Every kid who has ever touched a Nintendo 64, PlayStation or any other gaming console has thought to themselves, “I wish I could play video games for a living.”

That’s exactly what Jeffrey Shih, 26, does.

Every morning from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. PT, tens of thousands of viewers tune into Shih’s educational video-game stream on Twitch, a popular live-streaming video platform. Here, fans know him as “Trump,” one of the best players to stream Hearthstone, Blizzard Entertainment’s virtual card game based on the lore of their popular titles Warcraft and World of Warcraft. It is similar to traditional card games such as Magic: The Gathering.

Streamers like Shih make a living off of broadcasting through Twitch’s partnership program, which allows them to earn revenue by running ads, as well as a subscription program that enables a viewer to subscribe to their channel for $4.99 a month. What's more, some streamers accept donations via PayPal if fans are feeling particularly generous.

All of this adds up to quite a large amount of money. In an interview with GQ Magazine, Michael O'Dell, team manager of a professional League of Legends team called Team Dignitas, noted that one player made $8,000 from streaming in one month.

Shih started streaming in 2011 after graduating from New York University with a Bachelor’s degree in management and finance. In his first month of streaming, an average of 2,000 to 3,000 people would tune in to watch him stream StarCraft II — a respectable number of viewers, but nothing like the 15,000 who now watch him every day.

Shih wasn't immediately successful with streaming, though. Even in his first year, which many streamers would consider a great start, he continued to work another job. But Shih put in the time and dedication to grow his audience and numbers, and eventually decided to make the tough decision to quit his job, and commit to streaming full-time. Since then, he hasn't felt the need to work another job.

“When I started, [my earnings] would definitely qualify as less than minimum wage,” Shih said. “Now, I’m making a comfortable amount to live on.”

Shih estimated that an average of 5,000 viewers could provide a “respectable income” through ad revenue. However, he added that streamers who have around 2,000 viewers, combined with a particularly loyal fanbase, can get plenty of donations, and sustain a comfortable lifestyle through the generosity of others who find certain streamers entertaining.

Numbers aside, the simple act of viewers tuning in to their favorite streamers has given thousands of people the opportunity to stream full-time — a fact that Twitch acknowledged.

“From a Twitch perspective, and knowing the numbers intimately, I can say with a resounding yes that people are making a living just being streamers on Twitch,” Marcus "djWheat" Graham, Twitch's senior manager for new partnerships and pro-gaming expert, told Mashable.

But like any job in entertainment, those who are lucky enough to call themselves professional streamers are a different breed of people. Graham said streaming is not for everyone, and does not provide universal success.

“It’s realistic to think that if I want to be an NBA All-Star, that I could be and it’s going to take a lot of work and a lot of practice and some luck along the way,” Graham said. “But I also need to have a realistic expectation that I’m not going to be an NBA All-Star. And I kind of always say that streaming is very similar. It requires a realistic expectation that streaming is very fun and can be very lucrative if you are successful with it, but not everyone is going to be the next big Twitch superstar."

Even after a streamer has “made it," job security and maintaining an audience come into play. For Shih, the decision to become a streamer is not unlike the decisions people make when considering more traditional career paths. “It’s one of those things that you sort of know that it’s what you want to do," he said. Shih added that he believes it requires an immense amount of dedication to stream full-time, especially when the broadcast ends — a sentiment Graham shares.

“Stability is really just the responsibility of the content creator,” Graham said. “A lot of the ‘job’ of being a streamer is not just streaming, but also everything else around it — building themselves up as a personality. It’s stable if you have good regular content, if you’re smart about the decisions that you are making and you’re interacting and engaging with your community."

Twitch’s Perfect Storm

Without the platform and ability to stream, Shih and 5,100 other streamers partnered with Twitch wouldn't be able to play video games full-time.

Twitch officially launched in June 2011 after Justin.tv cofounder and Twitch CEO Emmett Shear noticed that more and more people started streaming video-game content on Justin.tv. As an avid StarCraft fan, Shear decided to launch Twitch, a separate streaming branch dedicated to giving gamers the tools they need to broadcast their gameplay.

Twitch now boasts 45 million unique visitors a month, with its peak Internet traffic beating sites such as Hulu, Facebook and Amazon, according to The Wall Street Journal.

