作者：Tracey Lien

成为媒体巨头是一个多么疯狂的理念啊。

在2007年，Justin Kan，Emmett Shear，Michael Seibel和Kyle Vogt有了一个看似很蠢，但却是可行的想法。

Kan将一个网络摄像头安在自己的帽子上。在9个月时间里，他并未取下该摄像头。Kan所看到的一切都将呈现在人们的面前。网络摄像头捕捉了他每日的互动——1天24小时，1周7天。当他去散步，吃饭，阅读，看电影，约会或回邮件时，这一切行动都被记录了下来。当他睡觉时，他将摄像头放在身旁，如此我们还是能看到他。当他坐在由陶瓷制成的宝座上时，他将摄像机的镜头对向了天花板。

这四个朋友决定创造一种全新的娱乐方式——即当直播视频流技术刚刚出现，当在线视频几乎不能毫无延迟地进行，当在线播放你的生活内容的理念还是件新鲜事时。

Shear之后说道，新奇的事物好像一直都有。这四个朋友并不确定该从哪里着手去实现这个愚蠢的理念。他们不知道Kan时而有趣，但是大多数情况下很无聊的视频流将如何支持一项业务，或者该业务将从哪里开始。但是在不确定之中，他们的广播试验为一些更大的挑战（超乎他们的想象）播下了种子。

使用电池组，笔记本电脑和网络摄像头运行着试验——充满着各种未知数，这四个朋友并不知道他们这个愚蠢的理念将会改变产业并成为世界上最大的专用电子游戏视频直播视频流服务。

改变产业

位于旧金山金融区的Twitch办公室占据了布什街一栋建筑（跨越了半个城市街区）的一整层。该公司的的大厅有一面墙上装满了平面电视，每个电视都呈现着其亮紫色和白色相间的logo—-“TWITCH, TWITCH TWITCH”。办公室的一侧是一排排办公桌，坐着20个敲着代码或看着视频流的工作人员。另一侧则是以电子游戏的地点命名的会议室。这里有Rapture室，灵感来自《生化奇兵》，这个房间装饰着假的壁炉和真皮扶手椅。这里还有Megaton室，灵感来自《辐射3》的废墟城，这间办公室还在装修中。

100多名Twitch员工一直致力于确保服务的顺利运行，甚至当它受到流量的冲击时。平均每个月，Twitch将播放超过600万个视频，其粉丝们将看到120亿分钟的连续镜头。在2013年末，每个月有超过4500万的粉丝在观看Twitch的视频流。

直播电子游戏也许看起来是一项较为利基的活动，只有一些死忠粉才会去关心，但根据某些数据表明事实上并不是如此。在最近的《华尔街日报》的图表上，我们可以看到美国网络流量的最高值，以及公司网络对此做出的回应，在此Twitch排行第四，前面有Netflix，谷歌和苹果，它甚至排在Facebook，亚马逊，Pandora和Hulu前面。

当主机制造商索尼和微软正努力将直播视频流分别整合到PlayStation 4和Xbox One时，他们都选择了Twitch。

来自电子游戏咨询公司Hit Detection的George Jones说道：“我认为Twitch就像是针对于游戏的ESPN。”在加入Hit Detection前，Jones曾在Wikia工作过，这是一个社区信息共享网站。“有趣的是从许多方面看来这是一次合法的比较。你在Twitch中看到的是人们采取与ESPN一样的方式去报导游戏。10年前，竞争游戏场景刚刚出现，我想我们现在所拥有的很大程度是源于Twitch。联盟，团队和角色之所以具有较大的活力是因为人们可以看到它，并且是基于吸引人的方式看着它。”

Twitch的大部分内容是源自eSports，Jones表示他相信Twitch已经基于某种方式验证了电子竞技游戏，这是其它公司并未做到的。与任何运动一样，出席观看总比相互竞争来得重要，而Twitch便是为人们提供了这样的方式。它让观看某些人玩游戏变得更加可行。它让玩家能够轻松地学会技能型游戏。如今人们会不断尝试追踪朋友的联合视频——任何类别中的最佳玩家都会在Twitch上传达他们的实践过程。

前《Games for Windows: The Official Magazine》总编辑以及现今的Hit Detection顾问Jeff Green说道：“我认为这让更多人意识到他们可能成为想要观看其他人游戏的那种人。我认为这是一个需要客服的巨大障碍。当我告诉人们我正在做《黑暗之魂》的直播并且我告诉他们我正在网站玩这款游戏而别人在观看我游戏时，像我的家人等群体（不属于游戏玩家）便会问道‘为什么人们要这么做？为什么人们会想看你玩游戏？’这是我在第一次听说这种方法时也曾产生过的想法。”

“不过我认为这是Twitch在此实现的一大任务：一旦你迈出了那一步并观看某人做某事，一旦你观看了解如何广播的人做广播，观看如何娱乐的人进行娱乐，或者观看擅长游戏的人玩游戏，你便会开始想，这真的是件有趣的事啊。”

Jones和Green做了另一项运动类比：为什么任何人想观看其他人扔球或接球？为什么任何人想观看别人滑冰？如果人们可以基于足够有趣且具有技能的方式去做到它，为什么他们不这么做？

Green说道：“显然，有很多人认为这么做很蠢。但一旦你这么做了，一旦你坐下观看别人怎么做时，你便会有‘哇，这真的好棒，这太有趣了！’的想法。”

广播

Jayson Love是一名来自Montana的34岁广播员。在Twitch，他被叫做“MAN”。在他的广播MANvsGAME中，他的任务是“打败每一款无价值以及一些有价值的游戏”。4年前，Love仍在为了生计奔波于各种临时工作间。而今天，他是Twitch的全职直播员，并且赚到了比之前更多的收益。他是Twitch中最受欢迎的广播员之一，每天晚上将面向4000名常客播放超过8小时的广播。

