[Ambient city noise]
Downloaded from YTS.MX
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
Buster. Buster, come here. Come here. Too much excitement.
[Background apartment noise]
[Computer powering up]
[Music]
Hello guys, we are back. Oh my goodness. Maxy, thank you so
much for the $30. That's so kind of you and thank you so much for
the kind words. I'm so glad you are enjoying stream.
When the mom dies to the shark, that's pretty bad, right?
He's like, "my mom died." Is like, "suck it up, bitch. You
got to get back out there." That would destroy some kids today I
feel like. All right, we've got to find some frogs.
Wait, it's still on irl, really? This sounds really sad,
I feel like I am talking to myself now. I guess that's what
streaming is. My stomach is growling, I'm really hungry.
Oh shit, that's a [explicit] twelve-month badge . Calling it,
maybe not. Oh, we're a defense team, boys. Let's go.
Well, poki merch is literally in like a day or two, we are
just getting the Europe side of it ready. Thank you so much for
subbing. Aerial force, welcome to the poki club. Thank you for
the nine months general, welcome back.
You use right-click? I use space.
You have to get this res, let's go.
I mean, I'm sorry, I said it. I'm sorry, I don't care if the
cameras are rolling.
It says error updating vodcast.
Pokilove, your insta was hacked? How?
[Streamers talking at once]
[Music]
Appreciate that, thank you.
My name is Ellie, I go by mopgarden online. I am a
professional streamer. I have been streaming for just over
three years in July.
Okay guys, we are doing the sub-a-thon again tomorrow, okay?
Oh my god, that junkrat is annoying. You can't win if you
die, heroes never die, gooded. Hype boys, thank you so much,
maxy.
I was working full time at Starbucks and I basically was
making more in today's of streaming a week than I was for
a whole paycheck at Starbucks. I thought to myself, "why am I
doing this?" I ended up quitting my job full-time and my manager
was like, "you are making an awful decision." I was like,
we'll see.
Sometimes it doesn't quite sink in. I get to travel
wherever I want, I get to make my own schedule.
This is the worst, when a fan donates and then they are like,
"oh, this is all I can offer until my next paycheck." I'm
like, stop giving me money. I don't want your money, save it.
That makes me feel horrible.
I was getting swarmed with emails, I was getting hundreds
of emails a day. People that wanted to have a meeting with me
for all terrier motives, you know? It's a mess.
I've had someone ask me to sign their baby on the forehead
and I didn't know how I felt about that.
She started crying and she was like, "it's been my dream to
meet you, I've been watching you for three years." That
experience alone is super surreal.
So for us it's just a number in the corner but when you try
to visualize it in the physical sense, that's a stadium of
people. Sometimes you take it for granted but when you stop
and think, it's like, wow. People tune in to watch me play
video games.
[Crowd cheering]
Hey Google, play highway to hell.
Google voice: Highway to hell by ac/dc, sure, playing on spotify.
[Highway to hell playing]
Streaming is basically just a guy or girl playing video games
in his home and broadcasting it to the world.
The idea that people can take their favorite game and they can
have that audience watch as they play it.
You are watching me stream video games and I am in the
corner in the camera and you are also watch me as I interact with
the chat so if you are familiar with YouTube, it's like YouTube
but live.
It's a lot like a live broadcast of a TV show,
something like Saturday night live. People are watching it as
it happens, there is plenty of room for mistakes.
God damn, this game is buggy as [explicit].
[Laughter]
Video games are inherently kind of glitchy sometimes.
I'm going out, oh, that was a bad idea.
[Screaming]
No, my neck!
The unpredictability of what is going on. It is this thing of
sharing the moment.
[Ominous music]
[Screaming]
You okay?
There are so many forms of great entertainment, novels, TV,
movies. But the cool part about video games is that you are
interacting directly with the medium.
He's right in front of me, shoot him with another rocket, I
will try to jump on it, quick, quick, quick. Oh, got it!
I think that's what makes them so exciting to people. It
dates way back to the earliest experience in arcades.
You are at the arcade, you put your quarter down, you're
watching. You're not just going to stand there and wait, you are
interested in who this person is and you are going to play. Your
friend or your little brother or your older sister watching over
your shoulder telling you, "do this, you should do that
instead!" watching videogames is and a lot of ways as fun as
playing them.
The people who see it as a trend, they are probably people
who don't get gaming to begin with. Everybody plays games,
whether it's Tetris on your phone or what have you. Gaming
has been so far removed from geek culture since the 80s so
anybody who doesn't acknowledge its as much a part of our
entertainment industry as Hollywood is is really out of
touch.
Another study that came out that showed that people 18-29
now watch the sports more than they watch anything pretty much
except for movies I think. More than sports, more than TV and
that's an entire decade of people that have grown up and
decided, "you know what? This is my entertainment of choice." So
I think it has been habituated, it's part of our culture already
so I do think that the idea of watching people play games
online is going to continue to grow.
I don't get that. To me, watching another person play
video games is like going to a restaurant and having someone
eat your food for you. If you like them, play them but I guess
I'm getting old.
[Laughter]
What a play. That would be so good.
I had no interest in doing it because I was like, "I don't
understand why anybody would watch people stream. Why would
you not just want to play the game yourself?" Then I went on
and I watched a big streamer play counterstrike for an hour
and a half and I was like, "wow, that was very fast. I don't
understand how that happened."
I don't know, why do people watch soccer? Why do people
watch basketball? Because they enjoy it. I mean, I think it's
as simple as that. It's exciting watching other people do well in
a game you know well yourself.
Obviously there's a vicarious enjoyment in seeing something
done well, even if it might be more fun for you to do it
yourself since you can't do it and since you can't perform at
that level just as with traditional sports, we enjoy
watching people who are the best at doing something.
[Crowd celebrating intensely]
There isn't a paid component
in terms of barrier to entry so it is free to watch. You pick a
game. I'm interested in league of legends, there will be a
really famous pro player currently streaming, a guy no
one knows is streaming with very few viewers.
The means that people used to watch live streaming video games
is twitch.Tv.
Twitch is a live social video community for gamers and
creative's. But we tried to do is build a live video site that
allows creators to build communities of like-minded
individuals around their passions. I think YouTube really
kicked it off with what they did which was really empower anybody
to broadcast themselves as their original motto stated. We took
that in a different direction and made it live, made it
actually interactive and a little more social. You feel
like you are in the room there with the creator, maybe even
playing games with them and they respond to you.
Can you tell me what kind of items there is because I haven't
seen. Morello's changed. Wait, is it new items are they
changing old items?
On twitch, you have twitch chat which is a little box right
next to the screen where you are viewing the broadcast itself.
People can basically just say whatever they wanted to it. It
is this stream of people talking, this mass of words
flowing down the screen that you can interact with it, respond to
it so streamers talk to their viewers and it becomes this sort
of relationship.
Twitch TV is not just a streaming platform, it's also a
social network. People can interact, can also share their
feelings, their opinions.
It becomes this big gathering and in the case of some of those
streamers, they are very good at sort of creating that at least
illusion of them being your pal so it's almost like sitting on
the couch and watching a friend play video games.
Oh my god, is that actually you? Dr. Disrespect, is that
you?
I prefer world champion.
It's sort of this depth of relationship with a content
creator that you don't see in many other places. For the
gamer, for the player, for the streamer, it feels like a little
bit more social.
Oh my god, it's [explicit] you. Wait, can you go over by
the fence so I can take a screenshot? Please, dad?
Even if you don't build a big audience and build a career on
it, it's a little bit more fun than playing by yourself.
People just create a sort of new culture and at the same time
in the industry and also entertainment as a whole is
factored as well.
[Crowd cheering]
Twitch came from a company called Justin TV.
My name is Justin and I am the star of Justin.Tv.
Justin kan, one of our cofounders, decided that
streaming his life 24/7 would be a really fantastic idea.
Justin TV was founded by Justin kan, Emmett sheer who
went on to be the founder and ceo of twitch, Kyle voit and
Michael siebel.
Turns out it worked in the sense that a lot of people were
so curious. "Who is this dude that thinks he can walk around
San Francisco and stream his life?"
I'm just the one with a camera.
His entire life, while he is sleeping, while he is walking
around, while he is working. It's a very boring, very raw
reality show.
I'm in the bathroom, going to tilt the camera up a little bit.
I'm trying to make this a pg-13 rated show.
Six of clubs, eight of clubs. It launched this idea of
sharing your life. In 2008, we opened up the platform for
anyone to use and then 2009, we started thinking about gaming.
Gaming vod content, on-demand content on YouTube was growing
very quickly at that time so we thought, "huh, why don't people
do this live? It just makes sense." As we continued to
noodle on it, we said, "hey, we really need to convince a board
to let us just do games." They said, "look, if you hit the
numbers you say you can hit in six months, we'll fund it." We
had those numbers in two months, launched twitch as a brand in
2011 and then kept growing from there. I think we were really
lucky actually to land on twitch.
It was actually really difficult to find a good noun or
verb that wasn't already taken for a site.
Are you aware of the myth of xarth?
With an x, x-a-r-t-h. That was sort of the working title.
"Oh, you can be xarth linked, people can be xarth linked, it's
perfect." it was not the right name, definitely.
Which was acquired by Amazon in August 2014 for roughly $970
million.
It was great meeting the Amazon execs because they were
like, "hey, we don't really know what you guys do but it's cool
and our kids watch it all the time."
I think that was definitely a signal that this was no longer
this niche thing, it was mainstream at that point and now
sure enough here we are a few years later and traditional
television is not doing so great, twitch business is
booming.
