Bloggers, Youtubers & Streamers - Why?

[sscott]

I had a YouTube channel for a while but stopped a couple of years ago, my most successful vid had about 20000 views which gave me a temporary gratifying high but what I thought were my most interesting vids barely made 100, I recently looked back at my vids and the most depressing thing was I used to be able to move my head (pre arthritis), sscott1000 was my channel, the last vid was the virtual boy giveaway which I thought ended on a high!

[Sephiroth81]

You have a convenient memory, I must say. A brief glance at your recent post history clearly shows you post far more youtube material than anyone else. But whatever. As I said, each to his own. Maybe you should get your "brother" in to defend you on this, eh? It'll be entertaining.

Can't beat a bit of sloppy trolling to finish off 2015 eh?

Laird - you do what makes you happy, and don't let a minority discourage you with standard predictable forum pettiness.

[The Beans]

You have a convenient memory, I must say. A brief glance at your recent post history clearly shows you post far more youtube material than anyone else. But whatever. As I said, each to his own. Maybe you should get your "brother" in to defend you on this, eh? It'll be entertaining.

Can't beat a bit of sloppy trolling to finish off 2015 eh?

Laird - you do what makes you happy, and don't let a minority discourage you with standard predictable forum pettiness.

But hey, let's just all move on, right?

[Sephiroth81]

But hey, let's just all move on, right?

Most of us already have, Beans.

[Rayne]

Well some interesting insights so far!

I think the point I was driving at was, if you're putting hard work into this kind of content only to receive 3 or 4 visits, hits & views, why keep going?

Completely agree about what's been said on Let's play. Sad that people would rather watch someone play a game than actually, well, play it

[Sephiroth81]

Well some interesting insights so far!

I think the point I was driving at was, if you're putting hard work into this kind of content only to receive 3 or 4 visits, hits & views, why keep going?

Completely agree about what's been said on Let's play. Sad that people would rather watch someone play a game than actually, well, play it

I don't have a youtube channel, but I guess you have to start somewhere. I'm not sure what you are getting at, as I don't think everyone who is on youtube is entirely motivated by the same things - ie clicks, views, hits etc....hard work or not. Some just find it therapeutic or worth logging for their own records. I'm sure there are lots of things you do which people might find odd....like coming on to a retro gaming forum like all of us weirdos. But lets not be too judgemental about it.

Same with the letsplay - some people like to record their own gameplay footage, some people like to watch it for many many reasons. For me, it sometimes serves as an alternative kind of review of a game - as there is no commentary, you just want to see what the game looks like (without Steve Benway talking in the background and connected up properly). If people want to enjoy gaming in more ways than just playing a game, then have at it.

[DPrinny]

The different between a streamer and a lets player is editing

Streamer is just the raw stream with no edits so you might get hour long streams
Lets players tend to snip things down so from the hour you will get about ten minutes and add effects and acting

[gman72]

Well some interesting insights so far!

I think the point I was driving at was, if you're putting hard work into this kind of content only to receive 3 or 4 visits, hits & views, why keep going?

Completely agree about what's been said on Let's play. Sad that people would rather watch someone play a game than actually, well, play it

I don't have a youtube channel, but I guess you have to start somewhere. I'm not sure what you are getting at, as I don't think everyone who is on youtube is entirely motivated by the same things - ie clicks, views, hits etc....hard work or not. Some just find it therapeutic or worth logging for their own records. I'm sure there are lots of things you do which people might find odd....like coming on to a retro gaming forum like all of us weirdos. But lets not be too judgemental about it.

Same with the letsplay - some people like to record their own gameplay footage, some people like to watch it for many many reasons. For me, it sometimes serves as an alternative kind of review of a game - as there is no commentary, you just want to see what the game looks like (without Steve Benway talking in the background and connected up properly). If people want to enjoy gaming in more ways than just playing a game, then have at it.

Surely the ultimate point of putting any video on YouTube is getting as many views as possible. I agree with your final thought here though, if they want to do it then great, I'm not saying they shouldn't, this is not North Korea after all, if someone wants to put up a 20 min video of themselves playing through a level of a game complete with no informative commentary of any kind other than a few coughs and heavy breathing and a few swears then so be it. My point is why would I want to watch such a banal waste of time when I have a nice new box of pins I can stab into my scrotum?

