https://www.latimes.com/entert...gbtq-glendale-school

Nick Mercs is a well known video game streamer (some of you would like him actually). Well, after that little fisticuffs in Glendale, CA, between parents (justified) tired of the woke bullshit, obviously it made the news. I loathe Twatter but he Twatted simply “leave the little children alone.” IE, stop this bullshit for children who haven’t gone through puberty yet. We’ve all had enough, etc.

Well Activision recently gave a content creator their own skin (Avatar, character, whatever). It’s the first time they’ve ever done this in Call of Duty. Nick Mercs and Tim the Tatman. Well after Nick twatted that, they tried to do the cancel culture on him. I mean if you read what he wrote, a big fat nothing burger, and everyone here will agree with the guy, 100%. Well Activision and Infinity Ward caved to LBGTQ+ and whatever letters that I don’t now. You know how it is, fake fucking outrage. They tried to cancel the guy. It didn’t work. Timmy (we refer to him as Timmy Tenders) backed up his friend, and said hey if you are doing that to him, go ahead and pull my character too. Both of these guys make 7-8 figures per year streaming video games (Nick makes 8 figures per year). And you may think oh big deal, a video game streamer, blah! Well video games outsell music now. After Tim did that, Dr. Disrespect (Guy Beahm), the biggest game streamer of all of them uninstalled Call of Duty live on his show, and many followed suit.

So Activision just royally fucked themselves and it’s going to be interesting how this plays out. Nick, who I’m not some big fan of but he’s alright with me, doubled down, and did not back down when they came after him. He stood by his words, and now he’s getting backed up and this story has picked up to national news media and many conservative news outlets. Google Nickmercs, or go on You Tube, and you’ll see hundreds of articles/videos on this. I just grabbed the first one in my google search that wasn’t behind a paywall. I play this game for fun and teammates, etc, all talking about it. The community is backing Nick as they, like the rest of us, have had fucking enough. I honestly thought the community would cave, in fact it’s the opposite. Some people are taking a stand with their money, their rep, and they aren’t backing down. I know it’s a video game streamer but it’s something. He’s got more balls than these music artists and actors.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Activision is worth around 63 billion and makes a billion + in profits per year. COD is a massive franchise and a hostile, toxic game, where your objective is to kill everyone you come across.

I’m strongly in favor of any size victory we can get. And this seems like a good sized one.

If there is any lesson to be taken here, it's never back down and never apologize. You still might get "canceled," but at least you'll keep your dignity. In this case, it proves that by showing courage and conviction, you not only keep your dignity, but you just might inspire others to follow you.

Indeed, I'll take the win. Keep chipping away at these swine. Keep marching forward.

I was reminded of the proverb "Great oaks from little acorns grow".

What, exactly, is a "video game streamer?" Somebody who live streams their game play? Or is more coaching/gameplay strategies/how-tos/etc? No, I am not going to abandon my Facepalm, Twatter, InstaGrime boycotts to look this crap up.

Surely people don't pay to watch, so how does someone generate "8 figures" per year? Do certain celebrity players get a percentage of player's licensing fees from Activision? Or is it from advertising/promotion?

I mean $10,000,000 is just a touch more than most people who post on SF make, and they're posting much more interesting content. Maybe some of our "high profile members" could live stream their SF posts (no unitards, please!), Dave T. and Q. could get rich just from streaming how they choose the winners of their karmas. Sorry guys, appreciate the hell out of both of you, but I'm still not paying to watch!

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
If there is any lesson to be taken here, it's never back down and never apologize. You still might get "canceled," but at least you'll keep your dignity. In this case, it proves that by showing courage and conviction, you not only keep your dignity, but you just might inspire others to follow you.

Indeed, I'll take the win. Keep chipping away at these swine. Keep marching forward.

TRUTH is your absolute best, most compelling detailed description of reality as you experience it.
HONESTY is being willing to say your TRUTH aloud.
COURAGE is what it take to actually say your TRUTH.
FAITH is what you need to express your Truth, Honesty, and Courage.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This I learned from Professor Jordan Peterson.

quote:

Originally posted by architect:
What, exactly, is a "video game streamer?" Somebody who live streams their game play? Or is more coaching/gameplay strategies/how-tos/etc? No, I am not going to abandon my Facepalm, Twatter, InstaGrime boycotts to look this crap up.

