More From Tracey Lien
The Twitch office in San Francisco’s Financial District takes up a whole floor of a Bush Street building that spans half a city block. The company’s lobby has a wall of flat-screen televisions, each displaying a bright purple and white logo, “TWITCH, TWITCH TWITCH.” To one side of the office are rows of desks that seat mostly 20-somethings typing lines of code while watching video streams. To the other side are meeting rooms themed after video game locations. There’s the Rapture room, inspired by BioShock, which is decorated with its own fake fireplace and leather armchair. There’s the Megaton room, inspired by the wasteland of a city from Fallout 3 — it’s still a work in progress.The 100 or so Twitch employees work to make sure the service runs smoothly, even when it’s being slammed with traffic. In an average month, Twitch broadcasts more than 6 million videos and fans watch 12 billion minutes of footage. As of the end of 2013, more than 45 million people watch Twitch streams every month.
When it was recently revealed that social game developer King.com filed to register the trademark for the word ‘candy,’ the response from fellow developers and game players was less than kind. The company, best known for making the highly successful puzzle game Candy Crush Saga and other titles in its Saga series, was accused of throwing its weight around and intimidating small developers.
Unraveling the story behind the stereotype of video games being for boys.
We talk to the designers behind the games made for Pitchfork and Kill Screen’s Soundplay project.
