Watching sports is a useful activity when you confined to a hospital bed for a month or two as has happened to people I know. In one case they wouldn’t be allowed to game, even sports were in danger of being too exciting for their condition.
Logic does not check out. Like they’re both activities I can do on my couch? Okay sure, I guess. Just like I can watch a video about knitting even if I can’t knit, but I could be knitting instead of watching!? Complete nonsense…
I can only watch so much football as can a rare other people like me. If I am watching football I want the view of one position. I don’t care that the quarterback got sacked on the play, how did the running back avoid the defense in his attempts to become open for a pass - or some such that I want to emulate when I next play. (i think that is a likely thing - I consider football too dangerous to play so I’m guessing - in reality I’d prefer to see other sports that I’m likely to play)
The game most of the world calls “football” is called “soccer” in the US. We have a very popular game we call “football” in the US that is unrelated to “soccer”, instead it is related to rugby (still very different from rugby, but there is a relation)
This thread got me thinking Lemmy needs a better “find a co-op buddy” community for games in general. If it’s here already, could use better marketing.
Not sum’m I suffer from, but I want to see y’all living your best lives too. A good homie can make or break a game run.
Watching someone cut a dovetail by hand is a lot more interesting now that I know from experience how hard it is. And maybe I’ll learn a trick to make my next ones better.
I’m not surprised. They are very hard to make correctly and not that much better than other options that are easier to do. they are a “holy grail” of wood working skill for a reason. I’ve done a dozen in my life and the best is so awful I want to burn an otherwise nice creation to hide the evidence.
If I want to do my hobby, I need to make time for it, whereas if I want to watch videos about my hobby, I can do it on the toilet. It turns out it’s a lot easier to watch than make time for a hobby, hence why I do more of it.
If I didn’t have to work, I’d spend more time doing my hobby. But I do, and I have kids, so hobby time is quite limited.
All of my little cousins and nephews watch streamers. To them it’s more fun to watch someone play than to play most times. They don’t like dealing with challenging games all the time, they really just want to have fun. These kids do play games but they watch more than me so I tried watching some streamers and I get it. When I was growing up we had systems with multiple controller ports and no online. Online gaming was PC only until I went to college and console online took off. But growing up you had to bring your friends or cousins to play some Mario Kart 64. That was way different than playing with randoms online. Streamers kinda brings that connection back.
This is not at all surprising. Almost all hobbies and sports are like this.
The only difference that makes this interesting is the fact that you could be gaming while watching about gaming, which is untrue for many other hobbies.
Not really interesting. Gaming is often stressful and requires more though / action being put into it. Also there is the matter of skill - it’s way more fun to see someone completely anihilate the other team, than to go out and get killed yourself. You can also go through a story based game without having to actually play, and you get most of the experience. You also need to count in people watching other people’s guides, especially for strategy games. For other hobbies it’s often about actually doing something and feeling the rush, or by occupying the hands and chilling out. You don’t get the rush of driving a car by watching someone else do it. You don’t get your hands occupied by seeing someone knit. Also, gaming provides instant feedback / dopamine. Watching it does that with even less effort.
I don’t find gaming stressful at all, I just honestly don’t have the time for it. Gaming means my butt needs to be in the chair doing nothing other than playing the game. Watching/listening means I can be doing dishes, folding laundry, or even commuting to work. Very rarely am I totally focused on watching/listening to someone playing a game, and I’m never involved in the chat.
If I had the time, I wouldn’t watch nearly as much, but I don’t, so watching is my surrogate.
Absolutely can’t stand watching people play video games. They play wrong.
And the only videos I watch of a game are ones to see what kind of game it is when I don’t know too much beyond word of mouth “this game is great” kind of thing. Sure, you’ve described the game as an action-packed romp with tons of weapons and semi-open world, but the video shows it’s a 2d side scroller with variations of the same 5 pixel “guns” that all shoot the same ball. Not interested.