Love说道：“Twitch已经彻底改变了我的生活。一开始我是做着一些没有长期计划或目标的临时工作，而Twitch却让我成为一个小有名气的人，这是我根本想不到的变化。我的妈妈曾与自己的同时提起我的广播，对方竟然说知道我，并表示经常收看我的广播。”

Love第一次开始广播是在4年前于Twitch的竞争对手UStream上，那时候他刚看完美国喜剧演员兼说唱歌手Andy Milonakis的即兴说唱，同时还整合了观众在UStream聊天框中所回复的内容到歌词中。因为之前从未看过这类型的互动广播，Love表示他完全被吸引住了，并决定基于电子游戏做一些类似的事。他说道：“关于这个玩笑的大笑点便是我认为自己是个聪明人，并占据着没人拥有的这个黄金想法。然后我便前往UStream并发现其实有许多人在做着这件事。”

Love希望自己的广播能够与众不同。他希望它能像是一个节目。他希望以此去娱乐观众。广播将是关于他如何努力战胜特定的游戏，但却不是eSports那样。他笑着说道：“这是关于一个人的努力，所以应该有些剧情。但大部分内容是关于我如何尝试着创造出乐趣，让人们开怀大笑。这就像是我自己表演的一出戏。虽然我需要一直表演着，但是我却非常热衷这么做。”

早些时候，Love的广播观众还不到10人。而在过去4年间，他的观众群体不断增加着。随着UStream及其竞争者Justin.tv（游戏邦注：Twitch便是从中分离出来）不断发展并添加更多新功能，Love基于自己所喜欢的功能不断改变着自己的节目。他最终决定跳槽到Justin.tb，因为他喜欢这里的视频播放器。当Twitch问世时，他带着Justin.tv的其它游戏内容一起来到了这里。

Bill和Jason Munkel是Twitch的另一对受欢迎的广播员。58岁的Bill和18岁的Jason共同主持FatherSonGaming频道。每天晚上，这对父子会广播他们一起玩《使命召唤》的情况。该频道才诞生一年，但是每天晚上却又2000至3000名观众。这对广播员在Twitch上共有13万的粉丝。

Jason说道：“其实这是我的主意。我记得在车上，我总是习惯观看许多《使命召唤》的评论者的YouTube视频，我记得那时候我想着爸爸和我具有某些独特之处。因为并不是所有父子都会一起玩《使命召唤》。我还记得那时候我想着，如果我们能够在网上放出我们一起游戏的视频该多酷啊。我们所做的与别人做的是不同的。”

Jason将这一想法告诉了爸爸Bill，作为一名终身游戏玩家，Bill再同意不过了。Bill说道：“我们想法一致，都认为这是一个很棒的想法，我们的广播也是由此诞生的。”

这对广播员一开始先记录下他们玩《使命召唤》的过程，并将视频上传到YouTube上。他们的视频并不是真的关于游戏，而是关于Bill和Jason之间的关系。有时候他们会上传一些嬉戏，跟着音乐跳舞等行为的视频。观众也因为观看这些视频感到开心，这对父子也喜欢与他们所创建的社区的成员进行互动。Jason说道：“我们所强调的一直是关于互动。我们喜欢与人们交谈，回应每一条评论，并观看回应。这便是我做这件事最享受的地方。”

Bill说道：“人们因为我感到开心是因为他们想看到一个活到我这个岁数的人是如何不落在年轻人和游戏后面。说实话，有时候我还是会被自己吓到。我们的所有观众之所以会感到兴奋是因为我真的在这方面做得很好。”

在Jason看到他们有机会能够直播节目时，便决定让FatherSonGaming加入Twitch。“在这里我们能够进行直接且实时的互动。你可以与当前的观众进行交谈。我认为这么做真的很棒。”

Bill和Jason每天晚上会广播3个小时的节目，并坚持着每周的日程表。尽管他们总是一起玩游戏，但Bill表示Twitch的广播进一步改变了他们的关系。他说道：“虽然平时我们也总是在一起，但Twitch将我们拉得更近。我们几乎一直都在一起，不管是在广播还是在思考广播内容。因为总在一起，我们的关系变得更加紧密，我想这是我们应该感谢Twitch的。”

JUSTIN.TV

尽管该服务现在是针对于电子游戏社区，但Twitch的首席执行官Emmett Shear表示当他和三个好友在2007年创建了Twitch的母公司Justin.tv时，他们并未猜到自己现在在做什么。

Shear说道：“当某天Justin Kan（联合创始人）和我在剑桥开车兜风时，我们尝试着想出有关业务的一些想法，然后我们开始谈论在网上广播我们当前的对话。这就像是这样的对话真的很有趣。我敢保证如果能够将其分享到网上会是很棒的做法。通过不断堆积将会变成怎样更极端的版本呢？在网上广播你的所有对话！那更极端的版本是怎样的？通过视频和音频在网上广播你的生活！”

事后看来，Shear承认这并不是一个多了不起的业务理念。这的确是个想法，但他们却并未拥有一个业务计划。在网上广播某些人的生活将如何才能1）赚钱，2）可持续？他们之后将明确这些问题。Kan抓住了这一机遇，并说服了另外两个好友Kyle Vogt和Michael Seibel去帮助他们创建Justin.tv。

Shear和Vogt负责项目的技术部分，让直播能够一天24小时渗透到无数人的生活中。Seibel的任务是为Kan找到有趣的事去做，而Kan必须带上网络摄像头去广播他的每一步行动。网络摄像头被连接到他背在身后的笔记本电脑上。笔记本电脑被负载4张EV-DO卡片上从而不断提供给他网络连接。他随身携带了多个电池包，从而让他和搭档能够在笔记本电脑快没电时快速做出应对。在接下来9个月时间里，任何登录Justin.tv的人都能透过Justin Kan的眼睛看到他所看到的世界。

