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On Twitch, you can never log off

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Re: On Twitch, you can never log off

#201

Post by Havoc »

vimwizard wrote: post #53

I think a more interesting story would be about the people that grind for years and years and never make it. You're left without a useful skill and no money, and probably a deficit on your mental health because you didn't go out and talk to people in real life for years. I think its not at all worth getting into as a career because making it big is like starting out as an actor, you have to know people. If you hit it…

>You're left without a useful skill

Not convinced that's 100%

e.g. I've watched streamers keep ~50 people entertained on a stream for 3+ hours.

Monologuing that long and still have people listening seems like there is definitely "something" there even if not easily transferable to an office job or whatever.

Re: On Twitch, you can never log off

#202

Post by weird-eye-issue »

Kiro wrote: post #143
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #27

Surprised this doesn't mention Asmongold. He just took months off from streaming and just came back like last week, and already just hit over 50,000 paid subscribers again. (In those months off he was streaming on his non-monetized alt channel where he doesn't feel any pressure with streaming and earns nothing.) Streamers have to also be doing YouTube or creating alternate revenue streams because live streaming will…

Wasn't he streaming on his alt (zackrawrr)?

I literally mentioned that in the comment you replied to, yes

Re: On Twitch, you can never log off

#203

Post by [deleted] »

holler wrote: post #96
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The folks who don't make it are an interesting group on their own. Something like 95% of streamers have under five viewers, and the majority of those have exactly zero viewers. Thinking about all those thousands of people broadcasting day in and out to exactly nobody is kind of fascinating. It's not like broadcasting on a ham radio or shouting into the aether or blogging on a little independent site thinking that may…

> https://nobody.live Something about that name is hauntingly sad.

[deleted]

Re: On Twitch, you can never log off

#204

Post by Balgair »

fbdab103 wrote: post #91
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The folks who don't make it are an interesting group on their own. Something like 95% of streamers have under five viewers, and the majority of those have exactly zero viewers. Thinking about all those thousands of people broadcasting day in and out to exactly nobody is kind of fascinating. It's not like broadcasting on a ham radio or shouting into the aether or blogging on a little independent site thinking that may…

Probably not all that different from musicians/artists/writers/bloggers who never attain any audience. However, the immediacy of the feedback would be soul crushing. Truly interesting.

Mostly true for most academic papers as well. Not just the humanities, but the sciences too. Since you can track how many people actually clicked on the download button for a paper, you can get a sense of how many people actually read it.

Only one of my few papers has ever been downloaded by someone not on the author's list (we can compare with each other). Granted, that one's been downloaded a lot. But still, most of that hard work and going back and forth with editors is for naught.

Re: On Twitch, you can never log off

#205

Post by cultofmetatron »

fbdab103 wrote: post #91
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The folks who don't make it are an interesting group on their own. Something like 95% of streamers have under five viewers, and the majority of those have exactly zero viewers. Thinking about all those thousands of people broadcasting day in and out to exactly nobody is kind of fascinating. It's not like broadcasting on a ham radio or shouting into the aether or blogging on a little independent site thinking that may…

Probably not all that different from musicians/artists/writers/bloggers who never attain any audience. However, the immediacy of the feedback would be soul crushing. Truly interesting.

The difference is creating music, art, writing has its own intrinsic reward. I have a ton of photos on my instagram and barely any followers for the amount I put in. If I was just doing it for the likes, i would have given up on it a long time ago.

Re: On Twitch, you can never log off

#206

Post by s1artibartfast »

Nursie wrote: post #196
PurpleRamen wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They referred to the people in the chat as 'chat' but warned never to use that word in the stream, instead have a cute name for it. Strange advice. Pretty much all Streamers I know, call their viewers chat. How big on twitch were those people speaking there? What kind of content did they made? Calling viewers by a cute name makes the impression of being more on the abusive side of community-interaction, or having a…

I got the impression they were plugged into whole communities of streamers for whom this is entirely normal. I have no idea how big they are, I don’t think they were aiming particularly young, one was regularly streaming horror games. To me the whole thing is weird in many other ways (why watch other people game?! I could be gaming!) but twitch seems set up for this sort of stuff and it feels pretty unhealthy.

Maybe I can answer some of your question. I'm a daily twitch consumer, and perhaps worse, a lurker at that.

It is basically the same as TV or YouTube for me, neither of which I consume much of. Good streamers are entertainers, and are interesting to watch. It is low effort consumption and relaxing. I learn about high level play for games that I enjoy, even if I watch them more than I play them.

Most of my watching takes place as I lay in bed waiting for my melatonin to kick in and pass out.

