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Boomer's avatar

I do think there's a bit of mission creep with a lot of these platforms.

They start out trying to serve one type of audience or creator, but the functionality grows and changes to the point that the original platform is almost unrecognisable.

I think it's always important to stay true to your core membership and to make sure the added features actually deliver something they need.

It sounds like the Twitch inclusion of Stories is a smart move, and FUN INC and Lanah Tyra make some good points about how it will help smaller creators stay connected with their followers.

The Epic situation seems wild. I think the purchase of Bandcamp (music) and SuperAwesome (youth digital marketing) grouped with their free games via Epic Games Store positioned them well for an integrated marketplace / streaming platform, but the time and money to do that is astronomical!

Lanah Tyra's avatar

Frontier also just announced layoffs :( I feel like if I ever make it into the games industry it will be Square Enix or nothing else... I was hoping to start with smaller studios but it all seems to be too risky at this point.

Boomer's avatar

It's such a difficult time at the moment 😔

What area did you want to get into in games?

Lanah Tyra's avatar

Game Capture Artist or Social Media / Community Manager. I love making videos and engaging with the community. Problem is I could do it but don't have a strong enough portfolio yet as after earning my degree 18 years ago I was put off by my mother yelling at me that editing videos from games is not a job... Then life happend and I was focusing on surviving alone in a new country.

Only started to think about it as a possibility again when I saw a job advert at SE and hit me that I wasn't just making stuff up, people do get paid for this.

Boomer's avatar

That's really cool! I was considering a similar path, but didn't think studios would have many roles for this.

It was seeing Playground Games advertise for a Game Capture Artist for Forza Horizon (quite a while ago now) that showed me it was a lot more prevalent than I'd thought.

Have you checked out organisations like Into Games or Work With Indies? They might be able to provide some advice or opportunities, and I think both have useful Discord servers.

Lanah Tyra's avatar

Oh thank you, I'll have a look!

Philip's avatar

I kind of think this is business as usual. In seeking greater profits companies will try to expand into new markets. Some successfully, others less so.

Boomer's avatar

Sad but true. I wonder if it's because at a certain scale you can only see things in terms of service benefit rather than person benefit. Like I can see how owning a music platform and a digital marketing agency would benefit their service, but does it benefit the people playing Epic's games? Unless Epic started that streaming service then I don't really see how they connect.

You'd hope that platforms would take a more deliberate approach to build happy and healthy communities in collaboration with the members! 😉

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