Everybody on ILG complains about Twitch

There was no Twitch thread so I'm starting one.
It started with watching LCS matches live (rel: Do like me and get into eSports because that's how American gridiron football dies), then watching LCS matches live via the Roku in the living room, and then "hey there's no LCS on, what the hell do people use this ridiculous service for, anyway"

I now have an account and am following three random-ass people. One of them is Canadian. This doesn't end well, does it.
Anybody else dabble in this nonsense? What is wrong with us?

Just a bit of fun, let's be cool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbYHY_QhiBw

i've been using it sporadically for the last few months. i really dislike the style of most of the streamers. it's probably just because i'm older than most of the streamers but i find them to be so fucking annoying that i want to die. the most popular streamers are a window into a version of dystopia. it's usually a dude who is constantly giving a shoutout to whoever just followed his channel or donated a couple bucks, or glancing off the side of the screen to say "what up Ragnarok420?" or whoever just said hello in the chat channel, only to never ever mention that person again, and meanwhile in the background shit is getting blown up and he's going "FUCK YEAH!" as a teammate in the game yells "YEAH BUDDY!" i am not expressing it well but it's a weird combo of commerce and self-promotion where success depends on the megalomania of the streamer. it's sort of fascinating to watch in small doses. it's also a style of streaming that probably represents only a small sliver of Twitch streamers - these are just the most popular streamers, the ones that have a busy chatbox and have hundreds or thousands of subscribers and stream on a regular schedule. but Twitch obviously wants this sliver to be the face of it. i guess there's no other way to organize the thousands of streams at any given moment other than just putting the most popular active ones at the top, but very few people are watching the vast majority of streams at any given moment.

i guess there's also the option of watching people play games who don't speak out loud. that can be alright, depending completely on the game they're playing, of course. but inevitably after watching someone play in silence for about 10 minutes i am mysteriously in the mood to just play a game myself.

every once in a while i find someone who is a little more low key and occasionally says interesting things. in those rare moments i need to remember to click the follow button. these are usually people that only have 0-4 people watching them. i have also had some success watching stuff in the Creative channel. it can be fun to just watch someone play around in photoshop for hours on end, and educational as well. there are also homemade cooking shows, arts and crafts, programmers, etc, so if you have a hobby that lends itself to streaming you should check Twitch to see if someone is working on something.

so i guess i hate it but i'm also sort of fascinated by it. it's tough to recommend Twitch to anyone without qualifying it with a bunch of warnings and caveats. i would never say "Twitch is awesome!" because then the other person would go check it out and likely find 10 horrific streamers in a row, if they made it that far. but there is a lot of good stuff in there if you're willing to dig. i will try to be better about following the better streamers and will post links to their streams on here when i find them, and it would be cool if others would do the same.

it's usually a dude who is constantly giving a shoutout to whoever just followed his channel or donated a couple bucks, or glancing off the side of the screen to say "what up Ragnarok420?" or whoever just said hello in the chat channel, only to never ever mention that person again, and meanwhile in the background shit is getting blown up and he's going "FUCK YEAH!" as a teammate in the game yells "YEAH BUDDY!" i am not expressing it well but it's a weird combo of commerce and self-promotion where success depends on the megalomania of the streamer.

i've been wanting to gripe abt twitch for awhile, this nails it perfectly. i was watching some dark souls 1 stream on there, i think it was a guy who completed it straight thru w/ out getting hit or something crazy. but the whole thing was just completely unwatchable, his body taking up half the screen as he does constant shoutouts on top of whatever graphic/sound effect he has to alert you the viewer that someone just donated $2. and it was just hours of that!

you know who is a good streamer? the guy who recently got some internet fame for setting a new super mario bros. speed run record: https://www.twitch.tv/darbian

his is a little different because he's always working on perfecting a level so he's constantly resetting levels and trying certain sections over and over again. but he doesn't talk constantly and he seems like a real human being.

The ones I follow are basically variety streamers who I found because they were playing some niche game I've been wondering about myself, like Terraria, and giving themselves crazy challenges like "okay this time no armor hardcore expert mode!" with lots of exuberant cursing or yosemite-sam-esque quasi-cursing and only occasional shouting out followers because, well, not many people sub or follow them and there's like 5 regulars in the chat. I like watching how people deal with random disasters, some of these guys have a resilience / commitment to the run that is just beyond me.

I also sometimes enjoy watching people enthusiastically losing in multiplayer games. Whatever the opposite of "tilting" is.

Yeah speed runners are sometimes fun to watch. Similar to how I got into LCS, once it clicked that I was watching people who not like you and me (ok not like me, anyway) it's a different category of spectatorship. Also somehow I stumbled across two military vets among the first couple of people I started watching - is that weird or what?

twitch is alright, i spend more time on there than i should. i try to find people who operate outside of the site's built-in chat culture/memes since that stuff mostly grates on me

"kappa"

oh god

I had to look that up and then I realized all the stupid faces people keep throwing at the end of their chatroom comments are supposed to be code for stuff and man, whatever, coded tribal languages are fine I guess but wow

I only set up an account to watch Karl Malone streams. I have also enjoyed things like "everyone on twitch plays pokemon" or whatever that was called. Y'know, the ones where chat commands control the game but everyone is trying to do it at the same time so it just turns into a giant mess.

Oh, there was like "my fish plays super mario" or something too, I'm sure that happened.

i didn't see the fish play super mario. but i'm 99% sure that i watched those fish play Street Fighter II turbo

where do I watch Karl Malone streams

twitch.tv/weinventyou but i haven't done one in a long time. though since i have the house to myself tonight i might do one later! i was thinking of doing ninja gaiden (NES) again although SMB2 is always fun too

ninja gaiden, thats giving me nostalgic rage

i streamed some dark souls awhile back to no one except for one viewer who joined only long enough to say "ur gay" in the chat

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/36323224/blizzard-to-tackle-harassment-on-twitch-after-player-suffers-racist-abuse

He lost narrowly in the final to fellow professional player Keaton "Chakki" Gill.

too much time on ilx

twitch is so, so good rn

So I started watching Flare2V's expert Terraria run on 1HP (using a save editor to force the handicap) and I have followed along for 727 deaths so far. still catching up. Now VG Badger has started the same type of run, I get to compare and contrast I guess. Artificially super-fragile runs are good shit though.

twitch emotes and chat spam are at the top of my 'get off my lawn you kids these days' list of things that I will never understand

If there's a game coming out that I'm interested in, such as the upcoming console release of 7 Days to Die, I like to check out a few well-curated lets plays on youtube to see if it is something I could get into. But I'll rarely watch twitch streams. I want to hear from the gamer about the game they are playing and to learn a thing or two about strategies game mechanics, but twitch streams always seem to devolve into senseless shoutout banter.

Yeah it's amazing how little most streamers talk about the actual game they're playing.

Anyway I'm still catching up after a bunch of work travel, watching Flare do his 1hp run of Terraria and he's now died over 1500 times. The landscape is just completely littered with gravestones to a truly surreal degree. Twitch needs searchable tags for salty masochism, this shit's hilarious.

Now with microtransactions, presumably to get Twitch a cut of the donations
https://blog.twitch.tv/introducing-cheering-celebrate-together-da62af41fac6#.lrume5xvm

Honestly kinda surprised this didn't already exist on Twitch. Once again porn innovating and leading the way for respectable business

tippin on 44s

I .want to turn Flare2V's spear-only Terraria run into a screenplay. where can I find an agent. And/or a therapist

I need to draw a proportional Venn diagram.

1 / 2 = dull streamers playing dull games = easily avoidable, like oncoming traffic
1 / 6 = dull streamers playing entertaining games = the trap
1 / 7 = entertaining streamers playing dull games = the disappointment
1 / 8 = people drawing (incl Bob Ross) = still don't get this tbf
1 / 15 = entertaining streamers playing entertaining games = oh so this is what this is about

i'll go ahead and ask what we're all thinking

that's 1/841th over a full share (841/840, or 100.00119%)

otherwise that's about right, although i like some of the drawing/creating stuff

drawing stuff is easy to understand. regardless of your skill it's mesmerizing to watch someone well-practiced doing a piece

bad games are OK if the streamer is entertaining enough

bad and dull aren't the same, I mean the Awful Games section of GDQ is always my favorite part

don't forget about social eating

that's 1/841th over a full share (841/840, or 100.00119%)

I included the streams that appear to be live but then you click and they're not

lol "bits" are not available for Canadian strimmers

Is this Venn diagram actually a pie chart or?

5 spheres: "entertaining streamers," "entertaining games," "dull streamers," "dull games," and "art?" with different sizes (and differently sized overlaps) computed according to my rough proportions

http://www.wired.com/2016/08/why-i-watch-lets-plays/

I tend to watch them the way I watch other sports: in the background, not necessary to pay too much attention, occasionally entertaining. But I kind of get the point the author is making.