Beyond that, I have no interest in watching videos. And if companies started trying to somehow cram even more ads into their games to advertise to people watching a stream then I’m even less in than before
I have to ask if you have ever watched professional level StarCraft 2. Because those people play at an insane level of multitasking and optimization and it is actually beautiful to watch in many cases. The stuff they do is often not even achievable by the average player. I’m sure there are other examples in FPS games and other genres, but what professional RTS players do definitely pushes the level of human cognitive ability.
The obvious barrier to entry here is knowing the game, as you can’t really appreciate things fully unless you’ve played at least a little. But I’ll say that I started off watching LowkoTV and he was entertaining enough to watch until I finally decided to try out the game, and then came to appreciate it even more after that.
Obviously using in game portals to related content creators to push more ads is idiotic, just saying the recognition of the importance of gaming content creators to the games themselves isn’t inherently a bad thing.
Every teenager on YouTube has suddenly become a professional gaming industry analyst for EA, Microsoft, Ubisoft and Bethesda’s failures, and could probably put it on a resume.
“The problem with the industry today…”
Fill in the rest with whatever and you’ve got hours and hours of angry, dissatisfied content for others to nod with.
That’s me for sure these days. Back in high school I used to play at least a couple of hours every day. I have a gaming PC and a Steam Deck but probably play a few hours a month. But I’ll happily watch several hours of Twitch each day while I’m relaxing.
As a (probably) even older guy I find it the weirdest thing ever. “watching games being played”. It’s boring AF.
Sure, I can’t t play counterstrike effectively anymore. Sure I am the one with the most deaths in helldivers2. Doom eternal is just way too twitchy for me. I’ve become too slow. In mechwarrior 5 I have too put the difficulty on story/easy and aim assist on. Which hurt my old ego the most to be honest.
But doing it still beats the shit out of watching it.
/start_old_man_rant
Especially these days when every streamer is an egocentric manchilds screaming their head off in a totally scripted “episode”. Or girls in bikinis only because it sells. Can we just leave that in hooters? And everything is bought and paid for. You’re watching a commercial. Or do you really think that logo on his mike just happens to be in view? Or the brand of the gaming chair?or that cupboard behind him filled with lights and gaming gear? Its ultra consumerism. And the begging for money. Fuck off. Really.
I mean, the thing that people watch twitch for is mainly the person/people on the stream, the game is a backdrop, rarely the actual focus
And not everyone is ego-centric like you’re saying? I mean, there’s literally tens of thousands of streamers. Don’t just look at the biggest ones that probably mainly appeal to kids, i.e. a different audience than you. Chances are the kind of people you would enjoy watching are just smaller and more niche
Makes sense. I usually just put on a 2+ hours long video whenever I’m doing chores. I don’t actually care about Wolfey’s last weird team, it just makes for good background noise.
Same. I watch VODs about a strategy game I really like playing (EU4) because I rarely have the time to actually dig in to a campaign, so watching/listening to someone else (while I do chores) do what I don’t have for allows me to get some of that connection to a game I love. I do play the game quite a bit (have nearly 1k hours), but not nearly as much as I’d like.
There’s a pretty big difference in what I play vs what I watch though. I generally play action games and watch strategy games, because action games are easy to jump into for an hour or so at a time, whereas strategy games usually need an hour just to remember what I was doing last, so I tend to wait until I can block out an entire evening.
I stream a 25-year-old MMO, EverQuest, about 8 hours a week and lots of viewers just want to live vicariously through my moment remembering when they were doing it themselves without committing 500-1,000 hours to level a character.
I also watch other people play other class types of endgame content to do the same.
I’m not the most engaging streamer, but I enjoy answering questions to my 2-10 viewers. I also enjoy when another streamer answers my own questions.
I don’t understand watching streamers with 4,000 viewers spamming kewk emojis though.
I played Quarm until just before Kunark came out. Haven’t played since Kunark but continue to support Secrets on Patreon. She’s putting so much work into it. How’s Kunark doing?
