[Full stream] - Pikmin 2 [Part 5]

Channel:

fruit salad

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Published on June 19, 2020 9:16:51 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mgESG-TnMk

Game:

Pikmin 2 (2004)

Duration: 4:06:38

7,609 views

150

overture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHaYdVCW72A

I'd just like to address that I had a bit of an outburst against chat at the end of this VOD: I never feel good about it after I say something like that, but allow me to try to put you in my shoes for a moment, as I also have difficulty even feeling like I'm fully in the wrong in those sorts of situations; you be the judge. Either way, I think I would find it therapeutic to vent about this as it's been something on my mind for my entire streaming career.
the biggest thing for me is backseating; as a streamer, this is INSANELY hard for me to cope with, and I admire greatly other streamers who have learned to deal with it in various ways. I'm a big fan of video games, and I think there is a sanctity to trying to solve something with only the information given in the world of the game; that is not to say I'm above Googling things when I get stuck on more inscrutable games like Dark Souls, but I enjoy figuring things out on my own and think that the process of learning in a game is a huge part of the enjoyment I get from it.
This is the core of why backseating is so annoying to me; it's just a constant smattering of spoilers ruining small experiences in any given game, and is usually paired with a condescending tone of impatience or self-importance that the backseating would be a lot easier to take without. and I fully understand that to someone more experienced in a game, it can be frustrating to watch a less experienced player, or someone who has been slow on the uptake to a certain strategy, especially if it's in a game you enjoy. as understandable as that is, Twitch chat specifically very much has a culture of its own, and I think the general acceptance of that culture among a lot of the userbase has led to people being a lot more comfortable with taking things too far. hence, a lot of backseaters are WAY more obnoxious about it than they have to be, and the worst part is how you see people become more and more comfortable with backseating the more they do it.

let me illustrate the vicious, self-propagating cycle of backseating that I have seen time and time again in Twitch chat in my 3-4 years of streaming(there have been MANY examples of this in the past, the example in this VOD is in no way a unique or special case at all):

someone in chat watches me casually stream a game they are quite familiar with; they start to get frustrated because they are used to the game being done better or more efficiently and so they start to backseat and tell me to do things in the game.
even if I don't read their comments, it's quite likely I will eventually do the thing they told me to do as it's usually the solution to some issue that just took me some amount of time to figure out as opposed to their knowing the solution or best strategy from the very start; it's also often something that you need to do to progress, so VERY frequently I will do something in-game and then look over at chat and see someone huffily telling me to do that exact thing I just did of my own accord. this bothers me to no end because I can practically hear that person saying, "oh, thank god I'm telling them what to do! guess I'd better backseat more seeing as they took my advice. glad to see they're cool with the whole huffy thing too!" Not only does it make me feel like they're trying to constantly take away the experience of figuring out the game for yourself, NOW they're feeling validated in backseating and are going to continue to do it even more, and possibly even make the rest of chat more comfortable with behaving that way as well.
I truly cannot express how often this exact Thing happens; especially so because I'm not constantly checking chat and just do it when I get a moment. it seriously happens so much and it's the thing that has been the most difficult to adjust to in streaming for me; I have learned to ignore people being abrasive or annoying in chat and youtube comments, but this is something that truly does irritate me still and tends to ruin certain parts of certain games for me, if nothing else just because of the bad mood it puts me in. but what am I supposed to do? ban this person? just never look at my own chat? there are usually more than 1 in chat at any given time, to differing degrees of extremity. what typically happens, and this has happened quite a few times more than a handful now, is I keep seeing the same people going through the vicious cycle and becoming more and more of an aggressive backseater until either the Thing happens one too many times or they just completely start flaming at you, in which case I usually say something douchey to them and then use the /ignore command on them, never to see them again; I know I should always just be the bigger man, but I guess what this whole essay is meant to do is explain why that's nearly impossible for me to do 100% of the time; I hope if you cared enough to read that this gave you a window to my own perspective.

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