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Twitch could be a $20B company within Amazon

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Re: Twitch could be a $20B company within Amazon

#31

Watching people play video games is something I still don't understand.

It doesn't make sense UNTIL you treat it as a competitive sport. I've played video games in my life but never treated it as something that I should improve my skills in. When I started playing Magic (the card game) I started to watch streams to learn better plays. It's about skill and skill development just like sports.

Re: Twitch could be a $20B company within Amazon

#32

Watching people play video games is something I still don't understand.

how about watching people talk? talk shows are some of the more profitable programs in television, but all you're doing is watching people talk. oprah built a whole media empire on talk shows. entertainment is in the eye of the beholder, and when you have ~150M beholders, you can build a pretty good business [1]. :)

[1] http://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/technology-media-an...

Re: Twitch could be a $20B company within Amazon

#33
This whole industry of game streaming is operating in a gray zone.

It's a matter of time before we see some big lawsuits against the streamer and streaming platforms which make a lot of money by publishing the whole content, without any royalties to game developers /publishers.

For certain games. it doesn't spoil or ruin the fun factor for viewers, but some others it just removed the incentives to buy a copy of the game in the first place.

Re: Twitch could be a $20B company within Amazon

#34
Game developers don't have any option except to restrict public display of their games in some way.

There are now plenty of people who enjoy watching but not playing games.

Game developers need revenue for this firstly because they deserve it, having made the entertainment, but secondly because former players are now just watchers and not paying money, reducing revenue.

My guess is that games developers will permit public display of a restricted part of the game, like level one only, and will require royalties for display of other sections of the game

Re: Twitch could be a $20B company within Amazon

#35
post #34

Game developers don't have any option except to restrict public display of their games in some way. There are now plenty of people who enjoy watching but not playing games. Game developers need revenue for this firstly because they deserve it, having made the entertainment, but secondly because former players are now just watchers and not paying money, reducing revenue. My guess is that games developers will permit p…

I think it's funny that people downvote because they don't like what they read even if its true.

Put yourself in the shoes of the game developer who puts everything on the line to develop a game that thousands of people watch but the developer gets no revenue for.

Re: Twitch could be a $20B company within Amazon

#37

Watching people play video games is something I still don't understand.

Think like when you watched your grand brother or friend play a game and gave advice on how to progress. Sometimes it's great to take a backseat and watch others play and say funny things.

Re: Twitch could be a $20B company within Amazon

#39

Watching people play video games is something I still don't understand.

There are 2 major types of content on Twitch:

- competition broadcasting. With teams, pro players, sponsors, shoutcasters, analysts, interviews during the breaks, huge shows, stadiums and fans. It's like watching any "classic" sports on the TV. Can rise several hundreds of thousands of spectators (League of Legends, CS:GO, Dota 2 and Hearthstone mostly).

- player stream. Can be pro players during their training or just really really good players who stream all day as a job. On a personal note, I watch them because, as I said, they are really really good and the most popular of them are generally entertaining. The most popular have peaks at 5000-30000 spectators.

In the 2 cases, we talk about watching the best players in the world (may be 0.1% of the streamers). The rest of the streamers doesn't really have a public (friends and family probably).

Re: Twitch could be a $20B company within Amazon

#40
post #34

Game developers don't have any option except to restrict public display of their games in some way. There are now plenty of people who enjoy watching but not playing games. Game developers need revenue for this firstly because they deserve it, having made the entertainment, but secondly because former players are now just watchers and not paying money, reducing revenue. My guess is that games developers will permit p…

Maybe, though streaming seems to me like more of a form of free marketing for these publishers than anything. Watching a game being played several times over will probably turn into a sale for a lot of people (though not everyone).

If you have a multiplayer game and want to make some money from the streams, it would be smart to host your own tournament and sell ads through it rather than charging royalties. Otherwise, streamers are doing your product a huge favor through exposure.

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