Playing video games has been a good and happy way to spend a day. You can choose different types of games, like Grand Theft Auto, League of Legend, Super Mario Brothers, Final Fantasy, and so on.

People now not only enjoy to play games themselves, but also like to see other people playing.

This is what game broadcasters do. They serve the audience by streaming, that is broadcasting live of what they are doing, or uploading videos of their game-playing.

In Taiwan, this industry is popular. Statistics show that there are more than 450 active streamers and they are occupying the top positions in the YouTube Taiwan subscriber ranking, for example, Op (with his YouTube name OpChannel) and Kouki both get more than 700,000 subscribers and they are the 10th and 11th.

Zynxyz, a broadcaster with more than 500,000 subscribers and 180,000 followers on Facebook, thinks the audience like to listen to them speaking nonsensically and randomly. He, estimates that there are 100,000 people in the  market, also thinks some people do not want to play the game themselves, so they watch it instead.

Annie, another streamer with around 600,000 subscribers, says the audience wants to see the realest responses when playing a game.

Indeed, you can always see them laughing crazily, screaming when scared, or even crying when encountering touching scenes.

She also thinks game broadcasting is in fact like television shows which helps people kill time and is trying to make it sophisticated.

The game shows differ substantially, nevertheless, from a real TV show in a sense that streamers are more stepping back when it comes to showing their faces. Many of them prefer to do all these behind the camera, or use skills to hide away them.

Zynxyz, in reponse to this, says they just would like to share to game-playing, but not the private life. They hope to keep their privacy.

Annie was one of them until eariler this year. According to her, she would not like to be disturbed when she was on the street, since her fans are quite young and less controllable.

She also thought not showing her face would not alter how the audience thought of or damage the imagination to her, so she had decided to stick to the status quo.

Annie’s decision to reveal her face was a key to more possibilities, such as sharing how she does her make-up, but she also had to bear risks of being attacked by netizens.

Now, Annie says she does not experience many differences and she is doing the same thing.

She thinks broadcasters setting too many limits to oneself would not succeed. They should have breakthroughs and try new stuffs constantly. They can actually do many more things, such as Op taking hosting jobs. In this way, they can bring freshnesses to both themselves and the audience.

This industry has been vibrant for several years. Annie thinks if it has to keep on, it is essential to maintain the heat, similar to the radio and television careers.

She seems optimistic as live streaming will become more convenient. She says the portable device development will make viewing and sharing more humane.

Zynxyz, on the other hand, is a bit pessimistic. He says the market does not put game broadcasting at an important position and it thinks people watching and practitioners are just the minority. Therefore, broadcasters are not earning nicely.

In his opinion, it may need some more time to pull the revenue up so that more counterparts of him can survive.

Game broadcasting was not regarded as a money-earning job few years ago. People at that time thought that playing games or seeing other doing that ought to be free. Donation, which is quite common nowadays, was not accepted at that time.

Blueirongate was one of the first people streaming Minecraft and in attempt to promote that culture in Taiwan. Many netizens were attacking him and he eventually could not bear the pressure and quit the industry.

Annie says it was a very pity but her generation then emerged, noting that they made their living through broadcasting and “it is no big deal and this is my job”.

She concludes, “it is the best if you can stay here bravely and do what you want to do.”