Markus Persson, or Notch, is the creator of the massive worldwide game known as Minecraft. He was born in Sweden in 1979 and quickly took an interest in game development. At age seven he was programming on his dad’s Commodore 128, a home computer module. At age eight he made his first game. His programming career would only grow from here, working on various projects over the years and even working as game developer for the company King. He left the company in 2009 and started working on something that would change his career and life: Minecraft. An early version of the game was available to play in 2009 and it quickly grew support up until its official release in 2011. The game rapidly gained popularity. The sandbox and survival elements made it very appealing to kids and teenagers. It was also very popular on YouTube, a key element to its massive growth. Due to its popularity and influence, Microsoft wanted to acquire the game. In 2014 after Mojang (Notch’s company) had sold 15 million copies of Minecraft, Microsoft made Notch an offer he couldn’t turn down: 2.5 billion dollars. Today it reigns as the number one best-selling game of all time with over 238,000,000 copies sold and on YouTube it recently surpassed 1 trillion views total. Markus Persson’s net worth is 1.4 billion thanks to Minecraft. The Swedish developer purchased a 70 million dollar luxury mansion in Beverly Hills, outbidding Jay-Z and Beyonce for the residency. While his money making days are over, he continues to develop for fun. He most likely will never create anything as huge as Minecraft ever again, but for the entrepreneurial mind it’s not so much about the success, it’s the creative and right brain drive that motivates them.
Archive for Video Games
Tyler Blevins (Ninja) is the most popular Fortnite streamer of all time. He came onto the scene in early 2018, growing his following to over 220 million total and he averaged a viewer count of 600,000, which was a new record. Growing up, Ninja was always very interested in video games, his father kept their family up to date with the latest games and consoles. He was always very good at video games, but in college, he took his gameplay to the next level. He started off by streaming other games like Halo and Battlegrounds: PUBG, but his stream really took off when Fortnite became popular. It is estimated that in 2018, he was making over $1 million a month off of his streaming alone. He has had several paid partnerships with tech companies and his largest deal is with the energy drink company, Red Bull. Now, on all the social media platforms combined, Ninja has over 70 million followers. Not only does Ninja stream for fun, but he often partakes in competitive Fortnite events, which he has won large sums of money from in the past. Ninja has been able to build his brand into a household name for children across the world. It is amazing to think how doing something as simple as playing video games can make yourself into a successful entrepreneur.
Eric Rivera, Jeff Emann, and Ben Christensen are three young entrepreneurs who founded the highly reputable and well-known gaming organization, FaZe clan in May of 2010. These three entrepreneurs started FaZe clan through a YouTube channel named FaZe Sniping, where the these three plus others would share videos of their skills on the popular video gaming franchise, Call of Duty. FaZe Sniping would transition into FaZe clan, and at one point, was the most popular video gaming channel and entertainment source on YouTube. As of today, FaZe is regarded as both a professional esports and entertainment organization. FaZe clan has kept its YouTube channel relative all these years, accumulating over 8.5 million subscribers. Countless members of the organization have also found immense success on social media, most notably being FaZe Rug, who currently has 22 million subscribers on YouTube. While the official FaZe clan and members of the organization have mostly transitioned away from video gaming content, FaZe still has high designation in the esports community, consistently making appearances in high ranking and paying tournaments across various gaming franchises. Earlier this year, FaZe clan was ranked the 4th most valuable esports company by Forbes. FaZe is also among the few esports companies that are publicly traded on the NASDAQ. While there are many owners of FaZe clan currently, the success of the company that has accumulated over the last decade has much to do with the entrepreneurial minds of the clan’s three founders.
Social media has been building bridges to new ways of innovation and entrepreneurship ever since it began. Those who have capitalized on it when it began, however, are the ones making all the money and gaining the most fame. Felix Kjellberg, or better known to some as “Pewdiepie,” created his youtube account only one year after the website was released. It wasn’t until 2011, though, that he began to post on what would become the largest account on the platform ever (owned by one person). He began by posting quite short and relatively boring videos on his account purely for the entertainment of his friends and himself. As time went on, more people began to find his account, subscribing to it, and Felix’s fanbase grew. Less than a year later he had surpassed the 1 million subscriber mark. He began to post more and more and only a year after that was at 10 million. It was safe to say that he was on the right track.
Pewdiepie began to create merch such as shirts, chairs, headsets, and eventually his own game on the app store. He was rapidly gaining fans and in the spring of 2019, the creator finally reached an astonishing 100 million followers, which meant that 1 in 15 people who used youtube was subscribed to his account. This may not seem like much, however, almost half of the country uses this platform. He is still creating to this day and after selling many products and featuring in other videos and ads, he has accumulated roughly a cool $45,000,000 from online interactions alone. Felix will forever be remembered in the industry of videomaking and for revolutionizing the world by his assistance in bridging the gap between the real and digital worlds of entrepreneurship.
Since beginning his NFL career, Juju Smith-Schuster has been a fan favorite with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Not only is he an excellent player, but he has one of the best personalities in football. His enthusiasm radiates throughout the whole team and helps to lift everyone up during good and bad games. This outgoing personality translates directly to what Juju does outside the game of football as well. Although he is very good at football, he isn’t wide receivers in football (yet at least). Nevertheless, he is still one of the best marketed players in the NFL even though he is not the best player in the league. Through his own self marketing efforts, Juju has been able to become one of the most well-known athletes and exemplifies how to branch out to be more than an athlete.
