Why streaming platform Twitch is trying to rebrand gamers
In his talk at SXSW Sydney last week, Twitch CEO DJClancy made it clear he is on a mission to radically change how people think about his platform and its users.
DJClancy streams to his 60,000 Twitch followers about twice a month. Sometimes he plays Roblox, a platform that hosts millions of user-made games. Other times he sings folk songs with his daughter Savannah.
DJClancy is also Twitch’s CEO. A former NASA scientist and Google engineering director, Dan Clancy took the reins of the live-streaming video platform in March last year.
In his talk at SXSW Sydney last week – “The importance of community and how we find it in an online world” – Clancy made it clear that he is on a mission to radically change how people think about his platform and its users.
Since Amazon bought Twitch in 2014 for $1.18 billion, the platform has produced some of the internet’s biggest stars and gone from 50 to 240 million monthly users. In a sign of Twitch’s cultural cut-through, it’s common for gen Z and gen alpha to address their friends with “Hey, chat”, mimicking the way Twitch streamers address their viewers.
Yet Twitch remains unprofitable.
In January, a few months after Clancy’s appointment, the company laid off 500 people, a staggering 35% of its workforce. Internal documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal in July suggested more layoffs could be necessary amid slowing user growth and engagement.
Twitch’s traditional strength has always been in video game content. Of the top 10 streamers this month, all are known for playing games. But for Clancy, the terminology around gaming is fraught.
“I no longer use the word gamer, I often now say people who game. Because with the term gamer, you get an image in your mind. And I’m sure there are tons of gamers sitting in this room and none of them fit that image.”
This distinction might appear semantic but it helps explain Clancy’s strategy for broadening the Twitch church. Clancy wants to avoid Twitch users being defined by the content they’re watching.
“Gaming is just kind of the thing that is going on on Twitch, but really what it’s about is community,” Clancy said.
“It’s about finding this group where you feel like you belong. So you have a group of mates that you can go be with when you’re feeling bad, when you’re feeling good, whatever.”
If Twitch can successfully position itself as a place for community rather than just content, then Twitch’s potential market suddenly includes anyone seeking connection.
To showcase that side of the platform, Clancy played a series of clips from non-gaming Twitch creators including broxh_ who shares his traditional Maori wood carving skills, a 24/7 feed where viewers can pay to dispense snacks to woodland critters and the dough-spinning PizzaPrincessG.
“Twitch is often grouped as a social media platform, but I actually think it is wildly different from other social media platforms,” Clancy said.
Unlike on other platforms, users on Twitch “go regularly to the same channel” and start recognising others who are interacting in the stream’s chatroom.
One of Clancy’s claims is that since users are able to interact with the streamer and each other over long periods of time, the relationships formed are genuine and not ‘parasocial’, a term used to describe one-way emotional relationships with media figures.
While the academic consensus is that social media is usually harmful to wellbeing, there is some research that participating in live-streams is actually beneficial.
Clancy presented a New York Times poll of gen Z that showed almost half of respondents wished that platforms like Twitter, Tik Tok and Snapchat “had never been invented”. The poll did not ask participants about their views of Twitch.
While he acknowledged the need for face-to-face interaction, Clancy said Twitch could fill the gap when meeting up in person was impossible or inconvenient.
“It’s particularly important for marginalised individuals because it allows them to find other people they can connect with.”
This isn’t the first time Twitch has tried to move beyond gaming. In 2019, it launched a marketing campaign focused on non-gaming creators and accompanied by the slogan “You’re already one of us”.
But the stakes are higher this time around.
Well-funded competitors like Microsoft’s Mixer, Caffeine TV and Twitter’s Periscope have all shut down in recent years, unable to turn a profit from live streaming.
Meanwhile, Twitch’s biggest rivals, YouTube Live and Facebook Gaming are holding on and voice-chatting community platform Discord is on the rise. A new kid on the block, Kick – backed by the founders of gambling site Stake.com and launched in 2022 – has made its mark by actively poaching Twitch’s top streamers.
As Twitch fights to move beyond gaming, it will need to prove that its particular mix of entertainment and socialising is what new audiences are looking for.
“For a lot of people, Twitch is what channel surfing used to be,” Clancy said. “You find something good enough.”
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