Streamers, Twitch and Total eSports organization (part 4)
Good day. It's no secret that streaming services have long been transformed from home toys for freaks into powerful media platforms that can collect millions of people from screens, riveting their attention to the screen for 5-6 hours, essentially replacing TV programs (for older generation), TV shows and other videos on the Internet (for the younger). Portals like Twitch can be called a new round of evolution in the world of Internet mass media. The very idea - to sit and watch how another person plays, may seem a bit strange, at least, and boring, at most.
But let's go back to the 2000s, which I described in the 3rd part , and recall those times when neither everyone had the opportunity to buy a “prefix”. In our class, for example, only 3 people had consoles. At the same time, a maximum of 2 people could play the game. Accordingly, when we were going to the whole class from the "happy owners", then our turn had to wait for 30-40 minutes. The rest of the time, we sat and watched others play. And I can not say that I did not like it, everything was perceived as part of the gameplay and was not boring.
For the creators of the Twitch streaming video site (in the beginning, the project was called Justin.tv) the reason was different. Initially, they did not suspect that the portal would be so popular and in demand, and that in general it would only carry the game theme. Their experiment began with the fact that one of the guys decided to hang on the camera, which filmed his life 24/7. And in the end, he went with her for 9 months, shooting absolutely everything and broadcasting his life in the “live broadcast” mode to the whole world. Many people liked this idea very much, and they asked them to make a message where they could create their own channels, TV shows and also conduct them live via a webcam. This is how the first streaming service Justin.tv appeared.
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There is also another factor that explains this demand from the audience - the difficulty in organizing their own broadcasts. It would seem that almost every person in our time has a PC at home or at most a laptop. To start the broadcast, you need to take a few elementary steps - register on the portal and click the “run stream” button in one of the specialized free streaming programs. But as in any business, behind the superficial simplicity, there are always hidden “pitfalls”, which begin to emerge as people understand how the whole industry works.
When I talked about the complexity of the organization, I meant two main factors. The first factor is the player’s personal skill, delivered speech, the ability to behave on camera. I think it is clear to everyone that if you started playing some kind of game just yesterday and you are certainly not a media person, no one will watch you. The second factor is the availability of equipment. Yes, for the beginning, many streams are not needed, but streaming services are a highly competitive environment. Many people want to become popular or earn money, not looking up from their beloved business or not getting up because of the PC. For this reason, the quality of streams is growing every day. Improved picture, channel design, sound. People hire tutors who give them speech, stylists who make them look, come up with various contests and tricks to attract and keep the viewer. If we weigh both of these factors, the task no longer seems so simple.
What is the role of Twitch for a cyber sports organization like ours? At the moment, for many “Pro” players, especially those who have already completed their professional careers, streaming services are almost the main source of income, allowing you to do your favorite thing, without leaving home. If we draw an analogy with ordinary sports, such as boxing, I would call services like Twitch a kind of training arena, where everyone can come and look at the athlete in a “lively”, relaxed, training atmosphere. Yes, we all see great athletes at the world's largest events and competitions, but many sports fans or fans often want to look under the mask of a champion and communicate with him as an equal, find out what kind of person he is in life and ask questions that interest them. Thus, many cybersportsmen or simply people who play well in one or another game attract attention and, accordingly, a constant, loyal audience.
But what to do if the player does not play at the “Pro” level or is not known to the subscribers? It remains to rely on the second factor - the quality of the broadcast. The policy of the organization Apei Gaming is such that we try to help all gamers who want to feel like cybersportmen and at least try to touch the world of cybersport. Accordingly, the selection bar in the organization is now quite low, and to take really well-known or highly professional players simply not from where. Therefore, we can only rely on our own strength and try to make the broadcasts as interesting as possible.
At the moment we have a registered channel of the organization on Twitch and today we are launching the first broadcast on it. The preparatory work took about two weeks, solved a huge number of organizational issues. Some of which I would like to talk separately and hear comments from knowledgeable people who may have more extensive experience than me or the guys from our media / Twitch department.
Initially, the development plan for Twitch trends looked like this - we wanted to start streaming one of the most popular games, but which had not yet gained its narrow audience and which still attracted the attention of players from different game disciplines. Our choice fell on Overwatch. This game meets all these parameters.
