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I watch Twitch because I grew up playing lots of video games and now watching is less of a time commitment then playing the games. Streamers aren't meant to be

I watch Twitch because I grew up playing lots of video games and now watching is less of a time commitment then playing the games. Streamers aren't meant to be consumed by watching them every day for hours on end. I mean, I'm sure there are core fans who do that, probably students and single young professionals like you say, but my use case for Twitch is "hey, I have 10-20 minutes free; not even enough time for a full DotA game, but I can see which pro players happen to be online now and watch them play for a bit". This gives me (somewhat surprisingly) lots of the same satisfaction that playing games used to give me; plus it's a lot less stressful (I was mostly into competitive multiplayer games) and without any practice required to get good at the game. Meanwhile I wonder how people have time to finish entire seasons of TV shows on netflix, given the modern trend of story-driven shows that assume you've actually seen all the previous episodes instead of pre-internet-era sitcoms that you could jump in and watch any 30-minute episode with little context. Twitch is more of a return to old-school TV in that regard.

metalliqaz 8y ago
I think this is a good explanation, however don't you find that you have to be a player of the game in order to enjoy watching it? Not being a MOBA player, I can never understand what is going on when watching games like DotA.
- neaden 8y ago
  You need to understand it certainly, in the same way you need to understand the rules of Football to really enjoy watching a game. but I haven't played SC or SC2 in years and I still enjoy watching the streams, in the same way that I've never played a real game of hockey but still like watching the NHL.
- mathgeek 8y ago
  For some people who used to play RTS and MOBA games years ago, they can still understand what's happening in a complex team game, even if they don't actively play the game.
- gcburn2 8y ago
  Not necessarily, several of my co-workers are big into Overwatch so when the Overwatch League started up in January I started watching matches with them. After a few weeks of asking questions as we went, I felt like I had a pretty handle on it and could start to contribute to the discussion. You are absolutely correct though. Those first few weeks I had no idea what was happening aside from the occasional head-shot.
  - xyzzyz 8y ago
    The popular FPS games like Overwatch, CS:GO, or Fortnite are easy to understand for someone who've never played them. Dota/LoL/Starcraft are completely different though -- you needs lots of hours of experience to even have any clue as to what's going on. Try watching it, and you'll see what I mean.
    - naravara 8y ago
      This is true of DotA and LoL, but not really Starcraft. Starcraft is fairly easy to pick up and almost all the relevant information to understand who is ahead, who is behind, and how the game is going is easily visible on the screen. Games like DotA and LoL have too many mechanics built into them that are just debt from their origins as a Warcraft 3 mod. They're not really intuitive or sensical to the uninitiated. Moreover, in Starcraft if lots of different things are happening at once, it's as technically challenging for the players to keep track of as it is for the viewers. With MOBAs the action is scattered across 3 to 6 areas of the map at the same time, so it's way more complicated to keep track of as a spectator. The Blizzard MOBA, Heroes of the Storm, was kind of designed from the ground up to be a lot more watchable. They got rid of the item stuff and moved the complexity from being focused on the character builds to more strategic stuff that's visible on the map. But it doesn't seem to have taken off that much.
- jrockway 8y ago
  Depends on the game. I have watched Dota 2 games and have absolutely no idea what anyone is doing or why. I tried playing HOTS and even the tutorial couldn't explain to me what a MOBA is. I think a lot of Twitch is not competitive games like Dota or Overwatch and are really casual games that anyone can understand. I never played Portal 2 cooperative but can easily understand what's going on if someone is streaming it. I think people that don't play the game but watch are watching games in that genre. There are also games in the middle, like Fortnite, that are pretty easy to follow. "What do you do in this game?" "Kill anything that moves and run to the circle." Once you understand that you can probably figure out what the streamer is doing and why.
