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Twitch the global gaming platform: Watch or Play? Are there any educational activities?

Worksite - Linking the connection of Knowledge and Twitch

The Twitch platform offers the ability of both being an educational and entertaining environment. Even though the predominant focus is around gaming, there are many opportunities to extrapolate "gaming" functionalities and applying them to any industry. As it relates to the problem of practice, the Twitch platform serves as a great example of how to approach managing and disseminating knowledge within a particular setting. Similar to Twitch, the worksite requires strong collaboration, interaction, and engagement from various virtual communities that are being supported by the users. Case in point, the idea of the community of gamers which is able to bring people from all over the world together around common causes such as learning (for example, gaming walkthroughs), fun, and entertainment. Indeed, there is merit in establishing something similar within our localize context. In our environment, we would replicate to the point of creating a learning community of experts. In addition, gamification has been promoted as a significant "game-changer" for institutions in driving interest with younger employees to participate and interact with learning and knowledge management in the organization. Finally, as a way of ensuring greater community engagement, there are options for users to chat on the platform. While we have something similar in the worksite, we can definitely explore ways of integrating more relevant links and resources in the experience on the internal chat feature.


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Gamification in organizations


An observation - Twitch changing how we view education

This Twitch observation was completed on April 7, 2020, by the research practitioner. The platform has been around for several years before its recent acquisition by Amazon (and you surely experience the marketing engine while on the platform). The platform is mainly used by gamers who engage in user-generated content. Gamers from all over the globe would either upload or live stream their content on the site. Upon loading the site, you are able to quickly Find Live Streamers...which is about having fun on Twitch. To assist with the exploration, there are filters by tags that I was able to use in finding both Educational Games and Card & Board Game. Clearly from the identification of educational tagging, they do consider themselves as a platform for learning and entertainment for their users.


Since this is user-generated content, I found that the tagging of games through the categories feature appears to be done "willy-nilly" by anyone. This means anyone would have been able to categorize an item on the platform as educational material when in actuality it might not be the case. Honestly, I was not entirely sure of the standards that are used on the platform to control what can be tagged appropriately or not. For example, Sonic the Hedgehog was classified as both being an educational game and action. What was alarming too, the tagging of the educational game was extremely small, maybe I could have counted them using my ten fingers, and still have some to spare. This begs the question, what is the definition of an educational game? Are there criteria that each game must meet before using the tag? I was left somewhat disappointed in my quest for these answers.

As I continue the observation, the Chat room on Twitch appears to be open for any permissible conversation. On trying the Sonic "educational game" I was greeted with ads from Amazon Prime (talking about the power of marketing) in the midst of my learning experience. While scanning through the platform, I came across this stream whereby one gamer was complaining that they have been playing for the past 12 hours and needed to sleep. Personally, as an entertainment and educational platform, they do have the responsibility to encourage all their users to practice healthy and safe habits. Maybe this is something that they would want to focus on through generating warning messages and even blocking users who are streaming continuously without taking proper breaks. Finally, I found that the foul language used in chat rooms were offensive and inappropriate for younger viewers who might have been there for the learning experience.


From an educational standpoint, there is a community built around the gaming and learning experience on the platform. Many would argue that gaming form not only an entertainment asset but also provide the ability of educational practices to be enhanced through cognitive skills, reasoning, communication, collaboration, to strategy (or at least figuring out your moves). On continuing the trend of trying to figure out the learning element, I when over to a live channel on "Learn Guitar", and within less than a minute into the listening as a participant, the host started using curse words. This seems to be a common way of speaking within these virtual communities and might not be suitable for younger audiences. Outside of the defined and limited educational game categories, there were more active channels available. These had viewership ranging in thousands. At the time of this observation, it was 12 am PST, and one of these channels "League of Legends" seems to be hosting an actual competition. It was a live campaign taking place with strong community conversations streaming at a speed that I would barely comprehend.

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Twitch

Aside from the live streaming capability, there were recorded videos available with walkthrough instructions along with tips and tricks. For instance, one game known as Mass Effect: Andromeda had one video on the platform that was over eight hours long. The tagging that was placed on this by the user stated "backseat gaming allowed, casual playthrough, blind playthrough, let's play". Let us be clear here, this video was created within the last 17 hours prior to me checking it out. You can only imagine the hundreds of hours of videos available for the same game. I basically gave up after attempting to scroll through the list only to spend a couple of minutes, and still hadn't clocked out of the last six months ago range.