Re: On Twitch, you can never log off

#207

Post by corobo »

minton wrote: post #35
geerlingguy wrote: post #19

I treat my media creation as a business. Hours in and ROI are important, especially since I have a family and also try to keep their lives out of my online presence. I looked at adding occasional Twitch livestreams to my output but quickly realized to make it return any kind of sustainable income, you have to practically "become a streamer". There's no slow on-ramp like with YouTube, where you could start earning inc…

A friend wants to start a channel. My instinct was that’s a very long shot (pointless even), but I told them I’d help if I could. Any advice for starting on YouTube?

Your first 100 videos will be awful. Quantity over quality[1] until you hit that.

Not for specific reasons, just because you're learning. If you've gotta go through hell, go fast.

[1] videos still need to be watchable ofc.

E: what is watchable though?

Begin, middle, end. Intro, stakes, hook, call to action, meat and potatoes, another cta, summary and seeya next time, don't forget to like and subscribe.

Keep a sense engaged, audio or video should always have something happening. Dead air is the sound of viewers leaving.

Reengage the audience after each scene change.

When in doubt, have a countdown to something. Show the remaining time wherever you get bored watching it back.

Record everything, edit to nothing. Make the video the shortest it can be while still watchable.

Believing effort is equal to reward is an express train to burnout.

Re: On Twitch, you can never log off

#208

Post by cableshaft »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #78
vimwizard wrote: post #53

I think a more interesting story would be about the people that grind for years and years and never make it. You're left without a useful skill and no money, and probably a deficit on your mental health because you didn't go out and talk to people in real life for years. I think its not at all worth getting into as a career because making it big is like starting out as an actor, you have to know people. If you hit it…

The folks who don't make it are an interesting group on their own. Something like 95% of streamers have under five viewers, and the majority of those have exactly zero viewers. Thinking about all those thousands of people broadcasting day in and out to exactly nobody is kind of fascinating. It's not like broadcasting on a ham radio or shouting into the aether or blogging on a little independent site thinking that may…

I'm kind of one of those people (I took a long break, but want to start doing it a bit more again soonish).

I do it in part just because I'm playing the games anyway and have the equipment, might as well stream it. If no one watches, oh well, no big deal, I'm still playing the games I was going to play with that time anyway.

And secondly, I am wanting to start doing some coding in public more. It's fairly stressful having to articulate what you're doing while you're doing it (tried it a couple times), and it sort of feels like I'm in a whiteboard interview at times, but I think it's good practice to become more comfortable doing it, and articulating what I'm doing as well as getting feedback from others could help me become a better coder.

Also the game I'm working on in my spare time (a sequel to my old Proximity strategy board game that was popular once upon a time as a Flash game and on Xbox 360) will eventually have support for a Twitch audience to play along via the chat, so I'll need to stream in order to test the game properly anyway, and hopefully by the time I get to that point I'll have at least a small handful of people who will be on there and can playtest it with me.

Also part of the reason I took a break is it turns out using an ultra-wide monitor isn't ideal for streaming (aspect ratio is off). I love my monitor but when I go into games I have to mess with borders and things can get cut off without adjustment, etc. I did get a Cam-Link recently though and got streaming from my Switch to work (and presumably my PS4), and it let's me stream 1080p without stressing my computer (no worry of dropped frames) and also letting me use my monitor still for Twitch chat, so that'll probably be easier to manage.

I've got some time off starting next week so I'm hoping to start getting into the habit of it again. If anyone's curious, I have the same account name on Twitch as on here, although I'm debating changing it to something that can be a bit more ubiquitous online, and haven't decided what yet.

Re: On Twitch, you can never log off

#209

Post by cableshaft »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #129
fbdab103 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not all that different from musicians/artists/writers/bloggers who never attain any audience. However, the immediacy of the feedback would be soul crushing. Truly interesting.

Your blog post today may be read tomorrow.

Twitch streams can be sent or uploaded to Youtube so they can be viewed later.

Of course the couple that I bothered to do that with also have basically no views as well :)

Re: On Twitch, you can never log off

#210

Post by oneoff786 »

Semaphor wrote: post #183
oneoff786 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might say we won the game. You would never say “we” got xx million viewers or any sort of commercial achievement.

At this point, I’m going to keep doing that even for streams I don’t mod, just because it seems to really annoy people ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To be frank, I don’t find it annoying, I just see it as a form of delusion. Streamers are always doing this thing where they pretend to have big reactions to things and I’m surprised people buy into it. The whole subculture feels like people roleplaying how people communicate in cartoons and anime but it’s not apparent that everyone understands it’s neither real nor how things work.
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