Video game streaming platform Twitch has risen to massive success, with its annual report for 2015 containing figures such as 241 billion minutes viewed for the year, equivalent to 459,366 years' worth of video, and average concurrent viewers of 550,000.
However, the multi-hour streams on Twitch, along with the long gameplay videos that can be seen on websites such as YouTube, are missing an entire demographic among video game enthusiasts. This gap is what new service Forge is looking to fill.
Contrary to the long viewing times on Twitch and YouTube, Forge, which is launching its beta version, will allow gamers to look for and share short clips of video games.
"I'm not a great gamer; there are some cool things I want to do that I want to save for myself," explained Forge CEO Jared Kim on the inspiration behind the new service.
Such things could include initiating funny glitches, landing massive combos or slaying a boss in record time. Previously, gamers did not have an option of being able to go back to these moments to share them with their friends.
However, with the development of quad-core PCs and high-powered graphics cards, the ability to capture and share these moments is now possible. Forge will provide gamers with a service to utilize the capabilities of today's systems without placing too much stress on the PC.
Forge works by recording the gamer's whole session while running in the background. Once a moment that the user wants to share happens in the game, hitting the F6 button will bookmark the moment without the user having to exit the game. After the user is finished playing, accessing Forge will show all the bookmarked video game clips, and the user can then choose which ones to share. There is a time limit of 5 seconds to 30 seconds for each video, which ensures that the moment is not lost in lots of other footage.
Forge will be continuously recording the previous 60 seconds of a gaming session, which will be taking up a 10 GB cache. However, the simplicity of the service could not be denied, as it is able to do what it promises in a very uncomplicated manner.
Currently, Forge only allows users to share their videos on the service's website and on Twitter. The company is looking to add Facebook as an option in the future. There are ways to share video clips on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, but currently Forge is focused on PC games.
