Yeah cause I’m too busy to game frequently, but I can watch something while being productive.
I would say this isn’t me, but I started playing Dwarf Fortress lately and have probably been watching an hour of tutorials for every 30 minutes I play at this point. 😅
Once you learn how to survive, the deep end is best learned by trial and error!
It’s not that bad! Once you’ve got the basics down you can just watch as everything explodes
Can confirm. This is me
This makes me feel kind of alienated.
I don’t think I’ve ever watched someone playing games intentionally, outside of like “how do you do this part?” guides, and maybe a couple hours spectating in games total.
Ok, and a handful of like “let me solo her” highlights that made it to me. But I never like seek it out.
I’m principal Skinner, I guess.
I like people doing challenge runs and speed runs, and occasionally letsgameitout who spends 1000 hours committing to the bit that I might have considered as a passing funny joke. I’d rather watch that then some evening ad riddled free to air.
I’m well over 30, not far from 40. Hobbies can be entertaining like watching someone else race a car. I ain’t gonna be able to do that. But I appreciate those who can.
It would never occur to me to go watch someone do a whole speed run. Even less so to watch someone “doing a bit”. Like, making a character that looks like Shrek and invading in a swamp is kind of funny, but I’m not going to watch that.
I don’t know how to explain the complete void that is my interest there. Like, I wouldn’t be mad if it was on in the background. But I just… Don’t find it appealing. Like watching paint dry or looking out my window. It’s there. Sometimes there’s a cat. But I’m never going to be like "sweet let’s go watch outside the window "
Bro, preach. Definitely only need a quick clip for like, where is this item hiding in Elden Ring?
Maybe helps that I still have a solid squad of irl mates I game with, but also don’t mind catching solo time on single players.
I was dead fucking wrong about twitch tho. When it first came out I was like “who the hell is this for, younger siblings?” Like, why wouldn’t you just play the game yourself? Figured there’d be a lil niche for e-sport pro level scene, but twitch got way bigger than I ever would’ve thought.
Saying all this as a mid-thirty dude who truly will never comprehend people who spend a bunch on twitchy
It’s cool watching people of different skill levels than you, not just the pros I think. Also when people take on challenges that take a long time, you can kind of skip through the vid at your leisure.
Plus sometimes you just don’t have the energy to game. It’s like Matt Groening said in that old Life is Hell comic (although about tv): Why is tv the best pal of all? When you’re tired, tv does the playing for you.
this is Lemmy. There’s like dozens of us in this thread that hate watching streamers! you are not alone.
imagine if this was about football fans
I can only watch so much football as can a rare other people like me. If I am watching football I want the view of one position. I don’t care that the quarterback got sacked on the play, how did the running back avoid the defense in his attempts to become open for a pass - or some such that I want to emulate when I next play. (i think that is a likely thing - I consider football too dangerous to play so I’m guessing - in reality I’d prefer to see other sports that I’m likely to play)
edit: spelling
i can’t make heads or tails of this reply :P
“how did the running back avoid the defense”, i’m assuming there should be a “to” in there? who runs back? i can’t parse it…
They went with American football, where “running back” and ”defense” refer to positions.
…huh.
The game most of the world calls “football” is called “soccer” in the US. We have a very popular game we call “football” in the US that is unrelated to “soccer”, instead it is related to rugby (still very different from rugby, but there is a relation)
strange
Welcome to the world. There are strange things all over. Sit back and enjoy laughing at the ride.
buarterpacv
That’s a fascinating way to spell… Presumably “quarterback”?
The interesting part to me is that you can watch football even when/if you can’t play football, but you could be gaming instead of watching.
Logic does not check out. Like they’re both activities I can do on my couch? Okay sure, I guess. Just like I can watch a video about knitting even if I can’t knit, but I could be knitting instead of watching!? Complete nonsense…
Watching sports is a useful activity when you confined to a hospital bed for a month or two as has happened to people I know. In one case they wouldn’t be allowed to game, even sports were in danger of being too exciting for their condition.