Streaming is huge business. Platforms are You Tube, Twitch (massive), Kick. A video game streamer is indeed someone who plays video games, live, often with other teammates. Think of it like a show. A TV show, where the content is a camera on the person, in a small rectangle on screen while the larger portion of the screen is the game being played. It’s very big business these days. You can punch in this URL, Twitch.TV. You needn’t have a login, membership, etc. Browse, and look for Warzone or Warzone2. This is the game where he had his own character that Activision pulled from the game. You’ll see hundreds of people (thousands?) live streaming the game, doing their own show. They are referred to as content creators. And yes Nick Mercs makes that much money. In memberships alone, he makes 7 figures per year. Twitch memberships to a content creator are around $5 a month. The streamer gets 50%, and Twitch (Amazon owns them) gets 50%. So you can look up any streamer, and see how many subscribers they have. Multiple that by $2.50 per month then times 12 for a calendar year. Nick is big enough that he has a separate contract with Twitch, for exclusivity rights, which is equal or more than his subscriber revenue. Then all the sponsors. I mean Jack in the Box sponsors some of these people, Mountain Dew (Game Fuel), controllers, peripherals such as controllers, the sponsors are extremely long. I’m not huge into this but I know even companies like IBM, etc sponsor these people. Tim is signed on with some “team” that Jerry Jones owns. E sports team. And Tim does live streams from Cowboys stadium in Arlington, TX. Big money in this business to the point that Nick Mercs makes professional athlete salary type money per year in this business. Younger people, streamers and content creators is huge, on par with say a big music artists for us in our youths. A last example: They’ll have some video game thing in person. A NBA type arena will be rented, it’ll be sold out, and people stand in line for hours for these people’s autographs and such, take pics, etc. Big money and big business. As I said, video game revenue and sales, the money, outsells music today.

quote:

Originally posted by architect:
What, exactly, is a "video game streamer?" Somebody who live streams their game play? Or is more coaching/gameplay strategies/how-tos/etc? No, I am not going to abandon my Facepalm, Twatter, InstaGrime boycotts to look this crap up.

Surely people don't pay to watch, so how does someone generate "8 figures" per year? Do certain celebrity players get a percentage of player's licensing fees from Activision? Or is it from advertising/promotion?

I mean $10,000,000 is just a touch more than most people who post on SF make, and they're posting much more interesting content. Maybe some of our "high profile members" could live stream their SF posts (no unitards, please!), Dave T. and Q. could get rich just from streaming how they choose the winners of their karmas. Sorry guys, appreciate the hell out of both of you, but I'm still not paying to watch!

I had this discussion with my kid. She aligned it to professional sports for me. I can play football, but not as well as Tom Brady... So I enjoyed watching him play. My wife enjoys cooking, but also watches the cooking channel on TV. My kid can play video games, but not as well as some of these streamers, and she enjoys watching them play.

Not really all that diffent when you think of it in those terms.

This is literally going on live, right now. I think this is an arena in Boston. Look at the crowd. Packed to the gills.

https://www.twitch.tv/callofduty

???

What. Tha. Fuck is that??

What language are they speaking? Why are all those kids sitting around a big table, with headsets on? Why is there a chat session consisting of nothing but repeated emojis?? What the Hell kind of insane ADHD bullshit is this??

What planet is that? Is there intelligent life there?

We are attempting to translate...

5ÿÌ–Y:éí$ÿ½”dÓíÍ?”¤2µŒgj¶tûíÉ‚Þ—8‘… Â^|HÓnæ¨Â‚Ú¡öD™\m^¶Xˆ#ç` í:#TÈÉÊñ1E8åE¸œÜ¸¦Ù$©WÇPî¼nƒ]~o„[w? í´Ú`´çŸÔbcdùÁÅ üƒ€! 庑B¨D`2€&€P@ðDyëWÀseØ.ðÝ’ñéÿ¡Í¿ÿ… éÙÍšäê$阡ÚóÿQnï§jó¶GövˆÁÓå׳÷(¼a†¦… hÂÕæ „^,ÑøÉ’Xéôÿ[©¿ór=bŸÙÝìuàWºSiû>?yï`… ê½Q™

Receiving transmission...



Shit

Are there any adults on that planet?

I find it hilarious that these video game streamers have more integrity than all of pro sports. If you think it’s silly, keep in mind that video games are the largest pipeline to gun ownership.

That's fine, but that page- what the Hell? I can't make any sense of it. A chat session in which chatters are posting endless lines of the same emoji. A psychotic video game in the middle of the screen. All those- are those adults or are they children- sitting there with mic'd headsets on (and dressed in all black?) What is this?? Have the Borg changed that much?

