I’m a professional gamer and streamer, here’s how I did it
EVERY teen in 2022 seems to want to become a streamer or YouTube celebrity.
It’s the popular career of the day, superseding the rockstars and fashion icons of the ‘80s and ‘90s generation.
Fnatic Moonryde is one of Italy’s biggest Twitch streamers, and also happens to be a very talented Call of Duty player.
Call of Duty: Warzone has been one of the biggest battle royale games for several years now, and this month saw the launch of Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0, an updated version of the game with a few brand new mechanics and changes that will keep things feeling fresh for die-hard shooter fans.
Of course, for an experienced player like Dario ‘Moonryde’ Ferracci, a bigger concern is the map.
He says: “At the beginning of a new game, choose your drop zone, and fight.
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"Fight, fight all the time, don’t run. Drop and play in the same zone, with the same team, and you’ll learn the layout of the area in depth.”
With a huge new map to explore, it’s even more important to get your bearings early.
Any players unfamiliar with the map will get overwhelmed fast, and you want to be one of the teams doing the overwhelming, not getting gunned down.
Gaming skills are undoubtedly important when entertaining thousands of viewers at a time – everyone wants to see some flashy skills and tense firefights – but it’s equally important for Moonryde to interact with those viewers and entertain them however he can.
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He explains: “I’m a reader, because the chat moves so fast, but I read fast, and we have a lot of interaction.
"I’m an energy streamer, so I have a lot of energy, and I bring a lot of energy to my stream.
"And a lot of interaction, I love to speak with [the chat], and we have a lot of funny moments.
"If the stream is boring and I don’t like the stream, they don’t like the stream. If I have fun, they have fun.”
Throughout our chat Moonryde is live on Twitch with more than three thousand viewers at any moment – those are impressive numbers for any streamer on a Friday morning.
He’ll stop mid-sentence in order to respond to chatters and thank viewers for subscriptions – one of the primary incomes for any streamer.
As Moonryde praises his viewers he expresses how his stream could not exist without them, when suddenly he receives ten subs.
Following that, he explains that he is obliged to do a dance for his stream, at which point he stands still in-game and dances on camera while singing about the subs.
It’s easy to see why someone would donate for a dance, especially when it’s at a potentially inopportune time.
The more influence and interaction the viewers get with what’s on screen, the more they seem to enjoy it.
As he plays the game better than I ever could, he also explains to me what he’s doing, how he’s developed his skills and awareness, and also interacts with his viewers at every opportunity.
Moonryde is actively juggling at least three simultaneous tasks, all while talking to me in his a secondary language.
With all of this in mind, and my voice rattling away in his headphones, it’s forgivable that he didn’t win every 150-player royale he dropped into.
Moonryde says: “It’s time and work” of what it takes to become a professional streamer.
“I’ve streamed for six or seven years, so it’s not fast.
"You have to be a hard worker, you have to be lucky, and you have to know people.
"If you’re consistent, you might not have huge success, but you will have something.
“If you can do something you love and get revenue from that, make money, you’re lucky.”
Moonryde is a member of the Fnatic professional gaming organisation, and he speaks of the org with a great deal of admiration.
He explains: “It is an honour. It is a top-tier team, one of the best in the world.
“They told me ‘you have to be yourself, do your stuff, and GG.’”
Once our chat wraps up, Moonryde pauses for a moment and walks off stream.
A few moments later he returns without his Fnatic branded merch, and instead is wearing a Sailor Moon sailor scout cosplay.
The messages spin by in the stream’s chat at a pace far too fast for anyone to follow.
Moonryde might be silly and dance while on stream, but it comes to entertaining his fans, he knows what he’s doing.
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‘Moonryde is an Italian Warzone creator for , the number one esports organisation in the world. Moonryde was the first talent to join the main roster having come through Fnatic Grassroots, the organisation’s grassroots academy.’
Written by Dave Aubrey on behalf of .
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