ZEELAND — Despite being just a junior in high school, an area teen has already started his first professional career. Aiden Timlowski, who attends online public school Lighthouse Connections Academy, is competing and making money as a professional video game player.

Timlowski, a 17-year-old Zeeland resident, plays Fortnite professionally under the online ID “penguiinwyd.” He said he played the game on Xbox when it came out before shifting to playing on a desktop computer, then began to take it more seriously.

“That’s when I started to realize this game was getting competitive,” he said. “I saw the competitive scene, the pro players, the streamers. I saw people I wanted to be like.”

Aiden Timlowski, of Zeeland, has started a career as a professional video game player while still in high school. [Contributed]

After making some connections in the gaming community, Timlowski was invited to spend the summer of 2020 living in a house with fellow gamers in Loudoun County, Virginia. It’s estimated that 70 percent of the world’s internet traffic travels through servers in Loudoun County, according to Digital Tech, making it an ideal location for gamers who need quick response times.

The flexibility of attending an online school system came in handy for the move, as Timlowski needed to move before the end of the school year.

“It was a really seamless transition,” Timlowski said. “(Lighthouse Connections Academy) has definitely been a really big help with my gaming and streaming. It makes it super flexible. If I need to be up early with tournaments or an earlier schedule with my business and brand, I can do that in the morning and schedule afternoons for school.”

In recent years, the esports industry has become more sophisticated as a professional field and more widespread across the globe than ever before. Worldwide, it's estimated that 557 million people will participate in esports by 2021.

Aiden’s dad, Don, explained that they chose Lighthouse after attending Zeeland Christian School through eighth grade and briefly enrolling in Zeeland Public Schools.

“It just wasn’t a good fit for Aiden, the structured setting of a traditional public school,” Don said, adding they tried a different online school before Lighthouse as well. “I did some research and found (Lighthouse Connections Academy). That’s really helped him along.”

Following the summer in Virginia, Aiden began his professional career, and realized just how much work goes into being an esports athlete.

“It does take a lot of work,” he said, noting he spends hours practicing, reviewing his gameplay and analyzing play of other top gamers. “It’s a lot of pressure. The average per tournament is around 150,000 to 200,000 players, so you’re playing against all these people to compete for maybe the top 50 to get money. It takes a lot of work, a lot of repetition.”

The world of professional gaming has expanded beyond individual players to include prominently sponsored teams, and top studios like Epic Games host annual tournaments with lucrative prizes on the table.

Don said that it did take him a while to come around to the idea of his son being a professional video game player.

“It took me a while to get my brain around it because it’s non-traditional, but it’s today’s world,” Don said. “My older son, Connor, one summer I made him get the traditional summer job at Craig’s Cruisers making the teenage minimum wage. I thought ‘I had to do that, he has to, too.’

“As I learned about online opportunities with gaming and other things, I realized that thinking wasn’t current, it’s not today’s world.”

Through gaming, Aiden has learned to optimize efficiency on his computer, which has led to another money-making opportunity fixing issues for friends and family.

It also provides a potential career path after a video game career, which typically ends when players hit their early 20s, Aiden and Don said.

— Contact reporter Mitchell Boatman at mboatman@hollandsentinel.com. Follow him on Twitter @SentinelMitch.