>Eventually we'll be watching generated personalities on twitch playing video games
that won't happen because the entire value proposition is in the personal connection to the streamer. (the modern derogatory term is 'parasocial relationship').
just like nobody watches chess computers or starcraft bots play nobody is going to watch bots play games. in fact to stay on the topic of the thread, people are making millions on onlyfans because they realized chatting with their viewers is much more valuable than generic pornography.
> If that was true, they would be doing it without games - they would just be sitting there and chatting for example.
This argument is flawed because 1) many streamers do exactly that, and 2) just because a streamer is not interesting when he's not playing a game doesn't mean that all the value is coming from the game. A juggler is not interesting without balls, does that mean it's the balls providing 90% of the value?
Given that:
* many streamers spend a substantial amount of their time just sitting and chatting with viewers, no game being played.
* if it was the game providing the value, you could just show a recorded playthrough without a streamer there to interact with the viewers, but this is not very popular.
* many streamers can play any game at all and draw a large viewership, but there are no games that any person can just start streaming and easily draw a large viewership
It seems fairly clear to me that the streamer contributes much more value to a livestream than the game being played.
> Every time I see articles talking about this subject, it's always completely focused on Twitch streamers that stream for a living.
Because, for the most part, those are the only people affected by these problems. If you don't stream with the intent to maximize your viewer counts and profits at all costs - stream when you feel like it, play what you want, don't chase trends, don't encourage parasocial relationships - you're basically immune to most of these issues.
> It's an open question if Twitch gets anything out of non-pro-gaming streamers.
> Ultimately those dollars come at the expense of others, there is limited attention and money,
What? There are huge untapped markets for live streams of "things" outside pro-gaming. I have zero interest in gaming but watch streams of people doing various projects (mostly on Youtube, but this is just showing there is a market).
> people also spend a lot of money on virtual slot machine games... it sucks the air out of the room for other developers making creative or useful stuff.
This seems an incredibly zero-sum way of looking at it. Maybe there is some cross-over between some zero-effort casual gaming and gambling, but that is a long way from "useful stuff".
> I've always wondered why someone may like to watch people playing videogames when you can play said videogames yourself.
I don't like it myself. But a number of my coworkers, and cousins, are of this cohort.
In general, it seems like they want an internet personality to follow. They like watching someone who gets angry and frustrated as they lose, or gets excited when they win. Its no different than following the personal lives of celebrities, except these "Twitch Celebrities" or "Youtube Celebrities" are more personalized and tailored for your specific interests.
>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.
> it is strictly about playing for fun and engaging with friends in a kind of hanging out in a living room together way.
For some, Twitch is to playing games as talk shows are to conversation with friends. It gives people a fraction of the mental reward of social interaction without any of the effort or risk of actual social interaction.
It's like a junk food snack for the social center of your brain. I definitely see the appeal and find myself getting sucked into that way of satisfying my need for human contact sometimes, but it ultimately always leaves me unsatisfied in the long run.
For others, I think Twitch is just watching a TV show that happens to be a game. They just want to passively experience the narrative of the game without the effort of playing. Or perhaps they want the meta-narrative of watching the player interact with the game.
> I wonder if there's a bit of game theory in play where it's impossible to be discovered when playing a megapopular game like Overwatch/Fortnite, and it's more advantageous to play relatively more obscure games.
I do not think most twitch streamers are trying to be professionals. I think most streamers are just trying to add more fun into their game time. In game theory everyone's main objective is the same, in this case measured in either revenue or viewers. In the twitch world most streamers are trying to maximize fun instead of viewers or revenue.
(Disclosure: I stream relatively obscure games, and know many other streamers in both megapopular and obscure games.)
>twitch is one of the platforms where I feel like I've struggled the most to get viewers.