Since making it to the NFL, Juju has made it known that he stays true to himself. He has not changed who he is because of his rise to fame and this has benefitted him. He loves having fun and is not afraid to go against the norms. When he first got to the NFL, Juju started making YouTube videos and streaming video games because he enjoyed doing it. He began to amass a very large social media following and now has over 1 million subscribers on YouTube alone. He was one of the first athletes to begin doing this and now this is the norm for athletes. He got criticized that this was taking away from his NFL career, but it has not proven to be true yet as he is still performing well. Not only this, but Juju even played Fortnite with the Ninja, Drake and Travis Scott. This got everyone talking whether it be the video game community or sports world. This blew up Juju’s popularity and as said before, started the trend for athletes to stream and play video games. Besides video games, Juju has also released clothing designed by himself for fans and followers. In addition to this, Juju has (or has done) endorsements with Oakley, Adidas, Pizza Hut, New Era, Call of Duty, and Art of Sport just to name a few. This is very impressive for someone so young like Juju, but is due to his own marketing efforts and following on social media. Juju has not shied away from being himself since coming into the NFL and has changed how players can gain popularity not only in the NFL, but in sports as a whole. He did not follow what everyone else was doing and went down the path less traveled by others in sports and is benefitting because of it.
How Star Wide Receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster Became His Own Brand
Danny Duncan is a famous YouTube star whose videos generate up to 3 million views. He performs stunts and comedy routines that interest your average day YouTube consumer. Due to his status as a internet celebrity, he has been able to generate a great amount of revenue from his websites and retail stores.
Duncan first worked at a Walgreens right out of high school before quitting to focus on making videos about skateboards and injuries. He was then hired to teach actor Jason Lee who sensed a great ability in Duncan to act and entertain. He told Duncan to focus on his YouTube channel as it would help with getting acting gigs and from there he took off. His most famous video is “Falling with 30,000 pennies” had close to 6 million views
Cites:
https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/danny-duncan-41751.php
If you haven’t heard of E-sports or have little knowledge on the subject let me fill you in quickly. Electronic sports (E-sports) has been taking the nation by storm amassing a huge following and proving that if your good enough at video games it can viably become your job. Originally the e-sports field was only for the most elite gamers who spent all of their time training in games and living off tournament winnings. Recently that has been changing at a rapid rate. The following of E-sports has been growing which in turn is leading to more and more people who want a piece of the action.
Delane Parnell was born in Detroit, Michigan and was pretty much born to be an entrepreneur. At age 13 he started working at the cell phone store of a family friend. At age 16 he and two associates left the business to start there own tech startup company focused on phones. After that he went on to start a car rental company as well. Being your average boy as well as spending a lot of time working with tech, Delane had an interest and joy in playing video games. This was where his claim to fame came in. In 2017 he started his company PlayVS with the goal of bringing E-Sports to high school students.
The problem Delane was solving was that kids around the nation, and globe wanted to be part of the E-sports scene but unless you had your entire life to dedicate to practice you would never be good enough. So he created a way for high school students, who have studies and lives outside of the world of gaming, to become part of the world of E-sports. PlayVS allows high schools to start an E-sports team that students can be a part of that allows them to play, as well as compete against other high schools. Due to E-sports being entirely online there is no travel required for the leagues and there is little cost as well. You simply have to get everyone online and let the competition begin. Delane figured out all the tools that were needed to make competitive high school gaming happen were there, he just had to put the pieces together. More then 13,000 schools have made teams through PlayVS and compete during the school year. He has become a leader in the E-sports field and opened the door for many people and students to participate in the online world of competition.
PewDiePie
PewDiePie is known as the most popular youtuber. He has the most YouTube subscribers in the history of the platform. He mostly post videos of him playing video games and providing commentary to other videos that are popular on the internet. He uses this platform and publicity to sell merchandise and to get funding from advertisers. He has subscriber base of 101 million people and that makes him around 12 million USD a year. So basically he got bank.
The college version of the board game Risk. The game GoCrossCampus also known as GXC is an online game that was developed by a group of current and former Yale students. H
ow it works is a group of students from various schools battle for territory on a map of a college campus, anything from a grassy area or a dining hall or dormitory building. They are trying to create a team based social gaming. As a start-up they raised $1 million in venture capital.
There ideas came from a desire to fuel team and school spirit against other colleges and universities. As well as against affinity groups, ultimately taking sports and college rivalries beyond the playing field or classroom test scores and onto every students laptop.
From the reviews to the left you can see that the appeal to this has grown beyond the appeal of college campuses. Professional businesses has found this as an interesting way to create some fun in the work place and some friendly competition. They currently have three functioning games that are available on their website and allow collaboration across laptop users.
Robert Nay, a seemingly typical 14 year old, took the mobile game industry by storm back in 2010. He developed the app “Bubble Ball”, which is a physics-based game that involves a series of puzzles to solve and levels to beat. Robert only spent a month coding and researching before the game was introduced to the Apple app store. Within the first two weeks of its release, Bubble Ball was downloaded 2 million times. At the beginning of 2011, the app reached 16 million downloads thanks to the company Ansca
Mobile, who chose it as its app of the week. At one point, Bubble Ball took the first-place spot from Angry Birds under the category of top free games in the Apple app store.
It is truly amazing how a someone so young executed on an idea he had that resulted in major success. Robert was not held back by the obstacles, but instead learned what he had to in order to bring his vision to fruition. This story sets a good example for anyone who thinks they want to pursue an idea they have but aren’t sure where to start. What truly determines if something will succeed comes down to taking action and taking on every challenge that’s ahead.