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I am obsessed with forming
healthy communities,

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and that's why I started Twitch --

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to help people watch other people
play video games on the internet.

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(Laughter)

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Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

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(Laughter)

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So in seriousness,

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video games and communities
truly are quite related.

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From our early human history,

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we made our entertainment
together in small tribes.

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We shared stories around the campfire,

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we sang together, we danced together.

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Our earliest entertainment
was both shared and interactive.

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It wasn't until pretty recently
on the grand scale of human history

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that interactivity took a back seat

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and broadcast entertainment took over.

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Radio and records brought music
into our vehicles, into our homes.

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TV and VHS brought sports and drama
into our living rooms.

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This access to broadcast entertainment
was unprecedented.

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It gave people amazing content
around the globe.

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It created a shared culture
for millions of people.

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And now, if you want to go watch
or listen to Mozart,

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you don't have to buy an incredibly
expensive ticket and find an orchestra.

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And if you like to sing --

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(Sings) I can show you the world --

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then you have something in common
with people around the world.

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But with this amazing access,

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we allowed for a separation
between creator and consumer,

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and the relationship between the two
became much more one-way.

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We wound up in a world where we had
a smaller class of professional creators

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and most of us became spectators,

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and as a result it became far easier
for us to enjoy that content alone.

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There's a trend counteracting this:

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scarcity.

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So, Vienna in the 1900s,
was famous for its café culture.

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And one of the big drivers
of that café culture

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was expensive newspapers
that were hard to get,

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and as a result,

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people would go to the café
and read the shared copy there.

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And once they're in the cafe,

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they meet the other people
also reading the same newspaper,

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they converse, they exchange ideas

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and they form a community.

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In a similar way,

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TV and cable used to be more expensive,

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and so you might not watch
the game at home.

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Instead you'd go to the local bar

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and cheer along with
your fellow sports fans there.

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But as the price of media continues
to fall over time thanks to technology,

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this shared necessity that used to bring
our communities together falls away.

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We have so many amazing options
for our entertainment,

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and yet it's easier than ever for us
to wind up consuming those options alone.

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Our communities
are bearing the consequences.

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For example,

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the number of people who report
having at least two close friends

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is at an all-time low.

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I believe that one of the major
contributing causes to this

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is that our entertainment today
allows us to be separate.

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There is one trend reversing
this atomization of our society:

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modern multiplayer video games.

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Games are like a shared campfire.

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They're both interactive and connecting.

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Now these campfires
may have beautiful animations,

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heroic quests,

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occasionally too many loot boxes,

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but games today are very different

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than the solitary activity
of 20 years ago.

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They're deeply complex,

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they're more intellectually stimulating,

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and most of all,
they're intrinsically social.

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One of the recent breakout genres
exemplifying this change

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is the battle royale.

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100 people parachute onto an island
in a last-man-standing competition.

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Think of it as being
kind of like "American Idol,"

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but with a lot more fighting
and a lot less Simon Cowell.

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You may have heard of "Fortnite,"

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which is a breakout example
of the battle royale genre,

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which has been played by more
than 250 million people around the world.

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It's everyone from kids
in your neighborhood

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to Drake and Ellen DeGeneres.

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2.3 billion people in the world
play video games.

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Early games like "Tetris" and "Mario"
may have been simple puzzles or quests,

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but with the rise of arcades
and then internet play,

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and now massively multiplayer games
of huge, thriving online communities,

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games have emerged
as the one form of entertainment

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where consumption truly requires
human connection.

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So this brings us to streaming.

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Why do people stream themselves
playing video games?

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And why do hundreds of millions
of people around the world

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congregate to watch them?

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I want you all the imagine for second --

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imagine you land on an alien planet,

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and on this planet,
there's a giant green rectangle.

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And in this green rectangle,

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aliens in matching outfits

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are trying to push a checkered
sphere between two posts

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using only their feet.

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It's pretty evenly matched,

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so the ball is just going back and forth,

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but there's hundreds of millions
of people watching from home anyway,

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and cheering and getting excited
and engaged right along with them.

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Now I grew up watching sports with my dad,

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so I get why soccer
is entertaining and engaging.

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But if you don't watch sports,

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maybe you like watching
"Dancing with the Stars"

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or you enjoy "Top Chef."

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Regardless, the principle is the same.

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If there is an activity
that you really enjoy,

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you're probably going to like
watching other people do it

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with skill and panache.

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It might be perplexing to an alien,

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but bonding over shared passion
is a human universal.

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So gamers grew up expecting
this live, interactive entertainment,

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and passive consumption
just doesn't feel as fulfilling.

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That's why livestreaming
has taken off with video games.

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Because livestreaming offers
that same kind of interactive feeling.

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So when you imagine
what's happening on Twitch,

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I don't want you to think
of a million livestreams of video games.

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Instead, what I want you to picture
is millions of campfires.

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Some of them are bonfires --

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huge, roaring bonfires with hundreds
of thousands of people around them.

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Some of them are smaller,
more intimate community gatherings

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where everyone knows your name.

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Let's try taking a seat
by one of those campfires right now.

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Hey Cohh, how's it going?

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Cohh: Hey, how's it going, Emmett?

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ES: So I'm here at TED
with about 1,000 of my closest friends,

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and we thought we'd come
and join you guys for a little stream.

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Cohh: Awesome! It's great
to hear from you guys.

