Some of Twitch’s biggest names have jumped ship to YouTube during 2022, but would Asmongold consider following suit? We spoke to the streamer about the prospect of moving, and if YouTube could be real competition for Twitch.
2022 has been quite the year for YouTube Gaming. Having acquired Twitch titans DrLupo, TimTheTatman, and Ludwig, the platform seems intent on knocking Amazon’s streaming service off of its throne.
While fellow streaming star, Asmongold, has admitted that prominent streamers switching to YouTube is a “real shakeup,” the MMO star seems pretty content streaming on either his main Twitch channel or second channel, zackrawrr.
Discussing the YouTube/Twitch saga in an interview with Dexerto, Asmon explains where it’s all gone right for YouTube and, in turn, whether or not he’s ever been tempted to join his colleagues.
Asmongold on YouTube/Twitch debate
Casting his mind back to the days of Mixer, Asmon draws parallels between today’s streaming platforms and the platforms of old. “The mistake Mixer made is that they only brought shroud and Ninja onto the platform, and I think YouTube is actually making a much better inroad into creating a streaming community. This is one of the weaknesses that Mixer had.
“If you look at the streaming ecosystem as a wildlife ecosystem, you can’t just transplant the biggest tree inside of a forest into a random desert and expect the tree to be able to grow. You need the shrubs, you need the birds, you need the squirrels, you need the grass, you need the roots, you need the fungus – you need everything in order for that existence to happen. What Mixer did is they took two gigantic trees.
“It took Ninja and it took shroud and it transplanted them over to Mixer, and because they didn’t have an ecosystem around them to refill the viewership they would inevitably lose due to the churn of people watching streams and then choosing not to, what happens is that the channel slowly declines and the platform loses relevancy, and it creates a public conception that moving over to the platform is unhealthy for your stream.”
Comparing the site to YouTube, he notes that “YouTube has brought over Dr Disrespect – Doc plays with Tim[TheTatman], Tim plays with DrLupo, and DrLupo plays with CouRage, then CouRage plays with Doc. All four of them play together, and what that creates is cross-pollination. It creates a way for those creators to refill each others’ audiences, and to collaborate and create content together.”
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Recalling a series of statistics that claim “for every view Twitch gets YouTube gets 200,” he notes that Twitch’s relevancy is dependent on its community.
“The community for Twitch is something that is very special in very good (and very bad) ways. You see so many people that want to stay on Twitch because of the emotes, the culture, and the community. As soon as YouTube is able to capture that and really build that community on their website instead, that’s when you’ll really see a competition.”
Concluding that “whenever I would really say that YouTube would be a legitimate competitor for Twitch is when people move over to the platform without a one million dollar contract.”
Will Asmongold leave Twitch for YouTube?
Of course, that immediately begs the question: will Asmongold ever swap to YouTube? “How many million?” he laughs, before noting that “hey, y’know, we’ll see what happens! I get more views on YouTube than I do on Twitch, honestly.”
“Would I be opposed to moving over to YouTube completely?” he asks. “No, absolutely not. I like YouTube a lot, I’ve uploaded on YouTube since 2008 – I was still in high school. I’ve always loved YouTube, and I love Twitch too, I like Twitch in a lot of ways. I do think there are elements of the Twitch community that are reductive, and are more reluctant to change, and do actively suppress growth on the platform.
“Would I go over to YouTube tomorrow or something? No, probably not. But it’s something I’d have to really think about a lot. It’s not something I’m really soliciting, that much, but I always leave myself open for options.”
Whether or not we’ll see AsmonTube in the future remains a mystery, but clearly the streamer believes that the platform is on the rise and looking to conquer 2022 just as it did 2021.