The presence of Twitch is not just affecting the play nor spectating of games, however, but also their production, marketing and reviewing. The success of Twitch is also clearly signalled by its recent purchase for almost a billion dollars by Amazon, and its position as roughly the 100th most viewed website, of any sort, in the world. For example, in 2016, there were 292 billion total minutes watched and 2.2 million unique streamers ( Twitch, 2016) who broadcast their activities on the platform, followed by over 350 billion minutes in 2017 ( Twitch, 2017). In the last 5 years, its visibility and impact have rapidly grown to a point where it has become a major force in the games industry and increasingly in the global media ecosystem as a whole. Twitch is a live streaming platform with a strong focus on the broadcast and viewing of video game content. Keywords digital economy, games industry, game studies, labour, live streaming, reviewing, video games The article concludes that live streaming is a major new force in the games industry, creating new links between developers and influencers and shifting our expectations of game play and game design, and is consequently a platform whose major structural effects are only now beginning to be understood.
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To do so, we draw on empirical data from offline and online fieldwork, including 100 qualitative interviews with professional live-streamers, offline ethnography at live-streaming events, and online ethnography and observation of Twitch streams. We explore three cases: streaming newly released games and the attendant role of streaming in informing consumer choice the visibility and added lifespan that streaming is affording to independent and niche games and older games and the live streaming of the creation of games, shedding light on the games industry and subverting ordinarily expensive or highly competitive game-design courses, training and employment paths. We focus not on live streaming as a form of media production and consumption, but instead explore its newly central role in the contemporary political economy of the whole video games ecosystem. This article explores the growing importance of live streaming, specifically on website and platform, to the games industry. (2019) 'The Impacts of Live Streaming and on the Video Game Industry', Media, Culture and Society, 41(5): 670-688.