Twitch Is a DEAD END! Electric After Dark Podcast
Added 2023-03-01 09:55:29 +0000 UTCToday I have a really fun episode full of all kinds of stories and tangents, including the main topic of why I think Twitch is a dead end of hardcore gamers to create an audience (though it will be good to launch a reality tv career).
Comments
Yoooo. Just signed up for the Patreon! I'm excited to support your work and check out these exclusive podcasts. I like that you genuinely don't have the typical mainstream sensibilities, because I'm the same way. Typically if you like a thing there's just a higher chance that I'll like it too. The mainstream stuff all feels so lame, and I am not a cynical person. Keep it real, man. Regarding your second channel, and the struggles of how to present as an artist or content creator... I don't have much personal experience but I follow a guy named George Poulos on YouTube, and he raves about a book called "The Artist's Way". It talks a lot about being authentic to your own sensibilities, how to embrace the creative process as opposed to the reception it receives, and other things artists struggle with. I haven't read it yet but I recommend it because I imagine it would really get noggin joggin'. Maybe you'll find his video on it interesting: https://youtu.be/uh5HauQrTB4 And finally... Twitch sucks. I don't enjoy using it and I think it facilitates a bad relationship with the platform itself--kinda similiar to Twitter.
Arcade Hell
2023-03-21 23:04:44 +0000 UTCAmen on that dude!
RiffMason
2023-03-14 17:25:59 +0000 UTCYes my friend it's a tricky road to navigate! I can only imagine how mind numbing making a bunch of commercial music must be, but I also get that sometimes you gotta pay the bills. So maybe finding that middle path through is possible, but that being said sometimes you gotta go with your passion and see how it shakes out :-)
The Electric Underground
2023-03-14 15:05:46 +0000 UTCHey on the topic of it feeling like somewhat of a genuine sacrifice making non-commercial content I certainly don't have anything that has anything like the following of your channel. But I have been focusing more on making more commercial dance music lately and even just doing that I've grown pretty bored of quite quickly. Nonetheless, it has still been a genuinely difficult commitment for me to have the strength of conviction to actually press ahead and write the music I personally really value rather than just writing the style of music I know other people like. It's a difficult sacrifice even on the level of deciding how I spend my time because I'm making a conscious decision to write music that will likely never be played anywhere, compared to writing music I pretty comfortably know I could get to play in local nightclubs in my city and would be able to leverage for stuff like getting djing gigs in my city and so on. Still, the sheer pleasure I get from writing music I really value is what has led me to decide to do what I really want to do more rather than just following the path of least resistance in trying to be successful, I'm still going to produce more commercial dance music, but I'm definitely not going to be as singularly focused on it as I have been in the past. I might have overshared here a bit but just thought I'd just share a story about my own experience with something that isn't a million miles away from what you described.
RiffMason
2023-03-14 00:45:05 +0000 UTCThat's a great title ha!
The Electric Underground
2023-03-13 20:16:11 +0000 UTCRight all caught up, the name for any ventures you do wading into pop culture obviously has to be called "The Electric Overground"
RiffMason
2023-03-13 19:48:01 +0000 UTCYeah they were a bunch of weirdos, I ended up leaving the lab after we spent an entire weekend talking about their loonie religion and then I was assigned to read a book about how fun it would be to fly into space or something.