I used to lend the older kids quarters so I could watch them play gunsmoke in the arcade.. been watchin other people play video games my whole life, son

severe technical difficulties are funny.
All the streams appear to be dead and this is the account currently featured on the front page: https://www.twitch.tv/undefined

Given that my options are a sport that I hate, a debate I can't watch because it's a japanese horror movie, and some other stuff that I don't care about, Twitch is more important than ever right now

People with Amazon Prime can now watch Twitch ad-free, get a free sub to a channel every month plus skins and other digital flotsam.
https://twitch.amazon.com/prime

lol looks like people are giving their free subs to whoever is streaming at the moment, meanwhile a lot of streamers are attending TwitchCon and missing out on the free loot (as far as I can tell Amazon still passes on the usual cut to streamers)

this is pretty nice, i picked a good year to finally try out prime

best Twitch channel http://www.twitch.tv/bubblepuppets

Desert Bus for Hope 10 is on.

https://www.twitch.tv/desertbus

lol

https://twitter.com/BadLayouts

twitch is cool for poker streaming too

wow some of those are phenomenal

I now tend to think of twitch streams like regular season sports broadcasts - well served being on in the background, sometimes it might be nice to have a producer with a replay option handy for when things accidentally get exciting

as if the subscriber support/donation shoutout circle-jerk wasn't enough of an abomination there is now 'cheering'

https://help.twitch.tv/customer/portal/articles/2449458

i guess thats months old but i haven't noticed it shitting up things until now

Streamers definitely have an interesting set of idiolects that they build up over time. I'm used to the weirdness of it now but I remember when I was first browsing streamers, flexing my eyebrows through almost the entire range of possible huh wtf ehh positions, it seemed so foreign and inexplicable.

Conversing with a chat window, inventing onomatopoeia for game events, all sorts of little semantic units for chat window stuff like the Twitch-specific emoji, etc. and these guys only talk to each other on Discord in chat room raids, so while there is a common dialect, it's perhaps more clearly of a collection of discrete idiolects than normal dialects seem to be.

why does deadmauFive have a twitch channel of him just making bad logo animations in cinema 4d

god i hate twitch

TVGBadger totally made me get Sunless Sea for the iPad

FailBetter and Re-Logic owe that dude money

sunless sea is great but i had to abruptly stop playing when i lost the essential, copious notes i was keeping when my laptop got wrecked. i don't think i could ever go back. tip: make copious notes, they will be essential

what the fuck is this

https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/IRL

thats been up for a while as a catch-all tag, ever since they okayed streaming things other than video game content

I think I just never noticed it on the browse by game page before. yeesh

these battle royale games got so popular so quickly

one of those things that's kinda surprising it hadn't been done long ago but i guess developing netcode that can support 100 players one one map smoothly isn't trivial

i keep seeing this mentioned but no idea what it is. what's the tl;dr?

player unknown's battlegrounds

it actually looks really fun, i wish i had a pc

you start out by parachuting out of a helicopter to your choice of location on a giant map, which in itself a cool way to start. you can be on small teams or by yourself (i think). the map is really large and has different areas with different pros and cons as starting spots. as time goes on, the map gradually shrinks as players outside of the shrinking circle start to take damage. this has the effect of ratcheting up the action as the overall number of players dwindles and the surviving, better players start to converge on each other, until at the end the map is very small and it turns into a tactical squad based (or solo) shooter.

it's fun just to watch, tbh, if you can find a good stream where the person shuts the fuck up

xp i think they're planning to do it on consoles too, it's still in early access though so that could be a ways off

i'm normally bored to death by shooters but have really enjoyed watching this so i guess i'm not surprised that it's putting up huge twitch numbers

sounds interesting ty

yeah, it's also interesting to watch because it seems like there are a variety of ways to play it and it doesn't seem like a particular approach is optimized yet. it's a new spin on the genre and it seems like new strategies are popping up in response. i guess i've only watched about 6-7 full games so maybe i'm totally wrong there. but i'm still enjoying the feeling of watching people pioneer new ways to play. and also just watching people goof off, i like that too.

one of my favorite streamers has been offline for a month. sad!!

Last night I realized that I get a free Twitch Prime account with my Amazon prime account. The only apparent benefits are I get a special icon by my name that everyone else has, and also I get a free $5 subscription that I can give out each month. I used mine on the ninja garden cowboy because I love that guy. Spin and win!

yeah i just throw my free subscription months to various people i like who don't seem to have a ton of viewers/income

you also get free stuff, usually its just skins/DLC for various games but sometimes there's actual games in there. I just claimed a free copy of Oxenfree from mine. not sure if its the same for everyone or different.

(you have to install their desktop app to play the free games is the caveat. doesn't seem too bad though?)

Sheriff Eli

https://www.twitch.tv/sheriffeli

^^^^ live right now. possibly the best thing i've seen on twitch ever? ex-cop basically just doing policework in gta. amazing.

bizarre! how are they doing this, GTA V online multiplayer?

yeah GTA5 online roleplay

watching one of the guys I follow playing Crusader Kings 2 the other day and he was consistently surprised at how the duke's wife, who hated him to the tune of -77 or whatever (like, his character's wife REALLY hated this guy, I guess) kept getting pregnant by the duke. (Crusader Kings 2 is weird, guys)

The fact he couldn't figure it out was mildly adorable but mostly like, oh right, you have played video games on webcam on a daily basis for a couple of years in a row non-stop.

