A few weeks ago, we talked about the streaming wars —how Netflix, Disney, Paramount, Amazon, Apple, HBO, and others are all competing for streaming customers. But there’s another kind of streaming war going on—it’s between Twitch and Kick. If you don’t know those names—that’s okay. You’ll learn today.
Lesson summary
Hi there, it’s Jeff and this is Plain English, where we help you upgrade your English with current events and trending topics. JR is the producer and he has uploaded today’s full lesson to PlainEnglish.com/592. That’s because this is lesson 592. JR’s smart that way. If you want the transcript, just look at the episode number—592, in this case—and use the episode number to find the transcript. Today is at PlainEnglish.com/592. And the transcript is free.
Today’s story is about Twitch, the live stream platform for video gamers and their fans. On Twitch, you can play a game, browse the web, or just live your life…and let others watch and comment in a box. It’s not for me, but it is for many millions of people. And a new kind of streaming war is heating up, with a new competitor called Kick.
I’ll also show you how to use the English phrasal verb “roll back” and we have a quote of the week. Let’s get started.
Growing pains at Twitch
Twitch is a livestreaming platform best known for videogaming. It’s owned by Amazon. On Twitch, users can sign up and immediately broadcast themselves playing online games. It’s like YouTube, only it’s live and the focus is on video gaming.
Twitch streamers can play games in their browsers or on popular video game consoles like Xbox and PlayStation. Some of the most popular games on the platform are League of Legends, Grand Theft Auto, Minecraft, and Fortnite. Classic games are on the channel, too. You watch someone play Tetris or even chess. The audience—this won’t surprise you—the audience skews male, by 70 percent to 30 percent.
On a typical channel, the streamer plays the game and interacts with viewers. Viewers can see the gamer’s screen—they can see the gameplay. But the streamer is also usually on camera, often talking and reacting during the game. The show is not just the gameplay, but you’re watching the player, too.
There’s a chat window, just like on other social media live streams. The chat allows viewers to interact with each other and with the streamer during the action. Viewers can also send the streamer gifts, using Twitch’s own currency. Some streamers offer monthly subscriptions, ranging from $5.00 to $25.00 per month. Subscribers might get premium content, no ads, and digital bonuses like special access or a custom set of emojis.
While Twitch is best known for video game streaming, that’s not all they have. Streamers can simply broadcast their lives—or host their own version of a reality show or talk show. Others broadcast themselves browsing the web—really!—and watching web videos and commenting on it all to their viewers.
A lot of Twitch streamers do a mixture of things over live streams that extend many, many hours. They play video games, they chat with fans, they let viewers peek into their lives. The streamers are often online for many hours a day—one, xQc, a twenty-five year old, streams between eight and fourteen hours a day.
His streams are a grab-bag of online life. Now he’s browsing online videos of someone doing a leg press; next, he’s scrolling through his YouTube viewer stats; now back to videos as he watches and comments on news footage from the Paris protests; then he’s playing a video game in which he kills a rabbit.
Later he played an online quiz show and speculated out loud about the answers. He talked about dyeing his hair—he admitted he knew that that his roots were showing—he showed off prop guns in his room, he complained that his audio was in mono and not stereo, and so on.
That chat window during the entire broadcast was an unending stream of nonsense.
If this sounds frivolous…keep listening. Twitch streamers can make good money , some of them. The popular ones make money from advertising that plays during their streams. They also collect a portion of the subscription payments from fans. Off the platform, they have endorsement deals and affiliate marketing to supplement their income.
Twitch is not immune to the general problems of platforms that host user-generated content. Over the years , they’ve had to crack down . They’ve banned nudity, pornography, offensive content, pirated content, and streams of online gambling. Twitch has extensive—and I mean very detailed, extensive documentation—explaining exactly what body parts are allowed to be shown. You know this is only necessary because people constantly push the boundaries !
But Twitch can’t crack down too hard because it also needs to keep its content creators happy. Streamers on Twitch have complained about their pay. Most streamers get to keep only fifty percent of the payments from their subscribers, which is much less than what app stores allow their creators to keep.
Twitch recently implemented rules that would further limit streamers’ ability to make an income. It generated such a backlash that the company had to roll back some of the changes. Still, many popular streamers have left Twitch, saying the company is no longer responsive to its community of creators.
YouTube and Facebook are imperfect alternatives. But for a long time there was no livestreaming, gaming-focused alternative to Twitch, so creators were stuck. But now, there’s something called Kick.
Kick is a new platform for streamers and it offers two competitive advantages. First, anything goes. The rules are much more relaxed. Kick is not terribly concerned about offensive or sexually explicit content. Streamers kicked off Twitch for violating community standards—they are welcome on Kick. You can also live stream yourself gambling on Kick. That was banned on Twitch. Kick is backed by the owners of online gambling sites, for what that’s worth.
The other advantage Kick offers? It allows content creators to keep 95 percent of their subscription income. The platform is smaller, but it lets creators keep more of what they generate.
But how to attract streamers and viewers? Kick has splashed out on pricey contracts with popular streamers. Remember xQc? His real name is Félix Lengyel. Earlier I said he was 25—he’s 27 years old. Kick offered him a two-year contract worth between $70 and $100 million—and it’s not even an exclusive contract. For comparison, this is about the same size as LeBron James’s most recent contract with the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team.
If you paid me $70 to $100 million to watch xQc’s stream every day, I don’t know if I could. I don’t know if I could do it. It would be hard.
Hey, quick note—we’re going to change things up just a teeny tiny little bit. I’m going to give you the quote and the song of the week after the main story instead of at the very end. And the reason I’m doing it is because of the web site.
Those of you who use PlainEnglish.com for the transcripts—you know that we split the transcript into two parts, the story and the expression. And many, many of you browse the site for expressions only. And it’s just a little strange that when you look to learn an expression, and at the bottom there is this unrelated thing.
So, if it’s okay with you, we’re going to do the quote of the week on Mondays, and the song of the week on Thursdays, right after the main story.
Quote of the Week
So that means we’re ready to take a break and take a look at an English quote for today. There’s a phrase in English, “when opportunity knocks.” That’s like, when a good opportunity comes your way, it knocks on your door.
So here’s the quote: “Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.” That’s from Laurence J. Peter.
Misfortune—meaning bad luck—will present itself over and over, while good luck—good fortune—might only come once. So take advantage of it when it comes.
“Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.” That’s from Laurence J. Peter and it is today’s quote of the week.
Next up: the expression “roll back.”
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