To boost their children’s confidence and skills in Fortnite, well-off parents are now hiring coaches to provide their offspring with lessons in the shooter. One can pay up to $50 an hour. Some fathers even take lessons themselves.
Who offers this service? There have been coaches for certain video games for a while now. And there have been sites like Bidvine or Gamer Sensei, which connect players with professional coaches for Hearthstone or FIFA. This is nothing new.
Especially in the huge game FIFA, there are thousands of “tutors” who make money from it.
However, the usual customers of the coaches are young-at-heart adults in their 20s and 30s, who spend their own money to become better at these games. They lack the time to keep up but have plenty of money to improve.
They are usually ambitious and thrive in their jobs. Still, they are tired of losing to their old friends who have more time for gaming than they do. Therefore, they are willing to spend some money to be coached by a professional and thus improve.
Children need to be good at Fortnite due to social pressure
New phenomenon since March: But now there is a different audience. Parents are paying for the coaches out of their own pockets so that the children can become better at Fortnite. Since March, Bidvine has already hired 1400 Fortnite coaches.
Reason Social Pressure: As the Wall Street Journal reports, parents pay for various reasons to help their children improve:
A project manager says with concern: Her 10-year-old son is under social pressure, not only to play Fortnite but also to be good at it. She has paid for her son four hours at $50. He is now afraid his friends will think he is cheating because he has suddenly improved so much.
My child will become an eSports professional and pay for my retirement
Reason Future Investment: A software developer from Texas pays for his son’s Fortnite tutoring for another reason. He is like an ambitious “sports dad.” He believes his son can become good enough to be a Fortnite eSports player later and make money at tournaments.
He is not alone in this idea. Another father, who works at Twitch, hopes that one of his three sons can make it to professional status. Then he could pay for his retirement.
Some want to keep up with their kids
The reason is fun: Other parents enjoy playing Fortnite with their children and want stronger team partners. A father from Georgia gifted his son an hour of lessons for his birthday, trained alongside him, and realized how much it helped.
Then ambition took over. Now he regularly takes lessons together with his son. This also strengthens the father-son relationship.
Another father, a software engineer from California, only wanted to be good enough to keep up with his kids. However, they rejected that and even teased him for taking lessons.
But dad persevered, and now the training is slowly bearing fruit. The 11-year-old son finds this not very funny. He does not want to live in a world where his father is better at Fortnite than he is.
This is what the trainers say: For the paid eSports trainers, who charge between $20 and $50 an hour, this situation is somewhat confusing. One is quoted as saying: “This feels surreal to me. My father would have never paid for this for me.”
Gaming comes into the mainstream, but it is probably something for high earners
What it’s about: The interesting thing is that many of the currently 10-year-old kids now have parents who grew up with video games themselves. And they understand this – it is not new territory for them. This shows that gaming is becoming mainstream simply due to the generational shift. Even if coaching may seem a bit strange.
It is also interesting that the parents who pay for their kids’ training have “well-paying jobs.” They probably do not have to stretch every euro twice.
Despite all the understanding and social pressure: For most regular earners, there are probably more important things than paying for their kids’ tutoring in video games.
In any case, it is a more pleasant approach to the topic than the bare panic that others spread:
