“Where do you watch live gameplay?”
Twitch used to be the go-to answer. But if you ask a gamer now, it is probably TikTok or Facebook Live instead as more people consume media in vertical format.
The traditional live streaming platform saw massive growth in viewership during the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020 as people were forced to stay at home and turned to watching live streams to keep being entertained.
The success is short-lived, however, as many livestream hosts have left Twitch after the new revenue share policy reduces their income significantly and its competitors become more attractive with higher payout rate and more potential audience to reach.
TikTok, with more than one billion monthly active users worldwide, stands out as a rising social media service for content creators to gain engagement. According to an analysis by Sensor Tower, users spent an average of 95 minutes consuming content on TikTok in 2022, beating other mobile social media apps and matching that of Twitch.
In 2021, the New York Times revealed an internal document which tells non-technical employees at TikTok the algorithm is optimised to increase retention and time spent on the platform, showing the company’s interest to dominate the video on demand market.
“TikTok is very good at organically promoting you if you’re doing the right things and constantly engaging with your audience,” Peter Webby, a streamer on TikTok with over 25,000 followers, says.
“Everyone is talking about an algorithm, but it really comes down to whether people are talking in your stream, interacting with you by tapping and liking your contents and are you having back and forth with your audience.
“We all know on TikTok, most people only give attention to a clip for half a second before they switch over to the next thing. If you can engage someone for more than that half a second, you’re already winning.”
Desktop games are usually designed in landscape orientation to fit on a widescreen monitor and offer an immersive gaming experience with more viewing area.
However, content creators can still set up their streaming layout in a way to adapt to watching live gameplay vertically on a mobile phone, which now accounts for nearly 60% of web traffic in the latest DataReportal’s statshot report.
Meanwhile, Meta is encouraging influencers to create and publish videos vertically as the updated video player on Facebook now defaults to vertical format, despite showing a landscape video.
“In terms of techniques, it’s very similar to live streaming horizontally,” Chris, who goes by Tigzy on social media and has a small, yet active community on Discord, says.
“There’re certain tricks you’ll learn when you’re live streaming in vertical format. I sometimes experiment with multiple cameras when I stream on TikTok.”
He typically positions the webcam overlay on the upper half of the canvas while the gameplay window is on the bottom half, alongside captions in highlight clips as people are increasingly watching videos while their phones are on mute.
Compared to a typical horizontal streaming layout, in which the camera output is typically located at a corner, vertical layout allows content creators to show their faces in larger size without obstructing gameplay.
“Most contents nowadays are consumed vertically. I think potentially it won’t be long until some games are released in vertical format,” Peter says.
“Who knows? One day, we might be in a place where it’s standard to have a monitor that swivels to play games of different aspect ratios.”
It is actually a phenomenon happening now thanks to the rise of mobile gaming, which gaming market data firm Newzoo says accounted for nearly half of revenues generated in 2023.
Some of the top grossing mobile games are designed to be played vertically, such as legendary endless runners Temple Run and Subway Surfers, as well as Uma Musume: Pretty Derby, a horse-racing simulation game ranking fourth on Google Play Store and 15th on App Store in Japan.
Streamers on landscape streaming platforms have to be creative with layout should they feature these games to avoid letterboxing, a headache which streamers on vertical streaming platforms do not need to worry about.
“Vertical live streaming is still in its infancy,” Chris says, “but the technology will grow with it and it’ll get better as time goes on.”