这四个朋友尝试着在Justin.tv创造全新的娱乐形式——一种基于网络的真实电视节目。即通过它所做的获得关注，但就像Shear现在说的，这几乎就是一个噱头。他说道：“广播24/7并不能说是一项业务。但它真的非常棒。”

当四个创始人尝试着思考他们的广播试验的下一步时，观众们开始问道是否可以尝试着创造自己的广播。在发展Justin.tv时，Shear和Vogt已经创造了一种工具能让人们通过网络摄像头顺畅地将视频传达网上。人们开始使用一个名为YouTube的全新视频平台，但在2007年，YouTube却还未能支持直播。Justin.tv的技术是专门针对直播而设计的。

在2007年夏天，Kan从帽子上卸下网络摄像头。Justin.tv平台正式问世。

与其它在同一年出现的直播服务一样，Justin.tv被划分成一些不同的类别。这里有致力于运动内容的频道，也有针对动画视频的频道。其类别范围从新闻广播过度到扑克比赛直播。但发展最快的一种类别便是电子游戏，这种情况并不只是出现于Justin.tv。人们将自己的计算机连接到视频流帐号中，并直播他们所玩的游戏。甚至那些在主机上玩游戏的人也为了通过Twitch播放他们正在玩的游戏而设置了外部视频捕捉设备。人们会通过广播比赛，速度等去谈论并分游戏。也有许多人只是广播他们正在玩的游戏，并在视频中进行讨论。

两年过去了，Justin.tv知道游戏用户正在不断撞到。到2010年末，Justin.tv的游戏覆盖了每种类别。2011年3月，它意识到必须给游戏一个术语自己的领域。2011年6月，它发布了第一个版本的Twitch，这是一个专注于游戏的直播服务，其实就是披着不同外衣的Justin.tv。

他们是否期待过Twitch能够获得成功。Shear表示肯定。甚至在Twitch出现前，Justin.tv的游戏类别数量迫切需求一个能够让用户直播游戏的服务。他们是否期待它能在如此短的时间内获得成功？Shear承认这真的让他们非常惊讶。他们知道人们想要分享自己的游戏玩法。但是他们并不知道一个月竟然会出现超过100万个不同的广播员。

Shear说道：“但我认为这是自然而然的事，人们总是想要与别人分享自己的成就和体验。我并不是一个足球运动员，但是我却能够观看Super Bowl。”

“这真的很有趣。如果你回顾游戏历史并回想几年前的情况，请思考下游戏是从哪里开始的？它是始于街机。那里诞生了第一款电子游戏。而关于街机非常有趣的一件事便是你所看到的比你玩的还多。可以说我们现在只是再次呈现这样的情况。”

想要分享

从许多方面来看，Twitch发现了玩家想要分享体验的愿望。在街机时代，玩家经常会花许多时间去观看更棒的人玩游戏，因为更棒的人总是能在其他人输钱时继续游戏。

观看其他人游戏本身并不只是一种娱乐形式；它还是一种教育方式。在竞争打斗游戏领域，玩家创造了租借录像带和DVD去相互分享信息。

世界最有名的打斗游戏比赛Evolution（EVO）的创始人Tom Cannon说道：“在20世纪90年代，他们将其称为格斗影视厅。它们包含了那些没人想到，但却出现在《街头霸王》或《铁拳》等游戏中会出现的创造性内容。”

这些租借录像带起源于日本。某些人（游戏邦注：通常是想出了让人印象深刻的移动组合的打斗游戏玩家）会将自己的打斗执行记录下来。租借录像带将在打斗游戏圈子中传播着。慢慢地，这些副本流到了海外，并继续延续着。

Cannon说道：“你必须知道某些人并借他们的录像带去创造你自己的副本。让人惊讶的是，录像带便是如此进行传播。当某些人前往日本，他们会在商店的架子上发现它，或他们将在访问朋友的时候得到它，然后他们便可以进行复制，将其带回美国，然后在这个国家进行传播。虽然这有点疯狂，但是这是他们在网上所买不到的。这都是通过朋友圈进行传播。”

当视频在美国传播开来时，它们已经被复制了无数次，屏幕上的镜头基本上已经非常模糊了。

如今，租借录像带和DVD已经是过去时代的遗迹。今天，当游戏玩家想要分享自己的体验时，不管是通过广播全球游戏比赛还是自己的打斗视频，他们会通过Twitch做到这些。只要简单地按压几个按键，全世界便都能看到他们在做什么。

在《星际争霸》社区，玩家会略过录像带和DVD而使用完全不同的方法去分享自己的比赛。

Derek Reball管理者eSports的团队Nv。他想起了广播出现前的时代，那时候玩家会录下游戏重放的低保真度视频文件。游戏的评论者将记录自己的音频文件并观看重放。视频和音频文件将被压缩并上传到网上。人们会下载它们并同时游戏。Reball说道：“这就像是早旧的无线电理念。虽然这么做并不好，但我们正是这么做到的。”

在《星际争霸》和其它打斗游戏社区中，租借录像带和低保真度音频文件已经被直播视频流所取代，让我们可以更轻松地获得比赛和教育资源。如今的Twitch比任何其它的流服务拥有更大的势头。基于该势头，它成为了电子游戏直播的首选平台。

专注于成功

Shear将Twitch的成功归因于它的专注点：它的唯一流服务便是游戏。Shear说道：“对此我们一点都不怀疑。我们之所以能够吸引电子游戏直播流用户的注意是便是因为这一专注点。我们是100%专注于任何能够获得最棒游戏内容的事。这也是我们唯一想的内容，当你尝试着为所有人创造某些有益的事时，你便很难打败那些专注于为某一特定领域的人创造有益的事的人，因为他们具有绝对的专注力。”

