Social media and video has an interesting culture when it comes to people sharing their lives what started with people pushing images from phones to services such as Instragram and the webcam revolution with YouTube has become also a utopia for gamers. The proliferation of HDPVRs and capture cards have enabled console and PC gamers to record their own gameplay and share it easily on YouTube—many gamers do this on the video sharing site are called “gaming commentators.”

In a bid to embrace commentator culture and esports, Treyarch, developer of Black Ops 2, will be launching the game with built-in livestreaming tools on November 13. In a way, this may revolutionize the way that gamers currently share their gaming experience. As currently extra hardware (HDPVR or capture card) is needed to do that, the addition of these tools in Black Ops 2 will mean that ordinary players with sufficiently strong Internet connections can just flip a switch and go.

The tools will be available on the PS3, Xbox 360 and the PC—no special equipment will be needed. No doubt, this will change both the PC and console experience of recording/broadcasting and shows that the Internet-enabled aspect of bot the PS3 and the Xbox 360 has caught up sufficiently to the PC to make them fully Internet-respecting devices. We are certainly not surprised by the Xbox 360 in this regard; but having it available on the PS3 is quite a nice catch.

People now often record themselves playing games (and the Call of Duty franchise is one of the most common) and then record themselves talking about the game, random subjects, the news of the day, or just expressing themselves. Some even use capture cards to broadcasts on sites such as twitch.tv or YouTube streaming or Google Hangouts.

This introduction of tools delivers two features CODcasting and live streaming.

CODcasting: Bring your personal experience to the world via the web

“The CODcast feature is a special spectator mode that allows the player to take on the role of a game commentator,” writes the Treyarch FAQ on the subject. “Using the CODcast interface, the CODcaster has the ability to see all of the action in the game by switching between many different views, including a picture-in-picture mode that allows the player to toggle between the game camera and map top-down view. This is the same kind of functionality used by professional commentators on pro gaming circuits, and is now made available to Call of Duty® fans everywhere.”

This functionality will allow the streaming of a game and commenting on it (live or after-the-fact, or even a remote game) alongside tools that permit the caster to add elements to the display such as scoreboards, text, and more. It will essentially be a lot like being able to have a friend act as an announcer as you play who can watch the match and flip between different views.

I think of this as a gladiatorial or coliseum-to-livestream style feature.

It’s more likely that we’ll see this change the landscape of how YouTube videos are produced by commentators who play competitively in multiplayer as well as for people watching videos as they’re being produced.

Livestreaming: League Play taken to the next level—the spectator sport

“Live streaming is a feature that will be available in League Play and will allow players to broadcast gameplay from their perspective to viewers on the Internet.”

It should be noted that this sort of streaming will have a delay and commentary by the player will not be broadcast at the same time. In this way opponents cannot use the livestream in order to gain an advantage over competitors when it’s being played at the same time—the point is to share the POV experience of the player with an audience and give them a reason to play harder.

There is already a thriving community of gamers who play Call of Duty and similar games on YouTube who do something extremely similar. They both record their games (and upload their favorite matches) and sometimes get onto YouTube to livestream themselves playing both competitively and for fun.

Treyarch partnering with cloud streaming outfits?

Now that OnLive is off the table as a cloud gaming experience and Gaikai is hooking into Machinima content (a YouTube network well known for gaming footage as I’ve mentioned above) and Twitch.tv positioning themselves with esports, it’s easy to see that chances are we’ll be seeing a partnership appear between Activision or Treyarch (the publisher and developer of CoD) with someone to stream this.

No information has come out of Treyarch about who will be powering the CODcasting or livestreaming experience.

So far, my guess would be Twitch.tv would be a major contender; but a cloud-gaming outfit like Gaikai might just be thinking this is their chance to make it into the big time by offering their services to such a large and extremely popular community.