Twitch.tv is more important for anyone who follows E-Sports than any other property out there, Cable or Net.

I'm on Twitch.tv more than ABC, NBC, CBS, etc for 8 months out of the year (football season excepted).

And I'm definitely not the only person who is like this.

No kids are leaving Twitch as long as it doesn't get rebranded. Amazon just needs to run it as a separate product.

I'll second that. College football (through whatever means I can get over here - i.e. most likely espn player this year) and twitch makes up 90% of the TV-style media I use.

It's true that video game streaming is far from being mainstream, but considering how engaged kids are in gaming now, I don't think it's far-fetched to see it only becoming more popular in the future.

There is already a lot of money in esports, so I'll go out on a limb here, and say that it's only a matter of time before it becomes mainstream.

I agree. When you look at companies like Major League Gaming who are becoming not only tournament hosts, but providers for online competition AND streaming you can't help but ask how popular gaming will become. MLG is already working with a developer in China to bring a video game arena/stadium to Hengqin Island.

A stadium. For video games.

The barrier to entry is just so much lower for video games when compared to professional sports - nearly anyone can play and get good enough to compete against the pros without even leaving their house. Personally I prefer "real" sports over their virtual counterparts, but millions of people disagree with me - and that number will only continue to grow. I think eSports are going to grow dramatically over the next 5 years.

the thing is people are always building stadiums, large and small for things. its whether the sport actually sticks. arena football, minor league football, the tampa bay devil rays, many many olympic stadiums, on and on it goes. In the end a stadium is a building.

That's the only point. Not much of one.

The internet is a pretty big stadium.

It's been proven to work some places. South Korea has had cable TV stations (plural) dedicated to e-sports for over a decade.

I guess I'm too old to "get it". Why is watching other people play video games fun? I've been a gamer since the mid 80's and I don't see the appeal. Maybe if they hosted the Official Video Game Olympics or something, that might be cool.

But just watching someone else play Fallout 3? Talk about a lack of immersion. I don't get it...

The reasons why people watch other people play video games are several:

1. People like to see someone of a very high level play a game that they too play.

2. You often get to see someone playing a game that you never heard about. For instance: The recent speed running marathon streams have showed a lot of obscure and old games.

3. And most important: People are entertained by the commentary from the streamer.

If you just run a game with no commentary you will be hard pressed to get any viewers. It is more that with the younger generation games have become a huge part of culture and to see someone playing games you play as well and chatting give the viewer a social experience. There is chat too and the streamers often address people in chat. If you look at the most popular personalities on YouTube many of them are gaming related. People spend a lot of time playing today's very immersive, social, and large scale games so it follows that they can be entertained by personalities involved with them.

You're missing another key type of viewer: the person who isn't able to play games at the moment.

I'll often leave a stream on in the background at work, or watch someone playing while I'm rocking my son to sleep.

You're not the only one... a friend of me who works in the IT department for a big IT company says about 20% of their daily network traffic goes to Twitch nowadays. It's a bit ridiculous if you think about it but he said he has many colleagues who have a stream open on the background of one of their screens.

I think a cross between #1 and #3 is easily the lion's share of viewership, especially if the game is difficult and almost antagonistic toward the player. I'm reminded of the Youtube videos posted some years ago by ProtonJon of his Super Mario World ROM hack play-throughs. I'd never personally play them, but it's easy to get an almost schadenfreude-level of enjoyment out of watching someone else suffer through a game that's extremely punishing. The same easily applies to other games that most people wouldn't ordinarily play for a variety of reasons (too old, as in your example, or perhaps too frightening e.g. Amnesia--that one made the hair on my neck stand up).

Well 99% of the views come from competitive games being played online. For example, there are less than 40 people watching Fallout 3 as I type this, but over 120,000 watching League of Legends. So you're right to not get it, because that's not really something people do.

When players do watch a streamer play a single player game, it's usually because the game has recently been released, and they want to make an opinion on whether or not they should buy it. Or because they enjoy the streamer's personality and commentary. They're not watching Fallout 3, they're watching TotalBiscuit play Fallout 3.

99% is just plain wrong. What about lirik's night stream. They were playing Hanging with Friends and it had ~60k viewers only half that of Lol and more than WoW, CS:Go, or Hearthstone at the time.

