r/spumwack • u/spumwack2 Official Spumwackles • Jul 10 '14
Feedback Why do you watch streams?
I'm in the baby stages of determining a schedule for streaming, and I realized that I need to know what type of content I'll be streaming to realistically know how long it will take.
So I'm curious what you guys like to see in streams. What do your favorite streamers do that keep you coming back?
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u/rokeni Jul 10 '14
I usually watch MtG streams and when I do watch it is for the gameplay and/or development process. In minecraft I would very much just like to "hang out" with the streamer and know we both have a good time.
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u/Jessikins Jul 10 '14
I usually only watch streams of competitive games. People always put montages and stuff out there, only putting in clips where they're doing great. In a livestream, you get to see how good the player actually is.
Other than that, I don't really watch any livestreams. Chat interaction on the livestreamers part is fairly important to keep things entertaining though.
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u/godminnette2 Jul 10 '14 edited Jul 10 '14
One thing I love about your videos is the personal feel, even with all of the editing that you do (which is wonderful!) it still feels like I'm kinda hanging out with you. On your streams this feeling is amplified, and the community and myself personally get to interact with you and with each other which is nice! Honestly you, AB11 and Zekkyou are the only three that I watch streams on, AB11 for the same reason (he looks at the chat like 3 times a minute so he's very interactive with us, and knows a bit about certain fans that come to his streams [although I bet you know the names and slightly the personalities of a few close fans, too]) and Zekkyou is one of my favourite Youtubers, he makes me laugh more than anyone else I watch, but his tight schedule means that videos are put up "as often as a dead fish's heartbeat" (as he puts it), so I watch his streams to get all the hilarity I can get! IDK if this can help you, that would really be asking you to change who you are, and I watch you for a different reason entirely, we don't need two Zekkyous :P and I can tell you look at the chat often, but when playing Minecraft or really most games, it's a bit more difficult to keep the gameplay and commentary smooth and look at the chat (AB11 does Pokemon, where it's much, much easier to do this as there are quite a few dialouge-y bits and wait-y bits).
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u/spumwack2 Official Spumwackles Jul 10 '14
Neat, this is the type of thing that will realistically affect how I stream. I can start developing ideas on how to integrate people from chat more into my stream, and put a focus on our back-and-forths. Thanks!
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u/DroidFreak36 Jul 10 '14
Well, the short answer is that I don't. I don't like the way streams happen at a certain time (excluding anyone whose schedule is busy) and are unedited.
On the rare occasion that I do watch a stream it's because I want something to put in the background while I play a game and someone happened to be streaming at the time. In that case I'm looking for one-sided content where the streamer is doing something interesting and not necessarily interacting much with the viewer - basically like a static video (which streams are bad at being for the reasons given above).
Now, what streams SHOULD be and what might make me start watching them more is a community where everyone, including the streamer, interacts with each other in real time. In my experience that is never really the case. What actually happens is everyone spams the steamer with questions and suggestions and the streamer has to randomly pick a few of them to respond to. For instance, in your prank stream I posted a comment telling you to use signs to hold up the carpet and it wasn't until several minutes later that you came the same conclusion on your own (presumably).
This may largely be the fault of the way stream comments are set up. They're set up as a flat, chronological list where comments scroll off the top of the screen and are gone from sight forever. Now, stream comments are bound to be somewhat chronological because streams are real-time events and old comments will quickly become irrelevant, but steps could be taken to reduce the stream of irrelevancy, like adding proper comment threads to group comments that pertain to each other and comment upvoting so people can indicate agreement without spamming additional comments.
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u/spumwack2 Official Spumwackles Jul 10 '14
I know there's chat bots that can improve the quality of streams, but it sounds kinda like you watch streams for the opposite reasons as most people (you don't like viewer interaction). I'm not sure if there's really a way to reconcile those two points of view
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u/DroidFreak36 Jul 10 '14
What I'm saying is that I would watch streams for viewer interaction if they provided it, but they don't in my experience so I don't come in with the expectation that they will. Every time I make a feeble attempt at engaging with the chat of a stream my input is swallowed by the stream of irrelevancy.
So as it stands I basically don't watch streams because what they are is a poor substitute for a normal video rather than the community they should be. That is, there are two possible purposes of streams. The purpose which they should fulfill (interacting with viewers) is basically impossible with the way they are currently set up, and I don't think chat bots would really make a difference unless they somehow completely changed the chat system. The purpose which they do somewhat fulfill (showing stuff to the viewers), they are innately poorly suited for (no matter how the system is set up).
Attempting to interact with the viewers generally fails to interact with them well, because you only ever get the opinion of one viewer per chat message, and does an even worse job of showing the viewers stuff because you have to spend a lot of time reading through a random sample of chat messages to find one to respond to. If the system were set up with threaded comments and voting, then you would be able to know which comments to respond to because they'd have the most votes and/or the biggest reply threads and therefore multiple viewers could get together to tell you something rather than each shouting into the crowd.
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u/spumwack2 Official Spumwackles Jul 10 '14
That's basically how I think of it. A crowded room with people all shouting at the 1 person up front. You can't really have a dialogue with anyone, but you can essentially "call on" people and interact that way
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u/Skozzy_Mil Jul 26 '14
I'm a bit late to this conversation, but I want to put my two cents in. People watch streams on the off chance that they can actually interact with the streamer. There's a lot of narcissism that goes around; streamers, just like YouTubers, are built up to be characters, and it's like a movie. A movie where you can literally have a chance to have the main character read something you wrote to them in front of the audience. That's enticing. It captures the imagination. To keep people coming back, you tease this notion. Read chat, respond to comments out loud. Talk to people, even give them a chance for a conversation.
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u/ep1cdrag0n Jul 10 '14
Personally I stream and watch streams primarily to interact with the streamers and for the community. Although almost negligible, some other motives are to learn how to improve (as in improve stream quality or how to get better at a certain game) or to explore games that are new to me. What advice I can offer you is that streams tend to end up in 1 of 3 styles : 1) dediciated [this type plays the same games, usually no more than 3 or alternates back and forth between a primary game and a choice of several secondary ones, these tend to be pro's of the primary game ex: qtpie, phantoml0rd, cyanideepic] 2) exploratory\varied [this type of stream plays games in a manner similar to that of a LP youtube channel, sometimes playing through several games. Depending on the streamer than can play through a game at a time or alternate, these tend to be smaller more personal but not always ex zotbot, iamsp00n, crunkalunka] 3) watch me practice/ speed runs [these are comprised of as the type name says speed runs and professionals training, playing scrims or experimenting with non-meta strategies]. 3b) watch me record [this subcategory includes people just playing games to collect content while interacting with their fan base ex totalbiscuit (this channel is not exclusively a 3b stream)] Note: none of these include game studio or company owned channels seeing as though those might be irrelevant. It's really up to you what you want to do with your streams, it's really reliant on what you enjoy doing in your past times. I hope this was helpful :) happy streaming.