It鈥檚 pretty fair to say that everyone has at one time or another dreamed of being on television.
But up until now, you needed to go to auditions and have some level of acting talent (or a willingness to play discreet and sweaty snugglebunnies with a producer in the back of a limo) if you wanted to be in front of an audience on the small screen.
But in today鈥檚 online age, anyone with a computer and webcam can become the host of their very own show, thanks to popular video sites like YouTube and the gamer-centric Twitch ().
You may not have heard of Twitch unless you鈥檙e a video gamer, but it is the fourth largest source of peak Internet traffic in the United States. Owned by Amazon.com, Twitch is basically a video streaming service where you can watch other people playing video games. Okay, I know what you鈥檙e thinking: 鈥淭hat must be as boring as watching grass grow, paint dry or professional golf on TV.鈥� But, for some 43 million viewers per month, watching other gamers is a great way to get tips, find a community of other people with the same interests, or just evaluate if you would enjoy that particular title.
I鈥檓 always looking for an excuse to spend more time playing video games (鈥渋t鈥檚 not six hours of killing orcs, honey鈥� I鈥檓 鈥榖uilding a following.鈥欌��), so I recently signed up for the free service and started my own stream and channel. It鈥檚 pretty easy, too. Twitch just lets you broadcast your stream, but they do supply links to free software you can use to capture your gameplay and other elements on your stream.
I chose the free Xsplit Broadcaster software, and after watching a tutorial or two, soon had a stream running that featured my webcam video, a chat zone, and my Elder Scrolls Online (a medieval/fantasy game) gameplay. I even spent an entire day constructing a small green screen out of lime green poster board so my webcam background could be eliminated and my stream would look professional. I had promised to do the laundry, but mountain spring-scented t-shirts could wait, because this was a cash-earning opportunity.
Indeed, Twitch streamers not only play and comment on games for hours, but they also make money doing it. Well, some of them do, anyway. Just like with YouTube videos, Twitch users can earn big bucks if their videos/streams get tons of views and they earn followers. In addition to ad revenue, Twitch streamers also solicit donations from viewers, so they can continue to broadcast without having to, y鈥檏now, have a real job like the rest of us slobs.
My first evening saw me chatting away to my one solitary viewer (you can see the stats on a dashboard page of your Twitch account) when suddenly I realized that since I was monitoring my own stream, I was that viewer.
Luckily, I tend to amuse myself quite a bit.
But if earning cash was my real goal (and not just goofing off playing games and wasting time making green screens), I鈥檇 be pretty worried about a new Nintendo program meant to license their game footage to be used in YouTube videos and the like. In a nutshell, Nintendo is going after YouTube 鈥淟et鈥檚 Play鈥� video creators that have uploaded videos of their titles and is demanding any ad revenue they may have collected from them. The Let鈥檚 Play community on YouTube is pretty big, and it features gamers showing walkthroughs of popular games.
But now ad revenue from a video featuring Nintendo content will now as a result go to Nintendo instead of the video鈥檚 uploader (although Nintendo did roll out a profit-sharing system with 鈥渁uthorized鈥� creators). The thing that worries the game streaming community is that this could set a precedent, with all game developers and publishers demanding the ad revenue from video creators and streamers. So far there has been an outcry from the streaming and Let鈥檚 Play communities, with many calling Nintendo 鈥渁nti-gaming.鈥� If they continue with this stance, it may change the livelihood of a lot of game streamers and YouTubers, unless they (metaphorically) get in the back of the limo with game producers.
And I鈥檒l have no excuse not to do the laundry.
