Twitch game streaming

As an old EverQuest fan, I find the concept of the Twitch gaming site, where it is possible to actually sit and just watch a game, as though you are watching television, to be absolutely fascinating.

Back in the day, like, say, in 2006, this would have obviousy been completely unthinkable...and until I found the Twitch site itself, it had never even really occurred to me, so much as a single time, that anyone could possibly find the concept of sitting and watching **someone else** play a game, all that interesting. Of course, after spending some time on Twitch watching other folks run through EverQuest as well as a few other games now,I'm beginning to feel quite differently about the entire affair. In fact, in truth, I am, as I said before, downright fascinated.

I'm also almost a bit concerned, because I can't help but wonder: Will an engine like Twitch, once it is truly mainstream and popular (which I would say, right now, it is not) ultimately be better or worse for gaming? A lot of people might think, automatically, that it will only make gaming **better**, but then one has to remember: By watching Twitch, actually buying the game yourself almost becomes sort of ... well, not necessary. For example, for the past 2 weeks that i've been aware of Twitch, I have not really found it necessary to log onto EverQuest like I used to. I now just log onto Twitch and watch, and what do you know...I've gotten my "fix" , my "dose". Previously without the ability to watch a streamed live copy of someone playing the game, getting my fix was totally impossible without actually logging on myself. This was especially the case back in the original EQ heyday, pre-2007, when not even an engine like YouTube existed.  Now, theres nothing to it however: I can get my fix from either Twitch, or I can even watch old successful, and massive raids, on YouTube. And I cant help but wonder: What will this seemingly small detail mean for the far off, or even close, future, of gaming?

Personally, I think we only have to look towards other things that have become "spectator sports" to understand what it will mean: Just like football, baseball, or especially like acting and music, gaming seems like it is going to eventually turn into something that will, first, get very popular for people to tune in and watch, just like those other things, but that will then, eventually, turn into something so professionalized and complex that, I fear, it will intimidate people to the point where the commoner will no longer feel its something that they ought to be bothered with, even as a simple pastime. This is, of course, what the commoner already, in my opinion, sadly does, with most of the other things that are already accessible through the TV: He or she sits on a couch as nothing more than a spectator, forever and obsessively watching, but never thinking  about actually **doing**.

I perhaps have some personal experience with this story of the sad, non participatory commoner, beucase I myself was originally a gamer, who then began to try my hand at being a musician, and I was forever astounded (and still am) by the way that so many people I have met in my life, have seemingly never once really met a truly decent musician ... outside of their TV, or even off of a simple stage. Iti s something I have been saying for years: For most people in the modern world, music is an incredibly 'plastic' and 'artificial' thing. It is something that comes solely through the speakers for them. They never see musical instruments. They never touch them. They never hear them live. They dont know the first thing about them.

Watching someone do something that is common for a guitar player, like, say, stringing the guitar up, or tuning it, is a somewhat perplexing and fascinating ordeal for them. And don't even get me started on an instrument like the piano that is, at this point, seldom used in pop music: I can remember once siting down in a community college classroom that had a piano in it, and playing it (just simple little chords) and the students were looking at me as though I was taking off on a spaceship, rediscovering some lost ancient art. It was incredible to me to see just how horrifically disconnected these average people were from something like the sound of an actual piano, in the same room as they. It was actually almost ridiculous, and definitly sad.

 These same people of course listen to more music than anyone on the Earth ever did previously; but they are as disconnected as can be from thinking that *they* could actually themselves participate. Everything for them, even something like singing a chorus all together, is always supposed to be for someone else, not they, never they. This is because these people have often seen the most majestical and enormous musical performances imaginable through their TV. They have seen the greatest players do the greatest things. They have watched all the famous archived clips of what the New York Times and that now somewhat insufferable Rolling Stone magazine assures them were the 'greatest bands of all time'.

 As a result, they try to pick up a guitar themselves, and the only thing they can think is: This is hopeless. I am so far from the end game, it is hopeless. We thus, in my opinion, lose  a huge sea of potential great players. I have forever believed that one part of the reason the 60s was so phenomenal in terms of rock music was because normal, everyday people who did not, initially, seem all that skilled or incredible,  like Jim Morrison (whose voice was not particularly good) or even John Lennon, began to dream enormous musical dreams, and one part of the reason they were dreaming them is because, back then, it was somewhat impossible to see the musical end game , unless you yourself reached it. In John Lennons teenage years, for example, full length 750p DVDs of great rock concerts, or even music vidoes forthat matter, did not exist. I feel this made all the difference in his early maturation and growth as amusician: He was forced to come up with his own songs and create his own fun. I always remember the old Dylan line : "They ask me why I write my own songs. I tell them: because no one else can write the exact songs I want to write." What would a modern Dylan think, however, having an engine lik Spotify available to him, where he can find literally one million artists to choose from? It might have taken him a little longer to realize,maybe, that no one else can write just like he himself can.