I just realized all the people I follow, at least the ones who use a cam, have great hair.

selection bias

unconscious though! and mostly I wound up following these people because they don't play MOBA, FPS or 4X all day like a shit-ton of people do

http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2017/08/11/harassment-livestreams-on-twitch-are-multiplying-and-easy-to-find

seems like a healthy development

Can't afford to ban paying customers, you know, those rape-threateners are some of our biggest bit buyers, see

Watching people nearly piss themselves playing Nidhogg II without having to have roommates is why this was invented

working on my marble madness record attempt at https://www.twitch.tv/weinventyou

go ZS!!

I just sent you my first ever twitch chat

that was fun!

okeydoke, i'm back in marble madness world again tonight. i plan on doing that for maybe 30-45 minutes, then switch over to one of the games i've been meaning to play but have never beaten out of this list:

mega man 3
startropics
mario lost levels
sonic 2

karl my wife is a dark souls fanatic, do you ever twitch it?

Found out I showed up on someone else's DS twitch stream, it was strangely exciting to watch back: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/160354431

xpost

i only have DS on PS4 and i haven't tried to stream anything from there yet. i somehow lost the little headset that comes with the ps4 so i'm not sure how i would hook it up.

but the bigger problem is that i'm really bad at DS games. there's kind of an entertaining way to suck, i think, but when i play DS i spend a lot of time just wandering around lost, dying to mid-level grunts over and over while accidentally exploring some section of the world that i have already traveled through. i think i might try startropics tonight.

it's been forever but i LOVED startropics back in the day

i rented it back in the day but i don't think i got very far. according to hotlongtobeat.com it takes about 11 hours to complete at a "leisurely" pace, so i'm going to assume it'll take me about 13 or 14.

i believe it was a 9 on my list
Forks' video game rating sytem POLL

lol

that's above "worth taking from little kid" level!

but juuust short of deadly force authorization

yeah, don't get your hopes up TOO high

changing gears and working on an extremely tedious 100-frame loop based on the samuel beckett play Quad

oh boy

https://www.twitch.tv/danielfromsl

I'm officially a FiZone fan. haven't subbed yet, will probably do when my free Prime sub comes around again. I hesitate to use the word cute, because gender stereotypes, but I think any pair of humans that cracks up this much playing games together would be considered adorable by most.

i like https://www.twitch.tv/endgameblues

twitch is sweet

there's a good ny-er piece about career streamers this week

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/20/how-to-get-rich-playing-video-games-online

touching up makeup on stream while waiting for a HOTS matchup to start: I really respect this, after some of thinkin baout

the Fizone remains my jam lately

TVGBadger is a lot less fun since he started cursing and mostly gave up the hat schtick. I guess I liked him better as a clown.

Flare2v barely streams anymore but his run through Cuphead was all worth it

how long until "monkaS" is in webster's

Karl Malone just waved his hand between a book cover and a camera for an hour and a half?

Classic Karl Malone :)

sorry, i didn't think anyone was watching! i was having crazy lag problems with OBS that would only show up when streaming, not locally, and i was trying to test out a bunch of fixes. turns out that i just needed to install the latest version of OBS.

but man oh man, now it's fixed and i'm itching to get back to pg 41 of a million random digits. 10% of the way there

live D&D is sometimes great: https://www.twitch.tv/geekandsundry

http://ew.com/gaming/2018/03/15/drake-broke-a-viewing-record-when-he-played-fortnite-on-twitch/

i asked some of my students to explain twitch to me in terms i could understand. they said “it’s like khan academy for video games”

like, in unison, or is that just the best one according to you? it's pretty good

nah one of them said it and everyone else agreed

what, that doesn't sound right at all.

twitch is an exploration of the worst case scenario answers to "what does success look like on this platform?"

Nhex it sounds right to me, in that generational context? my kid watches let's play youtubes to see what can be done & how to do it, and she's 7.

/me = old dog ! new tricks, so I watch it for the cursing in funny accents and the amazing feats of input timing that I was never capable of even at my peak of hand-eye coordination.

i don't remember Khan Academy having live chat, birthing shitposing, racism and memes

don’t take it too literally

lol 'shitposing'

like it

so I learned that Domina, a game where you play as John Hannah's asshole character from the Spartacus TV show, i.e. the owner of a gladiator training academy with no redeeming qualities, has Twitch interaction functions. So while the streamer plays the game (buying, outfitting, training gladiators, making some rudimentary choices about who to curry favor with, and how frequently to put on exhibition matches for extra cash at the expense of morale, etc) the subs and followers in chat can cheer and vote on things - which is, actually, kind of amazing.

I watched a match where one of the streamer's gladiators surrendered and the chatroom got the deciding vote on whether he would be allowed to live, the streamer was yelling at everyone, and it was pretty intense. Most of Twitch is just like sitting down on a dorm lounge couch and watching somebody else play games, but this was a lot more exciting (even if the game itself is a pretty lame sim tbh and you know me, I love human resources management sims).

