The Future is Gaming!

Wow, I just watched part of a 24 hour live gaming session by a gamer who goes by the name of DrLupo on Twitch.tv. If you haven’t heard of Twitch, no worries, you will. Jeff Bezos bought the platform for a ridiculous sum of money but he will make even a larger ridiculous sum of money as it eventually overtakes and consumes all traditional media outlets like broadcast tv, netflix, disney, etc. It’s insane to think about but it will happen.

Why? Because it levels the playing field, literally for everyone. And the coolest part of the thing I just watched – it was all for charity. Over $600k raised in 24 hours for St. Jude’s Children’s hospital. Amazing, wonderful, feel good stuff; people want to be a part of things bigger than themselves. Gaming does that.

Think about it; in the past only Kings had Armies to protect them, fight for them and take over as much of the world as possible. Humans managed to stay survive, become “civilized” and yet two World Wars broke out. Humans managed to find some peace and keep from Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) of the Cold War – so far. But men, and I do mean men as a gender in general, like to fight, like to dominate, and more importantly protect those they love. (Yes, this is extremely sexist but I’m not saying this is a bad trait in men, just that it’s more dominant in men backed by history and statistics.) So get off the soap box; it just is. It’s my blog, I’ll say what I want.

Anyways, individual men or women can no longer raise armies so instead they own professional sport franchises. Only the very rich, who’ve made their billions elsewhere can afford a franchise and there are only a few franchises available. This scarcity increases value. They literally buy the most elite athletes and use them as surrogates in battle; just like the Kings and Queens of olden days. If you don’t agree with that analogy; that’s just the business model.

So why am I suddenly so intrigued by gaming and the whole new empire building? Well, the potential economic gains are ginormous! DrLupo’s live feed was watched by over 60k people at any one time and potentially 48 million! Think about that – a guy in his house, playing video games gets more eyeballs on him than many ‘professional’ sports events. Gaming events are taking over stadiums and 100k in attendance is not unusual. Did I mention he raised over $600k in less than 24 hours?

So now the challenge, at least for me and hopefully others, is to figure out how to use this all for good instead of evil. And why is it so highly male dominated? And how can we use this to benefit education? and space exploration? Yes, my goals are not very transparent but at least they are benevolent.

Thank you DrLupo for choosing good.

More soon as I start this journey.