Poll of the Day > Glorifying people playing a video game as a job

(+) Yeah! (+)

Is extremely trite.
Thank you for listening to my ted talk.
I have nowhere else to yell into the clouds.
Have a nice day.

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Glorifying how? Praising them as the foundation of a just and pure society? Yeah, that's dumb (not necessarily "trite," though). Saying that they have a legitimate job and any attempts to insist otherwise amount entirely to some mix of jealousy and a failure to understand how the entertainment industry works? That's perfectly accurate.

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https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/o8r5xy/me_thinking_6k_hours_is_much/
Playing a game for 10,000+ hours is kinda unhealthy.
Creating memes about it and glorifying streamers / content creators who do this, just makes gaming look bad and set unnecessary bars and creates an environment where if you want to enjoy a game, it has to be your full time job.

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Let people make a living.

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Most jobs are never paid 'fairly' depending on their worth to society, just how much money they can extract from others and the rarity of the ability of a person to do said job. It sucks but we have to accept it to an extent.

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Judg AKA NMB-lite

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It's okay to be jealous, TC. I'd love to be a part of GameGrumps or something where you just have to play an hour of video games per day (not even well, either) while goofing with your best friend and manage social media pages and then get paid over $100k per year.

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faramir77 posted...

It's okay to be jealous, TC. I'd love to be a part of GameGrumps or something where you just have to play an hour of video games per day (not even well, either) while goofing with your best friend and manage social media pages and then get paid over $100k per year.

But I get paid over $100k/yr to write software which is something I actually want to do.

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QA already get paid dirt they don't need your attitude TC

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Judgmenl posted...

Playing a game for 10,000+ hours is kinda unhealthy.

Why? If you enjoy doing it and you aren't doing so at the expense of more important facets of your life, what's so wrong about that?

Judgmenl posted...

Creating memes about it and glorifying streamers / content creators who do this, just makes gaming look bad and set unnecessary bars and creates an environment where if you want to enjoy a game, it has to be your full time job.

It really doesn't. Unless you are actually trying to compete with those people for some reason (usually because you want to similarly play professionally), there's absolutely no need for you to be similarly dedicated. If knowing that other people are playing more than you prevents you from enjoying a game, that's entirely a you problem.

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TC is discovering how fame works

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glorifying people playing a video game as a job is trite, but complaining about people glorifying people playing a video game as a job, that's entirely fresh and worthwhile, ok?

your posts are the fucking worst, ok?

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Aculo posted...

your posts are the f***ing worst, ok?

oh helll ya - i been dethroned

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adjl posted...

Saying that they have a legitimate job

Just because you make money doing something doesn't necessarily make it a job. There are some gamers who are by all reasonable measures gainfully employed (in that a company hires them, pays them, covers their benefits, etc), but then you have a lot who are able to earn a living by passing a hat around. There are also people who make a job busking or panhandling, but that doesn't mean those are things people see as a legitimate job.

And if you're able to earn a living outside the confines of the traditional system, why pretend that it's simply a job?

adjl posted...

any attempts to insist otherwise amount entirely to some mix of jealousy and a failure to understand how the entertainment industry works?

That's kind of a failure to understand what jobs are.

Judgmenl posted...

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/o8r5xy/me_thinking_6k_hours_is_much/
Playing a game for 10,000+ hours is kinda unhealthy.
Creating memes about it and glorifying streamers / content creators who do this, just makes gaming look bad and set unnecessary bars and creates an environment where if you want to enjoy a game, it has to be your full time job.

tbh, I thought this whole thing was a work because I know you're a big hololive guy and that's pretty much what they do.

There's nothing inherently "unhealthy" about playing a game for 10k+ hours unless the 10k hours are concentrated in a very short span of time (ie, if somebody is playing 20 hours a day, that's likely an issue in some form.) From a practical standpoint, time spent in front of a screen doing one thing is probably as healthy as time spent doing something else; if somebody is earning a living doing one thing vs another in front a screen, that's kind of the same outcome.

However, at face value, 10k hours in a game that's been around 10, 15, or even 20 years isn't a huge thing, even though that's a good chunk of time as an aggregate (although for a game that's only been around 5 years, that can be a reasonably large amount of time; there are about 8,760 hours in a year, so 5 years is 43k hours and 10k hours would work out to be a bit under 6 hours per day which -- depending on the genre -- can be substantial -- and that goes down to an average of 3 hours per day in a 10-year game, which isn't a massive amount of time)

Otherwise 10k hours on one hobby vs 10k hours on another hobby kinda works out to be the same, even though not all hobbies are created equal and some might confer knowledge, transferable skills, certain habits, etc, so people can get more than just entertainment from 10k hours in one hobby whereas they might only get the entertainment in another hobby.