  - BigJono 8y ago
    This is why I've always thought Rocket League would take off in a big way, it's as trivial to understand as most physical sports. So far I've been proven wrong, but who knows, maybe it'll turn around.
    - jrockway 8y ago
      I tried Rocket League... I didn't find it that much fun and the learning curve was a bit too steep. I certainly knew what to do in the game, but I could never get out of my elementary-school soccer habits where I just chased the ball around like an idiot, never in a position to make a play. If I was in a good position, I didn't know what the controls did. As a result, not much fun. Overwatch I got sucked into immediately. I knew the basic idea; kill the red team... and the rest of the details I picked up as I played. The matchmaking did a very good job of keeping the games winnable but not boring. The variety of heroes has something for everyone; from those that have been playing FPSes since they were 5 (Soldier, McCree, Widowmaker), those that picked up Overwatch as their first competitive FPS at 30 (Winston, Reinhardt, Moira, Mercy...), or those that want something completely different (Doomfist, Sombra, Symmetra). I have made many friends in that game, even met my (ex-) girlfriend via "stay as team" after a good match. The biggest problem Overwatch has is that they made it appealing to the hard-core gamers as well, so you have to wade through all the people in the community that complain about "no aim, no brain" because they happened to play Aim Hero 13 hours a day and believe that's the only skill in a first-person perspective game that involves killing people. And the balance of the game is such that right now, they're kind of right... people with average aim in other games can absolutely destroy with Hanzo given the large hitbox of his one-shot-kill arrows. You don't need positioning, you don't need teamwork; just get those arrows in the immediate vicinity of the enemy's heads and you win, no matter what your team is doing. They'll probably tone him down a bit in the near future, though.
- steveklabnik 8y ago
  Just like regular sports, you need to understand the basic rules, but that doesn't mean you need to know all of them. Most people don't know the full rulebook of sports that they watch. And commentators can make it even more accessible; their expertise is there to help provide context and guidance.
  - hug 8y ago
    As someone who watches a lot of Dota (at an esports bar with strangers who may or may not know dota) and plays very little, you’re half right. In football You don’t need to know, exactly, which way the plays are going to go and why, but you do need to know the rough constraints of the game and what is physically possible to perform. Some of the things that happen in dota are utterly impossible to follow unless you have, at the very least, a knowledge of the (on average 3) active abilities of the ~110 heroes.
    - kungtotte 8y ago
      Yeah, I think this is the major difference. Being from Europe I don't really know anything about American football or baseball beyond the basics, but watching a game it's pretty transparent whenever someone does something good. I don't need to know batting averages, the difficulty of plays, or why a play was exceptional to know when a player or team scored points. Games like MOBAs are opaque by comparison. I can see roughly what's going on but I couldn't tell you if a team is winning or losing to save my life. In football if the guy holding the ball is out in front of the defending team and running to the end zone I can guess he's going to score a TD, but a team can look like they're getting whooped in DotA but really they're tricking the opponents and someone is making a sneaky play in a different corner of the map or someone has an ability or gear that means the situation is the reverse of what it appears, etc. All of that is really only apparent to someone very familiar with the game.
- bscphil 8y ago
  In addition to what others have said (you need to understand the game, not be an actual player of it), many channels cultivate a community of the same regular viewers. While gaming is technically the thing that brings them all together, the streamers' humor, community in-jokes, and a sense of shared interest are what make different channels unique. As a non-gamer, that's why I watch a few of them regularly. Watching streams is "about" gaming in the same sense that tailgating is "about" football.