Twitch has over 2 million people that stream every month,
we have about 10 million people that watch every single day from
around the world, most of our audience is north America,
Europe, east Asia, Latin America. On average, they are
watching over 100 minutes a day so not quite two hours but a lot
of content. I think people do that because it's so engaging,
it is a very different type of video experience.
I know there are a lot of critics and a lot of doubts
about twitch TV because it seems like a sort of mirror of the act
of playing that is natural. The whole point is that twitchers
are able to add more meaning to a game.
Many of them are very charismatic people so they are
fun to watch play a game in a different way than other people
would.
Awkward encounter, I am mortified. No, please don't kill
me, sir. Oh my god, I am seriously dying of
embarrassment.
It is absolutely not the game. You can stream final
fantasy vii, you can stream overwatch, you can stream
everything. It is not what, it is how. In my studies, I found
three main orientations of streaming. The first one is the
professional. The professional usually is a pro gamer who
depends on his or her game skills. Also to provide your
viewers tips, insights, strategies. The reason
professionals are streaming is because they are good, really
good at playing.
Falls asleep due to the ultimate coming it that he got
four with the pulse bomb.
My name is Alfred Lucas, I am from Sweden.
That's how you win a fight, mendo just kills everybody.
My gamer name or nickname is mendokusaii or mendo which is a
Japanese word. I just watch way too much anime.
I've been a pro gamer for a little over a year and a half
now. As soon as the overwatch release trailer was hyped on
blizzcon, I was like, "all right, that's it."
The game is a team-based action shooter that features
epic over-the-top battles in six vs. Six competitive matches.
I just decided I am going to go pro, going to have a
successful stream and I'm not quitting before I have that.
Originally I told my dad I want to take a year of school and
just tried to go pro in overwatch. Then he decided that
he's not taking a year off, he's dropping out of high school
because I don't want him to focus on making it within one
year, I want him to have all the time in the world to focus on
going pro because he believes he can do it and I believe in him,
too. The only reason I'm actually here is because of the
support from my father.
Show music
I stream generally 12-15 hours every day. I don't follow
a set schedule. I am the kind of streamer that if I'm awake, I'm
probably streaming. I make sure I pushed myself every day so I
get used to, "I'm so exhausted, I can play one more game and so
my fan base is American, Korean and European so I want to be
able to hit all regions with my stream. Also, I prefer nighttime
a lot more, I don't like the sun as you can see from the garbage
taped all over my window.
It gets bright and I sleep during the days so it's hard
sleeping. Yeah, I covered my windows with that. I went
outside to get breakfast that I ordered yesterday I guess but
the last time I was outside in the sun, I can't remember. It's
been a while.
Got to go, mendo though, has got the attack visors, got the
nano boost ready to go and that is going to mean afreeca blue I
think is going to be stopped right here, right now.
Your first instinct is like, "how can any human being track
that well with a gun and follow me wherever I am.
Most people watching me, they can't play my level. I dedicated
my entire life to improving and getting better and practicing
and since this is a first-person shooter, my aim is much, much
better than the average player. It is something they can't
really ever experience without putting years of their life into
practice and see like, "wow, I never thought you could do this
with this character, I never thought this was possible."
It's as if you can watch Michael Jordan practice and
actually interact with him live. That's the unique aspect of
twitch that no other platform really has mastered yet.
How easy is it for football players to communicate to their
fans? I can start my stream, play the game and have all these
people, hundreds and thousands of questions in chat and I can
answer them as much as I want to. I still do the same thing I
do my entire life, I sit in my room and practice and now I'm
streaming myself doing it and I'm getting almost worshiped for
it. I have a lot of very supportive followers, they give
me very nice life to live but I tell me straight up every day
that right now there is no pro play for me so of course I am
focusing on streaming but it still until I get on a pro team
so I can focus on that again.
Probably the most compelling part of the overwatch league is
that we are going to have regionally-based teams. The pro
players will have a guaranteed minimum salary and guaranteed
benefits so we are trying to be very protective of up-and-coming
pro players that they can see this as a real career with a
real future.
Hell yeah, definitely want to be a part of it. Unfortunately
it's not that simple. I haven't been in tournament play for a
while so it's hard to get noticed. I am kind of streaming
and making sure I practice the best that I can but my end goal
is definitely being a part of overwatch league and winning
overwatch league, season one, season two and season three
onwards.
[Music]
The second orientation is the hedonist who relies on his or
her performance skills. So the name is not so much important
but what is really important is the ability of the streamer to
harness it for his own purposes. For instance, using grand theft
auto or mind craft really to experiment, in some way to
highlight the subjective and personal dimension of the
streamer.
The only two things I've been pretty much good at my entire
life is making people laugh and playing video games and I
thought, "hey, that's literally what that platform is all
about."
That shit happens, man. You know, bad engine, man. You know,
the [explicit] oil got into the [Explicit] engine and [explicit]
Sparked on fire and the car blowup, man. You know, so? Oh,
shit!
Grand Theft Auto role-play is interesting. The idea is people
watch people play this open world of crime and role play
characters. You can play as a police officer if you wanted to,
you could be a criminal, a postal truck driver, or you
could run a food truck. People have taken to using it to act
like their own crime dramas, police procedurals. It's
basically a really elaborate improv.
My character is this petty, impulsive, emotional criminal.
He believes he is capable of taking over and running the
entire city. He's never going to acquire that, though because
he's really not the smartest guy around.
Can you drive with one hand? Of course I can drive with
one hand, what do you think?
[Explosion]
[Laughter]
The gta server we play on is robbing banks, selling drugs and
stealing cars. Then after that it's whatever you can imagine.
You can essentially do.
[Group singing karaoke]
If you do get caught, you are obviously arrested by the police
officer and he brings you down to whatever police station is
nearest.
You might want to get rid of my shit on me, you know, before
I do something crazy.
It gets really intense, when you are running from the cops
and hiding in the car and they cop drives by, your heart is
literally pumping because the minute they see you, they are on
the radio and everybody is coming to your location and you
have to do your best to get away. It's the most fun I've
ever had in a game.
Why does he come for me?
[Grunting, stunned by taser] Going to have some subjects
outstanding as well.
Why does he come for me first all the time?
So sheriff Eli is probably the most popular gta role player
and he is somebody who role-plays a really hard-nosed
by the books cop.
If you surf, do not start addressing me with respect, I'm
going to put my foot so far up your ass that the water on my
knee will clench your [explicit] thirst. The last thing you will
ever think about is Mr. Dank weed because the first and last
thing on your mind will be my foot. That's how far up your ass
it will be. Do you get me, sir? Are you picking up what I'm
putting down?
I'm picking up what you're putting down, sir trooper.
The guy who does it is a former policeman himself. He
basically uses actual police procedures in this videogame.
You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and
will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right
to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be
appointed to you at no cost by the state.
When he comes on the game, he clocks in as his actual shift.
Sometimes it's almost hard to tell if he's role-playing or not
because it's that authentic, he gets so into it.
43, 44. Mr. Buddha, you [Explicit] idiot, get out of
here now! Leave this [explicit] scene!
He runs it like a jackrabbit, I'll say too. There is no quit
in that boy, not at all, none.
When he pulls you over and you hear his voice, the chill
runs down your spine if you are doing something wrong because it
you are about to get [explicit] by the law, man. It's pretty
insane.
[Car destroyed]
We are so so [explicit].
Motor vehicle fire, request additional. Move away from the
car, move away from the car, move, move, move! Stop there,
stop right there.
We are so so [explicit], dude.
Mr. Buddha, what the [Explicit] are you doing, sir?
He actually came to prominence on other people's
streams and he didn't even have good enough hardware to do it
himself.
My old PC when I first started playing Grand Theft Auto
was held together with bailing twine and tobacco spit.
The community raised money for him because they wanted him
to have a stream of his own so badly.
They raised almost $30,000 to buy equipment. It was mind
blowing.
People love this guy. He is this grumpy police officer man
who goes around yelling at people in a videogame.
Sir, we can't risk you turning into a [explicit]
Missile every single time the backstreet boys come on, sir.
You understand?
Yeah, yeah, man. Maybe I won't listen to the music while
I am driving, you know?
So I work full-time at lone star downtown. I am the cook
there, make steaks for a living. I hate it so much but I got to
pay bills, right? The way twitch works, it's the perfect dream
job and that is basically my goal is to do is do that
full-time.
Show music
finally, there is the companion. Here, the social
dimension is highlighted. Here the game is really just a
premise. Sometimes they just post the game and go into chat
to share with them opinions, ideas, memories. There are great
discussions, great debates.
I didn't even realize that they're gone. Guys, they're
gone, they're out of here. Oh, no they're back. I didn't
realize, I looked around and nobody is here and then they
just poked around the corner and scared the shit out of me.
I love video games and I love people. It all kind of comes
together with streaming.
"How do I find a girlfriend? I'm lonely." Well, Neo-fusion,
you don't do it watching my stream. What happened to the
music, man? Hold on, let's see. Let's pick another album. What
do you guys want to listen to?
A variety streamer basically streams obviously a variety of
games. All these different genres of games we just kind of
hop between them and get to know the communities. Whatever is
popular and people want to see and whatever I'm interested in I
kind of try to find a nice, little balance there.
All right, I've got to get back to battling, guys. I don't
want to purchase this. They always try to get me to buy
things, man. It's almost like it's a mobile game.
I have a mature stream. I'm very vulgar, I talk about
everything.
My favorite porn? Why do you guys got to ask that today? I'm
not doing it, guys. You [Explicit] trolls, man.
Because I kind of have an older audience and we are kind
of a little bit, very vulnerable, candid with each
other. I think that leaves people to feel they can be who
they are and I think that makes people comfortable.
