Current Events > What is the appeal of livestreaming?

(+) Yeah! (+)

So, I can understand the appeal of normal content creation streams. Like video walkthroughs or showing a particularly cool feat/play, but I don't get why anyone would want to watch someone play a game casually/watch a movie/whatever the streamer is doing live.

Not only are you just watching someone else play a video game, but you also have chat flying by a million miles a minute, and shit popping up on screen making noise talking about X person subscribing and the streamer themselves talking about some contest or commissioned product and reacting to the subscriptions

I just don't see what the point is. And some of the audience are downright forward with their interactions. Talking to the streamer about things in their life, etc as if they were friends when that streamer doesn't know you from a hole in the wall. Not just female streamers either, so that's not necessarily a simp thing.

All the while the streamer has their face in the bottom corner, but doesn't really look at the camera (because they're playing)

I'm not trying to bash streamers or anything, just don't understand what people watching get out of it. Clearly they get something, as it's a multi million person audience collectively across streamers.

BunkerBoy posted...

just don't understand what people watching get out of it. Clearly they get something, as it's a multi million person audience collectively across streamers.

Do you have a nagging need to know why some people enjoy it? People are different, you're welcome.

The simplest answer is that they are attracted to the streamer in some way. They're good-looking. Good-sounding. Charismatic, funny, knowledgeable, skilled.

It's entertainment, like any other.

it's like having as direct of a connection as you can with someone whose content you enjoy, and with their chats/discords, they sometimes form small communities.

I haven't done so myself, but people like to be connected and have people they can communicate with where they have shared interests.

watching other people play is fun too.

I dont get it either, but my theory is it's a "cool friend/hot girl" rental. For some people it scratches that internal itch of needing a friend/gf that they are not getting elsewhere.

But no shame in that. Everyone has fun their own way. I'd just be like... calm your wallets. Even if you get her to say your name, she is not actually really your friend.

Good streamers will read their chat near-constantly, even while playing, and pick out comments or just the general sentiment/reaction of their chat (if it's going very fast) in order to engage with it. Many popular streamers are also quite good at their genre or game of choice, so if they're playing a game you're also interested you'll probably learn something from watching.

Sounds like everyone is saying voyeurism

Yeah, being on both sides it's pretty standard to have someone's stream on in the background while you're doing something else.

sounds like you've watched 3 very popular streamers and decided that's what all streaming is like.

My streams so far are about ten people chatting at most, and even then it goes pretty slow. :)

Livestreaming is about sharing moments of their gameplay from what ive experienced being a viewer. Seeing chat fly by on your screen is seeing how engaged their community are to the livestream.

If you see the livestream setups of these popular streamers, youd see that they usually have a dedicated chat screen thats maybe landscaped to get as much chat as they could so at a glance the streamer can also gauge how to interact with their audience. Their notifications are also organized to where they can see and read what happened. Afterall, its the streamer whos ultimately responsible to how chat behaves and when the chat becomes a bit too much to handle or outta control, its the stream moderators that help the streamer balance the chat out. Some streamers like the chaos though but wont lose their stream because of it.