Twitter has just announced the hiring of Rodrigo Velloso as their new director of gaming partnerships; Velloso previously worked as YouTube’s head of gaming content. Velloso’s role at YouTube seems pretty self-explanatory, given the massive presence of YouTubers creating game-related videos. By contrast, Twitter’s user-base isn’t exactly known for creating a lot of original content related to gaming (unless “the widespread harassment of marginalized people in the games industry” counts as original content, which I guess it does).
The “partnerships” wording makes it sound as though Velloso’s job will have more to do with advertising tie-ins than anything else, but here’s the statement he gave to Variety about his new role:
My entire career at Google revolved around content partnerships. I want to work with content creators and give them the tools, or in some cases build them the tools, to allow them to produce the best content.
This sounds more like a creative position as opposed to an advertising one. Maybe Velloso’s job will involve gamifying Twitter even further? (Let’s hope not.)
It’d be nice if his job was all about supporting Twitter’s more unusual corners, which result in net art like games made entirely out of tweets and thoughtfully crafted Twitter bots — but, let’s be real. It’ll probably be more focused on maintaining the social media fervor that surrounds massive gaming press events like E3, as well as supporting bigger companies that use the service to announce their products.
Still, one can’t help but wonder whether the ongoing harassment against marginalized people who work in games — tons of which has happened on Twitter’s platform — has anything to do with this new role. My cynical side says, “Probably not.” I don’t get the impression that’s a priority for Twitter, but hey, you never know?
(via Polygon)
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