I’ve spent boatloads more time watching football than playing football, too.
Also, with Rainbow 6: Siege, there’s so many ways to play the game that I love watching videos to get ideas for new strategies to try.
Lastly, contrary to popular belief, a lot of games actually require thinking about what you’re doing. Time spent playing is not really time spent spacing out so I will happily watch videos about a game I like to play when I don’t have the energy to actually focus on playing them.
I don’t watch streams, but I do watch a lot of Let’s Plays (i.e. Materwelonz, WoolieVersus). Sometimes to watch them play games that I normally wouldn’t, sometimes to listen to their insights at certain hype points in games I previously played, and usually due to loneliness (i.e. parasocial relationships).
Regarding the last point, it also tends to be the reason I gravitate towards games with strong story, or MMOs. Feeling like I belong to a community keeps the loneliness at bay. Outside of games, I like to be in crowded areas, though not necessarily interacting with anyone.
Makes enough sense, as goofy as it sounds.
- 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.
Arguably that falls under both 2 and 3, but yeah entirely unique challenges or play modes is another reason to watch.
Or counting how many people are employed in Skyrim.
Amen to that!
Where’s “New report claims sports fans spend more time watching sport / videos about sport than playing sport”.
This isn’t some new, crazy, hard to understand concept.
I’ll be honest I find it hard to understand for sports as well.
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?
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…
What if gaming time is 4 hours
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.
My wife likes YouTubers but isn’t a gamer. If I’m doing stuff with them I’m more likely to pick a video about games than a game.
My wife thought she was the same until suddenly it clicked and she realized she is in fact a gamer
We called my wife “fake gamer girl” for a while because we made a group chat back in 2020 with everyone in it to coordinate online games. They were there because she would play Among Us or Jack Box with us. It was very tongue in cheek. To be honest, they may have even said it themselves for the first time lol.
Nice. My partner is more of a movie person and I’m more a games person, so I’ll watch movies with her almost as a favour, and she’ll return it by playing games with me lol.
There’s an art to picking a movie or game for a choosie person, and we’ve both got pretty good at predicting eachothers’ tastes in media.
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.
people want to play with friends, and with gaming getting lonelier, i think people are seeking the parasocial relationships on streaming sites.
In other stunning news, researchers find people who like sports spend more time watching it than playing it.
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.
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
Never really understood watching it when playing is also very little effort. It’s not football.
Interesting that you see a difference between the two. Football also does not require incredible effort to play, still a lot of people only watch it.
Well…
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“Videos about gaming” don’t necessarily have to be gameplay footage. Reviews, promotional materials, discussions etc. count. Maybe even stuff like Viva La Dirt League’s content which is live action skits about video games.
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Tutorials and walkthroughs exist.
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Some vintage systems are difficult to get up and running or even find. For a lot of people it’s easier to just watch an enthusiast do it on youtube.
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Especially on Twitch with streamers it’s as much about the player as it is the game.
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Especially with esports or speedrunning it’s like watching a sporting event. Even if you like playing football too there’s something to watching the professionals play at the top echelons.
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One can watch gaming videos while doing other things. When I was moving into my apartment in Greensboro I assembled my furniture while watching HCBailly play through the Gameboy Zelda games.
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I’m definitely one of those people, but I work in an office where they let us watch shit on our phones as long as the work still gets done. A hell of a lot easier to watch YT videos than to try to sneak an Xbox S into a cubicle farm ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
when playing is also very little effort.
Same. Not only is it little effort, but you get to experience what the intended purpose of the game was without having to listen to some rando try out bad jokes or say lame stuff. Any time I look at a video tutorial I look for videos with no narration and once I figure out how to solve the problem I turn the video off and get back to the game. Watching someone else play a game just seems like a waste of time, personally
Sometimes I’ll watch videos for build inspiration, especially for survival crafting games
I hate watching people play video games too, but definitely for strategy or inspiration it can be helpful
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
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
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.
buarterpacv
That’s a fascinating way to spell… Presumably “quarterback”?
I would say this isn’t me, but I started playing Dwarf Fortress lately and have probably been watching an hour of tutorials for every 30 minutes I play at this point. 😅
It’s not that bad! Once you’ve got the basics down you can just watch as everything explodes
Once you learn how to survive, the deep end is best learned by trial and error!
It’s time for game publishers to think about in-game video as something beyond marketing alone," said Rhys Elliott, games analyst, MIDiA Research. ‘‘By reclaiming video engagement, publishers have the potential to unlock new revenue streams, like advertising, and drive growth.’’
Lmao, what a takeaway. Guy is struggling to earn that paycheck.
Reminds me of the business plans of the business guys from Ready Player One. “We estimate we can sell up to 80 percent of a user’s visual field before inducing seizures.” 😂
Groooowwwtthhhh! It’s all about that Groooooowwwtthhhhh!
Please bro just a little bit more groooowth. I promise we’ll unlock all the money in the world if we can just have a littile more grooowwth.
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.
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’ve been really into Meridian 59 lately, but haven’t been playing in the past couple of weeks. Thanks for the reminder.
