Inside the life of a professional gamer

“Spoodah” celebrating a victory. Logan Pitman/Courtesy

Sure, Logan Pitman could choose to flip burgers for a local food chain on a minimum wage salary, but instead, he sits in a chair for four plus hours a night playing “Guitar Hero,”  “Rocket League” or even “Professional Golf’s Association” in front of hundreds of viewers.  

In April, streamer Logan Pitman made the decision to take advantage of COVID-19 and the stay-at-home orders, quitting his job at Five Guys where he worked for over two years. He then hopped back on the major streaming outlet, Twitch, where his viewership numbers have taken a huge spike which allowed him to make more money than his previous job. 

Before the pandemic, Pitman worked full time and streamed part time, averaging  about 200-300 viewers per stream. Now his viewership has almost tripled as he is now averaging 500-600 viewers, mostly playing “Rocket League” which is a vehicular soccer game. 

“Right when COVID-19 started, obviously my numbers were going to spike because of people being home more, so my average viewers and revenue practically doubled which allowed me to not only pay bills but save money as well,” Pitman says. 

At the age of 21, Pitman has just inked a contract with an Esports team named “Ghost Gaming.” Pitman is heavily into sports so “Rocket League” changed his attitude toward gaming because he realized that it would be easy to make the top 100 in the world. This motivated him to continue playing and competing in tournaments— recording over 5,200 total hours on the game in five years.  

After tearing his rotator cuff in baseball when he was younger, Pitman had to find activities to do while in recovery. After not being able to throw a baseball for six months and engaging in intensive physical therapy, he resorted to “Rocket League.” 

Pitman has been to one major gaming competition and competed with several other professional teams. Although he didn’t play much at this competition, he was labeled a “professional,” and being at the competition helped him grow and become recognized within the “Rocket League” community, which shot up his Twitter followers from 2,000 to 24,000. 

“People recognized me from that,” Pitman says. “They would come up and ask for autographs and stuff. It’s kind of weird because obviously when I’m going to the store or something, nobody knows who I am but when I went to the gaming convention, everybody knew who I was.”

During his gaming career, Pitman has been sponsored by “Surfeasy VPN,” a virtual private network provider that works to keep users’ information private and secure, and a meal replacement brand called “Soylent.” 

Pitman lives with a couple of roommates and making the shift to full time streaming allows Pitman to unleash his competitive spirit, make money and entertain viewers around the world. 

“It’s awesome and crazy to see people from all over the world tune in to my stream,” Pitman says. 

On Twitch and social media, Pitman is found under the name “Spoodah.” The name comes from when he was a kid and had a Pitbull named “Sparta,” but he wasn’t able to pronounce it so he ended up calling the dog “Spoodah.”

With online gaming rapidly growing and becoming more innovative, Pitman believes gaming will pick up heavily and become more broadly covered by the mainstream media.  

The Gamecube, the cult classic Nintendo console released in 2001, has been an ongoing addiction in his life. Pitman is surrounded by Mario games and even Super Monkey Ball 2, where clips can be found of him speed running it on YouTube under “Spoodah smb2.”  

There are hundreds of streamers that play “Rocket League” on Twitch, and though Pitman is focused on playing the game, he prioritizes taking time to chat, so that he can feel connected to the people. 

“It’s a place where I want people to come and forget about shit that is happening in real life,” Pitman says. “I want to make it a more down to earth, personal stream where I can relate to people.” 

Pitman usually starts his streams around 10:00 p.m. every night and ends around 5:00 a.m. He plays a mix of Lo-fi and other ambient music in the background, which helps set the tone of the game and chat. 

While managing school and streaming full time, he is currently enrolled in four units at Saddleback College. Pitman says he just put in his transfer to California State University at Fullerton where he is working towards his bachelor’s degree in business administration.

Pitman’s main goal is to get his degree, but if the streams continue to do well, he will continue to invest more time into them and see what happens.

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