TWITCH VS MIXERThe big streaming showdown is hotting
up with Tyler “Ninja” Blevins taking his
14 million followers from Twitch to MixerILLUSTRATION: BERKE YASIKIOGLUTHE FUTURE OF STREAMING. STUDY 03IMAGINE WATCHING A LIVESTREAM
of your favourite sport – a football match,
say, or tennis tournament. But instead of
listening to the official commentator, you
provide your own play-by-play analysis –
and thousands of people hang on to your
every word. This is the vision of Twitch
CEO Emmett Shear, who sees a growing
future for “interactive livestreaming”
across the entertainment landscape.
Twitch, now a subsidiary of Amazon, is
best known for its video game content:
millions of followers watch top streamers
play games such as League of Legends,
Fortnite, and Counter-Strike: Global
Offensive in real time. But the platform
is branching out into potential areas of
growth such as sports. It has already
streamed football’s UEFA Champions
League and Europa League qualifiers,
and has made deals for USA Basketball
games and WWE wrestling pre-shows.
One challenge with hosting sporting
content, Shear says, is negotiating
rights that allow Twitch streamers to
run the broadcast on their own channels
with their own commentary.
This crucial interactive element is
what distinguishes Twitch and similar
platforms from the “passive” video
streaming services, such as Netflix.
People are interested not just in
watching the content; they congregate
around particular streamers and are
encouraged to actively engage with
them and other viewers by exchanging
messages and emotes (small imagesthat express a reaction, similar to
emojis) in a live chat. Twitch also invites
third parties to create “extensions” that
streamers can activate to interact in
different ways, for example by sharing
real-time stats or holding a vote.
The upshot is many channels
streaming the same content – be it
Fortnite gameplay or wrestling – but
with their own spin. When it comes to
sport, Shear imagines a channel that
is dedicated to a particular player in
different tournaments and teams, or a
specific skill such as goalkeeping. “We
really think that that’s the future.”
Beyond sport, Twitch is attempting
to expand into other pastimes, such
as music. In April 2019, it launched its
first game under its own brand – Twitch
Sings, a karaoke title, developed with
US game maker Harmonix, that allows
streamers to sing along (usually endear-
ingly badly) to a library of pop and rock
songs. Under the “creative” category
on the platform, you can find streamersmaking their own cooking or craft shows,
while the “IRL” category includes people
hosting talk shows or casually hanging
out. In many ways, this marks a return to
Twitch’s roots. It started out as Justin.TV,
a “lifecasting” channel for co-founder
Justin Kan, who livestreamed his daily
life via a baseball cap-mounted webcam.
However, Twitch is seeing more
competition, especially on the gaming
front. In August 2019, Tyler “Ninja”
Blevins, who with 14 million followers
had been the platform’s top streamer,
announced he was moving from Twitch
to Microsoft-owned Mixer.
Mixer may have only 30 million
monthly active users to Twitch’s
average 15+ million daily visitors, but
one advantage it has is a natural
relationship with Microsoft’s other
gaming properties, such as Xbox and
planned cloud gaming platform xCloud.
General manager Chad Gibson sees
potential for Mixer to work with xCloud
as a tool for game discovery, with users
able to go from watching a streamer play,
say, the next Halo title (itself published
by Xbox Game Studios) to playing the
game themselves in just a couple of
clicks – perhaps even jumping in to play
alongside the streamer.
Similarly, Google’s cloud-based Stadia
will allow players to stream to YouTube
by pushing a button on the controller – a
feature that seems to target the success
of gaming livestreams on Twitch.
Shear says he is not concerned about
increased competition. “Twitch has
never not benefited from innovation in
the game space,” he says. And more
broadly, he sees the rise of interactive
livestreaming as part of a broader shift
towards live events and experiences –
harking back to an era of community
entertainment. “Entertainment was
people sitting around a campfire, singing
songs, dancing,” he says. “It was always
a two-way experience.” Victoria Turk11-19-FTGoogleStadia.indd 100 13/09/2019 11:11