Online giant to launch app, site dedicated to gaming
By Derrik J. Lang, Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) --YouTube is seeking to win over gamers.
The online video giant announced plans ahead of next week's Electronic Entertainment Expo to launch a separate app and site specifically for fans of video games.
YouTube product manager Alan Joyce said in a statement Friday that YouTube Gaming will be a destination for users to find gaming videos, live streams and Internet personalities. The app and site will feature individual pages dedicated to more than 25,000 games.
Joyce noted that if a user began searching for the word "call" on the YouTube Gaming app, the military shooter "Call of Duty," not the Carly Rae Jepsen tune "Call Me Maybe" would appear first.
YouTube will also seek to make it easier for users to broadcast live and competitive gaming, known as e-sports, by creating singular links that can be shared and removing the need to schedule a broadcast.
"When I look at where YouTube is weaker in the gaming content space, I think live and e-sports," said Ryan Wyatt, YouTube's global head of gaming content, in an interview last month. "In the coming weeks, you're going to see us make improvements to our live product, and we do want to invest in e-sports from a content perspective. In some ways, it's still nascent, but there is something to say about the future of e-sports, and we definitely want to be part of it."
The move by Google-owned YouTube takes direct aim at Twitch, the gaming-centric streaming video site acquired by Amazon last year for nearly $1 billion. While YouTube remains the dominant online video site, Twitch has solidified itself over the past three years as a destination to stream gameplay from such titles as "League of Legends" and "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive." Twitch now boasts 100 million users who watch 1.5 million broadcasters a month.
YouTube Gaming is scheduled to debut this summer in the U.S. and U.K. The app and site will be previewed at YouTube's booth on the E3 show floor beginning Tuesday.
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More