I don't think I have the nicest boobs ever but I think
that they could probably compete with some celebrities out there.
Maybe Jonah hill.
Hoping that the people get something out of it and inspires
them or helps them or makes them laugh or any type of good vibes
or feelings.
My community especially I think because of the age, we
have a certain level of life experience where we are able to
help each other, understand each other, be empathetic. My
grandma, I lived with her for about a year, year and a half
while I was streaming so they got to know her, too.
I think you for taking care of my boy.
My grandma to me is like a second mom.
It's great to have you guys out there to support him and
Cora.
After we moved out, I think it was a year, year and a half
that my grandma ended up passing away.
It's okay, it's all right. It's all right, it's all right.
It's weird because I want to broadcast because it's kind of
my therapy and it's what I love to do but I didn't want to do
that because I didn't want to bring people into my psyche at
that point.
I've got to go, guys. I'm sorry. I tried to bring my
personal life into this but I got to go.
After kind of talking about it on Twitter with my audience,
they were like, "please, please. We don't care, just come
broadcast, chill, take it easy. We all understand." And they
did. We had 8000 people playing star wars battlefront and I was
halfway laughing as I was killing people with light sabers
and then the next moment crying because I lost my grandmother
and it was a roller coaster of emotions. That was the moment I
was able to grieve in front of thousands of people and then
accept that. That is a very, very emotional and very powerful
thing to feel when you have that much support from that many
people.
Aj, thank you for the 31 months. Happy birthday, it's not
my birthday.
I like the fact that I get to interact with people, I like the
fact that I get to play video games and I like the fact that
it's helping me explore games in whole new ways that I never
thought possible before and at the same time I am able to
support myself and my family. It's everything that I love
about life basically, video games and people, family,
friends, stuff like that. It's a no-brainer.
What's the documentary about? I don't know, I don't know. I'm
not even sure they are doing a documentary, guys. That's what
they told me.
The companion, the hedonist, the professional. I think that
all of them are effective, especially because twitch TV is
a really complex jungle.
Yeah, there it is. Oh, that's a hanzo again. I hate him so
much. Yeah, there's me, told you.
I think that the main reason to watch a performance on twitch
TV is the interaction.
There are some people who, for them, this is their main
source of community. Watching a streamer play video games and
interacting with that community that forms around that person.
For something like my stream, it's really community-based so
people want to come back because they like the people there. They
just want a place where they feel safe and feel excepted.
They want to engage, they want to have fun, they want to
meet people that are just like them.
The community is there, it's not a comment. It's a chat.
People can just ask questions in chat and I can give the
response right away. Yeah, I think that connection on twitch
is a very unique.
I think what individuals have been looking for is the next
level of entertainment, one that is more personalized, one that
is more engaging. We see a lot of individuals working so hard
to get our attention and as consumers we like to feel like
we are appreciated. Our twitch streamer wants to interact with
us, we feel like we are much more validated. It's something
different that the film, music, any other real entertainment
industry has given us before.
Twitch TV I think triggered a turning point because it
requires different skills. Skills that are more difficult
to develop in comparison with YouTube. YouTube is good right
now but in 10 years, in five years, people will want more. I
don't want you to do a video, edit it and upload it on
YouTube. I want you there, I want you to be honest, I want
you to be with me.
[Laughter]
[Music]
Hey, urban, that is fantastic. Thank you so much for
the two-month resub, welcome back. Really appreciate it. Do
the dance.
My family has been very supportive, my close family. I
think my extended family maybe don't understand as much. My
aunt said to me, "what skills will you have gained from this
once nobody cares about twitch anymore?" I just kind of went,
"whoa". I don't think they realize how much you do, they
just see it as, I play games for a living. Being lazy and you
don't want to get a real job. They don't see the whole
business and moneymaking side of everything. It is a real job.
So the farther away that you go from that archetypal
white-collar job, the less likely you are perceived as
having a real job or a real career. What makes streaming
video games so different is that it is considered odd. People are
using so much of their time playing video games when they
could be a productive member of society.
It actually happened.
You are sitting around playing video games all day,
that can't be too hard, right? But no, it is definitely a job.
It is in many ways a grueling job.
Twitch is running your own TV network. You have to do
everything. You have to understand the streaming
technology software. You have to understand Internet protocols
and lighting. All the basics of photography, green screen. If
the school of hard knocks. You are going to spend a lot of
money.
Microphones or cameras or even just the cpu to make the
game run faster. For me, what makes twitch a real job is the
amount of investment that these individuals are putting in to
make the twitch experience the best it can be, not just for
themselves but mostly for their consumers. Also, we only just
see them playing the video games. What a lot of people
don't see is the 60-70 hours of work behind the scenes.
The grind never stops really. Even when I am off stream.
Let's say I stream for six hours one day, I would spend
another six hours easily working with my sponsor's trying to
figure out if I am doing okay, making sure my own social media
stuff was good. Worrying about my website.
Especially working from home, you are always in your office so
you are always trying to work.
Most of them have full-time jobs outside of their streaming
of twitch and working two jobs with the amount of work and
investment that they do.
I think the first year of making Internet content, my mom
once a week would bring up the fact that, "oh hey, remember
that job? Is it still on the table? That company, I think
they still want you to go back to them." When I showed her the
check, I got $1000 this month. "Well, you could be getting
$6000 a month." Eventually the number on that check overtook
what I was making and that's when my family was like alright,
it's bringing in the money, do whatever you want.
It used to be that parents are saying get off the couch and
get a job. Now they are saying to their kids, stay on the couch
and get a job.
The way that people make money on twitch is through
advertising so twitch sells the advertising and the creators get
a cut.
We can play ads, up to three minutes of ads every eight
minutes so we get paid based on impressions and how long people
watch those ads.
If you are an affiliate or a partner on twitch, you can get
subscriptions so people can sub to you for a monthly amount.
People pay five dollars, $10 or $25 a month.
They get special perks, special badges, special emojis
they can use in chat.
Sometimes you get to play with the streamer once a month
because you are a sub.
There is a constant drive to try to bring in new viewers, you
have to, have to, have to. It's a grind.
You might drop 20 subscribers in a day just because people
don't watch you anymore, they can't watch your timeslot
anymore.
Your numbers start dropping, if your numbers start dropping,
you stop making money and if you stop making money, what's the
point?
It's really common for streamers to get approached by
gaming companies to try to get some marketing and attention on
an upcoming game.
So sometimes we have long-term sponsorships that will
last a year, two years. Still get into contracts. Sometimes
it's a one-shot thing. "Hey, will you stream this game today
from 2-4?"
They are called sponsored streams so you will put
#sponsored by said company and then you will play for a certain
amount of hours and they will pay you per hour that you play
the game on your stream. I have done that a few times and it's
like rent is paid for six months. It is more than what a
doctor would make in an hour, it's kind of ridiculous.
The rates I have seen for the biggest guys range from $1000 an
hour to up to $4000 an hour.
More so recently a larger portion of income is from
sponsorships as brands start to get into the gaming and
streaming space.
Sponsorships can be a bigger amount of your income, it's
usually a bigger amount, the bigger you are. For example,
currently hyperx and asus sponsor me.
I am using a 4-790k by intel, I'm using a 970 gtx by nvidia.
Here is a link to go and buy it. So I get to promote their
products, and return obviously they pay you monthly alert you
have any type of contract with them.
You guys can have the same viewers, the same notoriety but
if he is doing sponsored content and you are not, he is
quadrupling your income.
If you are full-time and been doing it a while, that's usually
where the biggest chunk of your income will come from.
Revenue, we will rounded up so it's easy. It is 40% and 60%
sponsorships. I am well on the way of making seven figures.
As of right now, I have about 1.3 million followers around
there. One might stream starts to get going in the late night,
I get around 8,000-10,000 viewers every night.
Show music
the subscriber count, I've been steady for a decent amount
of times at 10,000 subs. Sponsorships, especially if you
do six month or one year deals, that's going to be there like a
salary. I'm blessed to be in the position I am. Yeah. That's
pretty much it, yeah.
Now explain the business part of this now. There are reports
that you are making more than half $1 million a month. I
believe much of that coming from twitch and the twitch prime
subscribers. Here are getting 50% of that revenue when people
are watching you.
It's very, it's a good lifestyle.
The drop off from that tier is fairly sharp. You have people
who are drawing audiences of thousands of people and they
will maybe pull in mid five figures, maybe upper five
figures depending on how hard they hustle.
Viewers also donate small amounts of money every now and
then and you get a message across. "Hey, I've been watching
your stream for so long. Here is my appreciation for it."
Basically to say I like your content, I want you to keep
doing what you do, I want to support you.
Someone in chat was like, "let's get this man a new
computer." within 15 minutes, I think I got 126 donations and
made $4000. I'm like, why, why? That's insane, that is so much
money to give to me, man. You don't even know me but I
appreciate it.
You are into it, you are part of his or her team from a
certain point of view.
Especially for smaller streamers, especially for female
streamers. Donations will be 90% of their income.
You go through months where you will get $800 less than you
are used to and then can't make rent this month, hopefully next
month will be better. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not.
I think part of the appeal of donating beyond supporting a
streamer that you like lies in the fact that they can't not
notice you if you do that.
You see the thing pop up and you see the sound cue that your
kind of training people. It is like a pavalovian response.
It really kind of gives that sense of when you donate, you
can have that appreciation factor given to you, it gives
you a nice, little endorphin boost.
You are no longer this face in the crowd. Obviously other
people want to get in on that and start building on itself
because you want to be the most noticeable one.
Probably the most effective metaphor is the street artist.