[Sephiroth81]

Surely the ultimate point of putting any video on YouTube is getting as many views as possible. I agree with your final thought here though, if they want to do it then great, I'm not saying they shouldn't, this is not North Korea after all, if someone wants to put up a 20 min video of themselves playing through a level of a game complete with no informative commentary of any kind other than a few coughs and heavy breathing and a few swears then so be it. My point is why would I want to watch such a banal waste of time when I have a nice new box of pins I can stab into my scrotum?

I'm not sure thats quite true (about just getting as many views as possible). Its certainly a motive for many, and some do indeed get lots of views, but there are clearly hundreds of thousands who don't treat it that way, and continue it as a hobby. I'm sure the more views a video get won't do their ego any harm though.

For some, youtube has been a nice platform to put videos up to share with their friends and family....the view count I doubt plays much part (or at least in that scenario), just as I'm sure about people getting "likes" on other media platforms is not the ultimate goal. Sharing doesn't always have to be about playing a numbers game.

I get why though you and others may not appreciate watching through 20 minutes plus of someone playing a game (usually the coughs and heavy breathing aren't there as aren't many playthroughs just done through just capture cards??) and I personally don't watch more than a few minutes. But if I'm buying a game, I might check it out on youtube and one of these silent playthrough videos will appear, and sometimes I even use it to sneakily cheat, instead of using skills or that thing humans used to have....patience.

[gman72]

We shall have to agree to disagree as I think the actual point of putting a video on the tube is for views.
If you want to share pics or short vids with family or friends you have WhatsApp but each to their own.
As for the heavy breathing, coughing and swears... much more common than you think.

[Sephiroth81]

We shall have to agree to disagree as I think the actual point of putting a video on the tube is for views.
If you want to share pics or short vids with family or friends you have WhatsApp but each to their own.
As for the heavy breathing, coughing and swears... much more common than you think.

whatsapp is indeed better for that in many respects, but not everyone has whatsapp, plus its not been around for anywhere nearly as long as youtube (and youtube has lots of other advantages of ease of access over whatsapp, embedding videos etc). So unless youtube has suddenly become just purely a competition for views and clicks, it certainly hasn't always been that way for many.

But yea, the point of putting a video on youtube is to ultimately freely share it (or certainly not be upset that its being viewed by any random stranger, unless you make it private). I just don't think that EVERYONE uploads a video with the main motive to clock up and count views - it doesn't resonate or make sense to me, even if it does to you and others. Maybe i'm being naive, or you are being too cynical!

Most of the videos I watch tend to be from youtubers i subscribe to, so have been fortunate to avoid most of the heavy breathers with the chest infections! Although there are a couple of youtubers who are playing games, belching and have a jezza kyle guest vocab - which is offputting.

[Negative Creep]

The ones I really don't get are unboxing videos - do people really care where the usb cable is in the iPhone 6 packaging?

[stvd]

YouTube was (and is) a great resource.
Especially for nostalgia fans, it's great looking back at music videos, tv shows, adverts, old news/sports clips etc.

However, with the exception of this archive material, 99% of all YouTube videos are p!sh.

It was never about "the views" originally but that's what it's become now.
Attention seeking at it's best.
Or is that Facebook users???

[Shinobi]

Well some interesting insights so far!

I think the point I was driving at was, if you're putting hard work into this kind of content only to receive 3 or 4 visits, hits & views, why keep going?

Completely agree about what's been said on Let's play. Sad that people would rather watch someone play a game than actually, well, play it

Me I watch YouTube video's of awesome games done quick and the Replay Burner or Ben Shinobi who do 1cc of games.. Seeing some Ninja 1 life a hard game impresses me.. These are People who are stupidly good on games it's the same as being in arcade and big crowd off people around a good player.. I'd rather watch paint dry then some idiot who film themselves jumping round wacking all the buttons Swearing and talking gibberish!

The only guys I watch on YouTube are Metal Jesus and Last Gamer.. Ryan/Twoheadedboys blog and Megamixers ex blog are the only two I subscribe/read on here.. I have never clicked anybody else's links to they're YouTube, Twitter etc on here as they just don't interest me.. I also wonder the same thing how many views do these people get from they're sigs.. It seems a lot if effect for little reward..

I have upload videos of myself doing 1cc's up to certain replay sites my Eswat 1CC 1000's of downloads.. I've upload 3 videos to YouTube ages ago. But as Mark Twain " Fame is a vapour the only earthly certainly in life is oblivion"

[The Laird]

It's only about the views if you are looking to make money out of it, most people probably aren't and do it because they enjoy it, which is certainly my motivation. That said my most popular video has over 40,000 views