After the positive feedback I got from my last thread, I decided to keep you guys updated with a list of the most popular streamers from the last month. So, welcome to the first regular installment of the top 50 streamers list!
For those who didn't read the last thread, a few words about my methodology: I'm running a script that regularly (every 15 minutes) grabs various information about every stream that is available from teamliquid.net, put the data in a database and turn it into the fancy table that you see below. Since the last time I've made various updates to my script. For one, I don't use www.teamliquid.net as my main source of data gathering anymore, since I found out that the data I want is available in XML form. That kinda made things a whole lot easier. The XML version also has a lot more data (like race, language, featured status, etc.) that I now use for my table as well. Another update I implemented makes sure that only Starcraft 2 related streams are taken into account when creating the table. I kinda had to do that because half of the pro gamers have been playing (and streaming) nothing but Diablo 3 recently. Another minor adjustment is that a streamer now has to stream at least 2.5 hours in a month before being included in the list.
So, without further ado, here it is!
Actually, one last thing: I compare the below table to the results from April 2012 for consistency's sake, which is not the same as the table I presented in my last thread, as that one contained results from a few days in May as well. You can see the table I used for comparison here, there's only minor differences compared to the table in the previous thread. Also note that these numbers are for May 2012 only, so don't complain that Stephano once had a higher peak viewership. Yeah, he did, but not last month.
EDIT: I guess I should also mention that this list only contains players, and not casters like Day9 or group/event streams, in case that isn't obvious.
(Full HTML version here! Includes "Featured" column which took too much space to be included here.) Edit: Some people demanded a ranking sorted by average viewers*streaming hours, so I made one. You can find it here.
So there we go. Stephano is the new #1! Gratz! I can't wait for the inevitable Stephano vs. Idra debate to come up again. As you can see from the numbers, though, they are still pretty damn close and far more popular than any other streamer, so I wouldn't say that that result is saying much at all. They're both pretty darn popular streamers, just like they were last month. Let's leave it at that.
What is potentially saying a lot, though, are the viewer diffs. Numbers are down across the board, at times quite massively. Nearly everyone in the top 10 lost about 1000 viewers in the last month. I honestly have no idea why this is the case, and whether this is an indication of a trend or not. I sure hope it isn't, but we'll see whether the trend continues next month, I suppose.
Another thing that surprised me is the number of new streamers in the list. There's about 20 new names here, and the last 20 spots are almost completely filled with new faces. Why's that? Sure, some of the streamers simply lost too many viewers, but nearly half of the streamers who got kicked out of the top 50 list got kicked out because they did not stream at all last month. TaeJa last streamed on April 25, Alicia on April 24, Jjakji on April 17, and so on. It seems that streaming, for the most part, is pretty short lived and not a regular thing for some pros.
I wasn't sure if I should include Apollo or not, since he's a caster, not a player. I eventually decided for it, since he's been doing nothing but playing ladder games on his stream so far. If he starts casting games, though, he's out again, as there's no reliable way for me to differentiate the two from the data I gather.
It may sound rather weird, but I'm quite sure Destiny actually benefited greatly (for the purpose of this list!) from being delisted from Teamliquid. Nearly everyone lost quite some viewers in the last month, and I doubt Destiny was an exception there. But he got delisted, so the last data I have from him is from May 1 (so he barely got into this month's list in the first place). That way, he's not affected by the general downwards trend. I'm curious to see his numbers once he's listed again on TL.
On May 01 2012 07:28 Nerchio wrote: I want to be on the list! Guess i should be streaming more :D
(From the previous thread) Congrats, Nerchio, you're on the list! How about a top 35 spot as a goal for this month?
There's 4 streamers on the list that do not have featured status on TL: Hui has, as far as I know, a fanbase outside of teamliuqid.net, explaining his success. I don't know about Turuk, Pomi or sLivko, though. So congratz to them for making it into the list!
Poor Team Liquid. All of their players suffered heavy losses in their ranking this month. EG, on the other hand, is doing pretty well, all things considered.
Congrats to ForGG for being the only teamless player in the list. I hope he finds an awesome team soon!
