Some folks like to watch other folks play video games. A lot. That’s why Amazon paid a billion dollars to acquire game streaming company Twitch last year, and it’s why Google launched a new service this summer called YouTube Gaming.

While YouTube Gaming may be the newcomer, Google’s got a bit of experience with streaming video… and now the company has rolled out a major update for the YouTube Gaming app for Android.

Among other things, it lets stream their mobile gaming sessions live over the internet, so anyone can watch you smash birds into pigs… or something.

youtube gaming2

In addition to streaming gameplay over the internet, you can also capture audio and video using your phone’s mic and front-facing camera, allowing you to provide commentary while you play.

Want to capture a video of your gaming session without live-streaming it? You can do that too.

Recording and live streaming requires Android 5.0 or later.

Google says other updates include faster discovery of live streams, support for tipping your favorite gamers with “Fan Funding,” and a Watch Later feature for bookmarking.

Users can also now import existing YouTube subscriptions.

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10 replies on “Now you can watch other people play Android games (YouTube Gaming)”

  1. with the wait times forced upon you after an attack or build. it will be a very boring watch alright.

  2. Okay… I understood when people said they would rather watch than play games because they are expensive. That at least made sense.

    But android games are mostly free!! Jeez I do not understand this trend. The streamers themselves are obnoxious and uneducated. What they do is not special, it takes no talent. Yes, I am jealous.

    1. It makes little sense in any scenario. Game porn? Really makes me wonder about the intelligence of the human race.

      1. It makes as much sense as watching mindless TV or reading a Dan Brown novel, or spending hours trawling the internet, or making snarky comments that almost nobody will ever read…

        Oh wait…

        Damn…

        1. Mindless TV I’ll give you, but even a trashy novel would be more intellectually stimulating than this. Even snarky comments are more intellectually stimulating.

      2. As opposed to watching baseball or football or basketball or …

        1. Those are professionals doing something that nobody else in the world can do, and they’ve trained their whole lives.

          Not some idiot screaming at angry birds and being annoying af.

          1. People watch all kinds of sports – professional and non. Video gaming is something a single person can do and film themselves quite easily. Probably if teams of less-than-pro sports-ball players filmed themselves and streamed it they would get viewers.
            Of course for game streamers who get large numbers of views it is more about their personality or expertise and that’s a whole different ballgame, if you’ll excuse the double-dipping of metaphor.
            At the end of the day it hardly feels right to single out people who like to watch others play games online when you have people by the millions tuning in to see what the Kardashians do/say.

    2. It’s not about the game, it’s about the streamer — i.e. the person playing the game. Of course, you have to find the game at least somewhat interesting, but the most successful streamers will get viewers no matter what they’re playing (within reason).

      The most popular games on Twitch have dozens of streamers at any one time, but very few have of them have more than a handful of viewers, and it’s always the same few that get the eyeballs night after night. NBC discovered years ago that sports coverage was all about the personalities — especially when it comes to covering the Olympics. Get people invested in the personalities in the sports (or arts, music, TV shows, etc.) then they’re hooked. Streamers are no different.

      By the way, you’re caricature of streamers being obnoxious and uneducated is flat out wrong. There are some who are like that, sure, (they pander to the worst excesses of the “bro” culture) but the majority of successful streamers are well educated and are certainly not obnoxious. Probably the most successful Hearthstone streamer (a game you can play on Android) over the last two years is “Trump” (Jeffrey Shih). He’s an NYU graduate and I challenge you to find anything obnxious about him.

      Streaming is a business, and very few unintelligent and obnoxious people find success doing it.

      1. “and very few unintelligent and obnoxious people find success doing it”

        I am not going to go through the trouble of citing sources, but I entirely disagree.

        I have only ever once seen a streamer that did not meet those two characteristics, and he was not successful.

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