Judgmenl posted...

and creates an environment where if you want to enjoy a game, it has to be your full time job.

Which is kind of a problematic trend, although it's not unique to gaming. A lot of hobbies have the opportunity to earn a living, so people try to make a living at them even though very few people (relatively speaking) will be able to do so. And, when that hobby is something that's generally seen as a career (which isn't true of gaming), there's more of a pressure.

That said, there's less an expectation that a game be your job, and more that you just be good at the game.

faramir77 posted...

It's okay to be jealous, TC. I'd love to be a part of GameGrumps or something where you just have to play an hour of video games per day (not even well, either) while goofing with your best friend and manage social media pages and then get paid over $100k per year.

I honestly wouldn't, because the pay is uncertain and you aren't necessarily building transferable skills that can make you more money down the road. I can understand the appeal for a lot of people who were never able to really start a career, though. However, even if I was making good money doing that for a while, my thoughts would be focused on the future and what might happen when that comes to an end.

Granted, from a practical standpoint, a large existing fanbase likely means that *somebody* might be able and willing to get them a normal job if/when the whole YTer thing stops working out, but that feels like a wing and a prayer.

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Zeus posted...

Granted, from a practical standpoint, a large existing fanbase likely means that *somebody* might be able and willing to get them a normal job if/when the whole YTer thing stops working out, but that feels like a wing and a prayer.

This is what I was going to say, minus the last line.

Video games aren't going anywhere any time soon, and you can absolutely be guaranteed that someone will hire Arin or Dan from GameGrumps even after GameGrumps is done, unless they pull a JonTron and go full blown white supremacist or something.

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faramir77 posted...

This is what I was going to say, minus the last line.

Video games aren't going anywhere any time soon, and you can absolutely be guaranteed that someone will hire Arin or Dan from GameGrumps even after GameGrumps is done, unless they pull a JonTron and go full blown white supremacist or something.

I don't know much about JonTron, but doesn't he have enough money to never need to work again at this point? I thought he was the big guy on that channel.

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Zeus posted...

That's kind of a failure to understand what jobs are.

Then what is a job?

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Zeus posted...

I don't know much about JonTron, but doesn't he have enough money to never need to work again at this point? I thought he was the big guy on that channel.

He made a little money on GameGrumps, but he was there for less than a year - ... whoah, he got 1.1 million from GameGrumps? DAAAAANG oldschool youtube actually paid people!

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How much money is "enough money to never need to work again"?

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"I don't know what 'trite' means."

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vigorm0rtis posted...

"I don't know what 'trite' means."

Trite means having been discussed to the point of pointlessness.

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Judgmenl posted...

How much money is "enough money to never need to work again"?

Depends where you are and what sort of goals you have, but I would expect $10 million to pretty much guarantee that unless you go out of your way to try to use more (or have no idea how to invest and therefore try just living off of that money instead of generating income with it). With more modest living, even $1 million can do the job.

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Judgmenl posted...

How much money is "enough money to never need to work again"?

2 billion

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adjl posted...

Then what is a job?

Definition of a job: "A paid position of regular employment."

Definition of employment: "Employment is an agreement between an individual and another entity that stipulates the responsibilities, payment terms and arrangement, rules of the workplace, and is recognized by the government."

In the case of most content creators, there's no secondary entity or arranged terms. They're not getting a W-2 from YT, although if they have a normal employer they will get one from that.

Judgmenl posted...

How much money is "enough money to never need to work again"?

Varies from person to person depending on existing assets and lifestyle. I was under the impression that Jontron was a multi-millionaire, which should keep him going.

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Zeus posted...

Definition of a job: "A paid position of regular employment."

temps never have jobs :b

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Lokarin posted...

temps never have jobs :b

That depends. A lot of temps work through an agency, so the agency is the actual employer. Otherwise it's just regular employment for a set period. Keep in mind that temp jobs can last close to a year (and possibly even longer?)

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Arv agrees with judgmenl you can tell who the real gamers are and it isnt many of them. It makes gaming look bad

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Zeus posted...

Definition of a job: "A paid position of regular employment."

Definition of employment: "Employment is an agreement between an individual and another entity that stipulates the responsibilities, payment terms and arrangement, rules of the workplace, and is recognized by the government."

In the case of most content creators, there's no secondary entity or arranged terms. They're not getting a W-2 from YT, although if they have a normal employer they will get one from that.

So your basis for defining "job" is whether or not they have the right paperwork (since that's really the only thing you've identified that separates content creators from the definition given)? That seems... pointlessly narrow. Heck, by the definition given, business owners and other self-employed people don't have jobs, and that's just a silly thing to say.

