Finding out that justin.tv had officially been sunset, I kinda wondered if Twitch changes were on the horizon. And they were.

In a nutshell:

  • CON: any previously recorded broadcasts are going to be deleted in the coming weeks; either you highlight them on twitch, export them to youtube, or you lose them forever
  • CON: there are no more permanently saved past broadcasts; they are deleted 14 days after recording
  • CON: highlights are still permanently saved BUT they are now capped at 2 hours in length (my Tomb Raider speedruns are currently greater than 2 hours)
  • PRO: youtube uploads from twitch can now be any length

These changes only reinforce my previous paranoia, that it was stupid to put so much faith in the twitch system for keeping important videos. And of course, since I’ve had so many problems with my twitch videos randomly dropping bits and pieces (either due to my crappy connection or their continued ingestion problems), it makes it obvious that I really need to get a local recording option going ASAP.

On the sort of plus side, I found twitch’s “save forever” to be sort of user unfriendly anyhow. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was that way intentionally because they didn’t really want people using it.

See, as far as I could tell, there was no easy way to know if a video had been marked for permanent saving without doing the incredibly manual step of going into every single video and going into the options to see if “save forever” was still listed. Also, as far as I know they never directly advertised that you were about to lose a video. Again, you had to go into the individual video to see if it was on the chopping block.

It’s not the worst thing in the world obviously, but I lost all but one of my first livestreams (of Pixeljunk Shooter) because of these issues. And I really wanted to keep them because, hey, some day, I’d like to be able to go back and say “wow, look how much I’ve grown as a livestreamer”. Something like that anyway.

In other ways, this announcement also reinforces the fact that twitch is not appropriate for anything other than live broadcasts. As a viewer, I’ve always found their system incredibly difficult navigate to find interesting past broadcasts. For instance, if I’m interested in a particular streamer’s content, but they stream a bunch of different games, and I’m only interested in one specific game, I have to browse their past broadcast (or highlights) manually. There are no playlists, and no intuitive search functionality.

Now, depending on the particular uploader, youtube isn’t necessarily much better for this particular use-case, but at least they have the tools in place to do things like playlists. And youtube lets you search a particular user’s broadcast by keyword.

So basically, I was already starting to think that I should move “important” stuff over to youtube anyways. And this basically makes it mandatory.

Finally, I think this also guarantees that I won’t be using twitch for blind playthroughs. Now, if I’m playing Tomb Raider again and again and again, any particular broadcast isn’t as important to me as the first time I played Tomb Raider (given my later obsession with the game, I do wish I had a video of that first playthrough). In other words, to me, that first playthrough would be evergreen content and far more suited to youtube. So in some ways, why even bother with going through twitch in the first place.

Now, there are reasons to do blind playthroughs on twitch. In fact, as a viewer sometimes the thing I can enjoy most is watching someone else play one of my favorite games for the first time.

For me though, I’m finding the “overhead” of twitch to not be worth it on those first playthroughs.

The biggest issue is immersion. If you’re playing to make it a social evening, that’s one thing, but if you’re playing because you really want to get lost in a game world, then trying to follow and respond to chat completely takes you out of that game world.

I’m also concerned about getting spoiled by what someone may reveal in chat. For instance, I’ve never seen a Last of Us replay because I’ve heard the story is really good and I really want to be stunned by it the first time I finally play the game. I tend to think that putting “no spoilers” in your twitch title probably makes you 100 times more likely to have people stopping by to put spoilers in your chat.

And worst of all, I seem to be far more likely to be trolled when doing a blind playthrough which really kills the immersion.

[Ed. note: I originally did too much of a tangent on trolling here, but I’m just going to save that for a later post.]

my takeaways in general on the change to twitch

  1. I need to get a local recording solution going so I don’t have to worry about forgetting to highlight/upload a vid to youtube before the 14 day window is up and it’s gone forever.
  2. Twitch is an inappropriate place for evergreen type of content and it should instead be posted to youtube, whether via twitch upload or uploading a locally created copy.
  3. Any game where I want the immersion experience (such as a blind playthrough), I’ll just record locally and then upload to youtube later.

On the subject of #3, I do wonder if, in the far future, it would be acceptable to an audience to have specific streams where you specifically advertise that you won’t be responding to chat for the duration.

See, for me as a viewer on twitch, I’m really unlikely to watch a commentary-less stream. If I’m interested enough to watch something sans commentary, I’m going to be looking for it on youtube, not on twitch.

In the case of someone who’s commentating but not responding to chat, watching so many other twitch streams has somewhat trained me to think that that streamer is a bit stuck up. For me, I guess I’ve just kind of developed this attitude that the main purpose of twitch is to make it a social event (these are the types of streams I’m most likely to be watching anyway).

With all that said, if there’s someone I follow on twitch who I like as a person, I would be far more willing to watch their completely silent and/or no-chat-interaction stream of some game, because I have a “relationship” with them.

I would say that at the least, if I were going to try advertising a “no chat interaction” stream, I would need to have moderators in place, given that I wouldn’t want trolls coming in and creating a toxic environment for anyone who happens to be hanging out and watching.

So, in closing, it sounds like I need to hurry up and put in some more excruciating hours futzing about with computer settings to see if I can get an acceptable streaming/local recording solution going.

I’d rather be gaming.