Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#131

Post by pishpash » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

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'…

You can say the same about competitive live sports, and clearly your argument doesn't apply.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#132

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

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'…

[deleted]

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#133

Post by adrr » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 5:13 PM UTC

olliej wrote: post #34

How many of these streamers are just “I enjoy this game” and stream for the hell of it? Surely a bunch of the people with zero/few followers just don’t care?

Its a learning experience for them as well. They'll get better at public performance much like practising a speech alone at your house.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#134

Post by stale2002 » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 5:15 PM UTC

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…

Same here, actually.

It turns out that if you do the basics, and make content that is not terrible, then you can be the "#1 live stream programmer in the world", pretty easily.

But it turns out that getting to the #1 spot at the top of the twitch programming category only nets you about 10-20 concurrent viewers.

At that point the goal should be to grow the category as a whole, I guess.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#135

Post by mkirklions » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 5:16 PM UTC

Shivetya wrote: post #101

nickjj wrote: post #100

You could replace this title with "Programmers who spend years creating a SAAS app that no one uses" and it would be the same article. All of these streamers who are bothered by not having an audience seem to have started for the wrong reasons. If all they care about are subscribers and viewers, then you're going to get really burnt out when that doesn't happen. Most of the popular streamers who I've come across do i…

It would be even simpler to replace it with "Bloggers who have no audience". There are countless blogs out there and more everyday and few if any ever gain traction. However we must see it also from the small business perspective. How many start a business versus how many succeed? I remember when coffee shops, cupcake shops, and more, were the fad, and they vanish with regularity.

I have a website that broke past the 'no-one cares' blogging stage.

The most important thing was being unique with quality.

While other people parrot the best credit card rewards, we did serious research into finding the best Calories Per Dollar, Protein Per Dollar, Vitamin A per dollar, etc...

But like the other person mentioned, I dont like shoving it in people's faces. I'm finally at the point that I get hundreds of googles a day and Ive meet people IRL that have been on my website.

The biggest deal is to provide value that no one else is. Most people are wayy to lazy. They would rather spend 4 hours on a blog post instead of 20.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#136

Post by mkirklions » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 5:18 PM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #117

com2kid wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and each Twitch stream attracts over two thousand viewers. It's not a good way to make a living. To contrast with that, I know twitch streamers whose channel averages out at around 300 viewers a time, and who make a very comfortable living. Having a properly run channel that encourages donations, cash and bits, is a huge part of it. I've seen streamers who pull an easy $200 a day in donations. Add in 500 or so subs…

You also have to consider that the average length of a "day" for a popular Twitch streamer is 10-12 hours. And that those streamers have to stream 6-7 days a week to maintain their audience. Not worth it, honestly.

Yeah I will tell people I made 3000 dollars on cookbook sales.

Sounds great? Well if it takes 30 hours a week for 3 years, it really isnt great. (And I've probably spent 15,000 USD on interns and editors in 3 years)

Lucky I'm an engineer and my website is fun and I appreciate the traffic/comments more than anything.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#137

Post by fastball » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 5:18 PM UTC

mlinsey wrote: post #105

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 watch Twitch because I grew up playing lots of video games and now watching is less of a time commitment then playing the games. Streamers aren't meant to be consumed by watching them every day for hours on end. I mean, I'm sure there are core fans who do that, probably students and single young professionals like you say, but my use case for Twitch is "hey, I have 10-20 minutes free; not even enough time for a ful…

Relevant HN post from yesterday[0]. I'm sure the same is true for eSports (if not more so!)

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17535995

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#138

Post by J5892 » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 5:20 PM UTC

Reedx wrote: post #104

degenerate wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same boat. I find a chill streamer that doesn't talk much and plays a game I like. I set the TV to 30 minute timer and watch for ~10 minutes before falling asleep. This is similar to people that fall asleep to shows they like -- see https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurama_Sleepers/

Something I'm curious about is where that comes from. Why do people like falling asleep to the TV? Why is it preferred over white noise?

Honestly, I do it because I'm afraid of the dark.

When my SO is out of town, my brain generates all sorts of horrible possibilities of things that could happen to my while laying in bed, from simple home invasions to black holes suddenly appearing and consuming my right arm. Watching Futurama (I had no idea there was a whole community around it) distracts me from those invasive thoughts.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#139

Post by mkirklions » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 5:23 PM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #28

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 need…

This sounds like the twitter Financial Independence blogging community.

People with 0 new advice, rehashing the same old credit card rewards and budgeting advice.

Its so terrible that there are people claiming 'frugal ways to eat' and claim 50$/week per person for food is frugal. A single google search would tell you that under 30$/week is a good goal.

This drives me crazy because we are eating for 20$/week and actually put hundreds of hours into studying this.

In the end, my website gets hundreds of viewers a day, their blogs arent ranked on alexa.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#140

Post by cmsimike » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 5:24 PM UTC

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 become my default entertainment at home.

What I really enjoy about Twitch is that I can have it on in the background while doing other stuff (coding most of the time).

I am a huge video game fan, but as I aged, unfortunately, I found it difficult to dedicate time to video games (and there by taking time away from my coding). Twitch allows me to not only get the story of video games, but enjoy the game along with an entertaining streamer and chat (though I rarely ever pay attention to chat).