It is the same, it is up to you as a viewer to say yes or no.
From a traditional perspective, it doesn't make sense. Well,
wait a minute. I am giving you the content and if you like it,
you may want to give me some money. What? It works. It works
and don't trust me, see the statistics. It works.
Ask them politely to get off the boat. If they don't respond
or don't get off the boat, feel free to do one of two things.
[Music]
[Ocean sounds]
Ray?
[Scrubbing]
Holy crap.
Holy shit.
Wait, what?
Nariis donated 10 grand.
Holy shit.
No wonder he is so quiet, he's probably tripping right
now.
If somebody were to walk up to you on the street and open up
a case and say here's 10 k, it's yours, what would you do? You
would be like, what's the catch? No, you can just take it, it's
yours. There is a little bit of worry and then you are excited
but you don't want to be too excited because you don't know
the situation, is this real, am I being trolled, my god I am
going to roll around in one's on my bed. Another thing is
personal history. I lived out of my car for three months,
showering. I've got no shame, showering on beaches, I would
sneak into gyms and it was miserable. It was miserable. If
I had five or $20, that shit was a gold mine for me, you know? So
having someone drop 10k in your lap, it's like what the
[explicit]. What do you do? I think it was a week worth of
talking with him back-and-forth and try to cover your bases and
make sure this is something they really want. It's just nuts,
it's nuts, man.
They see value in what they are watching. Sort of mutual
exchange. I think it is another way to participate and moreover
it's an opportunity to endorse. I have donated across the
board on twitch in total number, $15,000, $16,000 to streamers. I
couldn't really understand why people supported streamers, I
couldn't get that, wrap my mind around it. I still remember the
day I decided, "hey, you know what? I'm going to start getting
more involved in this. This is really cool." Dr. Disrespect
would probably be one of the top streamers that I watched
consistently. I decided to throw him a big donation. It was $1000
and his reaction just, it felt good, man. I really can't
explain that thrilled because there is certainly an adrenaline
rush when it comes to donating streamers.
Whoa! 21 minutes ago, hammyjay donated $1000.
Hammyjay, Jesus! Where did that come from? Chat, how come you
didn't tell me? Chat, how come you didn't tell me?
I saw the chat, the reactions and it was a high. You know what
I mean? Believe it or not, it's very thrilling. Then after, I
felt good about it. I felt good I was giving back to someone who
gives me day to day content.
Where the hell did that come from, hammyjay? You insane,
ponytail wearing recluse video gaming machine. God, you look so
damn good, hammy. I mean, I look good, too. Look at me.
I was kind of hooked, I really was. I told myself I
wanted to support this guy more and the donations started going
in. I have given $8950 to Dr. disrespect on twitch. I am
number two I believe on the list.
The hierarchy of top donators, they will put it on
their page or even some in their stream overlay of the top
donators. Most of the people watching these streams play
video games. They like competition, they like goals. A
streamer basically can game-ify donating to them and make more
money that way because people want to compete so it becomes a
game within the stream to give money. It's not necessarily
exploitative but it can be.
[Music]
Whoa, start talking to -
[music]
Wait, hold on. Okay, all right dude. Alright dude. Which
means he moves up on the list, right under Mr. Capt. 22. Oh
yeah, you are above him now. You are now the second highest
donator on the channel, mrcaptain22 by the way, dude.
You also get that notoriety. I mean, you basically end up on
a list of top donors. You are essentially in the credits
sequence of this person's life. Or like a dick measuring
contest sometimes. I hate to use that term or playing chicken.
Some people give to the church, I give to streamers. You know
what I mean? That's how I think about it. As crazy as that
sounds. Because of donating and supporting channels, I have met
great people so I don't regret any of it, not at all.
We have kickstarters, we have indiegogo, there are a lot of I
would say articulation of this kind of turning point. I think
it is really a great example of how audiences are changing. They
are not passive, they are active and sometimes also want to
contribute to what you like. Actually it's great because it
tells us that really twitch TV is I would say more adult than
what we think.
[Music]
Right now, I live with my mom in Toronto, Canada. She has been
really supportive of this entire journey but she watches a lot of
talk shows and she hears stories where a sports celebrity or
movie celebrity has a manager that takes advantage of them and
she is a bit worried that might happen to me but I have
reassured her that knowing Chris for such a long time now.
Disguised toast is the smartest person I know by far.
He is mostly tied to just hearthstone streaming and
content.
Thank you hearthstone interaction.
Chris has invited me to stay at the off-line TV house in los
Angeles.
Being in a one bedroom apartment can get a little
depressing so I think him being out here, meeting other talent
is very beneficial for his career.
Entertainment gaming is centered around California as
most entertainment industries do. Down there, I can
collaborate, talk to team owners, game owners, game
companies. Everyone is there so it's going to be really fun.
Streamers in themselves and I don't mean this in a negative
way, they need a lot of help living. They don't learn the
basics of taking care of themselves because a lot of them
start gaming when they are very, very young. Like eight years old
or 10 years old and kind of grew into a space where they became a
pro player or content creator.
A lot of people ask me the same question about why did I
create this house, why can't you have people come in to do this
normally? The fact of the matter is everyone is too lazy. So we
struggle to get people on time for shoots in the house. I had
played professional league of legends for about four years and
at some point in my gameplay, I had a season where I did really,
really bad and decided to go streaming full time and stick to
content creation. Streaming and YouTube has been the most
profitable way to make money in this scene. I think even now if
you are a top player and go full-time into streaming, you
will make more money.
So this is our meeting room/family room where we do all
of our YouTube reviews and house meetings. This is the kitchen
where ironically no cooking gets done. This is the dinner table
where none of us actually sit and eat. This is Lily's room,
she's not home right now but Timmy is here. Hey Timmy, what's
up? Get back in the room.
I started off with league of legends but I've been trying to
branch out more so I've been doing a lot of music, art, irl,
other types of games and talking to people I guess. For me, art
and music are very, very important parts of my life and
streaming helps me real-time interactive my audience and show
them what I draw or show them what I play real-time.
[Playing piano]
[Music]
She's streaming right now.
Usually I play league, I also do some fun little things,
whether it be cosplay streams or I have done on American idol
type of thing. Really anything that is fun or entertaining for
my viewers. I come from a really, really small town so in
my high school I knew literally no other girls who played games
or enjoyed the same ones that I did so I wanted to make more
friends online. I saw what streamers were doing, how they
could interact with others, make friends with other streamers and
play with them so I came out here, decided to stay for a
couple months and see how much I liked it and totally fell in
love. I think it's been like, if anything, the most important
thing for my career.
This is mendo's room. Mendo? Oh, mendo's here. Yo, we're
doing a house tour. Oh wait, you're sleeping.
I was like, I need a place to stay for a week and a week
turned into a month of sleeping on the couch and a month and a
half of sleeping on the couch so now I moved in here and
hopefully if things work out I can stay even longer until I
find a team.
We have fedmyster's room. He is our in-house
cameraman/editor.
It's always been my dream to do something in film. I am very
passionate about gaming so when someone says you can make film
stuff with a bunch of gamers.
Then we have scarra's room. He's streaming right now, too.
These mid-game.
So for me, I don't have too much of a social life to be
honest. I traded success for work as opposed to success in
social life and I think that's okay.
When you stream and work and live in your bedroom, it can get
very depressing at times. You lack a lot of motivation and get
out of touch with things. Sometimes you need an extra push
to, "hey, let's go out to dinner, let's go out to this
event, hang out and do things." I think the social aspect is
very beneficial.
What's it like living with people here? It's kind of messy
honestly. We have a big, big problem with Amazon boxes
because no one goes out of the house to shop for things. We
probably get 4-10 Amazon deliveries a day. They buy
everything from a comb to shampoo to food online. So we
actually had to rent a 40 foot container and just stuff it with
boxes. It got the job done, we got rid of the boxes and now the
boxes are starting to accumulate again.
You are so mean. Do it.
I literally did not, what?! Oh my god.
Chris is the manager and cofounder of off-line TV. None
of us would be here without him. He doesn't feel like a boss to
me, he feels more like a brother. Did I say brother, wow,
that just came out.
He's really helpful because he is kind of like also sort of
the house manager. He handles more of the adult-y stuff.
He does everything, you know? He talks to everyone in the
house, he is the most responsible person in the house
for sure. He takes out the trash every week which I have done
once and I almost messed it up. He's my day by day manager,
he tells me everything I need to do, all my responsibilities,
handle sponsorships, produces a lot of my content and for the
most part tries to make my life easier so I don't have to focus
too much on doing anything but just being talent.
The fact I can have someone else make sure that everything
else runs smoothly really makes my life 10 times easier. That's
why I appreciate my manager so much.
We just want to grab a few minutes.
That's pretty good. We went from 0 to 100 pretty quickly.
Streamers, a lot of them are just a guy in a room by
themselves. They are suddenly so much more successful than they
have ever dreamed of being doing something they have always
wanted to do and are terrified it's going to go away. As
quickly as it came, it can go away because of something that
they do or say that they don't even understand.
I never really considered what happens, what happens when
I get so big or when I have 10,000 subscribers. Our goal is
to provide a staff that takes care of that for them so they
can focus on the broadcast.
Opg is online performance group. We're a full-service
management company for life streamers, you tubers, modern
gaming entertainment influencers.
It tickles agencies when we say it's because we talk about
our clients and they are like, "oh, you mean the streamers are
your clients." Yes, that's who we work for.
Opg has been a big help for us. They are able to sort of not
only bring us opportunities, but help us sort of argue our case.
Power rangers, wherever they go drop a really nice crowds. We
want the power rangers at the event?