That's expected though. It's also true of YouTubers, and Instagram 'influencers'. Because the barrier to entry is low, you're competing with hundreds of thousands of other streamers for the same set of eyeballs. Except for a tiny minority, the vast majority of you will never make a penny from streaming. Do it as a hobby, but don't expect to make a living off of it.
> Whereas for the middle of the road streamer (let's say 1-2k viewers at any given time)
Sentences like that show me how far removed my twitch experience is from others. Middle of the road, 1-2k viewers. The biggest thing I watch has 200 something viewers, sometimes with a raid(s) we reach 300-500.
Recently, I watched CohCarnage (because he had early access to an alpha releasing the next day), and he had a few thousand viewers. Chat was just a constant stream of letters. Impossible to have a conversation or even keep up with what’s going on. I disabled the chat a few minutes in, I do not get the appeal of mega streams.
> Streamers don't do any of that; they literally sit in their basement and play video games all day. Why do they need support?
The way you chose to phrase this hints at your opinion towards playing a lot of video games.
I personally have subscribed to a tournament host and various (ex-)professional players at times just because I valued the content they produce enough to be okay with giving money to them.
> Does a streamer with more support produce better content than a streamer with less support?
In many cases yes they do, because higher income can make way for dedicated streaming hardware, better gaming hardware, better internet connections and probably other things too.
> If you haven't noticed that with the several hundred live streamers you've consulted with then it seems by definition the streamers you interact with do not have the Super Fans being discussed [...] At the same time it doesn't mean these types of streamers and fans don't exist just because you don't work with them
I'm trying to take your word that you don't mean to disparage, but I don't see another interpretation for what you've said. You suggested that I'm not aware of basic Twitch functionality (when I clearly am), then claimed that I must not have knowledge of the subject because the streamers I work with "by definition" don't have super fans (even though they clearly do), then claimed I said super fans don't even exist (though I never so much as remotely hinted it), then repeated the claim that I don't work with anyone who has super fans (even after explicitly telling you they do).
All of those things (and some that I left out) are disparaging, and the entire premise of your commentary has been that your perspective as a viewer can be applied to the entirety of the content creation industry as an absolute and indisputable fact, but that my perspective as a viewer, streamer and consultant strictly applies to a unique subset of streamers whom I've personally worked with -- because apparently I exclusively find the extremely rare streamers and whales who aren't part of "the vast majority" involved in an "exploitative" industrial complex, even though that would be a statistical impossibility. So, when you sa"nothing I've talked to is about my personal experience vs your professional experience," that's patently untrue. It's the basis for everything you've said.
> Simply having a 100 gift sub button in the UI, well hidden and never mentioned otherwise, is still extremely hard to justify as anything but exploitative.
At the end of the day, you're attempting to perpetuate the completely false notion that "the vast majority" of large donors are "dysfunctional" and being "exploited." You witness people donate large amounts and for some reason automatically assume exploitation, but you have no actual evidence or justification for that assumption other than it seeming like a lot of money to you, personally. Unless you're a professional psychologist who analyzed these people, you don't get to declare that "the vast majority" of any population are mentally unwell or being exploited -- especially when your only knowledge of the situation is that you saw strangers push buttons on a website. That's not situational knowledge of anything.
In reality, there are magnitudes more large donors who contribute to be supportive and out of appreciation for the streamers time and talents. Some fans will spend 100+ hours per month watching a particular streamer, so if they can afford to donate $1,000, that works out to paying $10/hr for entertainment, which is less than many hobbies. Yet, I don't see you making claims that people who spend lots of money on other forms of entertainment are exploited -- just this particular industry, and for reasons you haven't actually articulated.
And that's all still ignoring the fact that your perceived observations do not apply to the content creation industry as a whole, or even the majority of it. When I tell you that what you're describing can't be applied to the nearly 1,000 whales I've personally communicated with over the past few years, it makes no sense for you to double down on a blanket generalization that "the vast majority" of streamers are exploitative and large donors are being exploited, because even basic math doesn't back your argument.
