New report claims gamers spend more time watching videos about gaming than playing games

The interesting part to me is that you can watch football even when/if you can't play football, but you could be gaming instead of watching.

I can only watch so much football as can a rare other people like me. If I am watching football I want the view of one position. I don't care that the quarterback got sacked on the play, how did the running back avoid the defense in his attempts to become open for a pass - or some such that I want to emulate when I next play. (i think that is a likely thing - I consider football too dangerous to play so I'm guessing - in reality I'd prefer to see other sports that I'm likely to play)

edit: spelling

Lmao, what a takeaway. Guy is struggling to earn that paycheck.

Groooowwwtthhhh! It's all about that Groooooowwwtthhhhh!

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.

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.

Execution is a small part of "the planning", man. That ain't even fair.

You play live service EQ or P99 or Quarm?

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

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

You don't watch football while playing football? What else is the jumbotron even good for?

Not really interesting. Gaming is often stressful and requires more though / action being put into it. Also there is the matter of skill - it's way more fun to see someone completely anihilate the other team, than to go out and get killed yourself. You can also go through a story based game without having to actually play, and you get most of the experience. You also need to count in people watching other people's guides, especially for strategy games. For other hobbies it's often about actually doing something and feeling the rush, or by occupying the hands and chilling out. You don't get the rush of driving a car by watching someone else do it. You don't get your hands occupied by seeing someone knit. Also, gaming provides instant feedback / dopamine. Watching it does that with even less effort.

You forgot: The videos often have absurd challenges that most gamers would never try, like for example trying to beat Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire with only a physical attacking Abra.

Amen to that!

This, how people can find watching more entertaining than playing is beyond me. I tried watching people play my favourite games on twitch to see what it was like, I got bored out of my brains in minutes.

The closest I can do is watching gameplay videos on youtube, from people who do extremely creative things that inspire me for future playthroughs - but even then.

To y’all watching streams: I’m not judging you, you do you. I just don’t understand you.

I usually open streams on a second monitor while playing, unless the game demands my full undivided attention for extended periods of time. It's more of a case by case basis for me.

There's retro streamers and smaller/older streamers that aren't so hype and "ON IT" all the time.

Sometimes I just want to be around the community that surrounds a game I am enjoying. If I am playing a JRPG, I may spend more time in a JRPG discord going back and forth with users, or go find a streamer playing it and pick their brain a bit.

It helps you not feel so alone with the experience. You may be the only person for miles and miles to boot up Breath of Fire IV, but rest assured, someone out there wants to talk about it.

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

Commentator: “Here’s my 100-hour video essay on what King’s Duty 8, an award-winning game, could have handled differently, with another 40 pages of annotations.”
Game Developer at 4:50 PM: “Ok whatever, we didn’t fix the cutscene bug but at least it doesn’t crash. Time to go home and not think about video games all weekend.”

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.

I have played through Factorio, I have also watched every video doshdoshington has made about it while cooking, doing dishes etc.

or it's because IRL our gaming interests aren't something we can talk about. I haven't had a IRL friend who thinks gaming is cool since I was 15. I'm 40 now. for 25 anytime I bring up my interest in games my 'friends' or girlfriends cringe and tell me to STFU about my weird immature stupid interest.

on twitch and youtube i can find people who share my joy of games and appreciate them and openly talk about their fond memories of playing them and how important they were to their childhood. IRL talking saying shit like that gets you socially shamed and ostracized.

I miss r/summonsign and whatever the one for elden ring was. From Soft co-op is the best part of their games.

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

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?

Hi, I'm plenty of people

Weird! 🤷‍♂️ Do they watch the twitch stream when their game is loading?

It's not that bad! Once you've got the basics down you can just watch as everything explodes

Once you learn how to survive, the deep end is best learned by trial and error!

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

Streamers kinda brings that connection back

In a parasocial kinda way...?

when my son plays he's constantly talking through whatever he's doing in the game. streaming has rubbed off that much

My first thought: I love the stories in Elden Ring, there's so many, so much history written into the art. But between constantly getting mollywopped and it being kind of trickle fed, I lose the story(ies). There are a handful of channels that go indepth on the stories, the legend, the history and "archeology" of The Lands Between.
There's a lot of intention and love put into Elden Ring, but do to sucking at video games, sometimes it's easier to enjoy the stories through other avenues.

for me it's mostly because I am too depressed and unmotivated to get out of bed and go sit in front of the console/PC but not depressed enough to put the dumb addictive black rectangle down

(i am taking medication i hope this changes)

I'm definitely one of those people, but I work in an office where they let us watch shit on our phones as long as the work still gets done. A hell of a lot easier to watch YT videos than to try to sneak an Xbox S into a cubicle farm ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well...

1. "Videos about gaming" don't necessarily have to be gameplay footage. Reviews, promotional materials, discussions etc. count. Maybe even stuff like Viva La Dirt League's content which is live action skits about video games.

2. Tutorials and walkthroughs exist.

3. Some vintage systems are difficult to get up and running or even find. For a lot of people it's easier to just watch an enthusiast do it on youtube.

4. Especially on Twitch with streamers it's as much about the player as it is the game.

5. Especially with esports or speedrunning it's like watching a sporting event. Even if you like playing football too there's something to watching the professionals play at the top echelons.

6. One can watch gaming videos while doing other things. When I was moving into my apartment in Greensboro I assembled my furniture while watching HCBailly play through the Gameboy Zelda games.

when playing is also very little effort.

Same. Not only is it little effort, but you get to experience what the intended purpose of the game was without having to listen to some rando try out bad jokes or say lame stuff. Any time I look at a video tutorial I look for videos with no narration and once I figure out how to solve the problem I turn the video off and get back to the game. Watching someone else play a game just seems like a waste of time, personally

Interesting that you see a difference between the two. Football also does not require incredible effort to play, still a lot of people only watch it.

Just because someone doesn't play games all the time doesn't mean they don't play games sometimes.

If you race 10 hours a week, but you watch racing 20 hours a week, are you not still a racer?

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.

They play wrong.

I feel that. A few times I had to stop the stream and play the game better myself.

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!

because i'm at work. or tired as fuck at the end of a long day.

What you need to do is find two or so reviewers who align with what you want out of a game.

It is a free and easy way to experience 75% of the experience without even downloading it (data bloat has massively ballooned too, perhaps needlessly in some cases). Also linear stories, or procedural things not being as deep as they seem.

Even when it comes to indie-appearing stuff I often don't like the direction of the game design/difficulty, so it will likely be a more enjoyable experience in those cases too. The narrator also cuts boring bits or issues, also may do things I would not especially when it comes to skill or knowledge of said game. They may do silly things or tell a story. This may be 300% experience (of a new mix).

EDIT: Also never really been into the idea of multiplayer games, competitive or cooperative for different reasons. So watching is a new avenue for that.

My wife thought she was the same until suddenly it clicked and she realized she is in fact a gamer

Damn I feel that

you only know you suck because of watching others. I skip that part :-)

The wisdom of streams is simple.

I do shit with my life other than gaming. If I want to experience a cool game without spending the money and without investing the time to get good at the game, it's a no-brainer to watch a playthrough done by a professional gamer and a professional live commentator like the best streamers are.

Emulators are a thing, you know.

Reviews have actually saved me money. Time is limited, so I’m thankful to be able toto watch a review and be able to use that to help me make a decision about a game I’m on the fence with.