E-sports and Live streaming.
With big announcements from the game console companies, Live Streaming has been thrust into the mainstream. Join us as we discuss the phenomenon with a lead researcher and a full-time streamer.
We have two interviews this week: Author & Researcher T.L. Taylor and Live Streamer Jeffrey Shih aka Trumpsc on twitch.tv
T.L. Taylor
Live-streaming research
Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming
Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture
Jeffrey Shih (Trump)
Hearthstone Arena with Trump - Welcome to Value Town!
@trumpsc
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
— Transcript —
Jeffrey: Hi I’m Jeffrey Shih, known online as Trump, and welcome to the Social Media Clarity podcast.
T.L. Taylor: People don’t behave as you always want, as you always expect, as you always wish and that’s the beauty of emerging culture.
Randy: Welcome to the Social Media Clarity podcast, fifteen minutes of concentrated analysis and advice about social media in platform and product design. Welcome to the Social Media Clarity podcast. This is episode seven on live streaming and eSports. I’m Randy Farmer.
Scott: I’m Scott Moore.
Marc: I’m Marc Smith.
T.L. Taylor: I’m T.L. Taylor.
Randy: This week we’re going to have two guests, T.L. Taylor, associate professor of comparative media studies at MIT. She’s also the author of several books, most recently Raising the Stakes about eSports by MIT Press. We will also be joined by Twitch.tv live streamer Jeffrey Shih whose handle is Trump SC.
Randy : Now for the news.
Scott: This episode’s news is actually not a specific news item, but the dual news items that the Sony’s PS4, and Microsoft Xbox One have both released in November. The thing to watch out for here is both offer the ability to live stream and upload clips of game play and videos of the players themselves. And while it’s still early in watching how people are using this new and easy ability to live stream. There have already been reports of conflict between streamers and hosting services and their terms of services or rules. At this time, popular live streaming service Twitch has shutdown all streams using Sony’s playroom while uStream does not have a blanket ban on the play room. The services hosting live streams and the console manufactures, and us, the creators would do well to look to the history of online communities and collaboration to learn already available lessons about user generated content moderation.
Marc: The video game industry is renewing itself, it’s releasing a new wave of consoles and we’re seeing the shape of video gaming for the next several years to come. At the center of it, it’s not just the gaming experience, and it’s not just this idea of using it as a media center but it’s actually the sharing of the gaming experience. It’s bigger than cable TV, and you may not have heard of it. But, it’s people watching other people playing video games, and it’s really really big.
Randy: On that note, I’d like to roll into our interview.
Scott: The first question is what is the live streaming of video games?
T.L. Taylor: It’s taking a core component of gaming that we’ve always had, which is sharing your play experience with others often sitting at the sofa hanging out at the arcade and basically using sites like Twitch.tv to share their play with broader audiences. Sometimes, they’re sharing their play in real time with people they know and friends who are hanging out and watching them online, other times with massive audiences. Basically, just distributing your real time play over the internet for others to watch.
Scott : The people who stream, is this a specialized group of people? Who are the people who stream?
T.L. Taylor: I think we’re seeing a really big change in the last couple of years. I would say historically the people who have been doing and experimenting with streaming live video have been folks who’ve worked in eSports who are sharing competitive tournament play, or professional play. There’s also of course people who’ve been really avid fans, or people who are producing specialized content. Those folks have of course really adaptors into live streaming. What’s really transformed in the last couple of years, is how easy it’s become for average folks to stream. As you mentioned at the top with the news, the new gaming consoles are now integrating streaming right into the heart of the hardware and that’s making it even easier, really just touch of a button and a log in. It’s becoming more and more accessible for many other folks.
Scott: The flip side of that question is, and you mention massive audiences, who’s doing the watching, and how massive is massive at this point?
T.L. Taylor: There’s a lot at stake right now in making the scene look very robust. The recent figure that just came out this week was League of Legends which is a very popular eSports title, it had its world final just back in, it was October or September. 12,000 people went to the Staple Center in Los Angeles to watch the event live. It was reported that there were 32 million people watching combined online and television. It’s not unusual at this point for major eSports tournament to get up in the multi-millions of unique viewers watching live. That’s the high end, all the way down to if you were to hop on Twitch right now. You would see people broadcasting to no viewers, and you would see people broadcasting to a handful. In fact, that long tail of people who aren’t broadcasting the massive numbers are a really important part of that ecosystem.
