MKX was the #1 selling game of 2015, so why so few viewers on Twitch?

[Enexemander]

It seems like people have the impression that streams overall are about skill display.

They are not.

Streaming is about entertainment. Are you the best player in the world that bodies your competition 99.9% of the time? Good for you, but if your stream isn't entertaining on a basic level, nobody cares.

Tru3 pulls the most viewers because he has a funny accent, a goofy hat, plays all the characters and engages the community with the chat, koth invites, and money matches. On a very basic level he gets the idea-streaming is about entertainment.

Max does the same thing, but takes it to a whole new level with shorts, friends to fuck around with, etc. I don't think anyone would complain about having Max's level of views, subs, and donations.

Even Neto proves the point perfectly, because he played like shit on purpose and a whole troll personality built up just for entertainment purposes. So really, as an avid stream watcher, please decide why your stream exists as a form of entertainment. The audience is there, but you have to give them what they want.

 

[KMK]

I think it's all about the online play being Shit. Unless you have good connection the game sucks. This just pissed people like me off. I stop playing online and have no one to play cause everyone I know except one person sucks to bad to play. Until the online handles lag better it Will not get better. Online play has to be very close to offline play in order for fighting games to get bigger. Just me though

 

[buyacushun]

"Run in and throw your bullshit out"

Sometimes, no matter what, this happens and is the only way I'd describe the gameplay. And all it takes is a d3.

It seems like people have the impression that streams overall are about skill display.

They are not.

Streaming is about entertainment. Are you the best player in the world that bodies your competition 99.9% of the time? Good for you, but if your stream isn't entertaining on a basic level, nobody cares.

Tru3 pulls the most viewers because he has a funny accent, a goofy hat, plays all the characters and engages the community with the chat, koth invites, and money matches. On a very basic level he gets the idea-streaming is about entertainment.

Max does the same thing, but takes it to a whole new level with shorts, friends to fuck around with, etc. I don't think anyone would complain about having Max's level of views, subs, and donations.

Even Neto proves the point perfectly, because he played like shit on purpose and a whole troll personality built up just for entertainment purposes. So really, as an avid stream watcher, please decide why your stream exists as a form of entertainment. The audience is there, but you have to give them what they want.

I think you're exactly correct in how streaming works and how streamers get popular. But I don't think anyone here, or at least in this thread think it's mainly about skill.

 

[I GOT HANDS]

oh I'm not saying MK or any FG is harder than Dota 2 or any MOBA. Just that there is no feedback at all when lose or win. Unless you know what to look for then you'd have no real clue what's going on. At least in MOBAs there are different screens with information. The scoreboard, death recap, even the UI can give you feedback on what's going on and if you're winning or losing. In fighters all you have are health bars.

I could never get into Dota. But I did get in to SMITE. The hardest part of DOTA for me was movement and trying to get used to the delay I felt and clicking everywhere. After that I had to learn what the champs do and what the items do. Then you start maximizing all that and get into team comps and blah blah blah.

I have one problem with that article and that's that it's by someone that has 93 hours in and doesn't realize there are good places to place wards. I found that out within hours because I took the time to ask or google it. Same for Smite. Most of that person's problems is that they are going about learning the whole game seemingly by themselves. Which if someone did in a fighter, I'm sure you'd understand if they went 93 hours and never realized to mix up the speed of their fireballs or using their best pokes or even that there is a neutral game. I still run into online players with over 1000 games played and they do NJP, random mileena rolls and always armored wakeup the moment the tiniest bit of pressure comes.

I think both MOBA and FG are hard to truly master or even get competitively good at to really play ranked. But that's a different topic.

