Alright so I am not a complete noob to the concept or having seen some of this. I am an avid stream/let's play watcher for assorted gamers online (personally I prefer YouTube to Twitch, but have no real opinions or citations to try to sway one or the other). I have and am currently subscribed to a few in the last decade where they have emerged into a category of their own. The ones I tend to follow really fall into two broad categories: content creators and official channels.
Content creators have my most profound respect because they take already existing content and put a fresh spin on it; take lots of vague, scattered information, sift through it and compress it into digestible chunks for those of us interested; or generate completely original content long individually-developed mindsets. Regardless of tastes, styles, interests, or any criteria you could assign yourself, there exists something you would more than likely enjoy. Might look at the other things I subscribe to one day, but I'm gonna stick to the video gaming aspect for now. I am currently subscribed to Markiplier and MatPat/The Game Theorist. I have been or occasionally seek out content from Pewdiepie, Jack Septiceye, Neebs Gaming, and FrankieOnPCin1080p depending on my current appetite for content. I tend to like streamers or creators that present an interesting take on something I'm already aware on or treat their viewers to their 'honest' self -- fully aware of how ridiculous this reads. Let me give you an example, Pewdiepie was my first gaming channel I subscribed to long before he reached the thralls of heights he has now -- I have no beef or grief with him, I just didn't care as the content coming out. Anyway he was still in Italy at the time (after Sweden, but before moving to the U.K.) and I loved his full playthroughs and his highlight videos, being the online superstar he's become I just don't get as much joy out of the majoirty of his content he's done given the accelerated release schedule. Frankie, Mark and some of the others gained my attention because of their commentary or the same-old-same expressed in their unique mindset or accents (silly but true).
Official channels will get the minimalist blurb I can give them out of respect for the original creators buried somewhere in their ranks. If you enjoy or find interest in a game I would recommend you follow at least one of the official outlets they offer: forum, social media, streaming service, etc. I keep falling in and out again with Guild Wars and on occasion I will catch myself watching GungHo's livestream.
For more than a decade now, these subset of media have grown by leaps and bounds so of course someone thought there was a way to marginalize and market it. Enter the eSport events. Yeah, this is gonna be a negative slant on the industry and two specific events that follow. However IF DONE PROPERLY, I think this is an interesting concept in its own right and might have some merits if refined under the right mindset. The idea is good, let people watch professionals or skilled players compete in these games we all have a piqued interest or strong desire to bare witness to.
However like vapes and the like adopting eCigarettes, I think gaming adopting the moniker of eSports was just a vast misrepresentation for the subculture (No I don't smoke, but have heard friends argue it to no end). I have watched two or three events and just not enjoyed it at all. Two were DOTA tournaments and the other was the Battlefield 1 celebrity live-stream earlier today (6/12/16). My central complaint is the asinine commentators. There are a dozen or more points of view (64 on the stream) and we are handcuffed to whatever they or an unseen producer in a monitoring room think is interesting content. The largely brain-dead dribble they regurgitate is frequently incorrect, idiotic, or just dull. eSports are NOT a live sporting event and as such do not benefit from the same announcer mentality I don't mind and even reciprocate positive experiences with for Football or alternative sports like MMA or Ninja Warrior. The reason I tuned in today was to hear some of the YouTube content creators give me their thoughts, not the two jackasses who never shut up and were obvious company-endorsed shills. The production itself was sub-acceptable (forget par) by even the most generous of reviews, 64 -- SIXTY-FOUR participants -- zero introductions of non-celebrity gamers until after the event, a very fuzzy distinction between teams and who was playing at any given time. I made it part-way through the Neebs/StoneMountain interview before the questions and conversation made me turn it off in disgust. God bless them the gamers tried their best to answer, but everyone with a mic obviously knew minimal about gaming in general.
Another issue I take is the style of event. Again a 64-man respawning, general strategiless FPS is not the best place to watch someone else's idea of a 'good view'. I will grant them that a few times they had some decent shots, but more times that appeared on screen were indistinguishable from any other. More than half of the participants, some of the content creators I've already spoken highly about, were never mentioned or covered. I've already seen two post their own recordings and thoughts after the event (thank Christ). THAT's the majority of content people joined for on top of seeing the fresh pre-Alpha playthrough. I didn't give two shits about what the half-dozen, industry- or company-funded yes men spouted or had to say. Oh you enjoyed your time, which I'm not going to get to see; I have no fucking idea who you are, could essentially not care less, and the repeated elevation your trying to claim your voice has is nauseating to the point of cancerous. Now I will throttle it back down a moment and say the gross inadequacies seen today are not so readily apparent in smaller MOBA or squad-sized team games. There are vastly fewer players and thus much fewer nodes of action at any point in time.
One final thought we had was an inability to follow how points were given or allocated, especially on the cumulative team pool. Mathematically, and having watched multiple points of view of all three games now, we still don't know how anything was calculated. It wasn't death tickets as in BF4, it wasn't any legible KDA ratio, and it surely wasn't any proportional reflection of points scored per person or team. My two roommates and I spent way more time that was necessary trying to figure it out. I direct you to the end of this video (game 3 from the livestream) to try and translate the scorecards to the final result.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1RUNPEZHQc
