Gaming Ramble Weekly

While it’s not new, streaming has become one of the biggest phenomenons in the last couple of years, with an increase in popularity coming about because of the worldwide lockdowns experienced during the height of the Covid-19 Pandemic.  The ease of access for anyone to stream means that the dream of reaching the big time is available to anyone with the means to stream.  You can start streaming simply by having a console and a headset, you don’t necessarily need to have a capture card and a top of the range PC.

But is this really a good thing?  Well, I plan to spend a good amount of time highlighting the pros and cons that come with streaming, looking at the platforms themselves, as well as what the impact can be on the individual streaming.  Regardless of how you feel about streaming and what your background is, my hope is that there is something in this post that resonates with you.  Whether you stream yourself, are an avid viewer of streams, or someone who pops on from time to time, I feel that there are issues highlighted that apply across the broader spectrum of social media as we know it today.

I always like to begin my blogs with my personal experience with the topic I’m tackling on any given week, as I like to think that you then have some context from the position that I come from.  I have streamed on and off since March 2021 on twitch, streaming directly from my PS4/PS5 to a community of people I am so thankful to have met.  My aim was never to get any sort of success from streaming, but just to meet some like-minded people I could hang out with every now and again.  I streamed single player story driven games to an average audience of anything between 5-10 people, and in general we just hung out and chatted, reacting to some of the biggest emotional moments in the games, and all in all it has been a lovely time.

On the other side, a lot of the people who watched me streamed themselves, and so I would have watched them throughout the majority of 2021, a year where I was finishing university and stuck, bored out of my mind due to Covid restrictions.  These streams helped pass the time for me, and I felt like I was getting to meet the people who appeared as just names in my chat.  But since leaving uni, and working a full time job, my energy to stream has waned, as has my desire to watch streams.  Thankfully, discord exists, which has given me a platform to join voice calls with these friends that streaming on twitch gave me, something I will always be thankful for.  

As from a streaming point of view, it is definitely fair to say that there have been periods where I’ve felt on edge, where warnings of bots designed to scam you in some way meant that should I receive a new follower, I was never sure if it was a real person or a harmful bot.  That did make streaming difficult, especially when I was only doing it for fun.  Does that mean however that my streaming experience was unhealthy?  Not necessarily no.  I streamed a lot during lockdown season, maybe four times a week, and used it for good, doing a twelve hour charity stream that raised £1300 for Great Ormond Street Hospital.  I certainly feel that I was able to find the better aspects of streaming.

“it is definitely fair to say that there have been periods where I’ve felt on edge”

In order to fully explore streaming culture, I’ll be presenting three main perspectives: the perspective of a viewer, the perspective of a “small” (and I don’t mean height) streamer with aspirations to make a career out of streaming, and the perspective of a “big” streamer, who streams to thousands of people every time they go live.  I feel that this best represents all the different facets that streaming offers, and while I won’t be diving into a mid-range streamer’s perspective, I feel that the case studies involved will have experiences indicative to anyone’s situation.

Let’s start by exploring the experience of the viewer of streams. After all, without viewers, streamers would simply have no income, and so, I feel it’s very fair to say that the viewer is the most important person in any streaming experience.  Very simply, if you as a streamer aren’t entertaining enough, you’ll lose viewers very quickly.  In a world where people are consumed by short form content on apps like TikTok and Instagram, streaming stands apart as a form of super long form content, fighting the battle of keeping the attention of the viewers.  Twitch does this well with the points rewards system.  Essentially, you get channel points for watching a stream, which you can redeem to make an impact on the stream, whether that’s through triggering sound alerts, or making the streamer have a drink of water.  What seems very small, is actually an extremely effective strategy to hold the attention of viewers.

One of the skillsets streamers need to be competent with is chat interaction.  One of the key features of streaming is that viewers can interact directly with the streamer through the chat function, essentially live messaging the streamer.  There is a sweet spot here, as those streaming to over 1000 viewers will have chats that are chaotic, with multiple messages being sent through every second, it is impossible to keep up.  Later on, I’ll be going into detail on how streamers monetise their content, but understand for now that the monetisation of a stream comes directly from the relationship a streamer can develop with their viewership.

But this is the Internet, and so there are a small percentage of degenerates whose sole purpose is to troll streamers.  It really is startling in today’s society the impact that such a small group of people can have on other people’s lives.  It is no coincidence that in this social media era we live in today, more and more people are experiencing anxiety and depression.  I firmly believe that social media gives us too much information about ourselves, whether that’s the opinions that others have of us, or in the case of streaming, allowing people we don’t know to impact how we feel about ourselves.  Again the solution to this is something I’ll dive into later.

“It really is startling in today’s society the impact that such a small group of people can have on other people’s lives”

The experience of the average streamer differs massively from the glorified idea that’s been built up from successful streamers, with the grind of streaming yielding little to no results, whether that’s monetary or otherwise.  I want to take some time to tell you about a good friend of mine who I actually met through Twitch.  Spectral Division, real name Adrian, is an aspiring content creator who dreams of being able to make content creation his job.  He typically streams three nights a week, about ten hours on total, and spends the same amount of time, if not longer, on his YouTube videos (an example of which I’ve embedded below, his most viewed video all about Fallout 76. Go check it out, and be sure to subscribe to his channel).  

