The Study of Twitch
Twitch.TV is an interesting topic to study upon. The site has changed dramatically throughout the years into the streaming giant it is today. Our group decided to focus on the way Twitch works, the history behind it, the controversies surrounding it and how it works out for users.
Firstly, our main topic of discussion for Twitch and in our presentation revolved around how the site works as a whole and how it works for the individuals on it. We decided to dive into research regarding Twitch’s Amazon Prime system and how that works for users as well as diving into the nitty gritty ourselves and using the site to discover how an individual would navigate the site to view content and or use the site to stream on. I personally asked my brother basic questions about how the site worked and his experiences on it. My brother decided to start streaming on Twitch but has fallen off because he’s not happy with viewer retention. His experience highlights his positive attitude in the beginning though. He did enjoy the site to stream on and he uses it mostly now to view popular streamers like HasanAbi. For some of my research I dived into the communities around Twitch and decided to enrich myself in the multitude of streams available on Twitch to view. I’m only used to gaming streams so it was quite interesting to find streams about content I’m not used to. Be it people streaming their daily lives, cooking, politics or more. It was an interesting rabbit-hole to dive down as the content presented on the site is clearly for more people than just gamers. I think this is what Twitch excels at. The site launched as more of a gaming related one but has evolved to more interesting things like art or politics. It’s a site that has changed aggressively throughout the years and will continue to do so. Twitch even had a category titled “Twitch Sings” where streamers would do a sort of karaoke contest.
The second big part of our research was revolving around the multitude of news coverage Twitch has had. This includes both positives and negatives. Jeff in our group made a great history tab. It highlights how Twitch evolved from a vlogging site to a more complex beast over time. He also did a good job of highlighting how the site has broken many records and has had many controversies. Some of these controversies consist of Twitch banning a streamer known as Dr. Disrespect seemingly without cause, causing him to switch over to YouTube’s streaming service, where he is finding his audience more than welcome to transition to. In our presentation as well we highlighted how streamers like Ninja broke streaming records and how AOC was able to as well break some records of her own streaming on Twitch. This highlights an interesting part regarding Twitch being that any one can stream on this site and hold some sort of audience. AOC streamed a game titled “Among Us” by Innersloth to hundreds of thousands of viewers as a fun little thing to be had with other internet personalities. As well as advocating people to go out and vote.
Finances wise, we as well researched how Twitch pays for certain streamers to stay on the platform. Streamers like Dr. Disrespect pre-ban were paid a large sum of money to exclusively stream on their platform. Users like Shroud and Ninja as well left the site to seek an exclusive partnership with the site Mixer. Which recently partnered with Facebook Gaming resulting in the sites shutdown. Twitch makes a large sum of money off things like ads for example. Which play before streams in order to fund the site. Individuals can also pay for subscriptions in order to avoid these ads on the site. Doing so provides monetary gain for the streamer and the site alike. It’s a system that has been in practice for a few years now and has helped the site immensely in its monetary gain and power.
Twitch is an interesting site as it has consistently changed over the years and has become a giant in the streaming industry. In all honesty. I myself expect Twitch to blowup more over the next few years and I see it as a potential replacement for some forms of media out there.