I mean, it's probably cheaper to get a power ranger than angry
Joe.
Right, let me put this on as an action item.
Power rangers vs. Influencers.
[Laughter]
Helping them understand what their time is worth, what
sponsorships or promotions on their channels should be charged
at and helping them execute that whole process. The influencer
industry has picked up in a really meaningful way. Two days
ago, we announced nine new clients, this brings us to 23
and probably by the end of the year we will have at least got
to 30 or something.
They ended up selling over a quarter ton of your coffee. They
are super happy, we are talking to them about how we expand and
grow that sponsorship next year. If you have any razor inside
products nearby.
Let me just scratch my eye real quick.
[Laughter]
Cohhcarnage who is one of our first clients was playing a game
called banished. A little indie game made by one person and so I
come in, he's playing and I said, "hey cohh, what's this?"
He said you should just stop watching the stream right now
and go buy this game. I know you're going to love it from the
other games that you like, just buy it and immediately I am
loading up steam, get of the purchase page and I am about to
hit that button, the buy button and I said what the hell am I
doing? Some dude I have never met on the Internet just told me
to and I'm about to spend $20. I hit the button and I said wow,
this is something new. Companies need to define things, they need
to define their commodities and what they are working with. The
term influencer as a person who has influence has become a term
for whatever things that they have, whatever they align with
or have affinity towards. There is a tremendous amount of desire
by their followers to pick that up. When Brad Pitt holds up a
can of coke, it's like, super obvious that he is there for the
ad but when a streamer talks about their product that they
care about and what they believe in and why their game is good,
it's authentic and that authentic recommendation is
worth more than any other form of advertising that we have ever
seen.
This laptop is less than 10 pounds, really portable and am
surprised by how far processors have come in that time. You go
like this to get your shield, I go like this and I get a laser
ax. What the?
The thing about intel is that their target consumer audience
is definitely gamers. When they are targeting someone like
scarra who is an ex-pro player and now full-time streamer. They
are basically targeting the exact audience they want.
There is a lot of promotional value that comes with streaming,
especially with big streamers. It's not like when you see the
12k viewer count, it's not like that 12k is the same people the
entire time so people are constantly going in and out. You
have to realize how much people that actually is throughout a 10
hour stream. There is a lot of value.
Game companies can amplify a lot of their early marketing by
engaging with streamers. Not just the big ones, the middle
tier actually are very influential with their audience.
So a streamer that has 100 concurrents is very responsive
to their chat and if they say, "hey, this game is really
awesome." there is a very high chance that their fans will buy
the game.
At Sony, we would just see the affect when someone was
streaming our game, the sales would spike. We would get
real-time graphs and you could watch it. It was amazing.
Before they might have thought we need the brands more
than they need us but gradually that is starting to shift.
Developers are debating right now how to make your game more
spectacular from the twitch TV audiences. That's huge, not just
doing a good game, but developing a game that is
entertaining to watch.
In this day and age, you don't design a video game and
not think of the streaming experience at the same time.
There's a lot of high-level decisions that you make about
how your game is presented and how your game is going to look
on stream. We are doing things like a third person spectator
smart camera, we are doing a team uniform system, also doing
things for our broadcasters and analysts like giving them a
top-down 2-d interactive map so that they can follow the action
and relay it to us, the viewer at home. Even more exciting is
the thought of how do you get people watching overwatch or
whatever videogame who don't want to play it or don't have an
interest in playing at all? But it is such a great viewing
experience that they want to spend time watching it.
A lot of games have been much more thoughtful, creative and
engaged with streamers as they launch. So pubg is a recent
example that is probably the best example that we have.
[Guns shooting]
Battle royal genre, it's a last man standing death match.
100 players or more battle it out into an ever decreasing play
zone and that's pretty much it. It is like land, loot, survive.
Some other e sports are a little too complicated for people who
don't play games. We seemed to have kind of captured people's
imaginations. When you see 10 players left, you get excited
because you might see someone when a chicken dinner.
It is really well-suited to a casual player but also has a
high skill ceiling and I think that has created this mass
appeal. I don't want to say for a fact that this is the most
popular genre on twitch but when you go in there, twitch is
ordered by the number of concurrent viewers and they are
always at the top.
Streaming and the streaming platforms is almost like the
canary in the coal mine that lets you know what is going on
with this game, is it going to be a hit or not? I think
something that pubg did very elegantly is they allowed for
high paced moments or fast action moments to happen and
then they allowed for the action to slow down at times. For a
streamer, it also gives them that interactivity time.
Time that the content creator can interact with people in
their chat because that makes up a large part of streaming. I
think it is this new kind of level of marketing that
companies need to look into and value because it is worthwhile.
I think there is a really great, healthy partnership
between games and streaming and streamers. When one is
successful, we are all successful together.
Some of our streamers started off really small and now they
have thousands of viewers and we want to do that, we want to get
the whole community to rise with the game.
He saw a couple of really big guys like Dr. Disrespect,
summit, shroud commanding 30, 40,000 concurrent viewers and
that was pretty unprecedented and then fortnite came out and
ninja broke every single record in the book. I heard him say on
stream that he knew right away this game was going to be huge.
Ninja streams almost all day, every day and he is getting six
figures every single time he streams. He personally had over
660,000 when he co-streamed with Drake. Since then, he has become
the largest influencer in our industry.
I don't know how many of you guys have twitch prime but if
you guys don't know what that is, see if you have it click on
the subscribe button above the stream and see if you have a
twitch prime sub available. If you've never used it before and
don't know what it is and you definitely have one available,
everyone has one month of twitch prime to test, a trial if you
will. If anyone has Amazon prime, you can link your Amazon
prime to your twitch account and get a twitch prime for free.
I saw last month that he had 150 million social interactions
which puts him at the number one in terms of social interactions
across all sports. As well as e sports, number two is Cristiano
Ronaldo at somewhere around 144 million. His level of influence
is absolutely remarkable and it all started with fortnite. When
you find a game that makes it and is emerging, you can be sort
of relatively unknown streamer and be at the top of the
viewership because it is sorted by the total number of viewers
at that time and if they game blows up and you continue to sit
at the top, it can definitely make your career. There is a lot
more to it than that.
I remember when this was a pokeémon stream. This has
literally never been a pokeémon stream. Not even for one day.
I can't even imagine starting right now on twitch. Such a
saturated market. There are so many streamers. They look at
this many followers, I can do that, that's easy and they need
to learn that it is a process instead of, "I am going to play
games one day and all of a sudden I am going to be rich."
Everyone says the first three months are the worst because
that is you just playing a game and talking to yourself with no
one in your chat.
Off and their spawn or something, still.
Do not under any circumstances go to a stream,
watch a streamer, large streamer get a donation like five or
$10,000 and assume that is going to happen to you.
If you are on the side of the street selling your wares,
everyone selling the same thing. What makes you interesting? Oh,
you got wacky, inflatable balloons in front of your stand.
You got that draw.
There is only one or two streamers every six months that
breaks out and starts to do big things like Dr. Disrespect is a
great one. Kind of blew up out of nowhere and he plays a
character.
You want the eagle dreams? You want the eagle dreams?
You can really use your body language, use your in game
action, use a lot of different tactics, it doesn't matter. What
matters is that you are able to give yourself an identity.
[Music]
I'm very shy so I want to make sure that they don't see
that as much, they see kind of... so I have to force myself
to make them feel more comfortable.
The term emotional labor is a sociological term that came out
in the 1980s that refers to how you use your emotions in your
work. If you present yourself as really engaging and happy, you
are more likely to get people to follow you or subscribe to you.
But that is something that in order to be a top twitch
streamer, you have to do every day or at least on a schedule.
This somehow is a toilet. Could you hand me a wet wipe?
What are you guys doing for dinner later if you want to stop
by and maybe get a burger?
That's hard to maintain, that always on all the time. A
comedian is up on stage, does his set. How long is his set? An
hour, hour and a half? We did this 4 to 8 hours every day,
seven days a week.
You don't get personality sick days as it were, that can
cause a lot of stress for a worker because they might think
they are not doing a good job because they are not meeting the
expectations for their consumers.
I think consistency is the most important thing in the
streaming world.
Started streaming seven days a week almost immediately. As
soon as I started doing that, I started seeing to viewers, five
viewers, 20 viewers, 50 viewers, 100 viewers, 200 viewers and
that was super exciting.
I don't ever look at my viewer count, ever. I think you
should stream the same way no matter what viewer count you
have.
A lot of the large streamers, if you talk to them and say,
"hey, my numbers are falling, man." They will say something
that I consider to be one of the most ignorant statements out of
anybody who is involved with twitch. "Don't worry about the
numbers, man. Stop worrying about the numbers." They have to
worry about their numbers, they have to worry about them to some
extent. It is a constant numbers game you are playing, that is
the addiction. Trying to figure out whatever you have to do to
keep those numbers up.
The growth of your channel is directly linear to how many
hours you put in. Right? If you put in double the hours, you
have doubled the chance of the growth. When I first started
streaming, it was like I didn't go home for Thanksgiving, I
didn't do anything but stream for the first two years.
When they are trying to make it especially they forsake
friends and family and significant others for a shot at
something that may not work out. I basically ignored my whole
family for three years. I realized if I'm not there, my
viewers are going to go to somebody else.
On twitch, it's about your viewers. Whether that is in
regards to the way you are ranked on various game screens
or in regards to the sponsorships you are able to get
or how much people are donating. All of it is based on your
viewers.
This past year I have taken it upon myself to spend a lot of
time with my family and a lot of times it is hard for communities
to understand that because a lot of people look at us like
robots.
