YouTube recently announced the launch of YouTube Gaming. What is it, and what will it mean for other online gaming services? Sarah Dobbs finds out
Ever got stuck on a game and turned to the internet for help? Chances are, you ended up watching a walkthrough on YouTube to help you nail that tricky puzzle in Portal or seemingly impossible quest in Skyrim. Whatever your console of choice, whatever your gaming style, there’s a video of someone else playing your favourite game on YouTube – plus hours upon hours of people showing off weird game glitches, explaining how to cheat or just talking about their high scores.
It might not have come as a surprise, then, that YouTube recently announced it was launching a new app and website dedicated to gaming. Named, imaginatively, YouTube Gaming (gaming.youtube.com), this new subdivision of the video sharing site will be home to all kinds of gaming-related material, from speed runs to live streams of gamers showing off their skills.
If you’re already immersed in gaming subculture, that might sound like a familiar idea, because there’s already a dedicated video site for gamers to showcase their in-game achievements. It’s called Twitch (www.twitch.tv) and its whole reason for being is to let gamers share gaming-related videos. Owned by Amazon, Twitch isn’t some tiny start-up; it’s a massively popular site with more than 100,000 million visitors a month.
So what can YouTube bring to the table to lure people away from Twitch? Should Twitch be worried, or will YouTube Gaming end up being another ambitious Google project that ends up getting quietly shut down a few months down the line? Let’s take a closer look…
What Is YouTube Gaming?
First, let’s see what YouTube Gaming actually is. There’s already tons of gaming-related content on YouTube, so at first it’s hard to imagine why anyone would think it needed to be given its own special banner. The blog post from YouTube Gaming project manager Alan Joyce explains some of the details, and a lot of it seems to be about organisation. Within the YouTube Gaming site, there’ll be dedicated pages for more than 250,000 games, so if you want to see all the latest videos related to, say, Fallout 3, you’d go to the Fallout 3 page to see everything in one place, instead of clicking through page after page of search results.
All YouTube Gaming users will be able to set up ‘collections’: essentially, lists of all the games they’re interested in or playing, so they can easily find new videos about them. Like bog standard YouTube too, users will be able to subscribe to specific channels, so you can follow your favourite bloggers or friends and see what they’ve recently uploaded at a glance too.
Live events are also a focal point, and Joyce says YouTube Gaming will be set up to make the “live experience” a simpler one, with streamlined links and an easier-to-use scheduling process. That’s all fair enough, but it’s not really specific to gamers, is it? You’d think anyone who uses YouTube for events and live streams might be interested in everything getting easier. Still, YouTube Gaming is a work in progress, and everything it’s mentioned so far sounds pretty good.
How’s It Different From Twitch?
The difference between Twitch and YouTube Gaming, at least from what we can see of it right now, is that Twitch focuses on live streaming. YouTube Gaming emphasises its live streaming capabilities too, but there will also be standard videos, just like on non-gaming YouTube. For Twitch, though, live streaming is its raison d’être. Originally, Twitch was a spin-off of Justin.tv, a live streaming platform created by Justin Kan for life-casting – that is, it was a platform for anyone to stream videos of themselves, whatever they might be doing. Twitch.tv was created as a gamingrelated subdivision, but it became more popular than the original platform, which shut down last year.
Twitch became so popular, in fact, that it was acquired by Amazon last year for a whopping $970 million. It’s been host to all kinds of enormous gaming competitions, it’s run huge charity fundraisers, and it’s a recognisable presence at gaming conventions and trade fairs. Thanks to partnerships with videogame publishers, it’s even been integrated with the likes of Minecraft and with Steam accounts, and its developer plans to expand so that users on pretty much every platform can watch Twitch streams.
In terms of functionality, though, Twitch offers a lot of the features that YouTube Gaming plans to offer: a mobile app, high-definition streaming, featured streams and the ability to follow specific channels and interact with other users. Like YouTube proper, it has a Partner Program that allows popular users to monetise their content through ad revenue. From a user standpoint, there really doesn’t seem to be much to separate the two.
Player 1, Ready…
If this were a fight, it would be hard to pick a winner. In one corner, there’s Twitch, a well-known brand in gaming circles with a massive existing user base, plenty of media partners and a shiny new corporate backer. In the other, there’s YouTube Gaming, a new service that will be able to pull in existing YouTubers – and an equally weighty, well-connected corporate sponsor to shore it up. They’re about as well matched as it’s possible to be.
Or at least they will be, once YouTube Gaming gets up and running for real. At the moment, it’s only available in the US and the UK, and there’s nowhere near as much content on there as Twitch boasts. In time, though, it’ll be rolled out in more territories, and content will soon start building up, and then… well, Twitch might need to start worrying.
Some of Twitch’s ‘partners’ have already started looking into jumping ship – or, at least, investigating the contractual obligations they have to Twitch. To qualify as a Twitch partner, you need to have an average viewership of at least 500 people and run a regular broadcast schedule with at least three streams per week; if you’re accepted, you get a chunk of the advertising revenue generated by your content. But you also, typically, agree to keep your stuff exclusive to Twitch.
