The hidden corner of streamer career – VnExpress Digitization

Ha Ha, born in 1999 in Hanoi, is a full-time game streamer. Every day, she streams about 7-8 hours on her personal YouTube channel with nearly 300,000 subscribers and the Nonolive app that she signed with.

She usually starts her day at 10:30 a.m. when everyone has gone to work. Immediately after waking up, she quickly performed the first livestream, lasting four hours in a row. 14:30 is when Ha has lunch and thinks about the script for the evening livestream, which takes place from 9 pm to 24 pm. She continued to spend 2-3 hours writing the script for the next day’s livestream before going to bed at 4am.

For many young people, the concept of streamer is no longer strange. This is considered a “money-making” profession, associated with fame. But behind the glitz on the internet, many streamers have to face psychological pressure, insulting words in cyberspace, even at the expense of their own health.

According to Nielsen estimates, by 2025, Gen Z in Vietnam will reach nearly 15 million people. This is the main and potential user group for livestream platforms to thrive. They are not just “users” but “pioneering content creators” across platforms.

Ha’s work has continued like this for the past four years and has almost no days off. “My life is turned upside down, when everyone goes to bed, it’s my work time. The time other people spend with relatives and friends is when I sit and play games and talk in front of the screen. At first, my parents thought I have psychological problems when I lock myself in my room all day and talk alone,” Ha said.

Having a passion for games since she was in school, after graduating from school, she decided to stick with livestream instead of going to the office like friends. Starting from zero, without a name, her streamer path was not easy. In the first stage, she played games by herself and streamed live on her personal YouTube channel, mainly to interact, get acquainted and create a close group of viewers, but almost no one noticed. “With a profession that lives by popularity and no one watches the livestream for two months, it’s really a heavy pressure for me,” Ha said.

Then, she switched to livestreaming for an entertainment app with a duration of four hours a day. Viewers began to increase gradually. “My luck is to be known by game publishers and invited to the office to livestream. After a short time, my name is also known by many gamers,” Ha shared.

Ha said her current job gives her a high salary, but it does not spread commissions, but has to be traded with sweat and tears. Sometimes, she also feels pressure when the number of viewers is halved, along with the pressure and competition of a series of emerging streamers with many tricks to retain viewers.

“I have to constantly innovate myself so that viewers don’t get bored, how to get people excited to follow my content every day. For example, instead of playing games, chatting, I create rooms for people to come in. competition, whoever wins the prize will be rewarded”, added female streamer 9x.

Many streamers also face insults and insults in cyberspace. Ha said one night she had to turn off her livestream midway because she couldn’t stand the insults from negative comments. “Serving an anonymous community is not easy. They are ready to spit out profanities every time I play. bad, or curse if I don’t do what they want. Even they discriminate because I’m a girl and learn to play games. Each time like that, it usually takes me three to four days to regain my spirit,” Ha said. remember.

Also a streamer like Ha, but Phuong Anh, born in 1993 in Hanoi, only considers livestreaming a part-time job. She usually livestreams about three hours a day after work.

There are days when she comes home late from work, but because of the pressure of the quota, she still has to sit in front of the screen to play games, talk happily from 9 pm to midnight. For her, the biggest pressure is when the views are reduced. “The difficulty of the streamer profession is how to retain old viewers and attract new ones. This requires you to work hard, explore and innovate content so that viewers don’t get bored,” she said. “In addition, streamers also need to know how to protect themselves, have an optimistic view to overcome negative and offensive comments in cyberspace.”

After graduating from Foreign Trade University, Phuong Anh collaborated and worked as an MC for an e-sports company. Being exposed to the esport environment, she tried playing games. At first, she livestreamed on the platform of a Vietnamese company, then signed a contract with the Chinese application Tamago. Even though she was just an unpopular streamer at the time, the highest solid salary she ever received a month was $900, not including support from viewers.

“Compared to the job I’m doing in parallel, introducing technology products, the income as a streamer is much higher. If you play games well, talk well, and work hard to livestream on platforms like Nimo, Facebook Gaming, No. money can increase many times,” she added.

Not only in Vietnam, the status of insults and harassment also often happens to world-famous streamers. Nightblue3, one of the famous American streamers on Twitch and game platforms League of Legends, also received many negative comments and curses when he lost the game. Some even insulted him because he did not follow the dangerous challenge they gave him. By page EKgamingwhen Nightblue3 and his girlfriend broke up, information was leaked and he was also mocked and cursed in his own livestream sessions.

Huy Pham, Director of Metub – a company specializing in developing YouTube channels for streamers, said that this is not actually a job of “sitting cool and eating a golden bowl” as many people think. Behind the glory, the money, the streamer faces many challenges and the dark side few see. They must constantly innovate and create new content to retain viewers.

The job of a streamer is not simply sitting in front of a screen and talking. They need to plan in detail, do makeup, prepare costumes, spend time reviewing old content to improve themselves. When faced with disparaging, negative, and offensive comments, streamers must learn to calm down and handle them wisely to avoid scandal.

“Along with desirable incomes, they also trade off their time and health. There are livestreams lasting 4-5 hours, streamers don’t even have time to drink water or go to the bathroom, lasting for a long time. Besides, they also do not have time to spend with friends and relatives because they have to focus on working continuously with high intensity to ensure the target and maintain the number of viewers.” Mr. Huy said.

Nguyen Hanh