I have absolutely no idea why people watch my videos. I'm a middle of the road gamer, not too sucky, not too skilled. I don't particularly find myself entertaining, yet I do pride myself on being authentic.

I'm not that popular, so don't get your pants in a wad. I'm just saying, the few subs I do have, I cherish every one, and for the life of me have no idea why they watch my stuff.

I will say that twitch was a hellish landscape for me that I failed to successfully navigate beyond a couple of months where I had more than 2 or 3 subscriptions, which give you about $2.49 a piece on that service.

I never did it for the money, but I can see how some of the original people who were there when it was justin tv have such huge audiences, based purely on name brand like any other commodity that's well known. I don't particularly find many of the "big name" streamers very entertaining, but you know what? That's OK. Because I myself am not particularly entertaining.

Some people do it for a job, but there's so little money to go around unless you have a gimmick or sell your soul for certain content, that this is a fallacious idea to follow. So anyone hoping to strike it rich through streaming? No idea what they're thinking.

As an example, I made about $250 in 2 years of regularly streaming on twitch, and that was streaming mostly at least 3 times a week, minimum 2 hours a stream. As I said, it's never been about the money, and some people will sit there and do it for 8 hours a day, but while I was in drama as a kid, I have never enjoyed putting myself on the camera for voyeurs to watch me and make out details of my gaming den while I'm playing Xenoblade 2.

I can't speak for everyone, but for me streaming is a useless hobby. There's nothing I can do as a streamer or watch as a content consumer on twitch, that I can't do on youtube or another video on demand service. The difference is, both myself and the content creator I'm watching are more insulated in a video on demand, and I don't have to deal with toxic ramrods in chat if I'm watching something, unless it's a live premiere.

This probably went on long enough, but I feel some kind of way about twitch. I don't view it as healthy at all. YouTube is simply the lesser of two evils, and much more laid back especially if you're a content provider.

I sometimes like to watch speedruns, but I usually do it to see how the speedrun differs from a normal playthrough. For example, in speedruns of Baldur's Gate 2:
* The game plays more like an RTS, which the player splitting up the party in order to get town errands done faster. (Casually, most players keep the party together in non-combat situations.)
* We also see a lot of out-of-combat use of spells like Haste.
* I noticed one run where the player dual-classed from Mage to Thief. (Usually, this particular dual-class is done in the other order for various reasons, not to mention 2 recruits who have this dual-class the other way.)
* Sometimes a player would use a polymorph teleport or summon a familiar to activate a warp that allows the player to skip a significant part of the game.
* A glitch that allows the player to choose dialog options that aren't currently available. For example, when someone asks for 15,000 gold that the player doesn't have, the glitch allows the player to say "sure, i have that 15,000 gold" and hand over money they do not have. (No money underflow, apparently, though some other speedruns, like Final Fantasy Legend 3, do make use of integer underflow.)

Or, Dragon Warrior 1's speedrun. That game requires hours to beat because of all the experience you need, so there's no way to beat it in under an hour without manipulating the RNG. On the other hand, the manipulated run, particularly the GDQ run of the game with commentary, can be fun to watch.

This past SGDQ there was a TAS of Zelda: Ocarina of Time that added content to the game, and that was interesting to watch, as well as a speedrun of Super Mario All-Stars + World that used arbitrary code execution to warp between games.

I already answered for myself, but this is a spot -n general answer.

Ignoring the speedrun aspect (unless ive played it to completion myself), i tend to look at some lets play types to see what the game is really like -- cant really tell by just reviews or peoples comments at times.Some games on gog only get a release trailer (plenty have zero gameplay in that) with screenshots ....

They earn money, lots, some of them.

...

There is two types of Game Streaming. The watching kind which has been discussed, and then there is the participation kind.

The first is basically video streaming of a game being played, either previously or live, so in my view not really Game Streaming.

The second is kind of like multiplayer, and it is where many reckon we are heading. That to me is Game Streaming ... streaming the game to your device so you can play it ... single player mode. We've gone there with movies and TV series and books and music, and the last bastion I guess is games. Browser games are like this ... you don't need the game installed on your device, though of course portions of it download to your device, even if only into RAM, while playing.

Where do you classify things like Crowd Control, or Twitch Plays Pokemon?

Participation streams, I guess?

Streaming is just a social thing for 90% of most people, it's pretty much the closet you can get to replicating the 'lan' vibe without being at one

I don't really know those, but going by what Linko64 replied, you are talking some kind of live video interaction.

Anyway, I thought I made what I said pretty clear, one is watching the other participation. What you seem to be suggesting is almost a third type, though as I indicated, I see that as video interaction, rather than game interaction.

In any case, lots of terms get bandied around for multiple things these days, and I am just trying for more clarity, with what seems obvious to me.

I didn't make any of these terms up, just feel the need to differentiate.

What would you call playing a game that hasn't been installed on your device?

And what makes watching a recorded game or live stream, any different to other video streaming?

Let me explain - So you can find games on Twitch that can be directed by the twitch chat so in the case of Pokemon

Pikachu -

Tackle
Tail Whip
Bolt
Twerk

The chat hits the relative input and the one with the most votes is the action taken. It's the same for movement, dialogue etc etc

If that's explaining the two questions I asked, then I don't think you understood them, and to be honest your reply doesn't make much sense to me anyway, and doesn't seem relevant at all to what I have been saying, sorry.

I explained what Twitch Plays is, it's pretty much that :P?

2019 thread... oh well...


Multiple reasons. As some have mentioned, to get a raw slice of the game to see if you want to play it. Though i see a lot of B footage of games in some videos where they are doing things like reading D&D stories from Reddit, and sometimes it's 'oh what's that game? I gotta check this out!'

Maybe you're lazy and don't want to go through all the hard work but still mostly experience the situation, or go through the story.

Maybe you can't afford the game, or the game is too short to consider buying (Order 1886?), or you don't have the machine to run it, but you can easily run a video.

But mostly if you are going to watch a stream, you're probably watching a personality not the game itself. So it's not that say you want to watch Fortnight, you want to watch Markiplier play Fortnight.

If you are a regular watcher of a streamer you sorta have a preference for them and their views on the game, playing style, or you just like to watch them succeed or suffer, and you feel for their progress.

Then there's more interactive. There's a few streamers that get feedback and stream a video and interact with the video and audience, one such one i saw did a live drum track for Seagulls and not only is the original video hilarious but how he reacts is funny too.

Some setup 'twitch plays' where chat feedback goes into playing the game, either getting optimal solutions for SHMUPS games or playing Pokemon and watching the chaos happen.

And maybe it's just to go down memory lane. Been forever since you played FF7 and someone's playing it? Why play the whole game when you can relax for 30-60 minutes and just get your slice of fun without having to dig out emulators or the old systems or any of that overhead.

Speedruns as mentioned is interesting, as you can learn and watch masters play working glitches in the code, or do things you never considered and improve yourself in the process.

Or maybe the game isn't readily available. (For example, if the game is a prototype, or if it's a game whose physical copies are rare and digital copies non-existent.)

Or if the game requires unusual hardware to play.