Lots of VP raids these days and there was a kick-ass event for the one year anniversary where we got to play in Plane of Justice for a month with all kinds of fun loot. Raids are instances now, with open world raids still around as well. So there’s none of that P99 FTE sweat going on. Basically, if you raid, you’ll get gear. No bottle necks for epics anymore.
I watch games about the game in gaming, but I also watch games about my game when I’m not gaming. Therefore by definition my gaming will be less than my watching gaming.
You have to watch the video of the game you are playing in order to play the game you are playing. By definition… (if you are video gaming) all bets are off for boardgamers!
Sometimes you are so tired that you can’t actively engage in something, but you want to engage with it so you passively engage instead.
This goes for gamers watching gaming videos, woodworkers watching woodworking videos or people with dirty houses watching lawnmowing/pressure washing/car detailing/rug cleaning videos.
You get some of the endorphins of achievement, without having to go through the effort of achieving something.
No Money. - Videos let me watch games that aren’t worth buying to me along with letting me parse games that look fun enough to buy.
No Time. - Videos can be put on during other chores or tasks, left on as background noise during times where I would absolutely not have enough time to actually play a game.
Skill Issue. - No matter how good I want to be, I’m ultimately just kinda ok at games. Watching higher level players can be a way for me to learn tips and tricks to improve, or they can be a way for me to experience difficulty levels of the game I will never realistically achieve on my own.
You forgot: The videos often have absurd challenges that most gamers would never try, like for example trying to beat Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire with only a physical attacking Abra.
Commentator: “Here’s my 100-hour video essay on what King’s Duty 8, an award-winning game, could have handled differently, with another 40 pages of annotations.”
Game Developer at 4:50 PM: “Ok whatever, we didn’t fix the cutscene bug but at least it doesn’t crash. Time to go home and not think about video games all weekend.”
Game Production Manager: “Nobody is going home until we get this bug ironed out. You don’t have to come in this weekend if you don’t want, but we won’t renew your contract if you didn’t.”
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imagine if this was about football fans
The interesting part to me is that you can watch football even when/if you can’t play football, but you could be gaming instead of watching.
Nah, I can’t game while I’m doing the dishes but I can watch a video just fine
You’re taking too long to do the dishes.
There are more chores than dishes:
That’s when I watch/listen to streamers, I almost never do it when I could otherwise be gaming. I’ll occasionally listen/watch while gaming though.
Obligatory
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbSehcT19u0
I feel this so much sometimes…
I don’t only do dishes. Also, there are short videos.
Watching sports is a useful activity when you confined to a hospital bed for a month or two as has happened to people I know. In one case they wouldn’t be allowed to game, even sports were in danger of being too exciting for their condition.
Logic does not check out. Like they’re both activities I can do on my couch? Okay sure, I guess. Just like I can watch a video about knitting even if I can’t knit, but I could be knitting instead of watching!? Complete nonsense…
I can only watch so much football as can a rare other people like me. If I am watching football I want the view of one position. I don’t care that the quarterback got sacked on the play, how did the running back avoid the defense in his attempts to become open for a pass - or some such that I want to emulate when I next play. (i think that is a likely thing - I consider football too dangerous to play so I’m guessing - in reality I’d prefer to see other sports that I’m likely to play)
edit: spelling
That’s a fascinating way to spell… Presumably “quarterback”?
i can’t make heads or tails of this reply :P
“how did the running back avoid the defense”, i’m assuming there should be a “to” in there? who runs back? i can’t parse it…
They went with American football, where “running back” and ”defense” refer to positions.
…huh.
The game most of the world calls “football” is called “soccer” in the US. We have a very popular game we call “football” in the US that is unrelated to “soccer”, instead it is related to rugby (still very different from rugby, but there is a relation)
strange
Welcome to the world. There are strange things all over. Sit back and enjoy laughing at the ride.
This thread got me thinking Lemmy needs a better “find a co-op buddy” community for games in general. If it’s here already, could use better marketing.
