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No mention of Dr. Disrespect - a Twitch persona who recently won "Streamer of the Year" at the Esports Industry Awards.

Just a passing mention of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, a game which according to some is growing faster than Minecraft did. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) is the most popular streamed game on Twitch right now. The game regularly has over 2,000,000 concurrent players, has sold over 13,000,000 copies, and is still in beta with just one multiplayer map. It has been the most popular game on Steam for a few months. Some digital items obtained from loot crates have sold for over $1,000.

There is a whole ecosystem that has developed underneath the Twitch platform where secondary services help gamers overlay responsive graphics over the video stream as well as take donations. Top PUBG streamers can make well over $1,000 per night in donations on top of their cut of the Twitch subscription fee.

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I don't mean to be rude, but so what?

There's no need to specifically mention your favorite streamer, or your favorite game. Just because PUBG is popular right now doesn't mean this is a phenomenon centered around PUBG. There have been many streamers making A LOT of money for years now. League of Legends, Counterstrike, and DotA 2, for example, have always had large fan bases with "Top streamers" making similarly ridiculous amount of money in tips.

They were just plugging their favorite steamer. It's related, which is fine.

There is basically no mention of the hit game on HN. It is presently a video game phenomenon and is inspiring video game developers to explore that video game genre.

That particular streamer is changing the streaming game and is invested in some third party streamer support apps. He has broad appeal as little kids dressed up as this Twitch streamer for Halloween this year.

I think an article about the game, its streamers, the revenue sharing, and how Twitch is evolving would make the front page of HN.

That is all. No hidden agenda.

> That particular streamer is changing the streaming game and is invested in some third party streamer support apps. He has broad appeal as little kids dressed up as this Twitch streamer for Halloween this year.

He's not really changing the streaming game. There's streamers out there much more successful than he is (Lirik, Shroud, IcePoseidon, etc, etc.) Don't get me wrong, he's fun to watch, but no mention of him isn't a big deal in the least.

I agree no mention of him isn't a big deal. But he is definitely changing the game. His stream style is way more entertaining then a lot of the other streamers mentioned, subjectivity aside. His production value for a live stream, thought that goes into each session, and the entire character he portrays.

I've seen so many knockoffs of him recently its kinda disturbing.

He's involved with boom.tv, which is creating a suite of tools streamers can use to interact with viewers in real time. He's not necessarily the best player or the most highly-paid streamer, but the production value of his stream is unmatched. He's innovating how people use the medium that is streaming. He uses live transitions with synchronized music, pre-configured greenscreens for his character's various gags, live viewer-triggered replays, and many other small touches that really do give the stream a better feel. Other streamers are going to have to match pace.

Again, this is nothing new. Some streamers are even dipping their toes into game development (Reynad, for example; he's making a competitor for Blizzard's Hearthstone).

you are just being idiotic.

Personal attacks will get you banned here regardless of how wrong someone else is being. Please don't comment like this again.

Could you name some other streamers that have similar setups? I have never seen any.

vinc3ntvega, a smaller Dead by Daylight streamer, does similar things.

What setup exactly are you talking about? A green screen?

The iPhone presented nothing new.

The Dr is a 2 time world champion (back to back-93/94, no less!) as well as an industry VETERAN! He designed half the maps in COD Advanced Warfare. He's a 6 foot frickin 8 athletic powerhouse too.

Ya'll mask your jealousness poorly.

PUBG inspired nothing, those kind of battle royale games have been around for ages (ages in game terms, a year or two ago H1Z1 accidentally popularized battle royale as an alternate mode in its zombie survival game, which was in beta).

AFAIK PUBG was made in response to other games that used to be popular in the genre failing after major changes, specifically H1Z1.

