College Students Earn Over 50,000 a Month as AI-Powered Anime Series Become the Latest Trend in Game Fan Creations

In April 2026, the topic “Hebei College Student Starts a One-Person Company and Earns 50,000 a Month” surged to No. 18 on Douyin’s Social Chart and No. 3 on its Local Chart, drawing over 150,000 concurrent viewers.

In footage from a media interview, a Gen Z boy wearing gold-rimmed glasses sits at a desk. On the computer screen in front of him plays an AI-generated animated series he created based on a Three Kingdoms-themed strategy game. As he speaks, his swivel chair sways gently in time with his speech, and he appears a bit nervous.He is Baite Man, a senior in the Advertising Department at Hebei University of Geosciences, and the protagonist of this trending topic.

While everyone was busy marveling at his “50,000 monthly income,” Tea House was more curious about how he transformed from a “slacker” gamer into a creator who mastered AI tools. So, once the buzz had died down, we tracked down Baite Man and tried to piece together his story.

01

By “straying from the straight and narrow,” he became his family’s pride and joy

Bettman is a veteran player of a top-tier, hit SLG game. He told the Teahouse that back in high school, he dove headfirst into this 2.25-million-grid sandbox, even serving as an alliance leader and leading his brothers in arms to conquer cities and expand their territory.Those nights spent laying out roads all night long to secure strategic passes, and those moments of fighting side by side with alliance mates toward a common goal, make up the most vivid fragments of his daily life.

Later, he was admitted to the Advertising Department at Hebei University of Geosciences.During a sophomore-year class, when the professor was discussing video editing logic, topic selection techniques, and the “three-second rule” for grabbing viewers’ attention, all that flashed through Bateman’s mind were scenes from video games. He suddenly realized that the in-game incentive program designed to encourage players to create fan content was, in fact, the perfect opportunity to practice his skills.

So he began experimenting with video editing, condensing the rivalries and conflicts within his alliance, as well as the ever-changing dynamics of the battlefield, into videos just a few minutes long. Gradually, playing games while editing videos became the central focus of his college life.

But in his parents’ eyes, this tendency to “treat a hobby as a serious pursuit” was hard for them to understand. “You worked so hard to get into college, yet you spend every day playing video games on the computer—isn’t that just wasting your time?” Such doubts constantly lingered in his ears.

But he persevered, posting hundreds of videos over the course of two years and gaining a group of “early-adopter” fans who supported him along the way.

A major turning point came around October 2025, when the AI video-generation model Sora2 was officially launched. After spending a night experimenting with it, Bateman keenly sensed that a new opportunity had arrived. “I’ve always had a lot of interesting ideas in my head, but it was difficult to bring them to life through video editing—AI, however, can do it,” he said.

AI gave him Ma Liang’s magical brush, which not only allowed the real-life stories from the game and the alliance to break free from the constraints of editing software and be reimagined as vivid, lifelike scenes, but also transformed the wildly imaginative, original storylines that had long been brewing in his mind into tangible, real-life footage.

He became hooked on this creative experience, which allowed him to turn all kinds of ideas into reality, so he began devoting more time to it and threw himself headfirst into AI video creation.

The rewards for their hard work came even faster than expected. As soon as the AI-generated videos were released, their view counts skyrocketed—especially for the original animated series *The Rise of the Katana*, which consistently attracted over 100,000 views per episode.

It’s important to note that in this relatively niche—and even somewhat obscure—gaming fan creation community, 100,000 views is definitely a bona fide hit, and back in the day, he wouldn’t have even dared to dream of consistently achieving such numbers with every episode.

At the same time, the game’s official incentive program began to show its effectiveness. With base earnings calculated based on view counts, combined with new subsidies for the AI short-form drama category, his monthly income quietly climbed and soon surpassed the 50,000 mark.

The impressive viewership and revenue figures further solidified his commitment to creating AI-generated animated series: “The audience loves it, and I’m making money—of course I’m going to keep doing this.”

With the income he earned from creating videos, he bought a new car. When he returned home, his family—who had once struggled to understand “what’s the point of playing video games?”—saw the new car and the substantial bank statements with their own eyes, and finally broke into smiles, feeling genuinely proud of him.

Later on, his account became a teaching case study cited by his advisor, and even more college classmates and relatives and friends from his village came to him seeking advice. Inspired by him, they all joined the industry and started creating AI-generated game and anime content.

I've also decided on a thesis topic.

Faced with growing recognition, Baite Man said frankly, "That feeling is truly very rewarding."

02

The game itself generates the storyline.

For Bettmann, creating game content he loves comes naturally; he spends years immersed in game worlds, player communities, and guild channels, all of which provide him with an inexhaustible source of inspiration.

So, when he first started creating AI videos, he brought real stories from the game and trending topics passed down by word of mouth among the player community straight to the screen.“Three Hundred Wei Zhis Can Devour Wu,” “Eighty Road Fees,” “When Enemies and Allies Use the Beauty Trap,” “High-Level Players Meet Newbies”… These iconic seasonal moments, popular alliance memes, and the unspoken emotions shared among players finally broke free from the limitations of text and voice chat, transforming into vivid, dynamic visuals.

As expected, these videos struck a chord with a huge number of gaming enthusiasts.In the comments section, some immediately recognized that “this is the story of our district,” others went wild with memes about “Brother 80, who embezzled military funds,” and still others turned various iconic scenes into meme images. For Baite Man, this sense of shared understanding across the screen brings him more satisfaction than any metrics ever could.

As he gradually learned how to use more AI tools, he grew dissatisfied with merely being a chronicler of stories and began experimenting with writing original scripts. The wild and imaginative plots that took shape in his mind were thus transformed into a series of AI-generated animated shorts, such as *The Rise of the Katana* and *The Regret of the Great Han Bow*.

