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With his two older brothers, Blevins started playing video games from an early age.
"My dad was actually the main influence," Blevins explained in the Twitch feed, "Walshy's Halo History." "He loved video games when they started out and he bought them" for us ", but we were really going to sleep as soon as you can imagine when we were little, 18h, 19h, 20h … .. He would play on the consoles until 2 or 3 in the morning. "
The family owned the first game consoles, such as Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo, and bought Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation games in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In November 2001, Halo, a war game futuristic multi-player, was launched on Xbox.
At 9 or 10 years old, Tyler asked to play Halo with his older brothers, John and Chris Blevins, remembers John. They thought he was too young to play, but "he just destroyed us," says John.
"He would stay awake in the early morning and continue to work," says Chris. "I think it was at that moment that we said to ourselves," Okay, maybe we will not play anymore with Tyler. "
As Blevins realized his skills and potential to compete and win prizes, he became a serious player.
"I started to realize:" Oh my god, you can really attend these events, I can create a team and I can compete with them, "he says. "It's at this point that things have become real."
He first played in competition in 2009 by participating in a Halo 3 event in Orlando with a small success. But Blevins gained notoriety by playing a later version of the game, "Halo: Reach", in 2011 at competitions in Dallas; Columbus, Ohio; and Anaheim, California.
"You have to be better than hundreds of people, thousands of people – you have to be the best player to even make money in tournaments," Blevins said. And he was there. The same year, Blevins earned about $ 100 a day streaming on Twitch.
In 2012, his team won the 2012 MGL Halo 4 Fall Championships, with Blevins getting the highest score of the last game. He has since competed with leading electronic sports teams such as Team Liquid and Renegades.
For the Blevin family, the growing success was a surprise.
"You know that you talk to him about the time he spends and he starts earning a little money here and there, and it's nothing," says Tyler's father, Chuck Blevins. Then the next thing you know, he says to me: "I'm getting feeds. I receive subscriptions. I am looking for sponsors. "And I say to myself," Where does it come from? "
In 2017, he focused on streaming "Fortnite" on Twitch.
By 2018, Twitch users have logged more than 430 billion minutes of feeds on the site, or 15 million active users a day and more than 3 million unique broadcasters each month. The company was acquired by Amazon in 2014 for $ 970 million.
But Blevins does not consider professional play as a viable career path for everyone. For ambitious young people, he suggests diversifying your interests and skills.
"All kids, you can not just give up and focus on playing video games," he told CNBC. "It's also becoming a very competitive career choice right now, and you want to make sure that you secure your future."