Not sum’m I suffer from, but I want to see y’all living your best lives too. A good homie can make or break a game run.
I miss r/summonsign and whatever the one for elden ring was. From Soft co-op is the best part of their games.
Truly. A bit of jolly co-op goes a long way
New report claims people with hobby spend more time watching videos about hobby than doing hobby
Watching someone cut a dovetail by hand is a lot more interesting now that I know from experience how hard it is. And maybe I’ll learn a trick to make my next ones better.
Dovetail sounds like a bird. It’s not a bird, right? Right?
A dovetail is a type of joint that doesn’t require fasteners and only uses the material (usually glue for wood).
It was more funny when I didn’t know that :(
But thanks! I kind of expected it’s something like that :D
Does knowing that the name comes from one of the join elements (left side) looking like the tail of a dove, improve that?
😏
I use one of those big metal paper choppers to cut doves tails.
And its cheaper to watch someone do it. Quality timber and tools are expensive.
And less annoying to your neighbor if you’re in a neighborhood. Plus how many tables can you actually fit in a house?
Cutting dovetails implies by hand - power tools exist for it, but those using power tools generally use different joints.
My neighbor does not make dovetails, then.
I’m not surprised. They are very hard to make correctly and not that much better than other options that are easier to do. they are a “holy grail” of wood working skill for a reason. I’ve done a dozen in my life and the best is so awful I want to burn an otherwise nice creation to hide the evidence.
If I want to do my hobby, I need to make time for it, whereas if I want to watch videos about my hobby, I can do it on the toilet. It turns out it’s a lot easier to watch than make time for a hobby, hence why I do more of it.
If I didn’t have to work, I’d spend more time doing my hobby. But I do, and I have kids, so hobby time is quite limited.
Execution is a small part of “the planning”, man. That ain’t even fair.
All of my little cousins and nephews watch streamers. To them it’s more fun to watch someone play than to play most times. They don’t like dealing with challenging games all the time, they really just want to have fun. These kids do play games but they watch more than me so I tried watching some streamers and I get it. When I was growing up we had systems with multiple controller ports and no online. Online gaming was PC only until I went to college and console online took off. But growing up you had to bring your friends or cousins to play some Mario Kart 64. That was way different than playing with randoms online. Streamers kinda brings that connection back.
In a parasocial kinda way…?
when my son plays he’s constantly talking through whatever he’s doing in the game. streaming has rubbed off that much
This is not at all surprising. Almost all hobbies and sports are like this.
The only difference that makes this interesting is the fact that you could be gaming while watching about gaming, which is untrue for many other hobbies.
You don’t watch football while playing football? What else is the jumbotron even good for?
I ain’t gonna tell nobody how to live their life or nothing, but, uh…
Kiss Cam, and wacky mascot antics. At least that is what I’m led to believe. Never actually been to a sporting event with a jumbotron.
They’ll also show replays of important plays, often in slow motion so the fans can get frustrated when a call doesn’t go their way.
Not really interesting. Gaming is often stressful and requires more though / action being put into it. Also there is the matter of skill - it’s way more fun to see someone completely anihilate the other team, than to go out and get killed yourself. You can also go through a story based game without having to actually play, and you get most of the experience. You also need to count in people watching other people’s guides, especially for strategy games. For other hobbies it’s often about actually doing something and feeling the rush, or by occupying the hands and chilling out. You don’t get the rush of driving a car by watching someone else do it. You don’t get your hands occupied by seeing someone knit. Also, gaming provides instant feedback / dopamine. Watching it does that with even less effort.
I don’t find gaming stressful at all, I just honestly don’t have the time for it. Gaming means my butt needs to be in the chair doing nothing other than playing the game. Watching/listening means I can be doing dishes, folding laundry, or even commuting to work. Very rarely am I totally focused on watching/listening to someone playing a game, and I’m never involved in the chat.
If I had the time, I wouldn’t watch nearly as much, but I don’t, so watching is my surrogate.
