Twitch vs Youtube, Stream vs Pre-recorded

[ano0maly]

Made the thread given how this has been a hot topic.

I'll start by sharing my own experience watching. Like five years or so ago, I've mostly only watched pre-recorded LP format on Youtube, but lately I've been quite enjoying Twitch stuff - videos of Twitch and other streams for the past two years, and eventually, watching actual live streams. Edited videos of Twitch streams, which are sort of a hybrid between pre-recorded and live stream formats, have become sort of a new hobby for me since 2016. As far as video playthroughs of games goes, they've largely displaced the pre-recorded format for what I watch, with a few exceptions.

Later on I decided to give actual live streams on Twitch a try, with the chatting and the wacky donations, and they perhaps were more enjoyable than I expected. I feel that for many streamers, having the stream (and sometimes camera) on has sort of become sharing their lifestyle routines and hobbies. Depending on how casual the nature of streaming is, it's like "I'm playing a game, might as well share it on stream" rather than playing it for the sake of streaming. And it's just nice to have a stream on like television without necessarily watching the whole thing.

[Ashan]

There was a point a few years ago where I enjoyed watching streams actively and participating in chat and whatnot, but these days I use streams as background noise while doing something else. Including right now where I've got a Bloodborne speedrun going off to the side.
As for actual LPs, I basically just watch raocow now whenever he plays something that interests me. And I don't think I could really commit to keeping up with more than that cause already I have trouble with just that!

[Sebby19]

Oh, I thought the side-discussion in the Hollow Knight thread just naturally ended, but okay:

While I did state that I don't really 'get' Twitch as a platform, I did some further thinking, and thought up one possible advantage I didn't consider before: How likely are you to suffer a copyright strike on a LIVE stream? Unless there are bots out there that can watch and shut you down, live.... *shudder*
But even then, your revenue is coming directly from your viewers (and sponsors?), not ads.

But yeah, not a lot about Twitch I understand, which basically comes down to lack of exposure.

[Bean]

Pre-recorded is easier for me to watch with how life has been busy for me this last year, but there's also the issue of Twitch taking up a decent chunk of CPU usage on my computer. Most Twitch streams I do care about get ported to YT with a few exceptions, so yeah. Kind of makes the choice easy for me.

[BobisOnlyBob]

Just echoing my post from the thread to here, regarding the topic of Twitch streams being archived to Youtube and the "Cultural" differences between the two platforms.

There people who stream lp recordings on twitch and then later release them on youtube, so it is possible to get the best of both worlds.

Depends on format and culture. I much prefer raocow's well-edited LPs to stream-recorded LPs where length tends to balloon, editing is discouraged, the player is distracted/interrupted by reading chat and reacting to subscribers and donations (especially with overlay effects), context is lost without chat being present or your own attention is distracted by including chat alongside the game. It's a totally different culture, suitable for some games but not others. I prefer Youtube for "This is an LP of this one game and I'm going to play it until I beat it, seeing as much as possible", and I prefer Twitch for "this is attempt #372 at Binding of Isaac/Warframe/ALTTP Randomizer, let's hang out and chill". YT is also better for "Blind" content, which chat ruins almost any possibility of that without strict moderation.

I'm largely focusing on the chat and community interaction angle of this, because that is what the predominant Twitch experience is, although I acknowledge both that Twitch does have some streamers who insulate themselves from chat and create fairly crafted or scripted content, and that Youtube does have an emerging base of streamers who interact with their chat. I've gotten live questions and feedback responded to on Youtube Chat by a game analyst who was streaming a random assortment of games and that was great fun, but it very much felt like the Twitch experience minus the usual emoticons - so maybe it is less about the platforms and more about Streaming vs Pre-recorded at the heart of it.

The Let's Play Format began with screenshots and relied heavily on intermittent community feedback for direction. Streams go to near-real-time feedback, while modern YouTube LPs can either be totally isolated from any sort of audience feedback or codependent upon it, someone like raocow falling inbetween where he largely "plays blind" without needing feedback, but always gets praise and criticism

and too many hints (yes, I'm guilty of that too but that's another discussion)

leading to him reacting to the audience on a delay.

