Why I’m Going All-In On Twitch

Earlier this year, in mid-March, eSports and Twitch experienced a massive crossover where the macro gaming entertainment scene became widely accepted by the masses because Drake and Ninja got together on Discord and streamed Fortnite.

Now, If you’ve been pretty deep into my content over the past three years, you’ll know that this didn’t come at any surprise to me; I knew that a crossover moment where Twitch and eSports would become a part of pop culture was coming because of the exponential growth of both the Twitch platform and the eSports industry. However, for what is likely the vast majority of you that haven’t been following me closely over the past three years, I had my team put my process of documentation to good use by recalling a myriad of times where I gave my thoughts on Twitch and eSports as a whole and putting them into a short one-minute video.

A post shared by Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk (@garyvee) on Mar 15, 2018 at 4:13pm PDT

Regardless, following this cultural moment with one the biggest music stars in the world and one the biggest gamers in the world, I got drilled with questions across all of my social channels asking for my thoughts on what this meant. As I see it, it is a foregone conclusion that millions of people will watch other people play video games for hours-on-end as a form of entertainment, because that’s already happened. Being said, this means that there is an incredible influx of attention on the Twitch platform, as well as competitors to Twitch, like the Chinese competitor to Twitch, Huya.

In case you were unaware, I undoubtedly believe attention to be one of the most valuable assets in today’s world. Attention is the single prerequisite to accomplishing nearly anything involving another party’s participation. It’s this simple: you can’t sell someone your newest product without first having their attention, you can’t pitch someone your startup without first having their attention, you can’t fundraise for your nonprofit without first having their attention, and you can’t change someone’s perspective in an argument without first having their attention. You can’t execute on virtually any task that requires another group or individual’s participation without their attention.

With that in mind, seeing the ample amount of attention on Twitch, I’ve decided to create my own Twitch channel and in-office Twitch studio. I call it a “Twitch studio”, but to be fair, it’s more of a streaming studio than anything else. I’m going to be using this setup for some of my Facebook streams, Instagram streams, and Twitch Streams. Also, as many of you know, I will never get romantic over a single platform. So, if a competitor to Twitch comes up and starts dominating, I’m not going to stay on Twitch just because I’m starting there, I’ll go wherever that new-found attention is or I’ll start using both platforms. One of the biggest mistakes that I see people making is that people run away from platforms as soon as their on the decline as opposed to continuing to use the previous platform in addition to whatever new platform has become a part of culture. The answer to the question of which platform should I create for is always both.

Even though I announced that I would be joining the Twitch community back in February, as I write this in July, I haven’t attacked this with the execution that I expected, mainly because I’m never really standing still and am always traveling. Even when I am in my office, I’m busy running VaynerX. Nevertheless, I’m salivating to get my Twitch game up. I feel like I’ve been watching the Twitch and eSports landscape from a far for a while now, but I’m happy that I’m getting involved when it feels authentic. I think that when you enter a niche community of any sort, you have to have a value prop that makes your entrance into those communities interesting and widely accepted or authentic. The reason why this is tough for me with Twitch is that I don’t play video games for 18 hours a day like most streamers; thus, I need to provide a value prop. Regardless, I seriously want to dominate Twitch and any other platform where I can stream games.

Obviously, I have the immediate disadvantage of having to run a $150 million dollar company during these efforts, in other words, I won’t be going live every day, but I will be making a sincere effort to be streaming at least once a week on my channel (though I’m grossly underperforming so far). So, if you’re a fan of retro-video games and my overly competitive style, go check me out on Twitch 😉

I do want to give a few quick thank yous to those that helped me throughout the process of creating my studio and partnered with me and my team to make this possible. I want to begin by saying thank you to Hunter and Alexis Pence who got me connected with Matt Scarpino and his company Go Button Productions who were responsible for putting the pieces together and getting my Twitch Studio setup to it’s current beastly state. If you noticed the neon green “GaryVee” signature hanging at the top of the studio, that was created by my amazing friends at Mondo Neon. I want to show some love to ProfessorBroman as well who was my first #AskGaryVee guest that was a Twitch streamer. Next, I have to give a big thanks to Adorama for hooking me up with all of the TVs, audio equipment, and cameras that we’re using to stream. I also owe a thank you to my friends at Xidax who built two monstrous PCs that my team and I are going to be using for all of our PC gaming and to run the future streams off of. I want to give a thanks to Colorware for being generous enough to give me the all of the gaming consoles and controllers for the studio. Additionally, thank you to Elgato for providing me and my team with equipment to run our console-based streams. And lastly, I want to give an enormous thank you to both Twitch and its community for giving me such a warm welcome. I seriously can’t begin to express how much I appreciate all of you, thank you.

Now, instead of focusing on me, let’s focus on you. If you read this post carefully, you’ll see that I knew that there was a lot of currency, which is attention, on twitch. The reason why I waited for the cultural crossover is that literally up until that moment, I didn’t think I could authentically enter the space. However, whether you’re a painter or rapper, now is the time to figure out how you can enter the space as well. For me, I feel like my beginning on twitch is appropriate because I used to play Nintendo and Sega Genesis back in the day, which is also part of what I’ll be streaming on my channel. For you, your nephew may play Fortnite, which you can document and stream even though you’re a 40 year old nurse.

With all of the pieces finally in place, if you’re an influencer or a personality that would like to jam with me sometime on my new channel, make sure to hit me up on my email (gary [at] vaynermedia [dot] com). I’ve been watching and feeling it coming and my Twitch game is about to explode!