I wholly agree that IRL content is what started the downfall of Twitch in my opinion, culturally at least. The meta of reaction and lazy content, combined with the ouroboros of creators reacting to other creators reacting to OTHER creators has made it like this insular place that if you haven't been on the platform for a while now just is totally inaccessible
Thinking that hiring a "deer person" as an unironic member of a policy-directing/advising team was the clearest sign of rot. That was so radioactive, you can see it glowing from Pluto. And they nerfed Pluto
I was first excited about IRL as an option on Twitch I viewed it as being a filler in between gaming streams as a way to connect with your community in a chat setting. I didn't think people would turn react content and mediocre content into a full time career.
Personally, I only watch Twitch for artist Streams. It's a comfy place to be, generally drama free, chill, and educational as well. Though it is not gaming focused content (though many artists are avid gamers) and that likely does take away from the core culture of twitch, I'm quite grateful for this side of twitch, as it's why I watch and it is content I deeply enjoy. Just my 2 cents.
twitch drama free? damn what circles you're in lol it's relatively easy to avoid it but i can see and say i got chill spaces mostly drama free for the most part. every one games, just with the pandemic many say hey with free time might as well make use of events being cancelled as it made sense,
i think there’s a point to be made that twitch doesn’t need that section, but that amazon could make a separate website connected to their branch of AWS that could harbor that content to a wide audience, such as yourself. i feel like amazon could pull off making services for multiple different things, they have Prime Video for on demand streaming of shows and movies, so why couldn’t they have it for art, gaming, irl streaming, and broadway-like play content?
@@TaKenR6 That would probably be a good way to do it. To some extent I understand the desire to have room for crossover between communities, but I also see Devin's point and why it destroys the core of what Twitch was. For what he talks about, it really does sound like a sad change. Change is the only constant, I suppose.
"After Twitch shut down Friday social drinking, a then employee defecated and spread it on the walls" What the actual fuck goes on inside these companies sometimes? Fantastic research, presentation and conversation as always Devin. Would love to see you out in some of the "mainstream media" educating and discussing these ideas and thoughts for a bigger audience.
This is very true. I was a die hard twitch user since 2012, but now I literally only go on twitch to watch that one streamer but tbh as soon as he leaves to RUclips, that’s pretty much it front twitch for me. I don’t even have the apps on my devices anymore. Sad to see the purple light dying
You’ve completely changed my outlook on a lot of Twitches actions and so many of these videos really do make me feel more informed. I offboarded from the affiliate program a few months ago but still stream and I feel like it has made no difference in viewership. It really is robbing creators.
14:11 Tik Tok Live is mostly IRL and is also full of toxicity and degeneracy but is constantly growing. Please do a video on Tik Tok Live. The content on there is 100x more toxic and degenerate than Cx/IP2.
I actually like the diversity of content on Twitch. I haven't grown out of watching live content, but I've definitely grown out of watching people just play games exclusively.
Basically - Twitch were created for gaming content. Twitch then focused too much on making money instead of empowering new content creators (those who are essential to the platforms succes) which lead to Twitch now being close to impossible for new content creators and a lot of click baity content that is similar to the rest of the players in the social media space. I'm not too sure about what they can do about it. Doesn't the content "get picked" by the users/viewers indirectly? What would you like to see Twitch become/change to from where they are now? and What can Twitch actually do about it?
I'd like twitch do disappear forever. The site is fucked six ways from Sunday after the big hack that happened. Good riddance, twitch is a dumpster fire and has been for a long time.
There wasn't one thing I disagree with in this video. I'm just as sad about the state of Twitch as many of us are. I hope for better but not expecting much from Twitch going forward. Thank you for making this video, Devin!! A great valuable video!!
Salari covered Twitch and it's Problems extremly well, getting much praise, but Pop-Culture Detective and Hbomberguy also dont have a Trillion and a Half Subs for no reason: their videos about alpha-males, pick-up Artists and all that is Genius.
I strongly disagree with Devon about 42:33 about him arguing that the metas on Twitch are something alien. Lewd content has a long history of being in video games look at dead or alive, gta, and I can go on seems hypocritical by getting upset now that is irl. The gambling meta is another excess frome the video game industry look at lootboxes. Finally the long hours incentive react content.
damn dude, I can hear the rage, disappointment, and sadness in your voice at the end. I feel the same way, just not as passionate since I was never as close to the platform as you and kinda stopped giving a shit around the time IRL started becoming popular
Love this video! It's sucked so much to watch twitch degrade into another version of "the cool kids" table at school and almost none of them do gaming content. React content (if you can call it that... it's just them watching gordo), the super sexual content, the gambling, the just chatting/irl content... and pair that with some of these horrible practices like uncapped subathons... people are just sleeping on stream now. It's honestly really sad to see, because I don't know if another platform will ever be able to survive in the market space.
I am guilty of sleeping on stream >:) I also built the world's first LED Guitar that people can control from chat. 😎 Did I mention it plays video games?
IRL Content may have thrown their ecosystem for a loop and forced changes (that probably still haven't been implemented correctly yet)... but the IRL content itself wasn't the problem.
Really enjoyed this take on this platform. Hitting on the fact that twitch used to be the place where you would go when you felt like the odd man out is what really put this together for me. It’s sad to see the greed take over comfort zones.
I'm only 1/3 in the video when commenting, but I REALLY REALLY wished IRL would gain its own website subsidiary from Twitch, like how Reddit separated their boards on the top tool bar, instead of being a category. I don't fault businesses doing things that improve profits, but it's like having a perfect chocolate milkshake and pour water in it, still tastes borderline OK, but would have kept the water in a separate glass.
I have to disagree with the whole gaming thing. The problem with early twitch was that they were heavy-handed. The community was gamers and this already rewarded gaming content. So the reinforcement was already there, and they didn't need to forbid it. But by forbidding non-gaming content, they turned it into that forbidden fruit that was both alluring and rewarding for streamers. Some were quick to find ways around the banned content, or were able to the skirt the rules, and they were able to profit off it as a result. If they had allowed non-gaming content from the beginning, I don't think it would be as big as it was today -- because there'd be nothing novel, alluring, or rewarding about it.
LivestreamFails isn't the only culture on Twitch imo that determines how the site operates. There's the W community, non English speaking communities, Vtubers, etc.
Feel privileged to be able to watch this. Devin, you're a gem in this community. Please never stop producing content. As someone who is fascinated with the marketing/business side of Gaming & Twitch, this kind of content is so, so hard to find yet so interesting. Could listen to you all day.
The media is evolving and Twitch has to capture that or be left behind to wither and die. There is massive audience beyond video games that Twitch can tap into that represents 100x growth potential for Twitch. There are already superb IRL content providers who provide huge amounts of superb content. I have virtually traveled the world many times over with a number of them, and been at the front lines - much tighter in than CNN coverage - at world events like the Hong Kong protests. I have heard phenomenal music performances 'sitting beside' artists who were unable to monetize through their usual venues due to Covid restrictions. The unique interactive and participatory nature of Twitch has a potential to create far tighter bonds between audience and performer than other media - the large, repeated donations and long duration viewership of many viewers of their favorite streamers are proof of this. The problem is not IRL per se, but that Twitch has failed to find a way to nurture growth of a diverse multiplicity of community cultures within the broader overall growth (in other words, the tightness of the video game model should be replicated within each community - Twitch has not found a formula for positively driving this, hence the evolution in that vacuum of a drama-driven react culture), Twitch has done a terrible job of helping streamers monetize and publicize (especially those starting out - and that 100x growth doesn't happen without 100x more streamers - Twitch's discovery and audience growth / data science support for new streamers could be massively better), and Twitch has a non-supportive generally hostile / adversarial stance against its creators (the policy of terrorizing streamers with arbitrary, unexplained bans being a great example of Twitch being an atrociously terrible business partner). I have considered streaming but Twitch is such an awful business partner I simply don't want my revenue and success tied to that type of partner. This all points to bad management of a very unique and special - almost magical - media property. Sadge! Sadge! Sadge!
So I agree with pretty much everything you've brought up. I'd even have an easier time swallowing the issues the corporate side of Twitch has if they offered better monetization to the creators. That being said, I don't understand how you can decry the push to IRL and lazy content, but still carry water for people like Amouranth or Hasan, who put zero effort other than trying to find the next meta, aka looking for loopholes in the TOS to create controversy to gain attention, or just play off of drama seekers/cultists from the culture that you said you avoid as well. Saying that they're just taking advantage of the system Twitch has created is a cop out. They're just as responsible for the content they create as much as Twitch is for allowing it. It just sounds hypocritical.
I think that goes to his personal bias in politics and people his company represents, but that could just be me. I don’t understand how else you could justify what Hassan does most of the time which is brain dead “react” content.
@@connorh7120 It's because people demand it. If you've watched such content, you'll find it's typically pretty fun. Since it's "brain dead" easy to make, it dominates as it's the most efficient way to fill up time without people getting bored. I do understand Devin's bias here, but I feel that's mostly because he sees the culture he "grew up with" become completely replaced by essentially a "social media" platform (without dynamic ads, which is odd. Should really get on that). It also doesn't help that twitch still burns money. Livestreaming isn't cheap.