EDIT: Fair-cop to them though, they've obviously done a greaat job. It's just that games like this are already coming out constantly, it's the new genre to clone. Before battle royale was that hot genre, it was MOBAs[1] + survival games a few years ago and MMOs were a few years before that. Battle Royale is actually a sort of spin off out of the survival genre. Another interesting thing to note is that survival/battle royale games have a lot of indie entrants who tend to have long alpha phases where hype makes them incredibly popular (DayZ, 7 days to die, Rust, Ark: Survial Evolved, Unturned, Don't Starve). Then the player base can sometimes die off as the game suffers from poor performance and slow development.

At the moment PUBG is suffering from lots of hackers, so we'll see whether it actually stays popular.

[1] Multiplayer online battle arena (5v5, top down, team game), spawned from a mod made for warcraft 3, popular examples include league of legends, DOTA2, Heroes of the Storm, etc.

Flappy bird? so what? right?

While you're technically correct in saying that PUBG isn't the first game of its kind, PlayerUnknown (creative lead) is the creator of the Arma mod DayZ, which to my knowledge is the origin of this genre.

PlayerUnknown(PUBG creator) created the Arma Mod Battle Royal and helped create H1Z1.

One of the reason Dr. Disrepect is so good at what he does, is that he makes his fans absolutely obsessed by him. He is the only streamer that I know that can be talked about in other channels without reprisal. The OP is just an example of his talent.

I don't mean to be rude, but so what?

I have just discovered how enjoyable Twitch is.

Dr Disrespect is amazing. He is an online performer and a gamer.

Most surprising are the people who talk about how watching Dr D has helped them through depression or cancer. He talked about this movingly but briefly in his speech this week.

This is a whole new form of entertainment. It will be fascinating to see where it unfolds. I think Amazon will get a very good return for their investment.

I'm not into watching gaming at all (I'd rather play), but this is really just another twist on 'Reality TV', and one with less dysfunction IMHO.

Exactly, livestreaming == reality TV.

It's too easy to turn off my brain and be 'entertained' for hours. I've recently forced myself back to watching films/TV instead. The difference in creative stimulation is like night & day.

Check out the Creative streams on Twitch if you'd like to watch some sweet DIY/artistic creations in progress.

Many people watch streams to learn new tactics and strategies. You don't get that from reality TV at all. No one is watching Survivor or The Bachelor and then using what they learned in real life.

> No one is watching Survivor or The Bachelor and then using what they learned in real life

Never say never. I am sure there are people who do, probably not with much success.

You know, I never really watched others game either, until just the other week. Since I am gnu+Linux only now, I have missed out on some games, but recently watched a play through of the new tombraider game and found it quite enjoyable. I really think it works better for linear games though, because its like I almost feel as if I played it but didn't have to spend the money on it.

Its this play by proxy I now think is one of the main draws.

I have been encouraged to stream by others myself, and do every once in a while on hitbox. Maybe I should give it a real try.

Until you hear an outburst like this: https://youtu.be/33sUi8r-PDI?t=557

Is that funny? To me it just sounds racist...

How's that racist? All he did was say the opponent's name in a weird way and "passive" aggressively criticize Daybreak.

Oh please. If that isn't racist neither is "me chinese me play joke me go peepee in your coke"

just because you find racism humorous doesn't mean it isn't offensive.

What? He's suggesting he lost that fire fight because of Daybreak's latest push to deploy servers in that part of the world. Yes, it's funny.

Let's not forget former Call of Duty level designer and 2 time Blockbuster 1993-1994 Video Game Champion!

back to back!

Not to mention that the article is four year late at least. The market for top streamers is almost saturated and the low hanging fruit places are filled with softcore pretend-to-be-drunk “opsies”

And as far as mentions go, there’s no word on pewdiepie either, he’s one of the pioneer of the genre along with videogamdunkey...

The whole article reeks of “I know nothing about it so must be new” mentality.

Shroud is the real high-roller. He regularly gets $100, $200, $500 tips. I think the highest single tip he's got was like $5000.

He also takes in a lot through Twitch subscriptions. He has 30k+ subscribers from what he last said and each would pay him $2.50-$10 / mo. Of course Twitch would take their cut but thats insane.

