
Twitch Is Developing Talk Shows and Dating Programs for Gamers - haneefmubarak
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-07/twitch-is-developing-talk-shows-and-dating-programs-for-gamers
======
kabacha
Everytime I read "for gamers" I can't help but throw up a bit in my mouth.

What's up with this obscure tribalism? I'm having trouble coming up with any
other mass-hobby that has such a sour tribalistic identity.

I love video-games and board games but defining yourself by type of mass
entertainment you consume is just so dystopian to me.

> dating for TV watchers

~~~
leakybit
no other hobby is as oppressing as being a gamer.

~~~
teruakohatu
That level of hyperbole is insane. I get far, far more grief about being
interested in rocks and geology than I do gaming.

Gaming is mainstream. A huge multi billion dollar industry caters to gamers
every need and desire.

~~~
slightwinder
You get rape- and deaththreats for being interested in rocks and geology? How
common is doxxing and people getting killed "by accident" in that community?
Because as sad as it is, this are the lower levels of the gaming-world.

~~~
thecupisblue
It's the behaviour of any subculture at scale.

~~~
slightwinder
I doubt that. I know many subcultures and yes, they all have a level of
toxity, but usually not to this extreme level. But to be fair, this level of
harm is more focused to specific sub-subcultures in gaming. Probably "gaming"
as a culture is to broad definend to really explain this things.

------
thorum
For some context, there are already dozens of Twitch talk shows, dating shows,
Bachelor imitations etc. that are extremely popular on the platform - hosted
by individual streamers, not the company itself.

For example “The Rajjchelor” (hosted by a popular streamer called Rajj) had
71,000 concurrent viewers during its most recent episode.

So this is Twitch looking at what is popular on their platform and thinking
about how they can create that content themselves.

~~~
0x8BADF00D
It’s nothing new. The average American is so broke that they need some kind of
reality show to live vicariously through.

------
Merem
Now, if only they could spin off all the gaming content...maybe create a
separate website for that. How about Justin.tv? That sounds nice, doesn't it?

I've been using the website for over ten years now and it's somewhat sad to
see how it has actually deteriorated over time (from the perspective of how it
used to be). Having been part of the community that made Justin.tv win against
its competition, it feels like they built on our backs, only to slowly abandon
us over time. The initial honoring by spinning off Twitch.tv for games
exclusively has long worn off, as it was supplanted by non-gaming categories
who continue to grow as they happily copy from other streaming websites
(Afreeca first and foremost).

I really wish there were proper alternatives in the West but network effect is
a thing and somehow, their websites are even worse than Twitch.tv (Mixer
doesn't work at all at the time of writing this).

~~~
aspenmayer
Is the site _worse_ for gamers now than it was before, in your opinion? Or is
there just more of other kinds of content and the issues that can cause.
YouTube for example seems an even stranger and worse site compared to Twitch
in this context for gamers. However, I haven’t used it much other than to
catch some 2d fighting game tournaments, but I had a link to that so I didn’t
have to search or browse much. The little I have seemed serviceable, but I am
not an expert familiar with its pain points and limitations.

Funny you mention Justin.tv. I used to livestream on there with a potable rig
I made with an Asus Eee Pc before it was cool. If it was ever cool, it wasn’t
on my stream. But I digress. Even back then, people were using it for game
streaming and it felt somehow _off_ in the way I think you mean, so thanks for
that insight.

~~~
Merem
It's tough to say, honestly, and it depends on how you define "gamers". The
initial batch was all about gaming, usually centered mainly around a community
(initially a single game (since there weren't many streamers around) but later
also broader categories like speedrunning and competitive gaming). That
actually held on for some years. But as the audience grew and grew, they
opened the gate for alternative content like "IRL" which really created an
opening for people wanting to serve (or exploit if you will) gamers and their
needs (they used to have a policy in place where only actual gaming streams
were allowed and you could report non-gaming ones). That had already been the
case previously where camgirls/former pornstars streamed themselves "playing"
a game, fishing for donations and the like. However, they never really fought
that and in the end, just embraced it since it meant more money for them (via
subs, later also bits as well as more traffic in general). That's not a wrong
decision as a company, but it left enough people with a bitter taste in their
mouth.

One of the main issues is that you basically have no filters. You can't
exclude entire categories, you can't exclude individual streams. They have no
proper tag system and they got rid of communities. All of that makes it more
difficult to find new streams that might be interesting to you specifically.
Then there is also the issue with performance. Twitch.tv isn't doing well in
my browser and while I do have an "older" PC, other streaming websites don't
have that issue. That and the fact that Twitch.tv is overloaded with pointless
things I have no interst in ("new prime loot", despite having no such account,
channel points which was mentioned elsewhere already, lots of notifications in
the chatbox about who donated most, gifted most etc etc) basically forced me
to watch Twitch.tv and chat with others (connecting to Twitch server via IRC
client) outside of the website. It does work really well for channels you know
you like but you will basically never discover new ones without going to the
website.

