Twitch to start selling video games this week
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
My friends and I just switched from Mumble to Discord and I find Discord to be inferior in almost all regards.
Discord's browser client is cool and convenient. The separate text/voice channels (as opposed to Mumble's 1 text channel per voice channel) fits our typical use case very well (people playing different games in different voice channels but sharing links/images/unrelated messages in text).
How has discord become so (apparently) big so fast? Is it just marketing money and slick UI design pushing it beyond its means?
The barrier to entry being low, it being free, having mostly all the features people are looking for, and this persistent communication is basically all it is. Before this, gaming communities would often set up a forum (sometimes with a really shitty chat) just for persistent communications outside of games and VOIP, and this rolls all of that into one package that's really easy to use.
I had huge issues with Discord's quality when it was first being publicly used because I was on a latent/lossy connection at the time and it just repeatedly disconnected me and forced me to completely rejoin a Discord server over and over, which implied their engineers had no understanding that the internet is inherently unreliable. That seems to have been well remedied, so actually improving their software immediately puts it 10000 feet above Ventrilo, Teamspeak, Skype, etc from my perspective. I've watched these applications stagnate over the years and it's bothered me pretty deeply.
No chat client works _great_ under bad network conditions, but I think overall I tend to try to avoid using Discord more than I try to avoid others when I'm on a bad internet connection.
Happens to me incredibly often after I lose my connection while sending a message on Android 6.0.1
Discord's rise helped by Microsoft's seeming neglect and confusing platform direction of Skype in recent years, even if Discord still doesn't have video chat. For messaging among people who know each other by name, Facebook's offerings are dominant, but for pseudonymous chat Skype remained strong until Microsoft vacillated between making Skype Windows' native messenger or a strong multiplatform freemium network that isn't plagued by an aging UI and the invasion of advertising. Discord won many users by organic word-of-mouth referrals from people who used to use Skype.
As for gaming voice chat, Discord is not as sophisticated as other offerings (edit: maybe that's the wrong wording; let's go instead with "not as configurable"), but offers a smoother out-of-the-box experience.
The fact that you don't need to install or configure any client (or even have an account) to bring someone in is the biggest single thing.
People come for the easy invites and stay for the (slightly better than) good enough chat, voice, and community features.
I'm sure there's plenty of guilds around that are still happy with their existing setup and haven't bothered switching, but my experience is that many have switched, and new guilds are basically only picking Discord.
I can see it pulling away from pretty much everything except those groups that have spent lots of time on crazy teamspeak setups with lots of ranks, different overlapping groups and so on.
Is TeamSpeak an open API? Shouldn't be difficult at all to write an import tool to import a TeamSpeak server's group structure to equivalent Discord roles.
Ultimately, I don't think this is as much an obstacle to long term success of Discord. These kind of servers tend to come around because running TS/Mumble servers require expertise certain groups don't have, so groups tend to colocate over some overlap in membership, and may still be colocated over inertia even if the overlap goes away.
The example I'm thinking of is a server I'm still on which is nominally owned by a battlefield clan, but also has a ffxiv guild, wildstar guild, eve corp and minecraft server chat on it. Each of these are effectively seperate entities and need to manage their own permissions, and if they were setting up fresh now, they'd all be seperate discord servers. The battlefield guys have some crazy rank structure based on time on the server or some such, the ffxiv group just has admin or not, and the minecraft group is a yes/no access perm.
The colocation is particularly not ideal as the battlefield clan and minecraft server tend to bring occasional DDoS attempts on the server, and there's not really much overlap in membership nowadays.
From the DM point of view he can still send us pictures, it is free and we don't really use maps so don't need Roll20 (or equivalent). Also direct messaging players secret messages is really easy and handy.
Mumble is a solid product but there's a lot more friction. First you need to host a server, and for most people that means paying for it. And then to get people to join they have to install a client, and the website can be confusing, and it's not clear which version they need to install, and it keeps prompting you to update which requires it to restart, and the client's UI is clunky, and the integrated text chat is very poor. And then when I need to join someone else's Mumble they have to tell me the host...and the port, and I've got to copy and paste it and go through Mumble's annoying UI to add another server, etc., etc.