I don't- it's outside of my paradigm.

I'm gonna put on my Karen wig and ask to speak with a manager but I think we may have to nuke the site from orbit.

If video game streaming/teams/sponsorship/etc. have become this big, I still ahve a couple of uncertainties:

1) How vacant must some people's lives be that they get so fixated on this kind of thing?

2) With this kind of money involved, there must be a wagering connection. How does that work? I am not interested in participating, just trying to get a better idea of the landscape. Mafia/Las Vegas's got to have their cut.

Back when I was building out the Internet for Govt. agencies, using mostly T1s (or 56K lines) for the WAN links (and 10base2 or the newfangled 10baseT for the in office LANs) nobody dreamed that this Internet thing was going to be used for idle recreation. When the post UUCP Usenet got a few porn groups going, I think a lot of people had their eyes opened, I know it caused a lot of discussion at DARPA who was still funding a lot of the Milnet and Arpanet sites.

By what kind of measure does video streaming outweigh music? Audio content consumes much less bandwidth than video streaming, so a bits to bits comparision isn't really meaningful. DNS traffic, last time I looked, was still the biggest load on the long haul lines, although point-to-point tunnels (think VPNs) are vying for the top spot, HTTPS is not even a contender. The protocols that dominated the early years, SMTP, FTP, Telnet, are not lumped in the "other" category. Question for the group: if I was a dinosaur, what kind of dinosaur would I be?

The video game they were playing in that link looked absolutely mindless. No connection of any kind with reality, shit moving all over the screen at a thousand miles an hour. Just kill, kill, kill at such an incredible pace, it loses all meaning.

Sitting there playing that for hours and hours has to have some kind of effect on a person's psyche. And they're making hero superstar idols out of the top players?

You can tell me I'm missing the point or I don't know what I'm talking about but it appears to me these people have created a genuinely insane universe in which they exist.

Again, looking at the chat stream, it's a tiny bit of barely coherent text surrounded by line after line of emojis, repeated over and over. As best I can determine, these people are stone crazy.

I see not a single redeeming thing in any of it. If this is what video games have become, it's time to get rid of all of it.

That link was the CDL (Call of Duty League). Some gaming companies decided to start up a league with teams in different cities. One city plays another city/team, playoffs, ultimate is the championship, etc. I don’t get why it’s interesting. Boring to watch to me. That’s the multiplayer COD. Small maps, team on team, round after round. Boring as watching paint dry to me but the young ens are real interested in it. I guess they are most interest in video game teams than professional real sports. So they show up for these big events in each cities, wait in line, sold out, blah blah.

Warzone is different so if at all interested (the game I play). Teams of 4, everyone on comms, doing call outs, team strategy pushing other teams to win the game. Military like tactics. Warzone is a Battle Royale. Big big map, with closing zones. A couple of videos of this. This is the guy in the OP and these highlights of games on YouTube. They stream this game for 6-8, maybe 10 hours a day. In the gaming community they are like actors or athletes or something. People watch them play because they are better at the game than most. They banter during their streams, discuss food, current events, actual professional sports, etc. Only showing this as it relates. Don’t expect anyone to think it’s cool, or whatever. It’s just a thing now and these guys are making millions. When I was first told about it, I couldn’t believe the money they were making. They build a studio or game show into a bedroom in their homes.

https://youtu.be/Bx68pKBAPBI

https://youtu.be/nF5Wi_3DgTU

Proximity chat (you can hear opponents when in close proximity:
https://youtu.be/RE0GTZknDAk

quote:

...if I was a dinosaur, what kind of dinosaur would I be?

Big and slow, sir, big and slow.

quote:

Originally posted by Gibb:
I had this discussion with my kid. She aligned it to professional sports for me. I can play football, but not as well as Tom Brady... So I enjoyed watching him play. My wife enjoys cooking, but also watches the cooking channel on TV. My kid can play video games, but not as well as some of these streamers, and she enjoys watching them play.

Not really all that diffent when you think of it in those terms.

The other nice thing about video game streaming (and/or watching it on YouTube) is that for story focused games, you get to watch a narrative that's better than what 90% of Hollywood has made over the last 15 years and not have to pay scalper's price for a PS5 or $3,000 on a high powered gaming rig to do it yourself.

It's also fantastic to leave on when you can't sleep.