Well, I thought that I’d talk briefly about videogame streamers today, and how I gained a newfound respect for them. For quite a while, I was mildly jealous of them. Sort of: “If I looked more photogenic and didn’t hate the sound of recordings of my own voice, I’d totally do it… Easiest thing in the world“. But then, in early-mid December, I had an experience which reminded me that their profession is a more challenging one than I sometimes think.
A relative showed me a Christmas browser game on their computer – one of those “endless runner” 2D platformer games where you only have to worry about jumping at the right moment. As the person with the most gaming experience in the room, they thought that I’d have a better chance at getting a high score on it.
I knew that I’d have to have a few practice runs with it in order to learn how to play it. That it would be a grinding “trial and error” challenge where I’d keep failing until I failed less badly. Where I’d gradually get incrementally better at playing it. Where the key factor – a lesson learned from growing up in the 1990s/early-mid 2000s, when games were less forgiving – was basically just pure determination.
Anyway, one of the things I didn’t expect – but quickly noticed – was that, in order to concentrate on the game properly, I had to ask for total silence whilst I was playing. Even a basic conversation could quickly distract me enough to cause a “game over”. As someone who primarily plays single-player games in solitude, this makes total sense. Part of what makes gaming so much fun for me is the meditative focus of it. How you have to be totally in the present moment, totally focused on the game. It’s immersive, mood-boosting and – if the game is good enough – emotionally satisfying in a similar way to reading a novel or making a piece of art.
And this suddenly made me realise that there was nothing “lazy” or “easy” about videogame streaming.
Not only do streamers have to play games – sometimes competitive or faster-paced ones – reasonably decently, but they’ve also got deal with the constant distraction of entertaining and responding to their audience whilst they are doing this. Rather than just playing a game, they’ve got to split their attention between doing well at the game and being someone that people find fun to watch.
Yes, each streamer probably has a different balance and probably also makes careful decisions about the difficulty and/or pacing of the game as well – I mean, one of the reasons why “jump scare” horror games became so popular for reaction videos and streams is because, often, the gameplay is incredibly simple – often literally just walking around – which frees up more mental “processing power” for entertaining commentary, responding to chat comments etc…
Even so, I suddenly realised that videogame streaming is very different to just playing a game on your own for fun. You not only have to be good at playing the game but you also have to do this whilst also being entertaining at the same time. It’s like dancing whilst doing archery, or doing a crossword puzzle whilst playing tennis etc… It’s two totally different skills which you have to do well as the same time.
In other words, it’s probably a lot more difficult than it looks.
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
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