Plus Discord's chat is good enough that it makes sense to start building small communities around it; it's also competing with Twitter group chats, Facebook groups, etc. I play World of Warcraft, and some guilds have started using Discord as their main "hub", instead of forums or whatever. And then there's the bots, and the emoji support, and so on, and so forth. Mumble competes pretty well with the core of Discord, but Discord does more than Mumble.
Ultimately, I think it's the same "why did Slack get so big when it's just IRC with some of the irritations filed off and a slightly better UI" question all over again. If you take a product people need, and make it very slightly better and really easy to adopt, then it's not surprising that it will get huge. Yes, you could technically use IRC instead of Slack, but there's a reason why a ton of companies adopted Slack but never adopted IRC.
It's bad enough that, even disregarding Discord's hilariously incompetent voice chat, Mumble will be a hard requirement the next time I'm looking for a new guild.
Don't get me wrong, Discord is a pretty solid product, but the only reason it has such a huge market share is because it's burning VC money and offering its services for free.
most streamers have a discord channel now and they bring their entire audience. thats why its growing at such a broken rate.
for every even medium sized streamer they convert, they get thousands of active users.
My real gripe is with all the small things.
Mumble can text-to-speech the names of people as they join/leave the voice channel.
Mumble includes timestamps on chat messages.
Mumble timestamps messages when users join/leave/mute/unmute.
Mumble has 'advanced' input options for voice-detection.
Discord doesn't currently do any of that. Unless I just can't find the right configuration.
For me, these small "Only notice when they aren't there" things are not outweighed by Discord's general ease-of-use.
The barrier to entry for a user to join your discord is insanely easy. Don't have the client? They can easily join through the browser.
Great design.
Now it seems most players I encounter have both Curse and Discord installed and will use the URL share feature that both have to share team invites for one or the other.
With them generally being used for gaming and now the acquisition and integrations happening between Twitch and Curse I suspect over time we will see Discord go the way of MySpace if they don't find someone to sell to and soon.
(Disclosure: My experience focuses on the WoW and to a lesser extent Overwatch communities, mostly in the Oceanic Aus/NZ region. But in those communities, Discord is utterly, crushingly dominant.)
Of course, there are plenty of Discord servers not associated with specific streamers or related to Twitch. Those will be harder to touch but I don't think Twitch cares about them anyway.
http://gizmodo.com/discord-has-a-child-porn-problem-17936822...
To our knowledge, the only recourse users currently have is to disallow direct messaging
https://blog.discordapp.com/discord-safety-boost-2d592ea3b14...
By default, Discord allows any two people who share a server to direct message each other. Unfortunately, the baddies can use this behavior to send you stuff that you don’t want to see — everything from Harry Potter spoiler memes (Snape killed who!??) to much worse. To keep the baddies at bay, we’re adding Safe Direct Messaging.
Are there any gaming communities still using IRC? It might still be niche which is why it's not a problem?
Disclaimer: grew up in France during that time so can't speak for other countries
On the other hand, this move makes Discord an attractive acquisition target who's looking to counter Amazon by pursuing the exact same market with a very similar integrated offering, and who thinks they can buy the market- and mindshare without users fleeing afterwards.
Time. Curse has significantly better community integrations. Discord has taken a long time to deliver on its features and lacks even the most basic (text channels per voice channel for instance). Curse already has video calls, its a significanty better replacement of Skype than Discord is.
Many are migrating to Curse because streamers use it, and it makes it easy and lucrative to do so as a streamer.
Unless Discord does something unique, like client side modding support and some cooler things you can do with servers, they're going to get crushed.
We still have a long way to go to deliver that experience and we are actively looking at community feedback on our launch this month.
Hubert, Founder of Curse now working for Twitch
Everyone has a price. The offers were just too low.
@jhgg - Can you speak on any plans to offer some sort of positional audio functionality in the Discord API? Perhaps you can use the existing game hooks available for the Mumble API's positional audio system? Being able to fully ditch TeamSpeak would be a big win for my group, and a disruptive move for you guys.