“相比较其它公司花费在游戏中的每一个小时，我们所投入的可能是10个小时，因为我们只专注于做这么一件事。”

这种专注力便是区分Twitch与其它竞争者的工具。Twitch背后的记录提供给用户针对于电子游戏流的选择。

Shear说道：“例如当你正在广播像《英雄联盟》或《魔兽争霸》等多人在线打斗游戏时，你必须确保不要让任何人看到你的广播超过6分钟，因为如果让人们知道你拥有某些道具，对方便会获得一个巨大优势。所以你并不希望其他团队会事先发现这点。”

“如果你正在参加一场比赛，结果便非常重要，你最好不要泄漏它。所以我们创造了延迟服务让你能够选择想要延迟多久广播，不过这看似有点违反我们的直觉。通常情况下，你会尝试着减少视频的延迟，而不是提高它。但在这种情况下，为了赢得比赛你就需要这一延迟服务。。”

“当我们创造了这一功能时，我们收到了无数反馈表示正等待着这样的内容的出现。”

广告也是伴随着电子游戏流而出现。现在Twitch已经有超过5100个合作频道—-由普通人运行的视频流，像MANvsGAME和FatherSonGaming等便是通过广播而赚钱。比起在固定间隔时间内弹出广告去打断一段流，Twitch让用户可以选择何时想要运行广告。所以在比赛期间，流运行者可以按压一个按键去运行一串广告，并获得收益共享。基于多少观众收听一个频道，广播员将通过作为Twitch的流运行着而谋生。Twitch的市场营销副总监Matthew DiPietro虽然并未公开其广播员的收入是多少，但表示他们都能从Twitch的广告收益中赚取颇厚的收益。有多厚呢，他的答案是“6位数”。

正是这种对于电子游戏的专注力吸引了主机制造商索尼和微软的注意力（那时候他们正着眼于在自己的全新主机上执行直播流功能）。

Green在提到微软和索尼（后者在发行PlayStation 4的第一天便整合了Twitch服务）时说道：“我想有些非常聪明的人正在将注意力转向事情的发展方向，并意识到现在的视频流是游戏体验的很大组成部分。这是一种前瞻思维的表现。”

Chad Gibson是Xbox的总经理。他表示微软最初将Twitch的应用带到Xbox 360，这让用户可以访问Twitch并通过他们的主机观看视频流。他表示这么做获得了很大的反应，并强调了视频流对于下一代主机的重要性。当是时候开发Xbox One时，直播视频流已经获得了不容忽视的巨大势头了。并且他也认为Twitch是个最佳选择。

Gibson说道：“我认为他们将专注点放在游戏上真的非常明智。我的意思是，已经有许多视频流公司，但是从属性看来它们都非常普通。而Twitch专注于游戏真正帮助他们创造出了符合社区需求的产品。”

Gibson表示当他开始与Twitch合作时，他是通过竞争游戏的角度去看待这件事，但他并未意识到eSports之外的直播视频流的乐趣。

现在的开发者正在使用Twitch向公众呈现他们未完成的游戏。发行商正使用Twitch作为一种市场营销工具与消费者进行直接对话，而用户正在创造他们自己的娱乐形式并将赋予之前的游戏新生命。

微软的Xbox One与Twitch的整合便是最近的一个案例，Twitch已经同PlayStation 4表明了它在主机用户间的名气。在1月初，索尼表示从去年12月23日到今年1月3日，20%的Twitch广播是来自PS4拥有者。在主机发行后的前6周，PS4拥有者创造了170万的视频流。当然，并不是所有人一开始都能理解主机的Twitch功能是针对于电子游戏内容。该服务必须源自PS4的游戏室—这一功能将PS4的摄像机指向了玩家并将客厅变成了一种互动体验，因为人们是在传播非游戏材料，即一些比Twitch更随意的内容，这也是索尼想要传播的东西。但人们慢慢地才意识到它。

“将其整合到系统中将能使Twitch独自完成的各种事变得合法化。这也传达了一种信息，即这是PS4和Xbox one现在所经历的部分内容。我们在尝试着告诉你这并不是只有奇怪的人会做的额外第三方内容。这是拥有这一主机所获得的部分体验。”

服务并不是完美的。作为一个相对较新的平台，它需要处理许许多多数据和快速发展的用户基础，这是一个“出牙期”的问题。Love说道：“它们所面临的这种类型的问题其实是最棒的问题。这是关于带宽成本，即有太多人来到这个网站。此外，它们的聊天也总是会被打断。”

在忙碌的周末，特别是当遇到较大的游戏比赛，或像最近，当无数用户决定一起玩游戏的时候，Twitch的聊天功能需要努力去跟上进度。有时候它并不能呈现出一些新信息。有时候它将会完全冻结。

Green说道：“它们将需要进行适当的规划。我不认为现在存在这样的机会，但Twitch可能成为它的成功的牺牲品，即只是基于其规划并保持人们使用该服务的巨大需求的能力。”

[根据Twitch的代表：“我们通过将频道移出一般的聊天服务器并移到一个专门的事件聊天服务器，即我们通常用于像The International和League Championship Series(LCS)等大型事件中，而缓解了Twitch Plays Pokemon的聊天问题。”]

不再愚蠢的理念

不到三年，Twitch和Justin.tv便在布什街上分享着同一个办公室。仍然作为Justin.tv的CTO的Shear说道，尽管从数值来看不如Twitch那般出色，但这一服务还是具有很棒的表现。Twitch的巨大成功遮掩了其它成绩的光芒。也就是说：Twitch的发展大大超越了Justin.tv，Twitch和Justin.tv的员工比例是15：1。

