Games

I’ve spent boatloads more time watching football than playing football, too.

Also, with Rainbow 6: Siege, there’s so many ways to play the game that I love watching videos to get ideas for new strategies to try.

Lastly, contrary to popular belief, a lot of games actually require thinking about what you’re doing. Time spent playing is not really time spent spacing out so I will happily watch videos about a game I like to play when I don’t have the energy to actually focus on playing them.

I don't watch streams, but I do watch a lot of Let's Plays (i.e. Materwelonz, WoolieVersus). Sometimes to watch them play games that I normally wouldn't, sometimes to listen to their insights at certain hype points in games I previously played, and usually due to loneliness (i.e. parasocial relationships).

Regarding the last point, it also tends to be the reason I gravitate towards games with strong story, or MMOs. Feeling like I belong to a community keeps the loneliness at bay. Outside of games, I like to be in crowded areas, though not necessarily interacting with anyone.

Makes enough sense, as goofy as it sounds.

1. No Money. - Videos let me watch games that aren't worth buying to me along with letting me parse games that look fun enough to buy.
2. No Time. - Videos can be put on during other chores or tasks, left on as background noise during times where I would absolutely not have enough time to actually play a game.
3. Skill Issue. - No matter how good I want to be, I'm ultimately just kinda ok at games. Watching higher level players can be a way for me to learn tips and tricks to improve, or they can be a way for me to experience difficulty levels of the game I will never realistically achieve on my own.

I watch games about the game in gaming, but I also watch games about my game when I'm not gaming. Therefore by definition my gaming will be less than my watching gaming.

Where's "New report claims sports fans spend more time watching sport / videos about sport than playing sport".

This isn't some new, crazy, hard to understand concept.

My wife likes YouTubers but isn't a gamer. If I'm doing stuff with them I'm more likely to pick a video about games than a game.

This thread got me thinking Lemmy needs a better "find a co-op buddy" community for games in general. If it's here already, could use better marketing.

Not sum'm I suffer from, but I want to see y'all living your best lives too. A good homie can make or break a game run.

All of my little cousins and nephews watch streamers. To them it's more fun to watch someone play than to play most times. They don't like dealing with challenging games all the time, they really just want to have fun. These kids do play games but they watch more than me so I tried watching some streamers and I get it. When I was growing up we had systems with multiple controller ports and no online. Online gaming was PC only until I went to college and console online took off. But growing up you had to bring your friends or cousins to play some Mario Kart 64. That was way different than playing with randoms online. Streamers kinda brings that connection back.

people want to play with friends, and with gaming getting lonelier, i think people are seeking the parasocial relationships on streaming sites.

In other stunning news, researchers find people who like sports spend more time watching it than playing it.

Never watched a stream, never really understood the motivation. But i also don't consume social media (besides lemmy) or such and am generally anti-social, so that might be that. I would be infuriated if those people wouldn't do what I would do. Also the chat is... Annoying.

Cool 😎

Never really understood watching it when playing is also very little effort. It's not football.

I would say this isn't me, but I started playing Dwarf Fortress lately and have probably been watching an hour of tutorials for every 30 minutes I play at this point. 😅

Expensive as the games are these days you gotta do copious amounts of research before plunking down those bennies

Guilty

That's partly because it's now more important to know what you're doing, than figuring out what you're doing, or just enjoying the fight. Unless you're willing to just tank insults while playing, and rebuild and retry with constant leavers, you have to study. Usually people try, but often they sit back and give in to "experiencing" games through video instead.

WoW for example has almost no tolerance for flawed teammates anywhere anymore, I've seen countless groups that would rather sit outside a dungeon for hours, than be inside it for 15 minutes too long.

And people no longer think "if you want good teammates, you have to build a team", they instead think that everyone who joins the random matchmaker has a responsibility to be good. It's rude to be bad at World of Warcraft.