Nah, I can’t game while I’m doing the dishes but I can watch a video just fine
You’re taking too long to do the dishes.
I don’t only do dishes. Also, there are short videos.
There are more chores than dishes:
- folding laundry
- sweeping and mopping the floor
- fixing the car
- going through the mail
- changing the sheets
That’s when I watch/listen to streamers, I almost never do it when I could otherwise be gaming. I’ll occasionally listen/watch while gaming though.
Obligatory
I feel this so much sometimes…
New report claims people with hobby spend more time watching videos about hobby than doing hobby
If I want to do my hobby, I need to make time for it, whereas if I want to watch videos about my hobby, I can do it on the toilet. It turns out it’s a lot easier to watch than make time for a hobby, hence why I do more of it.
If I didn’t have to work, I’d spend more time doing my hobby. But I do, and I have kids, so hobby time is quite limited.
Execution is a small part of “the planning”, man. That ain’t even fair.
Watching someone cut a dovetail by hand is a lot more interesting now that I know from experience how hard it is. And maybe I’ll learn a trick to make my next ones better.
Dovetail sounds like a bird. It’s not a bird, right? Right?
A dovetail is a type of joint that doesn’t require fasteners and only uses the material (usually glue for wood).
It was more funny when I didn’t know that :(
But thanks! I kind of expected it’s something like that :D
Does knowing that the name comes from one of the join elements (left side) looking like the tail of a dove, improve that?
😏
I use one of those big metal paper choppers to cut doves tails.
And its cheaper to watch someone do it. Quality timber and tools are expensive.
And less annoying to your neighbor if you’re in a neighborhood. Plus how many tables can you actually fit in a house?
Cutting dovetails implies by hand - power tools exist for it, but those using power tools generally use different joints.
My neighbor does not make dovetails, then.
I’m not surprised. They are very hard to make correctly and not that much better than other options that are easier to do. they are a “holy grail” of wood working skill for a reason. I’ve done a dozen in my life and the best is so awful I want to burn an otherwise nice creation to hide the evidence.
Plenty of people have a twitch stream open whilst playing a game.
Hi, I’m plenty of people
What’s your mom?
Weird! 🤷♂️ Do they watch the twitch stream when their game is loading?
No, they stare at both monitors simultaneously like a Chameleon.
“She’s got Marty Feldman eyesss”
It’s like having the tv or radio on whilst doing something else.
That’s me for sure these days. Back in high school I used to play at least a couple of hours every day. I have a gaming PC and a Steam Deck but probably play a few hours a month. But I’ll happily watch several hours of Twitch each day while I’m relaxing.
Probably just getting older and busier, haha.
As a (probably) even older guy I find it the weirdest thing ever. “watching games being played”. It’s boring AF.
Sure, I can’t t play counterstrike effectively anymore. Sure I am the one with the most deaths in helldivers2. Doom eternal is just way too twitchy for me. I’ve become too slow. In mechwarrior 5 I have too put the difficulty on story/easy and aim assist on. Which hurt my old ego the most to be honest.
But doing it still beats the shit out of watching it.
/start_old_man_rant
Especially these days when every streamer is an egocentric manchilds screaming their head off in a totally scripted “episode”. Or girls in bikinis only because it sells. Can we just leave that in hooters? And everything is bought and paid for. You’re watching a commercial. Or do you really think that logo on his mike just happens to be in view? Or the brand of the gaming chair?or that cupboard behind him filled with lights and gaming gear? Its ultra consumerism. And the begging for money. Fuck off. Really.
I hate it.
I miss total biscuit. That was entertainment.
/end_old_man_rant
I mean, the thing that people watch twitch for is mainly the person/people on the stream, the game is a backdrop, rarely the actual focus
And not everyone is ego-centric like you’re saying? I mean, there’s literally tens of thousands of streamers. Don’t just look at the biggest ones that probably mainly appeal to kids, i.e. a different audience than you. Chances are the kind of people you would enjoy watching are just smaller and more niche
Wouldn’t be me. I don’t like streams. When I’ve had twitch drops i wanted to claim I’d just mute the tab in the background to get the time limit needed.
