What's the appeal of watching people play games...

What's the appeal of watching people play games? I've talked to people before who supposedly love vidya and I ask them what games they play and they say they don't play anything, they just watch people play games.

Did you even bother to ask the people you talked to this question OP?

P E R S O N A L I T Y
D R I V E N
C O N T E N T

I hope typing that out felt as lame as reading it did.

>why do people go to concerts when we could just chill with our music players

i always enjoyed watching my friend play and when he asked if i wanted to go i said i rather watch.

It’s the same effect as when people become cuckolds after watching porn. Just as cuckolds train their brain to get off by watching someone else have sex, stream watchers train themselves to get enjoyment from other people playing games.
On a side note, stop watching porn.

>life is strange

I like having a stream open when I'm playing some grindian games

>He doesn't imagine he's the one fucking the girl
>He doesn't imagine the streamer is his best friend in the same room

You sound like a fucking loser m8.

thanks Sup Forums, now maybe actually go outside and kill the jews like you want me to do? Lead by example you faggot cuck.

>go on Twitch yesterday
>some big name faggot is playing STALKER for the first time or something
>he spends the entire time crying about the fundamental concept of weapon accuracy, and finally gives up a few hours in after calling the game terrible because he can't headshot people across the map with a pistol
Watching him was easily the most infuriating hour or so of my life.

If you want to watch somebody play a walking simulator for you or something, I can understand the appeal of Twitch. But nobody on that platform has the first fucking clue about how to actually play games.

I was excited typing it out, it was very fun. Moreover I think it's very pretty to read and expresses the enthusiasm and personality of the idea very well. Thank you very much for your concern.

>people
Gotta draw a line somewhere.
I am still open to the idea of a stream being actually fun or hilarious, but it would always be better without all of the filler and downtime. Even then, it'd always be better to play games with a fun friend instead.

I don't watch people play games I could just enjoy myself, but I do like watching them suffer through stupid bullshit I never would. Like speedrunner competitions where everybody's spent years autistically grinding the same jumps. It either looks cool in motion and exposes shit I might not have known about or they fail spectacularly in front of a live audience. Either way it's entertaining.

Come on. Don't be stupid.

People with no friends and people with no money
People with no friends think the streamer is their friend and believe that by spouting the latest memes over and over again in the chat makes them belong there
People with no money get to experience the game without wasting the money they need for food on vidya

there are maybe 5 twitch streamers you can enjoy watching

Why do people still watch the news instead of just googling recent events? Why do people listen to the radio? Why do people go to concerts instead of listening to lossless flacs?

Because it's just a thing people do. At this point, it's ingrained in the culture of youth across most of the western hemisphere, because kids now becoming teens have been watching youtube shit since they were literally born and are used to the one-person, largely unfiltered content delivery style., and of course it doesn't hurt that it's significantly less polished and thus more raw than everything that's ever been on television.

Market trends are a fun thing. You can see it in korea and japan, people love watching streams at dinnertime, in america and the uk it's all the time. Age ranges vary in japan and korea, it's almost strictly 8-13 and 16-25 in the west, it only seems like it's "everyone" because the only people that are even fucking online anymore are the ones who talk loudest about it.

Any Dan subs here? How long are you subbed?
t. 1-year sub

What's the point? To distract yourself into oblivion?

protip: don't go into streams with hardened sellouts that don't care

find a small one with 3 viewers and start fucking with the guy while knowing he will pay attention to you and stress over pleasing his only viewer

literally no one other reason to watch twitch unless the streamer is really good at the game

>comparing keeping up with current events to watching some stupid faggot play games

I have no friends and I cannot imagine being deluded enough to think a streamer is my "friend", fuck the masses.

watched him for 4+ years but never subbed. His content is always hit or miss for me.

The ideology of keeping up with current events in a 30 minute or sometimes hour long block where they frequently squirrel away relevant or interesting news to keep you watching so you view more advertisements versus just getting the fucking news in 20 seconds with a click is pretty comparable. People want what they want. They don't want some fake ass phoned in "GAMURR HARDCOAR" personality like G4 loved to shit out with their fauxhawks, they just want to see some stupid faggot playing a game. And all the 12 year olds now have something to watch in their spare time.

Did you have a favorite show user? Ever? At any point? That you wanted to watch every week? That's what streaming is to kids. It's totally replaced television.

Why post on a video games message board when you could be playing games instead?

Different reasons for different people
- surrogate friends
- genuinely like the person who's playing and elevates the experience for the one who's watching
- want to watch reactions to parts of the game you played
- too poor to buy games so watches lets play
- need background noise while doing some mindless grinding
I'm from the last category.

This.
Whenever i try to get into it i just end up firing the game up and playing instead.
Streams are for poor 7yr old kiddies who can't afford to play or broken manchilds whose only form of human interaction is watching others play and listen to them thank them for the tips.

his emotes are worth the sub tho, especially if you're chatting often

why would I have to play a story driven game, when I could watch it on Twitch/Youtube?