fastball 8y ago
Relevant HN post from yesterday[0]. I'm sure the same is true for eSports (if not more so!) 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17535995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17535995
- bredren 8y ago
  I thought of eSports / streaming when I read that discussion yesterday.
- joshschreuder 8y ago
  I believe it to be true. And like professional sports there is an enjoyment to be had seeing how people so far above your skill level play
ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
This BAFFLED ME for years as well. But I think I've finally figured it out. A lot of people are watching these streams AS THEY GAME. I can devote 75% of my attention to one monitor as a play "League of Legends", and listen to some helpful coaching from a Twitch Stream with 25% of my attention in the other monitor. At times when my game is loading, or my character is dead and I'm waiting to respawn I can even devote 100% of my attention to the stream, and engage in chat. I also can enjoy a stream when I'm taking public transportation or an Uber somewhere. Situations where I would game if I could, but I can't, so watching pros is the next best thing.
- scoggs 8y ago
  I mean maybe, but it's just as the person you replied to said: Lot of us grew up playing videogames with all of our free time. We are adults now. People in our age bracket who watch Twitch video game streams often probably do so to replace some of that time we wish we could be gaming. I can't speak on younger generation's consumption of Twitch and Youtube but I imagine for them it's just as normal as watching TV, playing video games, watching videos on the internet (in the early days), or to liken it to something people my generation and older did: going outside and playing.
- bigger_cheese 8y ago
  That's how I watch. When I'm playing an MMO or similar I have Twitch (or Netflix, or Youtube videos) playing on my second monitor. It's no different than having tv or radio on in background while you cook dinner or similar.
- 83457 8y ago
  I have twitch in background about anytime BUT when I'm playing a game
hellweaver666 8y ago
My hobby is making stuff, electronics, wood working stuff like that. Like gaming it's time consuming and I often don't have the time or energy. So I just watch other people doing it on YouTube a lot more than I do it myself. It's very rare for me to watch a live stream actually live though, more often than not I throw it in my "watch later" after the broadcast.
wingerlang 8y ago
> Meanwhile I wonder how people have time to finish entire seasons of TV shows on netflix, given the modern trend of story-driven shows that assume you've actually seen all the previous episodes instead of pre-internet-era sitcoms that you could jump in and watch any 30-minute episode with little context. Twitch is more of a return to old-school TV in that regard. Is this really true? I know I watched random episodes (Malcolm/Seinfeld/Friends/etc..) and enjoyed it. But re-watching them in the proper order is magnitudes better and clearly the way it was supposed to be watched. I wonder if the same is true for modern TV shows, e.g. the big bang theory - it can be watched and enjoyed by picking a random TV show. Even longer form, say Firefly/Dark Angel/Twin Peaks require you to watch it in order - yet they could be enjoyed on their own as well (you had basically no choice anyway..).
- michaelt 8y ago
  Is this really true? Look at The Simpsons, for example. No matter what anyone does in episode N, the world is reset at the start of episode N+1.
  - Retric 8y ago
    Not quite, Ned Flanders wife died for example.
    - beobab 8y ago
      And I do actually remember the amazement in the community when she stayed dead, rather than springing back to life as though it had never happened in the next episode.
    - RankingMember 8y ago
      To be fair, instances of lasting change through episodes were rare, usually necessitated by staffing/pay disputes (e.g. Maggie Roswell, who voiced Maude, leaving after wanting money for travel and not getting it, thus Maude being killed off) or death of the voice actor (e.g. Marcia Wallace, who played Edna Krabappel, among others).
  - 8y ago

