Ting

Super Quick Pastebin to summarize my thoughts on rules in speedrunning regarding capture cards/webcams.

I personally prefer someone to use a capture card. I think the idea that someone who would shoot for a sub 2 hour time in Mario 64 would by nature want to attract an audience to watch them do this, and would naturally just buy one. Money was never really the issue. My main concern has always been barriers to entry. While to those of us who have been streaming for years and understand how easy setting up a capture card is, this might sound trivial. For someone who is on the outside looking in, and has never used a capture card before, and stumbles upon the site and sees "No Webcams past this certain point" I think you lose people there. I almost never stumble upon a stream that uses a webcam capture, but they exist to a certain degree, and sometimes those webcam streams are the catalyst that gets them into trying the hobby out, and eventually upgrading. To me this type of ruling seems to only keep others out, and not bring new people in. I don't think many people are going to see this rule and say "Hey, I'd like to start playing in that community now." I think you're just going to see people who lack the knowledge of streaming, and immediately be put off. I feel like it's trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist.

At the end of the day, I understand the thought process behind, and I see why people are pushing for it, I just don't like where it leads. What's stopping people from forcing a bitrate requirement, or saying "well, ezcaps are trash, so you'll have to use this capture card instead." I look back at my stream when I first started, and the quality was atrocious even if I used a capture card. I gradually over time improved my set up because I knew that it was necessary for growth. I think I would have been more inclined to not try if I knew there were more barriers to entry.

Just My 2 Cents. Always down for discussion.