Absolutely can’t stand watching people play video games. They play wrong.
And the only videos I watch of a game are ones to see what kind of game it is when I don’t know too much beyond word of mouth “this game is great” kind of thing. Sure, you’ve described the game as an action-packed romp with tons of weapons and semi-open world, but the video shows it’s a 2d side scroller with variations of the same 5 pixel “guns” that all shoot the same ball. Not interested.
Beyond that, I have no interest in watching videos. And if companies started trying to somehow cram even more ads into their games to advertise to people watching a stream then I’m even less in than before
I have to ask if you have ever watched professional level StarCraft 2. Because those people play at an insane level of multitasking and optimization and it is actually beautiful to watch in many cases. The stuff they do is often not even achievable by the average player. I’m sure there are other examples in FPS games and other genres, but what professional RTS players do definitely pushes the level of human cognitive ability.
The obvious barrier to entry here is knowing the game, as you can’t really appreciate things fully unless you’ve played at least a little. But I’ll say that I started off watching LowkoTV and he was entertaining enough to watch until I finally decided to try out the game, and then came to appreciate it even more after that.
Obviously using in game portals to related content creators to push more ads is idiotic, just saying the recognition of the importance of gaming content creators to the games themselves isn’t inherently a bad thing.
I feel that. A few times I had to stop the stream and play the game better myself.
Every teenager on YouTube has suddenly become a professional gaming industry analyst for EA, Microsoft, Ubisoft and Bethesda’s failures, and could probably put it on a resume.
“The problem with the industry today…”
Fill in the rest with whatever and you’ve got hours and hours of angry, dissatisfied content for others to nod with.
“ABYSMAL! UNINSPIRED!”
That’s the spirit!
That’s me for sure these days. Back in high school I used to play at least a couple of hours every day. I have a gaming PC and a Steam Deck but probably play a few hours a month. But I’ll happily watch several hours of Twitch each day while I’m relaxing.
Probably just getting older and busier, haha.
As a (probably) even older guy I find it the weirdest thing ever. “watching games being played”. It’s boring AF.
Sure, I can’t t play counterstrike effectively anymore. Sure I am the one with the most deaths in helldivers2. Doom eternal is just way too twitchy for me. I’ve become too slow. In mechwarrior 5 I have too put the difficulty on story/easy and aim assist on. Which hurt my old ego the most to be honest.
But doing it still beats the shit out of watching it.
/start_old_man_rant
Especially these days when every streamer is an egocentric manchilds screaming their head off in a totally scripted “episode”. Or girls in bikinis only because it sells. Can we just leave that in hooters? And everything is bought and paid for. You’re watching a commercial. Or do you really think that logo on his mike just happens to be in view? Or the brand of the gaming chair?or that cupboard behind him filled with lights and gaming gear? Its ultra consumerism. And the begging for money. Fuck off. Really.
I hate it.
I miss total biscuit. That was entertainment.
/end_old_man_rant
I mean, the thing that people watch twitch for is mainly the person/people on the stream, the game is a backdrop, rarely the actual focus
And not everyone is ego-centric like you’re saying? I mean, there’s literally tens of thousands of streamers. Don’t just look at the biggest ones that probably mainly appeal to kids, i.e. a different audience than you. Chances are the kind of people you would enjoy watching are just smaller and more niche
Makes sense. I usually just put on a 2+ hours long video whenever I’m doing chores. I don’t actually care about Wolfey’s last weird team, it just makes for good background noise.
I have played through Factorio, I have also watched every video doshdoshington has made about it while cooking, doing dishes etc.
Exactly what I did the last few days, great channel :D
Same. I watch VODs about a strategy game I really like playing (EU4) because I rarely have the time to actually dig in to a campaign, so watching/listening to someone else (while I do chores) do what I don’t have for allows me to get some of that connection to a game I love. I do play the game quite a bit (have nearly 1k hours), but not nearly as much as I’d like.