Twitch is totally my radio now. I leave it on in the background while I do other stuff, and decent sound quality (and voice quality) is easily my #1 criterion for streams to watch. Which, by the way, happens to rule out most pro Dota 2 casts, because good lord, the production values are ridiculously mediocre.

Too much yelling = nope
Too much cursing = nope
annoying vocal qualities and/or affectations = nope

I just do chores and review documents and draft plans while I drag my laptop around the house like a boombox with some nerds on it yammering about how their space colony needs THIS or that battlemech needs THAT. What a world we live in.

I approve of your selection criteria, recommend me some specific channels.

https://blog.twitch.tv/the-doctors-will-see-you-now-370564b877c9

8 hours of classic doctor who starting today

Sorry 8 hours each day, for seven weeks.

what better way to watch doctor who than with racist comments from the dregs of humanity scrolling down the side

Apparently some people are into it, but yeah, I think it’s pure insanity. At least the chat panel can be minimized, though.

my esports viewing preferences have shifted from mobas to fighting games lately, looking forward to EVO this weekend

I’ve tried watching pro fighting games tournament play and just cannot keep up. I have no idea how the shoutcasters do their job.

it's not that hard to keep up with street fighter or tekken imo but yeah some of the anime games are almost unreadable if you're not familiar with them.

I was at the gym the other day and ESPN2 was apparently showing Overwatch matches. It looked ridiculous, totally illegible to a non-player (like me).

this year's evo lineup, for the interested:

Street Fighter 5 - it's street fighter. very fundamental and grounded and slow paced. this is the main event as usual and the finals will be on ESPN2 Sunday night.
Tekken 7 - the most popular 3d fighter this generation. this is probably the most watchable game for the uninitiated, it has good clarity and is faster and more exciting than street fighter.
Smash Bros Melee - half the smash players only want to play this game still so we're stuck with 2 tournament smash games forever. I played this for like 1000 hours as a kid and don't really want to see more of it at this point even in a different context.
Smash Bros Wii U - this is kinda a lame duck game now since the new one looks like a big improvement on it for the esports setting.
Dragonball FighterZ - this game looks absolutely amazing in motion though the pro matches get a little samey. fun to watch in small doses.
Guilty Gear Xrd - stylish anime fighter. the original guilty gear is the common ancestor of all the fast anime games but I don't know much about this iteration
BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle - extremely fast paced anime crossover game. my personal favorite on this list and the one I'm most looking forward to watching but probably the least legible to uninitiated viewers
Injustice 2 - DC comics fighter from the makers of mortal kombat. I only watched it once and it looked pretty slow

then of course people will be streaming side tournaments of all sorts of more obscure games all weekend which is probably my favorite part of the whole thing

I saw that Smash is actually AFTER SFV though!?

nah, SFV finals is the final event on Sunday. earlier rounds are ongoing and can be in whatever order

Tekken is def very watchable, whenever I try to tune in to Guilty Gear I get nauseous.

the character designs, music, aesthetics are sooooo much better than Tekken (well, every other fighting game series is imo)

to be clear I don’t think the anime games are bad or anything they just give me vertigo

Anyway I’m excited to see SonicFox hopefully win DBFZ in a fursuit

bbtag top 8 on right now, this is insane to watch

Anyway I’m excited to see SonicFox hopefully win DBFZ in a fursuit

― devops mom (silby), Thursday, August 2, 2018 9:11 PM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this just happened!

It did! He’s the best.

he said he was interested in smash ultimate, i hope he ends up destroying all the smash lifers at it

otm

people scoff at intersectionality but, sorry haters, it's 2018 and our hero is an american gay black furry gamer

uh, N.K. Jemisin is on twitch, and she's streaming Nier: Automata at this very moment!!

https://www.twitch.tv/nkjemisin

she is currently holding forth on nier lore, and how it relates to an older game called Dragon Guard

sorry, that should be Drakengard

for those not in the know, jemisin just won her THIRD hugo award in a row, the first time that's ever happened

I am not in the know but will follow just because

I think twitch might be is the best way to experience system-heavy sims like rimworld btw. let some other poor bastard do the work of making the little computer people do the work. and if it's a video you can fast forward through the fast forward parts.

I am not a Twitch person (I didn’t think) but put it on randomly as some background the other day.

Escape From Tarkov came on and man I was super into it. Russian made battle royale thing, closest thing you can get to a “sim” in this genre I guess. Literally have to take the time to load bullets into magazines and stuff. Have to deal with injuries. The streamer wasted a dude wearing a riot gear type helmet with face shield, looted it, put it on but there was bullet damage on the visor which obstructed vision so he was lifting it up and down depending on the situation.

