on it as claimed, then how did it end up with so many technical flaws in the end?

According to Phil, the truth is that "a lot of the bugs that are found don't get fixed." Even more - developers often simply ignore the advice of testers. Frank says: “They just ignore our remarks without even the slightest attention. They are just wasting money and resources.”

"Sometimes game companies just randomly pick bugs that need to be fixed," says Trent. “The thing about testing is that not everyone plays the same game. There are millions of combinations in the game that the player can use, so a team of 100, or even less people just unable to find all the flaws, and all this pops up in the final product. Combined with the fact that some bugs don't recur, this explains why such catastrophic issues can seep into the game. “A thousand times you could find a bug, but if you can’t explain in detail how it should be fixed, you can’t take it into account, even if it is critical for the game ... In order to finally be taken into account, you need to constantly repeat it ".

Even when developers listen to the test team, problems still can not be avoided. Trent adds, "Sometimes the developers swear they've fixed something, but the next build of the game breaks something else that was working before, or sometimes fixing them doesn't fix the problem at all."

And while testers are not to blame for many of these problems, Saul, who refuses to name the company he worked for, says: "The company blames us for ALL the bugs that are found in the final product." Pete remarks that "Producers don't listen to testers anymore...but if a bug comes up after the game is released, it's the testers' fault, even if they reported the problem beforehand."

To avoid delays in the release of the game, Sam says that publishers "intimidate" their testers that "if the product does not go on sale by the appointed time, it will be fraught with long delays at work." He described one employer as "very totalitarian" because of its treatment of testing staff. Among all the testers who contacted IGN, this complaint was common to many employers.

Conclusion

While the conventional wisdom about the job of a game tester is misleading, there are alternatives to overwork at work, and testers should pursue it. Companies like Valve or Blizzard are notorious for spending their time polishing games and fixing bugs, though for some reason that luxury isn't always available to companies that depend on shareholder expectations. Some companies open their games for beta testing, which leads to a new round of problems.

History shows that when testers are an integral part of the game development cycle, game companies produce better products, they have better sales, and most importantly, they end up creating a more humane working environment.

And received a lot of feedback in the form of personal stories of the players. We decided to publish the story that became the most popular among the 16 published, because you can learn a lot from it useful information about poker as a profession.

Professional poker player Michael Shinzaki answers.

Playing poker is like a roller coaster

I have been playing poker professionally for about 7 years. Of course, this is not the only thing I have been doing all these years. During this time, I completed my bachelor's degree, visited 45 countries, worked on my book, consulted for several online startups, but poker has always been the main source of income. At that time, I experienced many ups and downs, both financially and morally. Poker has helped me for enough short term get a huge life experience, including quite inappropriate moments for a 20-year-old guy.

When money starts pouring into your hands, everything seems possible.

I have seen the emotions and feelings of the players change at the poker table. I have noticed more than once how at different moments I myself was in seventh heaven with happiness, then in complete despondency. I saw tears of joy, and also saw how people who were on the verge of poverty began to pay six figures in taxes alone. I have seen people fail and get into huge debts. Playing poker is like a roller coaster. It makes you feel both elated and depressed. Poker brings out the best and worst in every player at the table.

Poker is a strange profession

It is similar to the process of turning water into wine. There is no installed wages, you can't just successfully pass an interview and go to work on Monday. You will need a huge amount of developments (some kind of foundation) to even try to turn this occupation into a source of income.

Beginning Poker Player Can Be Unsuccessful for a long time(or even stay that way forever) until he makes some progress. The level of difficulty of the game itself is also very variable, and this process does not always have a time dependence. You can earn a year's fortune in just a few hours (I've done this many times), or you can play for a month and end up in the red (and this has happened to me many times).

In the beginning it was just a game

When I started playing poker, I didn't think about making a profession out of it. The game is meant for communication, and when I was 18 years old, it was very interesting and exciting. Poker is intriguing. I enjoyed the competition and the creativity that is needed in the game. It's like erudite or chess, but with additional elements. I liked the feeling of celebration, I loved Mind games. I even loved moments of hopelessness, when you feel at a dead end and spend hours thinking about strategy. For me, it was akin to athletics, only without physical exertion.

Further more

In the end, after a series of losses that forced me to play low rates online, I began to analyze my mistakes and improve my playing skills. I started reading poker strategy books and watching games on ESPN to understand where, when and why I was losing. You may consider yourself a genius, but for every such genius, there are thousands of other players discussing the strategy of the game for 10 hours a day.

In poker, you need to constantly adapt. You can't get a patent and then just make a profit for the rest of your days. Remember, when money is at stake, your opponents start to develop very quickly.

