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Parents Are Now Hiring Fortnite Tutors For Kids

By Meruelo Media Aug 2, 2018 | 9:21 AM

Christian Petersen / Getty Images

Math tutors, piano lessons and private baseball coaching are a thing of the past. Out with the old and in with the new—Fornite coaches are the future, and the future is here.

The Wall Street Journal reported on several parents that they spoke to, who have hired the private tutors for their children. One mother in England says “There’s pressure not to just play it but to be really good at it, you can imagine what that was like for him at school.” The parents say they’re hoping the kids wills turn their hobby into an e-sports career or a college scholarship.

This new trend does come as a surprise to a lot of people, including the coaches. Apparently until recently, the only people investing in video game coaching were adults or young people aspiring to go pro. The coaches for the popular game are typically being found through social media or contracting sites. There are even coaching marketplaces like Gamer Sensei that charges between $15 and $35 an hour for lessons.

Fortnite, which is played on the streaming platform Twitch, is available for iPhone, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. The game is compared to a “Hunger Games” like battle where 100 players battle against each other, either on their own or in small teams. The player or team that survives until the end is the winner of the match.

Fortnite is celebrating its one-year anniversary and is now the most-watched video game in YouTube history. Although it was unsuccessful when it started off last July, things changed in September when it added a free-to-play “battle royale” mode. It then captured the Minecraft generation with the free play feature and then overtook Minecraft back in March and has continued setting records since. According to SullyGnome.com, a website that tracks Twitch traffic, in a span of a seven day period, more than 1 million people tuned into Twitch and watched for nearly 200 million.

Despite the addictive nature of the game, that has turned young kids into couch potatoes, and ruined the work ethic of professional athletes, a lot of parents are determined to have something come out of their childs addictions by giving in and hiring the tutors. Social media of course has something to say, and many Twitter users are going as far as to call it’s a sign of end times.

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