Tag Archives: Community

The women who make a living gaming on Twitch

Women battle old-fashioned sexism and new forms of harassment to become big players in the world of professional gaming

Two years ago Chelsea quit her job as a pharmacy technician to play video games.

“I went to work one day, and I was like, ‘I would actually be making more money if I had stayed at home and kept playing video games than coming here,'” she says. That week she handed in her resignation.

Chelsea is one of a growing number of women making a living from Twitch. Going by the username Xminks, Chelsea has become renowned for her skills in Call of Duty – so much so that playing it online has become her bread and butter. Every night about 10pm she turns on her webcam, chats to some of her 330,000 followers and gets to work. Continue reading The women who make a living gaming on Twitch

A Better Way for Streamers to Earn Ad Revenue

Twitch announced its plans to begin selling video ads in its partners’ live streams which can’t be blocked by third-party ad blockers. These ads will roll out this week and will be delivered through Twitch’s new SureStream video technology platform, which also offers smoother and more reliable streams, including ads.

The goal is to offer broadcasters a better experience than third-party ad networks could provide, which Twitch says cause technical issues due to the way they insert ads from external sources. But obviously, the larger goal here is to bring more of those potential advertising dollars in-house, so Twitch can profit by hosting its ads natively. Continue reading A Better Way for Streamers to Earn Ad Revenue

Improving Speech and Talking to an Empty Chat

The majority of first-time streamers will have an empty chat and it is hard to learn to talk to an “empty chat.” Although your chat and community are real people, it’s a different kind of social interaction that requires practice.

Kiratze wrote an in-depth guide about how to improve your speech and talking while in an empty room. Believe it or not, speaking properly to an empty room is a skill that many new streamers don’t realize they need to practice. Continue reading Improving Speech and Talking to an Empty Chat

Easily Download Your Favourite Twitch Streams With Twitch Leecher

While it’s simple enough to bookmark your favorite Twitch streams or saved clips, sometimes you might have the need to store your digital copy. Many tools exist for downloading “vods” from Twitch, but Twitch Leecher is one of the smarter choices.

As the utility’s GitHub description explains, you can use FFmpeg to grab all sorts of online streams, but it’s not the most efficient way to go about it. Continue reading Easily Download Your Favourite Twitch Streams With Twitch Leecher

Twitch Just Got Way Better with Help from Amazon

The next evolution of Twitch is finally here.

Ever since Twitch was first acquired by Amazon back in 2014 for $970 million, it was inevitable that the two websites would begin to merge features and build off of each other. We’ve seen that growth begin to take place with more stable servers and premium features present on Twitch, but this past weekend at TwitchCon, the yearly convention for — you guessed it — Twitch, the company announced a plethora of improvements and features coming to the website thanks to their partnership with Amazon. Continue reading Twitch Just Got Way Better with Help from Amazon