For Adrian, this is a hobby that he hopes one day will become his job (much like this blog for me).  But he works a full time job that involves an hour of travel time each way (adding up to ten hours a week) on top of the 25 hours he spends on content creation.  There’s no denying the work and dedication he has to his craft, and if you were to ask him if he feels rewarded by content creation in general, it is likely that he would say yes and no.  The experience he has gained is rewarding, however for all the hard work he puts in, I would say he hasn’t received the audience he should have.  Don’t get me wrong, it is always going to take time, and hopefully one day he’ll strike gold, but I think his case study shows problems with Twitch as a platform itself.

Adrian is a Twitch affiliate, which means his audience can subscribe to him, and donate bits (Twitch’s in-app currency), but at his level it provides little to no income.  Twitch’s use of pre-roll ads is something that I feel hinders smaller creators like Adrian.  Imagine you go to click onto a stream, to be given unskippable ads, that last over a minute.  It is very unlikely that you, as someone who has never seen Adrian’s content, is likely to stick around.  You’re more likely to move on to someone else’s stream, and so the cycle repeats.  

On the positive end, Adrian has a brilliantly supportive community of viewers who he interacts with regularly, and I think it’s fair to say that everyone wants to see him succeed.  I personally prefer being a part of smaller communities, as it means you’re in a position to get to know everyone.  But to make a living from streaming you need more than that, and growing your community is vital.

I won’t name other small streamers, but I know from my experiences that there are some that feel as though they owe their community streams.  There are some streamers I know who struggle with mental health issues, and when they don’t feel up for streaming they feel they have to explain all the reasons why.  In reality, no streamer should feel like they owe anyone anything, and it’s this side of streaming that can be unhealthy.

On the other side of the coin, there are streamers with huge audiences, often streaming to an average audience of tens of thousands of people at a time.  These streamers earn a ludicrous amount of money from sponsorship deals, exclusivity deals, subs, and donations.  And for me, this is the side of streaming that is the most unhealthy, and from those who don’t understand the world of streaming, easily the most baffling.  I want to make it clear that I don’t have a problem with these streamers in particular, if you’re successful you deserve what you earn, but the model is crazy.

I won’t be singling out any particular streamer, but I’m sure for a lot of you reading this blog, you can think of examples of streamers who have audiences above 10,000 viewers on a consistent basis.  A streamer with this audience size is more than likely to have sponsors, and some sort of exclusivity contract with the streaming platform they’re on.  So already, these people have a monetary advantage over smaller streamers.  Then, as their chat is likely manic, the probability of them picking out a single message is very slim, so in order to be noticed, people will donate money to have their message read out.  These are people who are most probably worse off financially, paying something like $5 to have their message read out loud on a stream.

And that’s not all.  These bigger streamers will run ads every 15 mins or so (after all, it’s not like you watch TV without ads unless you pay for it, right?), meaning that a lot of people will choose to subscribe for £4 a month to avoid ads.  Once again, the rich get richer as the viewer pays for an easier to watch experience, and for the streamer it’s a win-win, either they get ad revenue from those not subbed, or they get sub revenue from those paying to avoid ads.

“These are people who are most probably worse off financially, paying something like $5 to have their message read out loud on a stream.”

Once again, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying they shouldn’t do this, but I personally feel like in larger communities, the streamer-viewer experience is so unhealthy.  There are streamers who will exploit this relationship for monetary gain, and others not so much.  I feel like it’s a culture now that continues to become worse and worse, as streamers, and the companies who provide the streaming platform continue to look for more ways to monetise their content, leaving the up-and-comers to feed off the scraps.

So where do I stand in all this?  Well I really do feel that streaming culture is largely unhealthy, with the exception coming from smaller communities.  The problems exist all over the various platforms, but the major difficulty I have is the lack of support for new streamers to try and break through and make a living from something they love.  Innovation is key to making that leap of course, but the financial model of streaming means that it’s very difficult to break the established core that make up these platforms.

It is my hope that in the future we see more and more people breaking through and spreading a more positive and healthy message.  The atmosphere that comes with smaller streamers is generally much more healthy, with a group of people supporting who they’re watching while not being exploited for financial gain.  Ultimately though, this is all just my personal opinion, which could be very different from yours.  And that’s totally fine.  Streaming is so complex and diverse in nature that we are all likely to have differing experiences that lead to different conclusions.  My stance is that we should spend more time to watch and support those with the aspiration to succeed, and to help them along that path.  And if you have that dream to succeed, why not go for it?  You just never know what could happen through hard work and dedication…

And it appears that I am not alone in feeling this way.  In preparation for today’s post, I tweeted out a poll asking if people felt streaming culture was unhealthy, and 60% of those who responded agreed.  Now I can say that from that small sample size of votes, the majority of those who responded had either streamed for a while themselves, are currently streaming as a hobby, or are avid viewers of various different streamers.  It is interesting to me that such a percentage agree with a question I felt would have been controversial.  

Is there much that can be done to change streaming culture for the better?  Well, for starters, I certainly feel that there needs to be better protection for smaller streamers from bot attacks, something that has been addressed but a bit more work could be done.  Unfortunately, we will never be able to get rid of trolls, as much as we try, and so all we can do is do our best to limit the air time they get in the chats of streamers.  And finally, there needs to be a shake-up in the algorithms of sites such as YouTube and Twitch, so that smaller channels are easier to discover, and give them a chance to flourish.  From a business perspective, the more channels there are with large followings, the more revenue these companies will receive, and therefore, everyone wins.  Right?