@@LiveType I think that goes to the overarching problem though. Yes it's brain dead easy to make, because people are trying to stream for hours upon hours, instead of creating an actual show with some sort of cohesive topic or theme. Watching Hasan chew his cud while making a derisive snort once every 15 minutes because he has to fill 12 hours of airtime isn't entertaining in any sense of the word. People watch for the memes and to catch snippets for hot takes to farm for clout than for actual enjoyment for most of these people. Amouranth sucking a lollipop into a mic is just meant to titilate, and she only uses Twitch as a soft entry to her OF or Patreon. I want higher standards for streamers, but unfortunately the vast majority of them don't care about the quality of their content, just quantity, and I don't have any idea how it's supposed to get any better.
Devin's company that he runs with a business partner has to make money. Also he has built personal relationships to certain streamers. Being annoyed and disagreeing with a situation is one thing but actually going against people you like and that bring in the money your company makes is a completly different level. It might be hypocritical to a certain degree but it's also very human to do so.
@@migueltucabron I get that to a certain extent, but it just seems odd to call out Twitch and not individual content creators. Devin seems to think that the platform is being oversexualized, but then has an interview with Amouranth for an hour that is basically him just blowing smoke up her ass, when she's the most prominent face of WHY Twitch is in that situation in the first place. Just because she has a few brain cells more than the average streamer and actually invests her money instead of blowing it on unnecessary junk doesn't make her a brilliant businesswoman, and not holding her feet to the fire just lets the behavior continue. Anyway, Amouranth isn't the only problem, she's just a symptom, I just use her as an example because it's easy.
Thanks for giving the history breakdown. I knew some of it but had missed a lot of important pieces + the information about executives will be extremely useful when I analyse companies in the future Lovely seeing someone being so passionate about gaming and when you named the companies you owned/co-owned I was really happy get a broader perspective on the dots tied to certain teams within certain CS:GO. Especially CLG but there was also another one, but I forgot since I was so focused on listening + the lack of sleep due to Lost Ark haha I'm actually gonna look for videos of you and Thorin because that would be hilarious to watch for many reasons Rock on!
tbh twitch is kinda doomed due to only having live content and no algorithm. yt will probably be the best streaming platform in the future because it puts edited, quality content first and streams are just always gonna be bonus material.
i believe twitch does have a algorithm, if you watch x game like dark souls or GTA they'll send you those that stream those mostly or something right? RUclips does what it does best, given doing creators dirty in many ways then susan also being outta touch to all the various other issues & inconsistancies.
@@M4TTYN if twitch had a algorithm it would have some level of discoverability. there is a reason channels can just blow up and go viral on yt. biggest problem with twitch is you need to actively look for channels to find a channel you like. yt often pushes smaller channels onto my homepage according to what i watch. twitch on the other hand pushes bigger channels because people are more likely to sub, gift and drop bitties when there is more people watching as a flex.
Twitch added a individual user analytics algorithm in late 2020 based on aggregating stats of what people watch in a graph based exploration algorithm that only goes out like 1 node max (understandable but I would like a bit more) from my experience. Essentially that chart that analyzes group viewership patterns with the colored bubbles and interconnected lines, but put into a rudimentary recommendation algorithm. The whole "people who watch this stream also watch these streams". It's better but it's not organic recommendation. It also needs a shit ton of your own viewing habits to become "good" which only further enforces and caters to twitch "power users" and exemplifies echo chambers. Aka, it's still a king maker system, but at least it's not as egregious as at least it groups viewers now. I honestly don't believe the hardware currently exists to do what youtube does for live content. Maybe by the end of the decade, but twitch continues to burn money with no end in sight.
@@M4TTYN twitch does have an algorithm, but its trash for finding new people to watch. it will always prioritize those live streams that currently have many views over those that dont. it doesnt care what your main game/category is. if i search, for example, dead by daylight, and my friend who is a smaller streamer who mostly or exclusively streams dbd, his channel wont show up on my search if he is not currently live. and if he is currently live when i happen to search, he will be at the bottom of the list. it will be a snowball's chance in hell for him or any other small/beginning streamer to be found in the twitch algorithm naturally. not that it's impossible; i know someone who has grown exclusively on twitch (exclusively here meaning they didnt diversify and create their brand on other platforms such as YT or tiktok) but it's not likely.
I 100% feel that at the end of the video from you. I started on Twitch back in 2012, and in the last 3 years, I left and does not feel the same anymore and feel like it's hurting people form the inside out. It sucks.
As usual, Devon, you've hit the proverbial nail on the head. Spot on analysis. I think you could look at the 'drama' between Ludwig and Adin Ross last year as this on a micro level. The wanna be new, cool kid trying to shit on someone whose been grinding away, calling him a 'nerd' or a 'band geek.' Yet he wants to be where Ludwig is.
I would argue that if Twitch stayed gaming the whole time, they never would have grown and blew up as big as it did. Some of the biggest twitch growth moments were non gaming. I don't disagree that twitch, with how the platform, is built is kind of capped and has a ceiling.
I like the no edits tbh, we're live stream viewers anyway for the most part, we're used to no edits, I prefer that more than over edited garbage that some people put out with less insight, etc. the less editing, the more genuine it feels and the more valuable I find the content usually. Anyway great video, I hope somehow twitch listens to this, they've got a great community, but at the end of the day if they don't have that, they have nothing.
The part that hurts the most is losing the community. As a 0 viewer Andy that mostly just streamed and chatted with a couple friends it was atleast fun Togo live on twitch 4-5 times a week. Where as now I find that I have zero want to stream on twitch to where I’ve tried streaming on RUclips. And while streaming on YT is cool, it just feels like you gotta do something bigger, something grander and larger in scale. It just hurts to lose that spot to just chill on video games and chat with friends and ransoms you meet while playing games.
44:00 Yeah it is hard for all us little guys to become noticed but its always like that. There was a time for shoutout farming but that era is retired. Now everyone has their friend groups and people pick and choose what group to watch. There is little to no chance to be noticed or join those friend groups Unless you get noticed by the react streamers with their communities eyes gluded to placed like LSF.
Salari covered Twitch and it's Problems extremly well, getting much praise, but Pop-Culture Detective and Hbomberguy also dont have a Trillion and a Half Subs for no reason: their videos about alpha-males, pick-up Artists and all that is Genius.
I was spamming so hard the like button at the end... truth have never been more clear than this. Also no secret shoutout at +30 min but we're still here, keep on doing great things Devin.
It definitely lost its way to the point where I moved over to RUclips livestreaming. And since I don't do often like I used to, it just made sense for me to start from scratch and grow on RUclips. Everything that you've mentioned on the business sense of things, just validated my gut feeling for the future of Twitch.
I was there from the start too, I did a stream or two too, but I was mainly there as a viewer~ When it was Justin tv it was split into two, one for gaming and other for literally "other", although mainly used for Art~ In this way Games and Art was what made Twitch after it merged both sites and became Twitch, then merged again in the future to become a new Twitch; but naturally gaming was more popular as you're saying, I've just wanted to point out that it had 2 sides, not just gaming, that were mainly prevalent at the start, the Art side never really grew that much, it did but very slowly, and Gaming took over by a long-shot~ But whoever is reading this, don't get this wrong, no matter how much Twitch diversifies, it was indeed mainly about Gaming at start, everything else was extra as Gamers happen to be Artists and can do other things too, it was advertised as that too, the audience were always Gamers~ Things in the past were very different than now, but back then and now you grow with both and all of those categories/genres on your own efforts, it was always about you as the content creator from the start, that thing has never changed~ Twitch doesn't grow you, you grow on Twitch~ And the You isn't Twitch, the You is the You on all Platforms, Twitch is just one of em; don't put all your eggs into one basket~ And about Twitch itself, man, I had no idea they've changed this much~ I've always seen Twitch as organic, supportive and people who are there for Gamers, together with Gamers moving forward and changing the world~ Gamers and Twitch, E-Sports, everyone moving together with a strong Bond~ I've never seen it as a corporation who disconnects themselves from their own community and labels em as users, that is so wrong on so many levels, Twitch was never meant to be that, Twitch was always close to the Gamers and the Community, the World of it~ Even the Staff that show on stream were so nice, it's really surprising that this is what actually happened behind the scenes and what drove Twitch in the decisions that they make~ I hope that Twitch finds its way back and wakes up one day, brings back the close-knit bond with their community and actually works on features for their community, together with em and being a voice for em~ Twitch should be the voice of Gamers, of content creators, not a corporate that doesn't only cares about themselves and money, Twitch used to care about real values, this is not the Twitch I've used to know~ I really hope that Twitch doesn't continue going into this direction, the path to downfall is always sudden and fast, it will come without any prior notice~ Twitch can control the direction on where it goes, it is not too late; but if it never changes the direction and continues walking the selfish and seemingly easier path, the wide path, it will eventually run out of borrowed time~
I appreciate this. As a hobbiest on twitch, a lot of the stuff you talk about I just don’t see. A lot of the problems exist only if you watch big streamers. But like all I see in my live channels are fellow nerds living their best life. Even if they’re playing a Nancy drew video game with 5 people viewing.