Idk, could be tedious and frustrating jumping into it yourself, but watching someone good playing with his also good buddy was kinda thrilling.

one more reason to be alienated by the streamers that have 100,000s of followers and completely suck and you wonder why anyone spends more than 20 seconds watching, let alone a number of people equivalent to half the population of the state of wyoming

STAT | $30,000 - What it costs to have a top-tier streamer play your game for an hour on their channel, according to IndieCatapult’s Steve Filby, who was marketing manager on Motion Twin’s Dead Cells. (Motion Twin didn’t pay up, but devised a strategy that resulted in big streamers playing the game for free.)

"devised a strategy" ie had the hype cycle behind them

this kinda sums up the streaming scene

https://kotaku.com/fortnite-streamer-myth-pushes-back-against-twitch-chats-1828898924

Go Off Kings (Feat. Neil) - PUBG Broadcaster Royale Highlight Reel - Insane Kills - Ridiculous Snipes - Best PUBG Players In The World - Part 1 pic.twitter.com/0u8Uw22izC

— The Go Off Kings (@GoOffKings) September 24, 2018

yeah twitch is good again now that it provides live access to jesse

Jesse on "comedy circles" pic.twitter.com/kPDE58o2sE

— The Go Off Kings (@GoOffKings) September 7, 2018

Nobody should watch people playing Rimworld live, but on video with the fast forward option, it's kinda fun to see how different people build and manage their bases. How much blood you leave on the floor and how much you rely on traps and turrets says a lot about a person, I think.

i might stream an older game this afternoon - leaning toward SNES. anyone have any suggestions? i would like to play something that i haven't beaten before, but probably not something that will involve dying over and over and starting at the beginning of the game. if it goes well and i don't hate myself i would like to keep going all week, during the afternoons (my partner's out of the house til 5 most days)

Super Mario RPG
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (this gets difficult iirc, but i have decent old school mario skills)
Zelda: Link to the Past (i have played the first 15 hours of this game sooooo many times but life always gets in the way)
FFIII (see LttP)
one of many other old RPGs i haven't played or gotten very far in
any other game?

I vote Super Mario RPG or the Final Fantasy.

it'll probably only be you checking in on me this week! i'd pumped to play either one. have you completed either one of them before?

I love the many other old series of RPGs

like maybe...lufia or something? i'm open to that too

If you've never played Terranigma you're missing out

I've never really played SNES games like ever. Our first home console was an N64; I picked up a few different SNES games on various virtual consoles but never spent much time on them. I booted up SMRPG on an emulator at least once but emulator + laptop + keyboard is not a setup conducive to having any fun.

Anyway I'll be at work while you're streaming if it's before 5pm but I'll do my best to shirk and tune in if possible

terranigma it is!

i'm almost ready, i'm just trying to remember how to separate OpenEmu audio from microphone audio for the stream.

okeydokey, here we go: https://www.twitch.tv/weinventyou

i am sure i will sail right through this game with zero problems

I'll have to stop watching soon b/c I have to go to a meeting but everyone should watch karl get toasted on twitch

Whenever I see "weinventyou", I add the line "through the future see millennium" in my head.

uh, i just accidentally hit L1 on my PS4 controller, which is apparently mapped to "quickload", and it quickloaded the quicksave that i accidentally made back at the very beginning of the game. i "reset" the game on the emulator and the saves i had made within the game were also gone.

i am demoralized

but, i think i can actually get back to where i was within about 20 minutes of gameplay, so i'll work my way back to where i was and start there tomorrow

also i'm going to disable quicksave/quickload on my controller, because holy shit that was awful

actually i'm playing for a while longer, just finished the second tower. i'm not sure what i think of these "puzzles"

I feel bad because I couldn't hop into chat and help you figure out which holes to fall down

there's lots of optional shit like the Polynesia thing btw, this is not an easy game to "100%"

old jrpgs basically require you to read a guide to 100% them, they're not designed for it to naturally happen in a single playthrough

yeah, i'm definitely not trying to 100% it. i'll be happy if i just don't make an ass out of myself on 50% of the puzzles. i'm enjoying the game so far! and it's a good choice for me, because howlongtobeat.com suggests it will only be around 20 hours long. i completed the last of the five towers before stopping yesterday, which seemed like an intro. looking forward to getting to the main quest today, after i finish eating lunch!

I'm glad to see Trihex got unbanned (background - https://kotaku.com/streamer-trihex-apologizes-for-homophobic-slur-after-tw-1829604490)

Karl have you streamed any more Terranigma? I was really enjoying your playthrough. I guess I should just check in more often.

