While TastyWhale streams on Twitch a bit, it is only casual. (follow at THETASTYWHALE http://www.twitch.tv/thetastywhale hyperplug)
However, my friend Zach/HavocNinja37 (https://twitter.com/ZachMaynard) who streams nightly with one bitching set up (lights? overlay? microphone with popscreen??) tried out YouTube Gaming, the newest foray into digital broadcasting entertainment.
Here are his thoughts:
YouTube Gaming (YTG) and why it’s not good…yet
First off I want to point out the things that YTG is doing right because I’m looking at this as objectively as I can. YTG gives streamers the ability to stream at 1080p60fps where as Twitch max is 1080p30fps but you’ll more commonly see 720p60fps or even 30fps (I capture at 720p and downscale to i think 526 or something). YTG is completely HTML5 and feels like a new site and something different which is nice. Twitch still has Flash vestiges that are slowly dying off for HTML5 which is coming.
From my perspective that very short list is all that YTG is doing right. Like I said in my previous comments there are very little moderator controls that YTG has compared to Twitch. Twitch’s chat is IRC based so it still has tons of the old IRC functionality that has been around for years allowing for all sorts of tools to be built for it. People get incredibly creative with chat bots on Twitch to keep people engaged.
YTG has insane copyright restrictions. On their first day a larger streamer for them (a little over 200 viewers at the time) had a DMCA takedown notification to take down their stream because someone in the room had their TV too loud while watching Baywatch and their mic was picking it up. Twitch will mute your VOD (video on demand) but you are allowed to play music anytime during your stream.
As of right now I don’t see YTG as a competitor at all to Twitch. Their largest streamer on their launch day had just over 6000 viewers which is no slouch, until you look at any of the top streamers in the to 15 channels on Twitch. At 8am on a Wednesday I am watching a streamer who has 8k viewers on Destiny. The whole Destiny directory on YouTube PEAKED at 68 viewers across the whole game with the top in the Directory being 32. I understand Destiny isn’t LoL or anything like that but it’s consistently in the top 8 for Twitch and what I watch most so I use it as a reference point.
