It’s focused on esports and vacuousness of streamers.
This is a ridiculously mean-spirited and tactless comment to make, regardless of your personal feelings towards big name streamers or their business pursuits.
Yes, this is onbrand for me here. Look at the headlines + “stories” and “content” on dexerto. Big-name-streamer shit is just that, shit. Constant reality-TV-level “he-said/she-said” bullcrap and infamy for being famous. These are not the streamers to look up to or aspire to (well maybe for commercial profitability, yes)
My comment has nothing to do with aspirations or the quality of their work, as my interest in game streaming is itself limited and narrow. I guess I’m just a little surprised to see a comment here that hews closer to the negative discourse and toxicity that’s omnipresent on Twitter, YouTube, and games communities elsewhere like NeoGAF or Resetera.
I don’t wish death on streamers; those are in my reported posts referring to Trump, his family, his cronies and supporters. /s
I’ve posted on QT3 just a little longer than you and there have been many contentious threads and trolls but mostly in P&R.
Based on the quality of their content, I have a very low opinion of those aforementioned big name streamers. I’ll try to spread out my vitriol towards them with bigger words padding my contempt for them next time.
A lot of big streamers are scummy, but I prefer to target the specific scumbags and specific scummy actions.
I have no real strong opinions on most of them because I don’t follow or watch any of them really.
The biggest streamer I watch is probably Cohh and he’s not insanely huge or anything.
Edit: For a while I watched Sodapoppin a couple times because he’s a IRL friend of a much smaller streamer that I followed.
Going into his chat was just stupid. Like it’s just a wall of stupid shit flying past so fast as to be utterly pointless.
Once you get that big, things get weird. No interactions, no conversations, just memes and stupidity that no amount of mods can ever wrangle.
“I can’t talk about it, but a lot of people ask me, ‘Do you know the reason?’ Yeah, I do know the reason why now. I’ve known for months now—the reason why. And I’ll just say this right now, champs: there’s a reason why we’re suing the fuck out of them,” Dr Disrespect said with a laugh. “I don’t know how else to put it. The amount of damages and—you just don’t… Nah, nah.”
If he actually knew the reason, and it was something he thought was unfair, he’d tell us.
I think this is just bluster. Either there will never be a lawsuit, or he’s just going to file it for internet points, knowing it’s going to get thrown out.
Twitch boycott this week. I’m taking part.
What I think is weird is that back in the day when I was doing game writing for print and online there was in some readers a feeling of distrust, as in the game publications were paid off by the game companies.
Now, game companies lay out huge payments to streamers and youtubers and everyone knows it, and no one cares! The streamers and youtubers are clearly beholden to the game companies up to a certain point, and no one cares. There’s no separation between ad and editorial like there always was with print back when print was a thing. It’s so weird to me no one cares.
Probably because they’re required by law to tell everyone.
Like if you come into a stream and they’re sponsored by the game you’re watching, you aren’t gonna be bamboozled that they were getting paid under the table for access or whatever.
It’s more the other way really. Small streamers are beholden because they’re small, but so is their reach. Bigger streamers pick and choose their sponsors and they have the reach that companies care about.
I’ve seen people during sponsored streams shit on a game. Usually they temper it, but it’s easy to tell when they like or don’t like a game. Some don’t temper it at all other than how they express their dissatisfaction. “They need to work on this, it’s terrible,” instead of “this entire thing is horseshit and I hate it.”
Streamers rarely suck up to companies for access that I’ve ever seen. Everything about print was opaque to the public. And then you have reviews from people who obviously never played said games and… well how do you think the public will react to that? It’s a lot harder for a streamer to pretend to enjoy something they don’t and they sure as heck can’t not play something on stream.
I’ve seen sponsored streams where the streamer says up front they told the sponsor they would relate honest opinions - both positive and negative - about the product. I’ve also seen streams where the most negative opinion is a very mild positive statement. If there’s no disclaimer at the start of a sponsored stream I always figure it’s like the second one.
It’s more difficult if you pop into a sponsored stream on twitch I guess but I have never been confused about what I was getting when I watched a sponsored stream on youtube.
They have to have that they’re sponsored in the title. I think they also have to have it on the screen.
People still somehow wander in and ask if something is sponsored though, but that’s less on the streamer at that point.
I find that labelling for sponsored streams is very hit and miss. Some streamers are diligent about it and others are…less so.
I would personally prefer that Twitch created a “sponsored stream” toggle that streamers could check that gives a uniform element in the stream itself. A yellow border along the top or bottom? Automatically tagging the stream with “sponsored” or appending “Ad” or “Sponsored” the text of the stream description? Something like that.
Leaving it up to each streamer to individually choose how he or she wants to note that the stream is sponsored creates confusing outcomes for viewers.
Yeah, I could get behind that.
But we’re talking about Twitch. Not doing shit is kind of their bag.
LLance makes a living off Twitch’s inability to do much of anything.
Yeah, they don’t do anything until they’re forced, at which time the do the dumbest-possible thing to address the problem.
Are you sure you weren’t just way more in tune with what people were saying about print media then you are with what people are saying about Twitch? I’d be shocked if there aren’t lots of people who don’t trust Twitch streamers.
You are correct in that I don’t know much about the streaming world. I have never really enjoyed watching more than a few minutes of streaming to see what a game looks like. I have watched a few Youtube videos that were tutorials about solving something in a game. They can be quite helpful for quests in games. The whole Twitch thing where lots of people watch and comment while one guy plays and narrates has never appealed to me.
1-sided parasocial relationships are the new Thing.
I don’t know, I feel like that experience has been around for quite some time, and somewhat taps into that same vicariousness one might enjoy as they’re reading game playthrough write-ups like those that Tom posts, or when seeing another person/friend react to a great movie that they’ve never seen but you have.