The Electric Underground
2023-03-13 15:10:29 +0000 UTCOh thanks for the recommendation! I'd never heard of it before, sounds interesting :-)
The Electric Underground
2023-03-13 15:09:26 +0000 UTCSo far got far enough into the podcast that you're talking about those people on your psych course, damn that is rough lmao
RiffMason
2023-03-13 12:34:20 +0000 UTCMissed the notification for this podcast, will have to catch up on this tonight. For anyone interested given the comments here, and if you haven't come across him already, Antonio Damasio's Neurosci book Self Comes to Mind is really interesting if you're interested in theories of human consciousness. Given what Neon is saying here, I'm guessing he might have read it already ha
RiffMason
2023-03-13 12:22:09 +0000 UTCYeah in particular, after I explored the more scientific approaches, I wasn't thrilled with where cognitive science was going, and not really all that much in neuroscience nor AI at the time of my studies. The lines obviously blur considerably in all of these domains, but for me all of the approaches to me had considerable flaws in regards to my interests. These were among the more scientific, for sure, but we are obviously still very far from successfully establishing a satisfying predictive theory of consciousness today. With that said, a lot of the promise I was looking for is starting to emerge in AI. I always had a hunch that was the field, once sufficiently developed, would be the one to crack the door wide open. It was pretty dormant until ML arrived and it's starting to seem like in the next 20 years (or even far less) we could be able to do tests on a system that functionally has all of the markers for conscious observation that we would ascribe to humans. If I started in the field today, I would probably have a very different attitude and jump in head first. Actually I'm certain I would.
NeonDaggerGames
2023-03-04 18:14:33 +0000 UTCDon't let me come across as anti-therapy at all, just the attempts at reducing it to a functionalist checklist framed by the economic demands of employers. But even just the act of verbalizing your problems and being heard is therapeutic. I'm not sure if you're familiar with cognitive science, but it's literally the thing you're describing. It attempts to act as a synecdoche between various mind sciences, to try and explain and model conscious experience. AI research is one of the cognate disciplines, as is philosophy.
Philip Mason
2023-03-04 05:23:49 +0000 UTCThanks for the synopsis. That's probably another reason it didn't do it for me. I was/am more interested in the mechanics of thought. Basically I'm interested in how the brain computes. Or on a more philosophical basis, what is a mind and how do we effectively model it. I can't say I was too impressed with the state of that exploration. I never really thought too much about the ethical end goal of what good that produces in society, or helping people with their maladies. It's not that I am callous or indifferent, just my personal focus is on the abstract if the concrete means actually dealing with humans and their individual messiness directly :) I do see a lot of peers who throw a lot of money into therapy. One particular friend of mine was quite successful as a games journalist and made a good chunk of money when that was still a thing. Unfortunately he happened to have had a truly miserable childhood with unspeakable trauma and in the last few years his savings has dwindled to nearly nothing and he depends on friends to give him places to stay and so forth. But he still extols the virtues of seeing his therapist that charges trendy-city prices. I don't know what to tell him about that. I don't even know the answer, but it does strike me as supremely sad.
NeonDaggerGames
2023-03-03 19:46:06 +0000 UTCYeah, CBT & meds took over the psych field because it promised near-term return on investment & back-to-work targets to insurers & governments that were way more cost effective than previous modalities. And the basic concept of engaging with cognitive distortions is a great one that should frankly be a part of any school curriculum, the political spectrum would look VERY different if that were the case. But those "gold standard" CBT results often don't quite seem to stick over time; part of that is that the older generation who also had training in psychodynamic modalities retired, and were replaced by people approaching things like an auto mechanic with a checklist out of a repair manual. Which is where the holes really start to show in the "You need to go to therapy it is run by wizards who will make your problems vanish with the power of science" attitude half the internet seems to have, that's not true and never has been. One need only stand in a room full of psychologists/psychiatrists for 20 minutes to figure that one out. CBT is good at getting someone back on their feet, but in its clinical form is premised on incredibly shallow engagements with cognitive science. Things which are vital to long-term growth and stability like meaning generation, differentiating eudaimonic goals, integration, cohesion + homeostasis of dynamical systems etc. aren't even really part of the equation. That's all treated as "that's a frill, do it on your own dime" if people are even aware of it at all.
Philip Mason
2023-03-03 07:17:49 +0000 UTCThat's intriguing. You're obviously an interesting dude outside of just shmups and because I'm also interested in this stuff I took the opportunity to ask, not realizing it's a bit too close to personal detail territory. For what it's worth we seem to align on a lot of core principles, which is funny for me because as you say I basically never find anyone with my tastes and here's this guy I watch talk about shmups actually has interesting things to say totally by chance. I agree you should keep that whole thing separate and private as much as you can. Keep telling these tangent stories though, they are often the most entertaining parts of the podcast.
