Your future is audiovisual too: Gaming and streaming

Since the arrival of the first videogame consoles at the end of the ’80s, their growth has been solid and unstoppable. Users did not need to play in the amusement arcades as they had the machines in their own houses or even in their own hands. In the beginning, this change did not entail any alteration in the game’s narrative, as lineal stories continued to be the most common ones without multiplayer choices. We usually had a history, a hero, some missions and a final reward for the winner.

However, open-world videogames like Grand Theft Auto or Massive Multiplayer Online games (MMO) like World of Warcraft changed the industry and boosted a continuous increase in interaction options. Users did not just play the programmed missions of the videogame; now, they could enter a parallel dimension with other people from all over the world to compete, collaborate, or simply have fun in their own terms.

Thanks to this videogame boom and the online possibilities to connect users, a new entertainment world started its development in parallel: videogame leagues, e-sports teams, competitions, etc. The same companies from the industry, like Blizzard or Riot Games, pushed for this evolution, aware of the interest and the increasing demand, and the results are the current massive competitions. At the same time, the best players started to create their own social media profiles with their games, tricks and contests with other key players. They began to upload their videos and content to platforms like YouTube and, lately, they started with live streaming on Twitch. This platform succeeded in adapting its content environment to gaming.

Along with them, a world of game commentators, fans and speakers sprouted and began to create their content based on video games. All this with a consumer profile based on young, loyal and demanding people that are always open to consuming more and more content and with a steady and continuous growth in terms of numbers. We refer to YouTube channels with 17 million followers like Ninja’s one or AuronPlay’s channel with 11 million subscribers. In the field of live streaming, we have the 2.5 million watchers world record achieved by TheGrefg. 

However, these content creators soon started to fly alone and created their universe apart from video games. Nowadays, most of them have their trademark with advertising contracts and different products. For example, the streamer Ibai Llanos created a Balloon World Cup with the footballer Gerard Piqué, achieving a 455,000 users average audience. Another example is ElRubius, which developed its own TV Series with Movistar. But the origin and the content to which they always return is the same: the gaming world.

Most of the current successful games are open-world video games with endless collaboration possibilities with other players. You can play for hours and hours along with your friends or people from the other side of the world trying to achieve an undefined mission or just having fun. We have construction games like Minecraft or others like Fortnite in which we simply have to survive and avoid getting killed.

Therefore, games become endless unless we limit the time as some competitions do, with limits established around four hours. In any case, when a streamer wants to comment on any contest or is streaming its own playthrough, they may end the session with an enormous quantity of raw audiovisual material. And this has been the case practically every day for several years.

This is not a problem for traditional media, as they count on professionals and infrastructure to manage their content. Nevertheless, in this case, we are talking about young people who started their careers creating content with a PC and user-level archiving tools.

Furthermore, most streamers have to fight their own platforms for video archiving. For example, the leading streaming platform, Twitch, erases the videos after two months to avoid a collapse of its servers. If a professional streamer does not archive its video, it simply disappears. 

Little by little, and as their business grows, the key profiles of this industry started to hire professional editors, graphic designers and a full-blown digital team around them in order to avoid distractions and focus on their main activity: content creation. It only seems logical that the next step is to get a professional media asset management and start to use a deep archive MAM system like VSNExplorer MAM’s.

Therefore, a gaming streamer could download the video from their latest  Among Us session and add it to a deep archive with others from this game, which they could organize in the most convenient way for them. With this, we could quickly recover the content in the future. Imagine we want to create a Call of Duty “Headshot” compilation. We just need to introduce this word in our searcher and our MAM selects the clips and moments with this action to show them on the same interface. 

This is possible thanks to the content catalog available with a MAM System. Each video has associated metadata with information for the searching. This catalog process can even be automatic thanks to Artificial Intelligence engines, which create the tags using, for example, voice and facial recognition. After this, the user only needs to validate and check the results.

All these functionalities can be combined with the main editing programs like Adobe Premiere. Thanks to VSNExplorer Adobe Panel, a streamer can edit its video with Premiere and access unlimited content with a professional catalog on our MAM without exiting the editing program. This way, we can edit our Headshots compilation with access to all our archive in the same interface.

As we mentioned in this article, some of the stars of this industry started their path in this industry editing and uploading videos to YouTube as a hobby. After a few years, they found an unexpected success that turned into their way of living.

Despite that, many of these creators recognize that their media planning and distribution is still manual and that they do not use a professional platform. Therefore, some of them, like ElRubius, stated that sometimes they forgot to publish a video or campaign. It is a fact that their community loves spontaneity and improvisation on the content. At the same time, we are talking about videos that are not a hobby anymore, but a millionaire business that might require some planning.

After the professionalization of their media asset management, the next logical step is to take care of media planning and distribution. It might be interesting to combine a MAM system that allows content distribution to platforms like YouTube with a traffic management platform like VSNCrea, which allows to program and plan the content publication.

This way, we can upload a video directly to YouTube from our MAM System with all the required metadata and tags. After that, using VSNCrea, the streamer can program the publication of this content whenever they want, not only on YouTube, but also on different social media platforms. Additionally, suppose the streamer wants to divide its content like a series. In that case, it can program serial publications from the same platform, which will also produce custom reports to control the performance of this content.

In the next episode of our gaming and streaming series, we will disclaim some other options for the future of this world as they continue with their content creation. In the end, we only need to explore the map for different options and avoid excessive camping.