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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

#151
post #84

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/

Whoa. I am a The Office sleeper and had no idea that was a thing. There's something comforting about knowing I'm not the only one.

The Office or Forensic Files and I'm out.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#152

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 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's mostly students and single young professionals.

Streaming is great "background noise" for when you're bored and sitting around the house. It fills the same niche that I think sports does for sports people. It's live entertainment with no fixed outcome.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#153

> 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…

I'm not very familiar with Twitch, but isn't the community interaction (text/voice chat?) a large component of it? I'd imagine these streamers would be very interested in chatting with the 1 or 2 people who stopped by their stream. If the bots can't respond they'd be found on pretty quick, and making bots who can pass some sort of "video game specific Turing test" is a major endeavor. Only getting instantly recogniza…

Yes and no. The thing is, the majority of the viewers usually doesn't write to the streamer. They simply watch the stream, nothing more. So having five real viewers but no one is writing anything (or answering) is definitely possible. Still, interacting with viewers is where it gets interesting and it is live-streaming after all, so that's actually the point (otherwise you could just create a video and upload it somewhere).

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#154
I can relate to this, two weeks ago I started streaming from my Xbox and I've been enjoying 1-2 viewers at the time, sometimes 4 when I post the link to Facebook. To me 1-2 viewers is a lot, of course I play a game no one is playing: Battlefield Hardline.

The twitch channel for Battlefield Hardline has 3 streamers tops on weekends and I happen to be one of them. I bet I'd be getting zero viewers if I was playing Fortnite.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#155

I personally know Markipler (youtube, 23M+) as well as follow some other people here and there. There is a youtuber; BloominBanana I subbed around the same time I subbed to Markipler 2010ish, they both do (did?) the same horror gameplay except Bloomin' has about 12 subs on youtube. Mark as I knew him was the king of 'going out there' he was never afraid of marketing, publicity stunts and was honestly humble to his hu…

Do you mind going into more detail about how Markipler marketed his youtube channel, besides publicity stunts, bots and click bait titles?

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#157

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 put it on for noise/background content when cooking/cleaning/working etc.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#158
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…

Yes, but creating a SAAS app from the ground up still gives gives a valuable skill set. Even if no one uses your app.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#159

It would be great to have more programmers streaming their open-source work on Twitch. There's so much informal knowledge out there which can be learned by just watching experts at work.

I've toyed with having a "Watch me Linux" stream where chat shouts out things they want to know about Linux and I show them / help people with their Linux problems.

I'd like to do some infrastructure streams where I play around with things like my Kubernetes cluster, unfortunately it seems like a pretty bad idea to livestream configuration of something that is connected to the internet.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> You also have to consider that the average length of a "day" for a popular Twitch streamer is 10-12 hours. carlsagan42 streams once a week for ~4 hours, and pulls in a couple thousand viewers at min, at 6pm on a Saturday. His secret? He is super entertaining, hands down one of the funniest people and most entertaining people to watch on twitch. His YT videos of his streams then get a few hundred thousand more views…

You can't really compare extreme outliers against the norm. Very few Twitch streamers can have that kind of community you're talking about. I would wager low double digits.
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