Need time

After several 100$ bets, then with credit card my father, and many sleepless nights at the game, I suddenly realized that I was starting to make progress.

Over time, you begin to notice what worked and what didn't, pay attention to the play and tactics of your opponents, identify repetitive situations, and differentiate each player's approach to play.

Poker is not always perceived as reality

Sometimes it seems like a kind of loophole that most around you don't notice.

I made my first six figure in a year when I was 19, and at 21 I made that much in one day.

Some people never get half of that for a year of work. And what did I do for this? I just practiced playing cards. On my previous work at Baskin Robbins I was making $6.75 a day. And suddenly I was in a whirlwind of events around the world, started dating interesting people, stay in expensive hotels, eat at cool restaurants and buy everything you could want. This occupation allowed me to travel. And, most importantly, I got the opportunity and time to simultaneously do things that I liked, including blogging, sports, and also spend enough time with loved ones and family.

Everything comes to an end

But poker is addictive, and also has a significant drawback - it does not allow you to experience satisfaction. Some players find it a constant challenge, while others feel dissatisfied. Also, one of my biggest critics of the poker community is that when I looked around, I saw a lot of smart and talented people who just played cards, instead of leaving their mark on life and creating something really necessary and useful for society. This was one of the main reasons why I decided to end my poker career and start new stage in life.

In addition to Michael's story, another professional poker player Chris Sparks decided to sum up by highlighting the positive and negative sides this profession.

Pros of poker

• Money- a very small percentage of players earn significant money (enough to make them world-famous professionals), and in modern games almost impossible to get rich. Your opportunities are quite limited compared to other professions, but with the help of poker you can ensure a comfortable existence for yourself.
• Autonomy– only you decide when, how and where you play. At the end of the day, you are responsible only to yourself. For most, the lack of structure can be catastrophic, but for the self-confident and purposeful people this way of life expands opportunities and rights.
• Flexibility– play when you want it. Sometimes, when things are going well, I can play several days in a row. If I'm unlucky or just not inspired, I can safely leave the game and, for example, fly to another country for the weekend.
• Call– you play to live, which in itself is amazing. I was very passionate about poker and loved the competitive side of it. Many successful people talk about the need to love your job, and with poker it was true. I rarely felt poker work.

Cons of Poker

• Stress– I think you can imagine how intense the moments of victory and defeat are when large sums of money are involved. When you play online at several tables at once, you make more than 1000 "hands" per hour, that is, you manipulate quite a lot of money. Add to that the fact that short-term results are highly dependent on luck. Therefore, there are a lot of balding 20-year-old players in poker.
• Difference- you are always very close to other players (I have only won 52% of my sessions in my career), so it is very difficult to evaluate how you play. In my practice there was a three-month period during which I lost enough a large amount money, and my friends even more.
• Balance There is no end to the day in poker and it can take over your entire life if you let it. Extreme levels of concentration and discipline are required to achieve any level of success, as one bad decision can destroy hundreds of optimal ones. Therefore, 8 hours of multi-table gaming online is more intense and stressful than a typical work day. Not surprisingly, I stopped being interested in other things in my life besides poker, and it took me a lot of effort to regain my balance.
• Predators- most of your winnings come from inept players, and the better you know how to hunt them, the more money earn. You can also become a victim of a predator.
• you create nothing- Lack of playing for the purpose of earning a living. At the end of the day, you work on making the number on the screen bigger. You are of no use to society, and once you reach a certain level of wealth, poker will not satisfy you.
• cultural acceptance- this area has advanced significantly due to the excessive exposure of poker on TV, but many people remain ignorant of the issue of poker as a profession. To avoid a condescending attitude, I often omit the subject of poker when I meet new people.
• inconstancy– most successful poker players have a similar entrepreneurial activity and always have something on the side. However a large number of professionals have never worked in any other job and many of them even dropped out of college for poker. And when fortune turns away from them, they find themselves at broken trough without any alternatives.

These few stories confirm that you can make a profession out of poker and earn money for your life, but there is a very thin line that can turn success into complete failure.

Have you ever played poker or considered this type of activity as a possible profession for yourself?

Sweet stories of people getting rich at lightning speed make many people wonder if it is really possible to make a living playing poker? How much does it take to learn and is there a chance to lose the last money?

On the territory of Europe and the USA, poker is an extremely common game played by a large part of the population of the country, which cannot be said about the inhabitants of the post-Soviet space. Average Americans earn at least $10,000 a month and can safely afford to “drain” one or two thousand dollars in one evening, which can be used in Russia or the CIS countries to live a month in luxury and prosperity.

Beginning poker players need to take into account several obvious things at once - making a living in poker is real, but quite difficult and time consuming, especially if you have no experience of playing the game at all.