And, just for funsies, here's the top 10 Diablo 3 streamers on Teamliquid for the past month:
D3 really stole a lot of stream viewers this month. It'll be interesting to see if there's a big spike after Anaheim, or if the lack of streaming for this next week will hurt the numbers overall for june.
What a badass thing to make. So i'm wondering what it means though, that the majority of top50 streamers have less viewers on average than before (negative values for "viewer diff")? Does this mean there are more streams opening up, so more options and less viewers in general per stream because viewers are now spread more thinly with more options, or are there just less viewers in general? I like to think the viewer base keeps growing in our game
Quick note, on your website you got your backslashes and forwardslashes mixed up, so the featureds tdon't show.
Also interesting to see the massive falloff in viewer counts. Could be cos it's finals season, or it could just be cos SC2's declining (naturally). Still shocked to see that big a dip.
Glad to see Apollo in top 10, he's on now and it's brilliant. Far easier to relate to than some pros and so much good extra stuff, really hope he keeps doing it.
Also very glad to see GD Studio up there, they really are making a name for themselves in everything they turn their hand to, and rightly so. Bring on the SC2 Arena, 2GD casting?! OMG.
I think you might have your answer in the op on the decline. People might just be watching different streams instead of just the top ten. Also as someone already noted, Diablo3 probably had a big impact. I played d3 instead of watching streams and found watching it incredibly boring...and for about a week that was all anyone was streaming really interesting data though. Thank you!
On June 01 2012 23:59 Drmooose wrote: I think you might have your answer in the op on the decline. People might just be watching different streams instead of just the top ten. Also as someone already noted, Diablo3 probably had a big impact. I played d3 instead of watching streams and found watching it incredibly boring...and for about a week that was all anyone was streaming really interesting data though. Thank you!
Summer as well, i find it more interesting just to go out and grill or enjoy the good weather over watching a stream
Took me a while to realize that "top streamers" meant "top average streamer count" as opposed to "most hours streamed" or "most money made" or anything else. Don't know if it's the same people every time or how many unique viewers.
There are a bunch of different ways you can define "most popular" ::shrugs:: If you stream less frequently but you're well known, your rarity may increase your stream count when you do come online.
Congratulations to these guys There are certainly good reasons for them being the most popular
One thing I think would be interesting would be a measurement of "viewer-hours", aka the total number of time spent collectively viewing the stream (calculated by periodically sampling the stream's viewer count, adding every sample together, and multiplying by length of period).
On June 02 2012 00:49 Scisyhp wrote: One thing I think would be interesting would be a measurement of "viewer-hours", aka the total number of time spent collectively viewing the stream (calculated by periodically sampling the stream's viewer count, adding every sample together, and multiplying by length of period).
you mean like average viewers x hours streamed? srsly..
On June 01 2012 23:44 FallDownMarigold wrote: What a badass thing to make. So i'm wondering what it means though, that the majority of top50 streamers have less viewers on average than before (negative values for "viewer diff")? Does this mean there are more streams opening up, so more options and less viewers in general per stream because viewers are now spread more thinly with more options, or are there just less viewers in general? I like to think the viewer base keeps growing in our game
Hmm, let's see.
Average SC2 viewers overall in April: 15.779 Average SC2 viewers overall in May: 12.263
That's an overall decline of about 22%. Stephano lost 11.5%, Idra 15%, White-Ra 32%, MarineKing 31%. So, yeah, it's an overall decline, with Summer and Diablo 3 most likely to blame.
On June 02 2012 00:36 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Took me a while to realize that "top streamers" meant "top average streamer count" as opposed to "most hours streamed" or "most money made" or anything else. Don't know if it's the same people every time or how many unique viewers.
There are a bunch of different ways you can define "most popular" ::shrugs:: If you stream less frequently but you're well known, your rarity may increase your stream count when you do come online.
Congratulations to these guys There are certainly good reasons for them being the most popular
Yeah, I touched upon that in my last thread. There's various ways to measure "popular", and none of them are very accurate. Gamestreams.com also has a top streamers list, though not sorted by game and with a different (and more complex) way of calculating scores. I don't know how exactly they calculate their ranking, but they seem to heavily favor lots of stream hours over lots of viewers, as Destiny and Hui are the top 2 SC2 related streams on the list. Stephano, on the other hand, barely makes it into the list, Idra isn't in it at all.