Not all partners get the same contract, but according to Twitch, most of them include an exclusivity clause that bans gamers from live streaming their content elsewhere. That exclusivity clause might mean the issue of whether popular game-streamers pick Twitch or YouTube Gaming is forced; rather than waiting to see which works best for them, they’ll have to choose one or the other. As YouTube Gaming starts to pick up steam, then, it might be worth keeping an eye on some of the most popular Twitch streamers – like Chance Morris (sodapoppin), Jordan Maron (CaptainSparklez) or PhantomL0rd (PhantomL0rd, probably not his real name) – to see whether they decide to change allegiances. Most big name Twitchers tend to have YouTube profiles already, which might not bode well for Twitch.
Other Players
To really mix our sporting metaphors here, the battle to be the biggest gaming video site isn’t necessarily a two-horse race. Beyond YouTube, there are plenty of video hosting sites; beyond Twitch, there are plenty of other live streaming sites, and some of those are already very popular with gamers.
For starters, there’s Hitbox (hitbox.tv), which is probably the most obvious alternative to Twitch. It claims its chat function makes it the best choice for streamers to connect with their audiences, and it also offers extensive analytics for users looking to boost their profile.
Then there’s Ustream (www.ustream.tv), which is a nongaming-specific live streaming platform and is popular with business users. Its integration with the PlayStation 4 means it’s a pretty good choice for getting started with streaming games if that’s your platform of choice, though.
Want even more options? How about Azubu TV (www.azubu.tv), a game-streaming site that’s recently opened its platform up to any would-be streamers? Or Livestream (livestream.com) or Veetle (veetle.com)? Both of those are general interest streaming sites, but there’s no reason gamers can’t use them. Or you could try Daily Motion Games (games.dailymotion.com), a spin-off from Daily Motion that’s currently in beta.
Or… well, between the time of writing and the time you’re reading these words on the printed page, it’s likely half a dozen other contenders will have popped up, hoping to nab a piece of the games-streaming pie. All of them offer similar functionality at the moment, but any of them could come up with the killer feature or play home to the next gaming superstar, and beat the others to become the new hot commodity in our endlessly fickle attention economy.
Let The Games Begin
Will YouTube Gaming be the next Gmail or the next Google Wave? Only time will tell whether the new service will be a success or not. Google has created tons of super successful products that we can’t imagine living without any more, but it’s also been behind some real failures. The thing that’s likely to make the difference is content, and that’s not really something the platform makers can control. After all, you can have the slickest, most beautiful user interface in the world, but if there’s nothing there to make people come back to see more, there’s not much point in bothering. The money will go where the people are, so it’ll be interesting to see whether gamers flock to YouTube Gaming or find themselves more comfortable elsewhere.
See you back here in a year’s time for an update on how this all played out?
Other Dedicated YouTube Apps We Want
Before launching YouTube Gaming, YouTube already had dedicated services for Music and Kids content. But why stop there? We’ve got some ideas for new YouTube spin-offs:
YouTube Cooking
All recipes, all the time. There are loads of food-related videos on YouTube already, so why not stick them in one place and chuck in a live stream of Jamie Oliver showing us how to chop onions like a pro?
YouTube DIY
If we could monetise live streams of our rubbish attempts to reseal the bath and put up a shelf, some of our annoying household jobs might actually get done! Plus, er, some easily searchable instructional videos wouldn’t go amiss.
YouTube Cats
Approximately half of all the content on the entire internet is cat-related, so Google is missing a trick if it doesn’t create a dedicated cat channel. How many hours of live streamed kitten antics would we watch? It’s hard to come up with an exact number, but it’d be a lot.
YouTubeBox
Let’s go full meta: this spin-off would just feature live streams of people watching live streams. And maybe people live streaming themselves watching those too. The only problem would be finding enough viewers who weren’t also broadcasters to actually click on adverts and generate the revenue to fund it all.
Lazy Searchers
For the most part, Alan Joyce’s blog post announcing YouTube Gaming was pretty sensible stuff, explaining what the service will offer and why it’s cool. But there was one line we were a bit perplexed by:
“…when you want something specific, you can search with confidence, knowing that typing ‘call’ will show you ‘Call Of Duty’ and not ‘Call Me Maybe’.”
Now, granted, Google’s preternatural ability to predict what we’re searching for before we’ve finished typing it has made us kind of lazy about how we search the internet, but has that specific example ever really been a problem for anyone? Are there people out there desperate to find Fallout 3 walkthroughs who keep watching the video for Fall Out Boy’s ‘My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark’ instead? People trying to search for Metal Gear Solid streams who can only type ‘metal’ and end up scrolling through endless results for thrash metal bands instead?
We’re gonna say no, this is not a real problem, and it doesn’t need solving.
(Enough silliness - you can read the full blog post right here: youtube-global.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/a-youtubebuilt-for-gamers.html)