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How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online

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Re: How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online

#61

Post by GuB-42 »

thisisit wrote: post #15

> Garcia’s specialty is the multiplayer fantasy game World of Warcraft. While he isn’t its best player, he has a knack for talking entertainingly over his play : he is funny, brash, and filled with stories about his delinquent childhood in Newark. Most, if not all, of the live gameplay videos nowadays mostly tend to be about screaming and raging at the screen with lesser amount of stories. And for some reason people…

> why are people really interested in someone doing some stuff? Are they so alone that they need some validation or is it more to do with increasing voyeurism nowadays?

These are called "parasocial interactions" and this is not a new thing at all. It may even be healthy and linked to empathy. There is ongoing research on this subject.

Re: How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online

#62

Post by viiralvx »

petercooper wrote: post #36

The bit I'd be interested to read about is the psychology behind the "donors." Why would anyone throw down random $100 or $500 without a quid quo pro to someone receiving many other such donations? I understand streaming, generally, and have paid to subscribe to a channel before but the random throwing around of not insignificant amounts of money gets me scratching my head. (Should make it clear I'm not criticizing t…

You know, I had the same thought as well? Although, MKBHD was streaming one time and I threw him $5 and asked a question. And it was cool seein' him respond to my question in real-time. I guess that same feeling of satisfaction is granted for donating money and hearing them shout you out? I don't know. It was a great feeling for sure though.

Re: How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online

#63

Post by Mtinie »

pc86 wrote: post #42
chrisper wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big chunk of those 2,000,000 players are Chinese no?

What does that have to do with... literally anything?

Yeah, that was an odd comment, but it did get me thinking about how Twitch subscription sharing works when you have viewers in countries with wildly different costs of living.

Re: How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online

#64

Post by sillysaurus3 »

falcolas wrote: post #33
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

exploited They're not being exploited, nor are they exploiting themselves. No more than DrDisrespect is exploiting the system by dressing up like this: http://wikinetworth.com/uploads/Dr%20Disrespect.jpg Or Captain Disillusion is exploiting the system by dressing like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/Me... Everyone has a gimmick for attention, and being hot is just one tactic. And as so…

Just one, very lucrative, tactic. For example, one woman was recently banned for 24 hours for masturbating on camera (no skin, just highly suggestive movements and sounds). Someone who ranted about this kind of behavior on camera was banned for 72 hours. The rules are, to the casual observer, not evenly applied. It's also hard not to see, when browsing through channels, that the average successful streamer is an attr…

Isn't that conceding the point? She got banned.

It's good to point out uneven moderation, but it's important to back those accusations with sources. I doubt that 72 hour ban is so clear cut.

Re: How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online

#65

Post by petercooper »

astura wrote: post #58
petercooper wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I've spent money on a lot of weird things, giving arbitrary money to people I think who needed it, buying coins in games I've enjoyed, etc.. but donations with no quid pro quo to top Twitch players till do baffle me, given people making the donations know they're well off. It feels like me sending random checks to Larry David because I like watching his show :-D I'd just be keen to see an article digging into t…

What in Earth do you mean a "quid pro quo?" Twitch user gives entertainment and in return the donor kicks in some cash of they want to. Just like a busker. If you feel they provide you with $500 in entertainment and you have a spare $500, then it makes sense. That's like asking "why would you go to a casino when you know casinos make lots of money?" If you're watching Larry David's shows the business transaction has…

Twitch user gives entertainment and in return the donor kicks in some cash of they want to. Just like a busker.

I understand the busker metaphor, but the $100/$500 donations we hear about most often are to successful streamers, so it's more like throwing $500 at Axel Rose. That's the bit I find interesting.

Such donations strike me as unusually altruistic for the demographic involved, in a way that we don't see en masse in other public online venues (such as on YouTube, donating to open source, Instagram, bloggers, etc.) I'm quite interested in learning more about the psychology around that because I think other arenas deserve it too.

