You just need an audience for that theory to work.
I’m pretty sure he covered that, since “audience” is the third factor in his picture.
After all, you can’t be an asshole if nobody is paying attention.
I think the high majority of “stream monsters” are regular people who go to majors, locals, events, and just use the internet’s anonymity to join in on a local minority’s stupidity.
I think you guys care way too damn much about stream monsters.
Fits one of my themes though, people get upset they’re not getting the respect they ‘deserve’.
A true statement, since stream monsters have absolutely nothing to do with the actual offline scene of the fighting game community. However, we have to consider this from the audience’s point of view. If the casual player who just wants to watch his favorite players play in a tournament logs onto the stream chat, what do you think he’s going to see? He’s going to be a bunch of idiots spamming the chat with twitch faces, acting like immature children, and making dumb jokes. In his eyes, he thinks that the heart of the fighting game community consists of guys like stream monsters, which is the overwhelming majority of stream viewers. Those e-sports guys who want nothing to do with the FGC are looking at these types of people in determining what kind of people are in the community, with a very select few actually going to offline sessions and seeing what it’s like for themselves.
I think the exact opposite is the issue, a lot of people have been ignoring stream monsters, and thinking that that was the mature thing to do, without realizing that the problem was going to get much much worse until it was actually dealt with. Yes, these problems disappear when you are at a real life event, but stream monsters are now serving as the doormen to the community for anyone whose first encounter with this community is online.
I just wrote an article on the influence of stream monsters, and I’ll just leave you with the ending
Tl;dr The FGC was a privately owned business that went public and no one paid attention to how many shares were actually out there and now a large number of those shares and voting rights have been bought by a group that may want to watch the whole thing burn down just to enjoy the pretty lights.
A lot of people have been waking up recently and it’s beginning to look there will be a much larger push back against stream monsters in 2013.
It’s starting to become more like sports actually.
The community that actually plays is starting to get seperated from the community that watches.
Nobody acts like these online sperglords in real life.
This, so much.
This is the point of I am trying to make with the picture. On the internet, you say shit you would not really say in real life. That’s why you got people throwing dong at each other. Now to be fair Stream Monster are not all created equal, the issue of stream monsters in high numbers is a nightmare to control. In the long run streams like FGTV can reasonably control the monsters(because their is a small amount to moderate, and they can make people on the chat relevant on stream), and make a decent community.
you give them too much power really, 9/10 of the stream monsters aren’t bat at all, and 9/10ths of the ones who are bad aren’t so bad that something should be done.
It’s gonna be like that, and beyond that, a lot of the ‘celebrities’ we have need to be called out. Enough of the lampreys being significant and hearing their goddamn agonizing voices anymore.
People like to be fighting game hipsters.
Fuck that shit.
I am welcoming Skullgirls patched.
Man there’s an easy joke there.
I understand its only a small percentage, but you’re completely underestimating how much control that small percentage has.
BTW I was guilty of this too for a long time. A lot of us were blowing this off because we go to offline events and people at offline events could give a fuck about what the stream monsters are saying. The problem is that the streams are linked to sponsorship and pot bonuses, so its not like we can just do away with them to solve the problem.
But say you live in a state where there is no scene The argument that people like me and Redrapper and Master Chibi are using mean absolutely nothing to you. For those people streams are their link to what is going on in the community so they don’t know a world where fighting games exist apart from this internet mentality and stream monsters. For people who can’t get to Next Level or WNF to find out what stream monsters are saying is complete bullshit, a steady wall of text saying that Tekken Tag, or KOF or DOA is dead every time you go to twitch.tv is a powerful thing. We’ve become isolated in a world where we can fact check and forgot to realize that that is a luxury that some people don’t have.
New players, potential sponsors, parents of younger players, etc. are all getting their impressions of this community from stream monsters and just sitting back and ignoring them is basically conceding that very important ground to them. People are getting tired of stream monsters becoming the voice a community that they are proud of and are starting to get more vocal about taking that ground back.
(Its almost 3:00am so I’m not sure how well I stated that)
You’re underestimating other players. It’s not like we’re the only people enlightened enough to know the stream monsters are bullshit…
But, in order;
In general people don’t become part of the community through streams, they’re interested in FG’s first then start watching streams.
Fuck potential sponsors, I don’t care about them. If anything we need LESS of that around. Less sponsorship, less ‘celebrity’.
Parents are like new players, they’re not going to become aware of the games via streams.
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So to me the main people that might be chased away are potential sponsors, and they’re not particularly adding much.
Game not MvC3 or SF4 is on stream and it’s open season. The game is terrible, the scene for it is dead, put on something else, etc. combined with the fact no other game gets the turn out size of MvC3 or SF4 gives the stream monsters the appearance of being right so any first timers or non-FG enthusiast (someone not aware of FG sites, like just stumbled on the event somehow or newly interested in fighters).
So the game that catches their attention is not getting much love in the chat (they dont know to ignore the chat yet), the see turn out is bigger for other games so they think the game they like is dwindling in players, now they’re just going to go grab another game that probably isn’t a fighter.
Are stream monsters only FGC’s problem? There are no obnoxious idiots on Starcraft, Lol or MLG streams?
This goes back to a point in the original post, People who are coming in to a stream with no information DO NOT KNOW WHO IS FULL OF SHIT AND WHO ISN’T. It’s not even like they are stuck in the middle of an argument it is totally one sided. The civilized people are watching the stream and saying nothing, or infrequently commenting while that small minority of bad stream monsters are filling the chat with hate speech, messages saying that this game or that game is dead, claiming every other match is fixed, and don’t let a woman get anywhere in view of the main camera.
I don’t know a damn thing about day to day life in China and I don’t speak the language. I’m a pretty intelligent guy, but if I went there and a con man picked me up at the airport I would be completely screwed. It’s not like I can’t intelligently process thoughts, but I would be completely reliant on the people I met there for information. If you sat a plate down in front of me and said it was beef, how am I going to argue if I have no idea what the local dishes look like. If 9 guys insist it’s beef and one guy says it’s rat how do I know who is telling the truth?
You’re still looking at this as a person with a base of knowledge to go on and not as a person in a completely foreign environment. I’ve posted links to streams on Facebook, I know alot of people who have, people tweet the links as well. People’s non gamer friends, parents, cousins, coworkers, neices and nephews are seeing what competitive fighting games look like for the first time through these links and what they see as soon as they click them is a world controlled by stream monsters.
I’d argue that a lot of it IS about the old game, as when something new comes out, the community seems to flock to it no matter how good/bad it is. SF4 pulled a lot of people away from 3s, MvC3 away from MvC2, and KoFXIII (which I think is easily the best game of this generation) away from KoF 98’/2002. So what happens to people who prefer the older games and still want to play them? Less competition, less chance to use the skills they’ve built up. I’m not saying it’s the right attitude to have, but it does exist and it does grealty affect the scene for older games.