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Berlin The density of ponytails is high in the lobby of the Berlin hotel: dozens of young people, mostly men, mostly in their twenties, converse in the light violet and wait Emmett Shear – their employer will be the same This 35-year-old is the co-founder and director of Twitch, the largest live streaming platform in the world.
"Streaming can be a lonely activity, we want to make people feel that they are part of something bigger," says Shear, who is wearing a purple shirt and purple socks for the girl. Handelsblatt interview. His "Twitch Tour" has already taken Shear in Paris, now Berlin, tomorrow Kiev, then Stockholm. In principle, Twitch allows you to broadcast all live activities: an elderly, long-haired man who stands out from the crowd in the lobby of the hotel in a red and yellow juggler outfit. on his channel for his fans cheers on medieval instruments. However, most guests play professionally computer games, the "Overwatch" strategy game or the "Counterstrike" first-person shooter, and will comment on some of them themselves. watching hundreds of thousands of fans.
Twitch earns advertising revenue and shares it with streamers. "We're creating a whole new kind of entertainment work," says Shear, and for a moment, the dry programmer mimics the visionary: "Work is fundamentally changing, we need to develop new jobs. In five years, there should be millions of people living by Twitch.
The streaming scene becomes more and more professional
But the story of the talented ego-shooter or fantasy-general on the nursery computer is only one part of the truth. The scene is becoming more and more professional, sports clubs like Schalke 04 and companies like Comcast are investing in teams, and gaming companies like Activision Blizzard are organizing leagues with regular match days. The e-sport is becoming a multi-million dollar affair.
And just in the middle, Emmett Shear, who essentially operates the sky from the electronic sports scene – even though he probably does not like the comparison. Shear calls the operation of the professional league somewhat derogatory the "glittering and attention-seeking part" of Twitch, which is only the "cherry on the sundae".
Operators of the smaller chains that the company invited here to Berlin actually did Twitch. Twitch had 788,000 active channels at the end of 2017, much more than the gaming portal of Youtube, Facebook Live or Twitter Periscope. More than 20 million people visit the site every day.
Shear owes his point of view to a strange idea from his school friend Justin Kan, with whom he founded Justin.tv in 2006 – a 24-hour live broadcast of Kan's life. For his personal show Truman, Kan had to carry a camera and a 15-pound computer all day on his back. Shear, who studied computer science at Yale, became the technical director of the startup, calling a friend of both "the most stupid idea on the planet."
The founders quickly realized that the friend was right also the idea continued. Instead of watching Kan sleep and eat, users wanted to spread. Because the necessary hardware and Internet bandwidths are growing only slowly, Justin.tv has been shrinking for years. Until Shear, who loved playing the trading card game "Magic: The Gathering" when he was a kid, had the idea to save.
He developed an offer that specifically brought computer players to the platform. The number of users has exploded. Shear became CEO, Justin.tv changed his name to Twitch and was suddenly asked by companies in Silicon Valley: in 2014, Amazon ran Google and bought Twitch for nearly $ 1 billion.
Unlike his three co-founders, Shear has remained so far. "Amazon is an excellent parent company," says Shear. "They give you freedom, you're still CEO." At the same time, the influence of Jeff Bezos and his leaders is not greater than that of investors before the takeover. "Amazon manages the founding CEOs better than other big companies," says Shear, beginning to list: the ImdB movie database manager, Audible audiobook, or Zappo's Zalando prototype. "Everything is still here."
Bet with Facebook
Amazon's support is also required by Twitch to compete for exclusive broadcast rights for the best electronic sports leagues. In January, Facebook acquired the right to broadcast two leagues organized by the pioneering e-sports based in Cologne ESL. ESL has similar contracts with Youtube and Twitter. Referring to that, Shear defiantly states, "It would not be wise to win an auction."
Twitch, however, moves in. In early 2018, the company entered into an exclusive agreement with the game company Activision Blizzard for two years to show humans and robots watching weapons in the Overwatch multiplayer shooter. Twitch should have paid $ 90 million for this – even if Shear does not want to confirm the number.
Up to now, Twitch has to pay money to game developers. But Amazon is already developing its own games. In the future, so-called "triple-A" games will also be created there, ie elaborate blockbusters games that will compete with clbadics such as "League of Legends" or "Overwatch". "We have never done anything like it," says Shear. But the direction of Amazon has easily accepted. "That's the kind of madness that Amazon has on her."
When the first big Amazon Twitch game comes out, it can not say. "Developing games is an art, not a science." Shear speaks with admiration of his developers. After all, he still plays regularly at the computer, but now more strategy games like a first-person shooter: "It's embarrbading to be constantly shot by a 14-year-old with best reflexes. "
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