Re: How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online

#66

Post by petercooper »

viiralvx wrote: post #62
petercooper wrote: post #36

The bit I'd be interested to read about is the psychology behind the "donors." Why would anyone throw down random $100 or $500 without a quid quo pro to someone receiving many other such donations? I understand streaming, generally, and have paid to subscribe to a channel before but the random throwing around of not insignificant amounts of money gets me scratching my head. (Should make it clear I'm not criticizing t…

You know, I had the same thought as well? Although, MKBHD was streaming one time and I threw him $5 and asked a question. And it was cool seein' him respond to my question in real-time. I guess that same feeling of satisfaction is granted for donating money and hearing them shout you out? I don't know. It was a great feeling for sure though.

Thanks for the story. Those are the sort of things I'm interested in hearing about. Could you foresee a situation where you might ever donate $100 or more to such a streamer?

Re: How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online

#67

Post by empath75 »

olympus wrote: post #9

What I think is crazy is that this industry exists at the scale it does. It has replaced reality TV for a segment of the world population. There are legions of people that watch these streams, just to watch someone doing something that they could do themselves (but maybe not win as much). This isn't like F1 racing where I'll never be able to afford a racecar, or football where I don't want to exercise. Most of the ki…

I watch hearthstone streams and tournaments pretty frequently, and I used to watch a lot of starcraft. It was 80% so I can watch people that are better than me at the game and pick up strategies, and like 20% entertainment.

Re: How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online

#68

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

petercooper wrote: post #48
astura wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do a lot of things that baffle me. Spending $100-500 for some entertainment is actually reasonable and not at all baffling.

Sure, I've spent money on a lot of weird things, giving arbitrary money to people I think who needed it, buying coins in games I've enjoyed, etc.. but donations with no quid pro quo to top Twitch players till do baffle me, given people making the donations know they're well off. It feels like me sending random checks to Larry David because I like watching his show :-D I'd just be keen to see an article digging into t…

I was pretty baffled by this as well. But I think it comes from people who watch more than 10+ hours of someone. They then feel like they know them.

The donations then become something more like buying Girl Scout cookies, or a painting from a craft fair.

It's not the most efficient use of your dollar for a product, it's patronage of someone in your community.

Re: How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online

#69

Post by chrisper »

pc86 wrote: post #42
chrisper wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big chunk of those 2,000,000 players are Chinese no?

What does that have to do with... literally anything?

I was refering to this:

>The game regularly has over 2,000,000 concurrent players

Well, I think it is interesting to point out what demographics tend to play a game the most.

If the game has 1,999,999 Chinese players then, I think, that is less interesting than if it had 2,000,000 global players (from all over the place).

Not sure why you think it is so far fetched....

Re: How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online

#70

Post by drusepth »

petercooper wrote: post #66
viiralvx wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, I had the same thought as well? Although, MKBHD was streaming one time and I threw him $5 and asked a question. And it was cool seein' him respond to my question in real-time. I guess that same feeling of satisfaction is granted for donating money and hearing them shout you out? I don't know. It was a great feeling for sure though.

Thanks for the story. Those are the sort of things I'm interested in hearing about. Could you foresee a situation where you might ever donate $100 or more to such a streamer?

I've donated >$100 to one streamer in one go, who I've watched for years for both entertainment and game-related education (watching his tutorials on how to get better at games I play).

The traditional sense of paying someone cash for something often happens in parallel: you give something and you immediately get something. I think the mentality (or, at least my mentality) with streamers and tipping is a bit different: after you've received something (e.g. entertainment for X duration), _then_ you give something (a tip). Tipping someone $100 at any point might not make total sense in the moment to someone else observing, but tipping someone $100 for e.g. the last 6 months of free entertainment makes a lot of sense to the tipper. Sure, you could get away with not tipping and make that entertainment truly free, but you also want to support those who are creating it and encourage them to make more. After all, you pay for other entertainment, and often a large tip every once in a while still evens out to (much) less than you'd pay otherwise.

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