Game spectatorship: Twitch client implemented in CoH2

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This is the seventh part of the video game / e-sport spectator series. This time, I’ll focus on the internal twitch.tv client of „Company of Heroes 2“.

Company of Heroes 2 (CoH2), a real-time strategy game, was released this week on June 25th. But it’s not the release of the game itself I want to talk about. It’s one litte feature implemented in CoH2: It has an own twitch.tv broadcasting client.
Typically, to broadcast the own gameplay over twitch.tv, the user has to install a small broadcasting client. This client captures the video and sound output of a game and streams it over the user’s twitch.tv channel.
The developers of CoH2 implemented this feature directly into the game. The user just has to connect CoH2 to their twitch.tv account to broadcast the own gameplay.

CoH2 Twitch Client

But what makes this internal streaming client so special? From my point of view, it indicates that game developers become aware of the importance of broadcasting gameplay. As already discussed in this spectatorship series, watching other player’s gameplay is entertainment for various reasons. But from the point of view of a game company, gameplay broadcasts are cost-free advertisement.

If the gameplay seems to be entertaining, interested players might buy the game and start playing it themselves. By allowing all active players to broadcast their gameplay without having the issue of setting up a broadcasting software, the game company might increase the numbers of broadcasting players. This approach could result in an increased amount of spectators who might get interested in playing the game.