We should also use this thread to share streamers we find ourselves going back to and following -zoeyproasheck is priceless imo

I've also been enjoying dozing off to disnof while he curses and complains in his implacable southern-ish accent about the only game he ever seems to play, good 'ol rimworld

i've thought about doing some streams for friends now that i live alone with fast internet, probably won't have time until closer to the holidays though

I’d tune in

Jesse reviews a Black Ops 4 toilet amidst heavy gunfire pic.twitter.com/Ajt8JHMsCE

— The Go Off Kings (@GoOffKings) October 14, 2018

like maybe...lufia or something? i'm open to that too

have very fond memories of lufia 2 and how FAST it felt. the walking animations, the text scrolling, the random battles... it all felt like it was blazing by 2x the speed of some comparable j-rpg from the era. probably 3x faster than something from the ps2 era. I should play this again.

JF is doing God's work

listening to AOC talk about politics with a disheveled man in the process of hitting hour 50 of streaming himself playing donkey kong 64 without any sleep is probably one of the craziest things i've ever experienced

— friedrich nichijou (@levarburzum) January 20, 2019

So glad millennials are good now

I’m old as fuck and I love twitch!

Hbomb raising so much money/awareness for Mermaids through this stream is so fucking heartening, honestly.

Yeah. I hadn't heard of the charity. Seems like they are good?

Is DK64 really this long of a game?

if you try to do 100% without a guide yeah, it's filler collectibles hell, there's like thousands of bananas and other little things to get

lol at twitch today

"Lost Bet - Watching AYAYA for 10 Hours"
http://i64.tinypic.com/o5upna.png

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/977822609/break-the-game-the-documentary

Narcissa <3<3<3

after a certain point, the relaxing vibe of watching a chill streamer gets destroyed when they spend 10 minutes splitting hairs over which magic wand to pick in the latest cool roguelite that's making the rounds. PICK SOMETHING AND PRESS D

more generally than that - having to reckon with the fact that fairly entertaining streamers of the non-shouting variety can also be dumb is a disappointment I'm still not completely used to. This person is funny! They're engaging! They don't scream all the time to keep their chat engaged! Oh. Oh. They're kinda dumb. Oh, that's why they have a Patreon for this. Uff da.

I still enjoy Twitch from time to time when the right games are on.

I also shouldn't judge people for not having the level of education or reading & arithmetic capacity that I do. It does drive me up the wall sometimes, because I refuse to join chat and help.

This seems cool! https://www.polygon.com/2020/3/13/21178447/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-twitch-plays-pointcrow-nintendo-switch

i'm gonna stream in a bit! like, probably in 30 minutes to an hour from now. i will be playing some old emulated game. if anyone has a "request" i'll do that, but otherwise i might just gravitate toward a comfort food game that i know well, like SMB3 or something. or maybe i'll play a simulation game that i always wanted to rent from blockbuster when i was a kid, but never played: Aerobiz

ALSO: NEW "FEATURE": if you want, you can join the #twitch channel on the ilx slack. that way if you feel like making fun of me or other ilxors who stream, but don't want to sign up for twitch to do so, you can instead sign up for slack to do so

https://join.slack.com/t/poxyfule/shared_invite/zt-csm19k0n-P_w0mauC3_sXUXus~TI0mw

(that's not Sic-bait, that's real)

ok, it's finally happening

i'm playing Aerobiz.com
https://www.twitch.tv/weinventyou

ninja gaiden now, predictably

i went bankrupt

Figured this might be the right thread to ask, since some of you guys already seem into the process.
Thinking about pulling the trigger and buying the hardware and such to do streams/game capture. Particularly retro capture for short form videos, but it seems like live streaming is what people mostly do nowadays. Working with an iMac. Is it worth biting the bullet and buying a juicy PC?

Seems like a lot of opinions and options, from my googling. What's the good hardware/software packages - streaming, editing, recording, mics, cameras, etc - for this sorta thing in 2020? A lagless HDMI passthrough box? Etc etc. so was looking to hear from people who have done it.

1. https://obsproject.com/

i have a macbook pro, and have used OBS to attempt to stream on twitch (ask anyone who has ever had the misfortune of watching me try to stream an emulated NES or SNES game). i have horrible luck, insane bugs, bad and inconsistent performance. it seems optimized to work on a PC, not a mac, and pretty much all the online help/troubleshooting you can find is PC-specific.

oopa, meant to put that sad parenthetical after the second sentence

I bought a 4K capture card (4K60 S+) from ElGato and then realized it doesn't work with MacOS. So I installed bootcamp/OBS (shrug emoji), and it works fine. It also lets you capture video straight to SD card, which is fine for capturing gameplay, but doesn't work for streaming.

I emailed ElGato to see if they planned to support MacOS in the future, but the CS agent didn't know, and of course doesn't have any access to their roadmap.

thx for the input, some stuff to chew on

4k60 would probably be a good target for next gen consoles

My favorite rimworld streamer discovered terraria and is now on hour 23 of his hardcore stream

Logic retiring from music to be a 7-figure Twitch streamer is definitely a weird development and probably some kind of harbinger for something or other
https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/20/21327589/logic-twitch-signing-deal-exclusive-partnership

Can say with some inside knowledge that a number of big-name artists reached out to Twitch as the pandemic hit to start streaming. The team that runs Twitch Music was going pretty nuts about the prospect, at the cost of supporting many Twitch Music creators that have been on the platform for years. There are a couple voices in the company doing the right thing and trying to use these these artists as opportunities to boost some of the dedicated Twitch creators that have been around a long time.