Shear是唯一一个作为Justin.tv最初的创始者而留在Twitch的人。负责确保Justin Kan做一些有趣的事的Michael Seibel曾经是Justin.rv的首席执行官，之后变成了SocialCam（游戏邦注：一家针对手机设备制作视频分享应用的公司）的首席执行官。而作为企业家的Kan则继续创造了Exec，即他最近卖掉的一个差事服务。而与Shear一起开发了支持Twitch的技术的Vogt现在则是Cruise Automaton，这家主要开发自动驾驶汽车的公司的首席执行官。

也许这四个朋友是从一个愚蠢的理念而开始。从在剑桥兜风过程中的谈话到让Kan佩戴摄像机，电池包和笔记本电脑，再到未对业务做出任何规划——所有的这一切都表明了Twitch看上去会是一个糟糕的理念。但是当一个新的组合视频变成直播视频流，当一对父子分享着他们对于《使命召唤》的喜爱，当eSport的比赛被广播，并且当另外一个人发现当他们在观看别人游戏时，也能在社区大笑大喊并分享自己的想法时，所有的这一切便不再是愚蠢的。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

TWITCH: WHEN WATCHING BEATS PLAYING

By Tracey Lien

How a crazy idea became a media juggernaut.

In 2007, Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel and Kyle Vogt had an idea for something that seemed so silly, it might just work.

Kan attached a webcam to his hat. For nine months, he didn’t take it off. Everything Kan saw, the world saw. The webcam captured his daily interactions — 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When he went for a walk, ate, read, watched a movie, went on a date or answered his email, anyone could watch. When he slept, he placed the camera next to himself so the world could see him. And when he sat on the porcelain throne, he angled the camera toward the ceiling.

The four friends set out to create a new kind of entertainment — at a time when live-streaming technology was just emerging, when online video could barely run without lag and when the concept of broadcasting your life online was still novel.

And a novelty was more or less all it was, Shear later said. The four friends weren’t sure where their silly idea would take them. They had no idea how Kan’s sometimes interesting but mostly boring video stream could support a business, or what that business was to begin with. But in the midst of uncertainty, their broadcasting experiment planted the seed for something much bigger than they could have imagined.

Running around after Kan at the time with battery packs, laptops and webcams — slightly frantic and full of uncertainty — the four friends had no idea their silly idea would change an industry and become the biggest and — in a way, the only — dedicated video game live-streaming service in the world.

CHANGING THE INDUSTRY

The Twitch office in San Francisco’s Financial District takes up a whole floor of a Bush Street building that spans half a city block. The company’s lobby has a wall of flat-screen televisions, each displaying a bright purple and white logo, “TWITCH, TWITCH TWITCH.” To one side of the office are rows of desks that seat mostly 20-somethings typing lines of code while watching video streams. To the other side are meeting rooms themed after video game locations. There’s the Rapture room, inspired by BioShock, which is decorated with its own fake fireplace and leather armchair. There’s the Megaton room, inspired by the wasteland of a city from Fallout 3 — it’s still a work in progress.

The 100 or so Twitch employees work to make sure the service runs smoothly, even when it’s being slammed with traffic. In an average month, Twitch broadcasts more than 6 million videos and fans watch 12 billion minutes of footage. As of the end of 2013, more than 45 million people watch Twitch streams every month.

Live-streaming video games may seem like a niche activity that only die-hard fans would care about, but the numbers suggest otherwise. In a recent Wall Street Journal chart detailing the percentage of peak U.S. internet traffic and the company networks responsible for it, Twitch came in fourth, only behind Netflix, Google and Apple, placing it ahead of Facebook, Amazon, Pandora and Hulu.

When console manufacturers Sony and Microsoft sought to integrate live-streaming into the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One respectively, they chose Twitch.

“I think of Twitch as like an ESPN for games,” says George Jones of video game consulting firm Hit Detection. Prior to joining Hit Detection, Jones worked at Wikia, a community information-sharing website. “What’s interesting is it’s a legitimate comparison in a lot of ways. What you’re seeing on Twitch is guys covering these games in much the same way as ESPN would. Ten years ago there was a nascent competitive gaming scene, and I think what we have now is largely due to Twitch. The vibrancy of leagues and teams and the characters is largely because people can watch it, and they can watch it in a way that’s engaging.”

A large portion of Twitch content comes from eSports, and Jones says he believes Twitch has validated pro gaming in a way that no one else has. Like any sport, spectating often plays a bigger role than competing, and Twitch provides the gateway. It’s made watching someone play a game more accessible. It’s made it easier to learn about skilled play. Gone are the days of trying to track down a combo video from a friend of a friend — the best players in any category now stream their practice sessions on Twitch.

“I think it’s made more people realize that they might be the kind of person who wants to watch other people play games,” says Jeff Green, who was previously editor-in-chief of Games for Windows: The Official Magazine and now also consults for Hit Detection. “I think that was a huge barrier to overcome. When I tell people I’m doing a live-stream of Dark Souls and I tell them I’m playing this game online and people are watching, citizens like my family — who are non-gaming people — always ask, ‘Why would anybody want to do that? Why would anyone want to watch you play a game?’ Which is the same reaction I had when I first started hearing about it.

“And I think that’s one of the main things Twitch accomplishes here: Once you make the leap and watch someone do it … once you see it done by someone who knows how to broadcast, who knows how to entertain, or someone who’s an expert at the game, you start to think, well, this is pretty entertaining.”

Jones and Green make another sports analogy: Why would anyone want to watch another person throw or catch a ball? Why would anyone want to watch a person ice-skate? Well, if the person can do it in a way that’s entertaining enough and skilled enough, why not?

“Obviously there are plenty of people who think it’s the dumbest thing ever,” Green says. “But once you do it, once you sit down and watch somebody good, it’s like, ‘Oh my god, this is great; this is super entertaining!’”