The idea of ​​making money playing cards is not permanent, each of us is able to start earning six figures in dollar terms daily, but what path did these people have to go before such success?

Playing poker - how not to be left with nothing?

If you start a dialogue with successful players from Russia, you can find out their average income per month, as a rule, it varies from $1,000 to $3,000, but few of them will reveal main secret their lives - this income is not constant, in one week they can earn $ 5,000, and later lose the whole month in a row.

When playing poker, the main components will always be experience and knowledge gained from both training courses and personal mistakes, which have been carefully analyzed and verified. Remember - until you learn the key basics of the game, the path to winning is closed to you behind seven locks.

Learn to learn the technique of playing the game from other users, read as much literature as possible and study strategies, watch from the side how players behave in video recordings of games, live broadcasts from poker rooms. Learn to be cool, calculating and patient, of course, this complex art, but in order to earn a living in poker, it is vital.

Pitfalls of online poker

Poker, like any other type of income, has its pitfalls that can quickly and clearly leave you with nothing, and sometimes in large debts. How not to run into such stones and what you need to know about them in order to play in poker rooms and profit from it.

1. Your chances of winning are always 50/50 - remember the simple rule that all players at the table have an equal chance of winning and hitting the jackpot, elementary math. Over a long career, many professionals won only a little more than 50% of all sets played.
2. Mind - the game requires constant concentration and a calm, cool attitude to everything that happens around you, if you are emotionally quick-tempered and cannot control yourself in tense situations, the game can bring you to serious problems with health.
3. Instability - never and none of the players was completely sure of their victory, as well as the constancy of the income received. Today you can earn $1,000,000 and lose $2 million the next month.
4. Absorption - at a certain stage of the game you will be sucked in with your head, and you will be at your computer or gadget around the clock, trying to find the most profitable tables and the least experienced players.

Poker Success Stories

Many would like to know more about Russian poker players who have achieved good results and are able to boast that they earn a luxurious and prestigious life by playing the game. But many of them have made ends meet before.

Ivan Demidov

Muscovite, who received 2nd and 3rd places in international tournaments WSOP and WSOPE, average annual income young man is at least $7,000,000. Ivan graduated from Moscow State University and ended up in poker thanks to his good friend, which helped Demidov find money for a startup career - $ 50. A year later, Ivan had a huge fortune and became famous player to poker.

Mikhail Shalamov

An equally successful poker player from Yekaterinburg, famous for setting several records at once both in online poker and when playing in real tournaments. Despite his insignificant success, compared to Ivan, Mikhail earned over $600,000 in 4 years of his poker career.

The young man devoted a lot of time to learning strategies and getting the skills of the right game, practiced with friends at minimum stakes, improving his own skills.

Feruell

An unknown player in limit hold'em, initially started playing poker, making a huge fortune on this. According to the young man, he moved to St. Petersburg from Belarus and in just a year he reached the game at stakes of $100,000, after which he lost the pleasure of playing with the same opponents and left for hold'em.

You, like many other professional poker players, can do brilliant career and get your first million dollars within a few months after the start of your playing career, or you can remain in the red for several years. None of the success stories of the people described above began with “maybe”, each of the pros had previously read a lot, studied and experienced failure.

Every sane person has ever thought about whether what he is doing is right, whether he can harm someone in this way. The same thoughts arose in the hero of our translation.

Do not think that I want to convince you of something. I am not a moralist. Even if you are not a professional poker player, you might as well not think about morality in your profession. But you must know that you are always responsible for everything that happens in your life and for the consequences of your actions and decisions.

First I need to make sure that I am not justifying myself in this way. I put myself in the place of the person who buys the meat and ask myself if my action is moral. After all, he, like a poker player, has a choice to buy or not to buy, to play or not to play. And just because I have the ability to make money with this game doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong. Similarly, with the choice that meat sellers offer you. You should not turn on autopilot and mindlessly pay for these products.

Now I'll try to be as honest as possible. First of all, what result does poker give me? What can I suggest? Who invests in the poker industry?

These questions are not difficult at all. The main source of money in poker are recreational players. I just don't understand why anyone would invest in something like this. difficult game without any knowledge about this game. Let's assume that they have a desire for easy money, or they have so much fun playing that they are happy to flood their bankrolls. Given the above, my job as a regular is to give these players the opportunity to have fun and hope for easy money.

Online poker is a redistribution of amateurs' money between professionals, poker rooms and the state. Someone will say that such a system is absolutely normal if money is poured with pleasure. After all, people have to have some kind of entertainment, and if they are willing to pay for it, there is nothing wrong with someone who makes a living playing poker.