In the grand scheme of things, Twitch launched at the perfect time, when the professional gaming (or eSports) scene desperately needed an easier, more efficient broadcasting service. Graham confirmed Twitch’s early significance and eventual importance in the scene.

“When things started up with Twitch, it was a big blessing in disguise,” he told Mashable. “I was a broadcaster with no means to monetize his content. We were spending thousands of dollars delivering video ourselves, and it was impossible. Suddenly, Twitch empowered me and other broadcasters to earn revenue off of our content.”

As Twitch hosted big-name professional eSports tournaments for popular titles such as StarCraft II, Dota 2 and League of Legends, the coverage brought more people to the site. These fans of eSports came to watch various tournaments, but would venture to other broadcasts, and become fans of the entertaining personalities featured on Twitch.

Audiences grew, and streamers became popular. Now, as streams such as Twitch Plays Pokémon bring more mainstream attention to Twitch, the concept of streaming video games and general gaming culture is flourishing — and along with it, full-time streamers.

“Whether you want to call it a perfect storm, I don’t know, but as Twitch grows, it means more eyeballs come to the site, which means more cross-pollination begins to occur, and then people come up with these creative ideas, which brings even more people," Graham said. “Isn’t it just sort of like a chain reaction over the last two to three years?”

Trump, the Entertainer

Although gaming has become his full-time job, Shih is able to disassociate work from play.

From his early days battling snake bites and dysentery in Oregon Trail to playing the popular real-time strategy game StarCraft, playing video games and broadcasting it to the world made sense for Shih because it's something he enjoys.

"[Streaming] means a full-time job," he said. "However, it also is something that I’m happy to say I would do even if it wasn’t a full-time job. I consider it something that I enjoy, and happen to be making a living off of it."

In fact, streaming has expanded Shih's definition of what being an "entertainer" means. Shih is a pianist, and has always enjoyed playing for crowds; similarly, he enjoys streaming to tens of thousands of people daily, despite self-identifying as introverted and shy.

"People always ask ‘How does that work? You got thousands of people watching you,’" Shih said. "It turns out that when I’m in a group or party, I’ll tend to say almost nothing. But it’s different [when I’m streaming] because you’re not really conversing with any person. It’s sort of like you’re out there giving a speech.”

Shih continues to stick to his daily streaming schedule, and said he hopes to do so for "six more decades." He enjoys putting in the time to better build his audience through more interactive experiences, not only for the lucrative opportunities it brings, but also for the love of playing video games, the thrill of entertaining and the personal satisfaction that comes from the world of Twitch streaming and giving that "speech."

“I’m proud to have had 25,000 people concurrently watching,” Shih said. “It makes me feel validated in what I do because people are interested in watching, and they are entertained by it. It’s a good feeling.”

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5 Crowd-Controlled Online Games

1. 1. Twitch Plays Pokemon

   The lore and subculture of this game is infinitely more fun than playing the game itself. After a crowd of hundreds of thousands defeated Pokemon Red, Twitch set its sights on Pokemon Crystal.

   Image: Twitch

2. 2. FlapMMO

   If you thought Flappy Bird was frustrating when you played it on your smartphone, try playing it while 100 other user-controlled birds swarm around you, with names like "Poop On You" and "AAAAIIIIIIEEEE."

   Image: FlapMMO

3. 3. Pixelator

   Imagine trying to create "The Mona Lisa" while trapped in a small room filled with toddlers running around with permanent markers. That's the basic concept behind Pixelator, the online game that tasks crowds with drawing on the same canvas at the same time.

   Image: Pixelator

4. 4. Twitch Plays Street Fighter

   Pokemon isn't the only game Twitch plays together. Users also fight each other through the classic Sega game Street Fighter Alpha 3. Gameplay is similar to its Pokemon installment -- users control characters through the site's chat function.

   Image: Twitch

5. 5. Twitch Plays Zelda

   Twitch also tackled The Legend of Zelda in the wake of the Pokemon craze. After the mob defeated the game three times and interest began to wane, however, the channel moderator removed the game and replaced it with Pokemon Yellow.

   Image: Twitch