Generally it's watching people play online games, not single player ones like Fallout. And usually the top streamers are very highly ranked in their respective games. A viewer gets a chance to learn things, root for someone they like, and maybe have aspirations of their own.

Think of it this way: imagine if Kasparov and Fisher live streamed all of their chess practice, informal competition, and formal competition. Odds are chess fans would line up to watch.

It's just like that, but with strategic online games instead of strategic board games.

Also, some of the streamers are practically comedians, so they sometimes watch for general comedy and enjoyment as well. Or a mix.

Chess, like the so called "video games" being streamed, ought to be called a sport. Some people who don't know the distinction between a single player game (ala tombraider) and e-sport is not going to be able to comment nor appreciate the power of streaming.

> Chess, like the so called "video games" being streamed, ought to be called a sport.

Other way around, I think. Competitive video games ought to be called "competitive games," like chess. The whole "e-sport" label is stupid: "sport" has always meant a primarily physical competition, and competitive games of the sitting-down type--chess, checkers, Go, Scrabble, etc.--have been their own thing, with leagues and tournaments and titles, for decades or centuries before video games came around. Video games are more dependent on quick thinking and reflexes, but they're still primarily mental competition--see also speed chess, etc.

But competitive video gamers are too full of themselves to be happy rubbing shoulders with something as unhip as chess. They insist that they deserve the same (arguably equally undeserved) acclaim and money and fandom as sports, so they keep pushing the "e-sports" label and all the associated silly trappings and theatrics. After two decades of fruitless flailing, it seems like it might finally be about to stick, more's the pity.

> Maybe if they hosted the Official Video Game Olympics or something

I think it's just like any physical sport - having knowledge about a game and watching someone skilled play is interesting. People watch to learn and get better at something they find interesting. That said, watching someone play Fallout definitely isn't what gamers think of when you mention "eSports" - generally eSports refers to some level of competition, which is why real time strategy games and first person shooters are so popular - both require a lot of skill and knowledge of the game to be good at.

Getting back to the "Official Video Game Olympics" - there are actually some pretty serious competitions out there. Certain game developers have been known to self-host their own tournaments for millions of dollars in prizes (League of Legends and Call of Duty being two examples). There's also plenty of companies making a profitable business out of running these tournaments: ESL in Europe and Major League Gaming in the US being two of the bigger names out there right now. So in fact, the competition and prizes are very real, so anyone interested in a game may be interested in seeing who's going to win $1,000,000.

Additionally (and anecdotally my own experience): I don't really have time to play games much anymore, but I do have time to spend 30 minutes here and there watching someone play something.

It's nice that I don't have to invest the time it takes to get up to speed to know what's going on if the commentary's good -- and it's a solid, mindless contrast to TV for me (which has been phenomenally engaging lately. it's impossible to read emails and watch house of cards, which isn't true for game streaming :D)

This is a five minute video that does a really good job of explaining just that http://youtu.be/MN2jDtRNuCI

My daughters spend hours watching a hyperactive British guy scream at his Minecraft game. This, despite the fact that we limit the amount of time they spend online; it's the top priority for them.

When they play Minecraft, they make up their own commentary and they're dying to have their own show.

which? I'm looking for child friendly ones (no cursing, cussing, annoying sarcasam, etc).

http://www.twitch.tv/cohhcarnage is a rather family friendly variety streamer. Be aware, though, that he does stream 18+ from time to time(he'll make it known in the title, though).

http://www.twitch.tv/giantwaffle is primarily a minecraft streamer, and he generally doesnt curse and explains what hes doing. Beware, he does do nightstreams with Lirik, including cussing. He'll announce these, though.

Ballistic Squid, by any chance?

Stampylonghead!

A couple of things, one my kids like to hang out and watch me play, it was entertaining for them and they enjoyed seeing their dad get smashed by the monster. And second, for games like World of Warcraft where there difficult engagements with high level enemies (boss fights) it really helped to watch not one but several folks do the fight first before you could effectively participate[1].

What I find astonishing are Youtube "clip shows" on cable channels. These are "shows" where the hosts screen videos they found on Youtube and talk about them or rip them apart. I don['t get the appeal but apparently they fill the air time. Something which was a curated set of videos about a particular video game might actually have appeal to me, either from a shopping (I wonder if I would like it) to a mastery (I wonder what other people do at that stage) kind of thing. Not saying it would make money but I would be tempted to watch it. Some of the Eve commentary would make for an excellent show as well.

