If you have gamers at your house, you probably have heard of Twitch – especially if they like to either play, or watch other gamers play, while the play’s being streamed live on the Web and everybody tuned in is chatting about it. Some people call it YouTube for gamers. In fact, Google, YouTube’s owner, was rumored to be acquiring it last spring. But it has just been confirmed that Amazon is – to the tune of $980 million, according to StreamDaily.tv.
Game livestreaming is huge. “In July, more than 55 million unique visitors viewed more than 15 billion minutes of content on Twitch, which is supported by advertising,” StreamDaily reports. The community has some 1 million gamer-broadcasters, it adds, “including individual gamers, pro players, publishers, developers, media outlets, conventions and e-sports organizations.” The Twitch’s broadcasters with the biggest followings, called “partners,” get a share of the ad site’s ad revenue and can sell subscriptions to their channels. There are 5,100 partners.
That could be your kid, but if it is, you may not have to pay for college! Another plus: You can be on a business trip anywhere in the world and tune in to watch your child play videogames, comment on the process and ask annoying questions!
[Annoying questions like, “You keep the game chat about the game, right – no sharing of personal info, correct?”, can be good to ask every now and then offline, so you don’t lose your observer privileges by embarrassing your kid and making him or her want to go into stealth mode so you can’t observe or comment.]
Related links
- “A bit of videogaming is good for kids: Study”
- “Minecraft and the shared, creative safety of gaming, social media” and a little post about digital summer camp using Minecraft here and here
- About a 6th grade language arts class where students are called heroes and learn in World of Warcraft
- “Breadth of videogames’ benefits to kids may surprise” – and much more on the subject
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