Everybody just says work all the time, stream all the time,
do whatever, that's the grind. If you just do that all the
time, it usually has a negative impact on your health.
Carpal tunnel and rsi are really, really big fears of
mine.
It got to the point where I couldn't game for more than
three or four hours without really bad pain in my wrist.
Holding my hand the entire time developed one-sided muscles
so I have to counteract that by doing wrist exercises with a
weight to build muscles here to prevent the pain. Doing these
makes my wrist exhausted which means I can't play for a good
30, 40 minutes. I can't do it during the stream and I can do
them after the stream but generally I go from streaming to
fall asleep instantly. And what pays my rent, pays my food and
also the only thing I really, really love doing in life so
losing that and losing the potential to do that is more
than one thing.
There was a time I went and checked that I didn't leave this
house for well over a month. With that comes a lot of
psychological problems like depression, anxiety and all that
stuff because lacking sunlight, not smelling fresh air. If NASA
ever wanted to hire me to be an astronaut or something, I would
probably totally do it because I hadn't left in quite a while.
[Music]
I was making the rationalization that once I
become famous, once I really worked hard at this, I would
make enough money where I can take some time off. That's crap,
that ain't going to ever happen. That carrot I was chasing on a
stick was just in front of me the whole time and I never had a
chance to get it.
[Music]
I'd say the biggest physical challenge of being a streamer is
just sitting all day. When I first became full-time and I was
used to walking to work 25 minutes and walking 25
minutes back and being on my feet all day, going from that to
sitting all day, I gained a lot of weight. I was like, I don't
feel very good about my body.
One of the things that can happen if I said the entire time
and not move is blood clots can form.
Sometimes it is even hard to make a proper dinner.
Two or three years ago, went in for my regular checkup and
they said, "hey, you are prediabetic." Well, the key word
to me was pre. So okay, I'm fine still, right? He was like,
"yeah, you just got to watch it. Get some more exercise." Okay,
whatever doc. I was totally, totally, totally in denial but I
didn't care at that point because I needed to work.
Twitch streaming can be very dangerous. If they go for too
long or go for too long consistently because there are
cases where people will do long marathons of streaming.
Marathon gaming sessions are brutal.
People love seeing them and will support you a lot for them
but of course sitting at your computer for 24 hours takes a
big toll on you.
So if you are there, you are engaged and playing a game and
really fun talking, laughing with everybody and you have to
go to the bathroom. You get up, walk away and come back you will
lose viewers.
I started in the morning but I didn't snack through the night
which was my biggest mistake and I got to I think six or seven in
the morning and I tried to have an energy drink to push through
the last few hours and I went super pale and I felt really
nauseous and I couldn't see straight, my monitor was kind of
vibrating. I was like, I really don't feel well guys. People
were like, "you have three hours left, you can do it, you can do
it."
It is this very tenuous dynamic of on one hand I don't
want to die but on the other hand I got to keep going, got to
get those views.
I called it at 21 hours and I was very happy I did because I
have never felt that awful in my whole life.
Those kind of streams would kill me. Literally the next day
I would be exhausted but I would do it again. There are some
major consequences when it comes to trying to keep a schedule
like that.
People go for days and days pushing themselves in these ways
where they stay up too long and don't rest very much and putting
a lot of substances into their body to keep themselves going
and in a couple of particular cases that has resulted in
death.
I'm not playing my play through until the 26th. We will
be doing a 24 or maybe 36 hour plus stream of dark souls three.
Take it easy everybody, love your faces, love your butts,
thank you very much for a fantastic night. Peace.
Death of dalsarius, that was the linchpin for me, the turning
point of all of it. Dalsarius used to raid me every morning. I
was like completely heartbroken that that had happened. I was
like, man, I can't believe he was so young. After that, I was
like really, okay, he streamed all the time. I should probably
get myself checked out. I went to the doctor and they did some
initial testing and they said yes, you have a 100% blockage on
the backside of your heart which is okay in a way but you have
75% blockage on what is called the widow maker. Three arteries
that sit on the top of your heart and if they get blocked
off, you have a massive heart attack and there is no coming
back from it so you are done. We need surgery now. I said I am
not ready for surgery, I don't know what you are talking about.
They take a vein from your leg, it goes from here all the way
down and that becomes the artery of your heart and it bypasses
the clogged arteries. So I got an extra pipe in my heart. It is
like a secret level in Mario.
I would say that yes, twitch does have a responsibility to at
least be aware of the fact that people don't necessarily take
the best care of themselves with regards to how they stream.
Because twitch doesn't have any safeguards on the amount of
time that you put behind the camera, there is nothing saying
you can't hurt yourself doing this.
They build a platform that basically encourages the type of
lifestyle. Even if it is not directly codified, even if it
doesn't say do this, the way it is built basically says do that.
What if they had a pop-up? Something simple as that, they
don't shut off your stream but you have been streaming for 12
hours now, have you gone and walked around lately? Or hey,
tell your viewers you are taking a 10 minute break and get up and
walk. After my surgery was over, my community really supported
me. They did a go find me and gave me a few grand to help pay
some of the bills after because I wasn't streaming at all
anymore. I wrote on Twitter saying, "hey guys, I don't know
when I am coming back if I am ever coming back but thanks for
the memories." I think it was a great decision to move away from
twitch. You start appreciating the world a lot more. At some
point, I had to go this almost killed me. The kids basically
had to put up with me being a jerk for a while while I was
streaming. Yes, I missed a lot of time with them but I am
making up for it now.
[Music]
Twitch chat in and of itself is half amazing and half
terrifying.
Chat is a really big part of the social interactions on
twitch and with chat, the Internet comes unsavory people
sometimes.
Twitch chat has become kind of notorious and synonymous with
the idea of harassment or people being shitty. Big twitch chats,
this one with thousands and thousands of people, they are
moving so quickly for one that you can barely see what is
happening so people try to get attention. You get to see
exactly what these people think of you. In many cases, it's not
entirely flattering.
We got to roll soon.
I've been thinking about killing you in real life lately.
That's not nice, homey. Jesus, all I do is play video games,
man.
It's something that we kind of let it roll off our skin.
You should see a streamer's inbox, it's actually quite
terrifying.
Being on twitch and being behind a username is very
empowering. No one knows who you are.
They feel free to attack, they feel free to command, they
feel free to make points against race, religion.
It is difficult at times to be both black and a woman on an
open platform where you can see my face.
I don't think a day goes by where I am not called a
[explicit], a [explicit], a [Explicit], a moron, an idiot.
Wow, you are quite an incredible [explicit].
Thanks man.
Sometimes you get repeat offenders that will just see who
you are following or see who you are hosting and harass that
streamer based off your channel. Twitch has built-in basically
the global emotes and there is one of a speed runner named tri
hex, it's called the trihard emote. So people just spam it
basically any time a black person appears.
Would you consider a bastion strat like the one we just saw a
right now, would you consider that a good strat or
disrespect? You let me know in the chat when you are done with
all those trihard emotes and in the meantime we will go ahead
and send it over to our 'casters, uber and Mr. X.
I don't know about you guys at home but I would call that
strat appalling.
It actually didn't start out with that connotation but, you
know, all it takes is one person to set it off, people get
creative and put that emote with the watermelon emotes, the fried
chicken and playing on really negative stereotypes about
streamers of color.
[Music]
I actually know some friends of mine who have banned that
emote. If you are trying to type it in, it will show up as
asterisks just because of how toxic that emote got.
If most of the emotes of various people are white, then
of course it's going to be disproportionate and you will
end up in a situation where people use it that way. Again,
it is one of those things where twitch has these systems, they
end up accidentally and subtly pushing people to do things
certain ways.
There are very different reactions to female streamers.
There is either, "oh, so cool there is a girl streaming I am
going to go say hey." Or like, "she is using her body for
attention."
"I am faking my voice for attention, she is doing this for
attention." when I play games, I don't play well they will say it
like, "oh, who carried you to this level or you are just
getting boosted."
There are some really inappropriate things that guys
say and that is kind of the difference between the
harassment you get as a female streamer and the harassment you
get as a male streamer.
I've been called a [explicit] way more times than a normal
person would be.
Robotic voice: I hope you know your abc because I want to
give you the fifth letter of the alphabet.
[Laughter]
You want to give me e?
Just today I was wearing this, just a regular t-shirt and
some guy came in and said, "f you for using your sex appeal to
get ahead." I am literally just wearing a t-shirt. Just because
I'm a lady doesn't mean I am using sex appeal.
[Explicit], [explicit]. They will say things like I want to
eat your [explicit]. That sort of thing. Touch you and take
your clothes off.
Look, look at the chat. Look at the chat. Look at that. Look
at that shit. I don't deserve that, I know I don't deserve
that.
It just sucks when they say I am bad at the game, just wrong.
People will say mean stuff in part because they want to be
noticed and that is a very good way to get noticed. If you get 1
million compliments and one person says, "oh yeah, that
person is awful, I hate them." You are going to remember that
person.
I know I have had a situation where I have had to get someone
ip banned, they were just harassing me constantly and
twitch helped me out in that respect.
Just over a year ago, we started testing this tool called
automod. It is a machine learning moderation tool.
I think that is one of the best things that they have
created, it automatically kind of flags certain messages as
they may be inappropriate and hides them until one of your
moderators can say okay this message is good to show or this
message shouldn't show.
We built a number of tools early on that allows a
broadcaster to anoint community members to help them moderate
their chat so they are allowed to kick people out from chat,
drop the ban hammer, purge lines from chat.
I need people that can handle that situation without me having
to stop what I'm doing, interrupt the broadcast to take
care of this.
