Slashdot Mirror
No One Watches Online Videogame TV
GameDailyBiz talks about disappointing statistics for anyone who enjoys online videogame related video or podcasts; Almost no one watches them. From the article: "didn't even recognize that I might have made a mistake until I ran across a recent Forrester Research marketing report. The report found that while 25% of online households have expressed interest in podcasting, only 2% had experimented with audio downloads but did not listen on a regular basis and a mere 1% of households actually download a podcast onto a player. For most new tech trends a 1% percent adoption rate might be admirable or even encouraging. However, podcasting is a nerd darling. On tech blogs and nerd-news centers podcasting been proudly crowned the Wave of the Future(TM). Currently, the search site PodNova is tracking more than 55,000 different podcasts. Yeah, 55,000 channels and apparently nothing's on."
Yeah, 55,000 channels and apparently nothing's on.
So what? The internet had brought broadcasting to the masses. But the right to free speech doesn't mean anyone actually has to listen to you.
The only people who were surprised that podcasting TV shows about videogames didn't take off were the people who had the idea in the first place. I don't know if I'm typical (but apparently I am), but watching downloaded TV shows about videogames ranks at the bottom of my list of recreational "things to do." Up near the top of my is actually playing the videogames, followed by downloading mods to the games, and browsing news sites announcing new games. Somehow, I never get around to watching television shows featuring videogames, let alone downloading them and watching them on the computer I'm using to... well... play the games on.
There are three kinds of video game videos:
-Play footage.
-Reviews.
-Industry news.
As far as Play footage goes, I'd rather watch someone read a book. (Yes, there are exceptions, and while the survey doesn't say, I'm assuming it's American, and game culture in the US is very different than abroad.)
For the other two, podcast is the worst format. I want to scan, review and get the bottom line, which is something you can't do in an audio or video format.
And frankly 99.93% of podcasts are embarrassingly bad. The only reason podcasts have become popular is because they require even less skill and time to produce than a blog. (If such a thing can be possible.) There are tens of millions of blogs, but how many do you read? Compare that to How many are only visited by spam-bots?
We're not Korea, guys. Talking about them won't say anything about America or the very america-centric internet.
Is the Internet American? Sure, we might have a lot of users, but the title of this story is Games: No One Watches Online Videogame TV". "No one" and "online" are key words. Korea certainly counts as people, and are most certainly online.
Granted, I'm not saying that we're Korea, or that we have a videogame-centric culture- we don't. That doesn't mean that it isn't a valid point for discussion, though.
- dshaw
There's no connection between "online videogame TV" and the podcast stats in the linked story, other than the fact that they got the author thinking about his media habits...
And there are no actual stats about "online videogame TV"...
And the author wasn't dismissing all "online videogame related video" like the poster suggests -- "I pull up gigabytes of game videos"...
I can only conclude that the poster didn't actually read the story, and that the slashdot editors are too busy smoking crack to notice... But what else is new? =)