If they don't want a new CEO who can manage community, why can't they get someone in some other position that can manage the community and is empowered to do so? Does Amazon prevent it, or is the internal culture of the company so disconnected from the community that it's impossible?
CEO shouldn't be managing community and this is not normal for companies at this size. They would/should have a separate community director or some specific sr executive to oversee that department which then branches further as needed. Don't know if this is AMZ or why they want to have it that way but it's standard practice at the corporate level to not have the CEO directly oversee any one department, but "oversee the overseers" of _all_ departments. Edit: inwas browsing before I came to the part in the video. While this is true for operational-level community, it's not true for organizational-level community, or global identity and strategy. They *would* want the CEO to be the ultimate head if global strategy and identity management... however these might be AMZ's decisions as the parent company. But generally you want the CEO to be saying "who are we as a company," and "does this align with who we are," and "how does this help us inhabit our identity?"
Im not as og as alot of people, but this hit the nail on the head with how I feel towards what Twitch is now.... I miss the community feeling it had, now it feels like a defunct family all fighting over an inheritance
I always watch your whole videos Devin, regardless of how many tangents because I feel like you always have little golden nuggets like you do at 44:50 hidden somewhere . As always, your insight and viewpoint is much appreciated and helps make those who listen better for it.
Loved the video Devin, this whole situation reminds me of MTV. At first it was all heart and passion with music. Now it’s known for reality shows, etc. I feel like Twitch is basically on the path MTV’s timeline, there will still be gaming but I fear they will make the site more general. There are even some creators that think Twitch originally didn’t start off as a gaming streaming site which I had fun trying to debate them about proving they were wrong. Also another example is G4 channel too.
Twitch technically wasn't a gaming site at first actually. Twitch was called JustinTV before the re-branding and amazon purchase. Justin Khan founded it as a site for him and his college buddies to stream them hanging out. It turned into a gaming site after that and then they renamed it to twitch. So ironically, twitch kinda did start out as an IRL streaming site.
While I don't necessarily disagree with the things you say a good portion of this feels a bit like *back in my day* "we've got these sexy girls and this react content. GARBAGE! I remember when it was just nerds playing video games and we walked uphill BOTH WAYS."
I have said this so many times...If you can't lead, you should NOT be in a leadership role. The problem most industries face today is that they have/continually place people who can't lead into leadership positions when they have obvious better choices. This was a great part of the reason why I left my previous employer. When you purposefully elect to promote around all your real and motivated canidates and the "buddy system" becomes the basket from which your selections are picked from, then your company, business, industry is destined to deterierate from the inside out. Prime example of this, my previous employment was more focused on promoting of "buddies" and they gave people power who would spend most of their shift either napping in their car all night or spending most of the time in one department with very specific people and playing favorites, that made even people from all the other shifts believe there was some "explicit" things going on. Instead of supporting from management, we were all on our own most of the time. Our support went to either sleep on the job or to fuck a subordinate. There was NO respect for our leaders anymore. The whole thing started to crumble and got bad enough I left before the entire ship could sink. 🙄
I remember watching the co-optional podcast and hearing total biscuit get on the crew that they were going to get yelled at if they didn't go back to talking about video games after getting off track for a bit. I never sat down and thought about the negative impact that could come if they undid that rule.
I appreciate everything you do!! My attention span normally doesn’t allow me to watch videos longer than 7-10 mins, but I’m always looking forward to all 20, 30, 50 mins of yours!😊 💜
Your attention span is probably fine. Cut social media and read more long form content. Make it easy and find something you like... just like these videos. Take breaks if you have to but then come back immediately. Commit to finishing something and then gradually extend how long you can sit through things until you're watching 1-2hr long content that isn't at the movie theatre Train yourself to handle longer forms of content. You can do it. I have ADHD AND I do it.
@@randomuserame great advice and completely true. Our Brains are very elastic and resilient. You just gotta understand what things you do help improve or reduce your attention span and executive functioning in general.
Talkin about EQ 1 and 56k modems really hit me in the nostalgia man. IMO you are right with this. Your take on the silicon valley "employee" problem had me rollin too. Great video man!
I am honored and humbled that my little Detroit-based Smash tournament Frostbite gets mentioned along with huge names like Evo. Huge fan of the content Devin! Keep the videos coming!!
00:14:20 eh, nah. I think the introduction of IRL is what brought "new content" to the platform. Sure, it might be low-effort, but it's "safer" than playing copyrighted content (eg games, music and reacting to videos.) Usually. If you asked me what Twitch was used for prior to 2019, I'd say "low-effort gaming content, trying to make esports out of games not designed to be competitive". What brought new life to Twitch was the Pandemic and people being trapped indoors with nothing else to do. But people need to learn how to create. So complaining about low-effort content is just detrimental to the one making the complaint. Every time you point a finger, you have three pointing back at you. To which I think your next point, a tech person as a ceo, is the elephant in the room. Tech people fundamentally don't understand how their products are used, and will usually move to "make thing better", even if the way it worked before was why people used it.
You are really underselling how bad the "tech" non-business aspect of silicon valley is (to be clear this is not a sarcastic comment), it is toxic and even beyond a culture level and from a technological level not healthy.
I agree with this sentiment completely and I remember recently having the same discussion with some of my friends. They werent around when Twitch was just part of JustinTV, but I was. I was telling them how JustinTV was basically the IRL section of current Twitch and died for a reason. They didn't really have one focused community, whereas twitch did, and it was gamers. The site was built by gamers, and it feels as if they left us behind. They don't seem to understand their audience anymore and the site feels like it is, like you said, more of a tabloid magazine and less about the games and gamers. Conversation when Im on hardly ever seems to be about the game or games in general, it's about drama or seems like the chat is trying to push the streamer into doing something stupid. It seems to be a problem that the whole gaming industry is suffering from at the top though. The industry at the top has become more about making a billion dollars over making good stuff. They dont seem to care about the communities that got them there, just about getting everyone to buy their product. Look at what happened to BF 2042, I used to be a hardcore BF fan, but BF hasn't felt like BF to me in a long time. Same with Madden, FIFIA, COD, list goes on. Keep up the good work though man. I enjoy the long videos even if I have to take them in sections.
The more I thought about this, part of it was Twitch themselves shooting themselves in the foot with contracts about long streaming hours (I started to notice more and more people using reruns as live if they were a "pro player who happened to be at tournaments 1 or 2 weekends who were practicing being down on hours") but the content creators themselves have just started... all being the same. Look at stream layouts, look at stream content, look at X... they all have a "top donator/bit/gifter" "Recent follow/sub and/or alert notifications" the "meter to a goal/giveaway" the timers that don't mean anything outside of getting you to fork money over. They all have the twitch purple hue in their backgrounds, or beige vanilla "office looking game content to prove how long they've committed." It has gotten so bad that I loved purple as a color... and have pretty much shifted to a pink or a significantly different hue so when I look at the color I don't think Twitch and how good it used to be. I scroll to find someone new to watch... and literally everything is just the same. The actual game might be this fps vs that one, or speedrunning this new game vs that new game because it just came out and maximize those new game clicks, or this piece of gaming driving content (story) vs that piece of content (whatever hard content just got released) in the same game. A 500-viewer stream literally looks like a 5-viewer stream and I haven't even clicked through to their channel. Combined with the fact IF I even like the channel to follow, the rest of the channel knows... and then I'm eligible for gift subs which make my experience a turn-off so I unfollow again.
Everything of what you said on Twitch (and from the article) is honestly true and it hurts to see that reality. As someone who spends his free time on video games and I am passionate for it, it hurts how Twitch has washed itself from being a video-game platform to a husk of never-ending toxic wasteland, you can already see how much Twitch has lost it's northstar. I still view Twitch streams but only those that are gaming. Idk if I should hope or wish but better yet, I do hope things will improve, just not monetary but actual community support. Though one's thought can't come to fruition, one can still dream (πーπ)
fantastic video as always. sad to see that this is the new reality for twitch. I really do hope it changes or comes back to its roots. I can tell you are passionate and upset about how things are now, your emotion showed and really got to me. I love gaming and what it does for a lot of people. when you talked about how back in the day you couldnt talk about being a gamer in fear of being made fun of, that hit home and having twitch be a place where we used to be able to thrive was such a breath of fresh air. Thank you for shedding light on this and continuing to support gamers.
I don't know how you can possibly say that IRL content is lazy, when you compare that to watching a video game content player sit there and just play a video game that THEY DIDN'T EVEN CREATE! I watch all kinds of talented artists, crafters, and musicians put on live shows that are amazing and show tons of talent. They spent hours, days, and weeks creating THEIR OWN content - artists making their own custom overlays, animations, and then draw and paint LIVE... musician who compose live songs on the fly and do covers. Amazing crafters and technical experts making all sorts of crazy inventions and experiments. Yes... it's true there is a lot of IRL "reaction" content creators and creators that just hang out on the beach... but so what? A person sitting there playing a video game and talking is supposedly a better entertainment value than an IRL? To me... the biggest problem is Content Creation. Video gamers already have their content created for them. They just have to play it and try to be socially entertaining. Artists, have to build their content from the ground up from nothing, make it approachable, and repeat that over and over and over. LIVE. On stream. LIVE. That's nearly impossible to do for any extended length of time without resorting to having some content provided for you through "reaction" video watching or just hanging out and talking. No artist can complete in original content creation with a gamer who has that content already given to them (by a company backed by hundreds of design experts, programmers, and digital artists). It seems that every time Devin says "Community"... he really means "GAMER Community". Like IRL and Gamer content can't co-exist. Maybe they can't? But I don't see how that is the IRL maker's fault.
