Stellar streaming and gaming Archives

Now is the time that companies start seriously looking at how eSports play into their long-term strategy, says Morris Garrard, an information analyst who specializes in gaming at Futuresource Consulting.

Short-term, there’s been an obvious spike in video game streaming, with streaming leader Twitch seeing a 10% year-over-year increase in audiences numbers. It’s not an unsurprising spike, as hundreds of millions of families are now isolated at home in efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19. Video gaming is up 75% in the US, and all video streaming is up 12% amid the pandemic, according to Verizon. Idle consumers are looking for new ways to view content outside of linear TV, says Garrard. Viewership on streaming sites, including YouTube Gaming and Microsoft Mixer, are expected to rise, Garrard says.

In Garrard’s view, there are some obvious short-term opportunities for eSports. Broadcasters looking to reach those eyeballs, could air eSports, and the streams from popular gamers on their linear channels, says Garrard. This could provide a stop-gap to help address delayed deliveries of the paused productions.

What’s more, all production companies can begin producing eSport content, or they can tap into the audience by airing their existing content on popular platforms such as Twitch, which is what California-based prodco Genius Brands did when it launched an Inspector Gadgetmarathon on the streamer in 2018. Meanwhile, toycoscan benefit from advertising before videos and streams, and teaming up with influencers (like what Wicked Cool Toys did producing a range of products based on popular gamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins) in the space could net companies increased exposure from the large number of viewers. Speed here is of the essence as those viewership increases on Twitch probably won’t be permanent, says Garrard. After the pandemic abates and routines begin to return to normal, there will be a decline in eSports viewing.

Though COVID-19 is leading to a short-term spike, the eSports category was already on the upswing. Globally it’s forecasted to reach US$1.79 billion in 2022 in revenue, according to market researcher Statista. The viewership numbers for the category are also expected to grow 13% by 2023, says Garrard. Over the past few years, eSports has been growing steadily, with big players like Hasbro and Nickelodeon making significant investments in the category.  It’s a lucrative market that’s expected to hold steady, and companies that enter the space now could get a piece of an industry that was estimated at US$923 million in 2019, according to the market research firm.

“Some entertainment studios are scared of eSports since they don’t know how to get into the space, but kids see it as a viable source of entertainment,” says Garrard. “Companies should get into the space now because the audience is growing, and families could stick with it as a form of entertainment after the crisis ends.”

Dave Andrews

This is a pretty cut-and-dried case in my mind. The companies who construct MMOs do (and should) hold all rights to their work. It is their property, paid for in the labor and infrastructure costs associated with the teams who build them, and to suggest that we are merely ‘allowing’ companies to wholly own something they made is a ludicrous argument. The only entity entitled to the ownership (in whole) is the entity who created it (or to whom the product is sold). To argue otherwise would be to argue for the dissolution of the concept of private property.

Being a long time MMO player – and having spent time with almost all of the titles mentioned above and a fair few others – I totally get the emotional response to a hobby effectively being killed by something beyond your control. It sucks, but at the end of the day you simply have to respect the rights of the intellectual property owners. If they can no longer maintain and operate an MMO and the infrastructure involved (which can be quite expensive), or no longer find it in their best interest, then they have the right to shut it all down and move on.

The other thing to keep in mind is that in the vast majority of cases, MMOs are not shut down arbitrarily. MMOs are a product/service and gaming studios are businesses. When they start consistently going into the red and the choice is either appeasing a handful of players or trying to keep your employees fed and clothed.. well, I know which option I’d pick.

Where most of this argument exists is in a very emotional place and there really is no arguing with emotion at the end of the day. However, the fact remains that source code is no less an asset than a building or an iPhone or anything else – and players are very much not entitled to that asset. As we should all know by now, when you subscribe to an MMO you are purchasing the rights to use a service and a client. You are categorically not buying the source code, server code, or anything else.

In addition, there are costs to consider. How would such an ‘archival’ solution that involves legislation be funded? In my personal experience running MMOs (backend server work, etc), I would estimate the cost of running an MMO of three thousand or fewer players to be around 27,000 USD (2015 dollars). This covers things like rackspace at a semi-decent datacenter, labor for a semi-competent engineer (who can do database, network, and system engineer work), and all the miscellaneous things that go into serving up MMO content. That doesn’t sound like a lot – but how many MMOs have had the plug pulled on them over the years? How many more can we expect to die in the next 10? Is this really something we want government funding to go towards? I realize I’m asking a lot of questions, here, but I truly don’t understand my colleague’s obsession with keeping dead things alive.

Setting aside the copyright argument (I can’t really argue with someone who believes copyrights are culture killers) and the realities of cost (it would cost around 27,000 USD per month to run a barebones MMO from my experience), this is the most important argument I think I can make against a forced method of maintenance mode for MMO properties: the game you are trying to preserve has already died by the time maintenance mode would be an option. Think of an EVE Online with 10% of its current playerbase – how fun is that game even? If you were a newcomer looking to experience EVE Online in 25 years, you wouldn’t be able to. Hell, if you are a newcomer right now you wouldn’t gain any understanding of the previous 10 years of the game, even if you put 10 years into it.

Can anyone understand the “many whelps” of Onyxia or the context of Leeroy Jenkins even today? MMOs are an experiential piece of entertainment that is constantly shifting and requires, uniquely, a base number of players to really understand. The reason MMOs live (and die) in ways that other genres of video game do not is this simple fact. Social and cultural context are what define MMO experiences, more so than the code or the quests or the mechanics of gameplay.

MMOs are about people; it is the only real draw of the genre. How those people come together, the bonds that are built from shared experiences, the competition of being better than the other guild, or team, or realm, those are what make MMOs worth preserving – and it is also why they cannot be preserved in the manner James describes. We don’t need to preserve the ‘approachable spaces’ of a game by keeping the servers on. Comparing YouTube to the dusty scrolls of yester-millenia is facetious at best, not to mention the fact that the reason for the emphasis on preserving spaces in the real world is that those spaces often functioned as media (read: statues, plinths, triumphal arches, pillars, and columns all serve as media upon which information is written).

The digital media of the modern era is perfectly suited to record the digital spaces that function as MMOs. Without the context of actually having been there, having been a part of the zeitgeist of World of Warcraft or Star Wars: Galaxies or EVE Online, future players will be fundamentally unable to understand what made those games great. The experiences that those communities share are the only thing worth saving – and keeping the server lights on isn’t the way to save them.

There is, however, a method of preserving these experiences that exists right now. Everyone can (and many do) engage in this archival process already. It not only relates systems, art, and level design; it relates the actual experience of playing. It is called YouTube and it is free of cost to the developer. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City famously included EVE Online in their initial slate of video game inductions in 2013 and they didn’t do it by running a small server version of the game; they did it by putting together a video presentation. Game experiences change in MMOs, more so than any other category of video game. They are fluid in nature and the joy of them exists not in code, but in the people you play with and against. Better to document and record those experiences than to put up an empty shell of what used to be a video game.

To reiterate: it sucks to realize that a part of your life is now gone and can never be retrieved. That is as true for childhood as it is for a player’s alternate life in MMOs. Part of growing up and maturing as an adult is the realization that you can never, ever recreate old magic. You’ll never down Onyxia for the first time again; you’ll never win your first 1v1 in EVE Online again either. Instead, you should focus on looking forward, to making new magic and new memories and new friends in new spaces and new communities and new contexts. It is important to know and respect the legacy that past MMOs have delivered to us, but that doesn’t mean we should wallow around in their graves in a sad attempt at paying respects.