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?
Never really understood watching it when playing is also very little effort. It’s not football.
for me it’s mostly because I am too depressed and unmotivated to get out of bed and go sit in front of the console/PC but not depressed enough to put the dumb addictive black rectangle down
(i am taking medication i hope this changes)
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’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)_/¯
I didn’t use it, but I’m still salty that publishers had a fit about that. It’s honestly none of their fucking business where you run your games.
I’m not investing in a cloud only platform like Google’s abandoned attempt, so the only hope is a hybrid like Geforce Now.
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.
Because the new games are shit and the good old games you can’t play on newer systems properly
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.
“ABYSMAL! UNINSPIRED!”
That’s the spirit!
I’m part of this group and didn’t even realize it. But I have the most boring job in the world so I watch a lot of YouTube. Otherwise I never watch anything, especially at home.