Adventures on Twitch.tv
Apr. 19th, 2019 04:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flamebyrdOr, how my new hobby became watching other people play video games.
Let me begin by saying that this post is neither an endorsement or a recommendation for spending any amount of time on Twitch, although it hasn't been a negative experience for me.
It all started back in February. I listen to the podcast Wonderful, which is Griffin and Rachel McElroy talking about things they enjoy, and in one episode Griffin talked about a Sonic the Hedgehog 1 speedrun from the recent Awesome Games Done Quick charity marathon.
I'd never watched a speedrun before, but I do have a strong nostalgic streak for Sonic. I never had a gaming console growing up, but in the year my family lived in the UK (1993) a lot of my neighbours had Sega MegaDrives (as they were called), and I got very into Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 there. So I watched the speedrun video and had a great time! And then YouTube decided I wanted to see more GDQ content. So I watched some other Sonic runs, including this Sonic Mania race (Sonic Mania being a 2017 game and thus not being a game I've ever played, but which feels very familiar due to its own relentless nostalgia for classic Sonic games). A race! What a great idea! And from that I ended up checking out races for games I'd never heard of, which led me to a Celeste race from SGDQ2018*, which had the actual developers of the game providing commentary and an interview at the end. It was really fascinating and made me want to see more of that particular game.
Celeste is a Very Difficult Puzzle Platformer, which is basically the opposite of my gaming interests, but watching other people play it became immensely satisfying to me. I watched several speedruns, then I'd decided to find a Let's Play so I could find out what this plot everyone kept talking about was. I loved the plot (I'll probably make a second post about my Celeste plot thoughts). I loved the music. I bought the soundtrack. I ran out of videos on YouTube to watch so I decided to look up the Celeste speedrunners on Twitch.tv.
So, Twitch. It's a streaming platform with a Discord-like chat attached, with custom emotes. You can search active streams according to what games are being played, and streams will have tags letting you know what to expect, like if they're playing the game for the first time or doing a speedrun, and what kind of speedrun. The monetisation model seems to involve people subscribing to channels for a monthly fee, donating Twitch's internal currency to the streamer, donating actual money to the streamer... Some people earn enough through this to do it full time.
I ended up watching people play Celeste for the first time quite a lot. I really enjoy watching people learn the movement techniques and solve the puzzles unaided, along with uncovering and reacting to the plot. I don't enjoy watching people get stuck for a long time, so I'll often load the archived video instead of watching live so I can skip ahead. I like the streamer to be talking/reacting while they play, but I don't enjoy it when they pause every couple of minutes to read and reply to their chat. (I understand why they do it, I just don't enjoy it.)
Best thing I have seen on Twitch: A streamer playing Celeste for the first time, with <10 viewers, and a stranger arriving in chat, watching for a while and saying things like "you're so good at this game", then politely asking if the streamer would like endgame content hints. The streamer eventually said yes, and then the chatter started composing rhyming riddles to lead them to various endgame collectibles. A few days later, I was watching the same streamer again and the same person appeared in chat. "I wondered if you'd come back if I started playing this game again!", says the streamer. And then the chatter continued providing riddles on request. (I would read a fic with this premise, I'm just saying.)
(I would also read a fic AU inspired by this tweet by Celeste sound designer Kevin Regamey.)
Worst thing I've seen on Twitch is a Chicken Treat burger ad, which is a Trump parody and which shows up on my feed several times a day. DNW.
My most disappointing experience has been the time I clicked on a stream with the LGBTQIA+ tag, and the very first thing I saw was transphobic garbage, so I back-buttoned right out of there and now glare malevolently at the streamer's name whenever Twitch suggests them to me. But the other game streamers I've come across with that tag have been decent.
The chats definitely have a trend towards, um, let's say, the worst stereotypes of cis male gamers. But I've managed to find some that are less frequently irritating to me.
My preference is for watching <1 hour speedruns, preferably <30 minutes (*cough* Celeste ANY%) but I'll take what I can get. If there's really nothing else I'll put on a longer run of something for background noise while I'm studying. (There's this one guy who does an 8 hour speedrun of Super Mario Odyssey every day. I can't even.)
The aforementioned Celeste sound designer Kevin Regamey occasionally shows up in speedrunner stream chats and provides interesting insights into the game development process. Last night I watched him and a streamer exploring various extant sound bugs, one of which he fixed on the spot and promised would be in the upcoming DLC. Amazing.
(As for the Celeste speedrunning community, there seems to be occasional drama, I haven't cared to look into any of it. But from what I've caught wind of... don't let anyone ever tell you that predominantly-female online spaces are the only ones with wank 😂)
For the record: I do not, at this point, have a Twitch account, nor have I joined any Twitch Discords, so I am the creepiest of silent lurkers. I have a separate user profile on Chrome and view it all without logging in. But I'm becoming increasingly concerned that this will only last until I can come up with a new username to use for this purpose...
* Rewatching this now, I can see so many places where the strat(egie)s have changed since then. There's not even a demodash in Resort! They do 5A instead of 5B!