Randy: Could you expand a little bit on the importance of the long tail?
T.L. Taylor: Many sites like YouTube, are also dependent on not just the handful of people who are producing hundreds of hours of video, but they are very dependent on there being a constant influx of material and watchers. You need all of those other folks who are cycling in, cycling out. What’s going to happen to live streaming? Is it really going to be just an everyday part of play? Is it a specialized niche or quirky thing folks are experimenting with right now and it’s going to tail off? Having a culture of producing play for other people and a culture of spectatorship is ultimately what’s going to keep sites like Twitch and others going. You need an active ecosystem there.
Scott: In broadcast media, it’s very popular to use social media as a second screen to create this feeling of connectedness with other people via hashtags. Is that a potential crossover point for live video game streaming?
T.L. Taylor: Game culture is often the canary in the coal mine. It’s the place you see front-edge behavior and phenomenon way before other places. I think that’s absolutely the case with live streaming. You’re seeing often very robust and thorny parts of things we call social TV or second screen technology. Second screen stuff is tricky, and part of this is going to depend on how the stuff plays out on a console.
Randy: The streamer we’re going to interview, his sole income is from social casting. I don’t know if he considers himself an eSports participant or not, but his page has all the trappings of being in a league. They, borrow a lot of that language even though he’s always just on the screen playing Hearthstone by himself. Live streaming makes that difference is now you could participate individually without having to be a part of the sports league, kind of the democratization of eSports?
T.L. Taylor: Well, interestingly in eSports, on-site live face-to-face tournaments are actually still hugely important. It used to be really hard to be a fan. If you wanted to be a fan of your favorite Counter Strike team, or your favorite Starcraft player. You had to know there’s these specialist websites. Say you wanted to watch a game, maybe you were downloading a replay file, maybe you’re tracking down a VOD. If you were lucky you got to hear sports commentary on those games. Live streaming makes it so much easier to be a fan and to spectate. You can go on a site like Twitch right now, pick any number of games, pick tournaments you want to see. In the case of eSports, you’re going to hear commentators, you’re going to get multi views, you’re probably going to get some interviews. If you just love gaming, it also becomes very easy to spectate either games that you love, or increasingly people are using live streaming to check out games they maybe interested in purchasing. This also becomes the reason developers are interested in live streaming because it has PR potential as well. It’s just becomes easier to hook into things, one that you maybe already passion about or two find that you’re passionate about them if you get access to them easily. That really changes the eSports landscape in important ways.
Marc: Maybe you could talk about some of the issues about gender and race and diversity. When it was the case that you only saw the gameplay and there was no audio, a lot of these identity queues were minimized. As we add more video and more audio, and even things like seeing what’s in the background over the shoulder of the player.
T.L. Taylor: When it comes to things around gender, race, sexuality, general issues of diversity and equity, these have been vexing issues in game culture for many, many years. They have been vexing issues I eSports culture. For example, in the eSport scene you’re getting now people who are spectating tournaments, following games, following teams that are having to be accountable to audiences. They sometimes haven’t have to be accountable to before, because it was very insider culture. So, you see community struggling around norms, what they’re use to doing, what happens when more and new and different people enter their space. What’s perceived to be legitimate, so we’ve certainly seen eSports players release from contracts because of bad behavior and it’s no coincidence, too, that it’s often bad behavior that becomes very public because it’s taking place on live streams. It’s getting seen by a lot of people. You also see different live stream channels have different forms of engagement, norms around behavior. They moderate their channels in different ways. There’s no single set of cultural practices or norms right now. It’s also the case too, that women who are entering into live stream space face many of the challenges that woman have often faced in game culture. But, there was them sitting alone and their living rooms being confronted by incredible sexism. Often now, it’s getting performed live on broadcast. In some ways the publicness that live streaming puts our gaming culture in, it’s not so much of that’s creating new problems, it’s revealing a lot of issues that have long been there, and are getting kind of put on the table to be dealt with more and more.
Randy: T.L do you have any additional thoughts about issues associated with live streaming?