Our next step would be to get an "invite" from Twitch. To become an official channel and to be able to recruit not only "followers", but also subscribers, as well as to have different subchannels in Twitch. To do this, you need to fulfill one condition - during the week, stream at least 3 times and at the same time, at least 500 people should be constantly online on the stream. For a new channel, this is an almost impossible task and can only be achieved in the context of 6-8 months. Our organization has in its composition more than 200 people who, with proper separation of duties, can produce a product of sufficiently high quality, which we actually try to do by adjusting the quality work from the first broadcasts.
We had a long discussion and thought about the idea of ​​getting an "invite" and about the subsequent channel separation. As a result, we came to the conclusion that at the initial stage it makes no sense and it is better to focus on one channel with a lot of games than streaming, even if an invite is received, on ten highly specialized channels, “smearing” the already modest audience between them. Also one of the problems that immediately arise when there are different channels is the control and quality of the content. In order to make interesting releases, constantly grow and not get bored for 5 hours of broadcasting - each issue must prepare in advance and do it even within one channel very labor-intensive.
As a result, we settled on the conceptual idea of ​​the “grid of programs”, as on TV. Now, as part of Apei Gaming, there are 3-4 streamers that are ready to cover the events on the Blizzard, Dota2 and Arma3 games and thereby fill the whole week with daily streams. What are the advantages of this scheme?
Of the minuses, I can only name the fact that people usually come to look at a certain game and subscribing to the channel that had the same Overwatch yesterday, tomorrow they will see Arma3. There are of course people who simply subscribe to a well-known blogger, whom they are willing to watch just because it is he, not paying much attention to the game, which is streaming, but this is not our case. I will not say that this is a very critical minus, but we also tried to solve it by making a calendar module on the community portal. In this module, all events that occur within the organization, including the stream on Twitch, are recorded. Thus, anyone can find out when the broadcast of his favorite game will take place.
I described only a small part of the problems we had to face and the difficult decisions that we were able to make. If you have thoughts or ideas on this subject - please in the comments. Also today, at 18:00, we launch the first stream , where I will answer questions on the organization live, subsequent development plans and are ready to listen to tips and suggestions from experienced people.
In the next blog I will talk about the technical part of stream organization on Twitch, we will analyze third-party programs, various widgets and talk about bots that simplify the work of the tape drive.
But let's go back to the 2000s, which I described in the 3rd part , and recall those times when neither everyone had the opportunity to buy a “prefix”. In our class, for example, only 3 people had consoles. At the same time, a maximum of 2 people could play the game. Accordingly, when we were going to the whole class from the "happy owners", then our turn had to wait for 30-40 minutes. The rest of the time, we sat and watched others play. And I can not say that I did not like it, everything was perceived as part of the gameplay and was not boring.
For the creators of the Twitch streaming video site (in the beginning, the project was called Justin.tv) the reason was different. Initially, they did not suspect that the portal would be so popular and in demand, and that in general it would only carry the game theme. Their experiment began with the fact that one of the guys decided to hang on the camera, which filmed his life 24/7. And in the end, he went with her for 9 months, shooting absolutely everything and broadcasting his life in the “live broadcast” mode to the whole world. Many people liked this idea very much, and they asked them to make a message where they could create their own channels, TV shows and also conduct them live via a webcam. This is how the first streaming service Justin.tv appeared.
')
There is also another factor that explains this demand from the audience - the difficulty in organizing their own broadcasts. It would seem that almost every person in our time has a PC at home or at most a laptop. To start the broadcast, you need to take a few elementary steps - register on the portal and click the “run stream” button in one of the specialized free streaming programs. But as in any business, behind the superficial simplicity, there are always hidden “pitfalls”, which begin to emerge as people understand how the whole industry works.
When I talked about the complexity of the organization, I meant two main factors. The first factor is the player’s personal skill, delivered speech, the ability to behave on camera. I think it is clear to everyone that if you started playing some kind of game just yesterday and you are certainly not a media person, no one will watch you. The second factor is the availability of equipment. Yes, for the beginning, many streams are not needed, but streaming services are a highly competitive environment. Many people want to become popular or earn money, not looking up from their beloved business or not getting up because of the PC. For this reason, the quality of streams is growing every day. Improved picture, channel design, sound. People hire tutors who give them speech, stylists who make them look, come up with various contests and tricks to attract and keep the viewer. If we weigh both of these factors, the task no longer seems so simple.
