Twitch Is So Game-y

I’ve been watching more stuff on Twitch lately. Due to my work, I don’t really want to watch something short on Youtube, or have to fiddle around picking something new to watch. Youtube’s autoplay feature can make some godawful selections, and it’s also been fucky with adblockers, unless you use uBlock Origin on not-Chrome. At the same time, I don’t really want to put on a 3 hour long Youtube video because I won’t be paying attention to it. But with Twitch, I can stick on a streamer playing a game I like, and just have some background noise for a couple of hours. There’s a few streamers I follow on the regular, but some are chosen kinda at random when no one I follow is online.

What I generally tend to follow is, weirdly enough, Sea of Thieves, the Borderlands series, Minecraft or League of Legends. These are all games I know but aren’t completely familiar with, so there’s always a little bit of interest to keep me listening. League of Legends in particular because I kinda don’t really need to know what’s going on, most streamers will casually commentate on whatever it is they’re doing. Sea of Thieves streams on the other hand are generally quite calm and predictable. Not necessarily interesting, but peaceful. Even during the fights.

However, the more I watch Twitch, the more I realize just how gamified it all is. Everything is screaming at you to spend some sort of money on the streamers you’re watching. The streamers I tend to gravitate to understand this and aren’t too forceful, but damn, the opportunities to spend are everywhere. You can subscribe to a streamer, which does kinda make sense. But there’s also things like Bits, which are weird paid-for emote things. You also have scoreboards for everything, for gifting subs, how long you’ve subscribed and for using bits, and Twitch pushes you towards climbing said scoreboards.

And then there’s hype trains, which randomly pop up and heavily suggest that you SPEND MONEY RIGHT NOW because EVERYONE ELSE IS ALSO USING BITS AND SUBSCRIBING. These are probably the most invasive things when it comes to watching a streamer. In doing so, you’ll unlock exclusive emotes, which are clearly super important, and there’s massive banners saying how great the hype train is.

A lot of larger streamers will also have adverts in their chat rooms. Generally it’s just codes for the same old companies that also sponsor content creators on Youtube, but some streams will spam their chat with automatic links from bots.

That’s on top of all the adverts. I don’t see adverts because uBlock Origin is amazing, but the ads can be a little annoying. However, the adverts aren’t nearly as bad as the adverts you get on Youtube, and streamers will often tell you when ads are coming.

Even as you open Twitch, one of the first things you see is to go ad-free via Twitch Prime, and there’s a permanent notification for Prime Gaming stuff. A TON of games have various Prime Gaming bonuses. Warframe has had the pink Octavia stuff for ages, and have given away a lot of cosmetics. Funnily enough, Pokemon GO also joined Prime Gaming, but frankly, from what I’ve seen, the rewards for it have been godawful. But in all honesty, a lot of this can be skipped, since Amazon Prime is pretty expensive. If you can, wait for a free trial and grab what you can, otherwise it’s not worth it.

Still, it’s weird just how oppressive this monetization can be. But I can somehow put up with it. Mostly because at least most of the money does actually go to streamers. Unlike Youtube.