Also, a "most money made" list would be awesome, but I don't quite think that data is publicly available.
Please add another column that is total viewer hours (average viewers x total hours streamed). It seems this would be a very relevant metric to look at. And yes, I realize I can do the math myself.
I kept the original ranks since that makes it easier to compare (also, I'm lazy). I'm not exactly surprised by #1, but the rest does look pretty interesting.
Also note that I use more accurate numbers for the viewers*hours column, specifically non-rounded average viewers numbers.
It's fairly obvious why some peoples stream numbers are down isn't it? When you have guys like MVP and Huk as ''new'' streamers averaging over 3k viewers, that is obviously going to bite into everyone elses stream.
Excellent work you have there ! LOL must be another cause of decline, as most of the time I see LOL in the top list of viewership in Twitch's tablet application
On June 02 2012 02:33 JLew wrote: It's fairly obvious why some peoples stream numbers are down isn't it? When you have guys like MVP and Huk as ''new'' streamers averaging over 3k viewers, that is obviously going to bite into everyone elses stream.
A reasonable observation, but not quite correct: Huk, Apollo, Nestea and Mvp all started to stream only very recently, and the numbers were down already before that. But you're right that they most likely take away some more viewers from other streams as well.
It's great to see Stephano clawing away the top spot from IdrA. It seems like zerg players are enjoying the caliber of play and the little bit of fan service.
It's great as a stream viewer to see Stephano beating pros with suggested builds, and his style is very clear and more simple to try and emulate (IMO). I find it hard to trust the things I see on IdrA's stream, and his claim to fame is starting to be a bit tired (even for a fan like meeeeee).
Kind of curious to see how LoL does overall... I always see like 1 or 2 popular LoL streams every now and then, but not many after that.
I guess people could have had finals and graduation. That could easily account for a lot of time off. Plus Diablo III would have done something. Both of those things pretty heavily affected me
On June 02 2012 02:37 monx wrote: Imo there should be a minimum "hours streamed" to consider this data valid. 8.5 hours in a month is not enough
There is, though currently it's at 2.5 hours. I was considering raising that, but I didn't this time because I didn't do so last month, either. I'll definitely raise it to at least 5 hours for next month, though, perhaps more. The disadvantage is that we'd miss some big names if I set the minimum of hours streamed too high, since they simply don't stream a whole lot. It's still interesting to see how many viewers they get when they do stream, though.
I kept the original ranks since that makes it easier to compare (also, I'm lazy). I'm not exactly surprised by #1, but the rest does look pretty interesting.
Also note that I use more accurate numbers for the viewers*hours column, specifically non-rounded average viewers numbers.
This seems to make a lot more sense and the ranking doesn't surprise and isn't distorted by new or rare streamers.
Either way, things to consider why streaming hours and viewer numbers fluctuate:
Time of Day: When the biggest viewer regions (e.g. North America, Europe) are asleep or at work/studying, you will have lower viewer numbers when streaming.
Competition / coincidence: When a lot of other well-known streamers are online, viewer numbers tend to be lower. The primary race of a streamer may also have an effect.
Summer season: In the summer months both streamers and spectators may rather go outside or go on vacation instead of sitting in front of a computer.
Tournaments: When players have big tournaments coming up, they rather practice in private to keep strats and playstyle secret. Traveling to and from tournaments will also keep players from streaming.
Events: Whenever big events are streamed, viewer numbers of individual streams and individual streaming in general tend to go down.
On June 01 2012 23:38 Conti wrote: Nearly everyone in the top 10 lost about 1000 viewers in the last month. I honestly have no idea why this is the case, and whether this is an indication of a trend or not.
I'm have the same trend on all my website and always at the same time during the year. It's due to the weather. You lose quite some visitors when better weather and summers starts kicking in.
It should be noted that Catz, VINES, ForGG, and Spanishiwa are not new. Catz changed his tag from col. to ROOT, VINES went from oGs to Empire and ForGG went from oGs to teamless. Spanishiwa is listed as Quantic on April and May and he didn't change his name so I don't really get why he's listed as new here. Maybe he was listed as VileSpanishiwa in April?
