Jerry Banfield gaming is finally finished. It's been dying for a long time. It should have been quit and finished maybe a year ago, but now I've finally gone all the way with it. I've done gaming off and on for the last seven years, and this is the third significant time I've quit, with some other minor attempts mixed in there too. I want to tell you the story of this to help you understand why, especially if you really love the gaming videos, because instead I'm going to be doing music.
Seventy-seven songs and counting
I've already made 77 music songs. If you search Jerry Banfield on Amazon Music, iTunes, or Spotify, you'll find them. I'm quitting gaming because I need that time. I need that time to play, and the time I've been spending playing games I want to spend making music instead. I'm really tired of all the gaming. It feels like a waste of time. It feels pointless while I'm actually doing it.
The last gaming stream I did on Facebook went out to 20,000 people, which is cool, but my text posts go out to 20,000 people too. On Facebook I hit kind of a bottom. I went live and did a Warzone stream and it didn't work. What I see when I look back at the last three years is all these gaming streams and videos, but which of them is worth watching today? Who actually watches that stuff? I think back and realize that if I had been making music for those three years, I'd probably have 10 or 20 albums out, as fast as I crank out music. I'd have music that could be listened to and enjoyed for an indefinite amount of time.
All my creativity, all my desires are coming up to make music. I have songs in my head all the time. I get really excited thinking about making music. But I've been telling myself the story that it's too hard, and that I don't have enough time. Well, the reason I don't have enough time is because in 2023 I've spent hundreds of hours playing video games. If I'd spent that time making music, I'd have easily cranked out an album or maybe several albums, and all this music that's inside me would be able to come out.
Twitch, TikTok, and short videos
I love making music on Twitch. It's such a great place to make music, and there's a great crowd hanging out there right now. Making music on TikTok seems like a great opportunity as well. The short videos you can put out on all platforms make it easier than ever to actually get your music discovered.
Someone pointed out that I spent a lot of time building a great community just to quit, but the truth is most of the gaming community has been gone for a while already. The ones who are still here watch all different kinds of content I create now. Some of them found me through gaming, but they don't just watch me game anymore. There's hardly any community left of people who only watch me game, and I don't have fun doing the gaming most of the time. If you watch back most of my Warzone streams, I was annoyed. I was aggravated. I was stressed out. Yes, I said I was challenging myself, but what if I had challenged myself instead to make some music?
The hardest I've laughed possibly all year was when I came up with lines for some trap music I want to make. It goes like this: "Yoga getting off on Tuesday, got your girl in the front seats, you say?" I locked up and bent over laughing coming up with those lines. Music is so much fun, and it's so challenging, and I want to get back into it.
Why I quit music before, and why I'm done with gaming
I quit doing music before to go back to gaming because I wasn't making money with my music. What's funny is that I was just starting to get some skill making music when I quit. I was just starting to build the foundations of a nice community on Twitch for my music streaming when I quit. Then I went back to gaming, and in gaming I have accomplished everything. I've played with some of the best Warzone players in the world. I got paid to play with some of the best players in the world. I randomly ran into Dave Samir and played him on a live stream, finishing up in the final circle. I've had thousands of people watching my gaming videos at once, and a hundred thousand watching me do video games in 2021. I've hit my high in gaming. There's nowhere else to go. There's nothing else to do. I've finished. I have no other desires there. I've done everything.
When I look at gaming, I've played retro games, and those streams went off and went viral. I've won hundreds of Warzone solo games, some of the most-watched competitive games in 2020 and 2021. What else is left? To me, there's nothing left in gaming. The only reason I've kept gaming is momentum. I've been trying to quit. I swear this is the third video in 2023 saying I quit gaming, and I think I tried to quit in 2022 at some point too. But now I've finally taken the steps to get rid of everything. I've cleared out the games I had back here. The Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5 are on sale on eBay. Search Jerry Banfield and you'll find those. I'm getting everything set up for music. I deleted all the games off my gaming PC, which is now a music production PC.
Filled with excitement and song ideas
I'm filled with excitement. I'm filled with song ideas. I'm ripping through video courses learning how to make music. I'm listening to new songs. I love learning something new and then teaching it, and music to me is one of the most challenging things I've ever tried to learn, because I didn't grow up with any kind of music production. I didn't take any music classes or anything. This is an area where, unlike everything else I've done in my life, it's like a totally blank canvas.
I want to educate and teach people, help raise people's vibration, and remind people who they are. I realized there are so many talking videos like this all over every platform you look at. What there's not very much of is teaching people through music. Most of the music I hear people listening to is teaching them crap. It's teaching them to be victims, to be powerless, to blame, to be sick, and to be stupid. So much of the music people are listening to is very catchy and hypnotic, and it programs people to be all the things they don't want to be. In my experience, the best place I can deliver my teaching is in short music. I want to make music with my teachings in it instead of showing up and doing videos like this where I'm just talking, and instead of playing a video game.