MOBAs do have a couple things that FGs don't have that can make them more appealing to a casual. Information is abundant during and after the game. It's 5v5 so you can be mediocre but have someone carry (literally a role on the team) you to victory. You can follow common builds and regulate your skill usage to safe, sure things. That's much harder to do in a fighter unless you really practiced. So I don't think that one genre is harder than the other. But MOBAs definitely take it easier on new players than fighters do, both in direct and indirect ways. If fighting games want to get out of the niche, developers are going to have to figure out a way to make the game easier on new players. Without destroying what made the hardcore players like it in the first place.

Well that mightn't match your experiences with learning the game, but trust me it's a common thing. Ward locations always spun me out, in fact its something I've only wrapped my head around recently myself, but I'm a pretty focused player in playstyle and I haven't enjoyed supporting since I came out of my first hundred hours or so of playing Tidehunter, and I definitely had no concept of warding back then, and the value of them and the importance of location were even more foreign to me. However, everyone learns at a different speed. I can
believe that this is something you picked up on more quickly than me and the writer of the article - but I bet there is elements we caught on to quicker than you did. Thats the thing with the numerous layers of Dota or most mobas in general - there is simply so much to learn, and just like you could see people not realizing to mix-up speeds of fireballs to get in with them, it was at least 1000 hours before i started focusing on disguising aggressive movements in lane when going for a kill, and how subtle actions could scare my opponents backwards a bit blowing the midgank opportunity. Dota 2 may have builds, but thats because it has extra elements that NEED builds. If there was a shop in MKX, that let you buy items midgame, and characters came with a generic build outline to follow, this wouldn't LOWER the ease of access of the game simply because it has builds, it would be an extra level of difficulty that the builds are designed to help you with. But every FG character as an easy googlable guide in fact practically every new player to Dota is told to ignore the ingame guides (which freaking suck) and google for guides, Dota2AltTab.com was massive during Dotas rise to power as well. I don't think its fair to say that because Dota comes with in game builds it makes it an easier game to pick up and play than a game like MKX. I think that's VERY far from the reality of what a Moba is for a beginner.

It seems like people have the impression that streams overall are about skill display.

They are not.

Streaming is about entertainment. Are you the best player in the world that bodies your competition 99.9% of the time? Good for you, but if your stream isn't entertaining on a basic level, nobody cares.

Tru3 pullsa+ the most viewers because he has a funny accent, a goofy hat, plays all the characters and engages the community with the chat, koth invites, and money matches. On a very basic level he gets the idea-streaming is about entertainment.

Max does the same thing, but takes it to a whole new level with shorts, friends to fuck around with, etc. I don't think anyone would complain about having Max's level of views, subs, and donations.

Even Neto proves the point perfectly, because he played like shit on purpose and a whole troll personality built up just for entertainment purposes. So really, as an avid stream watcher, please decide why your stream exists as a form of entertainment. The audience is there, but you have to give them what they want.

Actually it's about both. If someone is at the pro level of a game, they can stream an absolutely silent and mute stream still be one of the most watched channels. At the same time, a complete scrub who is fun and engaging can do the same. Its the players who are able to mix a bit of both into their stream who will dominate the streams however.

 

[Jedimindtricks]

The fact that True Talent gets more views than Slips' stream is a testament to how viewer count doesn't mean shit in terms of quality.

No. True gets viewers because he's entertaining. Your average viewer doesn't want to watch MIT in training room practicing combos while Slayer shouts "what the?!!!" ten times in the background.

Your average competitive players stream goes something like this "enter ranked match, answer one chat question, play. Complain about lag. Win. Start another match." The YOMI stream, due to the congregation of great players is mostly offline but it's still just labbing and practice, sometimes in silence for ages with very little interaction.

