UPDATED 16:15 EDT / DECEMBER 02 2015

NEWS

Twitch encourages users to “co-stream” upcoming industry events

Twitch will soon be airing live coverage of two major upcoming video game industry events, The Game Awards 2015 and PlayStation Experience 2015, and the popular game livestreaming says that it wants its regular users to be able to participate with their own coverage, even if they can’t actually attend the events in person.

“We’re excited to announce how to watch these events on Twitch,” the site said on its blog, “but equally excited to announce to our broadcasters and community that we are bringing back ‘co-streaming!’ ”

Co-streaming is a form of live commentary that Twitch first tested out at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). It allows users to stream their own content on top of streaming video from another source, namely the official streaming sources for live events.

“All Twitch broadcasters have our official blessing to capture content (this week only) from The Game Awards (twitch.tv/thegameawards) and PlayStation Experience (twitch.tv/playstation) for use on their own channels,” Twitch explained. “This could be a simple rebroadcast session with your fans and community, or you can even provide your own commentary on top of the broadcast.”

Is co-streaming really that useful?

While co-streaming is certainly an interesting way for the average Twitch user to participate in major events, we discovered during our own E3 co-stream that the feature does not work particularly well for the type of press conference format most of the events used.

During our stream, we found that it was almost impossible to talk during the events because we would have to talk over the presenters, and it was only after the official streams ended that we could actually have any kind of meaningful discussion about it.

Obviously, this defeated the purpose of co-streaming during E3 in the first place, and it seems likely that the streams for The Game Awards 2015 and PlayStation Experience 2015 will be more or less the same.

So if all you want to do is make snarky comments under your breath like you are in high school again (we all did that, right?), then co-streaming may be for you. Otherwise, you might as well watch the official streams during the events and save your own content for afterwards.

Screenshot via Twitch.tv

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