I wasn't around for the old days of Twitch so it's good to hear more about the original community and culture. There are parallels here to what is going on in web3 -- imagine trying to make gaming content about games like Axie and be surrounded by non-stop financial hype content. Good to know I'm not alone :P thanks for the video
Just turned 7 years on Twitch. The website I once joined is not there anymore and it saddens me. I just left affiliate after being the first ones to get it when it was first announced in 2016. I stick around running my show because of the viewers who keeps returning to my chat. I don't want to lose contact with them. But it is as you described it. I'm holding on.. not thriving..
Twitch is reminding me of MTV for a bit, a non standard tv network that then introduces silicon valley/hollywood mindset into their network and started losing touch of its past and core audience. Gaming content is turning into reality content, at some point you’ll see fake relationships on twitch where you get scripted content more and more getting close to cable tv than what we hoped for, a network for REAL expression.
@@randomuserame it is happening currently to twitch, YT is a bit different since it’s more of it’s own solid branch and have a ton of different representation inside the company that it’s hard to break the culture. I think around 2017 it was close to breaking off a lot of the culture but seems it came back around though
Well video Devin. I started watching hearthstone in 2014 and the community and chat was so much fun, especially forsen. Another driver for the parasocial content was the pandemic. People didnt get as much social stimulation during their day so they get it from twitch in the evening. This incentivizes streamers to stream that content also because they 2x their viewcount.
I don't really have anything to add, but thanks for the video Devin. You give me so much insight into Twitch that I would never have if it wasn't for this educational content
6 and a half years.later. Yea...still there. Multistreaming now but I cant fight this meta by just streaming there! Thank you for the video. I can relay.
I’d say I hate the IRL/Reaction content on Twitch but I hate it even more on RUclips so it’s whatever. I just watch esports/gaming on Twitch cuz the live experience feels more live, static videos on RUclips, until things change this is just where both still shine for me. I haven’t watched a single Twitch streamer on RUclips once after the move, or esports for that matter, out of sight out of mind no matter how much I tuned in before. And as far as the backend both sites are kind of a mess anyways, least imo.
IRL is easy to avoid on RUclips though… it’s way better at showing you exactly what you wanna see, whereas twitch just throws everything popular at you. RUclips is the platform for everything. I wish Twitch would go back to being gaming only.
@@itsbeeva Definitely miss when it used to be more gaming centric. And I never use algorithms on any website so I guess that's just not as relevant to me. I used to DJ I'm old school...I just find stuff I like on my own lol
I'm definitely getting burnt out by all the awfulness that's happened in the last few years or so. I just wanna go back to Twitch circa 2016. All I want is for Twitch to focus on communities again, make an ad words style advertisement system so we can get fucking paid, and to hyper focus on gaming, art, and music. Let the IRL/react Andy folks go to TikTok.
I personally think you said it perfectly. Twitch is halfway down a road that it probably most likely wont recover from. I hope that there can be sensible change the affects in a positive manner but in all honesty I doubt it because the constant changes always have to be about money and not just bettering the environment of twitch.
I wonder how much the IRL culture change also affected adoption of the website. In gaming streams, the floor to understanding is just knowing the game that's being played. When watching IRL, you have to know the whole node network or the information is just lost.
Yea IRL birth most of the issues which twitch took a stance you'd can argue isn't a shock in these times but did grant the freedom and lanes many hobbiest took and benifited from then more catagories were created nice context and info here thanks Devin! I got my views on both mainly RUclips & Twitch's direction used RUclips since 2006 then in 2008 & 2009 used it intensively, for Twitch made my account in 2012 but only used it lightly in 2015 but really did in 2018 so if any wholesome days or unhinged i missed out but just hoping for the best at this point my circles had talks like others oh the direction with "twitch is outta touch" being the general conclusion. I watch streamers from many circles mostly gamers, artist, some game dev's to some the use a avatar controlled by a iPhone known as vtubers, i get around to the recomended on both Twitch and youtube passed many to me who i watched heavily support were i can some with the innocent mind set of "they only stream for fun" a rare against being a affiliate. I got my opinions with all these things given most us with no inside info then some of use never streamed *just hoping for the best* with fingers crossed at this point or hope the few alternatives around for now stay around if i choose to stream personally Trovo being one doing sorta well i guess but never touching FB gaming.
On executives: Au contraire, as the leader it is 100% your responsibility. Even if you're not the one making the bans or implementing the changes, it is under your guidance and supervision that this is happening, so all of it is on you. Are you culpable if someone is doing something illegal against your wishes under you? Probably not. But anything you've directed the people under you to do is ultimately your responsibility.
Bit late for this maybe, but that might make it more interesting. did you ever end up doing a reflective 'why I left esports' type of video? You discussed this early on during your streams back than but I'd still be interested in hearing you discuss your clg - back to streaming - talent agency arc now that you've seen the space from more angles.
I've seen official Twitch announcement/community streams where DjWheat was the spokesman, and while he seemed to be reasonably used to talking to an online audience and eloquent, I found his attempts very awkward to watch. At the time I didn't know about his position and thought he was just a streamer hired to talk about the official Twitch stuff. Mostly because he could not answer most of the questions he was asked, seemed to not have the relevant background information or just chose to ignore pressing issues. Now I realize that he was thrown in front of the camera without a lot of backline support and did his best to survive in the middle of the battlefield that was Twitch as a company vs its users. I completely understand why he chose to leave, it was an unpleasant experience for sure.
Really good perspective to hear. I'm interested to see what twitch will be like in 5 years and what other platforms will be like. Is this a problem with all big companies? Is it even possible for a niche website/environment to maintain longevity. I think in the long term decisions are made primarily for money and that's why Twitch is changing like it is.
This is a comment stating I watched the video up to [insert time here],yes I am awesome. But, seriously Devin I love your videos & it's nice to see what new video subject(s) you choose to tackle in them.
I enjoy the long videos, so keep up the good work. It is kind of a weird situation and i don't think this can be averted. Most of the major gaming streamers have become LSF/drama/react streamers. I would assume that that is where the money is and it no doubt requires less effort. I can't say I blame them, that is what their viewers seem to want, just like the gamble viewers want gambling scams and the sexual viewers want sexual content. This doesn't really bother me, but I find myself watching youtube more and twitch less over time.
I don't know much about what happened with twitch as a viewer/user. This disconnect probably does keep people on the platform since there aren't any popular alternatives. 1. Seems like with any merging into a large corporation, the original culture will always get diluted that made it special like you said. 2. I don't think the IRL content/non-gaming content is the tipping point, I think this reflects the broader appeal of twitch (which isn't necessarily bad - I enjoy the music streams, podcasts, etc). However, I do think that they are not preserving the intimate community that twitch was based on and, thus leading to some crap content on twitch. This speaks to also how they are incentivizing streamers and not promoting a clearer/safer culture. 3. It's interesting how leadership can make or break a company single-handedly. I agree new leadership sounds like it can turn things around for twitch. 4. In the end, I don't think merging with larger corporations is good unless you want to cash out or the business is going down. I think of discord and how they turned down microsoft. Riot also great culture. 5. Hope that your voice will continue to be heard among others to help change the twitch leadership/culture.
I wholly agree that IRL content is what started the downfall of Twitch in my opinion, culturally at least.
The meta of reaction and lazy content, combined with the ouroboros of creators reacting to other creators reacting to OTHER creators has made it like this insular place that if you haven't been on the platform for a while now just is totally inaccessible
Loop reactions *can* be entertaining. But there are only a handful who can pull it off.
I am SO glad someone sees the danger in hiring only from Silicon Valley and finally verbalized it.
I wanna hear all the tea now😭😂
Really, more people should be vocal about that, its a huge issue no one talks about because they know they'll be cancelled for speaking up first.
I was unaware of this. What kind of mindset do they bring with them?
Thinking that hiring a "deer person" as an unironic member of a policy-directing/advising team was the clearest sign of rot. That was so radioactive, you can see it glowing from Pluto. And they nerfed Pluto
@@randomuserame Groupthink is a real thing.
Devin's analogy of how Twitch was a Gaming magazine then became a tabloid National Enquirer, that was genius sir 👍 RUclips Gaming is the future 💯
I was first excited about IRL as an option on Twitch I viewed it as being a filler in between gaming streams as a way to connect with your community in a chat setting. I didn't think people would turn react content and mediocre content into a full time career.