metalliqaz 8y ago

I think this is a good explanation, however don't you find that you have to be a player of the game in order to enjoy watching it? Not being a MOBA player, I can never understand what is going on when watching games like DotA.

neaden 8y ago
You need to understand it certainly, in the same way you need to understand the rules of Football to really enjoy watching a game. but I haven't played SC or SC2 in years and I still enjoy watching the streams, in the same way that I've never played a real game of hockey but still like watching the NHL.
mathgeek 8y ago
For some people who used to play RTS and MOBA games years ago, they can still understand what's happening in a complex team game, even if they don't actively play the game.
gcburn2 8y ago
Not necessarily, several of my co-workers are big into Overwatch so when the Overwatch League started up in January I started watching matches with them. After a few weeks of asking questions as we went, I felt like I had a pretty handle on it and could start to contribute to the discussion. You are absolutely correct though. Those first few weeks I had no idea what was happening aside from the occasional head-shot.
- xyzzyz 8y ago
  The popular FPS games like Overwatch, CS:GO, or Fortnite are easy to understand for someone who've never played them. Dota/LoL/Starcraft are completely different though -- you needs lots of hours of experience to even have any clue as to what's going on. Try watching it, and you'll see what I mean.
  - naravara 8y ago
    This is true of DotA and LoL, but not really Starcraft. Starcraft is fairly easy to pick up and almost all the relevant information to understand who is ahead, who is behind, and how the game is going is easily visible on the screen. Games like DotA and LoL have too many mechanics built into them that are just debt from their origins as a Warcraft 3 mod. They're not really intuitive or sensical to the uninitiated. Moreover, in Starcraft if lots of different things are happening at once, it's as technically challenging for the players to keep track of as it is for the viewers. With MOBAs the action is scattered across 3 to 6 areas of the map at the same time, so it's way more complicated to keep track of as a spectator. The Blizzard MOBA, Heroes of the Storm, was kind of designed from the ground up to be a lot more watchable. They got rid of the item stuff and moved the complexity from being focused on the character builds to more strategic stuff that's visible on the map. But it doesn't seem to have taken off that much.
jrockway 8y ago
Depends on the game. I have watched Dota 2 games and have absolutely no idea what anyone is doing or why. I tried playing HOTS and even the tutorial couldn't explain to me what a MOBA is. I think a lot of Twitch is not competitive games like Dota or Overwatch and are really casual games that anyone can understand. I never played Portal 2 cooperative but can easily understand what's going on if someone is streaming it. I think people that don't play the game but watch are watching games in that genre. There are also games in the middle, like Fortnite, that are pretty easy to follow. "What do you do in this game?" "Kill anything that moves and run to the circle." Once you understand that you can probably figure out what the streamer is doing and why.
- BigJono 8y ago
  This is why I've always thought Rocket League would take off in a big way, it's as trivial to understand as most physical sports. So far I've been proven wrong, but who knows, maybe it'll turn around.
  - jrockway 8y ago
    I tried Rocket League... I didn't find it that much fun and the learning curve was a bit too steep. I certainly knew what to do in the game, but I could never get out of my elementary-school soccer habits where I just chased the ball around like an idiot, never in a position to make a play. If I was in a good position, I didn't know what the controls did. As a result, not much fun. Overwatch I got sucked into immediately. I knew the basic idea; kill the red team... and the rest of the details I picked up as I played. The matchmaking did a very good job of keeping the games winnable but not boring. The variety of heroes has something for everyone; from those that have been playing FPSes since they were 5 (Soldier, McCree, Widowmaker), those that picked up Overwatch as their first competitive FPS at 30 (Winston, Reinhardt, Moira, Mercy...), or those that want something completely different (Doomfist, Sombra, Symmetra). I have made many friends in that game, even met my (ex-) girlfriend via "stay as team" after a good match. The biggest problem Overwatch has is that they made it appealing to the hard-core gamers as well, so you have to wade through all the people in the community that complain about "no aim, no brain" because they happened to play Aim Hero 13 hours a day and believe that's the only skill in a first-person perspective game that involves killing people. And the balance of the game is such that right now, they're kind of right... people with average aim in other games can absolutely destroy with Hanzo given the large hitbox of his one-shot-kill arrows. You don't need positioning, you don't need teamwork; just get those arrows in the immediate vicinity of the enemy's heads and you win, no matter what your team is doing. They'll probably tone him down a bit in the near future, though.
steveklabnik 8y ago
Just like regular sports, you need to understand the basic rules, but that doesn't mean you need to know all of them. Most people don't know the full rulebook of sports that they watch. And commentators can make it even more accessible; their expertise is there to help provide context and guidance.
- hug 8y ago
  As someone who watches a lot of Dota (at an esports bar with strangers who may or may not know dota) and plays very little, you’re half right. In football You don’t need to know, exactly, which way the plays are going to go and why, but you do need to know the rough constraints of the game and what is physically possible to perform. Some of the things that happen in dota are utterly impossible to follow unless you have, at the very least, a knowledge of the (on average 3) active abilities of the ~110 heroes.
  - kungtotte 8y ago
    Yeah, I think this is the major difference. Being from Europe I don't really know anything about American football or baseball beyond the basics, but watching a game it's pretty transparent whenever someone does something good. I don't need to know batting averages, the difficulty of plays, or why a play was exceptional to know when a player or team scored points. Games like MOBAs are opaque by comparison. I can see roughly what's going on but I couldn't tell you if a team is winning or losing to save my life. In football if the guy holding the ball is out in front of the defending team and running to the end zone I can guess he's going to score a TD, but a team can look like they're getting whooped in DotA but really they're tricking the opponents and someone is making a sneaky play in a different corner of the map or someone has an ability or gear that means the situation is the reverse of what it appears, etc. All of that is really only apparent to someone very familiar with the game.
bscphil 8y ago
In addition to what others have said (you need to understand the game, not be an actual player of it), many channels cultivate a community of the same regular viewers. While gaming is technically the thing that brings them all together, the streamers' humor, community in-jokes, and a sense of shared interest are what make different channels unique. As a non-gamer, that's why I watch a few of them regularly. Watching streams is "about" gaming in the same sense that tailgating is "about" football.