NeonDaggerGames
2023-03-03 02:36:40 +0000 UTCYeah psychology is part science and part philosophy of mind essentially ha. A lot of it I think like you say isn't all that scientific. One of the main issues I have with psych today is that it's basically seen as this magic wand that can be waived to cure people. Have issues, just go to counseling, solved. Also the over emphasis on diagnosis and medication I find concerning and the idea of looking outside the realm of mainstream counseling is like your nuts or something ha. And the mainstream treatment method is basically "it's all good, just keep going and take this pill, it's not your fault" and that often ends up in a dead end for people. I could go on and on about it ha. My masters is in a specific field where if I said what is was, I'd basically dox myself lol since idaho doesn't have many people who are in my line of irl work. It is psych related though.
The Electric Underground
2023-03-02 21:16:48 +0000 UTCI liked the story about the crazy psychology cult. Got me laughing. There are nutty people everywhere. In that era, outside of going to goth clubs, I probably met the bulk of nutters in University. Although I think some of the more interesting people had just a little bit of nuts in them. It's like clam juice in a Caesar . A bit is intriguing, if not totally off putting, but any more and all bets are off. I got out of psych mainly because I just didn't think it was scientific enough. The behaviorist stuff was interesting, and I took a good look at neuroscience. I ended up in philosophy with a side interest in AI. My take was we aren't going to really figure out what's going on at the level I was interested in, until we build a system that at least resembles consciousness. It's finally at least reached the edges of that possibility and there's going to be some really crazy stuff coming in the next decade. What was the subject for your Masters?
NeonDaggerGames
2023-03-01 21:36:52 +0000 UTCYeah I think trying to bring all the avenues together in one center is the strongest strat, as trying to cross views across platforms is like transporting water with your bare hands ha. Also thanks for tuning in my dude, I think if you focus on youtube and slowly and surely tackle it you'll see stronger results than on twitch.
The Electric Underground
2023-03-01 19:03:45 +0000 UTCagreed 100% I do not like a single game they have made ha. And I've been told to try them all
The Electric Underground
2023-03-01 19:01:51 +0000 UTCEven though I'm a Twitch Affiliate, I've been thinking for a while about going back to multi streaming. I make so little money on Twitch, I'm wondering if streaming on YouTube might help me continue to grow my channel. Thanks for the shout out on that, by the way!
Josh Dieckmann
2023-03-01 18:46:50 +0000 UTCMy mildly spicy Hawt Taek: Naughty Dog is by a good margin, the most overrated game developer of all time.
Christopher Ladd
2023-03-01 18:34:53 +0000 UTCGuys, guys... you're missing the key. Get massive bazoombas and everything changes.
NeonDaggerGames
2023-03-01 18:00:01 +0000 UTCexactly Chinop! I think using Twitch as a streaming tool to show to your friends or small inside crowd is perfectly fine, it works in that sense. But trying to put together an audience on there for shmups and arcade is basically impossible. I don't know how one could even make it work other than changing genre and playing other stuff and then once in a blue moon switching to a shmup 1cc. I had the same experience where if I actually practiced the games on stream (I.E. Save state grinds) I would literally drop from 10 - 20 viewers to like 2. It's just not a pleasent viewing experience ha.
The Electric Underground
2023-03-01 16:32:49 +0000 UTCI feel like breaking into streaming in any genre right now is basically impossible. Shumps in particular seem like an engagement black hole. I personally just use twitch as a tool since it's so easy to set up. Good for boring grinds or verification on hard clears. I ran across a video of a guy talking about his journey in learning Ikaruga and in the process of learning and grinding the game he dropped from over a 1000 regular viewers to under 100. Props to you, SJ, Ed and others for keeping at it on YT. I just broke 500 subs myself after about 2 years of regular uploads. I only do it as my own personal archive but it's fun to look at the analytics. I know for a fact that if I played nearly any other genre at the rate I do with shmups I'd have a "successful" channel. My top viewed video by a large margin is one of the few non-shmup recordings I've uploaded.
Chinopolis
2023-03-01 16:26:31 +0000 UTC
