Nipl
Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one
181–190 of 365 posts
Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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.
For some people who used to play RTS and MOBA games years ago, they can still understand what's happening in a complex team game, even if they don't actively play the game.
Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one
#183Earlier 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.
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.
^ You should plug your books here :)
Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one
#184> "According to people who have gone through it, lacking an audience is one of the most demoralizing things you can experience online."
Um, what about bullying, doxxing, hacking, identify theft, etc?
Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. I also enjoy video games and often read up on trends and news... unfortunately I have little to no time to really meaningfully play them. I enjoy watching people who have gotten really masterful play the games I have read about. Not unlike sports. I also watch things like the Games Done Quick marathons. Those are mostly people who have dedicated themselves to a few games and are mostly interested in completing…
Yea I love games and used to play a lot, but they have become a huge time commitment. It’s usually one or more of: 1. Games that simply require grinding to unlock game progression (XP, time-based gates, etc.) 2. Games with numerous hour-long quests that need to be done serially in order to progress 3. Games that disproportionately reward outlier-level skill, requiring a huge practice time commitment (multiplayer shoo…
These days? Hasn't that always been the case? It's just that when we were kids etc. we had more free time.
The Nintendo Switch has an excellent selection of more 'casual' games. Super Mario Odyssey reminded me a lot of the games I played as a kid.
Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a Twitch consumer (married 'professional' in early 30's). I am a huge video game nerd at heart, so I watch streamers that run games that I am interested in however don't have time to play/master. Often it doesn't involve me sitting down for hours at night (although I am sure there's a huge demographic that does that as well). I usually watch when I am laying in bed before I go to sleep. Same time my wife is usuall…
Another thing about the TV analogy; when TV was only broadcast, many people (well, at least I...) would end up not watching an entire series. You turn on the TV and find out it's episode 3 airing tonight. What do you do? Just watch it and figure out what's going on via context, or try to hunt down someone who has a VCR and already taped episodes 1 and 2? Twitch in some ways is more like those old days. I follow sever…
Good point with broadcast TV. For shows I enjoy on Netflix, I'll usually miss the latest season on live broadcast if I forget to set the DVR to catch the series. If I wait until episode 3, I've already missed 1 & 2. So I can hope for enough re-runs to catch them all or wait longer for the series to migrate to Netflix where I can watch on my own schedule.
I also find entertainment in watching game streamers, but I catch them on Youtube at my own schedule as well. I've never attempted to subscribe to Twitch and watch live.
Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twitch replaces TV and competes with YouTube and Netflix time for me. I watch it in a lossy manner, where it's usually on while I work from home. The only time I'm watching Twitch in a lossless manner is when a Starcraft tournament is on, and in that case it feels exactly like watching back to back hockey games: about 5-6 hours of competition on a weekend.
Starcraft tournaments replaced traditional sports for me too! So good.
Same here, but with Age of Empires II! I still tune in to the biggest SC2 events even though I don't really know what's going on, RTS is just such a sick spectator "sport".
Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
> I would wager low double digits.
I know of more than half a dozen who are just Super Mario Maker streamers.
I know, my pure happenstance, of two cooking streamers who have built communities.
I think low double digits is a low ball estimate. There are more successful retro gaming streamers than that, I have no idea what the contemporary game twitch scene is like.
No one ever talks about 300 viewer streamers, they make for lousy news stories. Drama with super successful streamers, and articles like this one that talk about failure at the bottom.
Someone working 9-5, 40 hours a week, pulling in 40-50k a year isn't a news story.
Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I get pareidolia from white noise. Not a lot, but enough that the 'sounds' are more distracting than mundane background sounds like TV or music that I can tune out easily.
Even 'naturally' generated white noise (e.g. Marpac Sound Machine)? I have similar problems listening to electronically generated white noise but no problems with the Marpac.
Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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.