Twitch negotiates cuts at 30k and they scale it back a bunch at that level also.

From what I've heard at around 10k subs you are getting around $4 a sub.

> Some digital items obtained from loot crates have sold for over $1,000.

That's been happening for years. Hats in Team Fortress 2 sold for ~1500 (Burning Kabuto was around there IIRC), and a knife in CSGO went for 24k (apparently, http://read.navi-gaming.com/en/team_news/Rarest_and_expensiv...).

I think the point was that PUBG is still in early access, and has been out for less than a year.

CounterStrike and Team Fortress have been full fledged releases for many years prior to reaching those numbers.

Its not the absolute number that is impressive, its how quickly it has reached comparable values with these longstanding behemoths.

Golden Frying Pan in TF2 is around $2500 currently and has been reported to sell at over $5k at some point

Sounds like what I ended paying^H^H^H^H^H^H to buy http://www.wowhead.com/item=21025/recipe-dirges-kickin-chima...

Towelliee (Garcia) has been streaming on Twitch since the start. He's not the most popular streamer by far but is one of the few still streaming from back then. It will be interesting to see if newer more popular streamers like Dr. Disrespect can maintain their viewership.

I totally agree, Dr D. is funny as hell and PUBG is something else.

I never got the attraction to Twitch/game streaming. Before I came across Dr D/PUBG, I used Twitch to see if a game was interesting & simple enough to grasp, to assist in the purchase decision.

The Dr D/PUBG combo (and a few other lesser-known faves, e.g. BananaMan, P4wnyhof/Larsen) have made it fun to watch, actual entertainment, that I tune into. Daily...

On the other hand, PUBG is getting absolutely destroyed in reviews: http://store.steampowered.com/app/578080/PLAYERUNKNOWNS_BATT...

> Some digital items obtained from loot crates have sold for over $1,000.

Last time I looked nothing from current crates were going for that much it was just the special items from the pre-order crates that were going for that much, which is a pretty important difference I think.

Arguably, PUBG's success is completely attributable to it being a spectacularly fun game to watch and therefore RIDICULOUSLY popular on Twitch.

I don't think it's anywhere near as popular without the Twitch streams

I didn't know about Dr. Disrespect, until recently when I watched him on the h3h3 podcast. The man is pure gold, hilarious and the sinth 80's tracks that he plays on his stream are yummy :)

The snub seems perfectly in line with the Dr's last name

A big chunk of those 2,000,000 players are Chinese no?

What does that have to do with... literally anything?

Yeah, that was an odd comment, but it did get me thinking about how Twitch subscription sharing works when you have viewers in countries with wildly different costs of living.

I was refering to this:

>The game regularly has over 2,000,000 concurrent players

Well, I think it is interesting to point out what demographics tend to play a game the most.

If the game has 1,999,999 Chinese players then, I think, that is less interesting than if it had 2,000,000 global players (from all over the place).

Not sure why you think it is so far fetched....

You need to explain your reasoning a bit better. "Less interesting" for what exactly?

If anything from a streaming standpoint it's better to have a more "unified" player base, at least linguistically speaking. I doubt chinese players watch american streamers en masse, or vice-versa.

Less interesting as an investment vehicle, maybe. If cross-cultural interest in the phenomenon hadn’t yet been proven out, it might still hit an adoption cap at the boundary of the originating culture, and so stop growing.

> I doubt chinese players watch american streamers en masse, or vice-versa.

I agree. But are there any streamers who make use of live closed-caption transcription + translation services, the way broadcast news does? It’d Be interesting to see if just removing the language barrier would remove the culture barrier, or if it’s more fundamental.

The article seems to be all about Twitch. Chinese people don't really use Twitch, they have their own clones like Douyu. So while the percentage of Chinese players doesn't mean much from a global viewpoint, it matters a ton if we're looking at Twitch's role.

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