I do realize that individuals who participate in the platform as part of a learning experience for them. While others would frown upon Twitch being classified as an educational site, it did qualify as such. Certainly, people are visiting because they have an interest and desire to learn something about their game of interest. Maybe they are stuck and unable to beat that last stage or level. In joining the community of gamers around the world, they can get pointers and guidance on how to overcome that difficulty. The active online chat facilitates real-time communication and collaboration with gamers who have a common interest. Generally speaking, there are definitely opportunities to improve the experience especially around the chat and the language controls.

Readings - Scaling up Excellence

As I read the Scaling up Excellence, it reminds me about the challenges that organizations such as Twitch and my own confront every single day on scaling up operations while responding to the changes within a competitive landscape. For example, Twitch realizing that they were being beaten by Mixer, another gaming platform, quickly sort refuge in the arms of Amazon. Likewise, in my own worksite, there are learnings from the text that resonate. Scaling up is not a walk in the park, rather it depends on strong leadership, management, accountability, replication, and adaptability for organizational development and growth. In building a community, we are reminded that “Picking people who will jump at the chance to live the new mindset—and sidelining or even firing those who resist such change—is often the first step to scaling up a new mindset” (Sutton et al., 2014, p.91).


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Scaling Up Excellence

The following are snippets from the text ‘Scaling up Excellence’ which serves as a gentle reminder for understanding what success looks like vs. failure across numerous institutions and organizations around the world.


Successes

  • IKEA - adjusting to the Asian (China) market to accommodate that demographic

  • Cheesecake Factory's - 160 restaurants with the same menu but flexibility in the kitchen for a freshly cooked meal

  • IDEO

  • Facebook. Willingness to encourage people to fail fast and learn. Emboldened by the boot camp mindset to teach and learn the culture

  • Four Seasons drives from consistency and passion in customer experience

  • Joie de Vivre hotel chain - Buddhist strategy to expand the business

  • KFC (Yum!) thriving in China. Willingness to adjust the menu to accommodate the local taste

  • In-N-Out Burger and See's Candies - replications p.52

  • Intel - After Copy Exactly, and flexible in adjusting to increase yield rates

  • McDonald's - French fries the same around the globe. Bottom-up innovations

  • Girl Scouts of Norther California - modified the Thrive program…less school / classroom fashion

  • University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) - and improvement on drug doses. Drug treatment errors reduced

  • Pixar - controlling their films, rejecting the partners except Disney

  • Procter & Gamble - joining up with competitors to tackle the market p.52

  • Kaiser Permanente (KP HealthConnect) - journey on scaling around electronic record systems p.56

  • Stanford graduates and undergrads wearing helmets on campus p.67

  • JetBlue - IROP, pink sticky, and growth mindset. Ability to bring people together and deal with complex problems p.76

  • Institute for Health Improvement (IHI) - reduced preventable deaths in hospitals. Naming the problem is important in solving and finding solutions

  • Ford - create one Ford by naming the problem. Working together for a common and united cause in the company

  • Chrysler - fear of failure resulted in a slow turnaround. Restoring pride and confidence p.89

  • Ogilvy & Mather ad agency. Turn around the company due to new perspective and attitude p.93

Failures

  • Home Depot in China DIY. Refusal on adjusting to accommodate the tradition and market

  • Packaging company with 2444 franchise stores failed whenever moved away from their core business

  • Stanford's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design - design thinking failed with the Asians audience (Yusuke's flex)

  • Americans prisoners of war - rigid hierarchy and more death due to lack of flexibility

  • Xerox's European operation (Rank Xerox) - lacked leader support and buy-in. No template for replication

  • Stanford University and the implementation of Oracle Financial - CTO resigned after one year of big bang disaster

  • John Bentley's fancy restaurant - problems with managing the second restaurant. Issues with scaling.

  • Bristol Hospital - babies died due to the learning curve

  • Walmart - problems in launching in Germany. Management arrogance and lack of market understanding

  • Johns Hopkins Hospital - negligent in preventable death of a child. Adopting the practices of IHI

  • British Airways (BA) after BA admitted to a “dirty tricks” campaign which impacted another rival airline. P.83

  • West Coast gas stations. Teams don’t address customers complaints

  • Google. Failed experiment of firing the middle managers


Referenced from the Scaling up Excellence, 2014


Integration & Applicability

Scaling is about being able to branch out with a specific solution. There are definitely pros/cons associated with scaling up. Many companies have attempted scaling ventures leading some failures while others have seen successes. Both Twitch and Scaling up Excellence provide great examples of changing the mindset of a community to get things done. In addition, we need to continue assessing the need to instill proper accountability while ensuring that everyone is clear on not passing the buck from one individual to the next.


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