Catz lost 952 viewers and went from #15 to #29 VINES gained 143 viewers and went from #32 to #30 ForGG lost 246 viewers and went from #24 to #31 Spanishiwa gained 109 viewers and went from #43 to #34
This is really cool! I think you should definitely keep everything there but I think the overall ranking should be based off total views, avg view * hours. Right now it's too much a popularity contest. Don't get me wrong Stephano and Idra got a lot of viewers and it's great to see that but I feel people like Hui and ForGG and Dragon should be getting more "praise" since they are streaming for 200+ hours but aren't getting highly ranked just because they aren't as well known.
I instantly understood from the topic that this was your stuff again. I love it! I am curious about something though, why don't you try to add during what hours they stream as well? As I'm watching the list I'm curious to whether Stephanos huge average actually comes from him living in Europe and streaming during hours that the Americans do not. I don't exactly know how you could do this, but I think it would be a cool feature! Anyway! Keep the amazing job up!
On June 02 2012 03:21 pookums wrote: It should be noted that Catz, VINES, ForGG, and Spanishiwa are not new. Catz changed his tag from col. to ROOT, VINES went from oGs to Empire and ForGG went from oGs to teamless. Spanishiwa is listed as Quantic on April and May and he didn't change his name so I don't really get why he's listed as new here. Maybe he was listed as VileSpanishiwa in April?
Catz lost 952 viewers and went from #15 to #29 VINES gained 143 viewers and went from #32 to #30 ForGG lost 246 viewers and went from #24 to #31 Spanishiwa gained 109 viewers and went from #43 to #34
Hmm, you're right. My script should have taken that into account, but apparently it didn't. Let me go bug-hunting, I'll update the table accordingly.
EDIT: Fixed. At least the HTML table. Thanks for bringing this up! Going to look into the Spanishiwa weirdness now.
EDIT 2: Alright, the other one was my bad. The table for April is wrong, as it does not exclude people streaming for less than 2.5 hours, while the comparison table does. Spanishiwa only streamed 1.5 hours in April. Updated the April table now, too.
Hey, excellent work, Conti! Very interesting to see the fluctuation from month to month. I assume it is for reasons already mentioned, better weather, exams, D3 being released.
Great feature for Team Liquid having this sort of information.
On June 02 2012 03:21 pookums wrote: It should be noted that Catz, VINES, ForGG, and Spanishiwa are not new. Catz changed his tag from col. to ROOT, VINES went from oGs to Empire and ForGG went from oGs to teamless. Spanishiwa is listed as Quantic on April and May and he didn't change his name so I don't really get why he's listed as new here. Maybe he was listed as VileSpanishiwa in April?
Catz lost 952 viewers and went from #15 to #29 VINES gained 143 viewers and went from #32 to #30 ForGG lost 246 viewers and went from #24 to #31 Spanishiwa gained 109 viewers and went from #43 to #34
Wouldn't the general decline be caused by the increase of tournaments? Just saying... You stream while a tournament is going on, you don't get many viewers...
look at all that EG near the top, well done by their players/recruiting/whatever.
Stephano and IdrA, man it's crazy how much of a following IdrA has that he's competeing with the top foregeiner for viewership when his results are nowhere near as good. I like both of them though so it's cool to see this rivalry over stream views.
On June 02 2012 04:01 crms wrote: look at all that EG near the top, well done by their players/recruiting/whatever.
Stephano and IdrA, man it's crazy how much of a following IdrA has that he's competeing with the top foregeiner for viewership when his results are nowhere near as good. I like both of them though so it's cool to see this rivalry over stream views.
His tournament results aren't that good, but his level of play is. And his stream reflects his play.
Meh, sort of pointless to just count after average viewer. Whenever you put on your stream while it isn't prime-time, you're actually losing placements in this list which doesn't make much sense.
Maybe some of those who stopped watching, like me, is so used to having a professional caster now..like a tournament view with both sides of the players and casters with great knowledge and chemistry. But people have been playing D3, hope those viewers come back to SC2 streams.