Personally, I only watch Twitch for artist Streams. It's a comfy place to be, generally drama free, chill, and educational as well. Though it is not gaming focused content (though many artists are avid gamers) and that likely does take away from the core culture of twitch, I'm quite grateful for this side of twitch, as it's why I watch and it is content I deeply enjoy. Just my 2 cents.
twitch drama free? damn what circles you're in lol it's relatively easy to avoid it but i can see and say i got chill spaces mostly drama free for the most part.
every one games, just with the pandemic many say hey with free time might as well make use of events being cancelled as it made sense,
i think there’s a point to be made that twitch doesn’t need that section, but that amazon could make a separate website connected to their branch of AWS that could harbor that content to a wide audience, such as yourself.
i feel like amazon could pull off making services for multiple different things, they have Prime Video for on demand streaming of shows and movies, so why couldn’t they have it for art, gaming, irl streaming, and broadway-like play content?
@@TaKenR6 That would probably be a good way to do it. To some extent I understand the desire to have room for crossover between communities, but I also see Devin's point and why it destroys the core of what Twitch was. For what he talks about, it really does sound like a sad change. Change is the only constant, I suppose.
"After Twitch shut down Friday social drinking, a then employee defecated and spread it on the walls" What the actual fuck goes on inside these companies sometimes? Fantastic research, presentation and conversation as always Devin. Would love to see you out in some of the "mainstream media" educating and discussing these ideas and thoughts for a bigger audience.
my b
This is very true. I was a die hard twitch user since 2012, but now I literally only go on twitch to watch that one streamer but tbh as soon as he leaves to RUclips, that’s pretty much it front twitch for me. I don’t even have the apps on my devices anymore. Sad to see the purple light dying
You’ve completely changed my outlook on a lot of Twitches actions and so many of these videos really do make me feel more informed. I offboarded from the affiliate program a few months ago but still stream and I feel like it has made no difference in viewership. It really is robbing creators.
14:11 Tik Tok Live is mostly IRL and is also full of toxicity and degeneracy but is constantly growing.
Please do a video on Tik Tok Live.
The content on there is 100x more toxic and degenerate than Cx/IP2.
I actually like the diversity of content on Twitch. I haven't grown out of watching live content, but I've definitely grown out of watching people just play games exclusively.
Basically - Twitch were created for gaming content. Twitch then focused too much on making money instead of empowering new content creators (those who are essential to the platforms succes) which lead to Twitch now being close to impossible for new content creators and a lot of click baity content that is similar to the rest of the players in the social media space. I'm not too sure about what they can do about it. Doesn't the content "get picked" by the users/viewers indirectly? What would you like to see Twitch become/change to from where they are now? and What can Twitch actually do about it?
Nothing. Also their entire source code was leaked. I guarantee you their days are numbered. It just might be a lot of numbers.
I'd like twitch do disappear forever. The site is fucked six ways from Sunday after the big hack that happened. Good riddance, twitch is a dumpster fire and has been for a long time.
There wasn't one thing I disagree with in this video. I'm just as sad about the state of Twitch as many of us are. I hope for better but not expecting much from Twitch going forward. Thank you for making this video, Devin!! A great valuable video!!
Salari covered Twitch and it's Problems extremly well,
getting much praise, but Pop-Culture Detective and Hbomberguy
also dont have a Trillion and a Half Subs for no reason:
their videos about alpha-males, pick-up Artists and all that is Genius.
I strongly disagree with Devon about 42:33 about him arguing that the metas on Twitch are something alien. Lewd content has a long history of being in video games look at dead or alive, gta, and I can go on seems hypocritical by getting upset now that is irl. The gambling meta is another excess frome the video game industry look at lootboxes. Finally the long hours incentive react content.
damn dude, I can hear the rage, disappointment, and sadness in your voice at the end. I feel the same way, just not as passionate since I was never as close to the platform as you and kinda stopped giving a shit around the time IRL started becoming popular
Love this video! It's sucked so much to watch twitch degrade into another version of "the cool kids" table at school and almost none of them do gaming content. React content (if you can call it that... it's just them watching gordo), the super sexual content, the gambling, the just chatting/irl content... and pair that with some of these horrible practices like uncapped subathons... people are just sleeping on stream now. It's honestly really sad to see, because I don't know if another platform will ever be able to survive in the market space.
I am guilty of sleeping on stream >:) I also built the world's first LED Guitar that people can control from chat. 😎 Did I mention it plays video games?
IRL Content may have thrown their ecosystem for a loop and forced changes (that probably still haven't been implemented correctly yet)... but the IRL content itself wasn't the problem.
Really enjoyed this take on this platform. Hitting on the fact that twitch used to be the place where you would go when you felt like the odd man out is what really put this together for me. It’s sad to see the greed take over comfort zones.
23:00 Don't tell me... "It's for your own protection! We know what's best for you!"
Welcome to Silicon Valley!
I'm only 1/3 in the video when commenting, but I REALLY REALLY wished IRL would gain its own website subsidiary from Twitch, like how Reddit separated their boards on the top tool bar, instead of being a category. I don't fault businesses doing things that improve profits, but it's like having a perfect chocolate milkshake and pour water in it, still tastes borderline OK, but would have kept the water in a separate glass.
why should it? reddit is trash also.
@@thoticcusprime9309 lmao how is reddit trash xD
I have to disagree with the whole gaming thing. The problem with early twitch was that they were heavy-handed. The community was gamers and this already rewarded gaming content. So the reinforcement was already there, and they didn't need to forbid it.
But by forbidding non-gaming content, they turned it into that forbidden fruit that was both alluring and rewarding for streamers. Some were quick to find ways around the banned content, or were able to the skirt the rules, and they were able to profit off it as a result.
If they had allowed non-gaming content from the beginning, I don't think it would be as big as it was today -- because there'd be nothing novel, alluring, or rewarding about it.
LivestreamFails isn't the only culture on Twitch imo that determines how the site operates. There's the W community, non English speaking communities, Vtubers, etc.
Even how you word it shows the misunderstanding there are other communities but LSF effects the culture of twitch
Come to brazil
Feel privileged to be able to watch this. Devin, you're a gem in this community. Please never stop producing content. As someone who is fascinated with the marketing/business side of Gaming & Twitch, this kind of content is so, so hard to find yet so interesting. Could listen to you all day.
The media is evolving and Twitch has to capture that or be left behind to wither and die. There is massive audience beyond video games that Twitch can tap into that represents 100x growth potential for Twitch. There are already superb IRL content providers who provide huge amounts of superb content. I have virtually traveled the world many times over with a number of them, and been at the front lines - much tighter in than CNN coverage - at world events like the Hong Kong protests. I have heard phenomenal music performances 'sitting beside' artists who were unable to monetize through their usual venues due to Covid restrictions. The unique interactive and participatory nature of Twitch has a potential to create far tighter bonds between audience and performer than other media - the large, repeated donations and long duration viewership of many viewers of their favorite streamers are proof of this. The problem is not IRL per se, but that Twitch has failed to find a way to nurture growth of a diverse multiplicity of community cultures within the broader overall growth (in other words, the tightness of the video game model should be replicated within each community - Twitch has not found a formula for positively driving this, hence the evolution in that vacuum of a drama-driven react culture), Twitch has done a terrible job of helping streamers monetize and publicize (especially those starting out - and that 100x growth doesn't happen without 100x more streamers - Twitch's discovery and audience growth / data science support for new streamers could be massively better), and Twitch has a non-supportive generally hostile / adversarial stance against its creators (the policy of terrorizing streamers with arbitrary, unexplained bans being a great example of Twitch being an atrociously terrible business partner). I have considered streaming but Twitch is such an awful business partner I simply don't want my revenue and success tied to that type of partner. This all points to bad management of a very unique and special - almost magical - media property. Sadge! Sadge! Sadge!
Devin's holding back less and less about how he really feels. I really appreciate it even though we all know nothing will change :(
So I agree with pretty much everything you've brought up. I'd even have an easier time swallowing the issues the corporate side of Twitch has if they offered better monetization to the creators. That being said, I don't understand how you can decry the push to IRL and lazy content, but still carry water for people like Amouranth or Hasan, who put zero effort other than trying to find the next meta, aka looking for loopholes in the TOS to create controversy to gain attention, or just play off of drama seekers/cultists from the culture that you said you avoid as well. Saying that they're just taking advantage of the system Twitch has created is a cop out. They're just as responsible for the content they create as much as Twitch is for allowing it. It just sounds hypocritical.
I think that goes to his personal bias in politics and people his company represents, but that could just be me. I don’t understand how else you could justify what Hassan does most of the time which is brain dead “react” content.
@@connorh7120 It's because people demand it. If you've watched such content, you'll find it's typically pretty fun. Since it's "brain dead" easy to make, it dominates as it's the most efficient way to fill up time without people getting bored.
I do understand Devin's bias here, but I feel that's mostly because he sees the culture he "grew up with" become completely replaced by essentially a "social media" platform (without dynamic ads, which is odd. Should really get on that). It also doesn't help that twitch still burns money. Livestreaming isn't cheap.
@@LiveType I think that goes to the overarching problem though. Yes it's brain dead easy to make, because people are trying to stream for hours upon hours, instead of creating an actual show with some sort of cohesive topic or theme. Watching Hasan chew his cud while making a derisive snort once every 15 minutes because he has to fill 12 hours of airtime isn't entertaining in any sense of the word. People watch for the memes and to catch snippets for hot takes to farm for clout than for actual enjoyment for most of these people. Amouranth sucking a lollipop into a mic is just meant to titilate, and she only uses Twitch as a soft entry to her OF or Patreon.
