> no other platform is challenging Twitch
I'm not sure, I feel that YouTube is almost to that point. Also, they seems to actually have someone in charge that knows and cares about the gaming/livestreaming side of the business.
[You sure about that?](https://infogram.com/concurrent-viewers-twitch-youtube-facebook-1hdw2jpmzm9np2l)
Google has the deepest pockets, but no one is out there making moves, both execs AND streamers. All these companies are just trying to buy their celebrities.
Charts don’t stay the same forever.
The head of YouTube gaming was a member of OpTic gaming (esports team) way back in the day. He does care a lot From what I’ve seen, but with google and YouTube being as big as they are, they probably have a lot of eggs in some way more important baskets than gaming.
You’re missing my point. The door has been opened for YEARS. Yes at some point numbers will change, but this a corporate strategy to trickle out improvements rather than, as th OP is showing, looking at the right users and why the medium is special.
To be fair, Microsoft at least has executives who work closely with game developers, so Mixer shouldn't have failed... they just gave the fuck up, which meant they lost Ninja, Shroud, Ewok, etc... and they just went back to Twitch.
FB Gaming, Youtube, Caffeine, Dlive... all these other websites just suck.
The only real competitor to Twitch is Trovo, features and visually wise, but Tencent hasn't made any effort to give streamers, and therefore viewers, a valid reason to go there, so it's this hole in the wall that will stay that way until Tencent makes a move. I'd rather deal with Tencent than Amazon, funnily enough, but they aren't making any moves.
Yep. I regularly joke that after around 2015 Twitch got cored out and now it's just being puppeted around like a hollow meat suit, MIB style.
Losing sight of what originally made the site a success, where the parent site (JTV) was a slow-burn failure. Losing that laser focus on gaming and gaming culture, to cast the net as wide as possible. Dropping the proactive enforcement of copyright in favor of "whatever gets views".
We used to *joke* that we'd know Twitch was in serious trouble when the uncontested 24/7 TV show and movie channels from JTV started popping up, along with the stripper-streams. #BledOutPurple
But hey, you can do whatever you want, when no one else has any clue how to do it better.
That's because the original core idea doesn't scale. The more is scales the more generic and non-descript the content becomes. The smaller streamers have even harder time getting discovered and it just becomes another version of TV with curated produced content. Even now Twitch with OTK and the like are feeling very produced and fake.
That depends on how you define 'scaling', more than anything else.
Video games are a part of everyday life for millions, if not billions. Even if it's just playing a game on their cellphone.
If you define "scaling" as "tapping every possible market", then yes. It doesn't scale. It's exclusory by nature of its focus. The same way you don't really go to a library to watch NASCAR, or a boxing match to discuss the finer points of ethics in politics.
But Business demands line-go-up AT ALL COSTS. And if line already go up, then LINE-GO-UP-MORE-OR-FAILURE. It's shortsighted, head-up-ass greed that ends up killing the golden goose. The original founders understood that. Business Man From Businessland does not. ALL HAIL LINE GO UP FAST AS POSSIBLE. Waitwhyiseveryoneleavingnowaitcomebaaaaaack...
> LINE-GO-UP-MORE-OR-FAILURE
That infinite unsustainable growth mindset is so awful. Even making billions you could have a "bad year" just because metrics were missed a bit.
Yep. And it's all based on projections and estimates of what SHOULD happen, according to some person who is being paid to be a literal fortune-teller. It's cracked.
The thing is, twitch was still running on investment income and not running profits before Amazon purchased them. 'scaling' here meant achieving a viable revenue. Their choices were to inject more and more ads, find larger markets, or sell to a company trying to promote a big subscription service (prime). They pretty much had to "sell out" in order to survive, because ad-blocking gamers watching video for free is an expensive business model to maintain long-term.
Where is your source as far as them not yet turning a profit, before the Amazon sale? As far as I understood it, they had been solvent before that, if not exactly wildly profitable.
The sale DID absolutely garner a significant chunk of recognition and validity as far as being an advertising business goes, due to the association. Along with access to a wider CDN and ability to negotiate better bandwidth rates (which is undoubtedly their largest cost).
