I am hipster enough to differentiate between watching people play games well and watching people glitch games “well”.
Nobody grew up wishing they could bum rush Bowser’s stairs backwards or trick Super Mario World into playing the end credits after two levels.
I think a key generational divide between boomers and Gen-X is that one group of people play video games and the other doesn’t.
Between Gen-X and Millennials, I think it’s people who watch other people playing video games on Twitch and those who don’t. I don’t get the appeal at all. I kinda sorta watched a few people play a few hands of a CCG on youtube when I was super into this one card game and wanted to learn some strategies, but I don’t get how it’s fun to watch some dude run wild on Fortnite or whatever. NTTAWWT
I spent much of the 10s watching people play Street Fighter and Starcraft for completely different reasons.
SF was mostly two very strong players playing on a couch while cracking jokes and gossiping about the competitive Street Fighter scene. I don’t live in California where most of the pros are from, there are no serious news outlets talking about competitive fighters, and very few of my friends even played the game, so I had no outlet to play or talk with people of that caliber. The only way to learn the meta was to watch this show and the hosts were funny and charismatic and very knowledgeable.
With Starcraft they were all Korean so there’s almost no personality to the shows. I watched these because it’s essentially a war simulator - a giant battle of resources and strategy that’s complex but approachable for casual players to watch. I’d probably enjoy watching a real war play out similarly from a strategy standpoint if we could remove the human element from it.
I’d rather watch high level DOTA than most sporting events. And I rarely play anymore ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I’m actually generally anti-twitch and find most of the top streamers unbearable. But I still like a good speed run when it there is an explanation what is going on. I can’t watch speed run attempts over and over. But a one off on a marathon, shrug I still have a fondness for.
When I still played DOTA I sometimes watched the world championships. Seeing high level players make spectacular plays I couldn’t even imagine was quite exciting.
Used to watch a lot of pro Counter-Strike matches but I stopped playing the game a couple years ago and basically gave up on following the pro scene. Pro matches were amazing to watch and I don’t see the difference between them and watching normal pro sports.
I’m not a fan of watching streamers playing through single player games and can’t stand watching streamers who are more concerned with crowd interaction and other crap not related to the game.
“Never meet your heroes”
Who was it?
Also is Hearthstone still going? Since I left a few years ago I am totally out of the loop.
It was that one douchey norwegian guy or somethiong, I can’t remember his name right now. He was taunting me on stream after he beat me like 3x in a row with a deck that was favored. He always played rogue. Also, firebat BM’d me once but I kind of forgave him for it because that’s just who he is sometimes.
I forget his name but this guy who knew barely anything about poker went on a crazy run playing 10/20nl on bovada and it was absolutely hilarious to watch him make horrible plays and get lucky over and over.
Games with large modding communities often have documentation that is so shitty the only way to learn how they work is watch someone’s play through. I’ve watched a lot of modded Minecraft play-throughs to figure out how mods work.
I played for a couple years when it came out and then took a break and now tried to play in the latest expansion and was bored after a week and blowing $150 on cards 
Same stuff, do not recommend. They did make a new mode at least but I didn’t find it interesting.
A few hours into Planet Zoo - it reminds me of a city planning game more than anything else. Still pretty buggy, especially with the online animal trading market, but I think it’s got some promise
Can’t believe no one mentioned watching Rocket League on stream which seems like it would be just as exciting as an “real” sporting even if you’re into it. I’m more of a “watch the highlights” type myself but envision how full matches are enjoyable since it’s so much fun to play.
I play rocket league and honestly I just don’t get that much enjoyment out of watching individual streamers. I do watch the big events - they’re extremely exciting. And rocket league is about as close to a real sport as I have ever played in a game. Maybe counterstrike comes the next closest.
Epic’s acquisition of the game will probably do wonders for boosting it in the esports scene. but overall for the game I think it has been a bad thing.
For a while I kind of scoffed at the idea of “e-sports.” I’m mostly extremely non-competitive. But at some point I got a little into this CCG Gwent. Made it to the top 10k at my peak just to chase some silly reward (not much of a brag, I think there were only a few hundred thousand people playing it). Now I kinda get what it’s all about, battling for your spot on a leaderboard, researching decks that the top players use, following e-sports like it was a conventional sport.
I wish things were more stable. It’s not clear to me which games are gonna be around for a while and which will fizzle out --seems like Gwent is fizzling out but I haven’t checked in there in ages.
They need some strategic e sports. I guess Hearthstone counts
StarCraft?
Bummed to see given the age demo and, I dunno, disproportionally hardcore personalities of online poker players, nobody else itt into Kaizo Mario. That has been my jam for the last year, and there’s an endless array of content on Youtube of people playing absolutely sick, super creative levels.
um, you might check back…the witcher is so popular right now due to the netflix show and new people are getting into the franchise