Teaching on Twitch was a mild disaster for one games professor

Robert Yang has just said the magic number. Twitch chat suddenly has an echo, and it sounds like “nice.” Yang, a developer and New York University Game Center professor, is teaching a course about the sociology of streaming and Twitch by streaming on Twitch, with mixed results. “69 is the weed drug number,” one person helpfully declares. (420 is the weed drug number; 69 is the sex number.)

Anyway, class is in session.

Yang doesn’t typically stream his classes. Today is, unfortunately, special. The novel coronavirus — now elevated to pandemic status — is pushing everything from political events to game conferences into streaming. Offices and schools are temporarily closing their doors, and NYU is no different.

Faced with remote classes,...

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