Let me begin by saying that this post is neither an endorsement or a recommendation for spending any amount of time on Twitch, although it hasn't been a negative experience for me.
It all started back in February. I listen to the podcast Wonderful, which is Griffin and Rachel McElroy talking about things they enjoy, and in one episode Griffin talked about a Sonic the Hedgehog 1 speedrun from the recent Awesome Games Done Quick charity marathon.
I'd never watched a speedrun before, but I do have a strong nostalgic streak for Sonic. I never had a gaming console growing up, but in the year my family lived in the UK (1993) a lot of my neighbours had Sega MegaDrives (as they were called), and I got very into Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 there. So I watched the speedrun video and had a great time! And then YouTube decided I wanted to see more GDQ content. So I watched some other Sonic runs, including this Sonic Mania race (Sonic Mania being a 2017 game and thus not being a game I've ever played, but which feels very familiar due to its own relentless nostalgia for classic Sonic games). A race! What a great idea! And from that I ended up checking out races for games I'd never heard of, which led me to a Celeste race from SGDQ2018*, which had the actual developers of the game providing commentary and an interview at the end. It was really fascinating and made me want to see more of that particular game.
Celeste is a Very Difficult Puzzle Platformer, which is basically the opposite of my gaming interests, but watching other people play it became immensely satisfying to me. I watched several speedruns, then I'd decided to find a Let's Play so I could find out what this plot everyone kept talking about was. I loved the plot (I'll probably make a second post about my Celeste plot thoughts). I loved the music. I bought the soundtrack. I ran out of videos on YouTube to watch so I decided to look up the Celeste speedrunners on Twitch.tv.
So, Twitch. It's a streaming platform with a Discord-like chat attached, with custom emotes. You can search active streams according to what games are being played, and streams will have tags letting you know what to expect, like if they're playing the game for the first time or doing a speedrun, and what kind of speedrun. The monetisation model seems to involve people subscribing to channels for a monthly fee, donating Twitch's internal currency to the streamer, donating actual money to the streamer... Some people earn enough through this to do it full time.
I ended up watching people play Celeste for the first time quite a lot. I really enjoy watching people learn the movement techniques and solve the puzzles unaided, along with uncovering and reacting to the plot. I don't enjoy watching people get stuck for a long time, so I'll often load the archived video instead of watching live so I can skip ahead. I like the streamer to be talking/reacting while they play, but I don't enjoy it when they pause every couple of minutes to read and reply to their chat. (I understand why they do it, I just don't enjoy it.)
Best thing I have seen on Twitch: A streamer playing Celeste for the first time, with <10 viewers, and a stranger arriving in chat, watching for a while and saying things like "you're so good at this game", then politely asking if the streamer would like endgame content hints. The streamer eventually said yes, and then the chatter started composing rhyming riddles to lead them to various endgame collectibles. A few days later, I was watching the same streamer again and the same person appeared in chat. "I wondered if you'd come back if I started playing this game again!", says the streamer. And then the chatter continued providing riddles on request. (I would read a fic with this premise, I'm just saying.)
(I would also read a fic AU inspired by this tweet by Celeste sound designer Kevin Regamey.)
Worst thing I've seen on Twitch is a Chicken Treat burger ad, which is a Trump parody and which shows up on my feed several times a day. DNW.
My most disappointing experience has been the time I clicked on a stream with the LGBTQIA+ tag, and the very first thing I saw was transphobic garbage, so I back-buttoned right out of there and now glare malevolently at the streamer's name whenever Twitch suggests them to me. But the other game streamers I've come across with that tag have been decent.
The chats definitely have a trend towards, um, let's say, the worst stereotypes of cis male gamers. But I've managed to find some that are less frequently irritating to me.
My preference is for watching <1 hour speedruns, preferably <30 minutes (*cough* Celeste ANY%) but I'll take what I can get. If there's really nothing else I'll put on a longer run of something for background noise while I'm studying. (There's this one guy who does an 8 hour speedrun of Super Mario Odyssey every day. I can't even.)
The aforementioned Celeste sound designer Kevin Regamey occasionally shows up in speedrunner stream chats and provides interesting insights into the game development process. Last night I watched him and a streamer exploring various extant sound bugs, one of which he fixed on the spot and promised would be in the upcoming DLC. Amazing.
(As for the Celeste speedrunning community, there seems to be occasional drama, I haven't cared to look into any of it. But from what I've caught wind of... don't let anyone ever tell you that predominantly-female online spaces are the only ones with wank 😂)
For the record: I do not, at this point, have a Twitch account, nor have I joined any Twitch Discords, so I am the creepiest of silent lurkers. I have a separate user profile on Chrome and view it all without logging in. But I'm becoming increasingly concerned that this will only last until I can come up with a new username to use for this purpose...
* Rewatching this now, I can see so many places where the strat(egie)s have changed since then. There's not even a demodash in Resort! They do 5A instead of 5B!