Twitch’s Bits are Stupid

Twitch BitsI think “cheering” and “bits” are stupid. There, I said it. Twitch’s latest monetization technique tries too hard and comes across way too gimmicky — almost desperate. Have you not heard yet about “cheering” and how it works?

It’s a form of digital ‘currency’ that people can buy and practically ‘tip’ to the streamer. Twitch and its employees evangelists — no, screw it, they’re practically employees — don’t want you to think of it as tipping. I’m sure there’s a tax implication there somewhere. Twitch wants you to see it as “cheering” (hence the name) and wants you to get involved in the “experience” of “cheering”. It’s no different than throwing pennies at someone. Literally. Streamers get a penny for every bit. So for the minimum purchase of bits, Twitch takes $0.40 and the streamer takes $1.00. It’s tipping. Stop trying to call it anything else.

Buy Twitch BitsTwitch and the employees select partners who were included in the beta program are quick to point out there are gifs and memes and achievements and badges and all sorts of MORE GIMMICKS to distract from the fact that this is a tip. I’m still dismayed by people throwing money at streamers just to use their chat emotes, and now we literally have people throwing pennies by the thousands at these monkeys dancing for their supper. It makes the Apple community’s behavior appear tame.

It’s more gimmicks. Bits are another step in the direction away from focusing on the games. Excluding the statistical outliers, sponsored events, etc.,  streamers who focus on games receive less attention than streamers who focus on the gimmicks and entertaining their audience. There’s nothing wrong with entertaining people. I support that. What I don’t support are the entertainers becoming influencers. When they are perceived as influencers (and why wouldn’t they be when 30,000 people would watch them wipe their ass) then they receive preferential treatment. That preferential treatment further perpetuates the problem of them being influential, which perpetuates designing games to their nitch and the people who watch, which perpetuates the shallow nature of gaming, and before you know it you have a run on sentence more reason to continue developing games we see today.

  • I should begin by saying I don’t watch many streams, either on Twitch or anywhere else, so this is largely by inference but it seems to me as though streaming has become an entertainment form in its own right. A major one, at that. Far from relying on games and gaming as a raison d’etre, streamers use games in the way tv satirists or stand-up comedians use use the news – as material. And they use the viewers in the way game show hosts use contestants and audiences.

    In the same way that you won’t get detailed, insightful analysis of current events from a TV panel game, you aren’t likely to find that kind of approach to games from the more popular and celebrated streamers. As on TV, you’d need to move to the peripheral, more specialist, less-viewed output for that. However, in the same way that very popular TV satirists and comedians can exert an influence over the way politicians and celebrities are perceived by a significant portion of the population, so top streamers will affect the perception of the games they cover.

    In that way, by sheer dint of their popularity, they become influencers, whether it’s their direct intention or not.

  • Dead on that its tipping, and dead on why those on the pro side of it want to distance themselves away from calling it that. Also fully agree that 95% of all the steamers I’ve seen are terribly annoying attention-whores, but…

    Attention-whoring in today’s world is a valid ‘profession’ sadly, and not only that, but its very effective as a source of influence. Look at the Kardashians. They posses literally zero skill at anything other than being attention whores (and also just outright whores), but one tweet from one of the hell-spawns and suddenly a product flies off the shelf. Their mobile app, the whole emoji packs garbage, whatever lipstick they use/sell, it all moves far more copies than logic suggests they should.

    If I’m a company with low morals, why wouldn’t I bribe/pay one of them to tweet out that they love using my stuff? In terms of ROI, especially for lower-denominator products like a freaking emoji pack, my guess is a Kardashian tweet for 50k is far more effective than spending 100k on other marketing.

    Hell, half of instangram is whores whoring out fitness tea or whatever, so that’s just the world we live in now. Most streamers are just instawhores without a layer of plastic and more cloths on while they do their ‘job’.

  • You know, I agree with everything you said, and I still thought bits wasn’t a bad idea. Considering twitch itself pays for hosting and all the streaming bandwidth, which isn’t cheap, and they are losing incoming because adds happen less (both due to adblock and streamers replacing adds with donations). To me this seemed like them recreating their revenue stream, and I am not against that, after all, even though I can’t stand watching many of the attention whores, I do like the service twitch provides.

  • I don’t watch streamers ever but this sounds like business as usual, except twitch taking a cut of donations. I know so little about this that I read this twice and I don’t know who to be mad at. Am I supposed to be mad at the streamers for influencing people, the people for being influenced, or twitch for taking a cut of donations? I’m so far out of the loop I can’t even figure out what the loop is.

  • @Jenks: All fair questions.

    Am I supposed to be mad at the streamers for influencing people? No, I don’t think so. We can be mad at them for acting stupid and acting like the Kardashians (I like Syncain’s connection there).

    Am I supposed to be mad at the people for being influenced? Perhaps. The streamers (Kardashians) wouldn’t do what they do without an audience.

    Am I supposed to be mad at Twitch for taking a cut of donations? Not at all. They provide the service. This is the part I think is perfectly fine. What I blame Twitch for is creating gimmicks that entice their streamers to dance for tips more than they do. Streaming is turning into camwhoring rather than playing games.

    I think it’s all about a combination. As I mentioned in my post we have this vicious cycle:

    Streamers get attention (however they do it)
    Game companies see the opportunity for exposure so they pay or incentivize the personalities.
    Streamers appear to the public as the social elite and want to be connected to them however possible.
    Streamers get more attention from the public, attract more game companies, etc.
    Game companies start to make games the personalities like since the personalities influence people

    Instead of making “good games” they make “games people like to watch” or stop caring about the games in general and focus more on influencing the influencers. Right now it’s definitely business as usual.

  • Fully agree, it gameifies tipping and further divorces the tipper from the reality of just how much money he’s lobbing at the screen – after all, the money was spent some time ago getting the “Bits” (and related achievements ) and now it’s just a bunch of bits that need spending.

  • It reminds me of The Running Man, a place where entertainment and the zombies watching it has clearly hit a bridge too far. No they aren’t killing people in video yet at least. And I don’t mean just twitch. I mean all the various sites that can make the kardashians interesting and get money for it. No, we aren’t going to hell for liking this, just heading into the dystopian running man future. Oh wait. That might be hell.