[1] - Blizzard however is doing what they can to make it unnecessary much to the demise of the 'fun' aspect.

Most people watch big tournaments and/or high level competitive players (LoL, Dota2, cs:go, SC2). LoL and Dota2 run tournaments with prize money in the millions and the competing teams are fulltime players that live together and have coaches and sponsors, etc. Imagine Messi (or some American star athlete, eg. LeBron) streaming his training via a GoPro. Fans would be very interested.

Single player / non-competitive games (such as your example, Fallout 3) are indeed much less exciting and get less viewers. There are also streamers that aren't very good at playing anything, but they're entertaining in one way or another and have built up a following that just watched them play whatever.

First of all, successful streamers tend to have entertaining personalities (at least their audience thinks so). Other than that, I think there are a few main reasons why people like it.

1. Sometimes you just want to veg out and watch something, not be an active participant. You can enjoy the game without putting in any effort.

2. There's a community aspect to it. In a single-player game like Fallout you get to see someone else enjoying and talking about what you enjoy, and you can interact with others who share the same interests.

3. Many of the people who stream are really good players. Almost no one reaches that level of play so for most people watching a streamer is the only way to experience it. They can also offer insights and help make you a better player.

It is kind of weird and not traditional... but it does make sense to a young'n like me.

To hang out with pseudo-friends who have a common interest from the comfort of your own home.

It is just the point at which TV/film and gaming converge. By watching someone play you get the relaxed cinematic/narrative quality of a TV show with the enagagement of a game.

Watching competitive games is just like watching any other sport.

Exactly this.

I never understood how people could watch soccer/football and not get bored to death until the rise of esports. Now I often watch the league games for my favorite team and most of the world championship games.

I wouldn't watch someone else play Fallout 3, but I like watching people play competitive games like Hearthstone and SC2 because I feel like it makes me a better player. In the case of Hearthstone, the difference between watching and playing is minimal - it's basically the same if the streamer makes the play you would, and if not then you learn something (or, occasionally, get to feel clever because they didn't see your superior play).

That's a strange thing about Hearthstone. Watching a stream is almost as much fun as playing. You still get to make the decisions in your head since you have all the same information as the streamer.

Ha! I've got an 8-yr-old daughter that loves making gameplay videos. "Hi, my name is Isa, I'm 8, today I'm going to show you how I make this thing with Lego"... this year alone, she's recorded about 40GB of such videos. Sometimes she watches similar videos online.

I don't really get it, but she came up with the idea and started doing it by herself. There must be some sort of attraction to this thing.

The most watchable games are competitive multiplayer ones, e.g. starcraft, league of legends, dota. It's probably not very appealing to a non-gaming person, but the same can be said about baseball; I don't know rules and I'm pretty sure I won't understand anything going on in the field.

I don't get people watching single player games but I watch people play competitively to keep an eye out for new strategies and I also have some teams I'm a fan of.

I watch some singleplayer streams mostly for the entertainment value. Just watching someone play isn't very fun, but some streamers have funny commentary and play the game is weird ways.

It's not very fun watching someone play Fallout, but it's entertaining watching someone play Fallout role-playing as a homicidal maniac that uses nothing but his bare fists. The sheer difficulty is impressive, and if coupled with a talent for presentation/humor it can be a pretty fun time.

This is a good idea for a stream unless someone is already doing it. I remember people doing hard runs of games like that, beating the whole game without any weapons etc. I'd definitely watch that if I'm interested in the game already.

SpoilerWarning does exactly that https://www.youtube.com/user/SpoilerWarningShow/playlists

It's an absolutely standard and expected part of game marketing now.

Competitive game players watch replays and streams to increase their level of play in e.g. RTSs, etc.

I don't get it either. I'd rather watch a "real" sports person playing and training than a video game session.

Any real sport or just the ones you know? For example, baseball is really popular in the US but most people where I'm from would have a hard time watching it if you tried to pay them to: we don't know the rules of the game very well, we understand the strategies the teams use, we can't tell an exciting play from a boring one, etc.

With video games its a bit similar. If you played the game or something similar before you can appreciate whats going on but otherwise you will be completely lost and everything feels pointless.

