GAMING is a multi-million dollar industry and titles like Halo, Starcraft and Call of Duty have long had die-hard fans.

But what's it really like to make a living playing video games?

We ask the experts.

Compete at international tournaments

Andrew Pender is living the dream.

The 25-year-old is a professional gamer. He made $30,000 on the pro-circuit last year and his gaming career has already taken him to Germany, Korea and the US.

Pender has been gaming for almost 10 years and recommends that aspiring gamers build a reputation by competing in international tournaments.

“Do well in a tournament and everyone will know your name”, he says. “They’ll all respect you.”

The veteran gamer cut his teeth on Warcraft 3 and successfully made the leap to Starcraft II, working as a games tester to support himself as he clawed his way up the ranks.

He scoffs at claims of six-figure salaries, and says that only the best gamers in the world would be able to earn that much.

“I make enough money to survive, but it’s pretty much a passion thing,” he says. “I’m trying to live the dream.”

Ninety percent of his income comes from prize money and he relies on corporate sponsorships to fund his overseas trips.

While he loves his job, he is pragmatic about his prospects.

“I should probably start getting serious about my life and doing a career of some sort”, he says. “I don’t think playing games is the best way to secure a future”.

Coach or commentate for cash

Jared Krensel is hoping to follow in Andrew’s footsteps.

He quit his Media and Communications degree at Sydney University to become a professional gamer and now trains eight hours a day.

While his parents were initially unimpressed, they came around after he started supporting himself financially, and now tune in to watch his games.

“It’s kind of cute, they’re pretty supportive,” he says. “Luckily, I moved out of home.”

Krensel supports himself by teaching Starcraft II.

He charges $35 an hour to teach aspiring gamers how to improve their game and supplements that income by working as a commentator and streaming his own games.

The pro-gamer used to coach full-time but dropped down to part-time hours so that he could work on his own game. And lest you think it’s all fun and games, tournament season can see him training up to 13 hours a day.

“If you’re training to be a great golfer, a great soccer player, a great tennis player, it’s gonna take years and years,” he says. “It’s the same with Starcraft II”.

At 23, Krensel recognises that he has a sporting shelf life, but is hoping to eventually make the transition into writing, coaching or commentating on e-sports.

“It's not just something where I'm saying I don't want to work hard at life so I'm going to go and hide in a video game,” he says. “It's making a career out of something I love.”

Market yourself and go overseas

Mark Serrels is an avid gamer who’s successfully made the transition into writing about the industry.

He used to be a competitive Halo player and now edits the gaming website Kotaku.com.au.

“I never thought about quitting my job because it just wasn’t financially viable for me,” he says. “I played a lot of Halo, but I’m just not good enough.”

He is awe of the professional gamers on the circuit today.

“The people who play nowadays, they’re young, their brains are different,” he says. “It’s like being an F1 driver. It takes an extreme amount of skill to compete at that level.”

While there are certainly pro-gamers who have dropped out of high school and gone on to earn six-figure salaries, Serrels says that aspiring gamers need to be sure that they can hack it before dropping out to go pro. Games change or get phased out, and players that can’t adapt might not necessarily be able to find work in the industry.

“It’s not really something that you could do as a full-time job just yet,” he says. “You’d have to be a player or nothing.”

He advises aspiring gamers to market themselves and go overseas if they want to hit the big time.

Do it for the love of the game

It’s a strategy that Bradley Seymour has adopted as well.

The 21-year-old quit his physical education degree to become a full-time gamer, and recently went to Korea to train in a dojo.

He speaks fondly of the all-day training sessions and says that the opportunity to live and breathe Starcraft was “unbelievable”.

"Korea is just where you end up if you want to be the best,” he says. “The Australian scene just isn’t big enough.”

He’s since competed in Korea and America, and is hoping to go overseas to compete again later on this year.

Seymour reckons it’s the love of the game that separates the amateurs from the pros.

"You have to love it. You can't just want to play video games. It's not as glamorous as it sounds.”

“Some days you get up and you just don't want to do it,” he says. “But you still have to get up, sit down and practise and try and improve.”

So is there a future for gamers hoping to turn their passion into a career?

Serrels reckons they probably shouldn’t quit their day job just yet.

"It's a very niche market,” he says. “There's not a lot of these jobs out there. It's a very difficult thing to break into.”

“You'll find that a lot of professional gamers are actually college students and they do these things in tandem with a college degree. They have to be prepared, it's not a sure thing by any stretch of the imagination."

This story was written with the help of the Gamer Institute, an organisation that trains aspiring gamers to become e-sports athletes.