People have watched others play games since the arcade era. It wasn’t always clear that watching someone else click buttons on a screen could be a full-time job. Most folks still think of gaming as a solo grind or a local LAN party with buddies. That’s changing fast. Competitive gaming isn’t just a niche anymore. It is a legitimate spectator sport.
The roots go back to the 1990s. A player named Dennis Fong, known by his handle Thresh, proved you could make a living off it. He crushed opponents in Quake and other first-person shooters. Prize money and corporate sponsorships funded his career. He is widely recognized as the first professional gamer. Others quickly followed his lead.
Today, the landscape is different. There are more games. There are more players fighting for the top spot. But there is also a massive new way to gain attention. Technology leaps and the explosion of online users created a new arena. Video sites like YouTube, launched in 2005, changed the game. They allowed in-home sessions to reach hundreds, thousands, or millions of viewers.
Live streaming took it further. Justin.tv launched in 2007. It let everyday players broadcast their gameplay live. The feature became so popular that co-founders Justin Kan and Emmett Shear had to act fast. In June 2011, they spun off a dedicated site for live gameplay streams. They named it Twitch TV.
Now just called Twitch, the platform is huge. Even before its official standalone launch, it pulled in 3 million unique monthly users. Today, the numbers are staggering. The site attracts 45 million unique visitors every month. Around 900,000 of those are unique broadcasters. In early 2014, the parent company changed its name to Twitch Interactive to reflect this dominance.
The short version? Game live-streaming site Twitch is massively popular. But what exactly happens there? What can you see and do on the platform? The details matter.