On June 02 2012 00:02 figq wrote: TheGDStudio is not featured yet? <insert random Semmler comment about the chat>
yes its a shame.. , they are fantastic ...<3 Same as kungen stream ( if someone dont know him , just google him ) , but i dont know that he knows abouth TL , he quit WoW and now focus on D3 , maby its time to bring him to TL :D
@edit haha , he play now with athene , 15k viewers ..Link for interested people + Show Spoiler +
On June 02 2012 04:20 ErAsc2 wrote: Meh, sort of pointless to just count after average viewer. Whenever you put on your stream while it isn't prime-time, you're actually losing placements in this list which doesn't make much sense.
There's also an alternative version which sorts by average viewers*streaming hours. I'm not sure which is the best yet, though having Hui as #1 seems.. odd.
is there away to see how big of a share a player has on average and as peak of the overall sc2 streamers? An example would be if stephano streams that he might reach 20% of all sc2 streamers as a peak figure.
Unfortunately I think different timezones hurts the numbers a lot. DRG would have so many more viewers if he wasn't streaming early morning EST or whatever. Regardless, really cool to see.
On June 02 2012 04:20 ErAsc2 wrote: Meh, sort of pointless to just count after average viewer. Whenever you put on your stream while it isn't prime-time, you're actually losing placements in this list which doesn't make much sense.
There's also an alternative version which sorts by average viewers*streaming hours. I'm not sure which is the best yet, though having Hui as #1 seems.. odd.
Both are extremely flawed. That one would only favour people who streams a lot. I think the best list would be something like, take the average viewer-number of the streamer's top 10 viewer hours of the month or something like that. Don't think that would be possible, but for now it's either punishing streamers whenever they stream off-primetime-hours or punishing streamers who don't stream regularly even tho their streams are extremely popular.
On June 02 2012 04:20 ErAsc2 wrote: Meh, sort of pointless to just count after average viewer. Whenever you put on your stream while it isn't prime-time, you're actually losing placements in this list which doesn't make much sense.
There's also an alternative version which sorts by average viewers*streaming hours. I'm not sure which is the best yet, though having Hui as #1 seems.. odd.
Both are extremely flawed. That one would only favour people who streams a lot. I think the best list would be something like, take the average viewer-number of the streamer's top 10 viewer hours of the month or something like that. Don't think that would be possible, but for now it's either punishing streamers whenever they stream off-primetime-hours or punishing streamers who don't stream regularly even tho their streams are extremely popular.
That is quite possible, actually, though my current guess is that it would barely make a difference compared to the current version. I'll probably try that out tomorrow and see what happens. (Edit: ) Actually, I think it would be more akin to sorting the table by peak viewership, and I'm not sure that's fairer, either. Why should someone who has at times a lot of viewers and at times quite few be higher ranked than someone who consistently has average viewer numbers?
I just created a ranking based on viewers*hours, just out of curiosity. The previous one I provided only included the players already in the original top 50. This one includes all streamers. And the results are pretty interesting. Look for yourself. The top 15 or so streamers are as expected, but then loads of new (and at times quite unknown) names appear. And you're right, it obviously heavily favors those that stream a lot. Having someone like gaulzi above NesTea just feels so wrong.
On June 02 2012 04:38 blade55555 wrote: lol kind of funny how idra/stephano have 6k+ each and then next highest after them is 3k
A lot of that is also because they have a very low stream hour count. Every minute that you're streaming at 'weird' times hurts your average quite a lot.
On June 02 2012 05:27 Pheint wrote: This is awesome, and shows definitevly why the starcraft community can't have nice things. We don't even appreciate skill.
MVP is 16th, nuff said.
A good player does not necessarily make a good streamer. There are lots of things that come with having a good stream and looking at the numbers being actually good at the game doesn't make the top requirements.
Besides running a technically good stream (correct aspect ratio and that kind of stuff) the most important requirement to getting awesome viewing numbers is to just have a personality.
The guy that streams the highest level of Starcraft 2 with music tends to get less viewers (example: mvp) then the guy who plays at a lower level but uses his mic and interacts with his audience (example: destiny or dapollo). A combination of the two is very hard to find but those that do succesfully combine it tend to have a lot of viewers (example: IdrA, Grubby, WhiteRa).
I personally don't watch streams that run music, because I 'have' to run them muted (I have yet to find a streamer who streams my music of choice) and at that moment the content they provide is pretty bad. Why watch video if you can get video + audio?
I hope the viewers being down across the board (and in such high numbers) is just because May is finals time for just about everywhere and D3 being out.
