World of Warcraft Community Magazine Issue 9 | Page 22

ARTICLE

22 // World of Warcraft Community Magazine

demonstrate the new animations

U.S. college students held

room than the hustle and bustle

and interactions. This makes

its finals this past weekend,

of a sports bar. This leads me

Twitch an interesting blend of

with coverage by ESPN3.

to believe that ESPN and Twitch

amateur and professional. Twitch

If eSports continue to grow at

are not in so much danger of

does a great job of encouraging

their current rate, more and more

competing for the same market

the amateur side too, as anyone

large tournaments might move

share of our generation.

with an account is pointed to

to established networks. During

a tutorial with a list of a dozen

Amazon’s 2014 acquisition of the

I use the word ‘our’ because,

programs that can help them

Twitch brand, they stated that

speaking as a 20-something male,

start streaming at a basic level.

they had the goal of implementing

I feel like Twitch is a development

Twitch apps on PS4, Ouya, and

unique to this age range, roughly

Twitch certainly has the market

Xbox One, with the ultimate goal

15-35 (of course counting the

cornered on internet broadcasting

of being wherever gaming is.

fact that this technology was not

of video games. Blizzard’s

Given the increased focus on

even physically available until

usage of it to broadcast WoW

social media in the PS4 and Xbox

recently). I want to point out

arena tournaments at Blizzcon

One, it would certainly be possible

more the fact that, on any given

is testament enough of how

that Twitch will become the be-

Friday afternoon, a reasonably

it is legitimizing eSports as a

all and end-all when it comes to

popular streaming time, WoD

form of sports entertainment,

watching video game coverage.

has 22,000 people watching it
on around 400 Twitch channels.

but recently, Blizzard has been
tapping into different media

The popular pattern of casual

Around 25% of these channels,

when it comes to broadcasting

WoW streams of coaching and

I’ve observed, have zero viewers.

the newest and hottest gameplay

teaching lends itself much better,

75% have fewer than ten. 15% of

footage. Heroes of the Dorm,

in my opinion, to the intimacy

them h