Online live streaming is a new media genre that is the combination of broadcast and video communication. Quote from the article “The broadcasters live record themselves while they play video games and simultaneously engage in video-mediated communication (VMC) with their viewers.”
What is Live Streaming?
The early time of live streaming started at late 1990s, mostly are music radios, broadcasters use their voices only in the streaming.
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More recently, online streaming has expanded to food, cooking, painting, camgirl and video games, now gaming streaming has the biggest market. Video streaming has features of live TV, but at the same time it is the subversion of live TV industry. Traditional TV broadcasts are usually made in a specific scene, made by professional staff, equipment, and broadcast on the behalf of authoritative radio and television. Live streaming broadcasts reduce the threshold of content production, no matter who you are, no matter where you are, as long as you have the most basic camera and network equipment, anyone can do live video streaming. If the purpose of live television is to convey a message, the purpose of live video streaming is to get every day people involved with streaming and sharing. TV broadcasts emphasize news stories, focus on major events, and usually have a specific plan or agenda. In contrast, live video streaming is less structured, and more in tune with the audience. It usually more widely stimulates the audience’s communication and interactive participation, even going as far as letting the audience choose the direction of the flow of the produciton.
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The future trend of live streaming
Live streaming is still in the startup growth stage of its development: it has not yet reached a full stage of maturity. The startup period for gaming live platform is 2012 to 2014. The core users are PC-side gaming enthusiasts. From 2013 to 2015, the game streaming platform user scale increased from 12 million to 48 million. According to Ereli forecast, the number is expected to reach 100 million on 2017. Today the core users of game streaming platform are working married men, with age distribution in the 20-30 years old, accounting for up to 37% of total user. High popularity Gaming is the core resources of game streaming platform today.
Background of Twitch TV the world biggest live steaming platform
Twitch TV is a worldwide game streaming platform with huge user base: it is now the biggest streaming platform in the world. According to a quote from “Live Streaming On Twitch”, “Research into online live streaming of video games is still in its infancy and can be divided in two groups. The first strand is interested in the audience’s reasons to watch online live streaming, live streams that are attractive because of I) the ‘challenge’, performed by the professional with very little communication between streamer and audience; II) the ‘exhibition’ of player skill, which is combined with some talk and III) the ‘exchange’, where the “showman has the priority” over the game play”. Twitch was founded in June 2011, in July Twitch launched a partnership project, which like YouTube, to share income with video providers, this project attracted the world’s most popular video game podcasts, individuals, alliances, clans and ESports tournament. Twitch has more than 35 million independent IP users per month, and this figure is still increasing by 13% per month.
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Live Steaming and game design
Live streaming has big impact with video game industry, more and more people starting to consider the possibility of design video game with live streaming feature. According to “Live-Streaming and Game Design”, “The services and technologies of live-streaming games evolved around games; games are designed and then subsequently streamed. Certainly game makers have moved to integrate streaming features into their game, and others are beginning to design their games for streaming, considering the dynamics of spectatorship, such as with esports.”. There are two possibilities that demand game designers’ attention: games designed with Live streaming in mind, and game design with integrated live streaming. Each type of game has great potential in changing the future of video game industry.
References:
Daniel Recktenwald, Toward a transcription and analysis of live streaming on , Journal of Pragmatics, Volume 115, 2017, Pages 68-81, ISSN 0378-2166, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2017.01.013.
Goddard, William. (2015). Live-Streaming and Game Design. . 10.13140/RG.2.1.1928.2645.
Annotations
Toward a transcription and analysis of live streaming on Twitch
Daniel Recktenwald, Toward a transcription and analysis of live streaming on , Journal of Pragmatics, Volume 115, 2017, Pages 68-81, ISSN 0378-2166, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2017.01.013.
Summarize: The article introduces a new media genre that is the combination of broadcast and video communication. Quote from the article “The broadcasters live record themselves while they play video games and simultaneously engage in video-mediated communication (VMC) with their viewers.” The article use Twitch as example to explain how live streaming works, it introduces the background and history of Twitch and how data is collected and some methods. Also the basic layout of live streaming and transcription of Twitch.
Contextualize: The author Daniel Recktenwald is a professor of department of English in Hong Kong polytechnic University, the article is an academic Journal. The audience to this article are those who are interested in live-streaming and people on live steaming or how the live streaming industry works.
Assessment: The article is related to our group topic representation in Gaming because firstly, live streaming is important to esport, it provide income to support many professional gamers and gamers keep the whole industry growing, also some gaming media company will live stream the professional competitions to audience and gain income from advertisements.
Live-Streaming and Game Design
Goddard, William. (2015). Live-Streaming and Game Design. . 10.13140/RG.2.1.1928.2645.
Summarize: This article talks about the relationship between live-streaming and game design, it discusses many possibilities of future game models such as games designed as live-streaming and games designed with live-streaming. Basically, it introduces some existed models and explain what make them succeed, also the article talks about the potential of future live-streaming games.
Contextualize: The author is William Goddard from Playable Media Lad of RMIT University in Australia. He is a game designer also a player. Audience to this articles are video gamers, game designers and people doing live streaming.
Assessment: The article discusses the future possibilities of combination of live streaming and video game, and introduce the existed game models and business models.
BISMCS 333 SUMMER 2017 