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adjl posted...

So your basis for defining "job" is whether or not they have the right paperwork (since that's really the only thing you've identified that separates content creators from the definition given)? That seems... pointlessly narrow. Heck, by the definition given, business owners and other self-employed people don't have jobs, and that's just a silly thing to say.

No, the definition of a job is the definition of a job. Whether or not you feel certain things fit within that framework -- beyond the stuff that clearly doesn't -- is up to you. While we could quibble all day over what does or doesn't constitute "work," a job has a pretty straightforward definition.

As for the self-employed, keep in mind that a lot of them have contracts (ie, a document that stipulates the responsibilities, payment terms and arrangement, rules of the workplace, and is recognized by the government) with the people they perform work for (technically all of the WWE's wrestlers are self-employed). That said, you have to use the term "job" very loosely with the self-employed because many self-employed persons only work when they feel like it.

And not all business owners actually work at or for their business. However, for some who do, the business is structured in such a way to provide them a fixed salary (and then they can take the profits as a shareholder at a lower tax rate)

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Zeus posted...

No, the definition of a job is the definition of a job. Whether or not you feel certain things fit within that framework -- beyond the stuff that clearly doesn't -- is up to you. While we could quibble all day over what does or doesn't constitute "work," a job has a pretty straightforward definition.

I'm still not seeing how professional gaming doesn't fit into that mold. You work within the framework Youtube, Twitch, or whatever has established for you, produce money for them by doing so, and they pay you accordingly. All that's missing is - as you said - a W2, which means it comes purely down to paperwork, and that's a pretty narrow, arbitrary way to define such a broad concept.

Zeus posted...

As for the self-employed, keep in mind that a lot of them have contracts (ie, a document that stipulates the responsibilities, payment terms and arrangement, rules of the workplace, and is recognized by the government) with the people they perform work for (technically all of the WWE's wrestlers are self-employed). That said, you have to use the term "job" very loosely with the self-employed because many self-employed persons only work when they feel like it.

So... they have jobs when they are working, and do not have jobs when they are not. Just like everybody else.

Zeus posted...

And not all business owners actually work at or for their business. However, for some who do, the business is structured in such a way to provide them a fixed salary (and then they can take the profits as a shareholder at a lower tax rate)

If you can consider the abstract concept of "the business" to be a secondary entity, that broadens the definition enough that there's no reason to exclude gaming from it.

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adjl posted...

I'm still not seeing how professional gaming doesn't fit into that mold. You work within the framework Youtube, Twitch, or whatever has established for you, produce money for them by doing so, and they pay you accordingly. All that's missing is - as you said - a W2, which means it comes purely down to paperwork, and that's a pretty narrow, arbitrary way to define such a broad concept.

Because it doesn't fit the definition in any way, shape, or form:

Definition of a job: "A paid position of regular employment."

Definition of employment: "Employment is an agreement between an individual and another entity that stipulates the responsibilities, payment terms and arrangement, rules of the workplace, and is recognized by the government."

Again, like busking -- yes, you can get paid for it, but it's not a job and you can argue whether it even constitutes work.

adjl posted...

So... they have jobs when they are working, and do not have jobs when they are not. Just like everybody else.

If you're under contract, you have a job whether or not you're "working" at that exact moment. It's like the off-hours for other jobs, where just because you're not at work at that second doesn't mean you don't have a job.

adjl posted...

If you can consider the abstract concept of "the business" to be a secondary entity, that broadens the definition enough that there's no reason to exclude gaming from it.

Tell you what -- if they have a LLC or better in place which pays them a salary, I would consider that a job.

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Zeus posted...

Because it doesn't fit the definition in any way, shape, or form:

Definition of a job: "A paid position of regular employment."

Definition of employment: "Employment is an agreement between an individual and another entity that stipulates the responsibilities, payment terms and arrangement, rules of the workplace, and is recognized by the government."

Paid? Check.
Regular? Check, at least as much as anyone with self-directed hours (arguably most people these days, with all the WFH) is.
Agreement with another entity? Check.
Responsibilities, payment terms, rules? Check.
Recognized by government? Check, at least to enough of an extent to charge them taxes on the income.

Generally speaking, "it doesn't fit the definition in any way, shape, or form," means you can't rattle off every single part of the definition and find that it does fit each of them in some way, shape, or form. The only actual point you seem to have is the lack of a W2, and defaulting to whether or not the government - an entity notorious for being slow to recognize emerging social trends - considers it to be a "normal" job is both intellectually lazy and utterly useless for evaluating the concept.

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