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Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

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Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#21

Post by LoSboccacc »

moretai wrote: post #2

Are these not people who are just deluding themselves that they are doing it out of love, when all they want to do is be famous?

Depends. I’d say for example that the primitive technology channel does it out of love. So there are people like that, even if the wast majority does it because let’s be honest a career in video gaming sounds great. But the thing is those are also the least likely to attract viewers.

Top spots nowadays are claimed by sponsored players anyway and making it as an amateur is nightmarish difficult. Fame grows exponentially because once a talent emerges companies are quick to sign it up and after that they provide most of the promotion for their talent to grow.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#22

Post by eropple »

ryandrake wrote: post #3

> Despite the sometimes psychologically taxing nature of trying to get noticed on Twitch, some continue to persevere despite the cold indictment of the zero. Maybe I’m advocating a bit of a dark pattern here, but couldn’t Twitch keep streamers engaged by seeding streams with a few fake AI bots as viewers? This seems like it might be a little of the Empty Restaurant Effect. People hesitate to go into a restaurant if t…

Most people who are serious about doing the Twitch thing, even if it's just a serious hobby, pretty shamelessly spoof viewers. Even if you don't want to be dishonest about it, it is in some ways unavoidable. Have the stream open while you're on to make sure that everything's working? That's one viewer. We do group streams and people cycle in and out, so we keep a laptop with the stream open outside the recording room; that's another. People open it on a phone to check chat, that's another.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#23

Post by fullshark »

metalliqaz wrote: post #14

What I don't understand about Twitch is how anyone has time to consume this content. When it comes to sitting on your butt and watching something, the traditional TV show is moving to an on-demand model. Twitch is a step in the other direction, where if you faithfully consume content from any Twitch channel, you have to sit down and watch for hours every night when the streamer is online. Who does that? I imagine it'…

I used to watch it before falling asleep, you can start and stop watching at any point without losing much.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#24

Post by deklerk »

metalliqaz wrote: post #14

What I don't understand about Twitch is how anyone has time to consume this content. When it comes to sitting on your butt and watching something, the traditional TV show is moving to an on-demand model. Twitch is a step in the other direction, where if you faithfully consume content from any Twitch channel, you have to sit down and watch for hours every night when the streamer is online. Who does that? I imagine it'…

I'm not a twitch streamer/viewer, but I believe a lot of folks are in it for the community aspect. Following your favourite streamers and being a participant in the group chat - especially if your streamer chats with the group - is a way for folks to feel like they're hanging with friends.

In contrast, watching TV by yourself can be quite lonely.

There are a lot of other differences between TV and twitch; I'm not sure how much worth there is in comparing them. They seem (to me) to mostly be different categories of products that happen to both include a video component.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#25

Post by socrates1998 »

Most people are not interesting enough to watch play a video game.

Which means, most people should NOT be doing this. Or at least doing it with the expectation that people will watch them.

You have to be something that sets you apart. Super good, super funny, or entertaining. Just playing a game and making dick jokes isn't interesting or funny.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#26

Post by nlowell »

minimaxir wrote: post #9

Per Twitch's stream analytics, on one of my data science programming streams on Twitch the majority of my viewers came from the Explore page, under the relatively-less-popular Programming category. I wonder if there's a bit of game theory in play where it's impossible to be discovered when playing a megapopular game like Overwatch/Fortnite, and it's more advantageous to play relatively more obscure games. It wouldn't…

At least for streamers who are already somewhat established, the metagame is actually to move to whichever game is most popular with viewers.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#28

Post by com2kid »

I am a regular of a low viewer count stream, choaslegionkaeru, who is pretty good and talkative. He rarely gets past 10 streamers, and his style isn't for everyone and I don't think he'll ever be a massive success, but I enjoy watching and interacting with him.

I've tuned into other low viewer streams, and a lot of them are just bad. The gameplay is bad, and the streamer isn't entertaining. A successful streamer needs one or the other, either be one of the top in the world for the game you are playing, or be super entertaining to listen to. For the later, the game itself is more of a set piece around a comedy bit.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#29

Post by Twisol »

metalliqaz wrote: post #14

What I don't understand about Twitch is how anyone has time to consume this content. When it comes to sitting on your butt and watching something, the traditional TV show is moving to an on-demand model. Twitch is a step in the other direction, where if you faithfully consume content from any Twitch channel, you have to sit down and watch for hours every night when the streamer is online. Who does that? I imagine it'…

Twitch has offered VODs ("videos on demand") for streams for a number of years now, and people who can't see all the streams generally have at least a week to catch up on any content they particularly wanted to see. Skimming works particularly well if you just want the high points.

Where Twitch's live model works really well is in having a community of people all watching together. Streamers often engage with their audiences in some way, and Twitch's recent move to offer lower-latency streams is a reflection of that. There's a recent craze for a marble racing game called "Marbles on Stream", which a streamer integrates with their Twitch chat so that viewers can type `!play` to enter a marble into the race. (It's a Skinner box if I've ever seen one, but I like Jelle's MarbleLympics on YouTube, so I'm not one to talk.) You couldn't do that with recorded content.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#30

Post by reificator »

metalliqaz wrote: post #14

What I don't understand about Twitch is how anyone has time to consume this content. When it comes to sitting on your butt and watching something, the traditional TV show is moving to an on-demand model. Twitch is a step in the other direction, where if you faithfully consume content from any Twitch channel, you have to sit down and watch for hours every night when the streamer is online. Who does that? I imagine it'…

I treat a few recurring streams as podcasts where I just listen to the audio after it's already aired. That's pretty much it, I don't really watch any content and I don't show up to streams while they're live.

Twitch's VOD player is not particularly good, I might even say pretty bad, but you can absolutely watch on-demand.

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