The Day People Will Realise That Streamers Are Full Of Sh*t
I never enjoyed streamers, I don’t find them entertaining. They call themselves “content creators”, but they’re only a bunch of backseat drivers who never created anything (free speech feels good!).
When a game is popular, they’re on the first line, singing its praises but, when the game loses in popularity, they’re the first to lead the hate charge. The human brain is wired toward negativity, it’s a biological fact, it’s what makes us look for cars before we cross the streets. Medias have been abusing this facts for hundreds of years by serving us all the bad things happening in the world through their news shows. Streamers are doing the same, because a negative video simply brings more views.
The problem is that, by gaining a greater audience, they gain the power to influence the trend. Do you honestly believe that Final Fantasy XIV would have such stellar numbers if streamers wouldn’t play it? The problem is when a nobody uses that power to damage a game or a company for profit or just because he got cocky over an insult on Twitter.
When the scandal against Blizzard first appeared, the amount of streamers to jump on the hate train was incredible. The same people who profited their games for over a decade suddenly became a linch mob. Now, they’re already tempering their speech, realising that World of Warcraft is still a great game and that it is still popular. The “I will never return” has already turned into a “I still enjoy the game”. Wait for the next patch or the next expansion and you will see those hypocrites posting WoW videos again.
So, where’s the integrity in all that? Well, that’s simple, there’s none. If you’re looking for integrity, just stop watching video game streamers, they’re just trying to pay their bills, mostly at the developer’s expanse.
Hey! I agree partially 🙂
I think it does require some work and -to some extent- some talent to be a good gaming streamer. I mean, if you think about it, it’s quite impressive that some of them manage to be trully entertaining and to keep the attention of the viewers while all we can see on screen is some random guy playing a video game.
I also hate to hear about “content creation” though because it feels very forced and fake.
As for their integrity, I think all of it is driven by revenues. After all, it’s a job nowadays. Some streamers are popular because their audience deem them honest and true to themselves and they can keep being genuine because they get a lot of views and clicks thanks to that.
Others (probably less talented) need to sell out to keep revenues up. They can either promote games and get paid by the editors or they can come up with clickbait bullshit content like you describe in your post.
But I wouldn’t say it’s at the developer’s expanse though and I certainly woulnd’t feel sorry for big game developers like Blizzard. They’re gonna be fine 😀
It varies greatly from one person to another. Where you see talent, I see a bunch of egocentric jerks who enjoy way too much to point a camera at themselves. I find them unentertaining and I couldn’t imagine myself spending my hard earned free time watching someone else play a game that I could play myself. Now, it’s a free world, and streamers only exist because they succeed at keeping other people entertained. But that’s entirely subjective.
Now, my opinion differs from yours for another reason: my view is the the view of a WoW player. Streamers like Bellular and Asmongold have damaged the community with toxic videos and fake information. They are big streamers (2.4 millions followers) and their attitude during the recent Blizzard scandal was nauseating. While they have built their livelihood on the back of WoW, they didn’t hesitate to encourage people to quit when WoW was at its weakest, resulting in a mass exodus to other games.
Now that everyone is realising that WoW is miles ahead of the competition, people are coming back and those “influencers” are slowly tip toeing back as well.
But the WoW community didn’t forget, you should see how people talk about them in the game chat, they are burned, hence the title of my post. 😀
As for big developers, believe me, they suffer. Look at CD Projekt Red and Cyberpunk. When it was popular to make memes and spit on the bugged version of the early release, streamers followed the trend and the game’s reviews damaged the future of the game. The developers themselves stated that no matter how hard they try to improve the game, they don’t think they’ll recover from the damage streamers have done.
I recently saw a streamer reviewing the beta of Diablo 2 Resurrected, flaming it for being filled with bugs. It’s a beta FFS, it’s meant to be buggy!
When a game’s momentum is lost, it is lost forever. Unfortunately, in the gaming industry, as in the real world, popularity is often influenced by the loud mouths and not by facts.
I could spend hours citing games that have been irreversibly damaged by streamers who follow the trend because they’re whoring for clicks and I’m very happy that WoW’s community begins to share my opinion. 🙂
I feel sorry for Blizzard, but not the Blizzard you think of. I’m talking about the hundreds of people who give everything, trying to make Azeroth the wonderful place it has become. People with whom we regularly chat and who even became our friends and who see their work dragged in the mud by lowlives just because a negative post attracts more clicks… I say, it’s time for some internet justice!