I don’t have the attention span for streamers. It’s like golf. Might be fun to play but watching is another matter.
This, how people can find watching more entertaining than playing is beyond me. I tried watching people play my favourite games on twitch to see what it was like, I got bored out of my brains in minutes.
The closest I can do is watching gameplay videos on youtube, from people who do extremely creative things that inspire me for future playthroughs - but even then.
To y’all watching streams: I’m not judging you, you do you. I just don’t understand you.
I prefer to play, but I don’t have time to dedicate to it. I can listen/watch a game stream while working, on the toilet, or doing chores around the house. I can only play in the evenings and weekends, and only when my kids are otherwise occupied or in bed.
Yeah, watching is worse than playing, but it’s better than doing neither.
I don’t watch streamers, but I’ll watch videos like ‘which is the best weapon for [X]’ or ‘how to optimize production in [X].’ I’ve watched stream highlights like SovietWomble’s bullshittery, or IAmCrusty’s psychopathic VR vids. Once you get stuff like that into your YouTube algorithm, there’s a lot of it. It’s gaming content you can consume when location or time constraints won’t let you actually game, and that’s a larger chunk of my day than when I can sit down and play.
You can’t have stream highlights without a stream. Even if no one watches the stream, the infrastructure and technologies have to be there. And I can see where some audience members of those highlights would be attracted to the raw stream, trying to catch the ‘good stuff’ live, the same way some people watch NASCAR hoping to see crashes as they happen.
I enjoy watching tournaments to see how much of skill difference there is between me, the one day a week gamer, and the pros who play every single day for 8-12 hours. It shows you what is possible and what the limit is.
Once I bought a game because I saw a pro playing it and thought it looked like fun. Boy, was I wrong. The gaming community is not just a shit-hole, it’s a toxic, radioactive bog of brain dead troglodytes caked in layers of fecal matter, impervious to reason or friendliness. Not only that, many multiplayer games have either no tutorial and you’re dropped into a war zone when you keep dying, all the while being screamed at by some dude with a supermarket mic that’s either in his asshole, mouth or 3 meters away on his console, with no possibility of reviewing what you did or a some kind of training chamber / level with bots to get better in peace and quiet.
Well, for example; I like to watch LeagueOfLegends streams but don’t like to play it anymore.
I’m 4 years clean from league and I still dream about it sometimes
all ex-league players who i’ve spoken with (myself included) refer to league of legends and breaking free from it as if they were raised in a cult or dealing with life-ruining substance abuse that still affects them to this day
Yeah I’ve only ever found 1 game play chann on YouTube that I enjoy watching, Macie Jay who makes compilations of his stream for YouTube. He’s incredibly creative playing R6, it’s really fun to watch. But in general I don’t get watching someone play a game when I could just play it myself.
For me, it’s audio in the background that I can interact with if I want.
Sometimes the people are funny too, but it’s not like my first monitor. Streams are a second monitor thing, with me doing something on the main. Reading, gaming, writing.
Also sometimes I’ll watch the various leagues to see people do games I’d hate to play do really really well at it.
There’s retro streamers and smaller/older streamers that aren’t so hype and “ON IT” all the time.
Sometimes I just want to be around the community that surrounds a game I am enjoying. If I am playing a JRPG, I may spend more time in a JRPG discord going back and forth with users, or go find a streamer playing it and pick their brain a bit.
It helps you not feel so alone with the experience. You may be the only person for miles and miles to boot up Breath of Fire IV, but rest assured, someone out there wants to talk about it.
I usually open streams on a second monitor while playing, unless the game demands my full undivided attention for extended periods of time. It’s more of a case by case basis for me.
I did the same when I was playing WoW a long time ago, watching stuff while doing mining routes and whatnot. But to be fair, I was doing it because the game itself was a drudgery that I got skinnerboxed into playing and pretending I was enjoying.