Youtube is worse in general and I feel part of the issue is that they tried to
bake the livestreams into Youtube proper. While it's not wrong to leverage
existing platforms, it certainly wasn't good the way they did it. Also, due to
the network effect as well as streamers being tied to one platform,
competition isn't much of a thing anymore. As far as I can see it, the
competition is long over and Twitch.tv won. The only real challengers were in
the Justin.tv days when websites like Livestream and Ustream were actually
larger and in the early Twitch era when own3d was still able to
compete...until they ran out of money. As for livestreaming platforms for
people who are into gaming only? It's possible that one such thing can become
relevant even with Twitch.tv around but for that to happen, Twitch.tv would
have to be enormous...and even then, they would still offer a larger potential
audience. Still, if that happens, the emerging platform might have more of the
"pure" gamers around who stream for fun, rather than for money (one of the
larger issues I have nowadays - lots of people streaming to make money, having
overlays practically begging for it).

It depends on what year you are talking about. I still fondly remember the
times when Justin.tv was full of illegal _cough_ restreams of the Simpsons,
Futurama etc. I even paid for a "pro account" to get preferred treatment when
it came to data transfers aka I paid, so that the streams wouldn't lag (and
yes, that was a thing back then).

~~~
pteraspidomorph
Tip: You can use uBlock Origin filters to effectively remove the crap from
twitch chatboxes (I do!)

"Hype trains" used to make me want to throw my monitor out of the window, back
when I had to see them.

~~~
Merem
That's pretty neat, I didn't know that. I have done it with some other stuff
on the main website but never messed around with the chat before abandoning it
for just using my IRC client to connect to it (has some advantages too like
being able to scroll very far back, saving logs and the like but since they
use a heavily hacked IRC server, it has disadvantages like not being able to
see status messages (you won't be notified that a message you sent didn't
arrive because the channel is in followers-only mode for instance)).

------
w-ll
Twitch could probably just be read as Amazon for this article.

I think it's a bad idea, but also thats pretty much only what MTV (Music
TeleVision) has been doing for the last 2 decades and the people that watch
just keep eating it up.

 _15 million merits_

~~~
Jaygles
Twitch has been experiencing some feature bloat. The guy who thought of
gifting subs should be made a millionaire. The guy who came up with channel
points should find other work. The former increases value for both the
streamer and Twitch, the latter is a simple distraction taking attention away
from the stream content and only serves to increase page interactions.

I'm worried they're introducing changes to improve certain metrics and not
caring that the changes are basically gaming the metrics.

~~~
TypeCaste
I also didn't like constantly interacting with channel points, so I made a
Firefox extension to do it for me. If you're interested, I could add a setting
to hide channel points page updates while still claiming the periodic bonuses.

Extension here: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/points-
clicke...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/points-clicker)

------
wyck
Dating? So they learned nothing about the dismal effects of reality TV's on
culture and content creators? Here's a better suggestion, fire the person who
thought moving laterally into a garbage dump was a good idea.

~~~
cyberowl
Why is it garbage? It's just entertainment. Same way reading random crap on HN
is entertainment :)

~~~
kabacha
It's really unfair to clump all of entertainment together. Is watching reality
TV same as discussing tech medium? Even if you boil "entertainment" down to
"gives you fun points" one clearly gives you something more than that.

~~~
cyberowl
Yes absolutely. Discussing what's your favorite tech stack to me sounds like
discussing what's your favorite shoes

No one cares besides you. And in the end it probably doesn't matter which one
you pick from a purely logical point of view :)

~~~
kabacha
Completely disagree with you here. If you want to be a good engineer you must
be aware of the current market and trends.

If anything I'd even argue that reality TV takes away a lot of humanities from
you like social skills and social perceptions.

~~~
cyberowl
If you want to be a good socialite and marketing professional, you need to
know what's trendy and who's influencing the general population. Same idea

~~~
kabacha
It's completely absurd to think that watching reality tv would give you any
social or marketing skills — if anything I'd argue it's the complete opposite.