>Why do people go to concerts instead of listening to lossless flacs?
what? How is there any connection between this and watching someone play a game? Playing the game yourself (without a megadipshit talking overtop) is essential to exploring it. A song in FLAC or performed live can be explored and immersed-in either way.

>brawl poster at it again
HOW DOES HE DO IT BROS?

>manchild
>post jap pedo porn from his huge collection

Dunno who you're referring to mate. But i bet he's a great guy.

I don't get it too but I don't want to get it.

>some big name faggot is playing STALKER for the first time or something
you know it was forsen yet you didn't include his name

>literally grabbed a random pic from reaction folder.
you're looking too much into it

> 4ching weebshit judging someone
fuck outta here, you're embarassing

I'll watch streams but I won't pay for them. I haven't watched one in a long time but seriously if you aren't the one making money be the person getting money.

It's how the Jews get ahead, be like them.

i don't care, i just watch wrestling or sports on twitch.

Gee, i dont know, maybe so you don't have to hear some faggot talk over top of it?

butthurt much? in which category did you fall?

He's a guy on /hsg/ who posts that anime girl everytime a couple of hours before the new tavern brawl becomes available.
he's cool

I enjoy throwing on a stream on my TV for background noise when I'm doing something else. I used to do this with Netflix but Twitch is honestly better suited for it. Sometimes I'll sit and watch but it depends on the game and the streamer.

cool thanks for the info mate.

I've subbed twice in the 6+ years that i've watched him.

He used to be my main go to for streaming but since he got more popular and started raking in the dough he's been kinda meh for me. I dunno, i guess old Dan was more... 'homely'? 'cosy'? I remember when he used to play point&click adventure games a lot because he enjoyed them, now i can't remember the last time, it's all new releases and big games now.

I like GCCX, although I don't watch it so often that it's one of my main things. That's partly because you have to read subs, so I can't really play games and watch at the same time. I can understand the appeal of watching someone you like play games, then. But I simply can't imagine that there is anybody who would choose to stream themselves playing games on YT whom I would actually like. Because this is precisely the sort of thing that people I don't like choose to do. It's a conceit born out of vanity and mental sloth, to judge oneself entertaining and charming enough to make money and fame doing fucking nothing just because other people are doing it.

And to further my point, he became a huge sellout, which didn't sit right with me either.

That was forsen playing. Is that why you seem so mad? Because he said that he didnt like STALKER?
also bullshit that you dont know who forsen is. Literally the best twitch streamer

the appeal is that its better than regular fake television. this doesnt interrupt peoples game time, it interrupts peoples tv time.

This, also watching someone be shit at video games puts me to sleep really quickly

hey it's me again i'm adding an exception which is tournaments and events and shit. That's the only time it's acceptable to watch twitch. Peace.

This guy claimed to have 140 IQ and I watch him struggle to figure out what metro game to play and he unironically decides to start with the second game first. Honestly, the stalker stream didn't make me mad about his stupidity with shooting but rather the basic concept of using hotkeys, he actually went and looked up the hotkeys for the bandage and medkit despite the fact that they are displayed in the bottom left corner as plainly and big as possible. I honestly am almost ready to believe this was for shock value and he's pretending for easy drama bait. But then again there's so much stupidity in the things he did that I honestly don't know anymore.

I only do this when I'm eating, I love watching overwatch retards getting mad.

I don't even play that shit game

I stream raids for an mmo I play and I find people like to come into the stream and ask gameplay questions or even point out things we could be doing to make life easier, on top of that it's handy to have a vod to check over after raids to see where improvements need to be made

on occasion I'll stream some other game and people will hop by to chat in my stream which is pretty comfy admittedly

otherwise, unless it's a big event like a fighting game tournament or speedrun event I don't see the appeal of big streams where some obnoxious sellout won't give you any acknowledgement without you paying him and all you're doing is watching him play games

ive been watching twitch since 2012 and i dont know who he is. i see his retarded emotes being spammed every now and then though

Dan is awesome. I toss him my Twitch prime sub every month.

Dan will do popular new releases if he’s interested in them. But he also just did a play through of the Gothic series and Oblivion. So he still does older games. He’s doing Papers, Please right now.

And atleast his sell out moments are funny and a bit tongue-in-cheek.

i dont watch people play for hightier gameplay anymore. everyone sucks on twitch. i usually just watch jaboody dubs for laughs.

they are soyboy cucks

>watch one guy
>But nobody on that platform has the first fucking clue about how to actually play games.
this is where you're wrong kiddo

i cant play games without background noise and youtube is fucking trash

literally what you posted there proves you are a child

The amount of average viewers is almost always proportional with how cancerous the stream is.

