I just got back from a pretty full week in SF for GDC. The trip kicked off with a visit to Twitch (see prior post) and then two talks at the conference itself. I spoke on Tuesday about the history of communities in building the esports scene and then gave a microtalk in the advocacy track focusing on our AnyKey work. Hopefully both will make their way to the GDC Vault (and not paywalled) and I’ll link the videos here when/if they do. In the meantime though I wanted to put up a pdf of the slides from the microtalk mostly because I want to make sure to shout-out all the fantastic folks and projects I mentioned in it.
Tag Archives: esports
Twitch talk
It’s no small thing when the platform you’ve been studying for quite a few years invites you in to give a talk and leaves it pretty open as to what you speak about. The invite said “We like to hear about how successful individuals got to where they are today and what they’re up to now” – gulp! Needless to say, I spent quite a bit of time mulling over what I might share that wouldn’t be old news to them ;) I ended up trying to pull on a few threads from several of my major game research projects. I really enjoyed the visit and the great conversation. Here’s a VOD of if you are interested! Thanks again for the invite Lauren Forbes and Twitch!
Watch live video from TwitchOffice on www.twitch.tv
SportsMedia Podcast Series
I was excited to get a chance to be on Brett Hutchin‘s SportsMedia Podcast Series recently where I spoke about esports, streaming, and AnyKey. Brett is a fantastic media and sports scholar so being able to talk to him in depth about these subjects was an amazing opportunity!
AnyKey at TwitchCon 2016
It was exciting to get to attend TwitchCon again this year and I wrote up some reflections on our AnyKey initiative there this year and what esports can learn from variety streaming.
AnyKey updates
It’s been a busy semester since we announced the launch of AnyKey!
We’ve released a number of whitepapers on subjects such as community management and moderation, patterns of participation at esports events, and major critical issues. Learning how to produce short overview pieces like this has been a whole new challenge and I’m looking forward to getting better and better at it. Now if I could just amp up my design skills to make them look stylish!
We’ve also held several live-streamed broadcasts introducing the work of the organization and on the theme of “competition for all.” It’s been really great to get these conversations out in more popular venues. It’s been cool to see these events also get picked up on and then spun out into pieces at various websites as well.
There are big challenges facing the esports industry when it comes to issues of inclusion and diversity but I’m encouraged by the growing attention and, most importantly, initiatives to make change. Here’s hoping that trend only continues!