When you watch a lot of the more popular streamers in any game you tend to see a lot of audience interaction in-game as well. If I had Reno's ear I'd say something like this: why are we watching DJT beat everyone in the house again every night? Make Thursday a king of the hill night. Invite the first 7 viewers who do x thing(retweet, whatever) and the 8th spot will be a random YOMI member each round using random character select(since the average player has no chance at all against their mains give the illusion that Joe Schmoe might win). Make Monday Viewers choice night. You know how Monday night raw will do the whole "you choose the match!" Deal and people vote/tweet. Make a poll on TYM or somewhere on Friday with match ups for YOMI members to play on Monday night(characters/variations/players). Now do this for every FG you plan on supporting(MKX, SF, Smash, etc). And keep up the sweet guests. Seeing Tyrant, Tom Brady, KP at YOMI participating is really cool.

What I'm getting at I guess is for members here watching what we know is high level play is really cool. For your average gamer though, not so much. The biggest advantage streaming has over traditional broadcast TV is interaction, and that means more than answering a random question here or there. That's what true does, so people watch. Shit, aside from the obvious trolling that's what Neto did/does too.

 

[WidowPuppy]

why... why... why...

That's funny.



















































And really fuckin sad.

 

[Jedimindtricks]

Shit netcode is a big factor for me, personally. Lately, I can't get motivated to play online/stream the game because the online experience is so shit.

I also think if the game truly is getting boring for the majority, it says something about the lack of depth/variety of the gameplay. I often see people refer to the game as an offense-heavy game... well... if the strategy for most characters in the game is basically summed up by "Run in and throw your bullshit out", that doesn't make for an interesting game to play or to watch in the long run.

I think this has some to do with it along with the netcode making the format most would play it on garbage. You can only watch Erron black or Lao throw out the same damn strings over and over so many times. And the average viewer is like "why don't they do something" and has no idea: Because they can't! It's eat that chip or eat 30%.

I think support has something to do with it also. MOBA's get patches. Frequently. I've never seen a community so resistant to patches like the FGC. And content patches are very spread out/non-existent. No, another scorpion skin isn't content people want. For MKX in the next 3 months I have 4 shadows on Boone's Twitter to look forward to. Okay. Guess I'll be buying emotes in destiny, Fallout4, Tomb Raider, Halo, and everything else next year. Oh yeah, I'll be playing those also. By the time KP2 comes out I can be sure: online in MKX will still be garbage, and at least one will have had more updates/content in that time than KP1+2 put together released. So why keep playing, and if I'm not playing why keep watching?

 

[virtiqaL]

I've seen people comparing the difficulty of MOBAs vs FGs/MKX as a reason for the disparity in viewers. Implying that FGs are less popular because they're less accessible. Eh?... MK and the NRS fighting games are probably some of the most accessible and easy to play fighting games out there. I'd say it would be harder to compete in a MOBA at the highest level than MK, if not only because there is communication and coordination required between several players. Otherwise, at the casual-intermediate skill level, I'd say both MK and MOBAs can be described as fairly accessible and easy to pick up, but difficult to master.

In terms of viewership, I think it would be more fair to compare a game like CS:GO to FGs. MOBAs are free-to-play competitive games, I think that alone is reason enough for why they're always going to consistently have the largest amount of viewers.

 

[..???..]

i dnt like watching randomers play games, i tend to only watch the big tournaments
- o and the difficulty thing is irrelevant. twitch took off with league of legends, when twitch started that was basically all there viewers.
the biggest twitchers for league of legends have been streaming since twitch start

on side note i played 8000hrs + over 18mnths on league of legends and now dont touch mobas.

i think people here over analyze sometimes

 

[Undergroundepict]

I think it's all about the online play being Shit. Unless you have good connection the game sucks. This just pissed people like me off. I stop playing online and have no one to play cause everyone I know except one person sucks to bad to play. Until the online handles lag better it Will not get better. Online play has to be very close to offline play in order for fighting games to get bigger. Just me though

This.

It's a shame so few people get to actually play the game they purchased, because if they played offline they would surely come to the conclusion that the gamel is unbelievably awesome.

But what incentive is there to watch people play a broken version of a game that you cannot even enjoy yourself? When online is shit, the casuals are always the first to go, and those are generally the people who watch streams.