>Is that why you seem so mad? Because he said that he didnt like STALKER?
>"i don't want to trigger anyone but"
>proceeds to shit on the game
>claims completely false and ignorant statements about the game mechanics
>adds pointless bait sentences just to trigger everyone and garner attention
Lmao shut up soyboy, this retard didn't even know this game is made by ukranians and not russians "that feel national pride", what a fucking moron.

>i cant play games without background noise
Thats not healthy. Turn off the computer games and get help, user.

that category that fucks degenerate weebs in ass

I don't watch anything on Twitch because it's pure cancer, but I follow a few youtubers because I find them funny. The game is just there as background noise between jokes.

why

NEVER SUB

I can only watch one streamer. And I don't even smoke weed or play fighting games competitively, but the streams are too much fun. I wish all his youtube highlights had the twitch chats recorded too. The chat really adds to the atmosphere and immersion. Don't talk to me.

Because I don't want to spend 200 dollars every season to get all the hearthstone meta decks.

>comparing concerts to vidya streaming
You have a better chance at using the sports argument, holy shit.

autism

I used to watch cs streamers like dazed and m0e in 2015-2016 when they weren't too popular and memey. It was nice to play with them in pugs and then watch them do 10 mans into fpl and rank s and have this completely different sense of gameplay and atmosphere to the stream before rank s became too popular and it was just dumb plays over and over. It was honestly a really good time to be alive then. I joined a team and got into open and I even got into rank G recently, but for months I have 0 motivation because rank s is filled with a bunch of morons and it's a glorified pug at this point. I also honestly despise steel though, not because he's whining all the time, but because he's a very slimy kind of underhanded person.

It's a friend simulator, extremely sad. Paypigs that donate to their e friend they live vicariously through to try and feel easy and quick friendship without much interaction and only having to keep a sub up.

>wish all his youtube highlights had the twitch chats recorded too. The chat really adds to the atmosphere and immersion. Don't talk to me.
I bet you're a fucking red name

There's absolutely nothing wrong with watching some autist play a game you like while you shitpost here

Giving him money on the other hand...

Makes me feel less lonely I guess.

One game is enough to be immersed in. You don't need background noise if a game is already self-contained world with a back, middle and foreground, ideally without "noise" (noise ain't artistic).
Tearing up your attention across a game and something else actually ruins it, believe it or not, and it might as well serve as proof that you're hardly enjoying them in the first place. Immersion is the key. Distraction is de-immersion.
I say "get help" because people who rip their attention to shreds like that are likely just bypassing or running away their own life. Alternatively, people get overly enthusiastic with the idea of saturating their time with fun bells and whistles, eating dinner in front of the tv, etc, but past a certain point their actions telegraph their utter starvation for amusement, or their resistance to life in general.

tl;dr i also cant sleep without background noise either

have you ever played a grinding game? like Path of Exile? Thats exactly why he does it

It's fun

When I was a small child, I used to watch my older cousins play videogames whenever I went to their home. Same with some friends, they used to watch me play single player games while they watched and vice-versa. Streams are not that different from that concept. Maybe people who don't get the point of streaming never experienced something similar to what I described.

I have a stream open on the second monitor most of the time if i'm playing a game with no story or anything, like Dark Souls 3 most recently.
I tend to just have it on the second monitor most of the time just as noise

I find out about games through game message boards.

Why are you people talking through this shitty site when you can just go outside and talk to anyone without having to type anything?

I don't really watch live streams, but some Let's Plays can be quite funny, like Pokecapn's Let's Play of Sonic 2006. I remember laughing a lot at those videos back around 2009 or 2010, when I first watched them.

What happens if you don't have background noise at night?

i dunno shit just makes it easier

>27
>Never played a moba
>Never played any sort of crafting survival game aside from DF
>Never played a battle royale thing
>Never watched a stream or even been to Twitch
>Never purchased micro transactions/cosmetics
>Tried playing some shitty mobile gacha game and was turned off in minutes. Don't understand these appeal of these at all.

When I was little I was determined not to be like my parents and hate everything new that I was into. I was gonna be the cool and hip adult. But fuck, now I totally understand

I do similar shit with podcasts. I’m kind of concerned that I always need content playing in the background.

i just watch vinesauce members because they're actually funny

im old as fuck and not that good at vidya anymore, also not much patience for it.

joel has been getting pretty autistic lately though, cant wait for the doom mapping streams start again though

>tfw vinny personally permabanned from his channel
dont know why

Hearing someone else’s thoughts and perspective on a game.

>tfw those years you spent as an edgy kid trying to fit in on an anonymous imageboard by forcing yourself to hate things

We all grow out of it. (I like to think.)

Past Dan videos are a hell of a lot more comfier. I missed the full Halloween months where he played bad games for the viewers.
Now he shortened it to half a month so he doesn’t get frustrated.