The Fortnite star and millionaire streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins is only 28, but talks about the bad old days as a professional gamer. In comparison, today’s professionals have it easy. They should stop whining about the ping.
What is the context? Ninja himself uploaded a clip on Twitter with the title “Kids these days”.
This is a code for “Old man complains about the present and tells how it used to be.” Ninja is aware of how this message will resonate with his followers.
Ninja is only 28, but his career as a professional gamer began 10 years ago with Halo 3. He knows a different time in eSports, before Epic came with the big budget and turned teenagers into millionaires overnight:
- Back then, tournaments took place on-site, in LAN – everyone had the same conditions
- Today, many eSports tournaments, such as in Fortnite, are held online. Players connect to a server. Some have worse ping than others due to their location and disadvantages
This is what Ninja says: Ninja says that eSports players today complaining about the ping in Fortnite don’t realize how good they have it. It is unbelievable that players today have the chance to play online for millions of US dollars.
In the past, Ninja says, players had to:
- travel to the locations where tournaments were held
- pay for the expensive flight or gas
- book a hotel room on-site
- buy a team pass
- often stay longer at tournaments, as they spanned several days
Tell Mom and Dad that you lost $2,000
These were the difficulties: Ninja says that back then, eSports players often had to invest at least $2,000 to get to a tournament. But then they still had no guarantee of winning anything.
People today should imagine how it was to convince your parents to cough up $2,000 as a 13-year-old, just to fly 6 hours across the USA to participate in a tournament.
Or how bad it was to tell your parents that you wasted that $2,000 to travel to a tournament where you won nothing.
In the end, Ninja says the classic line: “The kids today have it good and don’t even appreciate it.”
While he initially made an effort to address everyone from 13 to 80, he ends up with the “kids.”
This is how people react on Twitter: Reactions are mixed. Some make fun of Ninja a bit, while others agree with him. In any case, the clip is getting a lot of attention, with over 800,000 views already.
In the comments, many address this “old man talks about the good old days” attitude.
- One says: “In our time, we had to walk 15 miles in the snow to get a decent ping”
- another says: “These damn frauds win millions of dollars while playing in their pajamas and Mom cooks them food”
- A third says: “Come to South Africa, then you’ll understand.”
- However, there are also some who see it like Ninja: “People like you paved the way.”
- Other Twitter users remember their eSports experiences – about how little money was at stake back then and what inconveniences one had to endure.