What is the role of Twitch for a cyber sports organization like ours? At the moment, for many “Pro” players, especially those who have already completed their professional careers, streaming services are almost the main source of income, allowing you to do your favorite thing, without leaving home. If we draw an analogy with ordinary sports, such as boxing, I would call services like Twitch a kind of training arena, where everyone can come and look at the athlete in a “lively”, relaxed, training atmosphere. Yes, we all see great athletes at the world's largest events and competitions, but many sports fans or fans often want to look under the mask of a champion and communicate with him as an equal, find out what kind of person he is in life and ask questions that interest them. Thus, many cybersportsmen or simply people who play well in one or another game attract attention and, accordingly, a constant, loyal audience.
But what to do if the player does not play at the “Pro” level or is not known to the subscribers? It remains to rely on the second factor - the quality of the broadcast. The policy of the organization Apei Gaming is such that we try to help all gamers who want to feel like cybersportmen and at least try to touch the world of cybersport. Accordingly, the selection bar in the organization is now quite low, and to take really well-known or highly professional players simply not from where. Therefore, we can only rely on our own strength and try to make the broadcasts as interesting as possible.
At the moment we have a registered channel of the organization on Twitch and today we are launching the first broadcast on it. The preparatory work took about two weeks, solved a huge number of organizational issues. Some of which I would like to talk separately and hear comments from knowledgeable people who may have more extensive experience than me or the guys from our media / Twitch department.
Initially, the development plan for Twitch trends looked like this - we wanted to start streaming one of the most popular games, but which had not yet gained its narrow audience and which still attracted the attention of players from different game disciplines. Our choice fell on Overwatch. This game meets all these parameters.
Our next step would be to get an "invite" from Twitch. To become an official channel and to be able to recruit not only "followers", but also subscribers, as well as to have different subchannels in Twitch. To do this, you need to fulfill one condition - during the week, stream at least 3 times and at the same time, at least 500 people should be constantly online on the stream. For a new channel, this is an almost impossible task and can only be achieved in the context of 6-8 months. Our organization has in its composition more than 200 people who, with proper separation of duties, can produce a product of sufficiently high quality, which we actually try to do by adjusting the quality work from the first broadcasts.
We had a long discussion and thought about the idea of ​​getting an "invite" and about the subsequent channel separation. As a result, we came to the conclusion that at the initial stage it makes no sense and it is better to focus on one channel with a lot of games than streaming, even if an invite is received, on ten highly specialized channels, “smearing” the already modest audience between them. Also one of the problems that immediately arise when there are different channels is the control and quality of the content. In order to make interesting releases, constantly grow and not get bored for 5 hours of broadcasting - each issue must prepare in advance and do it even within one channel very labor-intensive.
As a result, we settled on the conceptual idea of ​​the “grid of programs”, as on TV. Now, as part of Apei Gaming, there are 3-4 streamers that are ready to cover the events on the Blizzard, Dota2 and Arma3 games and thereby fill the whole week with daily streams. What are the advantages of this scheme?
- People do not disperse on different channels.
- The channel is 100% active due to daily streams.
- There is a chance to more quickly get an "invite" with a more dense concentration of efforts
- Content remains high
Of the minuses, I can only name the fact that people usually come to look at a certain game and subscribing to the channel that had the same Overwatch yesterday, tomorrow they will see Arma3. There are of course people who simply subscribe to a well-known blogger, whom they are willing to watch just because it is he, not paying much attention to the game, which is streaming, but this is not our case. I will not say that this is a very critical minus, but we also tried to solve it by making a calendar module on the community portal. In this module, all events that occur within the organization, including the stream on Twitch, are recorded. Thus, anyone can find out when the broadcast of his favorite game will take place.
I described only a small part of the problems we had to face and the difficult decisions that we were able to make. If you have thoughts or ideas on this subject - please in the comments. Also today, at 18:00, we launch the first stream , where I will answer questions on the organization live, subsequent development plans and are ready to listen to tips and suggestions from experienced people.
In the next blog I will talk about the technical part of stream organization on Twitch, we will analyze third-party programs, various widgets and talk about bots that simplify the work of the tape drive.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/395639/
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