And as disconnected as this all might seem from something like gaming, I personally do not think it is disconnected at all, because , again, I can already see it happening in terms of my own desires and wants. Again, one must think: Years ago, when I was a kid, if I wanted to see an actual full length raid in EverQuest, I had to somehow finagle my way into a real one, and the truth is that, when I was a kid, I never actually managed to get that far in EverQuest, but you better believe that each time I logged on, that was what was really the motivation in the back of my head: I have got to reach a raid, and see what it looks like..I have got to see the legendary thing that I have only heard about from other players, I have got to reach the end game and see for myself. The goal was, really and truly, not all that different from chasing a dream in reality: It was hard, it was mysterious, and it was challenging. Now, however, what has happened? Ill tell you: I log onto YouTube, and again, I can see the greatest raids that have, apparently, ever happened. Beyond that, I can also just watch the guy on Twitch as he goes about playing the game in a skilled manner that I can't imagine pulling off. And honestly, as happy as it makes me to see others enjoying the game, it also makes me just sad, too, becuase I can already imagine the day when the first teenager will sit down with a new unboxed video game in his hhand, one that he has already spent 700 hours watching on the future nationally syndicated Twitch, and his sniveling little, mean friends next to him will start whispering into his ear: "You might as well just throw it out the window, becaus you will *never* be as good as KingKytus887. You'll never be as good as him. Hes the best. Youre just a sucker! So why bother?"

And yes, its true, I know, some teenagers will be motivated by this sort of harassment and competition, and I know some of you  out there love to hear of these little sniveling ultra competitive psychotic mind abusers, because you think competition makes "everything better", but the truth is that,quite frankly, I do not think it does. I think it makes it all **worse**. I think it rips the spine out of a culture and makes people not want to participate. It keeps people quiet. It ties their hands up and tells them "just sit and watch, do not try."

I think that a culture like music has become so outlandishly competitive with spectator shows like American Idol and Dancing with the Bimbos that it has actually almost been entirely destroyed, because the cheap little trick that obsessive competition hides from you is that it always comes jam packed with uniformity and conformity as well.... and this is the thing , you see, that frightens me most. Itcomes jam packed with the idea that there is a "superior" way to do something or enjoy something , which everyone starts blindly copying, even though there is not. People start to believe, even when they can't themselves see it, that one way of doing something is better than another. Derek Jeter, even on a bad day when he has no hits, is for some reason "ultra superior" to the random minor league guy who hits 6 home runs in a single 9 inning game...

For instance, I personally could care less whether I am watching a baseball game of the New York Yankees, or the Lowell Spinners, a minor league ball club, because I cannot really see the difference between who is better or worse. I'm not an expert of ball, I am only an untrained eye. I cannot see the difference that some 40 year scout can see. I cannot see it. To me the games look more or less exactly the same, save for the enormous crowds that are or are not there. I have enjoyed minor league games  **more** than some World Series games, in fact, that I have watched from TV. I just like to see the game itself. I cannot see this enormous difference that other people insist on telling me is there.

I also tend to not be ableto see the difference between musicians who sing to me in a bar and the ones who play in the arena, and oftentimes, in truth, just like the minor league ball clubs, I have found the musicians in the bar that much more entertaining. I have also found my own self to be that much more entertaining as well, and I would even go so far as to say that I **prefer** my own self, to anyone else, even though I am not famous or known for my music.

The other people in this world, of course, who never cease to stop reading Rolling Stone magazine or the New York Times, as I said, and who lkisten to every new record literally the very second it has been unleashed, and then read 50 reviews about it from critics who apparently know all there is to know, insist that the man in the arena is infinitely more enjoyable than the man in the bar, even though they cannot explain precisely why, beyond "he has more eyes on him". And they insist so seriously on this that, as I keep stressing, they have shut everyone else out of the gates, in favor of paying homage to this one lone guy , who is a "star" and a"titan" to be endlessly obsessed over.....

And like I'm saying: I can already tell.... this is probably going to be the future for gaming, and I dunno...but I 'spose I find it all quite sad.. ----