These short animated series with complete storylines not only keep gamers hooked on new episodes but have even attracted a large audience of casual viewers who don’t play games. Baite Man estimates that about 80 percent of the audience consists of gamers, while 20 percent are casual viewers drawn purely by the storyline.He told Teahouse: “As long as a complete world is established in the series, even viewers who have never played the game will have little trouble understanding it from the very first episode—in fact, they’ll find it more and more engaging as the series progresses.”

The data also confirms the appeal of AI-generated animated series. After the first series produced by Baite Man went live, viewership skyrocketed. “And it wasn’t just one episode that had high viewership—every episode did. The average viewership per episode has consistently exceeded 100,000.”

These days, his workflow for creating AI-generated animated series has become quite standardized: first, he creates a rough plot outline and dialogue on his own, then feeds it to the AI to flesh it out and refine it, after which the AI generates the corresponding character art, background images, and video prompts;After generating the various clips, he simply uses the last frame of the previous video as the first frame of the next one to create a seamless transition. Once this entire process is complete, the final video is essentially finalized.

However, before he was able to get this workflow up and running, he went through a long period of experimenting with different tools. Bettmann admits that the pace of innovation in the AI industry is faster than anyone could have imagined. Since diving headfirst into AI video production, he has been discovering new models and techniques almost every day.

At first, he could only use a simplified version of ComfyUI called the “vivo skin”; later, he managed to master the full, native version of ComfyUI; and then came GPT-Image 2,Google’s Nano Banana (commonly known as the “Big Banana” model), Gemini 3 Pro, and other professional tools flooded the market, and he kept up with the wave of new tools almost every day.

As his tools continue to evolve, the efficiency and quality of his content production are soaring in tandem.Today, his main tools include Jimeng, Gemini, Runway Gen-2, and LIBTV. With the support of this suite of tools, once he enters a high-intensity creative state, he can produce over ten minutes of footage in a single day for a one-minute short video. This qualitative leap in productivity directly supports his account’s update schedule of one—or even two—posts per day.

There is a noticeable difference in video quality between the early and recent versions.

However, this increase in efficiency comes at a cost. Bettman laughed, “Compared to when we only needed a Jianying subscription, the cost of subscribing to various platforms is now much higher.” And that’s just the subscription fee—during the actual video production process, additional token fees are constantly incurred.

For example, on Jiemeng—the platform primarily used for the core stage of video production—the cost of generating a video is roughly one yuan per second, and it’s not guaranteed that a satisfactory result will be produced on the first try; if the result isn’t suitable, it must be regenerated, which is why they refer to this process as “drawing cards.”

Bettman believes that these high computing costs are enough to deter many newcomers from entering the market. Coupled with the fact that many people are unfamiliar with this game, the gaming-themed web series niche he operates in has remained a “blue ocean” with little competition for quite some time.It wasn’t until around May of this year—more than a month after his interview gained traction—that a wave of new competitors began to emerge.

However, just as these newcomers were entering the scene, Bateman had already moved into a new phase of growth; the revenue from his single account had risen even further from the previously reported 50,000.At the same time, he teamed up with several fellow players he had met online, rented an office in Shijiazhuang, and formed a five-person team. In addition to managing his own account, they were simultaneously developing other accounts.

"I'm used to staying up late, so I can hardly ever get up in the morning. I go to the office in the afternoon to attend a meeting or take care of a few things—four or five hours of work a day is enough for me." Now, as a recent graduate, Bateeman has achieved an enviable level of flexibility in his work.

03

“It’s finally our turn to ride the wave of the times.”

Unlike other AI-generated anime series, which rely on revenue sharing from platform traffic or monetization through commercial deals, Bateman’s revenue primarily comes from the official creator incentive program launched by the game developer. This is a creator incentive program that has run for 37 episodes—one episode per month without interruption for more than two years.

AI animated series, as a brand-new content format, were only officially incorporated into the incentive system around March of this year. Bateman recalled, “Around the time after the Lunar New Year, the authorities introduced a special incentive program specifically for AI animated series.” He happened to catch the first wave of benefits from this government support.

Following this, the game launched an AI short-form drama contest, offering a cash prize of up to 30,000 yuan to the first-place winner, using the substantial prize money to attract more players to try their hand at AI-generated content.

Game developers expand their reach through high-quality content, while creators use this to earn an income and support themselves. This entirely new, mutually beneficial model is now being recognized and replicated by an increasing number of game developers.

In March of this year, *Fantasy Westward Journey Mobile* launched the “11th Anniversary AI Short Drama Competition”; in June, *Egg Party* partnered with ByteDance’s ByteEngine to launch the “Egg Party Portal Competition,” featuring two separate tracks—one for professional animation studios and another for general UGC—with a total prize pool exceeding 4 million yuan;37 Interactive Entertainment also officially announced the “Shen Shan Cup 2026 Global University AI Micro-Short Drama Creation Competition” in May, setting aside a 3 million yuan dedicated incubation fund and 300,000 yuan in prize money for the event.

Game developers are investing real money to incentivize players to create content, while creators are giving free rein to their creativity, using AI tools to craft more vivid and engaging storylines based on game IPs.Driven by AI tools, an entirely new model of game UGC creation is rapidly taking shape. In this process, many players like Baite Man have seized the opportunity and successfully transformed a simple gaming hobby into a sustainable full-time career.

Bettman said, “This time, it’s finally our turn to ride the wave of the times.” Perhaps no one knows how long this wave will last or how far it will carry us. But at least for now, it has spurred a group of young people brimming with creative passion to take action—and has even opened up an entirely new path in life for them.