Skip to main content

Plays.tv Wants To Be Instagram For Games

"Dear Google, please buy us. Love, Raptr."

The company behind Raptr, AKA that thing that lets you know every time someone in the world is playing Red Faction, has come out with a new site that's basically Instagram for recording and sharing game clips. It's great news for the Kardashians of the alternate Sliders dimension where they all work for GameSpot.

Plays.tv is basically Twitch for the work-about gamer on the go who just wants the instant satisfaction of watching footage of dudes teabag each other in video games. In other words it's a short-form video streaming service, or at least that's what the people behind Raptr are calling it.

"Twitch is synchronous, long-form and one-to-many -- only about 1 percent of Twitch users are streaming their gameplay, and being a successful 'broadcaster' on Twitch requires both a time commitment and a skill set that not all gamers have; you have to be entertaining for long periods of time,” Raptr founder and CEO Dennis Fong told Gamasutra the other day.

“Plays.tv, by contrast, is asynchronous, short-form, and anyone can be a creator/contributor. Every gamer's memorable moments are interesting, especially if they're distilled down to just the best parts..."

The new service is in beta right now, but it has its own site and client, and can process video taken with various capturing software. Is this better than YouTube?

Read this next

Emily Gera avatar
Emily Gera is a former journalist who contributed to The Guardian, Polygon and Rock Paper Shotgun. She is now a senior writer at Larian.
View comments (9)
Related topics

Rock Paper Shotgun is better when you sign in

Sign in and join us on our journey to discover strange and compelling PC games.