A website that lets you live-stream your gameplay is creating celebrity players as well as fresh ways of generating games
VIDEO killed the radio star – now video games are doing the same for TV.
Twitch lets you stream live video of yourself over the internet, and has grown enormously since it launched in 2011. Now with more than 45 million visitors and more than a million new videos a month, the vast majority of which are of people playing games. No wonder Google is reportedly holding talks about buying the firm for $1 billion.
Twitch's popularity was given an extra boost with the release of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, which both let players stream their game at the push of a button. A webcam can let the player add their face to the stream. Twitch now beats Facebook, Amazon and Tumblr in terms of peak internet traffic in the US, behind only Netflix, Google – including YouTube – and Apple.
But why do millions of viewers want to watch other people playing games? Many don't have time to play all the games they want to, says Lucy James at Ginx TV, an international TV channel based in London dedicated to covering video games. In many cases, the popularity of game-watching comes down to the personality of the uploader. "These players are the new celebrities," says James.
Like many Twitch streamers, Felix Kjellberg, or PewDiePie to his fans, uploads videos of his finished live shows to YouTube, where his channel now has over 27 million subscribers – more than any other, including YouTube's own. Kjellberg started out playing horror games and his funny – some might say overenthusiastic – reactions and personality quickly made his videos popular.
An important feature of Twitch streaming is the live chatroom that accompanies videos, says James, who co-hosts her own Twitch show with Holly Nielsen, also at Ginx TV. This lets viewers immediately engage with the players, who often read out and respond to comments. Indeed, viewer participation is set to become a bigger part of the experience. Twitch's chatroom feature was recently used to play a game of Pokémon, where 80,000 viewers tried to control the main character at once by typing in commands.
What started as a quirky experiment is now being built into mainstream games. The recently released Daylight , for example, is a horror game that frightens the player in unexpected ways each time they play. But if a player is live-streaming on Twitch then viewers can influence the game further by typing in words like "scream", which triggers a sudden scream, and "light", which turns off the player's only light-source.
To make it more fun, viewers don't necessarily know what words will have an effect and have to guess. "We have had really great feedback from players and viewers alike," says Cassie Dull at Zombie Studios in Seattle, Washington, the makers of Daylight. "Everyone really enjoys being a part of the scary experience."
Many more games are likely to be made with similar features, says James. Ultimately, she thinks game plots could be automatically generated according to what viewers request in the comments.
What is certain is that watching games has become as popular as playing them. "It's growing at an incredible rate," says James.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Bedroom superstars"
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