THE BROADCASTERS

Jayson Love is a 34-year-old broadcaster from Montana. On Twitch, he is better known as “MAN.” His stream, MANvsGAME, broadcasts his mission to “beat every game worth a damn … and even some that aren’t.” Four years ago, Love was struggling to make a living working various retail jobs. Today, he live-streams on Twitch full-time and makes more money than any job he’s previously held. He is one of Twitch’s most popular streamers, broadcasting for up to eight hours every night to an average of 4,000 viewers who regularly tune in.

“Twitch has completely changed my life for the better,” Love says. “It’s almost too much to think about sometimes. I went from these dead-end retail jobs with no real long-term plan or goal, and Twitch has allowed me to become something of a minor e-celebrity, which is crazy to think about. My mother was talking to one of the guys she works with about my broadcast, and he said he knew me and told her he watched me all the time.”

Love first started live-streaming four years ago on Twitch competitor UStream after seeing American comedian and rapper Andy Milonakis freestyle rap while incorporating lyrics that viewers posted into the UStream chat box. Having never seen this kind of interactive broadcast before, Love says he was blown away and decided that he should do something similar with video games. “The big punchline to this joke was I thought I was brilliant and sitting on this golden idea no one else had,” he says. “Then I went onto UStream and saw all these other people doing it.”

Love wanted his stream to be different, though. He wanted it to be like a show. He wanted to do it to entertain viewers. The broadcast would be about him struggling to beat certain games, but it wouldn’t be eSports. “It’s one man’s struggle, so there’s some drama in that,” he laughs. “But a lot of it is just me trying to be funny, trying to make people laugh. It’s like a performance for me. I am absolutely performing, and it’s draining, but I love it.”

In the early days, Love’s stream had fewer than 10 viewers. Over the course of four years, this audience slowly and steadily grew. As UStream and its competitor Justin.tv (from which Twitch spun off) grew and added new features, Love would move his show back and forth based on which features he liked best. He eventually settled on Justin.tv because he liked its video player. When Twitch launched, he moved over with the rest of Justin.tv’s gaming content.

Bill and Jason Munkel are another popular pair of broadcasters on Twitch. Bill, 58, and Jason, 18, run the channel FatherSonGaming. Each night, father and son broadcast themselves playing Call of Duty together. The channel is a year old and averages 2,000-3,000 viewers a night. The pair have 130,000 followers on Twitch.

“It was actually my idea,” says Jason. “I specifically remember being in the car, and I used to watch a lot of YouTube videos of Call of Duty commentators, and I remember thinking that Dad and I have something unique. Not many fathers and sons play Call of Duty together. It’s kind of an unusual thing. And I remember thinking this would be cool if we could post these videos of ourselves on the internet. We could be different [than] what everyone else is doing.”

Jason pitched the idea to his father Bill who, as a lifelong gamer, thought it was neat. “We have a great bond, and we thought it would be a good idea, and that was how it was born,” Bill says.

The duo started by recording themselves playing Call of Duty and uploading those videos to YouTube. The videos were never really about the game — they were about Bill and Jason’s relationship. Sometimes they’d post videos of themselves goofing around, dancing to music. Viewers got a kick out of it, and the two liked interacting with the community they built around their little show. “Our whole thing was always about interaction,” Jason says. “We loved talking to people, responding to every comment, seeing the reactions. That was my favorite part of it.”

“And people get a kick out of me because they wanna see how a guy my age can keep up with these young guys and this game,” Bill says. “And I generally don’t, but every once in a while, I’ll surprise myself. I’ll do really, really well, and all our viewers get excited because I did really, really well.”

FatherSonGaming made the switch to Twitch after Jason saw the opportunity to do their show live. “I saw there was this immediate, live interaction. You could talk to people right there as they were watching. I thought it was amazing.”

Bill and Jason stream for about three hours each evening and stick to a weekly schedule. While the two have always played games together, Bill says their Twitch channel has changed their relationship. “We were always close, but Twitch has brought us even closer than I could ever imagine,” he says. “We’re together all the time, whether we’re streaming or thinking of ideas to do for our streams. Our relationship has grown immensely because of how often we’re together, and I think we owe Twitch that.”

JUSTIN.TV

Despite the service now being a fixture of the video game community, Twitch CEO Emmett Shear says when he and three friends founded Twitch’s parent company Justin.tv in 2007, they didn’t know what they were doing.

“[Co-founder] Justin Kan and I were driving around Cambridge, Mass. trying to come up with ideas for a business, and we started talking about broadcasting the conversation we were having on the internet,” Shear says. “It was like, this conversation is interesting. I bet it would be cool to share this online. That snowballed into, well, what’s the more extreme version of that? Broadcast all your conversations online! What’s the more extreme version of that? Broadcast your entire life online with video and audio!”

In hindsight, Shear admits this wasn’t much of a business idea. It was certainly an idea, but they didn’t have a business plan. How was broadcasting someone’s life on the internet going to be a) profitable and b) sustainable? They would figure that out later. Kan jumped at the opportunity to be the talent and the two roped in friends Kyle Vogt and Michael Seibel to help them make Justin.tv.

Shear and Vogt worked on the technology side of the project, enabling a live-stream that could be available to thousands of people 24 hours a day. Seibel was tasked with finding interesting things for Kan to do and Kan had to wear a webcam broadcasting his every move. The webcam was hooked up to a laptop he carried in a backpack. The laptop was attached to four taped-together EV-DO cards to give him a constant internet connection. He carried multiple battery packs with him so he and his business partners could quickly change them out if it looked like the laptop was about to run out of juice. For the next nine months, anyone who logged onto Justin.tv could see the world through Justin Kan’s eyes.

The four friends tried to create a new form of entertainment in Justin.tv — a kind of web-based reality TV show. It garnered attention for what it was doing, but as Shear now says, it was mostly a stunt. “The broadcasting 24/7 thing didn’t turn out to be a business,” he says. “But it did turn out to be pretty cool.”