T.L. Taylor: For me, one of the most critical aspects of this emerging scene of live streaming pertains to issues around intellectual property and ownership. Ultimately we’re talking about content that is fundamentally coming out of game development companies who in very in degrees have a lot of investment in particular ownership models. Nintendo, just within the last six months, put out a very strong statement disallowing people from earning from any revenue on videos they’re posting on Youtube. It cause a huge upset in that community because many people have more progressive notions of what co-created content looks like in digital culture. There’s a really interesting open question and future about intellectual property and this productions. We’re still waiting to see what’s going to happen. A lot of the major developers so, Riot, Blizzard, Valve, and Steam will say things like, “Your activities have to be non-commercial, unless you’re working with partners.” Whether that’s partner networks or somebody like Machinima who does multi-channel network, a lot of these companies are still trying to figure out how to handle their IP. They fluctuate between it’s ours and hold it close, and well we’re in this moment where people are creating things. So, you see these kind of funny half answers, and then sometimes you can put stuff out there but they still want to regulate what the content is in some sense. Look at a game like Counter Strike that was played well past its shelf life. It was played well past its shelf life because a community developed around it that kept it energized; that refreshed it through its practices and its modification. You can’t say to people, “Come in, make this with us” and then draw line always when you go, “Not that thing, can you just do things we all love and agree with.” Culture’s emrgent and sometimes it’s messy, and sometimes it does stuff you can’t control and that’s part of the beautiful game.
Randy: On that, I’d like to thank T.L. Taylor for talking with us today about live streaming. We will include links to her project, research and book in the show notes. Thank you T.L.
T.L. Taylor: Thanks very much, it’s been a lot of fun.
Marc: Thanks for coming.
Scott: Thanks a lot T.L.
Randy: For our tip, I’d like to introduce Jeff Shih, also known as Trump on Twitch. Thanks for being on the show Jeff.
Jeffrey: Of course.
Randy: Jeff, why do you go by the handle Trump?
Jeffrey: I go by Trump because it’s the verb form of the definition to get the better of an adversary or a competitor by using a crucial often hidden resource. It’s also just a strong and powerful short word. Something people can remember. I have gone a lot of questions about what the SC in my full name, TrumpSC, stands for. Turns out it stands for Starcraft which leads me to a tip which is to not name yourself after one game in specific because you never know if you’re going to move on to another game. If you do, you’ll be stuck with that tag for awhile.
Randy: How long have you been live streaming?
Jeffrey: I’ve been live streaming for just over three years now.
Randy: How often do you live stream?
Jeffrey: It used to vary. I used to do it part time. Recently, I have moved about a 40 hour a week venture.
Randy: You do that on Twitch.tv?
Jeffrey: Yes.
Randy: What game are you currently playing?
Jeffrey: Currently, I’m playing the Blizzard game, Hearthstone. It’s a fun collectible card game which is digital only. It’s really cool to watch. It’s just been about 2 to 3 months and it’s got a huge following. We’re nearing the end of the close beta period supposedly open beta is soon.
Randy: I recently was on your page and saw that you had 10,000 simultaneous viewers in the middle of the afternoon, California time. Is that typical?
Jeffrey: Yeah, It is actually pretty typical and, at first, blew me away I have started to embrace it.
Randy: How did you grow your audience overtime?
Jeffrey: It’s been a culmination of say, 3 years of streaming. Here, it may just be I am an early adapter of the game and people see me as being good at it.
Randy: What advice would you have for aspiring live streamers?
Jeffrey: Doing something, that is unique in some way. Either you’re the best at the game, or one of the best, or you’re extremely entertaining, or you’re informative something that sets you apart. Most top streamers, or perhaps even all top streamers, do give a running commentary of their play. Do that. Stick with it. Try to stay with the schedule. You have to spend a lot of time at it.
Randy: Would you talk a little bit about the community of streamers?
Jeffrey: A lot of Hearthstone streamers recently went to Blizzcon which is the Blizzard convention. We all met up with each other there. It’s really useful to know people in the community since you can have each other’s back, you can trade tips, you can share traffic.
Randy: Do you have anything else you’d like to say to anyone whether they’re fans, or streamers or potential streamers.
Jeffrey: I would recommend going to streaming only if you’re absolutely passionate about it. Since it does take a long time unless you’re both very good, as well as have something else to offer on top of that via running commentary or being very entertaining while playing it. It’s tough to make it. Basically just going to it only if you are absolutely certain that’s what you want to do.
Randy: Thanks for the tips Jeff, we’ll include links to your show in our podcast notes.
Randy: Go to socialmediaclarity.net. This podcast is available under creative commons license.