前 Twitch 总监告诉 Geoff Keighley：The Game Awards “是未来”

In a recent interview, former Twitch director Marcus ‘djWheat’ Graham sat down to talk about the past, present, and future of streaming, watch parties, esports broadcasts, and everything in between. Graham spent over a decade at Twitch and has been a recognizable face in the esports industry since the 1990s, and in this interview, he divulged some juicy tidbits about his time at the company.

One segment turned to what he considered the ‘success stories’ of streaming. It hasn’t always been the millionaire-making giant that it is today, and the long road to get here was punctuated with small successes that grew into something monumental. In his words, one such success is The Game Awards.

The Game Awards Made It Big

The Game Awards is arguably, by numbers, the most significant gaming-themed broadcast in the world. It’s a free-to-consume, packed showcase densely populated with jaw-dropping trailers, world premiere reveals, and, of course, awards. Geoff Keighley has been the face of The Game Awards for more than a decade, and he has been instrumental in getting it to where it is today.

In his recent interview with eldorado.gg, Marcus ‘djWheat’ Graham, an esports caster and former director at Twitch, stressed that he saw the power of The Game Awards very early on. The potential was staring him in the face.

He said:

I sat down with Geoff Keighley really early on. I said, “This is the future. And if you want to have as many people watching The Game Awards as humanly possible, you put it into the hands of creators. You let them watch alongside you. You’re not going to lose anything. You’re going to gain clips. You’re going to gain all this.”

He was talking somewhat poignantly about the esports industry and how it took so long to leverage the almighty influential capabilities of content creators. These days, more viewership is attributed to watch parties and co-streamers than to official broadcasts, and Graham insists that all came far too late.

Graham suggested that the desire to chase a more traditional, sports-influenced operating model was the cause of that slowdown. He said that these enormous gaming companies, like Valve, Riot, Activision, and Ubisoft, thought it would be like established sports.

The reason why was because they wanted to try to follow a more traditional model. They thought there was a future where companies were going to pay millions of dollars for the rights to broadcast, when in reality I don’t think that future was ever going to manifest.

Instead of bringing in creators and leaning on the audiences they’d established, some esports operators wanted to push for exclusive broadcast deals. We saw that especially with Activision, which floated exclusivity arrangements with YouTube or Twitch for the Call of Duty League or the Overwatch League.

But it’s very hard to get a streaming platform to pay millions of dollars for something that will be consumed for free. And you just don’t paywall esports.

The Game Awards certainly has made itself known as ‘the future’. It’s the most-watched gaming event of the year, pulling in tens of millions of viewers, and it has become a multimedia spectacle that draws the attention of non-gamers as well.

It effectively started in Geoff Keighley’s bedroom, and now it takes over enormous venues and is watched by the eager eyes of millions around the world.

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Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.

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