Depends on your definition of mainstream. I know some huge games like League of Legends, DOTA2, and Starcraft routinely do 6 figure concurrent viewer counts for tourneys. That is higher than a lot of TV. I personally have had 8,000 live viewers.

NFL like status is not attainable so lets not say that this is the business plan. Yes the users can move somewhere else, but for gaming twitch is the de facto site for streaming right now. There has been talk of switching sites whenever some streamers get aggravated but it would have to be a huge failure to have people switch en masse.

It is also not easy to do live streaming. It uses massive amounts of bandwidth, and you have to keep this going live to people all over the world. Twitch is the YouTube of video game streaming at the moment and it would be hard to unseat them.

What do you stream?

I stream primarily fighting games (Street Fighter) which is a much smaller audience than the games I mentioned, but EVO world championships does over 130k live viewers every July. EVO is the largest tournament in Fighting games. Our demographic is very young, and we have a lot of serious fans that have actually come to our location from far away to play with us.

Keep in mind these are concurrent video viewers over the course of many hours. If you take video plays like Youtube does it measures in the many millions for a tournament like EVO.

I think your underestimating the potential of game streaming. Twitch might be a seemingly impossible distance from reaching NFL-like numbers on a single stream, but what about 1% of that audience on 100 streams? or 500 streams? They don't even need to have that, because twitch is streaming 24/7. Everyone will see a few YouTube videos a week, maybe even a few a day, but Twitch users will watch a stream for HOURS.

I completely agree. I'm not huge into watching streaming but I'll be more likely to stay watching a stream for a lot longer than a YouTube video. Which for advertising purposes. They have more opportunities for either on page ads or intermittent ads between rounds/matches. Combined with the fact that most streaming. You develop more interest and involvement with a player or players.

I don't care about a random keyboard or video card advertisement. But what keyboard or video card your favorite streamer is using seem like a far more valuable ad to pursue. The NFL and others have a lot of branding. And merchandising among teams. YouTube can't get people to buy shirts or random things of random funny fading videos. But I think it'd be a lot more likely for many to buy something relateded to longer term Fandom

I'll preface this by saying that I do believe esports will be the biggest international competition after soccer/football. I do agree that twitch won't be the end all be all in live streaming games. The barrier is very low and I think in a growing market, a company under amazon or google can't flourish.. where a startup that leaner and more in touch with trends could easily come out and compete.

Even if live-streaming video games (or other digital real-time content like screenshares) was a hot market, Amazon doesn't have as good a record as Google in integrating it's acquisitions.

Look at Audible - they still have their own crufty website (which uses the same credentials as your Amazon site, sure) and discovery and reviews are less usable there than on Amazon.com.

Also see Goodreads, DPR and IMDB - all places where things have essentially gone on "as before".

What good is "integrating" acquisitions? Users don't care about your org chart.

Amazon could clone Twitch fairly easily (bandwidth is the limiting factor and Amazon happens to have gobs of it), but they still bought the Twitch brand. It would be a ridiculous waste to throw that in the trash.

I think the integration is pretty good, personally. I mostly listen to books these days, and it's usually Audible books purchased through the Amazon site.

Audiobooks (both Audible and physical CDs) are listed side-by-side other types of book media on Amazon.com. To pick a random example, if you look up Steel World by BV Larson: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FCXPC94/ - you'll see the paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible audio edition, and sometimes others.

Some titles have "Whispersync for Voice", which I think is an impressive type of integration. With those titles, you can sync your progress between the Audible and Kindle formats, so that you don't lose progress when switching from reading to listening. Additionally, when you own one format, the price of the other format drops substantially (if I recall, usually to a few dollars). I count that as a deep and sophisticated type of integration between the Kindle store and Audible.

Whether I visit the Amazon.com site or Audible depends on my motivation. If I want to find a good book, and I'm willing to either read or listen, then I'll hit Amazon. If I'm looking specifically for an audiobook, I'll hit Audible. Also, I think the Audible site might have been redone since you've last seen it. The home page doesn't look like what was around before the acquisition. I see a modern, Amazon-style product grid on audible.com when logged in. It's also integrating content from Amazon such as "Based on your Amazon and Kindle book purchases, we think you'll enjoy...". The Audible site to me looks like a curated window into Amazon.com now.

Amazon owns IMDB? The fact that I did not know that is reassuring.

To some extent, I think that is not a bad thing.

