Tyler "Ninja" Blevins: A Perspective from someone who has watched him for over 7 years

Hi everyone,

If you clicked on this article, odds are you already are familiar with Ninja after his recent livestream with several mainstream personalities.

I am one of the few people that can honestly say I have watched this guy for years (yes, I know you are very skeptical). Whether or not you believe me, it is worth understanding who Ninja is and how he came to be this successful.

Ninja's mainstream relevance was first found after the Halo 3/Halo Reach combines in which he emerged as a breakout Halo player amongst many other players. To say Ninja was a great Halo player would be an understatement; he was that guy who would grind Halo on stream for 12+ hours a day and still be able to maintain an education and personal relationships. He didn't care if he was just playing with subscribers or playing GameBattles 1v1 matches, he grinded just to grind. He didn't play because streaming was profitable; he played because he loved the game. When Ninja would get 300+ viewers in 2010, that was a BIG deal (especially since he was primarily only playing Halo Reach). For some context, he has nearly 200,000 subs on Twitch now and is one of the top PC Battle Royale players in the world.

As a Halo Pro, Ninja found a mix of success. He was a consistent top 8 finisher in Halo Reach and went on to have strides of dominance in Halo 4 4v4 competitions winning several of them. Even when Halo was going through a rough patch (competitive Halo 4 is by far the worst competitive Halo title in the 6 game franchise's history), he was still streaming everyday and playing for the love of the game. He became wildly more popular each and every year while being a strong advocate for keeping competitive Halo alive. It was to no one's surprise when he was there at the first Halo 2 Anniversary tournament which served to be the spark Halo needed for it to gain relevance as an E-Sport (Competitive Gaming Title, whatever you want to call it).

As Halo came back to light, Ninja could often be found playing multiple titles and expanding his horizons to PC gaming. Having success in PUBG helped serve the table for Ninja to be respected as a well-rounded competitive gamer. Of course along with that is his colorful personality and consistent optimism. Ninja has always been very goofy, as shown in this Moo-Moo hat video in which he 1v1s against one of the two Suddoth twins (hopefully by now, you see how much of a nerd I am about this and actually believe me haha).

More recently, Ninja has taken a step back from Halo competitive deciding instead to focus on PC gaming. I respect the move after seeing him place consistently well at events but not really seeing him be part of a real Halo dynasty. He probably could have been but we will never know sadly. I have included both his first and last Halo montages below as a tribute to him.

You can see as a personality he definitely appeals to a wide audience (from children to adults). I feel weird having spent many hours of my free time watching a guy play Halo only to have him be one of (if not) the most successful streamers of all time. If you want to see more of Ninja, I have included links to both his Twitch and Youtube accounts. I hope you enjoyed this historical perspective on a guy will probably become (if he is not already) a mainstream personality.