------
hvasilev
Twitch stopped being a gaming streaming website and is technically "Amazon's
streaming platform". They want to branch out of gaming (which is their core
audience) into general streaming market dominance, but it seems to be very
difficult. So they basically started promoting non-gaming streams, which are
related to gaming. It was a good plan, but turns out that it didn't work the
way that they expected to, since gamers are quite unpredictable. For a while
the viewership of twitch is stagnant, and slightly declining. There are many
additional reasons for this, but in my humble opinion they should kept the
streaming platform niche and focus on promoting gaming content, instead of
trying to branch out of it into general streaming.

~~~
slightwinder
> Twitch stopped being a gaming streaming website

Don't you mean gaming-only? Because the majority of content (>90% probably) is
still gaming.

------
greendestiny_re
I started watching Twitch in 2014 for a highly specific purpose: watch video
games played with skill and possibly interact with/support skilled gamers.

I stopped watching Twitch in 2018, when it became apparent that Twitch has
less to do with video games and more with watching the streamer react to
what's happening while feigning to interact with the viewers. When I watch
Twitch today, I feel like I'm the one being gamed.

I loathe forced interactions, the incessant notifications, popups and added
Twitch UI that clutters the screen, even when I maximize the video, making it
feel like I'm watching the game through a pinhole. I hate the streamer's
constant "thank you for the <X> months sub, <username>" that disrupts any
gameplay immersion. In the chat, streamer's bots dominate with their
!<command> walls of text while I can't type in anything because I can get
banned for certain faces or just can't post at all unless I follow or
subscribe (pay money).

Besides, it became increasingly more difficult to find skilled gamers because
everyone started trend surfing. If SodaPoppin plays an indie game, all of a
sudden everyone is playing it to leech off of the fact he can push any
category to #1 in the Most Watched group. This leads to tons and tons of crud
and brainless filler as streamers play low-value games designed to elicit
shock reactions.

Why would a skilled guy play an obscure game for his 25 viewers when he can
trend surf and grab hundreds of new followers, subscribers and viewers just by
playing whatever SodaPoppin is playing? Twitch pouring money into dating
content means a perverse incentive to trend surf to the max, game the audience
and produce contrived drama.

Here's a great example of typical Twitch content, minus the notifications,
from CohhCarnage:
[https://www.twitch.tv/videos/614909188?t=00h13m48s](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/614909188?t=00h13m48s)

Nothing of substance happens in that ~1h video as he plays Fallout 76, he just
walks from one merchant to the next, buys stuff, plants veggies, kills 1-2
enemies, reads some text logs and the video ends. It's total filler, with no
insightful commentary, no skill portrayed and nothing worth watching. The guy
has over 1.2 million followers for no discernible reason. That's Twitch,
rewarding the producers of filler.

The closest replacement I found was CarcinogenSDA Youtube channel that does
old video game speedruns, most often in the "no damage taken" category. It's
fascinating and comes in two versions: with or without the player's
commentary. That's what I want—turn on a video game speedrun lasting 3-4 hours
with no interruptions or the player's contorted face and just enjoy the show.
If I want to know how he figured out a certain trick, I can watch the version
with the commentary and that's that. No forced interactions, for the love of
God.

The last fun thing I watched on Twitch were the Power Rangers and YuGiOh
marathons in 2018, and even then only because of the 24/7 chat that made them
fun.

------
mirimir
Honest question: Is "gamer" a very useful category?

I never enjoyed board games, and I grew up before electronic games existed, so
I'm clearly not one. I have relatives who are, however. And they play games
that are so different that it seems irrelevant to getting who they are.

In other words, doesn't it matter more what sorts of games people like?

~~~
ausbah
as someone in this thread mentioned, being a "gamer" has a very strong group
identity despite varying wildly across different genres and platforms

however despite the label being so shallow that literally _anyone_ who touches
a game every now and then can adopt the label, there still exist gamer
"subgroups" who hold vitriolic ideas on what a "real gamer" is. I believe this
exclusionary version of the label normally takes the form of men ages 15-35
lashing out at any game that veers too far from what is "acceptable" on race,
gender, sex, etc. deeming them to be the byproduct of "SJWs who want to ruin
our games"

~~~
mirimir
That's what I was thinking, more or less. And I just found this survey:
[https://www.polygon.com/2017/1/20/14337282/games-for-
women-a...](https://www.polygon.com/2017/1/20/14337282/games-for-women-and-
girls)

I'm guessing that "real gamers" play games that are most popular among male
players.

But maybe "gamer" is simply shorthand for "people who play games".

Edit: So am I a "gamer", because I pose online as various fictional personas?
Or because, in meatspace, I pose as an unremarkable person?

------
dbcooper
Just watch Stavros Halkias' advice show.

[https://www.twitch.tv/stavvybaby](https://www.twitch.tv/stavvybaby)

------
gorgoiler
> no escape rooms

A shame! I am now wondering if Crystal Maze reruns are available on More4.

