Streamers who broadcast to no-one

boing
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I’d be curious to know if(and if so at what level of popularity/entrenched algorithmic stature) the optimal strategy changes(and whether one can actually change strategy without alienating the old audience and not gaining a new one).

If you are already more or less assured an audience shifting toward the most ubiquitous mass market stuff available presumably expands your audience further(and, if you are at that level of popularity you probably also have handy options like actually being sought out by studios looking to have you fluff their upcoming releases). If you aren’t, though, moving mass market makes you the 450,680th-most popular Fortnite streamer; which isn’t very exciting.

In the obscurity case I’d imagine that going maximum insane late night public access television at least might qualify you for cult status; rather than definitely qualifying you for obscurity. There are vastly fewer people looking for “Encyclopaedic Compendium of Games You’ve Definitely Never Heard of; and Diverse Obscure Mods Thereto”; but also a lot fewer offerings in that area(and probably no two alike).

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Ask any kid what they want to be when they grow up and most of them will say YouTuber. My son uploads his gaming videos to YouTube and, bless his little heart, is elated when he gets 3 or sometimes 10 views. I guess this is just one of those cultural things that will fizzle out as people learn that they haven’t got “it”.

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The vast majority of blogs are read by hardly anyone.

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I’m confused. Does the word “streaming” refer exclusively to “streaming gameplay on Twitch etc.”, or is it the same as vlogging live on YouTube, “going live” on FB etc, and how is any of it that different from broadcasting on old technology like ham radio?

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The original article has it correctly as “no one.”

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A friend bought me a game as a present he really enjoyed last year (Titanfall 2). I am terrible at real-time point and click games like these. I got completely stuck fighting a boss robotsman. Since the PlayStation 4 has built-in twitch streaming, he told me to spin up a stream so he could watch and give me pointers while I played. It worked really well as a sort of video-conference app. He watched on his mobile, I streamed without a thought from my console. I had forgotten what it was until I had about ten people show up to watch me play terribly, die, and my friend shouting in chat what to do. It was interesting how my ineptitude drew an audience, but that in turn pushed me to try my best.

Audience as effort maximizer?

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I don’t even know if I’d call it a “kids these days” problem. I was the oldest of several siblings, so I recognize the old “you can have fun watching me play!” grift from a mile away.

The gaming industry loves it though, because it means gobs and gobs of free and enthusiastic advertising.

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“There will always be someone to tell you that misery is self-improvement.”

One of the truest things I’ve read on this site in my ~14 years of readership.

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I’d like to have that console, though.

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“Now is the winter of our content…”

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At a low point, I once called the transit info line & told my secrets to the robo voiceprompt.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t catch that.”

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Including mine, woohoo!!!

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I keep meaning to finally figure out a good place to set up a streaming station in our apartment so I can resume streaming old (and less-old) adventure games. I had been trying to do it from the second bedroom but the wifi reception in there was terrible and after my first few streams it kept dropping out constantly. I at least managed to get through all of Connections (the Myst-alike made as a companion to James Burke’s TV show) and some of Grim Fandango Remastered before it became untenable. I didn’t have much in the way of an audience (mostly just a couple of long-distance friends from Twitter), but it was a way to motivate myself to actually finally play some of the stuff I’ve been meaning to for a long time.

I would say certain segments of the industry love it. Competitive games are a huge boon, sure, and if nothing else Twitch can make oceans of money running ads on people’s Minecraft streams. But games that are more narrative-focused, like Firewatch or Obduction or Night in the Woods, are less clear-cut. In those cases, it’s perhaps more likely that watching a stream of the whole game will be sufficient for someone who might have been interested in it, and the devs will lose a sale as a result. It also potentially broadens the potential audience, though, so it’s very much a double-edged sword.

I will say, there are a lot of different kinds of streams, and a lot of different reasons to watch them. Many of them are basically the equivalent of watching sports on the TV (a vicarious activity that I don’t see many people leaping to poo-poo, which leads me to suspect that a lot of this “streaming is dumb” stuff really is a “kids these days” response), but that’s not everything there is. People also stream card and board games, tabletop RPG sessions, cooking shows, art, and so on (lest we forget, Bob Ross has been huge on Twitch).

I don’t watch a lot of streamers myself; mostly I watch LoadingReadyRun’s channel, but they do a ton of stuff there. Here’s some of their shows that I personally enjoy (all of which can be watched in VOD form on their LoadingReadyLive YouTube channel):

  • Watch + Play - a show where Graham makes Alex play really awful games from the depths of places like Steam and itch.io. Mainly it’s just fun to watch Alex tilt out at the twelve millionth “find a key to open a lock that has a key that opens another lock ad infinitum” “puzzle” in a horror game where the flashlight dies in 30 seconds.
  • Dice Friends - LRR’s tabletop RPG show. The campaigns only run for a few episodes each before they rotate out for a new scenario with new players, characters, and DM, which keeps them from dragging on forever. Enigma of the Star Tunnels is a particularly wacky 3-session FATE-based campaign that they just wrapped up a few weeks ago.
  • Talking Simulator - Alex and Cameron play games and critique them in the same artistic way one would a movie. I watch this because they’re insightful and funny, and because it’s a way for me to experience a lot of games that I either don’t have an interest in buying, or wouldn’t have heard of or taken an interest in otherwise Their stream of SOMA actually motivated me to buy a copy for myself, and I watched their stream of Spec Ops: The Line to experience a game I found interesting but not my preferred type of gameplay.
  • LoadingReadyLive - LRR’s mostly-bi-weekly live sketch comedy and goofy skit/segment show. It’s very silly.
  • Let’s Nope - Alex and Ben’s horror game stream. It’s pretty much just straight play-throughs, but their reactions are the fun part. If it were just a silent no-camera stream of a horror game, I wouldn’t watch it.
  • AFK - They play board games and card games. Right now four of them are working their way through Pandemic: Legacy, but they’ve also play stuff like Hero Quest, Risk, the Fallout board game, the Star Trek VHS board game (experience bij!) etc.

On top of all that, James has a multiplayer Minecraft stream (Mine O’clock), Kathleen does a stream where she and a friend play romance and interactive novel games (Let’s Kiss), Adam just plays whatever he remembers to bring to the office that day (Adam’s Gamehaus), Heather and Ian play rhythm games (Rhythm Cafe), Ian and guests do crafting, cooking, and engineering projects (Tinker Tailor Solder Fry), Wizards of the Coast pays them to run Magic: The Gathering promotional events, etc. etc.

My point is, streaming isn’t just “hook a monitor up to OBS and press go”. It can be, but that’s definitely not going to get you an audience.

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I rather like the idea of having some of stream that has zero viewers. There’s something conceptually neat about it. I don’t know that I have the patience to do it for long, though.

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I ended up with a livestreaming app on my iPad that I haven’t touched since I got it. It’s probably for the best.

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An interesting exploit:

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For me personally, I just don’t have the time, money or energy or skill to play games, keep up with consoles or even a PC capable of playing them. I’m not even close to a potential sale, but I love to see what’s happening in games, and hate to not know a story that everyone is referencing. I would think anyone who is a potential sale would avoid these spoiler-bombs like the plague.

It raises an interesteing idea though, that the game studios could release their own playthrough, as a kind of director’s cut, through youtube, or even Netflix. If I could support a studio while watching a playthrough, I definitely would.

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Some of them already do.

There are also a lot of deals where high-profile streamers are given early access to games as a marketing thing.

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