Looks Slivko isfeatured now - he was promoted during may i think (?) And yep, also interesting that last table, jEcho, Spyte, Kawaii, Gaulzi, ProTech and Fitzy putting their time in!
On June 02 2012 06:38 TumNarDok wrote: Looks Slivko isfeatured now - he was promoted during may i think (?) And yep, also interesting that last table, jEcho, Spyte, Kawaii, Gaulzi, ProTech and Fitzy putting their time in!
Heh, according to my log, he was featured just a few hours ago.
Don't really get the ranking at all, should it be a much better way to determain it? I mean if you actually stream for 100h you should be ranked highter than a guy thats only on 10h. Hours streamed * top viewers / avg viewers ?
As if you stream for 100h you surly are going to catch a lot more people than a guy thats only streaming 2h. I don't mean that as in peak but as in unique viewers for each day.
On June 02 2012 06:55 PiQLiQ wrote: i've been talking to athene some too. And he peaks more viewers than some of the diablo3 streams atm so. Does statistics isn't correct.
On June 02 2012 06:55 SniXSniPe wrote: It's sad that players like MVP and NesTea are not at the top of the list :<
People don't watch streamers necessarily for the same reasons as you do. Most people are just content watching entertaining streams, by streamers who interact and speak the same language as them. People like players they can relate to, too. So being a multiple GSL champion doesn't mean that much to a lot of foreigners if they can't interact with fans.
We watch streams for entertainment value. I know for myself I can't stand watching players who 1) don't have a webcam, 2) never interract with chat, and 3) have no personality. I subscribe to as many SC2 streamers as I can find on Twitch and Own3d and then watch the most entertaining for me: MaximusBlack, Dragon, Destiny, ROOTerdam, Catz, Nathanias, TubbyTheFat, puCKK, NovaWar, desRow.
As for other games or other personalities stealing viewers, I don't buy that. They all stream at different times and no one watches one stream for 8 hours. I do understand people losing interest in watching streams in general, though. When I first discovered live streams I watched anyone who was on. But after a while, it became like TV: there are 10 people streaming but "nothing good is on" so I'll go do something else.
The shear ratio of negative viewer to postive viewer change from last month is a bit astonishing. Obviously other games are stealing viewers as almost every game gets streamed these days. I will be very interested in what kind of change occurs when HOTS comes out.
On June 02 2012 06:55 SniXSniPe wrote: It's sad that players like MVP and NesTea are not at the top of the list :<
People don't watch streamers necessarily for the same reasons as you do. Most people are just content watching entertaining streams, by streamers who interact and speak the same language as them. People like players they can relate to, too. So being a multiple GSL champion doesn't mean that much to a lot of foreigners if they can't interact with fans.
Actually for MVP's case, people wanted to see him play 1v1, but instead he played 4v4 with the viewers instead, hence why his viewer count is not as high.
I have been playing D3 and Dota 2 instead of watching streamers. I still watch every tournament and already have my hotel booked for Anaheim but watching someone stream just doesn't hold my interest like it used to... especially when half the people on the korean server are using smurf ID's so you never know who they are playing against.
Very interesting, nice post. Over all my time watching streams, the numbers have changed drastically. When someone is on a slump, you usually see their viewers plummet, and when they are doing good; vice versa. There are only a select few individuals who have maintained their viewer count, and only go up from there.
Beta and a while after was SC2 streaming glory days; if you streamed SC2 you basically always had 3-5k+ viewers. Orb used to boast 5-10k+ viewers for a long time, a long with many other people.
One reason is the selection and choice of streams nowadays; there's a lot of it. It further helps the scene though, competition!
I kept the original ranks since that makes it easier to compare (also, I'm lazy). I'm not exactly surprised by #1, but the rest does look pretty interesting.
Also note that I use more accurate numbers for the viewers*hours column, specifically non-rounded average viewers numbers.
thank you!
although i was looking for the top 50 viewers*hours rather than just the top 50 average viewers rearranged (as i assumed you had all that data still) the difference probably only affects the bottom half of the list
looking forward too seeing this every month!
also, i've never heard of hui... how is he not featured if he streams that often with that many viewers?
