Plays.tv, the free video-sharing service for gamers, has garnered over ten million active monthly users in their first year—rivaling the popularity and engagement of photo-sharing site, Instagram. This growing social platform attracts over four million content creators per month; from high-profile eSports champions to casual gamers playing with friends. The result is a staggering 1.6 billion minutes of gameplay footage recorded—per month.
Proof of concept
Launched in 2015, Plays.tv is owned and operated by Raptr, a PC-gaming service founded by Dennis “Thresh” Fong; recognized as the first professional gamer. One would presume that Raptr’s own community—ten million strong—would account for Plays.tv’s impressive first year, but in a phone interview with [a]listdaily, Fong revealed a surprising revelation. Not only did their small company spend less than $15,000 on marketing the new website, they decided to keep Raptr as separate as possible.
“In the first year, we did a pretty minimal amount of promotion within Raptr for Plays.tv.” Dennis Fong told [a]listdaily. “We’ve been stepping it up probably in the last maybe 30-45 days—but in the first year, one of the things that we really wanted to do was to prove that Plays.tv could be successful as a stand-alone service—that it could have viral and organic growth of its user base and viewership on its own. So actually we really didn’t do any promotion of Plays.tv, especially in the first, probably ten months. I definitely wouldn’t say that Plays.tv is successful because of Raptr, but obviously once we proved that it was a service that gamers loved, then we started promoting it into Raptr.”
Fulfilling a need
Plays.tv is a free service that allows PC video game players to capture and share memorable clips from their own gameplay or others’ on the internet through a Chrome plug-in. The software automatically detects and tags players featured in the clip, as well as other search-worthy criteria like playable characters, type of kill or map. Users on Plays.tv will automatically have these clips added to their profiles for all to see. The video clips, averaging 30 seconds in length, get right to the point for easy consumption. According to Dennis Fong, the site is “really a video storytelling platform that enables gamers to share their stories the way they want.”
Unexpected Applications
“Because we have [automatic player tagging],” Fong added, “A vast majority of eSports pros in League of Legends use Plays.tv. We don’t sponsor them, but they use it for a reason that we didn’t quite intend, which is to actually analyse their play.”
Unlike other video recording software, each game recorded with Plays.tv is separated by session and automatically highlights play by plays for easy review. Fong adds, “A lot of top teams have told us, ‘this is actually our number one most important coaching and analysis tool.'”
What’s next
The Plays.tv platform has now been launched publicly, extending game share possibilities to developers. The Game Events API lets any game provide real-time metadata to Plays.tv, enabling automated video highlights for players after every game. The Web API gives developers direct access to Plays.tv’s video library, enabling anyone to embed the videos or create entire applications around Plays.tv videos, with options to pull feeds filtered by game, characters, hashtags, usernames, and more.
While PC gamers take advantage of this thriving online community, console gamers will have to wait. “We’re pretty much squarely focused on PC at this time,” Fong explained, “I don’t see us moving toward consoles in the near future.”
