Success on Twitch.tv / “Greed”
Success
It’s far too easy my friends to get caught up in this life in what we don’t have, what we aren’t, what didn’t happen to us, etc. There are so many things in this world that aren’t going to happen for you and if you dwell on them all, you’re gonna have a life where you miss all the wonderful little things that you do have. Life is far too short to not enjoy every minute of it.
I’m gonna focus this idea on Twitch and some lessons I’ve learned over the years.
There is always gonna be a streamer or group of streamers who is perceived by others and yourself as “more successful” than you. You will focus on the big follower, view counts, influx of donations and grow jealous. Sometimes this jealousy will turn into hate towards the caster or pity upon yourself for not being “equal” to them. I’ve seen far too many casters go down the road of either hate or Pity.
The problem is the definition of what success is, what being a great caster means to you. Success cannot be judged in terms of viewer counts, follower counts, or donations. These are meaningless numbers that get too much attention. Imagine for a minute if all streams had all numbers (follower, viewer, etc.) removed and the streams were arranged in random order. How then would you define success?
I tell you there are many casters on the later pages with low view counts that have far more success than anyone at the top. Success is not a number but the feeling you get when you share moments with other people around the globe. Success is turning on the cast and knowing that a friend will be there to talk to you and enjoy the game with you. You have an instant connect with a person who you’d probably never know in real life joined together by a mutual love for video games through twitch.
Having fun and building relationships while enjoying video games is what twitch should and always will be about to those who are truly successful. I am successful only because of my relationship with the people who come to my channel and nothing more. I don’t care if i have 1 viewer or 1,000, enjoying great games with other people is what streaming is all about for me.
I am secure enough with myself and my definition of success to not care if ManvsGame, Hot Blooded Gaming, Towliee, etc. have higher viewer counts than me. I don’t look at the viewer count because when you get obsessed with the viewer count you focus on the people who are not in your channel instead of focus and paying attention to those who ARE in your channel. Cover up the viewer count, it’s a meaningless number that is only gonna hurt your ability to be a great caster if you focus on it.
You should be judging your success based on the fun your having with both the game and the people or person who is enjoying it with you, not a number.
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So true.
Its also easy to focus on the bad things, all the trolls that you attract. I sometimes see populair casters that are focusing so much on the trolls, they ignore the “I love you!” fans, and only react to the “I hate you!” trolls.
But I truly believe that you Dan, will always be the same Dan that we (the community) love And continue to love and will never lose sight what is truly important.
And I hope that when im 70 years old, ill be watching you play Final fantasy 32. Kappa
I personally would call succes about numbers….of course if you have a personal goal….then i would call it a personal goal that you succeeded, that’s your personal succes, but it’s not a global succes. a global succes, is in my opinion(!) still based on numbers, the more people the more money the more succesfull you are in an average count….
For example, you can be really disapointed with the wii, but it is a succes because it’s the most sold console in the world for now….though I would call my xbox an personal succes because I enjoy playing with it more then my wii.
I do agree though that you should never “focus” yourself on getting an higher count….you will make yourself unhappy because of it , for example, not playing your own games you like but the games people want to see….of course you need compromises sometimes and “listen” to your audience, but only when it’s not in the way of your happiness, like playing skyrim because everybody thinks it would be fun watching me play it, but me being so bored by the game that the commentary I would deliver would be influenced by it. But a game like star wars kinect, that looks like fun to play but not when I’m at my own, I would consider that because I could create an experience with that , together with the people watching with me.
The only thing I would say though is if you have 2/3 people in a chat, I always feel a bit akward but that’s personal I guess, i always prefer above 10/20 people to keep the chat going.
I would disagree though on calling names in your blog….don’t know why but it doesn’t seem really right to show examples…..can’t really explain it sorry
otherwise nice blog dan ^^ keep up the good work (and keep them up maybe a bit more frequent lol lol 
)
There is no name calling, If you are referring the casters I mentioned, if you re-read you’ll see that I’m naming example of casters with usually high view counts.
Its always sad to see a caster go down the dark side of streaming. The only bad experience that stands out for me is when I was hopping from cast to cast and I ran into this guy he seemed nice, polite etc. Eventually he got some trolls and that was all he could talk about, not the majority of people that loved him but just that one **** in chat.
This is great advice to follow a real inspiration for any aspiring casters.
Sweet advice Dan!
I know this is a pretty old blog post, but it still is true to this day,year,decade. I’m very refreshed and happy that other casters feel out there feel this way (thanks dan!), perhaps there should be a fun-o-meter bar in the channel and we can just go by that! but seriously, this is the way to think if not be jealous of a fellow caster or go as far as hate on their “numbers”
for me it’s all about having fun and sharing experiences with others. Only thing I wish is more people could know about when stuff like that happens!
I’ve been trying to brainstorm of a way to get promote just the low view channels just to show examples of what Dan is saying about their “success”
awesome article, please right more.