I kept the original ranks since that makes it easier to compare (also, I'm lazy). I'm not exactly surprised by #1, but the rest does look pretty interesting.
Also note that I use more accurate numbers for the viewers*hours column, specifically non-rounded average viewers numbers.
thank you!
although i was looking for the top 50 viewers*hours rather than just the top 50 average viewers rearranged (as i assumed you had all that data still) the difference probably only affects the bottom half of the list
Actually, I did that, too, though it took me a bit longer since I had to change my script accordingly. After the top 15, the changes are quite drastic, actually. As predicted, that list heavily favors lots of streaming hours over lots of viewers, with someone like gaulzi being ranked above NesTea. I wouldn't call that a fair representation of popularity, but it's an interesting list nonetheless.
also, i've never heard of hui... how is he not featured if he streams that often with that many viewers?
Hui is a Taiwanese player, and I think that's where his main audience is. My guess is that most of his viewers don't come from teamliquid but from other sites. He doesn't seem to participate in any tournaments outside of Taiwan either, as far as I know, so that's probably making him less interesting to the foreign community.
On June 02 2012 20:03 desRow wrote: This thread is awesome Keep up the good work, hopefully I can manage to get in the top50 next month :D it will be tough!
Do you plane to stream a lot ? I enjoy your stream a lot, and you're show with ToD even more.
I wonder if this ranking is fair.. Are we counting effort and streaming on a daily basis for a stable number of viewers or just the other case which is stream 5 times a month, get 10k viewers? Makes me wonder who actually diserves to be on top of the ranking
On June 02 2012 20:03 desRow wrote: This thread is awesome Keep up the good work, hopefully I can manage to get in the top50 next month :D it will be tough!
You need about 135 more viewers on average to make the list (assuming overall numbers stay the same). You can do it!
On June 02 2012 06:55 SniXSniPe wrote: It's sad that players like MVP and NesTea are not at the top of the list :<
People don't watch streamers necessarily for the same reasons as you do. Most people are just content watching entertaining streams, by streamers who interact and speak the same language as them. People like players they can relate to, too. So being a multiple GSL champion doesn't mean that much to a lot of foreigners if they can't interact with fans.
Actually for MVP's case, people wanted to see him play 1v1, but instead he played 4v4 with the viewers instead, hence why his viewer count is not as high.
Yeah I think so as well. He is being nice and giving fans the opportunity to play with him and stuff, but I'd rather watch him crush Korean GMs
On June 02 2012 04:20 ErAsc2 wrote: Meh, sort of pointless to just count after average viewer. Whenever you put on your stream while it isn't prime-time, you're actually losing placements in this list which doesn't make much sense.
There's also an alternative version which sorts by average viewers*streaming hours. I'm not sure which is the best yet, though having Hui as #1 seems.. odd.
Both are extremely flawed. That one would only favour people who streams a lot. I think the best list would be something like, take the average viewer-number of the streamer's top 10 viewer hours of the month or something like that. Don't think that would be possible, but for now it's either punishing streamers whenever they stream off-primetime-hours or punishing streamers who don't stream regularly even tho their streams are extremely popular.
That is quite possible, actually, though my current guess is that it would barely make a difference compared to the current version. I'll probably try that out tomorrow and see what happens. (Edit: ) Actually, I think it would be more akin to sorting the table by peak viewership, and I'm not sure that's fairer, either. Why should someone who has at times a lot of viewers and at times quite few be higher ranked than someone who consistently has average viewer numbers?
I just created a ranking based on viewers*hours, just out of curiosity. The previous one I provided only included the players already in the original top 50. This one includes all streamers. And the results are pretty interesting. Look for yourself. The top 15 or so streamers are as expected, but then loads of new (and at times quite unknown) names appear. And you're right, it obviously heavily favors those that stream a lot. Having someone like gaulzi above NesTea just feels so wrong.
I like this one :D you should put it in the OP next month if you don't take it as your primary. Thanks again for all the work its quite fascinating ^^
I didn't realise ForGG wasn't with a team? I often go onto his stream and he seems quite confident and a skilled player, the games i've watched, granted just ladder, he wins a very large majority of them. The variety in stream viewers is pretty strange, a few thousand less on some to only a few hundred more on others. All different races + countries too.
