• ZeroHora@lemmy.ml
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    9 days ago

    I mean they are counting e-sports? Because is the same shit as watching soccer but better, vast majority of soccer fans doesn’t play it regularly.

    7.4 hours a week gaming

    Those are rookie numbers

    • huginn@feddit.it
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      9 days ago

      The long weekend from Thanksgiving gave me unprecedented access to factorio space age. I think I hit 60 hours last week.

    • bluGill@fedia.io
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      9 days ago

      Watching someone cut a dovetail by hand is a lot more interesting now that I know from experience how hard it is. And maybe I’ll learn a trick to make my next ones better.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      9 days ago

      If I want to do my hobby, I need to make time for it, whereas if I want to watch videos about my hobby, I can do it on the toilet. It turns out it’s a lot easier to watch than make time for a hobby, hence why I do more of it.

      If I didn’t have to work, I’d spend more time doing my hobby. But I do, and I have kids, so hobby time is quite limited.

  • eronth@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    Makes enough sense, as goofy as it sounds.

    1. No Money. - Videos let me watch games that aren’t worth buying to me along with letting me parse games that look fun enough to buy.
    2. No Time. - Videos can be put on during other chores or tasks, left on as background noise during times where I would absolutely not have enough time to actually play a game.
    3. Skill Issue. - No matter how good I want to be, I’m ultimately just kinda ok at games. Watching higher level players can be a way for me to learn tips and tricks to improve, or they can be a way for me to experience difficulty levels of the game I will never realistically achieve on my own.
  • bokherif@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    Because the new games are shit and the good old games you can’t play on newer systems properly

  • LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    In other stunning news, researchers find people who like sports spend more time watching it than playing it.

  • youreinthedrizzle@sh.itjust.works
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    9 days ago

    That’s me for sure these days. Back in high school I used to play at least a couple of hours every day. I have a gaming PC and a Steam Deck but probably play a few hours a month. But I’ll happily watch several hours of Twitch each day while I’m relaxing.

    Probably just getting older and busier, haha.

    • Redredme@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      As a (probably) even older guy I find it the weirdest thing ever. “watching games being played”. It’s boring AF.

      Sure, I can’t t play counterstrike effectively anymore. Sure I am the one with the most deaths in helldivers2. Doom eternal is just way too twitchy for me. I’ve become too slow. In mechwarrior 5 I have too put the difficulty on story/easy and aim assist on. Which hurt my old ego the most to be honest.

      But doing it still beats the shit out of watching it.

      /start_old_man_rant

      Especially these days when every streamer is an egocentric manchilds screaming their head off in a totally scripted “episode”. Or girls in bikinis only because it sells. Can we just leave that in hooters? And everything is bought and paid for. You’re watching a commercial. Or do you really think that logo on his mike just happens to be in view? Or the brand of the gaming chair?or that cupboard behind him filled with lights and gaming gear? Its ultra consumerism. And the begging for money. Fuck off. Really.

      I hate it.

      I miss total biscuit. That was entertainment.

      /end_old_man_rant

      • SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        9 days ago

        I mean, the thing that people watch twitch for is mainly the person/people on the stream, the game is a backdrop, rarely the actual focus

        And not everyone is ego-centric like you’re saying? I mean, there’s literally tens of thousands of streamers. Don’t just look at the biggest ones that probably mainly appeal to kids, i.e. a different audience than you. Chances are the kind of people you would enjoy watching are just smaller and more niche

  • iii@mander.xyz
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    9 days ago

    Plenty of people have a twitch stream open whilst playing a game.

  • stevedice@sh.itjust.works
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    9 days ago

    Makes sense. I usually just put on a 2+ hours long video whenever I’m doing chores. I don’t actually care about Wolfey’s last weird team, it just makes for good background noise.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      9 days ago

      Same. I watch VODs about a strategy game I really like playing (EU4) because I rarely have the time to actually dig in to a campaign, so watching/listening to someone else (while I do chores) do what I don’t have for allows me to get some of that connection to a game I love. I do play the game quite a bit (have nearly 1k hours), but not nearly as much as I’d like.

      There’s a pretty big difference in what I play vs what I watch though. I generally play action games and watch strategy games, because action games are easy to jump into for an hour or so at a time, whereas strategy games usually need an hour just to remember what I was doing last, so I tend to wait until I can block out an entire evening.

      • stevedice@sh.itjust.works
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        9 days ago

        Yep, it’s hard to make time for a several hours long hobby when you’re an adult.

        strategy games usually need an hour just to remember what I was doing last, so I tend to wait until I can block out an entire evening

        lol yeah, it’s like planning date night with your game.

  • biscuitswalrus@aussie.zone
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    8 days ago

    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.

    • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nz
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      8 days ago

      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?

      • Master@lemm.ee
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        8 days ago

        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!

          • Master@lemm.ee
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            8 days ago

            The point is if you are video gaming you are literally watching a video of yourself playing the game. That is why it is "video"gaming…

      • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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        8 days ago

        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.

  • Robust Mirror@aussie.zone
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    8 days ago

    Where’s “New report claims sports fans spend more time watching sport / videos about sport than playing sport”.

    This isn’t some new, crazy, hard to understand concept.

    • Eiri@lemmy.ca
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      8 days ago

      I’ll be honest I find it hard to understand for sports as well.

  • RinseDrizzle@midwest.social
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    9 days ago

    This thread got me thinking Lemmy needs a better “find a co-op buddy” community for games in general. If it’s here already, could use better marketing.

    Not sum’m I suffer from, but I want to see y’all living your best lives too. A good homie can make or break a game run.

  • I stream a 25-year-old MMO, EverQuest, about 8 hours a week and lots of viewers just want to live vicariously through my moment remembering when they were doing it themselves without committing 500-1,000 hours to level a character.

    I also watch other people play other class types of endgame content to do the same.

    I’m not the most engaging streamer, but I enjoy answering questions to my 2-10 viewers. I also enjoy when another streamer answers my own questions.

    I don’t understand watching streamers with 4,000 viewers spamming kewk emojis though.

    • TheOakTree@lemm.ee
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      9 days ago

      I’ve been really into Meridian 59 lately, but haven’t been playing in the past couple of weeks. Thanks for the reminder.

    • Subverb@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      You play live service EQ or P99 or Quarm?

      I’ve played them all. EQ definitely the game nearest and dearest to my heart.

  • Miles O'Brien@startrek.website
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    9 days ago

    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

    • ashaman2007@lemm.ee
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      9 days ago

      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.

    • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
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      9 days ago

      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!