As the four founders tried to figure out the next step in their streaming experiment, viewers began asking if they, too, could create their own streams. In developing Justin.tv, Shear and Vogt had created a tool that allowed anyone to smoothly stream video from their webcam to the internet. People had started using a new video platform called YouTube, but YouTube didn’t support live-streaming in 2007. The tech behind Justin.tv was designed specifically for live-streaming.

In summer of 2007, Kan retired the webcam attached to his hat. Justin.tv — the platform — launched.

Like other live-streaming services that launched in the same year, Justin.tv was divided into categories. There was a channel dedicated to sports content, there was a channel for animal-related video streams. The categories ranged from news broadcasts to live-streams of poker matches. But the one category that ballooned more rapidly than any other was video games, and this was happening across the board, not just on Justin.tv. People were connecting their computers to video streaming accounts and live-streaming the games they played. Even those who played on consoles set up external video capture devices in order to get Twitch to stream what they were playing. People broadcasted tournaments, speed-runs, footage of themselves talking about and analyzing games. Many just broadcasted the games they were playing and talked over their stream.

Two years into Justin.tv, the company knew there was a growing gaming audience. By late 2010, gaming on Justin.tv dwarfed every other category. By March 2011, it realized it had to give gaming its own home. In June 2011, it launched the first version of Twitch, a gaming-focused live-streaming service that was basically Justin.tv with a different skin.

Did they expect Twitch to be a success? Shear says yes. Even before Twitch launched, the numbers in Justin.tv’s gaming category pointed toward a ravenous demand for a service that allowed users to live-stream games. Did they expect it to be as successful as it was in such a short period of time? That, Shear admits, was a surprise. They knew people wanted to stream their gameplay. They didn’t know there would be more than one million unique broadcasters a month.

“But I think it’s natural and human to want to share your achievements, your experiences, with other people,” Shear says. “I’ve never been a football player, but I can appreciate watching the Super Bowl.

“And it’s interesting, if you go back through the history of gaming and think back on what it’s been like over the years, where did gaming start? It started in the arcade. That was where the first video games were. And one of the interesting things about the arcade was you watched more than you played … Everything that’s old is new again.”

DESIRE TO SHARE

In many ways, Twitch taps into the existing desire within gamers to share an experience. In the days of the arcades, players often spent most of their time there watching the best person play, because the best player would keep playing after the others lost their coins to the machine.

Watching others play wasn’t only entertaining in its own right; it was educational. In the competitive fighting game scene, players produced VHS tapes and DVDs to share information with each other.

“They called them combo videos in the 1990s,” says Tom Cannon, the founder of the world’s most prestigious fighting game tournament, Evolution (EVO). “They contained really creative stuff that nobody thought was in games like Street Fighter or Tekken.”

These VHS tapes would typically originate in Japan. Someone — usually a fighting game player who had figured out an impressive combination of moves — would make a recording of themselves executing the combos. The VHS tape would then get passed around through fighting game circles. Slowly, these copies of copies would make their way overseas, where the copying would continue.

“You had to know someone and borrow their tape to make your own copy,” Cannon says. “Amazingly, that’s how tapes got distributed. Someone would go to Japan, they’d find it on a shelf in a store or they’d be visiting a friend who had it, they’d make a copy, bring it back to the States, and it would slowly make its way around the country. It was kind of crazy. There was no online space where you could buy these things. It was all [through a] friend of a friend.”

By the time the videos made it to the U.S., they’d been copied so many times the footage was barely visible on the screen.

The VHS tapes and DVDs are now relics of a bygone era. Today, when game players want to share their experiences, whether it be through the broadcast of a global gaming tournament or their own combo videos, they do it through Twitch. With a few button presses, the whole world can watch what they’re doing, live.

Over in the StarCraft community, players skipped the tapes and DVDs in favor of a different way to share their matches.

Derek Reball manages the eSports team Nv. He recalls the days before streaming when players would record low-quality video files of a game’s replay. The game’s commentators would record audio files of themselves speaking while watching the replay. The video and audio files would be zipped and uploaded to a website. People would download it and play both at the same time, crossing their fingers that it was in sync. “It was like this old-school radio concept,” Reball says. “It was really bad, but that was how we did it.”

Across the StarCraft and fighting game communities, the VHS tapes and low-quality audio files have been replaced with live-streaming, making tournaments and educational resources more accessible than they’ve ever been. Twitch currently has more momentum than any other streaming service. With that momentum, it has become the go-to platform for video game streaming.

FOCUS OF SUCCESS

Shear pins Twitch’s success to its focus: It’s the only streaming service that devotes all its energy to gaming. “I don’t think there’s any real doubt about that,” Shear says. “We won [the video game live-streaming audience] because of focus. We were 100 percent dedicated and focused on doing whatever it takes to get the very best gaming content … That was the only thing we thought about, and when you’re trying to build something that’s good for everyone, it’s hard to beat someone who’s making something that’s good for just one segment, because they’re superfocused.

“For every hour some other company could spend on gaming, we could spend 10 because that was the only thing we were doing.”

This focus led to tools that differentiate Twitch from the competition. The technology behind Twitch gives users options specific to video game streaming.

“For example, when you’re broadcasting a game like League of Legends or Dota or any MOBA (multiplayer-online battle arena), it’s critically important that no one be able to see your stream for about six minutes, because there are certain items you can buy that, knowing you have it, is a big advantage to the other team,” Shear says. “So you really don’t want the other team to find that out in advance.

“If you’re in a tournament, and the results really matter, it’s critical that it doesn’t leak. So we built in a delay server that lets you choose how much delay you want on your stream, which seems totally counterintuitive. Normally, you’re trying to reduce latency for video, not increase it. But in this particular case, to run this kind of tournament you need a delay server. You can’t not have that feature.