Naturally as more top level players stream, the competition for viewers will get more intense, which will mean less viewers per individual streamer but not a decrease in total actual viewership.
On June 02 2012 10:18 Jell wrote: how can someone as hated as Destiny get so many viewers?
There are people who hate Destiny?
On June 02 2012 06:59 speknek wrote: it's very sad to see some of the players above mk,mvp,nestea imo, but okay
Most of the Korean streams are just them playing, no webcam, no interaction, and blasting KPop. They can easily get tons of viewers if they realized what viewers wanted.
On June 02 2012 21:25 Smapz wrote: How come Destiny is #4 with much lower avg. viewer, peak and hours than lots of others?
On June 02 2012 12:01 Tayar wrote: more people should watch axslav, dude is fucking jesus christ reincarnate.
I agree, and im glad he has at least broken top 50 man gives free coaching sessions.
But the only reason i can guess why Koreans aren't the top 10 is because they aren't as entertaining when it comes to interaction with the chat, and they stream at odd hours as compared to the rest of the world.
Wouldn't a better ranking would be: Avg viewers/hours streamed?
Anyways its not like it matters much. Very interesting. One thing I think would help SC2 streamers get more viewers would be more consistency with the time they are playing everyday. Some streamers it seems you have to be lucky to catch them streaming.
I know that sometimes they need to keep their builds private and stuff, but I really do feel some streamers should try to be more consistent of the hours they stream
Im sure this has been mentioned, but your tables could definitely help the TL staff determine who to feature. Especially considering the 4 players on this list not featured.
On June 05 2012 00:25 Alva` wrote: It would also be iteresting to see how much money players make through streaming per month and comparing the top earnings.
Not sure if all of that information is completely public.
On June 05 2012 00:25 Alva` wrote: It would also be iteresting to see how much money players make through streaming per month and comparing the top earnings.
Not sure if all of that information is completely public.
Just check any streamers reddit AMA or the many posts by FXOboss that touch the subject.
Great work, but next time you should rank the streamers based on viewers*hours, or some sort of balanced metric, in the OP. It really provides no value to rank based on average viewers and just shows who is already popular. Streamers like ForGG and Dragon who put in much more effort and provide over 12-times as much content as your number 1 ranked player really deserve more recognition. Also, the viewers*hours chart seems to reveal some unknowns that really need the exposure they deserve.
On June 05 2012 02:43 pr0bez wrote: Great work, but next time you should rank the streamers based on viewers*hours, or some sort of balanced metric, in the OP. It really provides no value to rank based on average viewers and just shows who is already popular. Streamers like ForGG and Dragon who put in much more effort and provide over 12-times as much content as your number 1 ranked player really deserve more recognition. Also, the viewers*hours chart seems to reveal some unknowns that really need the exposure they deserve.
I'll definitely have both charts in the OP next month, though I'm honestly not sure which one is better/fairer. One rewards well known streamers who don't stream a lot, the other rewards streamers who stream a lot, even if they only get 5% viewers of the popular streamers. Neither seems perfect.
Conti, that is true. I realize now that the problem with simply viewers*hours is that some streamers could have a very poor quality stream, or simply be AFK/not playing seriously and still rank high.
Seems a lot less people watch sc2 streams month by month, wonder if Hots will break the trend or if first-person streaming sc2 will eventually die out completely since less and less people are playing the game, I know myself and all my friends have moved on from sc2 completely just sometimes catch a gsl game or so nowadays, down from playing hours every day and following every tour, just no charm in this game, dunno hard to explain
EPT
The XML version also has a lot more data (like race, language, featured status, etc.) that I now use for my table as well. Another update I implemented makes sure that only Starcraft 2 related streams are taken into account when creating the table. I kinda had to do that because half of the pro gamers have been playing (and streaming) nothing but Diablo 3 recently. 
Another minor adjustment is that a streamer now has to stream at least 2.5 hours in a month before being included in the list.![[image loading]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/top50MayFixed.png)
Nearly everyone in the top 10 lost about 1000 viewers in the last month. I honestly have no idea why this is the case, and whether this is an indication of a trend or not. I sure hope it isn't, but we'll see whether the trend continues next month, I suppose.
![[image loading]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/top10MayDiablo.png)
