EVE General Discussion

It's quite entertaining to watch lowsec roams on twitch.


Some people tend to say you can roam for hours and nothing entertaining will happen. Same people have no idea what they're talking about. There is definitely a space for EVE to be streamed.

If there wasn't, then how come some people are surprisingly successful at it?

The SCL Final, yesterday, between Pandemic Legion and The Reputation Cartel was as good viewing as you will get on Twitch. Peaked at around 800 viewers, but should have been higher. Great match and thanks to some nice camera work, was not dots in space.

Noted. I won't stream my roaming in a Vagabond. What about in a Rifter or Stabber? People seemed interested in watching those.

Anyway, on topic... Eve streaming (like streaming of a number of other games that are fairly abstract) is not very friendly for non-Eve players to watch. Even then, certain kinds of activities in Eve are simply un-streamable; if you watch them over someone's shoulder, they just seem horribly boring.

The way I see it, for a stream to be interesting, it needs a few things:

• Some sort of acknowledgement of the viewers, if possible - Interaction is better than simply spectating.
• Engaging content during passive times - It doesn't matter if there's no action going; use conversation/music/whatever to great effect.
• Action that is "worth" seeing live - streaming market warrioring or POS grinding is bad; your viewers would get just as much out of it by reading a write-up. Streaming yourself picking a gang to death with a Vagabond is good; watching action is always better than reading a play-by-play recounting.
• A "focus" of the stream - whether it be to watch a solo PvPer's hijinks, or to be virtually present at a fleet battle, or readying yourself for some stream-sniping, there needs to be a "point" to watching.
• Uniqueness - how unique is the particular stream? Do others do the same thing regularly? Does it show something that is a daily occurrence in Eve?

Watching a "pro" PvPer's adventrures would make a good stream. So would a suicide ganker gang, a small roaming fleet, or an epic battle. Sitting on a Titan waiting for a battle, shooting a POS, or mining, all make bad streams.

People need to learn what is exciting to watch, and what would be better shared using just a blog.

I'm sure people would love to watch me fueling POS towers.

Seriously though, I think it might be a good way to attract some new players if groups like RvB or Brave Newbies would stream some of the fleet roams they do.

Showing people you don't have to invest years in the game to have fun is a good thing.

The mittani has been getting 900+ viewers, which is 400 more than the amount expected to get partner with twitch, hopefully he keeps it up.

Unless you're omniscient and I clearly think you're not, no one at this right moment can't say exactly how this game will impact players, how players actions will impact on game development and directions, how long it will last or how fast it will die.

There are literally hundreds if not thousands of shooter games, they're all shooters games but some are above all others for little things that make you keep playing it.

There are a lot of space and space ship games but Eve is clearly different with it's fantastic player created content and also all those silly boring some times stupid, bugs bad mechanics etc.
Just like Eve evolved over time no one at this point can say whatever game not even out for public will be or not be good, please or not and can say how long it will last.

Since how many years thousands of dudes say solid as stone WOW is crap and will die tomorrow? -they're wrong all the line.
How many say the same about Eve? -they're also wrong all the line

Edit: on topic - twich is cool and can actually be interesting for stream of huge fleet fights for those people who don't know how it looks like and always talk about "blob" without having the slightest idea of the huge amounts of work/organization, awareness and knowledge of the game/tactics to lead several fleets for huge amounts going from 500 to over 1000 players flying so many different ships with so many different roles.

Twich quality is really amazing however, I wouldn't even care to take a look at whatever stream of random dude roaming dozen systems shooting and getting shot once an hour. I clearly have better to do for all that time like playing the game my self but I can understand some people have the time for whatever reason and could enjoy this.
In this case it's pretty simple: create your twich account, stream and let it know in "Out of Pod experience", those interested in will be looking at.

I'd argue that there are two main factors that contribute to the success of video game video content.

1) The niche. If you stream a game that sold ten million copies on launch night, then you're fishing with dynamite. You are guaranteed to get at least a few viewers with even minimal effort. On the other hand, if you're making videos about some obscure niche game with not even a million total subscribers (cough cough, EVE Online), then you're in big trouble, because there's such a small demographic of people even remotely related to the game you're streaming, and only a fraction of them will be interested in watching a stream.

2) The personality. If you have a great voice and you're good at projecting it and saying interesting things, then you will get viewers who are just there because they enjoy what you do. On the other hand, if what you are adding on top of the video game footage is bad, or even non-existent, that will have a negative impact on your viewership.

These two points complement each other, and one can make up for the other to a large extent.

The following as examples of this theory:

Totalbiscuit - When it comes to his vlog content and his first-impression videos, there really isn't much of a demographic for this. People tune in to hear his voice and get his opinions on games.

Cosmo Wright - This guy could be playing tic tac toe and people would still flock to his stream by the thousands just to hear his insightful analysis and watch the impeccable precision with which he placed his Xs and Os. His personality and skillful play are completely driving his viewerbase, and any game he plays sees a huge increase in popularity until he switches to something else.

Riot and League of Legends - As for League content, tournaments often have bad casters who don't even know what they are talking about, the game is incredibly boring to watch, you don't have the faintest clue what's going on if you don't play it yourself, but they consistently get impressively high concurrence purely because there are millions and millions of people playing LoL, and some of that just spills over into twitch viewers.

So the problem we are facing when streaming EVE is the lack of a demographic, and we need to doubly make up for that in the value-added content we bring to the stream or VOD if we want to get anywhere.

You mean "follow". You're not a partner, and you don't have a subscribe feature.

If you are going to be successful in twitch tv playing EVE Online better expect people to make it their mission to locate you either by ingame name or system (it's hard to hide 100% of the time), and blow you up.

If you don't mind that, well, have fun.

Prior to buying the HD Stream for this years Fanfest, I had never heard of Twitch. I didn't even realise that normal people could stream there until I read this thread.