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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

#61

Post by Animats »

alexandre_m wrote: post #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 g…

That's going to be interesting litigation. There's a legal analysis under UK law here.[1] It's not too helpful. WIPO suggests that legislation may be desirable to give game developers control over videos of games.[2] Their country-by-country analysis is all over the place.

It's a tough call. Arguably, the player is the performance, against the game as a backdrop. That could be argued as a transformative use. If you make a video of someone playing golf on a Robert Trent Jones golf course, Robert Trent Jones (or his estate) doesn't get royalties. If you make videos of people playing sports with sports gear with prominent logos, that doesn't mean the sports gear company has a copyright interest. You don't have to pay royalties to car companies when their cars appear in a video.

Cut scenes may be an issue, since the player isn't controlling them.

[1] http://www.develop-online.net/analysis/uploading-gameplay-co... [2] http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/copyright/en/creative_i...

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

#62

Post by bobcostas55 »

hoodoof wrote: post #35
hoodoof wrote: 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.

>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.

Has this _ever_ happened?

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

#63

Post by wongarsu »

duaneb wrote: post #52
alexandre_m wrote: post #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 g…

Why do you think content owners would see this as IP theft rather than free advertising? Are people watching play throughs rather than playing it themselves?

It heavily depends on the game. There are lots of single-player games where the story is much better than the actual game mechanics. Or where watching somebody figure out all the puzzles is more fun than doing it yourself. Here, streamers and let's-players likely cause a decrease in game sales. In simulation and competitive games on the other hand streamers should usually cause more sales then they prevent.

As one less recent example, watching Half Life 2 with funny commentary is great, but I have no desire to ever play the game myself.

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

#64

Post by danso »

duaneb wrote: post #52
alexandre_m wrote: post #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 g…

Why do you think content owners would see this as IP theft rather than free advertising? Are people watching play throughs rather than playing it themselves?

At least some are. I myself watched a playthrough of "Last of Us" and greatly enjoyed it. But because the game is so linear and story-driven, and the gameplay itself doesn't look particularly remarkable, I'll likely never pick up the game, even though considerable resources were obviously expended for voice acting and writing and direction.

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

#65

Post by ggregoire »

thecolorblue wrote: post #45

What is a good example of a twitch stream to show how great live streaming can be?

Here a list of the current top streams, per number of spectators: https://www.twitch.tv/directory/all

This weekend you can watch the LCS finals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Legends_Championship...).

Winners will represent their region (North America and Europe) for the World in October (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Legends_World_Champi...).

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

#66

Post by delecti »

ggregoire wrote: post #39
wehadfun wrote: post #21

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 ju…

I think you're leaving out an important third category of "personality" streamers. People that get views because they are entertaining, rather than because they're necessarily that good at the games they're playing.

I don't know what proportion of the whole each of the three makes up, but I would assume that the third category at least the very least merits a mention.

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

#67

Post by s_kilk »

duaneb wrote: post #52
alexandre_m wrote: post #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 g…

Why do you think content owners would see this as IP theft rather than free advertising? Are people watching play throughs rather than playing it themselves?

Depends on the game. Many games are only remarkable for their combination of story and aesthetics, with the minute-to-minute play being fairly mundane. In that case I can see a bunch of people just watching a stream and not bothering to play the game themselves.

How many of them would have been so pushed as to play the game for themselves anyway... an open question.

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

#68

Post by dmoy »

duaneb wrote: post #51
andreasklinger wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two additional aspects: 1) Twitch can leverage the core support network that amazon can build Starting from aws - to prime video subscriptions 2) amazon will go strong into tv top as soon as apple and google take it more serious. at that point the got one of the bigger kinds of content under control - similar w/ google and youtube

What makes you think appletv will ever support Amazon video? The iOS app definitely needs chrome cast support.

Given that, e.g. amazon stopped selling Chromecast, I don't have high hopes for interoperability here.

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

#70

Post by douche »

alexandre_m wrote: post #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 g…

Then perhaps it will become necessary to design games for replayability, rather than on-rails linear stories. Games != movies. I don't see that as a bad development.
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