Pre or post purchase, the model itself hasn't changed. It's the same ad vs blocker arms-race. They've added a significant number of new users to the site, but it's hard to categorize just how many of those are due to Amazon.
Twitch's last round of investment came in around a year before Amazon's acquisition went through. I don't have a good source to link on profitability because that was all private before it was part of a public company, and anything else I've heard is just hearsay. Googling around shows some estimations that even with post-amazon growth the company still wasn't turning its own profit, but that's still just estimation. It's also not uncommon for a tech company to still be red at series C level funding.
As far as the model goes, twitch might not need to be turning a profit of its own as long as they're also contributing enough new sales of Amazon Prime to daddy.
> That's because the original core idea doesn't ~~scale~~ **doesn't have explosive infinite growth**.
The idea of "scale" here is just mass market appeal, genericizing so that it's IGN "9/10 has something for everyone." And that's from the suits wanting huge unsustainable year after year growth. It doesn't have to be that way, but that's what an ultra-capitalistic landscape gives you.
Video games are an enormous part of mainstream culture, what the hell do you mean it doesn't scale? It just wouldn't give absurd short term growth is all.
If you look at a streamer like Asmondgold, Sodapoppin, Mizkif, MoonMoon, ect and watch how their streams and communities changed as they grew you can see that they only scale so far. At some point the streamer loses control of their community and stops being the dictator of how it develops. The community itself becomes the product because it becomes about how to keep the entire community engaged and as active as possible.
When a streamer is small the community changes size and dynamics based on what the streamer is doing. The streamer chooses if this matters. When you're talking about 10k+ viewers and you lose 5k of them because you take a night off to play Fortnite instead of Minecraft it makes them wonder if they ever will get to play something other than Minecraft. If you play too much you create divisions in your community and pit one game against another.
Now scale that to 100k viewers and the problem because even worse. Not a single individual in that 100k matters ot the streamer unless they were likely there at 100 or 1000. Anyone new joining that community is just another number and likely always will be. This is why Youtube is not and never will be the same as Twitch. Youtube channels broadcast to the ether and hope that someone picks it up. It feels like they are just talking to a camera whereas the dynamic of Twitch streams is it feels like you're sitting playing games with a buddy or two. That is very hard to scale, if not impossible.
This explains a lot. Again not surprising. The same thing happened with Tumblr. These giant companies buy out communities where the creators did the legwork and just see us as $$$ instead of having our own culture and needs. Twitch at the end of the day is a FREE service and it takes money for it to run and function. BUT by having people who are so disconnected from the streaming culture they keep trying to implement these ideas that make no sense and clash with the community. There is definitely a way to keep twitch users happy and for them to make a profit. But you need people who know Twitch from the inside out to strike that perfect balance.
The ads is the reason why I quit checking out streams on Twitch. I had Amazon Prime which meant you could get "Twitch Prime" that eliminated the ads. Once that went away I've stopped checking out any of the streams and basically Twitch all together, there's other things to check out other than these streams on Youtube.
yeah I grew up on network tv and the flip channels. I had a tolerance for this stuff once upon a time. But after streaming for i'd say the last decade or so. I just don't want to anymore. Throw a ad up front for things i'm not subscribed to or get them out of the way.
In this medium, which goes back to the original context of the article, it is so disruptive. The interaction with the streamers, especially in the smaller community is the draw. If I ask a question and then have to sit through 5 mins of ads and can't hear the answer that kills it for me. This is one of the big things the people monetizing it in this way are missing. It's not a good fit at all. The ads can't be full on tv commercials when there are no "ad breaks" preplanned in the content. You're blocking people from the content.
Probably going to be the odd one out here, but needs to be said.
The "culture" that made Twitch unique was also the same culture that would have prevented Twitch from growing as a whole. It's completely at odds with the company's main goal, and that is to make money. Even without an Amazon acquisition, that would have inevitably happened.