It's a volunteer position, they are not getting paid. "Hey,
I like your stream, I want to help you out." People being
willing to go through all that effort for you is really
humbling.
I can't imagine what it would be like without mods if I took
it off for one day.
It's great to see how these comments are completely
destroyed.
That's why they get swords.
Boys and girls, men and women, altogether in at least a
narrow effect of this kind of behavior. To be ready for any
kind of distraction.
I think we are getting swatted, what in the world.
Except from swatting of course.
Put your hands up, put your hands up!
Get on the ground, get on the ground!
Put your hands behind your back!
Don't you [explicit] move, you hear me boy?
Swatting refers to making a fake emergency call and trying
to make it as crazy or as scary as possible that it actually
forces the police to bring in the SWAT team.
Police department is kind of required at that point to treat
it as a major situation, especially with all the
shootings and everything that go on in America.
They come in with their guns out, ready to go.
So basically you as the person calling the SWAT team get
to see how the streamer reacts and see what's going down. It
was you that one who did it so now all the other viewers are
watching your game that you just played on everybody.
We got a phone call from the police saying come out slowly
one by one or something like that so when we opened the door
to our apartment, we see all these police officers with guns
and everything pointed at us. Come out slowly with your hands
behind your head and walk backwards. One at a time and we
are like are you serious?
If they were to walk into a situation where it seemed like
the person was a threat because the information that they are
going on suggests that they are and somebody did something a
little wrong, somebody could get seriously hurt.
Walk this way! Walk this way!
When they got there, 28-year-old Andrew Finch came to the door. Police say he moved
suddenly and an officer fired. Now Finch had no weapons, not
only was he unharmed, he had nothing to do with the online
gaming dispute.
A reporter that used to work for us interviewed somebody who
claimed to be a swatter. This person claimed to be 15 or 16
years old, there was this very clear disconnect between the
action they were performing and their understanding of the
consequences of those actions. Discussing on almost these
sociopathic terms but probably is not a sociopath, just a kid.
It's an instance where somebody can have a really profound
effect on somebody who they regard as famous or successful
but the potential cost of it is so high.
They don't get a proper sense of how popular they are because
they sit in a bedroom and stream for 10 hours a day and interact
with chat. Yes, you see their concurrent numbers, could be
5000, 10,000, 20,000 people watching them but that doesn't
really register.
I've done the one meet and greet recently in Shanghai. I
did it for two hours nonstop and eventually had to cut the line
off because people kept lining up for photos. I didn't know
people in China knew who I was.
Yeah, whenever we go to an event, where did all these
people come from? Who are these people? I'm like they are your
fans.
The biggest meetup I've gotten was in Toronto. I didn't
think I was going to get that many people but when I got
there, the crowd was insane and the security actually came and
told us you guys need to get out. It is a privately owned
property, you need to get out. I was like oh crap, okay. I was
like where do I go? He said, "i don't care, just cross the
street and get walking." I'm like okay. So we start walking
and there is this huge crowd of people following us and I had to
stop and turn back and yell at them, "guys, it's not you, it's
me. I messed this up but you guys have to stop following me
or I'm going to get in trouble."
I'm really sorry, I didn't think this through.
[Crowd cheering]
We have to disperse, this is not legal.
[Laughter]
For a lot of people, their favorite streamers are famous to
them. Theoretically if you gave enough money to your favorite
streamer, you can have a phone call. It would be for one of us
being able to get on the phone with our favorite movie star or
something.
There usually is very much an expectation to be rewarded or
compensated in some sort of way. One of the twitch streamers was
saying here is this individual, he has donated a lot of money
but he wants to talk to me more and I'm very uncomfortable with
what he is saying but I feel bad. Most people would say no,
you can't be creepy, just because you have donated tons of
money.
Robotic voice: Skirts go up, pants go down, body to body, skin to skin.
When it's stiff stick it in. The longer it's in, the
stronger it gets.
Stop.
Robotic voice: It goes in dry, comes out -
stop.
But in this meritocracy capitalism society that we have,
the customer is always right. That's very much enforced so
it does put twitch streamers in that precarious place in which
they want to support their biggest fans, their highest
donors because if they are going to donate that high amount of
money, they will probably do it again and show the appreciation.
This same person, look at all these donations and they are all
so rude and intrusive and obsessive. Almost $500 just to
be an asshole in my donations.
They essentially are celebrities but they don't
necessarily get any of the perks and benefits that celebrities
often get, more specifically safety and security.
I have had some sketchy situations where people have
tried to find my address. Some people listen to, "hey, I was
out at Starbucks today and they will factor in she said it takes
five minutes for her to walk to Starbucks and if there is this
Starbucks here, she can live here and they will go to where
your po box is and these are the Starbucks around that po box and
try to figure it out through there and it's insane because
after people were like, "hey, is this your address?" I was like,
"whoa, that's very uncomfortable and I feel very unsafe." So you
always have to be very careful with all, with everything you
are saying.
Streamers are usually not really private environment. Just
live their passions. You as a viewer are there with them and
there is so much intimacy.
Parasocial interaction refers to interactions that are
one-sided. When you make this interaction or people put that
interaction to you, you are actually not going to interact.
It won't become a social interaction. Twitch and a lot of
those social media applications have blurred the line even if
you are not interacting or you are just addressing the
community itself, you are still creating and maintaining and
reinforcing a relationship. A lot of people think that because
they see these individuals and feel like they are having these
interactions with them that they do have a close relationship.
Oh man, well basically what happened was I had a fan that
flew over here from Singapore, he didn't fit in, he wasn't sure
what he was going to do with his life. He had just broken up with
his girlfriend and so his idea was he wanted to get a start in
America and he was going to do that by living with me. So he
landed here and walked 20-30 miles and ended up at my house
at 4 am in the morning knocking at my door. He was crying, his
hands were shaking. He was this small kid, this desperate,
desperate kid. So when I saw that, I opened up the door, I
started talking to him. It was pretty emotional, I'm not going
to mince words, pretty [Explicit] up because of it. He
had his luggage and he was saying, "this is my last chance.
If someone was drowning, would you reach out your hand for
them? Because if this doesn't work out, I'm living on the
street." it did what I could for him, I got him an uber, I tried
to set him up in a hotel or something. He wouldn't take it,
that's not what he wanted. Last thing I saw was him walking off
down the street with his bags and you've got to understand the
context. I owe everything to my viewers and a have a viewer who
is coming to me saying, "hey, please help. I need help. I'm
going to die."
The next night, my brother went to go let his dog out and
as he walked out to our back porch, he had someone back there
go, "hello, Ben." He looked over and he's like, "oh crap, he's
back." he went and woke me up, I went out there and he had lit a
candle and had his umbrella up and some of the furniture on the
back porch was huddled together, he made a little shelter and I
walked out there and I was like oh my gosh, man. You can't do
this. He's just like, "I'm sorry, I don't know what to do."
We ended up talking and trying to figure something out and I
was so distraught. I got on Twitter and I was like, what the
hell do I do? I had an anonymous viewer reach out to me and say
how much is a ticket to send him back home? It was a $1500 ticket
which was completely covered by one of my viewers and I talked
to him and said, hey man, this is your way back home. Otherwise
you are on the street, that's the best I can do for you and
after talking a little bit, he took it.
Just by watching ellohime in the context and state of mind
that he was in and just hearing ellohime talk or reference fans
in a certain way reinforcing that relationship and the belief
that he would be able to do something for his situation. I
assume that the individual from Singapore, because he was
stressed probably was just ruminating on the idea and
really reinforced that idea in his head and what makes it
interesting is that is not a mental health thing, that is
something that a lot of us do all of the time.
It wasn't just like stick the cops on him which I will do now
though. For now, I've got this policy. I don't care what kind
of bleeding heart ends up on my front porch, I'm calling the
cops now. Before, yeah, it was a tough situation and we found an
easy way out thanks to that viewer. I am so thankful that I
had a viewer that was able to support me and get him home and
support heads and reach out and that's kind of part of what the
community is about, looking out for each other. There are all
sorts of way that people sort of support, tried to contribute.
It's not all about money. People find creative ways to help and
from there it evolves into whatever their talents are,
their strengths are. That's pretty cool.
Coming in hot, no helmet, no vest, no sights. Scatter my
stats.
[Blowing sounds]
Man down. I started gaming when I was younger, probably
five years old. I used to play games like NHL, call of duty,
halo before I got hurt. When I was 19 years old, I was at a
party with a couple of my friends and it was just a freak
accident where I got dropped on my head wrestling around.
Injured at c3, c4 vertebrae in my neck and my spinal cord got
severed. After my injury, the toughest adjustment was
basically I was a hands-on type of guy, everything I did was
physical so not being able to do things like workout, play sports
sucked.
It's a different change of pace for the whole family, he
doesn't have a lot that he can do and you want to get his
mindset to do something else.
You got to go left, right, right, right. That's good,
perfect. Right, right, right, straight, straight, keep going,
keep going, keep going. Keep going, keep going, keep going.
Good.
The quad stick is basically one joystick where you have
three holes you can sip or puff. On one of the holes, two of the
holes or all three of the holes at the same time and you can
also light sip or light blow. So you basically have 32 some odd
combinations you can use. Most people would be what the hell
did you just do and I just did 18 commands to do that though.
I noticed as I am playing I started getting harder and
harder and harder and that's when I was like, this is
amazing. Amazing of the fact that he can go back to what we
did when we were kids. Gave him something to wake up and do
every day to beat me again.
After you just practice, learn your limits on the thing
and what you can and can't do, after a while I got good at it.
Oh shit.
Incoming.
[Glass shattering]
Oh my god, I just had shot him with the m24, Draven.