I want higher standards for streamers, but unfortunately the vast majority of them don't care about the quality of their content, just quantity, and I don't have any idea how it's supposed to get any better.
Devin's company that he runs with a business partner has to make money. Also he has built personal relationships to certain streamers. Being annoyed and disagreeing with a situation is one thing but actually going against people you like and that bring in the money your company makes is a completly different level. It might be hypocritical to a certain degree but it's also very human to do so.
@@migueltucabron I get that to a certain extent, but it just seems odd to call out Twitch and not individual content creators. Devin seems to think that the platform is being oversexualized, but then has an interview with Amouranth for an hour that is basically him just blowing smoke up her ass, when she's the most prominent face of WHY Twitch is in that situation in the first place. Just because she has a few brain cells more than the average streamer and actually invests her money instead of blowing it on unnecessary junk doesn't make her a brilliant businesswoman, and not holding her feet to the fire just lets the behavior continue.
Anyway, Amouranth isn't the only problem, she's just a symptom, I just use her as an example because it's easy.
I love the insight you bring to this conversation. Thanks for being willing to approach this and go into detail!
The consistency of the content has me here instantly
Thanks for giving the history breakdown. I knew some of it but had missed a lot of important pieces + the information about executives will be extremely useful when I analyse companies in the future
Lovely seeing someone being so passionate about gaming and when you named the companies you owned/co-owned I was really happy get a broader perspective on the dots tied to certain teams within certain CS:GO. Especially CLG but there was also another one, but I forgot since I was so focused on listening + the lack of sleep due to Lost Ark haha
I'm actually gonna look for videos of you and Thorin because that would be hilarious to watch for many reasons
Rock on!
tbh twitch is kinda doomed due to only having live content and no algorithm. yt will probably be the best streaming platform in the future because it puts edited, quality content first and streams are just always gonna be bonus material.
i believe twitch does have a algorithm, if you watch x game like dark souls or GTA they'll send you those that stream those mostly or something right?
RUclips does what it does best, given doing creators dirty in many ways then susan also being outta touch to all the various other issues & inconsistancies.
@@M4TTYN if twitch had a algorithm it would have some level of discoverability. there is a reason channels can just blow up and go viral on yt. biggest problem with twitch is you need to actively look for channels to find a channel you like.
yt often pushes smaller channels onto my homepage according to what i watch. twitch on the other hand pushes bigger channels because people are more likely to sub, gift and drop bitties when there is more people watching as a flex.
Twitch added a individual user analytics algorithm in late 2020 based on aggregating stats of what people watch in a graph based exploration algorithm that only goes out like 1 node max (understandable but I would like a bit more) from my experience. Essentially that chart that analyzes group viewership patterns with the colored bubbles and interconnected lines, but put into a rudimentary recommendation algorithm. The whole "people who watch this stream also watch these streams". It's better but it's not organic recommendation. It also needs a shit ton of your own viewing habits to become "good" which only further enforces and caters to twitch "power users" and exemplifies echo chambers. Aka, it's still a king maker system, but at least it's not as egregious as at least it groups viewers now.
I honestly don't believe the hardware currently exists to do what youtube does for live content. Maybe by the end of the decade, but twitch continues to burn money with no end in sight.
@@M4TTYN twitch does have an algorithm, but its trash for finding new people to watch. it will always prioritize those live streams that currently have many views over those that dont. it doesnt care what your main game/category is. if i search, for example, dead by daylight, and my friend who is a smaller streamer who mostly or exclusively streams dbd, his channel wont show up on my search if he is not currently live. and if he is currently live when i happen to search, he will be at the bottom of the list. it will be a snowball's chance in hell for him or any other small/beginning streamer to be found in the twitch algorithm naturally. not that it's impossible; i know someone who has grown exclusively on twitch (exclusively here meaning they didnt diversify and create their brand on other platforms such as YT or tiktok) but it's not likely.
I 100% feel that at the end of the video from you. I started on Twitch back in 2012, and in the last 3 years, I left and does not feel the same anymore and feel like it's hurting people form the inside out. It sucks.
As usual, Devon, you've hit the proverbial nail on the head. Spot on analysis. I think you could look at the 'drama' between Ludwig and Adin Ross last year as this on a micro level. The wanna be new, cool kid trying to shit on someone whose been grinding away, calling him a 'nerd' or a 'band geek.' Yet he wants to be where Ludwig is.
Greg Murphy
Lubwig and Adin are basically the same person for two different scenes lol
That NFT video really nuked your algorithm lol
I would argue that if Twitch stayed gaming the whole time, they never would have grown and blew up as big as it did.
Some of the biggest twitch growth moments were non gaming. I don't disagree that twitch, with how the platform, is built is kind of capped and has a ceiling.
I like the no edits tbh, we're live stream viewers anyway for the most part, we're used to no edits, I prefer that more than over edited garbage that some people put out with less insight, etc. the less editing, the more genuine it feels and the more valuable I find the content usually. Anyway great video, I hope somehow twitch listens to this, they've got a great community, but at the end of the day if they don't have that, they have nothing.
The part that hurts the most is losing the community. As a 0 viewer Andy that mostly just streamed and chatted with a couple friends it was atleast fun Togo live on twitch 4-5 times a week. Where as now I find that I have zero want to stream on twitch to where I’ve tried streaming on RUclips. And while streaming on YT is cool, it just feels like you gotta do something bigger, something grander and larger in scale. It just hurts to lose that spot to just chill on video games and chat with friends and ransoms you meet while playing games.
44:00 Yeah it is hard for all us little guys to become noticed but its always like that. There was a time for shoutout farming but that era is retired. Now everyone has their friend groups and people pick and choose what group to watch. There is little to no chance to be noticed or join those friend groups Unless you get noticed by the react streamers with their communities eyes gluded to placed like LSF.
Salari covered Twitch and it's Problems extremly well,
getting much praise, but Pop-Culture Detective and Hbomberguy
also dont have a Trillion and a Half Subs for no reason:
their videos about alpha-males, pick-up Artists and all that is Genius.
I was spamming so hard the like button at the end... truth have never been more clear than this. Also no secret shoutout at +30 min but we're still here, keep on doing great things Devin.
It definitely lost its way to the point where I moved over to RUclips livestreaming. And since I don't do often like I used to, it just made sense for me to start from scratch and grow on RUclips. Everything that you've mentioned on the business sense of things, just validated my gut feeling for the future of Twitch.
I was there from the start too, I did a stream or two too, but I was mainly there as a viewer~
When it was Justin tv it was split into two, one for gaming and other for literally "other", although mainly used for Art~
In this way Games and Art was what made Twitch after it merged both sites and became Twitch, then merged again in the future to become a new Twitch; but naturally gaming was more popular as you're saying, I've just wanted to point out that it had 2 sides, not just gaming, that were mainly prevalent at the start, the Art side never really grew that much, it did but very slowly, and Gaming took over by a long-shot~
But whoever is reading this, don't get this wrong, no matter how much Twitch diversifies, it was indeed mainly about Gaming at start, everything else was extra as Gamers happen to be Artists and can do other things too, it was advertised as that too, the audience were always Gamers~ Things in the past were very different than now, but back then and now you grow with both and all of those categories/genres on your own efforts, it was always about you as the content creator from the start, that thing has never changed~
Twitch doesn't grow you, you grow on Twitch~
And the You isn't Twitch, the You is the You on all Platforms, Twitch is just one of em; don't put all your eggs into one basket~
And about Twitch itself, man, I had no idea they've changed this much~ I've always seen Twitch as organic, supportive and people who are there for Gamers, together with Gamers moving forward and changing the world~ Gamers and Twitch, E-Sports, everyone moving together with a strong Bond~
I've never seen it as a corporation who disconnects themselves from their own community and labels em as users, that is so wrong on so many levels, Twitch was never meant to be that, Twitch was always close to the Gamers and the Community, the World of it~
Even the Staff that show on stream were so nice, it's really surprising that this is what actually happened behind the scenes and what drove Twitch in the decisions that they make~
I hope that Twitch finds its way back and wakes up one day, brings back the close-knit bond with their community and actually works on features for their community, together with em and being a voice for em~
Twitch should be the voice of Gamers, of content creators, not a corporate that doesn't only cares about themselves and money, Twitch used to care about real values, this is not the Twitch I've used to know~
I really hope that Twitch doesn't continue going into this direction, the path to downfall is always sudden and fast, it will come without any prior notice~
Twitch can control the direction on where it goes, it is not too late; but if it never changes the direction and continues walking the selfish and seemingly easier path, the wide path, it will eventually run out of borrowed time~
I appreciate this. As a hobbiest on twitch, a lot of the stuff you talk about I just don’t see. A lot of the problems exist only if you watch big streamers. But like all I see in my live channels are fellow nerds living their best life. Even if they’re playing a Nancy drew video game with 5 people viewing.
If they don't want a new CEO who can manage community, why can't they get someone in some other position that can manage the community and is empowered to do so? Does Amazon prevent it, or is the internal culture of the company so disconnected from the community that it's impossible?
CEO shouldn't be managing community and this is not normal for companies at this size. They would/should have a separate community director or some specific sr executive to oversee that department which then branches further as needed.
