Game Rant recently had the chance to sit down with Amber Howard, the new Head of Talent at TalentX Gaming (TXG), a collaboration between esports leader ReKTGlobal and TalentX Entertainment. Howard has worked in traditional talent management at the NFL, and branched out into gaming and digital entertainment with Machinima before continuing to work with esports pros and A-list streamers into the present. We had countless questions about content creation, diversity in esports and streaming, and the future of gaming entertainment, but one point about thefall of Mixerand its effects on one of the most inspiring up-and-coming entertainers in gaming struck a chord.
Soleil Wheeler, known online as Ewok, is a 14-year-old streamer, the first female player ever signed to the prominent esports org FaZe Clan, and participated in theFortniteWorld Cup, all while being one of the most successful deaf content creators in gaming. In November of 2019, she jumped ship from Twitch to stream exclusively on Microsoft’s streaming platform Mixer, a platform which will now shut down permanently as of July 22. Of course, Ewok’s success isn’t contingent on the existence of any one streaming platform, but Howard, Ewok’s manager, pointed out some details which indicate that Mixer’s downfall might mean a setback in accessibility for streaming as a whole.
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In Gaming, You’re Never Too Big to Fail
One of the first questions posed to Howard was about her predictions for the future of esports and content creation. She was firm on the fact that it won’t go anywhere and will only expand, but also pointed out that “content creation and streaming is still very much the wild wild west.” In her view, content creation will become more mainstream and continue to rapidly grow, as indicated byFacebook, Youtube, and Twitch’s consistent large-scale efforts to gain more content creators to feed demand for quality content. This also brought up the topic of Mixer’s shutdown in the face of such overwhelming competition.
It’s unfortunate. I had creators who were growing and finding a home on Mixer who are now out of a platform. Mixer really did have some amazing tools for streaming and accessibility that we found extremely useful- specifically for Ewok. It’s a tough lot, but in gaming you’re never too big to fail.
Microsoft partnered with Facebook Gamingto slowly transition all of its creators to Facebook’s platform before the Mixer shutdown, but this still represents a major setback for those who were just beginning to build burgeoning communities on the platform. This only serves to illustrate the double edged sword that is such a rapidly-changing industry: there is untold room for innovation and success, but even giants like Microsoft can fail if it places the wrong bets. Later on in the interview, Howard delved further into the specifics of Ewok’s relationship with Mixer.
Mixer and Ewok’s Drive for Hard-of-Hearing Accessibility
Near the end of our questions, Game Rant asked Howard how much potential she sees for content creators to change the way that games are made. She responded simply that it depends on the creator; for a content creator to really change a game and its community they have to not only be a large influence, but also be unique and have real value to add. She used the example of Ewok to show how muchone streamer can change the industry.
Soleil, Ewok, is one of those cases. There are so many platforms that are interested in hearing from her, and we were working on a big initiative with Mixer to make the platform more accessible for hard-of-hearing and deaf people like her. [Not only that, but] Xbox… cloud… there was tons of development that they wanted to involve her in, in addition to games…. she’d love to be able to play many games on launch but they don’t have accessibility features. It took Fortnite a few years before they added visual cues to make it easier for people like her. If there could bemore collaboration with people with disabilities… it would be beneficial for everyone.
While Mixer may not have been able to draw the numbers to compete with its rivals, it’s clear that the platform was making some very important strides to improve streaming as a whole. As Howard suggested though, there is far more toMicrosoft’s drive for accessibilitythan just its streaming platform, and plenty of other major industry players may be looking to innovate in similar directions. We can only hope that in the future, other platforms put in the time and effort to accommodate for all types of gamers, and facilitate the success of pioneering content creators like Ewok. For now, we can only lament the loss of a promising platform and continue to look forward to the potential of many others.
