In a story Nov. 16 about three Florida men who made a career out of playing video games, The Associated Press reported erroneously the name of the vice president of marketing at the streaming company Twitch. His name is Matthew DiPietro, not Di Pietro.
A corrected version of the story is below:
3 Florida guys find a career playing video games
Playing video games for money? 3 guys make career out of gaming, blaze new path online
By TAMARA LUSH
Associated Press
LAKELAND, Fla. (AP) — From nine to five, seven days a week, Robert Schill plays video games while sitting on a plush, brown sofa in central Florida.
Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people watch. His web channel has more than 35 million hits in one year.
And Schill gets paid for it.
He’s a shift worker, a laborer in a brave and strange new economy that rewards a Big Brother-like existence combined with entrepreneurial pluck.
Schill’s not alone in this venture, not even in his own home. When the 26-year-old ginger-haired Schill finishes his shift, he unplugs his game controller and his roommate, 29-year-old Adam Young, sinks into the sofa and plays until 1 a.m. Then a third roommate, Brett Borden, 26, clocks in for his eight-hour shift.
They are the stars of StreamerHouse. They broadcast via Twitch.tv, an online network that attracts tens of millions of visitors, most of whom watch footage of other people playing video games.
StreamerHouse is set in a 1920s-era Mediterranean-revival home graced with 20 cameras, at least 15 computer screens and two bulldogs (Mister Pig and Baby Pig). It’s part reality TV, part talk radio and part performance art. The trio play games, chat with fans and narrate their daily lives into an expensive microphone setup.
They make money from a cut of Twitch advertising, subscriptions, video game sales and from fan donations.
In October, one admirer from the Middle East gave StreamerHouse $6,000.
StreamerHouse capitalizes on a cultural moment that demands engagement and intimacy with everyone from celebrities tweeting pictures of their newborns to friends and family posting Facebook photos of breakfast.
The StreamerHouse guys deliver with an intimate, non-stop show where they interact with fans in real time.
There’s something genius about this.
Read the Full Article: Source – Associated Press
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/af9abce5c7104219a1d9d4db8c96aed3/3-florida-guys-find-career-playing-video-games
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