Thanks for that. I suppose it makes sense (unless it specifically refers only to footage of video games, which would make it ludicrously non-descriptive). I'd probably have just called it a videocast myself. I'm also a little confused that people are watching such things in sufficient numbers for lots of people to be doing it on a regular basis, but I suppose it's more or less like audiences for professional gaming (which I also don't 'get', but clearly it's popular). Unless you get a really entertaining commentary along the way? I could appreciate that.

Well, we do try to give good and entertaining commentary. :-D
You could have a look at our past broadcasts and see if there's a streamer you like (we're all pretty different in which games we play and the commentary we give):
http://www.twitch.tv/gogcom/profile/past_broadcasts

The UT championship from yesterday is here:
http://www.twitch.tv/gogcom/v/7929918

(disclaimer: I know very little of the streaming world and have only very recently started to be involved with it, through the amazing Twitch GOG channel)

In terms of watching professional competitions, think about it this way: of the US population under 30 years old, most have spent more time in front of their console screen than watching any of the popular local sports (baseball, American football, etc) on TV, so obviously there is a huge (still untapped IMO) potential for video game broadcasts as sports. After all when we watch our favorite sports on screen, we do it because those people are professionals and much better at something that we like to do ourselves form time to time but we're nowhere near as good as them. So why not have the same happening for video games? Because they aren't athletic sports? Well, chess isn't athletic either but I don't think anyway is going to say chess competitions are much less serious than athletic sports. The "seriousness" of it eventually comes from how much popular that thing is, which determines how much money gets poured into it, which results in more money being made available for more people to do this full time and get better and better. And if anyone thinks video game sports do not require physical sacrifices just read this[1].

As for variety streaming like on the Twitch GOG channel, those are closer to journalists, show presenters, stand-up comedians rather than professional athletes. There is pure entertainment value in watching these streams, on weekends these days my wife prefers that we both watch some GOG streams (live or recorded) rather than anything that's on TV, and she's not even into gaming or computers, it's just purely because it's more entertaining to watch some of our streamers than any show on TV at that time.

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32996009

Alright, since people have expressed interest to play on a community server, I've setup a UT2004 GOG Twitch Community server at gog-ut2k4.mooo.com password "gog", some Twitch regulars have played on it lately and I will join (and maybe even get some friends on) whenever I have time in the evening.

Since people here have claimed that the forums community would like to get together on such a server, let's see it! :)

Instructions:
* buy UT2004 ECE off GOG
* start game, click "Join Game"
* (need to do this once) go to the "Favorites" tab, right click somewhere on the empty screen/list, click on "Add Favorite", enter the address above
* once you get the server in the list, double-click on it to connect and play
* have fun!

Thanks!

I've tried it for a couple of minutes and got totally destroyed by bots. :P

Cool, thanks for testing/feedback!

The bots are set to Adept skill level, it's what we used to train for the tournament. Just stick with it and you will get better fast, then you will learn how the AI thinks which might not help you vs humans but it will increase your score :) Learning the maps helps too.

The map collection is a mixture of the deathmatch maps used in the 2 tournaments. We'll probably have to try to coordinate a bit to have more people join and not just face bots. Also joining some kind of voice conference with the other players does wonders to the fun factor of this game.