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ES: So Cohh, can you share
with the TED audience here --

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what have you learned
about your community on Twitch?

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Cohh: Ah, man, where to begin?

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I've been doing this
for over five years now,

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and if there's one thing that doesn't
cease to impress me on the daily,

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it's just kind of how incredible
this whole thing is for communication.

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I've been playing games
for 20 years of my life,

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I've led online MMO guilds for over 10,

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and it's the kind of thing
where there's very few places in life

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where you can go to meet
so many people with similar interests.

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I was listening in a bit earlier;

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I love the campfire analogy,
I actually use a similar one.

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I see it all as a bunch of people
on a big couch

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but only one person has the controller.

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So it's kind of like
a "Pass the snack!" situation, you know?

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700 people that way --

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but it's great and really it's just --

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ES: So Cohh, what is going on
in chat right now?

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Can you explain that a little bit to us?

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Because my eyesight isn't that good
but I see a lot of emotes.

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Cohh: So this is my community;
this is the Cohhilition.

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I stream every single day.

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I actually just wrapped up
a 2,000-day challenge,

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and as such, we have developed
a pretty incredible community

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here in the channel.

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Right now we have
about 6200 people with us.

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What you're seeing is a spam
of "Hello, TED" good-vibe emotes,

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love emotes,

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"this is awesome,"

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"Hi, guys," "Hi, everyone."

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Basically just a huge
collection of people --

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huge collection of gamers

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that are all just experiencing
a positive event together.

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ES: So is there anything that --
can we poll chat?

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I want ask chat a question.

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Is there anything
that chat would like the world,

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and particularly these people
here with me at TED right now,

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to know about what they get
out of playing video games

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and being part of this community?

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Cohh: Oh, wow.

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I am already starting to see
a lot of answers here.

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"I like the good vibes."

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"Best communities are on Twitch."

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(Laughter)

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"They get us through
the rough patches in life."

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Oh, that's a message
I definitely see a lot on Twitch,

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which is very good.

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"A very positive community,"

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"a lot of positivity,"

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which is pretty great.

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ES: So Cohh, before I get back
to my TED talk,

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which I actually should probably
get back to doing at some point --

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(Laughter)

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Do you have anything else
that you want to share with me

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or any question you wanted to ask,

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you've always wanted
to get out there before an audience?

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Cohh: Honestly, not too much.

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I mean, I absolutely love
what you're doing right now.

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I think that the interactive streaming

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is the big unexplored frontier
of the future in entertainment,

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and thank you for doing
everything you're doing up there.

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The more people that hear
about what you do, the better --

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for everyone on here.

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ES: Awesome, Cohh. Thanks so much.

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I'm going to get back
to giving this talk now,

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but we should catch up later.

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Cohh: Sounds great!

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(Applause)

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ES: So that was a new way to interact.

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We could influence
what happened on the stream,

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we could cocreate
the experience along with him,

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and we really had a multiplayer experience
with chat and with Cohh.

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At Twitch, we've started calling this,

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as a result, "multiplayer entertainment."

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Because going from watching a video alone
to watching a live interactive stream

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is similar to the difference between
going from playing a single-player game

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to playing a multiplayer game.

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Gamers are often as the forefront
of exploration in new technology.

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Microcomputers, for example,
were used early on for video games,

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and the very first handheld, digital
mass-market devices weren't cell phones,

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they were Gameboys ...

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for video games.

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And as a result,

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one way that you can get a hint
of what the future might hold

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is to look to this fun, interactive
sandbox of video games

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and ask yourself,

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"what are these gamers doing today?"

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And that might give you a hint
as to what the future is going to hold

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for all of us.

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One of the things
we're already seeing on Twitch

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is multiplayer entertainment
coming to sports.

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So, Twitch and the NFL teamed up
to offer livestreaming football,

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but instead of network announcers
in suits streaming the game,

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we got Twitch users to come in

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and stream it themselves
on their own channel

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and interact with their community

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and make it a real multiplayer experience.

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So I actually think that if you
look out into the future --

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only hundreds of people today
get to be sports announcers.

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It's a tiny, tiny number of people
who have that opportunity.

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But sports are about to go multiplayer,

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and that means that anyone
who wants to around the world

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is going to get the opportunity
to become a sports announcer,

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to give it a shot.

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And I think that's going to unlock
incredible amounts of new talent

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for all of us.

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And we're not going to be asking,
"Did you catch the game?"

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Instead, we're going to be asking,

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"Whose channel did you catch the game on?"

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We already see this happening
with cooking, with singing --

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we even see people streaming welding.

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And all of this stuff is going to happen
around the metaphorical campfire.

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There's going to be millions
of these campfires lit

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over the next few years.

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And on every topic,

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you're going to be able to find a campfire

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that will allow you to bond
with your people around the world.

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For most of human history,

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entertainment was simply multiplayer.

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We sang together in person,

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we shared news together
in the town square in person,

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and somewhere along the way,

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that two-way conversation
turned into a one-way transmission.

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As someone who cares about communities,

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I am excited for a world

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where our entertainment
could connect us instead of isolating us.

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A world where we can bond with each other
over our shared interests

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and create real, strong communities.

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Games, streams and the interactions
they encourage,

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are only just beginning
to turn the wheel back

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to our interactive, community-rich,
multiplayer past.

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Thank you all for sharing
this experience here with me,

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and may you all find your best campfire.

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(Applause)