Why I’m Going All-In On Twitch

Earlier this year, in mid-March, eSports and Twitch experienced a massive crossover where the macro gaming entertainment scene became widely accepted by the masses because Drake and Ninja got together on Discord and streamed Fortnite.

Now, If you’ve been pretty deep into my content over the past three years, you’ll know that this didn’t come at any surprise to me; I knew that a crossover moment where Twitch and eSports would become a part of pop culture was coming because of the exponential growth of both the Twitch platform and the eSports industry. However, for what is likely the vast majority of you that haven’t been following me closely over the past three years, I had my team put my process of documentation to good use by recalling a myriad of times where I gave my thoughts on Twitch and eSports as a whole and putting them into a short one-minute video.

A post shared by Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk (@garyvee) on Mar 15, 2018 at 4:13pm PDT

Regardless, following this cultural moment with one the biggest music stars in the world and one the biggest gamers in the world, I got drilled with questions across all of my social channels asking for my thoughts on what this meant. As I see it, it is a foregone conclusion that millions of people will watch other people play video games for hours-on-end as a form of entertainment, because that’s already happened. Being said, this means that there is an incredible influx of attention on the Twitch platform, as well as competitors to Twitch, like the Chinese competitor to Twitch, Huya.

In case you were unaware, I undoubtedly believe attention to be one of the most valuable assets in today’s world. Attention is the single prerequisite to accomplishing nearly anything involving another party’s participation. It’s this simple: you can’t sell someone your newest product without first having their attention, you can’t pitch someone your startup without first having their attention, you can’t fundraise for your nonprofit without first having their attention, and you can’t change someone’s perspective in an argument without first having their attention. You can’t execute on virtually any task that requires another group or individual’s participation without their attention.

With that in mind, seeing the ample amount of attention on Twitch, I’ve decided to create my own Twitch channel and in-office Twitch studio. I call it a “Twitch studio”, but to be fair, it’s more of a streaming studio than anything else. I’m going to be using this setup for some of my Facebook streams, Instagram streams, and Twitch Streams. Also, as many of you know, I will never get romantic over a single platform. So, if a competitor to Twitch comes up and starts dominating, I’m not going to stay on Twitch just because I’m starting there, I’ll go wherever that new-found attention is or I’ll start using both platforms. One of the biggest mistakes that I see people making is that people run away from platforms as soon as their on the decline as opposed to continuing to use the previous platform in addition to whatever new platform has become a part of culture. The answer to the question of which platform should I create for is always both.

Even though I announced that I would be joining the Twitch community back in February, as I write this in July, I haven’t attacked this with the execution that I expected, mainly because I’m never really standing still and am always traveling. Even when I am in my office, I’m busy running VaynerX. Nevertheless, I’m salivating to get my Twitch game up. I feel like I’ve been watching the Twitch and eSports landscape from a far for a while now, but I’m happy that I’m getting involved when it feels authentic. I think that when you enter a niche community of any sort, you have to have a value prop that makes your entrance into those communities interesting and widely accepted or authentic. The reason why this is tough for me with Twitch is that I don’t play video games for 18 hours a day like most streamers; thus, I need to provide a value prop. Regardless, I seriously want to dominate Twitch and any other platform where I can stream games.

Obviously, I have the immediate disadvantage of having to run a $150 million dollar company during these efforts, in other words, I won’t be going live every day, but I will be making a sincere effort to be streaming at least once a week on my channel (though I’m grossly underperforming so far). So, if you’re a fan of retro-video games and my overly competitive style, go check me out on Twitch