“When we built this feature, we won this huge chunk of content that had been waiting for someone to build this for them.”

Advertising is also built with the video game streamer in mind. Twitch currently has more than 5,100 partner channels — streams run by ordinary people, like MANvsGAME and FatherSonGaming, who make money from broadcasting. Instead of having ads popping up at set intervals that could potentially disrupt a stream during an important part of a game, Twitch lets its users choose when they want to run an ad. So between matches, a streamer can hit a button to run a string of ads, and they get a cut of the revenue share. Depending on how many viewers tune into a channel, a broadcaster could feasibly make a living of being a Twitch streamer. Twitch’s VP of Marketing Matthew DiPietro can’t reveal how much its broadcasters are taking home, but says that some of them are able to live quite comfortably just from revenue earned from Twitch advertising. How comfortably? “Six figures,” he says.

It’s this focus on video games that attracted console manufacturers Sony and Microsoft when they were looking to implement live-streaming into their new consoles.

“I think there’s some supersmart people who were paying attention to the way things were going and realized that streaming was now a big part of the experience,” Green says of Microsoft and Sony, the latter of which launched the PlayStation 4 with Twitch integration on day one. “It was good forward thinking on their part.”

Chad Gibson is the general manager of Xbox, where he oversees Xbox Live, Achievements, multiplayer and Twitch integration. He says Microsoft initially brought the Twitch app onto Xbox 360, which allowed users to access Twitch and watch streams through their console. The response, he says, was huge, and highlighted the importance of streaming for the next generation of consoles. When it came time to develop the Xbox One, live-streaming had gained such momentum that it couldn’t be ignored. Twitch, he says, was an obvious choice.

“I think their focus on gaming is phenomenal,” Gibson says. “I mean, there’s been other streaming companies, but they’ve all been more general in nature. Twitch’s focus on gaming really helps provide a product that the community has really responded to.”

Gibson says when he first started working with Twitch, the competitive play angle made sense to him, but he didn’t realize interest in live-streaming went beyond eSports.

“I was thinking of the best Call of Duty players in the world and how I’d love to see them play,” he says. “And then I remembered when we first met with Twitch and they said Minecraft was superpopular, too, and that was one of the first facts that just blew my mind, because it’s not a competitive game. It’s a game about building worlds and creating and collaborating. It’s got a phenomenal presence on Twitch, and it made me realize that it spans far beyond the competitive eSports angle.”

Developers are now using Twitch to show their games to the public before they’re completed. Publishers are using Twitch as a marketing tool to speak directly to consumers, and users are creating their own form of entertainment and breathing new life into games that launched years ago.

Microsoft’s Xbox One Twitch integration is a relatively recent addition, but Twitch has already shown its popularity among console users via the PlayStation 4. In early January, Sony reported that from Dec. 23-Jan. 3, 20 percent of Twitch broadcasts came from PS4 owners. In the first six weeks following the console’s launch, PS4 owners created 1.7 million streams. Of course, not everyone initially understood that the console’s Twitch functionality was reserved for video game content. The service had to be pulled from the PS4′s Playroom — a feature that points the PS4′s camera at the player and turns the living room into an interactive experience — because people were streaming non-gaming material, some of which was raunchier than Twitch and Sony were willing to broadcast. But people are slowly getting it.

“Having it built into the system legitimizes Twitch beyond anything they could have done on their own. It’s basically sending a message that this is part of the PS4 and Xbox One experience now. We’re telling you this is not some extra third-party thing that only weird people do. This is part of the experience of owning this console.”

The service isn’t perfect, though. As a relatively new platform that is dealing with enormous amounts of data and a rapidly growing user base, it’s encountering teething issues. “The kinds of problems they’re dealing with are the best kind of problems to have,” Love says. “They’re bandwidth costs, and they just have too many people coming to the site. So much that, for instance, their chat is constantly breaking.”

During busy weekends, particularly when there is a big game tournament or, most recently, when thousands of users decided to play a game together, Twitch’s chat function will struggle to keep up. Sometimes it won’t show new messages. Sometimes it will freeze up entirely.

“They’re going to need to scale appropriately,” says Green. “I don’t think there’s a chance of this right now, but Twitch could become a victim of its own success just in terms of its ability to scale and keep up with the demand the sheer volume of people using it.”

[According to a Twitch representative, "We remedied the chat issue with Twitch Plays Pokemon by moving the channel off of our general chat servers onto a dedicated event chat server, which we typically use for large events like The International and League Championship Series (LCS)."]

SILLY IDEA NO MORE

Less than three years on, Twitch and Justin.tv share the same office on Bush Street. Shear, who is still CTO of Justin.tv, says the service is performing well, even though its numbers may not be as good Twitch’s. Twitch’s gargantuan success just makes everything else look small in comparison. To wit: Twitch grew out of Justin.tv, but the Twitch to Justin.tv staff ratio is now 15-to-1.

Shear is the only one of the original Justin.tv founders to remain at Twitch. Michael Seibel — the man responsible for ensuring Justin Kan did interesting things — served as CEO of Justin.tv before moving on to be CEO of SocialCam, a video-sharing app for mobile devices. Kan, a serial entrepreneur, went on to found Exec, an errand service, which he recently sold. Vogt, who along with Shear developed the technology that would power Twitch, is now CEO of Cruise Automaton, a company developing self-driving cars.

The four friends may have started with a silly idea. From their initial conversation while driving around Cambridge, to strapping cameras, battery packs and laptops to Kan, to not having a plan for their business — everything that led to Twitch seemed like a bad idea. But when a new combo video is live-streamed, when a father and son share their love for Call of Duty and each other with the world, when an eSport tournament is broadcast, and another person finds a community that laughs and shares and shouts with them as they watch a game being played, none of it seems so silly any more. (source:polygon)