If I did not want to think deeper, this conclusion would be enough for me. But, as I said, I want to be as honest as possible and look for grounds for objection. So far I have found two.

I have no doubt that poker can be a useful and educational thing. Thanks to poker, I have developed long-term thinking and many other useful skills. But this does not mean that all players have this opportunity. I don't think a player who regularly calls three streets with third pair can get as much out of the game as I did.

In my opinion, recreational players could put their fun money to better use than playing online poker. By providing these people with online poker, we give them the opportunity to spend their money worse than they could. There is no sense of morality here.

Smarter people offer less smart game, as a result of which in the long run the former will receive the money of the latter. Again, morality here and does not smell. highly moral and clever man should not abuse his advantage in intelligence.

As someone in the poker industry, I have to admit that poker cheats less smart people. And cheating is definitely immoral. If everyone suddenly stopped playing, then they would not have the opportunity to lose their money in this way.

These two reasons seem good arguments in favor of the fact that it is immoral to make a living playing poker. And now what i can do? Should I Quit Poker? I don't look at things only in black and white. In some cases, morality must be considered relative to the circumstances. Intentions are part of the actions that must be judged by the principles of morality.

For this reason, it is not necessarily immoral to make a living playing poker in the short to medium term. Everything depends on intentions. If I play poker just to get rich and live a comfortable consumer life, then morality would be in question.

So when I play poker for a living, I must have serious altruistic intentions. I must spend all the money I win very wisely. I should spend as little money as possible on myself, on maintaining my own existence and let most for charity.

I'm still not convinced that even in this case, making money for a living playing poker is moral, and in the future I would like to generate money in a different way that would be more in line with these principles. Good luck at the tables!

Every year online earnings become more and more popular. For the first time, the opportunity to make money on the Internet appeared 20 years ago. Of course, in the early years, Internet earnings seemed to be something "from the world of fantasy." Many did not trust the Internet, considering making money online as a waste of time. In fairness, it should be noted that in the early days of its existence, making money on the Internet was really doubtful. However, today the situation has changed radically. Thousands of freelancers from all over the world earn money by working on the worldwide web. In our time, Internet earnings are no longer in doubt. According to statistics, only 5% of online job offers turn out to be “scams”. Thus, it is safe to say that absolutely anyone can make money on the Internet, regardless of their kind of activity.

If you love gambling and want to try your luck, pay attention to online casinos. Modern virtual casinos- this is a great opportunity not only to enjoy the game without leaving your home, but also to earn good money. Have you ever thought about how much, approximately, it is possible to earn in an online casino? Professional players assure us that the average earnings per gambling is up to $300-400 per month. And this is subject to the most minimum rates. Is making money from gambling a reality? And how is it possible to make money playing in online casinos? Today, we will try to figure out how to combine business with pleasure and learn how to make money on online games.

Online gambling games where you can earn real money:

1. Slot machines. According to statistics, many novice players choose online slots. Slot machines have a number of advantages: simple rules, fast loading of the game, a wide range of bets, several paylines, various bonuses and promotions. By playing slots you can earn up to $20 in just one spin. The most profitable in online slots are Special symbols(wild, scatter and bonus images) to help you earn extra spins. Each bonus spin can bring you twice as many credits. That is why slot machines are considered not only the most popular, but also the most profitable gambling on the network. I recommend trying your luck at the newly opened casino: Pharaoh slot machines for free.
2. Roulette. Roulette is one of the earliest gambling games. It's no secret that roulette is called the queen of the casino. And this is not surprising, since online roulette brings solid winnings to players. If luck is on your side, you can earn up to $25 per spin. In roulette you can make almost any bet from 5 cents to $100. The larger your bet, the higher the chance of good payouts.
3. Poker. Poker is considered to be the most intelligent gambling game in the world. It is for this reason that poker is considered legal in some countries of the world, as it is considered an intellectual game, and not a game of chance. Unlike other online games, winning at poker is not so easy. In order to succeed in this difficult game, you need to know the basic rules, be able to apply the basic strategies and tactics of the game, and also be well versed in psychology. It is customary to bluff in poker, which is why you need to learn how to "read" the player's mind by his facial expression. However, if you learn how to play poker, you can earn up to $100 in just one day.
4. Black Jack. Perhaps there is not a single player in the world who would not dream of trying his hand at blackjack. If you have a good memory and know how to memorize cards, online blackjack is what you need. Of course, you can't make millions in blackjack. However, this interesting card game can bring you up to $20 per evening.
5. Games with live dealers. Modern technologies allow players to try their luck by playing various Online Games with live dealers. In order to play video games you will need excellent internet speed. Unfortunately, at bad internet connection, the video connection does not work well and often freezes.

More about slot machines and other gambling games you can find out