Don't know if this is AMZ or why they want to have it that way but it's standard practice at the corporate level to not have the CEO directly oversee any one department, but "oversee the overseers" of _all_ departments.
Edit: inwas browsing before I came to the part in the video. While this is true for operational-level community, it's not true for organizational-level community, or global identity and strategy.
They *would* want the CEO to be the ultimate head if global strategy and identity management... however these might be AMZ's decisions as the parent company. But generally you want the CEO to be saying "who are we as a company," and "does this align with who we are," and "how does this help us inhabit our identity?"
Im not as og as alot of people, but this hit the nail on the head with how I feel towards what Twitch is now.... I miss the community feeling it had, now it feels like a defunct family all fighting over an inheritance
I always watch your whole videos Devin, regardless of how many tangents because I feel like you always have little golden nuggets like you do at 44:50 hidden somewhere . As always, your insight and viewpoint is much appreciated and helps make those who listen better for it.
Love when a Devin Nash vid ends in a rant 🙌 Thanks for all your hard work and for sharing all of this!
Loved the video Devin, this whole situation reminds me of MTV. At first it was all heart and passion with music. Now it’s known for reality shows, etc. I feel like Twitch is basically on the path MTV’s timeline, there will still be gaming but I fear they will make the site more general. There are even some creators that think Twitch originally didn’t start off as a gaming streaming site which I had fun trying to debate them about proving they were wrong. Also another example is G4 channel too.
Twitch technically wasn't a gaming site at first actually. Twitch was called JustinTV before the re-branding and amazon purchase. Justin Khan founded it as a site for him and his college buddies to stream them hanging out. It turned into a gaming site after that and then they renamed it to twitch. So ironically, twitch kinda did start out as an IRL streaming site.
While I don't necessarily disagree with the things you say a good portion of this feels a bit like *back in my day*
"we've got these sexy girls and this react content. GARBAGE! I remember when it was just nerds playing video games and we walked uphill BOTH WAYS."
I have said this so many times...If you can't lead, you should NOT be in a leadership role. The problem most industries face today is that they have/continually place people who can't lead into leadership positions when they have obvious better choices. This was a great part of the reason why I left my previous employer. When you purposefully elect to promote around all your real and motivated canidates and the "buddy system" becomes the basket from which your selections are picked from, then your company, business, industry is destined to deterierate from the inside out. Prime example of this, my previous employment was more focused on promoting of "buddies" and they gave people power who would spend most of their shift either napping in their car all night or spending most of the time in one department with very specific people and playing favorites, that made even people from all the other shifts believe there was some "explicit" things going on. Instead of supporting from management, we were all on our own most of the time. Our support went to either sleep on the job or to fuck a subordinate. There was NO respect for our leaders anymore. The whole thing started to crumble and got bad enough I left before the entire ship could sink. 🙄
I remember watching the co-optional podcast and hearing total biscuit get on the crew that they were going to get yelled at if they didn't go back to talking about video games after getting off track for a bit. I never sat down and thought about the negative impact that could come if they undid that rule.
I appreciate everything you do!! My attention span normally doesn’t allow me to watch videos longer than 7-10 mins, but I’m always looking forward to all 20, 30, 50 mins of yours!😊 💜
the longer the Devin Nash video is the better haha
Your attention span is probably fine. Cut social media and read more long form content. Make it easy and find something you like... just like these videos. Take breaks if you have to but then come back immediately. Commit to finishing something and then gradually extend how long you can sit through things until you're watching 1-2hr long content that isn't at the movie theatre
Train yourself to handle longer forms of content. You can do it. I have ADHD AND I do it.
@@randomuserame great advice and completely true. Our Brains are very elastic and resilient. You just gotta understand what things you do help improve or reduce your attention span and executive functioning in general.
Talkin about EQ 1 and 56k modems really hit me in the nostalgia man. IMO you are right with this. Your take on the silicon valley "employee" problem had me rollin too. Great video man!
i for one like the length of these videos, and think youre really good at staying on topic/relevance and public speaking in general :)
I am honored and humbled that my little Detroit-based Smash tournament Frostbite gets mentioned along with huge names like Evo. Huge fan of the content Devin! Keep the videos coming!!
00:14:20 eh, nah. I think the introduction of IRL is what brought "new content" to the platform. Sure, it might be low-effort, but it's "safer" than playing copyrighted content (eg games, music and reacting to videos.) Usually. If you asked me what Twitch was used for prior to 2019, I'd say "low-effort gaming content, trying to make esports out of games not designed to be competitive". What brought new life to Twitch was the Pandemic and people being trapped indoors with nothing else to do. But people need to learn how to create. So complaining about low-effort content is just detrimental to the one making the complaint. Every time you point a finger, you have three pointing back at you.
To which I think your next point, a tech person as a ceo, is the elephant in the room. Tech people fundamentally don't understand how their products are used, and will usually move to "make thing better", even if the way it worked before was why people used it.
You are really underselling how bad the "tech" non-business aspect of silicon valley is (to be clear this is not a sarcastic comment), it is toxic and even beyond a culture level and from a technological level not healthy.
I agree with this sentiment completely and I remember recently having the same discussion with some of my friends. They werent around when Twitch was just part of JustinTV, but I was. I was telling them how JustinTV was basically the IRL section of current Twitch and died for a reason. They didn't really have one focused community, whereas twitch did, and it was gamers. The site was built by gamers, and it feels as if they left us behind. They don't seem to understand their audience anymore and the site feels like it is, like you said, more of a tabloid magazine and less about the games and gamers. Conversation when Im on hardly ever seems to be about the game or games in general, it's about drama or seems like the chat is trying to push the streamer into doing something stupid. It seems to be a problem that the whole gaming industry is suffering from at the top though. The industry at the top has become more about making a billion dollars over making good stuff. They dont seem to care about the communities that got them there, just about getting everyone to buy their product. Look at what happened to BF 2042, I used to be a hardcore BF fan, but BF hasn't felt like BF to me in a long time. Same with Madden, FIFIA, COD, list goes on.
Keep up the good work though man. I enjoy the long videos even if I have to take them in sections.
The more I thought about this, part of it was Twitch themselves shooting themselves in the foot with contracts about long streaming hours (I started to notice more and more people using reruns as live if they were a "pro player who happened to be at tournaments 1 or 2 weekends who were practicing being down on hours") but the content creators themselves have just started... all being the same. Look at stream layouts, look at stream content, look at X... they all have a "top donator/bit/gifter" "Recent follow/sub and/or alert notifications" the "meter to a goal/giveaway" the timers that don't mean anything outside of getting you to fork money over. They all have the twitch purple hue in their backgrounds, or beige vanilla "office looking game content to prove how long they've committed." It has gotten so bad that I loved purple as a color... and have pretty much shifted to a pink or a significantly different hue so when I look at the color I don't think Twitch and how good it used to be.
I scroll to find someone new to watch... and literally everything is just the same. The actual game might be this fps vs that one, or speedrunning this new game vs that new game because it just came out and maximize those new game clicks, or this piece of gaming driving content (story) vs that piece of content (whatever hard content just got released) in the same game. A 500-viewer stream literally looks like a 5-viewer stream and I haven't even clicked through to their channel. Combined with the fact IF I even like the channel to follow, the rest of the channel knows... and then I'm eligible for gift subs which make my experience a turn-off so I unfollow again.
100% agree with the IRL take. The change was incredibly noticeable.
Working night shift and getting recommended a new Devin Nash video makes it time well spent.
Everything of what you said on Twitch (and from the article) is honestly true and it hurts to see that reality. As someone who spends his free time on video games and I am passionate for it, it hurts how Twitch has washed itself from being a video-game platform to a husk of never-ending toxic wasteland, you can already see how much Twitch has lost it's northstar. I still view Twitch streams but only those that are gaming. Idk if I should hope or wish but better yet, I do hope things will improve, just not monetary but actual community support. Though one's thought can't come to fruition, one can still dream (πーπ)
Another banger from the man
fantastic video as always. sad to see that this is the new reality for twitch. I really do hope it changes or comes back to its roots. I can tell you are passionate and upset about how things are now, your emotion showed and really got to me. I love gaming and what it does for a lot of people. when you talked about how back in the day you couldnt talk about being a gamer in fear of being made fun of, that hit home and having twitch be a place where we used to be able to thrive was such a breath of fresh air. Thank you for shedding light on this and continuing to support gamers.
I don't know how you can possibly say that IRL content is lazy, when you compare that to watching a video game content player sit there and just play a video game that THEY DIDN'T EVEN CREATE! I watch all kinds of talented artists, crafters, and musicians put on live shows that are amazing and show tons of talent. They spent hours, days, and weeks creating THEIR OWN content - artists making their own custom overlays, animations, and then draw and paint LIVE... musician who compose live songs on the fly and do covers. Amazing crafters and technical experts making all sorts of crazy inventions and experiments. Yes... it's true there is a lot of IRL "reaction" content creators and creators that just hang out on the beach... but so what? A person sitting there playing a video game and talking is supposedly a better entertainment value than an IRL?