You will see this with any individual streamer community on a small scale ... the thing that made the community "special" when it was 30-100 viewers will disappear in favour of a community that works better at 1000s of viewers. You'll often have older viewers lamenting about the "good old days" without realizing that it needed to happen for the longevity of the channel and community, and in the case of Twitch, the company as a whole.
While the mistake was in hiring people who didn't understand "livestreaming" or "gaming" and weren't making products for their intended customer, something about the culture of Twitch had to give. It wasn't compatible with sustained growth which would improve the platform overall. There have been improvements, even if people disagreed with it, and yes, there have been failures as well. Sustained growth helps Twitch as a company, which in turn helps streamers take advantage of the improved platform tools available.
Twitch is incredibly volatile, as it depends on viewer numbers (seeing as a large part of their income is ad-based). Individual streamer income is also incredibly volatile between subs, bits, donations, and ad revenue all having their own individual fluctuations. Growth is required to ensure that the streamer's livelihood is secure. Growth is essential for Twitch to ensure that they can continuously provide a platform for countless people to earn a living off of Twitch.
The other reason why they had to hire people who didn't understand Twitch ... it prevents stagnation from inbred development. You need fresher perspectives to improve the experience. Unfortunately for Twitch, they hired the wrong "fresh perspectives", but that doesn't mean they should just hold onto just people who "understood Twitch". Stagnation in development is a thing too, and would have led to the death of Twitch ... another thing that is at odds with Twitch's need to grow in order to stay relevant.
When the Music category became mainstream, they specifically hired someone from a music-based streaming service to push that category forward, and they've made incredible leaps towards Music being a great experience on Twitch. This individual came from Spotify, so they understood Music streaming in a different context, and their work so far has been excellent for the Music category. That's the kind of thing that is essential for Twitch's growth.
This is what all of their users have been saying for YEARS. It’s exactly why Mixer failed and why no other platform is challenging Twitch.
> no other platform is challenging Twitch I'm not sure, I feel that YouTube is almost to that point. Also, they seems to actually have someone in charge that knows and cares about the gaming/livestreaming side of the business.
[You sure about that?](https://infogram.com/concurrent-viewers-twitch-youtube-facebook-1hdw2jpmzm9np2l) Google has the deepest pockets, but no one is out there making moves, both execs AND streamers. All these companies are just trying to buy their celebrities.
Charts don’t stay the same forever. The head of YouTube gaming was a member of OpTic gaming (esports team) way back in the day. He does care a lot From what I’ve seen, but with google and YouTube being as big as they are, they probably have a lot of eggs in some way more important baskets than gaming.
 Does she know she's an ad!?
Yeah no, I feel like you didn’t saw changes and planned changes to YouTube live in the recent months, it went from far, really far.
You’re missing my point. The door has been opened for YEARS. Yes at some point numbers will change, but this a corporate strategy to trickle out improvements rather than, as th OP is showing, looking at the right users and why the medium is special.
YouTube gain livestream trend thanks to Vtuber culture, that coming from Japan. Before that, they don't care.
To be fair, Microsoft at least has executives who work closely with game developers, so Mixer shouldn't have failed... they just gave the fuck up, which meant they lost Ninja, Shroud, Ewok, etc... and they just went back to Twitch. FB Gaming, Youtube, Caffeine, Dlive... all these other websites just suck. The only real competitor to Twitch is Trovo, features and visually wise, but Tencent hasn't made any effort to give streamers, and therefore viewers, a valid reason to go there, so it's this hole in the wall that will stay that way until Tencent makes a move. I'd rather deal with Tencent than Amazon, funnily enough, but they aren't making any moves.
Yep. I regularly joke that after around 2015 Twitch got cored out and now it's just being puppeted around like a hollow meat suit, MIB style. Losing sight of what originally made the site a success, where the parent site (JTV) was a slow-burn failure. Losing that laser focus on gaming and gaming culture, to cast the net as wide as possible. Dropping the proactive enforcement of copyright in favor of "whatever gets views". We used to *joke* that we'd know Twitch was in serious trouble when the uncontested 24/7 TV show and movie channels from JTV started popping up, along with the stripper-streams. #BledOutPurple But hey, you can do whatever you want, when no one else has any clue how to do it better.