We'll see how it pans out.

i may try to stream Hades a bit tonight, if anyone's interested. my playing ability is in that uncomfortable zone where i'm nowhere close to being "good" at it, but i can get through the game most times without too much difficulty.

last time i tried to stream was a nightmare, though, in terms of the connection and the video quality. streaming from a mac is fucking hard!

has anyone else here streamed a game from a mac? what did you use? OBS? is there anything better? it's always the sound that is the true nightmare - splitting the game audio from the microphone volume is surprisingly complicated.

Happy to see Twitch has listened to everyone who shared feedback and removed the “Blind Playthrough” tag to encourage more inclusive language for our community.

You can still use “First Playthrough” or opt to use it in combination with "No Spoilers" for the same sentiment. 💜

— Aureylian △⃒⃘ (@aureylian) December 4, 2020

Next up: blind spot, blind alley, double-blind, blind date, turning a blind eye, etc.

lame

glad they did that

other than it being uncool because it's p.c., changing the category name has literally zero negative effects on anything

Exactly.

It undermines the credibility of campaigns aimed at furthering inclusive language so in that sense, yes, it does have negative effects. 'Blind playthrough' was never a slur or even a mildly pejorative expression: it's not a 'bad' thing to go in blind when you're starting a new game – on the contrary, it enhances the experience.

They’re “happy to see” that? Way to rub it in

It's actually quite hard to play a video game when you're blind. I wouldn't say it enhances the experience at all.

My bad, I'd forgotten that the word 'blind' only has One True & Literal Meaning.

I dunno, letting your actions be dictated by edgelords and would-be edgelords seems to be a losing proposition twice over: first, you're ceding the moral high ground to them, and secondly, you're letting them dictate the contours of language.

I'd also like to imagine that acts like this might prompt other people to reexamine their own language, too.

But 'blind playthrough' was never the sole province of edgelords, unlike many other gaming-related expressions. If the goal is to pwn the Gamergate crowd (which is fine by mine), a self-pwn is not the best way to go about it imo.

The goal is to honor a simple request by a subset of visually impaired gamers, not to pwn anyone.

Again, 'blind playthrough' does not denote anything negative. Arguing the observe is really stretching it.

Why don't you tell that to visually impaired gamers like @stevesaylor or @stevenspohn. I'm sure they'd be happy to know it's just a misunderstanding.

I hope you realize that not all visually impaired gamers agree.

do you know what subset means

Said subset is not enough to determine whether 'blind playthrough' is acceptable or not.

Like I said, go tell them that

I would discuss this with them in person if given the chance, sure. As it stands, I don't have a Twitter account and am not interested in creating one.

are people with nervous tics not offended by "Twitch" ?

It's reasonable to consider it akin to all the examples under the posted tweet, so I would be curious what those cited visually impaired gamers would say about "double-blind study" etc.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/tech/pogchamp-emote-banned-capitol-hill-trnd/index.html

https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2021/05/21/lets-talk-about-hot-tub-streams/

being found to be sexy by others is not against our rules

whew!

being found to be sexy

we find the defendant to be...NOT SEXY!!

*cries of relief from the family*

i'm painting here now: https://www.twitch.tv/zach_tbd

Not twitch exactly, but does anyone know anything about Discord? I use it for ttrpgs through video and was looking for a bot that would track counters or tokens so that all players on the channel would be able to see the current count(s).

https://t.co/7vTDeRA9vt got leaked. Like, the entire website; Source code with comments for the website and various console/phone versions, refrences to an unreleased steam competitor, payouts, encrypted passwords that kinda thing.
Might wana change your passwords.

— Sinoc (@Sinoc229) October 6, 2021

Annoying. I changed all my passwords this morning.

just a thought - why haven't I received an email from Twitch/Amazon advising me to change my password?

https://kotaku.com/twitch-depp-heard-trial-hasanabi-pokimane-xqc-johnny-am-1848892955

This might be the thing that finally breaks my streaming addiction.

Fuck these people.

The whole Good Guy Johnny Depp internet phenomenon around this thing is some of the cringiest shit it the world.

It’s pretty disturbing and upsetting. I have no idea why people are so fond of this guy.

they liked him in the movies and people think movies are real now

That was a rhetorical question. I know why.

i don't follow the twitch streamer scene at all, and have just barely followed the Amouranth saga. i just think this, in isolation is a funny tweet

I played more overwatch than I did hot tub. That’s NEVER HAPPENED

— Kaitlyn (@wildkait) November 27, 2022