To me... the biggest problem is Content Creation. Video gamers already have their content created for them. They just have to play it and try to be socially entertaining. Artists, have to build their content from the ground up from nothing, make it approachable, and repeat that over and over and over. LIVE. On stream. LIVE. That's nearly impossible to do for any extended length of time without resorting to having some content provided for you through "reaction" video watching or just hanging out and talking. No artist can complete in original content creation with a gamer who has that content already given to them (by a company backed by hundreds of design experts, programmers, and digital artists).
It seems that every time Devin says "Community"... he really means "GAMER Community". Like IRL and Gamer content can't co-exist. Maybe they can't? But I don't see how that is the IRL maker's fault.
This right here
Devin! Inlude the timestamp chapters for your long videos pretty pretty please!?
Bro I'm crazy with your content, I love the content and how you said like stuff we need to hear. great job!
I wasn't around for the old days of Twitch so it's good to hear more about the original community and culture. There are parallels here to what is going on in web3 -- imagine trying to make gaming content about games like Axie and be surrounded by non-stop financial hype content. Good to know I'm not alone :P thanks for the video
A damn good video, thanks for keeping it real Devin!
Just turned 7 years on Twitch. The website I once joined is not there anymore and it saddens me. I just left affiliate after being the first ones to get it when it was first announced in 2016. I stick around running my show because of the viewers who keeps returning to my chat. I don't want to lose contact with them. But it is as you described it. I'm holding on.. not thriving..
Twitch is reminding me of MTV for a bit, a non standard tv network that then introduces silicon valley/hollywood mindset into their network and started losing touch of its past and core audience. Gaming content is turning into reality content, at some point you’ll see fake relationships on twitch where you get scripted content more and more getting close to cable tv than what we hoped for, a network for REAL expression.
Didn't that actually happen? Or was that YT
@@randomuserame it is happening currently to twitch, YT is a bit different since it’s more of it’s own solid branch and have a ton of different representation inside the company that it’s hard to break the culture. I think around 2017 it was close to breaking off a lot of the culture but seems it came back around though
Well video Devin. I started watching hearthstone in 2014 and the community and chat was so much fun, especially forsen. Another driver for the parasocial content was the pandemic. People didnt get as much social stimulation during their day so they get it from twitch in the evening. This incentivizes streamers to stream that content also because they 2x their viewcount.
I love your passion for the subject.
38 seconds in and I already know this is gonna be a good one
I don't really have anything to add, but thanks for the video Devin. You give me so much insight into Twitch that I would never have if it wasn't for this educational content
6 and a half years.later. Yea...still there. Multistreaming now but I cant fight this meta by just streaming there! Thank you for the video. I can relay.
I’d say I hate the IRL/Reaction content on Twitch but I hate it even more on RUclips so it’s whatever. I just watch esports/gaming on Twitch cuz the live experience feels more live, static videos on RUclips, until things change this is just where both still shine for me. I haven’t watched a single Twitch streamer on RUclips once after the move, or esports for that matter, out of sight out of mind no matter how much I tuned in before. And as far as the backend both sites are kind of a mess anyways, least imo.
IRL is easy to avoid on RUclips though… it’s way better at showing you exactly what you wanna see, whereas twitch just throws everything popular at you. RUclips is the platform for everything. I wish Twitch would go back to being gaming only.
@@itsbeeva Definitely miss when it used to be more gaming centric. And I never use algorithms on any website so I guess that's just not as relevant to me. I used to DJ I'm old school...I just find stuff I like on my own lol
I'm definitely getting burnt out by all the awfulness that's happened in the last few years or so. I just wanna go back to Twitch circa 2016. All I want is for Twitch to focus on communities again, make an ad words style advertisement system so we can get fucking paid, and to hyper focus on gaming, art, and music. Let the IRL/react Andy folks go to TikTok.
I personally think you said it perfectly. Twitch is halfway down a road that it probably most likely wont recover from. I hope that there can be sensible change the affects in a positive manner but in all honesty I doubt it because the constant changes always have to be about money and not just bettering the environment of twitch.
I wonder how much the IRL culture change also affected adoption of the website. In gaming streams, the floor to understanding is just knowing the game that's being played. When watching IRL, you have to know the whole node network or the information is just lost.
2 videos in a week i been so spoiled thanks!
Yea IRL birth most of the issues which twitch took a stance you'd can argue isn't a shock in these times but did grant the freedom and lanes many hobbiest took and benifited from then more catagories were created nice context and info here thanks Devin!
I got my views on both mainly RUclips & Twitch's direction used RUclips since 2006 then in 2008 & 2009 used it intensively, for Twitch made my account in 2012 but only used it lightly in 2015 but really did in 2018 so if any wholesome days or unhinged i missed out but just hoping for the best at this point my circles had talks like others oh the direction with "twitch is outta touch" being the general conclusion.
I watch streamers from many circles mostly gamers, artist, some game dev's to some the use a avatar controlled by a iPhone known as vtubers, i get around to the recomended on both Twitch and youtube passed many to me who i watched heavily support were i can some with the innocent mind set of "they only stream for fun" a rare against being a affiliate.
I got my opinions with all these things given most us with no inside info then some of use never streamed *just hoping for the best* with fingers crossed at this point or hope the few alternatives around for now stay around if i choose to stream personally Trovo being one doing sorta well i guess but never touching FB gaming.
nice talk, like your marketing topics more. the video about the grill was awesome
On executives: Au contraire, as the leader it is 100% your responsibility. Even if you're not the one making the bans or implementing the changes, it is under your guidance and supervision that this is happening, so all of it is on you. Are you culpable if someone is doing something illegal against your wishes under you? Probably not. But anything you've directed the people under you to do is ultimately your responsibility.
Bit late for this maybe, but that might make it more interesting. did you ever end up doing a reflective 'why I left esports' type of video? You discussed this early on during your streams back than but I'd still be interested in hearing you discuss your clg - back to streaming - talent agency arc now that you've seen the space from more angles.
Thank you Devin!
I've seen official Twitch announcement/community streams where DjWheat was the spokesman, and while he seemed to be reasonably used to talking to an online audience and eloquent, I found his attempts very awkward to watch.
At the time I didn't know about his position and thought he was just a streamer hired to talk about the official Twitch stuff. Mostly because he could not answer most of the questions he was asked, seemed to not have the relevant background information or just chose to ignore pressing issues. Now I realize that he was thrown in front of the camera without a lot of backline support and did his best to survive in the middle of the battlefield that was Twitch as a company vs its users. I completely understand why he chose to leave, it was an unpleasant experience for sure.
Thanks for this. Listened to the whole thing and can't agree more
Good to see you still providing awesome value for people man.
Salari covered Twitch and it's Problems extremly well,
getting much praise, but Pop-Culture Detective and Hbomberguy
also.
Private companies raise, come and go. This is nothing new. Just ask the former king of social media MySpace how they are doing.
Really good perspective to hear. I'm interested to see what twitch will be like in 5 years and what other platforms will be like. Is this a problem with all big companies? Is it even possible for a niche website/environment to maintain longevity. I think in the long term decisions are made primarily for money and that's why Twitch is changing like it is.
46:30 is the greatest point devin's ever made about streaming.
Once again, great video and even greater shirt!
They wanted to become TV, and they became TV.
I don't watch tv.
Ugh I love the long videos keep them up please 👍
This is a comment stating I watched the video up to [insert time here],yes I am awesome.
But, seriously Devin I love your videos & it's nice to see what new video subject(s) you choose to tackle in them.
I see Big A at 38:00
Can twitch go back to becoming a gaming webstie?
I enjoy the long videos, so keep up the good work.
It is kind of a weird situation and i don't think this can be averted. Most of the major gaming streamers have become LSF/drama/react streamers. I would assume that that is where the money is and it no doubt requires less effort. I can't say I blame them, that is what their viewers seem to want, just like the gamble viewers want gambling scams and the sexual viewers want sexual content. This doesn't really bother me, but I find myself watching youtube more and twitch less over time.
I would press like button 10x times more, if it would be available. Keep it up OG!
It’s so difficult to listen to a video this long when you are talking so fast and never taking any pauses or slowing down. It’s overwhelming.
I don't know much about what happened with twitch as a viewer/user. This disconnect probably does keep people on the platform since there aren't any popular alternatives.
1. Seems like with any merging into a large corporation, the original culture will always get diluted that made it special like you said.
2. I don't think the IRL content/non-gaming content is the tipping point, I think this reflects the broader appeal of twitch (which isn't necessarily bad - I enjoy the music streams, podcasts, etc). However, I do think that they are not preserving the intimate community that twitch was based on and, thus leading to some crap content on twitch. This speaks to also how they are incentivizing streamers and not promoting a clearer/safer culture.
3. It's interesting how leadership can make or break a company single-handedly. I agree new leadership sounds like it can turn things around for twitch.
4. In the end, I don't think merging with larger corporations is good unless you want to cash out or the business is going down. I think of discord and how they turned down microsoft. Riot also great culture.
5. Hope that your voice will continue to be heard among others to help change the twitch leadership/culture.
While I'm quenching my thirst for knowledge, these videos are also the signs I'm looking for in this crazy Twitch world. Much appreciated.
Devin, never make a 4-10 minute video - please, and thank you!