Additionally, I love just about everything about the Discord client, but I would like to see voice quality improve to the level of where I remember Mumble to be, though admittedly I haven't used that in a while, though remember it to be fantastic, barring network hiccups. I also have an issue, both on the desktop client and the Android one, where @notifications come in 'late', from minutes to hours. Furthermore on the desktop client, the notifications aren't always shown on screen, as a timer seems to be started before the pop-up is actually drawn, and something like the accompanying HDD activity during that timer lifetime can cause the timer to expire before the notification is drawn on screen.
https://discordapp.com/gamebridge https://discordapp.com/developers/docs/topics/rpc#setuservoi...
I'll see if I can put it to good use, but it's a new challenge for me.
Discord is a cool program, and I applaud them for how far they've come, but there are gaps in functionality that have been refused implementation because 'not enough votes'. Basic things, such as being able to change font sizes, or have two columns of guilds, or actually turn off the 'blocked messages' pop-up that comes in when somebody that you've blocked talks in a chat you're in. (Yes, that's a thing).
When someone has to download a mod for your program to experience it better, you're doing it wrong.
Discord still lacks features even Ventrillo had, such as text channels per voice channel. You can't just send stuff to each other, you've gotta form another group, or use a public text channel in the guild. Thats the kind of problem Discord was made to solve, yet refuses.
And, as you said, Its not near Mumble quality, and due to the convenience of the program everybody just uses open mic. I can't join a community VC without it sounding like I just joined a group Skype call. With mumble, you had to look through the options and setup your mic, and a lot more people chose PTT.
For anyone interested in fool-proof PTT, just re-bind your caps-lock key to F14 (Scroll Lock), or some other special key on your keyboard if you have extra keys.
Effectively, Discord is just used for text channels, because the very thing they advertise, VOIP, is worse than the software its supposed to be better than. Give me Mumble any day for voice, and Discord for chat.
Hubert, Founder of Curse and now working for Twitch
I disagree. Your program being moddable and letting people customise their experience is a good thing. We're not talking about core features here, just customisation that varies from person to person.
Thing is, Discord fiercly opposses modding. If they supported it, I'd leave out that part, but multiple devs have literally formed a culture of 'all mods are bad'. https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/5vcar1/change_y...
"TL;DR: Don't use third-party addons if you don't want your account to get stolen."
This statement started a campaign of users going around saying modding software is 'compromised', and saying they have all the proof, when the reality was that someone downloaded an external plugin /for/ the addon, which you have to move into a specific directory and enable. Exactly like a program, except you can read .js source. Yet, Discord itself allows you to just send people executables and script files, no problem.
It wouldn't be as big of a problem if Discord atleast tried to cooperate and take a minute to ask what was going on. If they did, they'd realize that the author of the addon is working on a version that restricts and whitelists things that could exploit users. Perhaps if Discord used their cult of personality for good, it would be done already.
Also fwiw, on desktop you can open up Developer Tools with Ctrl-Shift-I and mess with the styles.
- the longtime Curse Client, effectively an addon manager that started for World of Warcraft but now supports games like Rift, Skyrim, Minecraft, Kerbal Space Program
- CurseForge, the community site behind addon hosting and development
- the recent "Curse Voice" VOIP and chat client that is a direct competitor to Discord, and which got subsumed with the mod manager into the "Curse App"
- Gamepedia, a wiki host for video game wikis
Together with built-in streaming and just enough social networking, Twitch Desktop combines the best of Curse and Twitch to create a gamer hub that has more value-add than Steam -- largely a storefront -- and is similar to the new Blizzard App (previously known as the Blizzard Launcher or the Battle.net Launcher).
Blizzard's offering streams to Facebook Live, integrates with Facebook login, has a barebones but recently enhanced VOIP chat, and is the competitor with the most direct feature parity -- but captive to a publisher, and outsources all streaming to a third party.
7 months ago when Facebook announced that they're building a gaming hub, I wrote [1] that I'm not opposed to some social-ness in gaming, but real-name-based Facebook isn't the network most people want to conduct their gaming on.
Twitch is a gaming-focused YouTube and pseudonymous social network that can now offer a featureful, streaming, social, and chat application for download, and they're backed by a corporate parent that likes to sell you stuff. This is a pretty good match.
I think that Twitch's streaming capabilities are going to be the question - are they enough of a differentiating factor to break people away from Steam and onto Twitch Desktop?
To name a few: cloud saves, steam workshop, big picture, and steam controller.
Even if I dropped all the social features in favor of some other platform, I'd still be launching all my games through steam for those features alone.