> On the contrary these things are extremely visible and advertised.
You listed the basic concept of subscriptions and rewards as evidence for nefarious activity and exploitation. That's rather silly, and I'm not going to engage with it.
> Also the conversation was never about all "donors", from the beginning it was about "the vast majority of Super Fans are not buying courses or supporting the development of content". Disagree or not with the statement it never made claims every single
Please stop making pedantic nitpicks. I've literally quoted "the vast majority" a dozen times in these comments, and you're choosing to pick a single instance where I generally referred to them as donors for the sake of brevity within a long sentence, which itself is inside a paragraph specifically about super fans and even started with the words "super fans." You know exactly what I was referencing, and that you continue to turn these false nitpicks into full arguments is both exhausting and starting to resemble gaslighting.
An excellent video that I've also seen! What I found most interesting about my original video is how Onlyfans and Twitch fills that perfect niche to monetize the parasocial relationship.
> Yeah I rarely watch Twitch but basically do so for two reasons.
I think you may even be in the minority. I would expect most fans of twitch streamers to be an actual fan, not there to merely enjoy the game (even tho the game is actually enjoyable to them as well).
On youtube, it is more likely the opposite - "fans" on youtube enjoy the content, more than the youtuber. This is typically why once a youtuber becomes well-known for one type of content, that they cannot switch away (see the countless minecraft content creators that are somewhat burnt out by minecraft, but continues to make it since it is the majority of their views). Content creators who _are_ personalities and can branch out, have already done so to twitch.
> I've seen people talk about girls on OF making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month and while I'm sure some are, I wish people would understand how few are actually making that amount.
I think this is the same result of people who look at Twitch and think they can be the next Ninja or Shroud. Yes, there are people on Twitch that make many thousands of dollars a month. The odds of becoming one of those people is vanishingly low for someone starting out fresh, and it takes many years to build up to that point. These are people who spend 8+ hours in front of a camera interacting with a live audience, 6-7 days a week, not to mention all of the things that happen in the background. Joe Shmoe in his house, streaming a couple hours a night when he gets off work, is likely not going to make it.
Sorry, I'm not getting it. Are you a successful streamer and are offering your own experience as evidence? Or are you a non-streamer just giving your general take?
You make my point with that screenshot. The chat isn't unrelated. The chat is primary. The streamers I talked to and the streaming I've watched is a performance for an audience. It's way more interactive than most live theater, even the stuff with audience participation. And it's leaps and bounds more socially demanding than film work.
As an example, watch this video from a streamer with 120k followers on Twitch:
While playing the game she is deeply involved a conversation with the people watching. As streamers explained it to me, that's key to the economics of being a successful streamer, in that significant audience segments are buying a feeling of being in the in-group, and that feeling has to be supported with actual interaction with the streamer.
I agree that's not the same thing as being on the same stage with people. But it's still very social. Similarly, remote work is still social. I've never met any of my colleagues, for example, but they're still people to me.
> streamers who stream for a potential social benefit may feel the need to chase trends, play the more popular games, and other similar things in order to increase/maintain viewership for more socializing opportunities
I've never heard of any streamers like this, but if any do exist, they are effectively no different than people who stream for profit because the intermediate goal of maximizing viewership is the same.
> Twitch.tv is something that amazed me that it became so big. I don't really play video games. Who would spend hours watching people play video games?
Heh. I grew playing games with friends. When I got tired, I'd spend hours just watching them play and having fun hanging out that way. It was no surprise to me they got so big so fast. It really is all about empathy, and I thought this little anecdote would help strengthen your point! :)
that won't happen because the entire value proposition is in the personal connection to the streamer. (the modern derogatory term is 'parasocial relationship').
just like nobody watches chess computers or starcraft bots play nobody is going to watch bots play games. in fact to stay on the topic of the thread, people are making millions on onlyfans because they realized chatting with their viewers is much more valuable than generic pornography.
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