9_22_2022

This post is about some Twitch & ad related things, but not about the 70/30 split (which I don't really care about personally). Moreso about how frequent ads are becoming

All the recent Twitch ads talk made me think about how it affects speedrunning and other types of specialty streams. I think they are fairly interconnected, and ads have a pretty bad effect overall on growth & interest of these kind of hobbies. Established channels don't really feel the same burden as the small to mid size channels trying to grow while doing these kind of specialty streams. I think there are many signs about the platform that make it seem that Twitch wants to funnel people to more established channels with subscriptions, rather than the freeform channel-hopping community driven platform it used to be. And I think stark increase in ads is part of that. It's easy to say it's just all money related (which is certainly true) but there are other implications

I think there's a strong effect of the platform trying to minimize how many channels the average user frequents. Ads on channel swap are an obvious sign, though Twitch still makes money on the swap. But ads in general promotes the value of subscriptions, and large streams get a ton of ads. Stream regulars tend to put up with ads because they either are used to it, or have a subscription to help. The exploration phase of hopping around channels and seeing what's up is very long gone. I think the people most affected and likely to drop off are the ones who casually like to check out Twitch every now and then, and get disincentivized every time and opt to come back less and less. But these people aren't where the money is, so Twitch doesn't really care. The most valuable stream to Twitch is one where Twitch gets subscriptions, bits and retention from the viewer, which sounds obvious, but it seemingly makes more sense to minimize an average user's channel exploration, if the streams that they DO watch have these elements that cause more interaction, which tend to be the bigger streams. And if you aren't subscribed on a larger channel, you're getting slammed with ads, so Twitch is still making out alright. The rest of the platform certainly does not seem to revolve around exploration tools for the viewer to diversify either - tags is a weird system, teams are a relic of the past, "communities" was a half assed feature, and the search bar is generally unhelpful I feel (the best general feature is exploring streams by game, I'd say). It all points towards keeping the viewer in the bigger stream that focuses on maximizing monetization, if Twitch can get you there in the first place. From what I can tell I see it a lot, less people in smaller streams over time, more people in the bigger ones, sort of the effect of "people moving from the country to the big city". It doesn't really impact my viewing much since I'm usually in smaller streams in general if at all, but I can definitely safely say that I almost never really go "explore" anymore

WRT speedrunning/specialty streams, I think the elephant in the room that smaller and mid size streamers don't often chat about is that popularity & viewership often ties directly into motivation to speedrun things or work on whatever project. This most definitely is not the case for everyone, and I know many people who wouldn't blink twice about how many viewers they get and couldn't care less. But I think it's almost always a sensitive subject for a lot of other people, and when you have a combination of 1) less willingness of viewers to diversify and check out new channels and 2) possibly less viewership at all because of the platform becoming less friendly to watch, I think motivation to work on your speedgames gets less and less, which stagnates the hobby overall. And I think it's something that most people wouldn't admit, that they care about their 'popularity' and how it ties into their motivation. But the reality is that very, very few people grind speedgames offline and post a VOD, in particular top times, which naturally is because there's some sort of social element to it all that makes it appealing. So if there's a social element to it that makes it appealing in the first place, then of course viewership and growth is part of the equation. And when the platform works against you (for reasons above about ads & other things) while you're trying to be motivated to work on your speedgames, I think that's a primary factor in feeling like the effort is more than you get out of it, and people drop off

Part of what made early speedrunning thrive was how accessible channels were to simply watch multiple at a time, or check out different channels in short bursts, and learn about the hobby while it was growing. I've read some discussion recently about "how speedrunning isn't dead!!" and while I think it's not going anywhere and is still a great hobby, it's delusional to think it's in the same fun & exciting state it used to be, for a ton of reasons (many I've already written up). Speedrun related streams that thrive now often have a unique corner of the internet where people flock to because of their consistency on scheduling & content (i.e., playing the same game over and over), and the rest is pretty muddy. All I'm really saying as part of this write up is that Twitch's modern platform sure isn't helping speedrunning overall