Japanese Gamer Earns $10K Playing MMORPG ArcheAge

Japanese gamer Moru-chan was paid $10,000 for three months of work livestreaming the MMORPG ArcheAge. It's a dream so grand that most would probably find it laughable: making money to play games. Not making money to write about games, make games or test them, just to play them. To sit back and rake in cash doing something you already love.

One Japanese gamer has done the impossible and attained it. Moru-chan (his user name) was a longtime and loyal fan of ArcheAge, XL Games and Trion's fantasy MMORPG. His dedication to the game led the ArcheAge team to offer him a job livestreaming the game, a service for which he was paid one million yen or roughly $10,000.

For three months Moru-chan woke up each day at noon and would then play the game until 6am, stopping a few times throughout the day to do things like eat, bathe, do laundry and update his personal blog. His daily work period would last about twelve hours.

During the course of his paid gaming, he made a point to engage other players through his blog and via the video sharing service Niconico. On several occasions he organized in-game activities for his fellow players. One recent event based in his efforts, saw seven hundred players cooperating in a (failed) attempt to take down a powerful sea beast widely regarded as the most powerful monster in ArcheAge.

All in all, you could say that Moru-chan, for the duration of his paid streaming, at least, lived the dream. A dream we'll that we'll mention, just for the sake of dissuading "nerd shut-in" stereotypes, was backed by his wife who supports his work.