The best game to use a quad stick for anyone who has never
used it is storyline games where you can take your time but those
games are, I don't know, those games are boring to me. I would
rather face another person and let them know that they got beat
by my mouth.
[Gunfire]
Oh, he's resing, he's resing. He's probably up by now.
Lay down, lay down.
Oh. I did it, holy shit.
A year ago I didn't even know twitch existed. My brother
got really into it and he was like, "I don't see anyone who
does what you do, everyone will probably be really amazed. I was
like, I don't know, I'm a really private dude.
This is a whole different category of twitch streamer.
He's not just playing the game, he is also running twitch and I
have a little twitch myself and that's difficult for me and I
have my hands.
I feel like I'm just playing video games and having fun. If I
wasn't on twitch, I would still be playing video games having
fun but I think it's cool that it helps out a lot of people,
makes them it may be inspired.
It gives them the same outlet that he gets. Maybe they have a
brother or a sister that they used to play games with and now
they have that connection again. To be honest with you, before
I got injured, I didn't really know that could happen to
myself, I didn't know that was a thing so I think when people see
me, they asked a lot of questions.
People in a wheelchair, you don't realize what they are
going through and you can tune into twitch now and you can talk
to rocky, he's bringing awareness that we are the same
as everybody else.
For disabilities, some of them can't be fixed, some of
them you got to may be ignored somewhat. There are people like
me out there and people like me have fun and can do what other
people can do, you just have to find a way around it.
He's just a regular dude and can kick our ass in a videogame
just like anybody else. It's amazing. I am super proud of him
and what he has become and what he is going to become.
I think I just like showing people that you can do whatever
you want if you try your hardest. Big daddy in the house,
hell yeah! I know I am the best in the world at quad stick. I
will challenge anyone on that.
I think the idea of being an entertainer related to video
games, that's going to stick around as long as games stick
around. This is the best form of entertainment related to game
industry so these guys are on the forefront and I can't see
their opportunities going down. I think the question isn't
whether or not this is a sustainable business model, the
question should be what is the limit.
Irl stands for in real life and essentially vlogging. It's
one person talking to many about whatever they want.
Getting a self the stick and having your phone and walking
down the street and living your life on twitch.
[Laughter]
It's been the fastest-growing category ever since.
There are people who spend more of their day streaming
their life on twitch than they do not doing that.
[Screaming]
That's what I'm talking about! Woo!
I feel like I've used gaming as a medium to share myself with
my audience. Then I was able to use fitness as a medium of
sharing myself with my audience and now we are getting to the
point where you can really just share whatever you are into.
There are people who cook on twitch, there is also social
eating where the idea is that you hang out with people while
you eat and maybe talk about the food, maybe you don't, who
knows.
Being able to share yourself and your personality with
anybody who is interested is I think at the core of what twitch
is and in terms of the possibilities for that, I don't
know, it seems endless.
[Playing recorder]
Especially if you think about the potential in terms of
education, future top performers probably will teach you how to
perform specifically with your hands, teach you how to speak
Italian, I don't know.
We want to see how other types of content that are
traditionally interactive are reacted to by the audience.
Let's see if you can make something that requires audience
participation. How can we make content formats slightly
different enough that makes it interesting for our audience.
The thought of twitch playing a video game together, I mean,
that's the ultimate sense of community.
One of the biggest milestones on twitch was a phenomenon
called twitch plays pokeémon. People in chat could type
directions like left, right, up, down and impact the gameplay.
Thousands and thousands of people are trying to control all
at once. You would think there is no way that somebody could
make progress but they end up coordinating.
Makes you a little scared for the hive mind at times.
At peak viewership, we had 122,000 people controlling one
game.
They succeeded, twitch plays pokeémon beat pokemon.
[Pokeémon theme]
That's probably the most significant, unique thing that
has ever happened on our platform.
It very quickly evolved into fan art and fan works, there is
even like a sort of jokey religion formed around one of
them. It has been other twitch plays of games of all sorts of
genres so it has become this type of massive phenomenon.
Whether that is fan art, whether that is animate, Sci-Fi.
We are going to try a bunch of new things in the near future.
Would there be huge saturation? Everybody doing the
streaming thing? Maybe. For other people coming up, I think
it might be too saturated for them to really find their niche.
I will however say that if you are talented enough, if you are
hard-working enough, there is no limit for you. Doesn't matter
how saturated the market becomes, you will make it on
hard work alone. If you are good enough at it.
Who's ready to kick off twitch con 2017?
[Crowd cheering]
[Music]
Twitch con is a really big deal because it is a place where
people can go meet and hang out with all the people that they
spend every day of their life chatting to online.
We are all just sitting in our bedrooms, recording
ourselves playing video games. Twitch con is that opportunity
to -
actually spend some real lifetime with each other.
That's why we love twitch con, 57 countries represented
here, all ages, all different industries, different passions.
This is the third year doing it, it has grown so much, the
lines are insane, the people are everywhere. You are seeing
people huddled around personalities and stuff.
The last twitch con I wasn't a partner, I feel as though
affiliates of viewers kind of hold you up to a higher standard
and kind of look up to you and ask you questions.
Talk about what we know, what we learned, work with one
another and just get advice on how to make streams grow.
From taking what I learned at last time, I used it and grew
into what I am today and have learned a lot of new stuff this
time.
He kept telling me, "mom, it's a real business." I was
really resistant to it. We have now since changed our mind and
we are fully supporting everything he does.
We were thinking, "why would anybody watch somebody play a
videogame?" right? It's crazy.
[Music]
There are opportunities to do activations and gigs.
A lot of people think that these things are like a
vacation, it's not at all. It is pretty much work the entire
time.
I was in the h1z1 tournament which was a lot of fun, big
arenas and you have the likes of mighty mouse demetrious Johnson,
ice-t was watching. You get this weird mix of celebrities that
really like gaming, you get the personalities from twitch.
Basically the whole house is here at twitch con so lilypichu,
poki, scarra, mendo. This is our last meet and greet, we decided
to do one together, the whole booth was completely packed so
the house was really happy to meet their fans.
[Music]
It's about dominating. And looking good dominating.
When they walk up, it's like, "oh, it's good to meet you." You
shake their hand, they are like, "I am so and so." I am like holy
crap, the memories of all the things start flooding back and
you embrace them, you love them. I will sign your tit. Where
is the nipple? There it is, right around.
It's a weird thing because I want to spend time with them and
get to know them but in this atmosphere, it doesn't lend
itself.
[Music]
I didn't actually get selected for twitch meet and
greets so I wanted to make sure that I still was able to have
unavailability for everybody to be able to hang out in more of a
casual setting. For me, because I consider so many of people
from my stream my actual friends, I think it is really
important to match the face to the name and meet people more on
a personal level.
This dinner tonight was my number one event for twitch con
and it wasn't even unofficial event.
You honestly feel like if something wasn't going that
great in your life, you can go into her chat or hit her up on
discord and she cares. She gives a shit.
I can honestly say some of my best friends I have met on
twitch.
Beyond the viewer and streamer dynamic, we have
created bonds that go a little bit deeper and there is a trust
there.
It's been a great support system for me. Personally.
We bleed purple, we all do, man. We do. I love it.
Sometimes it doesn't feel real because as kids growing up
playing video games, you are always thinking, "hey, wouldn't
it be great to get paid to play video games?" That's exactly
what I'm doing right now. I have never lived in Los Angeles
before, I only hear what they tell me on TV and movies so I am
really excited to see what it's actually like down there.
Where's disguised toast? That's the greatest name in
gaming history. Give it up for - [Music]
[Purring]
Disguised toast, how did you come up with that name?
Oh, it's a play on words. Like this guy's toast.
Oh. I didn't get that.
I don't know what I'm doing, I'm winging it, I'm just doing
it and seeing where it goes. I actually put in my two weeks not
too long ago into work and what I made the first month when I
wasn't even partnered streaming I wouldn't make a year at my
current job so I think I am very comfortable with going
full-time. Really nervous but I think it's going to work out.
My family when I grew up, this wasn't something I knew you
could even want to want. The relationships that have been
able to form, what I have been able to do with my channel for
charity, for veterans, first responders, that kind of thing.
I can't imagine another job like it to be honest. It has
definitely been I think positive is too weak of a word to be
fair, it's been amazing. It's been amazing.
If I get picked up for a team, I intend to be with that
team for long term and I intend to be part of that team to make
that team the best team in the world. I will swallow my pride,
if I have to be on the bench, I will be on the bench and prove I
deserved to be on the starting roster.
I want to see some of these Houston players come out. Okay.
Mendo is in the house.
I didn't know he was in the house.
Two direct rockets in a fairly short span of time no
less.
It's my path so it's good for me, you know? Maybe not for
everybody, maybe it would be, who knows. But it's what is good
for me and for once in my life I feel good about what I'm doing
with my time and I like who I am and I love my family and I
couldn't always say that so I am very blessed, very blessed.
A lot of people think that twitch TV is just really a
mirror of the current digital entertainment, it's just an
appendix, a footnote from a certain point of view. But it is
not true at all actually. A lot of times twitchers don't realize
how important, how relevant is their work. They think, "I am
just playing my favorite game and that's all." It's not like
that. These streamers, they are able to change opinions, they
are able also to affect feelings, look at your chat,
look what is going on with your viewers. They are talking about
really important things, really remarkable things debating about
their own identity, their day, their work. It really surprised
me that some twitchers don't realize how they are changing
viewers' lives.
I don't know, be proud of yourself.
There are a lot of things I could do but I haven't found
that one "this is it" kind of thing. I will probably keep
streaming until I do.
[Music]