Relevant to probably no one, but Bikeman left the Late Shift over a “difference of opinion” with everyone else.
Which is just crazy pants to my brain (that’s a hell of a difference of opinion) and I needed to get it out someplace and bugging them about it after they asked people not to is a dick move. They’re all still friendly, etc, etc, yadda, yadda.
Anyway, carry on.
Dream’s popularity is largely thanks to the YouTuber’s Minecraft speedrun videos, where he tries to complete the game as fast as possible, and their Minecraft manhunt series, which is ridiculously popular. Dream’s speedruns continually break records and make the Minecraft world speedrun leaderboard, to the astonishment of many viewers. During this success, suspicions arose about the legitimacy of some of his runs, and in particular, accusations arose about Dream tampering with the game to get better luck.
In Dream’s streams it was noted that he always got very lucky when having to collect both ender pearls and blaze rods. In their paper, the speedrun.com moderators took six of Dream’s livestreams to conduct their investigation. They found that in Dream’s runs, he successfully barters for an ender pearl 42 out of the 262 times and collected 211 blaze rods out of 305 mob kills which is just under 70% (instead of the usual 50%). In short, he was getting a much higher percentage of important item drops than you would expect.
Taking into account sampling bias (I suggest you read the whole report for more details), they found that the likelihood of Dream getting the drops he received are “unfathomably small” and there is a 1 in 177 billion chance of getting Dream’s successful trades legitimately. The paper concludes “Dream’s game was modified in order to manipulate the pearl and rod drop rates”.
The report is crazypants thorough.
I love, love, love Displate, but watching this video’s build up I couldn’t help but think this might be one video in poor taste to monetize.
BlizzCon streamed on a variety of mediums — YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, etc. — but viewers were quick to note that on the Twitch Gaming stream, the band’s music was replaced by something un-Metallica as a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) failsafe kicked in to protect the song’s rights.
Metallica just can’t catch a break. Last time they played with Lady Gaga the presenters didn’t know who they were, and the live mix was a disaster on top of that. Then of course there’s the whole Grammy situation with the nefarious Jethro Tull. And don’t even get me started on James being immolated on stage, or them forgetting to play Trapped Under Ice when they toured Antarctica in 2013.
Does this qualify as poetic justice?
Is there a respectable way to migrate to the Casino circuit?
I am too old for this shit:
One of the weirdest articles I’ve read in awhile but this:
On top of that, she was $20,000 in debt because her stream setup
What are they using. Are these like sound proofed studio rooms in a home or something? How does a stream setup cost 20k. I feel like the handful of hours in my life that I’ve actually spent looking at any stream seemed really, really basic. Is having a glitchy animated face character really that expensive?
She has a full body mocap setup so that can be a lot money just on cameras, suits and lights. Additional PC to process and render the data and image, etc.
Oh, yeah, mocap suit was 13k by itself. And that’s at 50% off apparently for being an independent developer.
Wow,
And a good camera is in the $2-4k range. Top streamers use high-end DSLRs, not off-the-shelf webcams.
I think $20k is probably a pretty good estimate for what a “pro” Twitch setup costs.
Of course you can start small with very little investment and grow.
In fairness, a TON of streamers/talking head Youtubers use the $600 Canon m50 mirrorless, which is excellent with any halfway decent lighting. But yeah, even that is bonkers expensive compared to even a high-end webcam lik the $100+ 92x series from Logitech.
The problem from my perspective is how can someone decide to spend all this money before then realize they cannot pay rent.
I don’t know what to make from this story. It’s interesting I guess but it’s like reading a rag to riches story from a lottery winner.
Reading this article—perfunctory old man (i.e., someone in their mid-30s) comment: I recognized only two names mentioned (T-Pain via listening to popular music in the mid-to-late aughts, dunkey from someone here posting a video of his)—I’m struck by how bad Twitch looks as a money-making platform. Streaming an average eight hours a day, the threat of being banned, etc. it seems like using the Patreon model and uploading videos to YouTube or wherever is easier and more sustainable, but I guess she needs audience interaction for it to work. One of the people interviewed mentioned the need to diversify her income sources, and that seems vital for her future since she’s one ban away from permanent ban.
TBH the whole creator system is a little insane. Youtube is crazy banhappy for minor and inscrutable infractions, demonitize all sorts of content, and continuously change up their recommendation and subscription methods so that a channel that was successful one year might be worth nothing the next. Patreon can and will drop creators at will, and of course could just go belly-up tomorrow. You’re basing your entire livelihood on the continued goodwill, functionality, and your-content-friendliness of enormous, faceless corporations with no real incentive to care about you, specifically.
From that article, it sounds like CodeMiko is Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast, but live improv and performing for hours and hours each day.
I’m impressed.
