What is Twitch, and why should I watch it?
We answer a couple of significant questions: what is Twitch, and why does it have over 140 million monthly users?
The meteoric growth of Twitch may have passed middle-aged consumers by.
It’s a modern concept which is unlikely to resonate among people who still consider Facebook modern (even though younger generations have long since migrated to messaging apps).
Yet Twitch is something of a phenomenon.
Launched in 2011 by a one-time YouTube rival, and subsequently acquired by Amazon, Twitch is now a multi-billion dollar enterprise with over 140 million monthly users.
So if you haven’t heard of it, what is Twitch, and where does its appeal lie?
What is Twitch used to do?
Twitch is a streaming service for computer gamers, which evolved from the lifecasting platform Justin.TV, where founder Justin Kan broadcast his entire life around the clock.
The popularity of gaming content took Kan by surprise, and within three years, the original website had been shut down to focus solely on gaming streams.
Today, typical content includes personal online gaming streams, industry-specific discussion podcasts, esports tournaments and occasional forays into non-gaming content.
The latter includes creative art platforms, EDM mixes, talk shows and live streams of puppies and kittens.
Perhaps inevitably, there’s also some content aimed at over-18s, with bikini-clad women in hot tubs alongside live streams from cannabis farms.
However, the burgeoning esports market has underpinned much of Twitch’s growth, with huge audiences for tournaments involving games like Counter-Strike 2, FC24 and Fortnite.
These are often won by professional teams of full-time gamers, sporting aggressive names like Cerberus, Fnatic, London Spitfire and Endpoint.
Some of these teams focus on a particular title, while others spread their talents across multiple games. Solo players can become quasi-rock stars in their chosen niche.
The increasing use of Riyadh as an esports event host city reflects the huge sums of money being invested in esports, with prize pools of up to $40 million at a single tournament.
In its Prime
In late 2014, Amazon acquired the Twitch.tv domain and related branding for almost a billion dollars.
This provided the marketing and technical underpinnings which subsequently saw seen this video live-streaming service dominate the global market.
While almost any internet-enabled device displays Twitch content, uploading content requires 8GB of RAM and a fairly powerful processor (an Intel Core i5 or above).
While much of Twitch’s content is broadcast live, on-demand content is also readily available.
The appeal of watching strangers playing a computer game last week will be lost on some readers, while others might reasonably view this as the ultimate incarnation of reality TV.
As with any artform, there’s a thrilling pleasure in watching people nailing note-perfect Guitar Hero soloes or evading the police in Grand Theft Auto V.
Even sedentary activities like card games attract audiences, with live commentators providing expert analysis of complex Magic: The Gathering battles as each instant counters an artifact.
It’s easy to fall down a rabbit hole and find yourself watching foreign-language coverage of a game you last played a decade ago, especially if the players are better than you ever were.
Rather like TikTok, the fast-paced (and often frenetic) nature of both the content and the user interface makes Twitch an easy place to spend more time than you’d intended.
Its appeal is focused on current and lapsed gamers, although forays into other niche topics suggests Twitch is now pursuing a wider share of the hugely lucrative live-streaming market.
