This applies mostly to young gamers.
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.
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?
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.
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!
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.
