Live data from Hacker News

Twitch could be a $20B company within Amazon

backchannel.com

121–130 of 175 posts

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

#121
post #26

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

Give it a try, see if you like it. I'd suggest a variety streamer first. The main thing for me, is that it's entertainment, not really the game itself. Visualise this: Imagine your favourite comedian cracking jokes, now imagine him cracking jokes while playing a video game. Now imagine a chat of thousands joining in and interacting with your favourite comedian. Now imagine yourself talking to and cracking jokes with…

Now imagine he's not funny and he's trying to appeal to kids.

This is why I don't bother. I do like speedruns, and I watch some of the cinemassacre stuff on youtube since I do actually like watching those guys.

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

#122
post #94

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

Look for semi popular games with viewers in the 200-1000 viewers and you will find a lot of really good, entertaining people who interact with chat. Big streams are entertaining but fail to capture the magic and often become horrible people. In my opinion the glory days of twitch are already behind them because they have failed to incentivise small time streamers. Most pro esports players don't stream because the inc…

I feel sorry for people who can't handle the twitch community. In fact most of the detractors are generally shitty people.

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

#124
post #17

More and more people are dumping cable TV. The main reasons that I hear for people keeping it are sports and news. If live streaming sites like twitch can sign deals with sports leagues, then I think we will see even more people cancelling their cable. The nice thing about streaming is that you aren't channel limited, so there is no reason why you can't follow some obscure minor league team on the other side of the p…

Live news broadcasts from individuals passionate about researching live events would be great, too. Anything like that that could replace MSM. From people compiling the current latest news from places like Twitter, to people actually out on the streets during events.

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

#125
post #2

Amazon bought two things with Twitch: 1) A social community 2) a monetization model. The video service itself is secondary. The past several years has shown the social communities grow organically. But its hard to make users adopt one. If you build it, they probably won't come. It's easier for a big company to buy one up than start one from scratch. (Think Instagram versus Google Plus). Second, Twitch is one of the f…

>Twitch has shied away from dark patterns that lock out adblocking users. I don't see any big modals or disabled video if I run an adblocker on Twitch. This is no doubt on purpose.

I vividly remember this not being the case, whereas (at least in partnered streams) if twitch detected an ad-blocker it would stop the stream and then fill your screen with recommendations to subscribe to the streamer.

What ended up happening if I recall correctly was the adblockers would just block the anti-adblock screens so they were rendered ineffective.

I'm pretty sure there was other efforts, but I found this on their blog [1]

[1] https://blog.twitch.tv/experiment-with-advertising-on-partne...

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

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The active engagement of Twitch viewers can often help boost sales for games that prove popular among live streams. Can users purchase games (from Amazon) directly through Twitch? Amazon could offer streamers a referral cut, too.

That seems like posing a real challenge for Amazon, simply because the entire PC game market belongs within reasonable margin of error to Valve, via Steam. I don't know as much on the console side, but the impression I have is that that's moving more toward digital delivery as well, via the various console manufacturers' storefronts. Not sure how Amazon would be able to find a meaningful entry into that particular ma…

[deleted]

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

#129
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that does happen it will be unprecedented. Activision and Bungie, which own Destiny, frequently works with streamers to premiere new content and hold events and they are not alone. They seem to know that streamers are good for business.

nintendo? not exactly unprecedented.

Nintendo has an antiquated grasp of business though and will go under even sooner if they continue with this type of behaviour. They are currently fueled on goodwill and nostalgia value. A complete outlier in that aspect.

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

#130
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 le…

Relevant article on a game developer that did not approve of streaming their game: http://www.thatdragoncancer.com/thatdragoncancer/2016/3/24/o...
Post reply on HN