- - -
If they are seriously aiming to compete only with Blizzard App, then I'd imagine them planning on failing then.
Besides, Steam and Origin also have VOIP and streaming capabilities, And Steam also has mod management systems too, so Curse is closer to steam than to battle.net
Besides, the UI is fairly close to feature parity with discord (much like how curse was) which is adding screen sharing soon http://i.imgur.com/SPPLZhi.png
So it does seem more closer to trying to compete against Steam+Discord than a battle.net
Speaking of monetization models, YouTube is also leaving a lot of money on the table, or will soon enough, when it comes to podcasters that right now are forced to use subscription services such as Patreon to fund their channels. Why doesn't YouTube offer a more "built-in" alternative to that?
I'm not suggesting these because I want Google to be richer, but because I fear that one day Google will wake-up and realize that a lot of major YouTubers prefer doing anything but using its text and pre-roll ads. It could then decide to ban all of those people who don't use those exact type of ads that YouTube offers. So I'd rather they start adopting alternative monetization models that make it easier for Youtubers to make money the way they want to.
If it's not on Steam it's not on my machine. I'm not dealing with having to install more garbage apps
On the other hand, Twitch manufactures its cultural bonafides. As opposed to Valve, who makes great games, Twitch sponsors conferences, runs an elaborate developer relations team, and makes a lot of strategic investments in other games.
Authenticity matters a lot to gamers. Valve earned it. This affiliate advertising program would seem to undermine authenticity.
Assume you make a game in Unity that works well both in mobile and desktop. Now you need to publish on iOS, Google Play, Amazon App Store (Underground or not?), Steam, GoG, Twitch, and Facebook. You may want to make a WebGL demo version for web portal sites as well. Each Platform has their own contracts you have to read carefully and not break.
To complicate it even further -- your game may work best as a paid game on iOS, but ad-revenue based on Android, and Underground on Amazon. These all require exceptions and finagling in the codebase.
Lets add some more complexity! "Gamecenters" -- Google Play integration, Amazon Gamecircle, iOS Game Center, Steam. Do you have Achievements? Steam has their own Achievements, as do all the platforms. Cloud save, Leaderboards? etc.
Now you make an update on your game..and have to export your game for all the various platforms and their special cases, and test them as well.
Walled gardens and market fragmentation drastically increase the cost of app/game development. It's hard for small or single-person dev teams to produce properly multi platform apps. It's sad to think about how much engineering is wasted replicating identical features across platforms, just for the right to play in the walled gardens of our technological overlords.
Other than maybe that last one, and that depending on what it expands to in practice, it is not clear to me why I'm supposed to somehow consider these things a bad thing. Hosting, creating, and engaging with community doesn't seem like "manufactured" cultural bona fides if the effort is real and substantial. An accusation about "manufactured" cultural bonafides would to me involve trying to project an impression of greater involvement than actually exists, not doing a lot of real involvement.
Am I missing a nuance you are trying to communicate here?
I don't know that this translates to game sales, though, especially because the majority of Twitch viewership goes to F2P games.
[0]http://gadgets.ndtv.com/games/news/steam-offline-after-secur...
I've heard "shared source", I've heard "available source", but never this.
So anyone can download it, but you can't modify and redistribute it?
(Of course their non-legal texts don't mention the "don't use Amazon competitors" clause all that explicitly, only explaining that yes, you can use it without online features or software running on hardware you own)
Twitch Prime provides some exclusive in-game items and steam has had exclusive cosmetics in the past as well already, so while having multiple venues to purchase your PC games from is always good for the market, I'm wondering if we're going to end up in a console-like situation where the exclusive addons are setting apart the games on the individual platforms.
And is their Twitch client open source or not? Itch.io client[1] for example is.
Most of the value Steam offers Amazon/Twitch will likely offer over time (shared servers/friend status etc...). The supply chain that Amazon offers for physical games though would be nearly impossible for Steam duplicate.
Additionally, the general customer service experience with Amazon is phenomenal. If this is brought to Twitch, that alone is an improvement over Steam's treatment of customer.
> The Partnered streamers who have opted into this new commerce program will earn 5 percent for the sales from their channel, Twitch says. The game publishers, meanwhile, earn 70 percent of revenue for the game sales.