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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

#231

Post by therealdrag0 »

mgr86 wrote: post #227

I'll share my personal use of twitch streams. I really enjoy AOE2. The game might be nearing its second decade, but its very enjoyable for me to watch personally. I will use youtube-dl to grab past broadcasts and play the games back at 1.5x to 2x speed. I can easily skip through parts I find uninteresting. I'll generally watch one or two games per day, but my time commitment is under 30mins.

Are they playing against other humans? I got AOE2 HD a couple months ago and it's been my go-to game this summer. But I haven't thought of looking on twitch or for multiplayer online.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#232

Post by KirinDave »

Having spent literally hundreds of hours producing video game content for youtube and twitch, I can say this:

It's an incredibly sad, discouraging experience even if you get traction (and I got some traction). It's also utterly hollow: your entire existence is as a wrapper around the content folks actually want to see. The most successful streamers develop their own brand, but these people are the 0.5%, the Felixs and the _sips and the ZachScotts. They're the exception, and even they have specific genres and subjects that if they venture into they risk losing a massive chunk of their audience.

Once I realized this, I had to stop trying to do it professionally. I'd rather go back to doing software product work. At least I feel like a real person with real impact in this field, as opposed to one of a billion interchangeable wrappers around other people's mostly interchangeable content.

But you can of course go see my youtube channel and watch my old minecraft content if you want. Some of the stuff around the middle of my cycle (i.e., D&S play Minecraft, Minecraft the Hard Way, Sunless Minecraft) was pretty solid for the genre.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#233

Post by Ataraxy »

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'…

Background noise while working.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#234

Post by _raoulcousins »

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'…

This is very frustrating for me. I like to watch skilled players who explain their startegy to improve my own game play, but streams are a slog to watch live. Some streamers archive their streams, but big chunks of their recordings are muted because they play copyrighted music.

I know I'm in a tiny minority of people that watch streamers as a learning tool and not as a source of entertainment. No reason to cater to people like me.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#235

Post by thomastjeffery »

_raoulcousins wrote: post #234
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'…

This is very frustrating for me. I like to watch skilled players who explain their startegy to improve my own game play, but streams are a slog to watch live. Some streamers archive their streams, but big chunks of their recordings are muted because they play copyrighted music. I know I'm in a tiny minority of people that watch streamers as a learning tool and not as a source of entertainment. No reason to cater to p…

> but big chunks of their recordings are muted because they play copyrighted music.

It's ridiculous that Twitch mutes audio, even if it's only a few seconds. Fair use is being totally ignored.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#236

Post by webkike »

SurrealSoul wrote: post #36

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…

I dunno, Dunkey managed to do it.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#237

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

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…

This BAFFLED ME for years as well.

But I think I've finally figured it out.

A lot of people are watching these streams AS THEY GAME. I can devote 75% of my attention to one monitor as a play "League of Legends", and listen to some helpful coaching from a Twitch Stream with 25% of my attention in the other monitor.

At times when my game is loading, or my character is dead and I'm waiting to respawn I can even devote 100% of my attention to the stream, and engage in chat.

I also can enjoy a stream when I'm taking public transportation or an Uber somewhere. Situations where I would game if I could, but I can't, so watching pros is the next best thing.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#238

Post by matheusmoreira »

The important thing is enjoying the game and having fun. The number of people watching the stream shouldn't have a negative impact on that.

Lots of streamers seem to approach video games like they're some kind of full time job. They play games, stream the footage then expect thousands of dollars to start coming in every month. Of course the vast majority of them are going to end up frustrated. These people seem to be doing it solely for the money. I get the impression they wouldn't be playing anything if the potential to monetize their "fun time" didn't exist. I've seen successful youtubers force themselves to play games they don't like because of their fanbase, all while complaining about how the game sucks and sometimes even rage quitting. It's cringeworthy.

Why not play the games for the fun of it? It's easier to stream if one starts with that mindset. It costs nothing to stream gaming sessions, so they lose nothing if if nothing comes of it. Even if there's no audience, there are advantages: the stream can be recorded and archived, giving the streamer video footage of great moments they can look back on. People are gonna play games anyway, they might as well stream it.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#239

Post by xyzzyz »

gcburn2 wrote: post #190
metalliqaz wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a good explanation, however don't you find that you have to be a player of the game in order to enjoy watching it? Not being a MOBA player, I can never understand what is going on when watching games like DotA.

Not necessarily, several of my co-workers are big into Overwatch so when the Overwatch League started up in January I started watching matches with them. After a few weeks of asking questions as we went, I felt like I had a pretty handle on it and could start to contribute to the discussion. You are absolutely correct though. Those first few weeks I had no idea what was happening aside from the occasional head-shot.

The popular FPS games like Overwatch, CS:GO, or Fortnite are easy to understand for someone who've never played them. Dota/LoL/Starcraft are completely different though -- you needs lots of hours of experience to even have any clue as to what's going on. Try watching it, and you'll see what I mean.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#240

Post by trevor-e »

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'…

Most streamers have a fixed schedule so it's not that difficult to catch them online. I'm not sure why you think it's for students and single young professionals or that you need to spend hours of time online, you can watch whenever and for however long you want.
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