I just feel like such a tool when I'm playing a video game, like I'm wasting my time. I played a bunch of God's Unchained this year and the recurring thought kept coming to me: there's got to be something better for me to do. Right now it looks like I shouldn't let go of gaming, but it also looked like I shouldn't let go of drinking until I absolutely couldn't figure out how to live without it anymore, and it was wrecking my whole life. With music, I can see that out of everything I can create, my music is what the collective, the seven billion people on this planet, wants from me the most.
Why I believe music is my calling
In many ways you might think it's completely irrational. How have you made 77 songs that have had maybe 5,000 listens total and still think that's your calling? Well, I've got some unique skills for music. Most people making music don't know how to do marketing, and I'm an expert at digital marketing. I know I can get people to listen to my music, and that's a weakness most musicians have. I also like doing everything myself, and music is something I can do completely myself. I can make my own music, make my own videos, and all these short video platforms make it so that my music can get out to the whole world in one single short video format. It's like there's some convergence, everything has fallen into place, and I see that all I need to do is make music.
For the foreseeable future I will definitely keep making crypto videos as well, because I calculate my earnings at about fifty dollars an hour to do five or ten hours of crypto live streams and cut those live streams into reviews while I'm live and put them up. I see that the crypto streams will help cover the bills so I can do music the rest of the time, and I'm always going to want to invest my earnings, so I intend to stick with crypto but do the minimum on it. All I really need to do in crypto is review all the coins. In five or ten hours a week I can review twelve altcoins easily and connect with the crypto community. But the one thing that's got to give in my life is the gaming.
It's been hard. My TikToks have actually been picking up some followers lately, and I've been scared of doing the music. I've been scared, because people say my game streaming is what made my career. Well, if you think that, you don't know my career back far enough. The first place I got famous online was teaching online courses on Udemy. That's where I first blew up, teaching online advertising, digital marketing, and hacking classes. Yes, the gaming did go even higher than that, but just wait until you see what this music does.
I have a knowing inside me that if you really want to reach everybody who's interested in your content, you'll do it through music. I'm closing in on a hundred million views, and the largest topics have been things I've taught, like online classes on Facebook marketing that I put up for free on YouTube, and my gaming videos, which have gotten tens of millions of views. But if I ever do anything that gets hundreds of millions of views, it'll be music. What's amazing is that I trust this inner guidance and intuition. I feel this massive excitement. Music is a place where I can really pour out my moods and my emotions, and I've been gifted with one lesson after another.
There was a video I watched of a guy who really wants to make music and never does it, and I found myself uncomfortably relating to him a lot. I want to make music, and I just feel like video games have become a waste of time for me. At what point do you stop? Video games have been like a pacifier in my life, and yes, it was fun, and there is some value to it, but at what point has that value disappeared? When I look back, I believe the universe was trying to guide me. When my Facebook page was demonetized, that was guidance to go do something else, and perhaps even guidance from my highest self. As long as I was going to make ten grand a month on Facebook gaming, I was probably just going to keep doing that, the same way that as long as I was going to make a thousand a day teaching, I was going to keep doing that. But it seems like everything has kept driving me toward music, and I am really excited for it.
Everything Keeps Driving Me Toward Music
I bought the new Ableton Push 3. I pre-ordered it. I used to have the Push 2, and I have Ableton 11 installed on my computer. I have so many song ideas that I have never heard or seen anything like some of the stuff that is in my mind. I know that as an artist, as a musician, I can create things that other people will hate, that they will rip on and make fun of, and that will promote my music to epic levels, and that some people will really love. I am ready to stick with the music this time, because last time, on some level, I wanted to be broke and not go for it.
I was in a perfect position when I quit my music last time to really take off. I had just laid a foundation, TikTok was just getting started, and I literally, right when I quit my music before, was in a perfect spot to start cranking out short videos on early TikTok. Everything was given to me, and I got scared. I got scared of not having enough money, and I wanted to go back to the comfort of what I knew in gaming. I still had a vision, a dream, of becoming a full-time professional gamer. But I have done that. I have been a full-time professional gamer, and I remember not liking it a lot of days. I remember thinking how stupid it was that I had to just play Warzone or nobody would watch, or I had to just play retro games or I would not get any views. What I love about music is that it is where I can really create in a way that is unlimited.
A New Chapter, and Letting the Gaming Go
So I am so excited to begin this new chapter, and you can continue our journey together if you want. The best way to stay in this with me is to join the Jerry Banfield Family, where I share what I am building and we can create alongside each other. I will be right here making the music. But if all you were ever in here for is the gaming, then it is time to let you go, time to let the gaming go and move on. I appreciate all the love and support around the gaming.
The last thing I will mention here is that some of you may feel really mad or sad that I am not going to do gaming anymore. But think about why. If it really upsets you that I am not going to do gaming anymore, maybe it is because you do not want to do gaming anymore either. Maybe there is something you want to do with your time, and you want to let go of gaming too, and me doing it makes some part of you say, hey, you can do this too. In my experience, there comes a point where it is time to grow up, let go of playing video games, and really get to work on why I am here in this world.
So much love and support to everyone who came along for the ride. If you want to look back on all of it, you can still find the whole run of it in my Games playlist. As far as I know, this will be the final video on Jerry Banfield gaming, but who knows, right? I hope it is the final one.