The Twitch boom: The rise of the plataform due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic
Keywords:
Streaming online, Twitch, Valuación de impacto, Covid-19.Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic led various countries worldwide to implement social distancing measures and strict quarantines, resulting in changes in people's daily consumption habits. The increase in time spent at home fostered new forms of home entertainment, driving various types of online entertainment and interaction. The main objective of this study is to measure and analyze the impact of the pandemic's effects on content consumption on an online live streaming platform, Twitch. The research method involved the use of data related to the average total views on the platform, aiming to determine the initial and prolonged effects of the pandemic on the behavior and evolution of consumed content on the platform. Statistical techniques employed included Regression Discontinuity and Differences in Differences. The results suggest that the pandemic led to an increase in the number of concurrently connected users by 30% to 40%. Furthermore, it is observed that this change in the platform's viewership level persists over time, maintaining the growth trend observed before the pandemic at the new post-pandemic level.References
Aguilar Del Castillo, A. (2021). Las plataformas digitales tras el Covid-19: Las nuevas tendencias y hábitos de consumo del entretenimiento. Lima: Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas. http://hdl.handle.net/10757/657569
Brynjolfsson, E., Collis, A., y Eggers, F. (2019). Using massive online choice experiments to measure changes in well-being. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116(15), 7250-7255. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1815663116
Brynjolfsson, E., Eggers, F., y Collis, A. (2018). Measuring Welfare with Massive Online Choice Experiments: A Brief Introduction. American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings, 473-476. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/120171
Chae, S. W., y Lee, S. H. (2022). Sharing emotion while spectating video game play: Exploring Twitch users' emotional change after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Computers in Human Behavior, 131, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2022.107211
Cusumano, M., Gawer, A., y Yoffie, D. (2021). Can Self-Regulation Save Digital Platforms? Industrial and Corporate Change, 1-36. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3900137
Ferrarelli, M. (2016). Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford y Joshua Green, Cultura transmedia: La creación de contenido y valor en una cultura en red, Madrid, Gedisa, (2015). Perspectivas Metodológicas, 16(17), 161-162. https://doi.org/10.18294/pm.2016.1064
Gawer, A. (2021). Online Platforms: Societal Implications of the New Dominant Business Models of the Digital Economy. Berlin: Hertie School. https://digitalage.berlin/
Giertz, J. N., Weiger, W. H., Törhönen, M., y Hamari, J. (2022). Content versus community focus in live streaming services: how to drive engagement in synchronous social media. Journal of Service Management, 33(1), 33-58. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOSM-12-2020-0439
Gómez-Carmona, D., Cano Tenorio, R., y Marín Dueñas, P. (2022). El efecto de la COVID-19 en la aceptación de uso de Twitch. En S. Olivero Guidobono, El camino hacia las sociedades inclusivas (págs. 1062-1083). Madrid: Dykinson. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=8772332
Hamilton, W. A., Garretson, O., y Kerne, A. (2014). Streaming on Twitch: Fostering Participatory Communities of Play within Live Mixed Media. CHI 14: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (págs. 1315-1324). Toronto: CHI 14. https://doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557048
Hilvert-Bruce, Z., Neill, J. T., y Hamari, J. (2018). Social motivations of live-streaming viewer engagement on Twitch. Computers in Human Behavior, 58-67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.02.013
Johnson, M. R., y Woodcock, J. (2018). The impacts of live streaming and Twitch.tv on the video game industry. Media, Culture and Society, 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443718818363
Laming, C. (20 de diciembre de 2020). El efecto de COVID-19 en Twitch y qué juegos son los mejores para transmitir. https://charleslaming.github.io/covid-and-twitch/
Matei, A. (2022). Streaming Wars. La nueva televisión [Reseña]. Revista Mediterránea de Comunicación, 1(12), 1-3. https://doi.org/10.14198/MEDCOM.21152
Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS). (29 de junio de 2020). COVID-19: cronología de la actuación de la OMS. Recuperado el 18 de septiembre del 2023 de https://www.who.int/es/news/item/29-06-2020-covidtimeline
Padilla Molina, A., y Navarro, C. (2022). Audiencias y streamers en Twitch: patrones de consumo y producción en el ámbito hispanohablante. Quaderns del CAC, 25(48), 67-77. https://www.cac.cat/es/documentacio/comunicacion-riesgos-crisis-y-conflictos
Pineiro-Chousa, J., Lopez-Cabarcos, M., Pérez-Pico, A. M., & Caby, J. (2023). The influence of Twitch and sustainability on the stock returns of video game companies: Before and after COVID-19. Journal of Business Research, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.113620
Scerbakov, A., Pirker, J., y Kappe, F. (2022). When a Pandemic Enters the Game: The Initial and Prolonged Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Live-Stream Broadcasters on Twitch. Proceedings of the 55th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 1-10. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/79725
Sjöblom, M., y Hamari, J. (2016). Why Do People Watch Others Play Video Games? An Empirical Study on the Motivations of Twitch Users. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2779543
Zhao, K., Yuheng, H., Hong, Y., y Westland, J. C. (2020). Understanding Characteristics of Popular Streamers on Live Streaming Platforms: Evidence from Twitch.tv. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 22(4), 1-45. https://doi.org/10.17705/1jais.00689
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Nicolas Alvarez
The works published in this magazine are under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 Argentina license.
Important: The author is the owner of the rights to exploit the contents of the article of his authorship.
You are free to:
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.
Adapt — remix, transform and build from the material.
The licensor cannot revoke these liberties as long as you follow the terms of the license.
Under the following terms:
Attribution - You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if any changes have been made. You may do so in any reasonable way, but not in a way that suggests that you or your use is endorsed by the licensor.
Non-Commercial - You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
There are no additional restrictions - You cannot apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others to make any use permitted by the license.
