I've found Twitch to be amazing entertainment. I almost never watch live just due to how boring it can sometimes be, instead I like to watch the vods of the streamer and skip anything I dislike. I was always surprised how many people participate with the streamer, either through chat or donations. Perhaps that's a large draw for most people, but I just couldn't stand the chat except for very brief doses. For me Youtube playthroughs and watching a previous stream on Twitch aren't that different, but I do still prefer Twitch. The main difference and reason I prefer Twitch compared to most playthroughs on Youtube is that I like how it isn't edited or cut. I much prefer just skimming through the video instead of it being compressed for me already. Not that all playthroughs are compressed, but then they're very similar already.

 

Lirik and Summit for general FPS games and anything brand new.

Kephrii for autoaim widow plays in Overwatch.

SingSing, Arteezy and Blitz/stormspirittv for Dota 2.

liquidtlo or Polt for SC2.

Whenever I want to watch some Rimworld, Spartyon7 is pretty chill.

2Gd whenever he streams is pretty fun too but that's pretty rare especially with his new game coming out.

Day9 is also really chill and he just plays a wide variaty but focuses a lot on Hearthstone.

 

I mean, Firebat is great for Hearthstone. And Seagull obviously for Overwatch.

 

The yogscast also strean though fair warning if your expecting great plays its not really for you I watch for the bants they do a tavern brawl one every week and a dnd stream on sunday I think though everything gets uploaded in its entirety to yogscastlive on youtube if you prefer

 

If the game has enough strategic and technical depth I can see the appeal in watching, much the same way I can see the appeal in watching professional athletes.

Doesn't do much for me that said.

 

For me it was always watching people do things I couldn't even imagine to be able to replicate (mostly Starcraft II) and now... I watch Hearthstone for salt I play the game but the amount of butthurt coming from some of the players is so entertaining.

 

Twitch for me is all about competitive gaming. I love being able to watch tournaments live, and while the excitement of the caster will carry over for a YouTube video it's just more intense when watching it with a bunch of other folks. I don't usually participate in the chat, but I like having it there (when they aren't shitty).

I do some streaming as well (pretty small, about 750 followers) and enjoy being able to interact with folks after games and answer questions. I almost exclusively watch/play Warcraft III, so it's a small community, but everyone knows everyone which is great.

 

I would say the biggest appeal to me is that it offers a quality medium for watching competitive gaming tournaments, especially in dota2 and csgo.

In general I don't really watch individual streamers except on occasion of a new game release or something like that, watching a serious game between pros is just far more compelling for me.

 

SovietWomble for CSGO, you can check out their hilarious highlights here: https://www.youtube.com/user/SovietWomble

I mostly avoid streamers though and only watch competitive CSGO tournaments on twitch live. Sometimes, if I miss it, I'll try to avoid checking out the scores and then watch the vod on twitch.

So kinda like real life sports. Sure, I could watch the highlights on youtube but watching the match live is a different experience.

 

Wedlockes, Cockblockes, Grandfather Clockes, Warlockes...

The only thing I ever really watched on Twitch was a preview of someone playing Terraria 1.3 the day before it came out.

Part way through, I bailed out because trying to watch anything streaming on my connection is a pain in the - *BUFFERING*

 

I sometimes watch Patrick Rothfuss play games on Twitch - he usually discusses story elements as he does it, which is pretty fun.

He did a thing a while back where people got to vote whether he took some time off to play games, or did some extra writing for the day. I thought it a boon to the goodness of reading/writing folk that they overwhelmingly voted for him to play some video games.

 

To be fair, the vote was from people who were already watching him play games. In terms of his general fandom, I assume it would overwhelmingly favor writing.

 

What's his channel called? Is it still active?

 

I haven't been following it super closely, but he broadcast a week ago. He's heavy into festival and con season, at the moment, so that'll be impacting things.

https://www.twitch.tv/patrickrothfuss

dhulli - it was more a fundraising tactic for Worldbuilders, here, and the vote went to games over words: http://www.worldbuilders.org/what-should-pat-do

 

Patrick actually had this absolutely amazing Fallout 4 playthrough. This is all I could find of it, though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0HXWbQ3XI4

Edit: Nevermind, it's in Joe's link.