Twitch Might Produce Interactive Streaming TV Programs Image courtesy of Nathan Penlington
The appeal of Twitch is being able to watch someone play a game while simultaneously chatting with people about what you’re seeing. How could the site expand that concept? It’s thinking about producing TV-style programs that would change based on feedback from the audience.
If the Amazon-owned company wants to expand its business to people who aren’t interested in video games, this would be an interesting way to do it. Haven’t you always wished for a Choose Your Own Adventure book in video form?
It’s not guaranteed that this is going to happen, though. Twitch CEO Kevin Lin told Recode that the company wants to try making interactive original content, but only if it’s able to find a studio that’s interested in making truly interactive programs and changing them based on user feedback. Users’ reactions to previous episodes could affect future ones, or even force producers to go back and change things that viewers didn’t like.
“We’d want to identify really progressive studios that are willing to take a gamble,” Lin told Recode. Instead of “dumping” whole seasons at once, the content would have to change week to week.
Keep an eye out, Lin says, but if you don’t see any programming like this from Twitch in the next few years, it’s because the company wasn’t able to make it happen, or find a studio open to taking direction from its own audience.
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