I mean this seriously; not as a dig. Why be exclusive when everyone knows youtube? I may even watch a video if i see it when browsing.
But who just watches OTHER PEOPLE play games for fun? How can you build a hugely expensive business off this? Is it all basically advertising for video games funded by companies?
Millions of people do? I do. There's a few reasons I do:
* Streamers connect with their audiences, I can chat with them live - ask questions about the game or technique
* Streamers are entertainers. They joke, cry, rage with you. They are engaging people.
* Community. I'm a subscriber to person X, so are you!
* Skill. Streamers are often the best in the world at their games.
* Can't play now. Cooking? Folding laundry? Watch some twitch.
* Events. Exports, and charity events like games done quick are amazing.
* Discoverability. Finding a new game or a new streamer for a game I like is super easy.
How do you build a business? Some streamers have thousands of people paying them $5 a month. Twitch takes a cut. They show ads, they collect donations, they sell in game products and the games themselves. (Twitch splits the revenue for those with their streamers. ) It's powered by viewers and ad revenue, is what I'd guess.
How can you chat with your streamer when the live chat feed is a massive spam box due to the sheer volume of users? Unless of course you're watching the lesser known streamers.
A lot of popular games on Twitch are competitive games. Many amateur players watch skillful or professional players to increase their own skills.
Others watch the same way many people watch sporting teams compete. "who just watches OTHER PEOPLE play games for fun".. I suppose you haven't heard of the Superbowl, which sells ads for $5million USD
I'm 22 and have been watching twitch very regularly since I started college in 2013. I think my age group is the main demographic twitch targets, and I can say myself and many of my friends watch for the streamers and community more than the games themselves. Lirik, a streamer I have watched for years, is someone I would watch play literally any game due to how entertaining his personality is.
May be anecdotal, but many of my friends have the same mindset. Besides watching competitive eSports tournaments for specific games, usually someone will have a few streamers they will watch play anything.
You watch Lirik!?!? Come on man watch a R E A L streamer like GiantWaffle... People like you probably only have 908 friends on Facebook, like "wolf packs" and work for networking companies TriHard. Get on my level and call me :^)
Do you watch professional sports (football, basketball, etc)?
Watching competitive video games (starcraft 2 is my favorite) has a similar appeal, to me. If you don't watch any sports, than the appeal of esports may not make sense to you.
Of course, twitch is bigger than esports, but each viewer category has their own needs & content that fills them.
Lots of people watch Twitch. I'm a Starcraft fan and it's basically the only service I would use to watch streams. I might float over to YouTube if a user has a show, someone like Day[9].
Regarding ads there's a few different ways it happens. Sometimes the stream itself will have ads, this is most noticable with Korean content when they start putting up ads for Korean ISPs or mobile apps. The other way ads happen is through the Twitch platform itself and these are what you're most likely used to seeing on YouTube. Targeting is okay but not the best, solvable problem though.
eSports might seem like a joke still but I guarantee that a lot of people don't feel that way and follow them in the same way that football teams are followed. It's entertainment like any other.
It's just fun. It's not more complicated than that.
There's the trope of the younger sibling watching the older one play games, and it turns out that a lot of people enjoy that. You can watch for loads of different reasons:
* High-quality gameplay. Some of the most talented people in e-sports regularly stream, and most of the popular streamers are quite good generally.
* Introduction to games and critique. I definitely use Twitch to decide which games I'll buy and play.
* Streamer personalities. A lot of the streamers are very very good at what they do. They are funny and entertaining, can tell stories, and generally cultivate a community around their stream. They play off the drama of what they play (a big part of why battle royale games are so popular). It's weird how much watching a stream can feel like hanging out with friends.
It's one of those things where you might not understand unless you give it a try, and certainly not everyone will love it, but it's so damn compelling. I predict really big things for Twitch.
I think it's more of an audience targeting thing, I'd guess there's not many people who are into competitive games and unaware of twitch.
For me personally, I watched twitch pretty regularly when Starcraft 2 was popular, to learn tips and tricks from players better than myself. It was more akin to watching game film than entertainment content to me.
When I was heavily into playing Hearthstone, I would regularly watch streams of players with better-than-average skill. It filled a niche for me, watching them judge circumstances and make good plays.
I did the same with Overwatch, only to a much lesser extent - I personally didn't like what was available at the time.
This is easy enough to answer; gamers / game enthusiasts.
But then you confound it by asking:
>Why be exclusive when everyone knows youtube?
I don't really follow at this point. I thought my post covered that; Twitch has great discoverability of live content, and so if I am trying to watch a CS:GO tournament, and they're all going to be on Twitch, I'll go to Twitch and watch...
If you're asking from a content-creator's perspective, I think I can answer that in one symbol: $
>But who just watches OTHER PEOPLE play games for fun?
"Who just watches OTHER PEOPLE play sports for fun?" Is that a dissatisfying parallel for you, or does it sufficiently illuminate the point?
Professional sports, Pro Wrestling, Chess/Go, sports talk shows / talk shows in general, "celebrities playing sport xyz" all have elements of entertainment that are shared with game streaming as a form of entertainment.
I mean this seriously; not as a dig. Why be exclusive when everyone knows youtube? I may even watch a video if i see it when browsing.
But who just watches OTHER PEOPLE play games for fun? How can you build a hugely expensive business off this? Is it all basically advertising for video games funded by companies?