I guess, ultimately, the majority of people want the quick stimulus - shout in the chat and hope you get noticed - rather than either the delayed gratification of following a series and influencing the player with small nudges or positive feedback, or not interacting with them at all and just consuming their content. It's nothing new for people to prefer the quick and immediate, that's just human society dating back millennia, but being able to interact from the crowd with the hosts on the stage has never been quite so immediate, so accessible and so actively encouraged to the point of forming a collective dialogue - this isn't quite the same as heckling comedians or throwing tomatoes at lousy vaudeville, although those are definitely still "immediate"!

Of course, that still overlooks another major factor - editing vs live, processed vs raw. While raocow, to stick with him as the example, very rarely makes a bad edit we've all had moments where he's skipped over something or we've lost some sentence we were keen to hear the conclusion of because of cutting (sometimes it's funnier that way). With a stream, you get the whole experience uninterrupted, not just mistakes and all but truly never missing a beat, that reality TV factor of getting a window into the player's life for a bit, and that in itself - the face-cam factor, a social something that is largely cut out of produced-for-Youtube content (unless you're uploading dozens of times a day with lots of personal vlogs, bringing something closer to parity with live, raw content). Whether that's for better or worse is a matter of taste, but there's no denying there's always a demand for celebrities, a demand for more parasocial relationships to latch onto and the live factor only encourages those sorts of "streamer personalities" to emerge.

Ugh. I'm tired and I rambled. Gonna hit submit with the disclaimer that the above is fairly unpolished thoughts.

[ano0maly]

I have had some issues with my current computer not good enough to play some Twitch videos too (it's pretty old), but I found that if you have a decent smartphone it plays there, as long as you have good Internet connection available.

[Zach808]

Not a huge fan of streams, since everyone always seems to stream when I can’t watch. Not only that, but streams tend to murder my phone’s battery when it bothers to play at all without intense lag. I much prefer the pre-recorded stuff.

[BobisOnlyBob]

Oh yeah, as a Brit I tend to be limited on when I can watch streams from the US. The only major stream I watch is GDQ, and I find myself staying up awful hours to catch the best stuff.

And it's true, the sheer bandwidth streams required to stay synched at high bitrates - not to mention the bloody chat, which despite my earlier comments can be a fun to crucial part of the experience - is absolutely murder on phones, all three of battery, RAM and data.

[Leet]

I can rarely stand streams. Supergreatfriend is the major exception because he brings a commentary A-game to anything, and I don't have anything against watching someone I know stream. But the environment of popular "streaming" is usually awful. Chat is just people regurgitating the same idiotic memes all over themselves forever, and most streamers don't put a lot of thought into their actions.

[Alice]

Oh, so this is where this thread is. I was expecting it to be in the gazebo or something.

I've already largely made my views known in the Hollow Knight thread but as a viewer I feel the benefits of Youtube and prerecorded videos far outweigh the benefits of livestreaming personally. Livestreamed videos are far longer and on someone else's schedule so if you're busy that's a huge con for livestreaming.

On top of that an edited video can edit out the boring parts which makes sense for something that's supposed to be for entertainment purposes. I can understand not editing for things like speedruns though, that makes total sense. I think something like raocow's Hollow Knight is a good balance. He started out not editing very much and when he did it largely just covered traveling between locations to save on video time.

Livestreams also have some other annoying bits. The donation and subscriber crap that happens seriously detracts from my enjoyment of any streams personally. Even if I was one of those donators/subscribers I honestly could not care less about it than I do and I really don't understand the focus on that. I also don't really care for the chats in livestreams. Largely that's just me not being a fan of big group chats but it's also partly because it's infested with insufferable memeshit which, again, detracts from my enjoyment of any of it.

[SAJewers]

I have had some issues with my current computer not good enough to play some Twitch videos too (it's pretty old), but I found that if you have a decent smartphone it plays there, as long as you have good Internet connection available.

try this: https://streamlink.github.io/

let's you watch twitch streams (and other stuff as well) in your media player of choice.