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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

#221

Post by Retric »

rossdavidh wrote: post #220

So, I'm just going to say this, even though probably everyone already knows it: there are way, way more people looking to make a living off of producing content (Youtube, Twitch, etc.) for the internet, than there are people thinking, "If only there were more content on the Internet, I would pay some money or put up with some ads for that." There's nothing wrong with putting it out there if you want to, but expecting…

I suspect their are far more viewers than people making content. The issue is 1 or even 10 viewers is no where near enough to support a content creator.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#222

Post by busterarm »

steveklabnik wrote: post #71
SaltyBackendGuy wrote: post #43

Earlier 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…

We had VCRs with timed record from the early 80s onward and had a _large_ collection of recorded VHS.

We got into the habit of recording a few minutes before and after the show was supposed to air, as things frequently did not run on schedule. Especially recording things on the major TV networks and recording Doctor Who off NJN who would keep the fundraiser drives going as long as they could before starting an episode.

The only problem with this was sometimes my brother had a habit of taping public access porn over whatever was in the VCR...but that wasn't exactly a problem either. :)

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#223

Post by vkou »

vultour wrote: post #159
cuckcuckspruce wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you're lucky, you'll probably learn a few lessons on security really quickly.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#224

Post by rubicon33 »

Retric wrote: post #221
rossdavidh wrote: post #220

So, I'm just going to say this, even though probably everyone already knows it: there are way, way more people looking to make a living off of producing content (Youtube, Twitch, etc.) for the internet, than there are people thinking, "If only there were more content on the Internet, I would pay some money or put up with some ads for that." There's nothing wrong with putting it out there if you want to, but expecting…

I suspect their are far more viewers than people making content. The issue is 1 or even 10 viewers is no where near enough to support a content creator.

I find it fascinating that the distribution of resources is almost always NON-LINEAR.

Take capital wealth. Money. That is a heavily non-linear distribution.

Twitch is no different. If you use viewers as a proxy for wealth, it's fascinating that even that proxy behaves in a non-linear way.

I happen to have heard some interesting behavioral theories about why resources distribute in that manner. I'm always curious about what other people think.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#225

Post by jrockway »

metalliqaz wrote: post #174
mlinsey wrote: post #105

Earlier 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.

Depends on the game. I have watched Dota 2 games and have absolutely no idea what anyone is doing or why. I tried playing HOTS and even the tutorial couldn't explain to me what a MOBA is.

I think a lot of Twitch is not competitive games like Dota or Overwatch and are really casual games that anyone can understand. I never played Portal 2 cooperative but can easily understand what's going on if someone is streaming it. I think people that don't play the game but watch are watching games in that genre.

There are also games in the middle, like Fortnite, that are pretty easy to follow. "What do you do in this game?" "Kill anything that moves and run to the circle." Once you understand that you can probably figure out what the streamer is doing and why.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#226

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

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 feel there's a few things worth mentioning that either haven't been mentioned or I have a different take on.

For me, Twitch is background a lot of time. I have 3 monitors, so I often have youtube or twitch up on one while I work on something, and it has a chat, so you can interact with other people watching it and their conversation if the whole thing isn't just a giant meme-blast-fuckathon like it is on so many popular streams. In this era of marathon-oriented Netflix shows, Youtube and Twitch are surprisingly reminiscent of old-school TV in how little attention they demand.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#227

Post by mgr86 »

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.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#228

Post by JeremyBanks »

bdz wrote: post #81

Myself I stream to archive my gameplay. It's just good to look back some moments and some interactions later so if I record it then why not broadcast it too? I guess I fall in the same situation because I only have 1-2 viewers.

If you're streaming as archiving (which I also do), YouTube is simpler since it automatically keeps all of your VODs without you needing to explicitly save each one.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#229

Post by Nannooskeeska »

glitcher wrote: post #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?

I'd assume that the people who are getting zero viewers aren't generally the same people getting bullied, doxxed, hacked, identity-thefted, and so on.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#230

Post by tathougies »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #130
grogenaut wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for Twitch but I'll put it in old man terms: I have a subscription to MLB.tv. I watch EVERY SINGLE game of my team each year, that's 162*3 = 486 hours a year. That's 27% of a 1800 hour work year. If you go in season, that's 54%. It's on all day every day that I'm at my work desk. I watch Twitch the rest of the year. Do I watch it intently? No. Do I know the score and what's going on? Generally. Do I feel I fol…

It is really regrettable that humans have this incredibly illogical, subconscious algorithm for making otherwise logical decisions. Most of the money and capital in this world are held by the older generations rather than the younger generations. The younger generations have to then spend their time "pitching" the older generations on ideas that, in a vacuum, are logical but not evident to the older generations. As a…

As a person of color, the last time I checked, there are also old people of color. It's not like we just sprung up fully formed 10 years ago or something, okay?
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