There’s a pretty big difference in what I play vs what I watch though. I generally play action games and watch strategy games, because action games are easy to jump into for an hour or so at a time, whereas strategy games usually need an hour just to remember what I was doing last, so I tend to wait until I can block out an entire evening.
Yep, it’s hard to make time for a several hours long hobby when you’re an adult.
lol yeah, it’s like planning date night with your game.
I stream a 25-year-old MMO, EverQuest, about 8 hours a week and lots of viewers just want to live vicariously through my moment remembering when they were doing it themselves without committing 500-1,000 hours to level a character.
I also watch other people play other class types of endgame content to do the same.
I’m not the most engaging streamer, but I enjoy answering questions to my 2-10 viewers. I also enjoy when another streamer answers my own questions.
I don’t understand watching streamers with 4,000 viewers spamming kewk emojis though.
I’ve been really into Meridian 59 lately, but haven’t been playing in the past couple of weeks. Thanks for the reminder.
You play live service EQ or P99 or Quarm?
I’ve played them all. EQ definitely the game nearest and dearest to my heart.
I stream and play Quarm exclusively. Best balance of nostalgia and community. <3
I played Quarm until just before Kunark came out. Haven’t played since Kunark but continue to support Secrets on Patreon. She’s putting so much work into it. How’s Kunark doing?
Lots of VP raids these days and there was a kick-ass event for the one year anniversary where we got to play in Plane of Justice for a month with all kinds of fun loot. Raids are instances now, with open world raids still around as well. So there’s none of that P99 FTE sweat going on. Basically, if you raid, you’ll get gear. No bottle necks for epics anymore.
Most of us are ready for Velius, but having fun.
I watch games about the game in gaming, but I also watch games about my game when I’m not gaming. Therefore by definition my gaming will be less than my watching gaming.
What if gaming time is 4 hours, you spend 3/4 of gaming time playing games, and you watch gaming videos for one hour outside gaming time?
I remember not having kids…
Now gaming time, if I’m lucky, is like 30 mins a week. Much of that spent patching and remembering wtf I was doing last time I played.
Not counting playing with them, at least. Though they spend more time watching Minecraft videos than playing Minecraft, so there’s that.
You have to watch the video of the game you are playing in order to play the game you are playing. By definition… (if you are video gaming) all bets are off for boardgamers!
Board gamers watch videos about board games too!
The point is if you are video gaming you are literally watching a video of yourself playing the game. That is why it is "video"gaming…
Those aren’t gamers in the same way watching racing doesn’t make me a race car driver.
Just because someone doesn’t play games all the time doesn’t mean they don’t play games sometimes.
If you race 10 hours a week, but you watch racing 20 hours a week, are you not still a racer?
Fair point
Sometimes you are so tired that you can’t actively engage in something, but you want to engage with it so you passively engage instead.
This goes for gamers watching gaming videos, woodworkers watching woodworking videos or people with dirty houses watching lawnmowing/pressure washing/car detailing/rug cleaning videos.
You get some of the endorphins of achievement, without having to go through the effort of achieving something.
In other stunning news, researchers find people who like sports spend more time watching it than playing it.
Makes enough sense, as goofy as it sounds.
Amen to that!
You forgot: The videos often have absurd challenges that most gamers would never try, like for example trying to beat Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire with only a physical attacking Abra.
Or counting how many people are employed in Skyrim.
Arguably that falls under both 2 and 3, but yeah entirely unique challenges or play modes is another reason to watch.
Definitely fall into this category. Commentary/ video essays about games are my go-to for background noise.
Commentator: “Here’s my 100-hour video essay on what King’s Duty 8, an award-winning game, could have handled differently, with another 40 pages of annotations.”
Game Developer at 4:50 PM: “Ok whatever, we didn’t fix the cutscene bug but at least it doesn’t crash. Time to go home and not think about video games all weekend.”
Game Production Manager: “Nobody is going home until we get this bug ironed out. You don’t have to come in this weekend if you don’t want, but we won’t renew your contract if you didn’t.”