fastball 8y ago

Relevant HN post from yesterday[0]. I'm sure the same is true for eSports (if not more so!) 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17535995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17535995

bredren 8y ago
I thought of eSports / streaming when I read that discussion yesterday.
joshschreuder 8y ago
I believe it to be true. And like professional sports there is an enjoyment to be had seeing how people so far above your skill level play

ghostbrainalpha 8y ago

This BAFFLED ME for years as well. But I think I've finally figured it out. A lot of people are watching these streams AS THEY GAME. I can devote 75% of my attention to one monitor as a play "League of Legends", and listen to some helpful coaching from a Twitch Stream with 25% of my attention in the other monitor. At times when my game is loading, or my character is dead and I'm waiting to respawn I can even devote 100% of my attention to the stream, and engage in chat. I also can enjoy a stream when I'm taking public transportation or an Uber somewhere. Situations where I would game if I could, but I can't, so watching pros is the next best thing.

scoggs 8y ago
I mean maybe, but it's just as the person you replied to said: Lot of us grew up playing videogames with all of our free time. We are adults now. People in our age bracket who watch Twitch video game streams often probably do so to replace some of that time we wish we could be gaming. I can't speak on younger generation's consumption of Twitch and Youtube but I imagine for them it's just as normal as watching TV, playing video games, watching videos on the internet (in the early days), or to liken it to something people my generation and older did: going outside and playing.
bigger_cheese 8y ago
That's how I watch. When I'm playing an MMO or similar I have Twitch (or Netflix, or Youtube videos) playing on my second monitor. It's no different than having tv or radio on in background while you cook dinner or similar.
83457 8y ago
I have twitch in background about anytime BUT when I'm playing a game

hellweaver666 8y ago

My hobby is making stuff, electronics, wood working stuff like that. Like gaming it's time consuming and I often don't have the time or energy. So I just watch other people doing it on YouTube a lot more than I do it myself. It's very rare for me to watch a live stream actually live though, more often than not I throw it in my "watch later" after the broadcast.

wingerlang 8y ago

> Meanwhile I wonder how people have time to finish entire seasons of TV shows on netflix, given the modern trend of story-driven shows that assume you've actually seen all the previous episodes instead of pre-internet-era sitcoms that you could jump in and watch any 30-minute episode with little context. Twitch is more of a return to old-school TV in that regard. Is this really true? I know I watched random episodes (Malcolm/Seinfeld/Friends/etc..) and enjoyed it. But re-watching them in the proper order is magnitudes better and clearly the way it was supposed to be watched. I wonder if the same is true for modern TV shows, e.g. the big bang theory - it can be watched and enjoyed by picking a random TV show. Even longer form, say Firefly/Dark Angel/Twin Peaks require you to watch it in order - yet they could be enjoyed on their own as well (you had basically no choice anyway..).

michaelt 8y ago
Is this really true? Look at The Simpsons, for example. No matter what anyone does in episode N, the world is reset at the start of episode N+1.
- Retric 8y ago
  Not quite, Ned Flanders wife died for example.
  - beobab 8y ago
    And I do actually remember the amazement in the community when she stayed dead, rather than springing back to life as though it had never happened in the next episode.
  - RankingMember 8y ago
    To be fair, instances of lasting change through episodes were rare, usually necessitated by staffing/pay disputes (e.g. Maggie Roswell, who voiced Maude, leaving after wanting money for travel and not getting it, thus Maude being killed off) or death of the voice actor (e.g. Marcia Wallace, who played Edna Krabappel, among others).
- 8y ago