On a normal weekday, most of us get up in the morning to get ready for our jobs or classes in seemingly mundane and repetitive events. For former Halo professional Tyler “Ninja” Blevins though, he is living the dream of many.
Blevins is the most popular streamer on Twitch.tv, the largest video game live-streaming service on the internet, and he wakes up in the morning to play the ever-so sensational Fortnite and other games for his thousands of viewers.
Ninja is not the first to make it big on Twitch, nor will he be the last, but we are looking at the first possible celebrity professional gamer to transcend the gap between video games and mainstream pop-culture.
Blevins, after retiring from the professional Halo scene, focused on his Twitch channel, where he had already been partnered since 2011 and his community had grown slowly during his playing days on organizations such as Team Liquid and Renegades.
Since then, he became a streamer for esports organization Luminosity, and focused on the growing popularity of battle royale-style games like PUBG and of course Fortnite.
When the latter blew up to become one of the most popular games on the video-streaming site, people flocked to Ninja’s stream not only because of his personality, but because he is really damn good at what he does.
What makes Ninja’s situation different though is that Fortnite has become so popular that it has drawn in players from every age demographic, and even celebrities. The former Halo professional was able to get rappers Drake and Travis Scott and Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Juju Smith-Schuster on his squad, and live-streamed the whole thing.
Viewers poured in after Ninja and Drake tweeted out the stream, and Ninja, who already drew in around 100 thousand viewers when he streams, saw numbers jump up to over 600 thousand viewers, breaking the record for most viewers on a single stream.
There had been large twitch streams in the past, such as League of Legends pro-player Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok debut on the site, the unbanning of Tyler1 and his return to League after a near two year ban from the game, and the return of Guy “Dr. Disrespect” Beahm to the site.
Never has there been mainstream pop-culture icons like Drake and Travis Scott playing a video game with a seemingly normal guy though.
That last sentence is the craziest part. A normal and humble guy, someone you would never think of socializing with one of the biggest figures in music, got Drake, Travis Scott, and an up-and-coming NFL star in Juju Smith-Schuster to play a video game with him.
Five years ago this does not happen. Even two years ago it is pretty doubtful.
More and more, celebrities are now bringing video games to the mainstream media, and with that, professional gamers are getting more credibility as celebrities.
Dr. Disrespect did an interview with Rolling Stone, the marque entertainment magazine. Ninja went onto CNBC for an interview, which is almost unheard of for a professional video gamer. On the other side, you see people like Post Malone streaming PUBG and Smith-Schuster living in the FaZe Clan house making Fortnite and Call of Duty videos on YouTube.
Despite all of this fame though, Ninja and his wife Jessica (JGhosty on Twitch and YouTube) continue to be humble and respectful as ever. The two of them started up a campaign to help pay for local pet bills.
The first pet they sponsored, Miracle the cat, needed dental work, which the two of them paid for using donations they received on stream. After taking care of Miracle’s medical bills, they two do not plan on stopping anytime soon either.
“The next animal we sponsor I seriously want to cover the costs for having someone go down to a kill shelter and bring them back to a shelter that allows fostering,” Jessica said on her Twitter account on March 21.
The biggest takeaway though from these two is that Ninja and his wife are the role models that Twitch deserves. In a day and age where both YouTube and Twitch stars are coming under more and more controversy, such as Logan Paul or Dr. Disrespect. They are happily married, have no controversial things that I know of and they give back to the community in multiple different ways.
One example is the charity stream Ninja had on Feb. 6 in which all proceeds went to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention after he lost a personal friend after they committed suicide. He set a goal of reaching $25,000 but his amazing community pushed that over $100,000 in an eight-hour period.
“[…] I love you guys. […] We’re gonna celebrate because this is one of the most amazing things I have ever done in my entire life,” Ninja said after the stream.
“Yeah I have the viewers and shit, but you don’t understand, like I can have a 100,000 viewers and if no one cared, and no one would donate for causes like this. You guys are amazing, you guys are amazing! Thank you so much! Thank you.”
Ninja is as close to a celebrity that we have in the world of Twitch and the community could not have anyone better to represent them.
“This man…this man is the face of gaming. I am so glad that I can utter that sentence. Say what you will of Fortnite, of @Ninja or even streamers generally, but you can’t deny that we’ve never been presented to a mainstream audience by a better role model. I salute you sir,” Destiny personality James “My name is Byf” Byford said on his twitter account on March 19.