So I ask this to you: is the game you are playing not entertaining enough, that you have to watch something with it in order to feel entertained? If so, why not play something else that captures your whole attention? It’s your time, shouldn’t you be spending it with things you actually enjoy?
The answer is I enjoy both games that capture my whole attention and games that allow me to watch something in the background. Sometimes I feel like doing the former and sometimes the latter
It’s time for game publishers to think about in-game video as something beyond marketing alone," said Rhys Elliott, games analyst, MIDiA Research. ‘‘By reclaiming video engagement, publishers have the potential to unlock new revenue streams, like advertising, and drive growth.’’
Lmao, what a takeaway. Guy is struggling to earn that paycheck.
Reminds me of the business plans of the business guys from Ready Player One. “We estimate we can sell up to 80 percent of a user’s visual field before inducing seizures.” 😂
Groooowwwtthhhh! It’s all about that Groooooowwwtthhhhh!
Please bro just a little bit more groooowth. I promise we’ll unlock all the money in the world if we can just have a littile more grooowwth.
You don’t really know it until you stop watching videos for like a week. Suddenly you want to do your favorite things again; try things yourself again.
I game while watching my favorite streamers!
Never really understood watching it when playing is also very little effort. It’s not football.
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Sometimes I’ll watch videos for build inspiration, especially for survival crafting games
I hate watching people play video games too, but definitely for strategy or inspiration it can be helpful
I’m definitely one of those people, but I work in an office where they let us watch shit on our phones as long as the work still gets done. A hell of a lot easier to watch YT videos than to try to sneak an Xbox S into a cubicle farm ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Might wanna contemplate about nvidias geforce now 😁
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I didn’t use it, but I’m still salty that publishers had a fit about that. It’s honestly none of their fucking business where you run your games.
I’m not investing in a cloud only platform like Google’s abandoned attempt, so the only hope is a hybrid like Geforce Now.
It’s an okay-ish solution for people who don’t wanna invest in a pricey pc or that just wanna game from their potato thinclient. No mods kills it for me personally.
A guy at work used to use a cloud service called Shadow PC.
They’d basically rent a gaming PC out and he’d just torrent them right on to the cloud machine. Pretty sure mods would have worked there.
It felt a touch laggy with a mouse, but a controller would probably have been just fine. It’s a shame there’s a disconnect between what gamers want (a gaming PC that’s just somewhere else) and what providers want (a walled garden).
True. Those cloud-services allow for mods. But still too laggy, too expensive, too much hassle. And in the end you own nothing again. Like car leasing 😑
But gf now is much cheaper, but therefore has those downsides. But yes. Just a pc somewhere else
Well…
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“Videos about gaming” don’t necessarily have to be gameplay footage. Reviews, promotional materials, discussions etc. count. Maybe even stuff like Viva La Dirt League’s content which is live action skits about video games.
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Tutorials and walkthroughs exist.
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Some vintage systems are difficult to get up and running or even find. For a lot of people it’s easier to just watch an enthusiast do it on youtube.
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Especially on Twitch with streamers it’s as much about the player as it is the game.
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Especially with esports or speedrunning it’s like watching a sporting event. Even if you like playing football too there’s something to watching the professionals play at the top echelons.
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One can watch gaming videos while doing other things. When I was moving into my apartment in Greensboro I assembled my furniture while watching HCBailly play through the Gameboy Zelda games.
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Interesting that you see a difference between the two. Football also does not require incredible effort to play, still a lot of people only watch it.
for me it’s mostly because I am too depressed and unmotivated to get out of bed and go sit in front of the console/PC but not depressed enough to put the dumb addictive black rectangle down
(i am taking medication i hope this changes)
I hope it changes for you too!
thank :]
I mean, have you played games recently?
Sometimes you are so tired that you can’t actively engage in something, but you want to engage with it so you passively engage instead.
This goes for gamers watching gaming videos, woodworkers watching woodworking videos or people with dirty houses watching lawnmowing/pressure washing/car detailing/rug cleaning videos.
You get some of the endorphins of achievement, without having to go through the effort of achieving something.