I think that's exactly why these start-ups accepted the Amazon acquisition, because they retain their own autonomy.

Twitch will more easily move to deliver IPTV broadcast of events to the cable-cutting netflix crowd than traditional media. I would be happy to bet long on them.

I mean we already see the start of it with YouTube broadcasting Coachella, etc. More recently, Twitch has been used to stream gaming-related real life stuff, like the Dota 2 International 4 after-party DJ set. Conversely, the big media conglomorates are still wrestling with how to deliver content online and most just mirror your cable subscription to your device, rather than offer IP-exclusive methods of delivery.

I don't think Amazon is the best fit for Twitch - I personally would've preferred some company who is in the entertainment industry and more willing to start breaching into broadcasting live concerts, sport, big events, etc. on it. Valve, for example, already uses Twitch pretty heavily during their events and has shown interest to move outside of gaming (they sell non-gaming software via Steam) but they're probably also not mature enough to really start becoming a fully-fledged media company either. I don't really know of one company who is ideal in that space.

That said, I don't think Amazon is the worst either. It'll be intersting to see how they take it.

Amazon is a pretty good fit for Twitch. Why? 1) Digital distribution is becoming the norm for video games. Amazon already sells physical media and purchase codes for many game platforms. It's a tie-in to sell product. 2) Amazon is breaking into ad serving to go head-to-head with Google and Facebook. Twitch will likely be the flagship content property for their ad network. Game publishers often spend just as much in marketing a game as they do in developing it (http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Most_expensive_video_games). Amazon stands to scoop up many millions (~100M?) in advertising revenue from the games industry alone. 3) Amazon already has a streaming delivery network whose subscription base they want to expand. If they can upsell (or merely sell) Prime to gamers, then that should supplement their ad income. 4) They already know how much it costs to run Twitch, because it's built on AWS.

The entertainment industry is notoriously short-sighted and generally parasitic when it comes to technology. It's also an industry that is extremely image conscious. Having uncontrolled/unedited content that runs counter to their image is anathema. If any game publisher or old guard broadcasting company had gotten its hands on Twitch, I strongly believe it wouldn't have gone well.

With the impact from the many health issues only just starting to be felt, I'd take a bet that esports are more popular than the NFL in another decade.

You do realize that the most subscribed Youtube channel is literally just that. A guy playing games with funny commentary.

>There just aren't enough great uses for live streaming yet and video game streaming is very far from being mainstream.

You may be right, but you may be wrong. Twitch is in a similar sort of space as sports - which are the best kind of content generators (and content is king). Piracy is largely side-stepped because value is highest when it is LIVE. New content is always created by incumbents and new challengers, and there is tons of opportunity for marketing.

I don't know what the future holds, but E-Sports are here to stay. It'll only get bigger.

>Twitch obviously can't believe it's very close to reaching NFL-like status either or it wouldn't sell for a mere billion and change.

Why not? Superbowl has 100 million viewers. 200 million viewers for the total NFL season. I don't think those numbers are that impressive, when Facebook gets 800 million active users per day, on 1.3 billion active accounts and Youtube gets 4 billion views per day. In fact, NFL is pretty much done. There is only so much money you can squeeze out of North America, and nobody else cares about it.

>The users will all move to Hitbox.tv or any number of new sites that will pop up. It's easy to do live streaming, it's just expensive.

It's easy to do Youtube. It's easy to do Facebook. It's easy to do Instagram. It's easy to do WhatsApp. Now go do it and see how well you do.

You would be surprised at the viewer numbers on twitch for any given night, just random sampling can show hundreds of thousands of viewers.

Plus a lot of the people who are streaming there do links back to Amazon, Newegg, and similar, for the gear they use or want. I am curious if Amazon will put pressure on the streamers to limit links to non Amazon sites for goods.

Plus with private streams its entirely possible they may leverage it into a webex type business.

> wouldn't sell for a mere billion and change

Worth pointing out that's a lot of money -- if it becomes a large cultural force, they'll still get credit, if there's more money on the table... some people don't care about the difference in numbers that huge. So this takes a lot of variability off the table at a fairly marginal cost (no second giant yacht, etc).

You could have said all the same things about YouTube when they got acquired. It sold for around the same amount of money, it wasn't at all clear that online video was going to become mainstream, there were massive copyright issues, existing competitors, and it turned out very nicely for them.