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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)