On Sunday afternoon, around 2 pm, Ludwig Ahgren, a Twitch streamer in Los Angeles, turned on his camera and started broadcasting. He didn’t stop.
For the past five days, Ahgren has maintained an almost constant live broadcast of his life. He plays video games, talks, cooks, eats and sleeps, all online. At night, it offers movie nights with its viewers. Mr. Ahgren lives with five roommates and his girlfriend, and some of them also play a role on camera, helping him to cook or work out together.
He even spilled himself in the shower (in shorts).
All of this is part of what is known on Twitch as a “sub-zone”. A sub-zone is a short period of time in which a streamer engages in certain activities or stunts to accumulate paid subscriptions on his channel. Some streamers set numerical goals. For example, if they reach 2,000 new subscribers, they’ll either eat something spicy on camera or play a particular game for fans.
Ahgren, 25, has structured his sub-zone so that each new signature adds another 10 seconds to a watch that determines how long it will transmit. When Mr. Ahgren set things up this way, he imagined he would be broadcasting for a maximum of 24 hours, maybe 48. Five days later, his sub-stream stream exploded and became the main stream on Twitch, driving tens of thousands of new subscriptions. daily, as fans pay to see how long he can go. He has won over 40,000 new subscriptions since streaming began.
“The strangest thing is that every time I wake up, it feels like it gets bigger and bigger,” said Ahgren. “Last night, I went to bed with 30,000 viewers and 60,000 subscribers. I woke up and had 70,000 viewers and 70,000 subscribers. “
That’s because, while Ahgren sleeps, an army of fans works overtime to maximize their subscribers. They chat and play YouTube clips and videos for each other to keep the channel fun. Ahgren’s name appeared on Twitter twice in the past week, both times while he was sleeping.
“At night, the rest of us make his content for him,” said a 21-year-old college student who serves for Happygate and serves as one of Ahgren’s moderators. “We try to keep everyone excited and highly motivated to see this continue as long as possible.”
“Sleep flows have been really interesting,” said Stephen Seaver, 15, a high school student in Georgia. “Basically, what happens are his mods” – short for moderators – “get a call from Discord and they’re calling and talking all the time, changing their mind for subs. The idea is to be funny, while he sleeps the timer increases. “
Sleep streams became popular during the pandemic on Twitch and TikTok, where fans say they like the nightly pop-up communities that sleep streams facilitate. Breeders like them because they are able to literally make money while they sleep.
“I fell asleep on the broadcast last night and became the most watched transmitter on Twitch,” Mr. Ahgren tweeted on Monday. “What the hell is that?” Later on Monday night, Twitch wished Mr. Ahgren “Goodnight”From his official Twitter account.
Twitch, which has been owned by Amazon since 2014, saw a rapid increase in popularity last year. The site had already expanded from a place where players could stream their Fortnite and Call of Duty game to a broader platform that included lifestyle, cuisine and political flows. The coronavirus pandemic accelerated this growth as people trapped in the home sought entertainment online.
Erin Wayne, head of community marketing and creator of Twitch, said channels like Ahgren’s are becoming more common on the platform. “It’s the idea of multiplayer entertainment, where the community is able to impact the content that a creator makes, will continue to grow in popularity,” she said. “The person who consumes the content can directly impact and, in some cases, dictate what happens in the content they consume. It is so inherently unique on Twitch. I think that’s why these types of marathons or subscriber flows are so popular. “
Ahgren’s stream can be seen as an extension of the tendency of creators to monetize more and more parts of their lives, from daily decisions about what to eat or wear to who to hang out with. Streams like his can generate a deeper connection with fans, who see the sub-area as a collective experience of the community.
“No matter what time of day you tune in, his stream is up and running, and you’ll see a lot of familiar faces in the chat,” wrote Nathan Grayson, a game reporter, on Kotaku. “It’s only been running for three days, but it already feels like comforting food.”
It was that kind of comfort and connection that Mr. Seaver said that attracted him. “Even though the stream content may not be particularly special, it is the fact that you are all part of this community watching this really rare event,” he said. “You can watch Ludwig’s entire life for days. It’s not good for him, but you get a lot of content out of it and you, as a community, got together and were able to see it happen. “
As a result, more and more people have been able to make a living from streaming on the full-time platform, with a handful of the streamers who earn the most by earning more than $ 1 million a year, according to a September study by online lender CashNetUS.
Twitch’s growth reflects the general boom in the gaming industry in 2020. Requests to stay home combined with the launch of a new generation of video game consoles from Microsoft and Sony in November led to a financial bonanza; players spent a record $ 56.9 billion last year in the United States, an increase of 27% over 2019, according to the NPD Group.
Although Ahgren has already made six digits outside his line, he encouraged his young fans to be responsible with their money. “I was just saying to them, ‘Hey, don’t use your stimulus to control me,'” he said. “Make sure your bread is right before you distribute it.”
No one knows how long Mr. Ahgren can last. Other Twitch streamers have been streaming relatively continuously for more than 31 days, but Ahgren said he couldn’t imagine that things would get to that point.
He has a trip coming in to visit his girlfriend’s family within a week, several hours north, so he hopes things will be over before that. Otherwise, he will have to find a way to take his stream to the road. “I think it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” said Ahgren of his stream. “I’m kind of excited every day to wake up because it will never happen to me again.”
Kellen Browning contributed reports.