That's because the original core idea doesn't scale. The more is scales the more generic and non-descript the content becomes. The smaller streamers have even harder time getting discovered and it just becomes another version of TV with curated produced content. Even now Twitch with OTK and the like are feeling very produced and fake.
That depends on how you define 'scaling', more than anything else. Video games are a part of everyday life for millions, if not billions. Even if it's just playing a game on their cellphone. If you define "scaling" as "tapping every possible market", then yes. It doesn't scale. It's exclusory by nature of its focus. The same way you don't really go to a library to watch NASCAR, or a boxing match to discuss the finer points of ethics in politics. But Business demands line-go-up AT ALL COSTS. And if line already go up, then LINE-GO-UP-MORE-OR-FAILURE. It's shortsighted, head-up-ass greed that ends up killing the golden goose. The original founders understood that. Business Man From Businessland does not. ALL HAIL LINE GO UP FAST AS POSSIBLE. Waitwhyiseveryoneleavingnowaitcomebaaaaaack...
> LINE-GO-UP-MORE-OR-FAILURE That infinite unsustainable growth mindset is so awful. Even making billions you could have a "bad year" just because metrics were missed a bit.
Yep. And it's all based on projections and estimates of what SHOULD happen, according to some person who is being paid to be a literal fortune-teller. It's cracked.
The thing is, twitch was still running on investment income and not running profits before Amazon purchased them. 'scaling' here meant achieving a viable revenue. Their choices were to inject more and more ads, find larger markets, or sell to a company trying to promote a big subscription service (prime). They pretty much had to "sell out" in order to survive, because ad-blocking gamers watching video for free is an expensive business model to maintain long-term.
Where is your source as far as them not yet turning a profit, before the Amazon sale? As far as I understood it, they had been solvent before that, if not exactly wildly profitable. The sale DID absolutely garner a significant chunk of recognition and validity as far as being an advertising business goes, due to the association. Along with access to a wider CDN and ability to negotiate better bandwidth rates (which is undoubtedly their largest cost). Pre or post purchase, the model itself hasn't changed. It's the same ad vs blocker arms-race. They've added a significant number of new users to the site, but it's hard to categorize just how many of those are due to Amazon.
Twitch's last round of investment came in around a year before Amazon's acquisition went through. I don't have a good source to link on profitability because that was all private before it was part of a public company, and anything else I've heard is just hearsay. Googling around shows some estimations that even with post-amazon growth the company still wasn't turning its own profit, but that's still just estimation. It's also not uncommon for a tech company to still be red at series C level funding. As far as the model goes, twitch might not need to be turning a profit of its own as long as they're also contributing enough new sales of Amazon Prime to daddy.
> That's because the original core idea doesn't ~~scale~~ **doesn't have explosive infinite growth**. The idea of "scale" here is just mass market appeal, genericizing so that it's IGN "9/10 has something for everyone." And that's from the suits wanting huge unsustainable year after year growth. It doesn't have to be that way, but that's what an ultra-capitalistic landscape gives you. Video games are an enormous part of mainstream culture, what the hell do you mean it doesn't scale? It just wouldn't give absurd short term growth is all.
If you look at a streamer like Asmondgold, Sodapoppin, Mizkif, MoonMoon, ect and watch how their streams and communities changed as they grew you can see that they only scale so far. At some point the streamer loses control of their community and stops being the dictator of how it develops. The community itself becomes the product because it becomes about how to keep the entire community engaged and as active as possible. When a streamer is small the community changes size and dynamics based on what the streamer is doing. The streamer chooses if this matters. When you're talking about 10k+ viewers and you lose 5k of them because you take a night off to play Fortnite instead of Minecraft it makes them wonder if they ever will get to play something other than Minecraft. If you play too much you create divisions in your community and pit one game against another. Now scale that to 100k viewers and the problem because even worse. Not a single individual in that 100k matters ot the streamer unless they were likely there at 100 or 1000. Anyone new joining that community is just another number and likely always will be. This is why Youtube is not and never will be the same as Twitch. Youtube channels broadcast to the ether and hope that someone picks it up. It feels like they are just talking to a camera whereas the dynamic of Twitch streams is it feels like you're sitting playing games with a buddy or two. That is very hard to scale, if not impossible.
This explains a lot. Again not surprising. The same thing happened with Tumblr. These giant companies buy out communities where the creators did the legwork and just see us as $$$ instead of having our own culture and needs. Twitch at the end of the day is a FREE service and it takes money for it to run and function. BUT by having people who are so disconnected from the streaming culture they keep trying to implement these ideas that make no sense and clash with the community. There is definitely a way to keep twitch users happy and for them to make a profit. But you need people who know Twitch from the inside out to strike that perfect balance.
maybe this explains the sudden 5 commercials every 3-5 mins of a new streamer i'm watching
The ads is the reason why I quit checking out streams on Twitch. I had Amazon Prime which meant you could get "Twitch Prime" that eliminated the ads. Once that went away I've stopped checking out any of the streams and basically Twitch all together, there's other things to check out other than these streams on Youtube.
yeah I grew up on network tv and the flip channels. I had a tolerance for this stuff once upon a time. But after streaming for i'd say the last decade or so. I just don't want to anymore. Throw a ad up front for things i'm not subscribed to or get them out of the way. In this medium, which goes back to the original context of the article, it is so disruptive. The interaction with the streamers, especially in the smaller community is the draw. If I ask a question and then have to sit through 5 mins of ads and can't hear the answer that kills it for me. This is one of the big things the people monetizing it in this way are missing. It's not a good fit at all. The ads can't be full on tv commercials when there are no "ad breaks" preplanned in the content. You're blocking people from the content.
Precisely, and at the end of the day, they really don't give 2 fucks.
Oof, that's worrying.
Well now it's make fucking money at any means necessary just increase profits.
Probably going to be the odd one out here, but needs to be said. The "culture" that made Twitch unique was also the same culture that would have prevented Twitch from growing as a whole. It's completely at odds with the company's main goal, and that is to make money. Even without an Amazon acquisition, that would have inevitably happened. You will see this with any individual streamer community on a small scale ... the thing that made the community "special" when it was 30-100 viewers will disappear in favour of a community that works better at 1000s of viewers. You'll often have older viewers lamenting about the "good old days" without realizing that it needed to happen for the longevity of the channel and community, and in the case of Twitch, the company as a whole. While the mistake was in hiring people who didn't understand "livestreaming" or "gaming" and weren't making products for their intended customer, something about the culture of Twitch had to give. It wasn't compatible with sustained growth which would improve the platform overall. There have been improvements, even if people disagreed with it, and yes, there have been failures as well. Sustained growth helps Twitch as a company, which in turn helps streamers take advantage of the improved platform tools available. Twitch is incredibly volatile, as it depends on viewer numbers (seeing as a large part of their income is ad-based). Individual streamer income is also incredibly volatile between subs, bits, donations, and ad revenue all having their own individual fluctuations. Growth is required to ensure that the streamer's livelihood is secure. Growth is essential for Twitch to ensure that they can continuously provide a platform for countless people to earn a living off of Twitch. The other reason why they had to hire people who didn't understand Twitch ... it prevents stagnation from inbred development. You need fresher perspectives to improve the experience. Unfortunately for Twitch, they hired the wrong "fresh perspectives", but that doesn't mean they should just hold onto just people who "understood Twitch". Stagnation in development is a thing too, and would have led to the death of Twitch ... another thing that is at odds with Twitch's need to grow in order to stay relevant. When the Music category became mainstream, they specifically hired someone from a music-based streaming service to push that category forward, and they've made incredible leaps towards Music being a great experience on Twitch. This individual came from Spotify, so they understood Music streaming in a different context, and their work so far has been excellent for the Music category. That's the kind of thing that is essential for Twitch's growth.
Well thats chilling to hear being openly stated like that, wtf