On November 07 2012 02:05 Conti wrote: Hmm. So I've compiled a bar chart for the total SC2 stream viewers by month. The actual numbers are not important, so ignore the y axis numbers. It's the ratio between month that's important. The results are pretty interesting. See for yourself:
I first compiled the bar chart without differentiating between WoL and HotS, and I started to write various possible reasons as to why the drop in viewer numbers could have occurred this month (start of school, lack of revenue from streams, etc.). Looking at the same graph with WoL and HotS viewers split up, however, it becomes quite obvious what the problem is. Viewership of WoL streams actually went up from the previous month, if only slightly. And between August and September, the total viewership didn't change, either. What did happen, however, was that the pros stopped streaming HotS and got back to playing WoL, and it appears that most of us that watched HotS did not go back to watch WoL.
It could be the other way around, too. It's not possible from this graph alone to find out whether the viewers stopped watching HotS streams (therefore making the streamers play WoL again), or if the streamers stopped streaming HotS and the viewers lost interest. Either way, I did not expect HotS to have such a big influence in viewer numbers. Interesting.
Pros: Go and stream more HotS shenanigans!
I've added this to the OP.
This goes contrary to what DJWheat was saying about Twitch.tv SC2 stream numbers.
What did he say exactly?
Note that my numbers only contain players streaming their games, and so I exclude a whole lot of other stuff. The numbers don't contain casters or events or shows, etc. The recent premier events like MLG and WCS Europe had gigantic viewer numbers, up to 100.000, way more than any other SC2 tournament before. So player streams viewership going down in one month doesn't really have to mean much, it's just one of many, many variables to consider.
I am curious if you start to add in tournament stream viewer numbers into that bar graph what would happen? Is it that there are more tournaments stealing viewers from regular streams? How are the combined tournament numbers comparing to previous months?
I know this is a bit outside the scope of what you're analyzing here, but it might be interesting to see how it all compares. There would be challenges of course in determining what counts as a tournament and what doesn't, seeing as there seems to almost always be some kind of SC2 event going on ...
On November 08 2012 04:59 HoboJoe20 wrote: I am curious if you start to add in tournament stream viewer numbers into that bar graph what would happen? Is it that there are more tournaments stealing viewers from regular streams? How are the combined tournament numbers comparing to previous months?
I know this is a bit outside the scope of what you're analyzing here, but it might be interesting to see how it all compares. There would be challenges of course in determining what counts as a tournament and what doesn't, seeing as there seems to almost always be some kind of SC2 event going on ...
That's pretty much the problem, yes. Another big issue is that the largest tournaments (GSL, MLG, IPL) do not actually show the stream viewers. So if I add all the tournaments minus the big ones it would present a very distorted picture.
Still, I'm a curious guy, so I've gone ahead and added every non-player SC2 stream to my plot. That includes every single stream that's categorized as "SC2" or "HotS" that is not already in the plot. So it has tournaments, shows, single casters, Day9 dailies, etc. Everything you can think of that's not a player.
Note that the low numbers for April and May are due to the way I used to gather data back then and are not at all accurate.
On November 07 2012 02:05 Conti wrote: Hmm. So I've compiled a bar chart for the total SC2 stream viewers by month. The actual numbers are not important, so ignore the y axis numbers. It's the ratio between month that's important. The results are pretty interesting. See for yourself:
I first compiled the bar chart without differentiating between WoL and HotS, and I started to write various possible reasons as to why the drop in viewer numbers could have occurred this month (start of school, lack of revenue from streams, etc.). Looking at the same graph with WoL and HotS viewers split up, however, it becomes quite obvious what the problem is. Viewership of WoL streams actually went up from the previous month, if only slightly. And between August and September, the total viewership didn't change, either. What did happen, however, was that the pros stopped streaming HotS and got back to playing WoL, and it appears that most of us that watched HotS did not go back to watch WoL.
It could be the other way around, too. It's not possible from this graph alone to find out whether the viewers stopped watching HotS streams (therefore making the streamers play WoL again), or if the streamers stopped streaming HotS and the viewers lost interest. Either way, I did not expect HotS to have such a big influence in viewer numbers. Interesting.
Pros: Go and stream more HotS shenanigans!
I've added this to the OP.
This goes contrary to what DJWheat was saying about Twitch.tv SC2 stream numbers.
Wheat was talking about stream numbers on twitch including all games, nothing about sc2 specifically.
I think the topic of the conversation was Destiny's post. I'm pretty sure that you're incorrect.
On November 06 2012 23:27 SolidMustard wrote: Interesting. Not sure why Destiny's stream is listed in "sc2 streams" though (and I'm not even being sarcastic here)
Because he's been streaming SC2. If he'll only stream LoL from now on, he won't be on the list next month.
It also says hes teamless. I'm pretty sure hes still on team root. Are you sure of this?
On November 06 2012 23:27 SolidMustard wrote: Interesting. Not sure why Destiny's stream is listed in "sc2 streams" though (and I'm not even being sarcastic here)
Because he's been streaming SC2. If he'll only stream LoL from now on, he won't be on the list next month.
It also says hes teamless. I'm pretty sure hes still on team root. Are you sure of this?
On November 07 2012 02:05 Conti wrote: Hmm. So I've compiled a bar chart for the total SC2 stream viewers by month. The actual numbers are not important, so ignore the y axis numbers. It's the ratio between month that's important. The results are pretty interesting. See for yourself:
I first compiled the bar chart without differentiating between WoL and HotS, and I started to write various possible reasons as to why the drop in viewer numbers could have occurred this month (start of school, lack of revenue from streams, etc.). Looking at the same graph with WoL and HotS viewers split up, however, it becomes quite obvious what the problem is. Viewership of WoL streams actually went up from the previous month, if only slightly. And between August and September, the total viewership didn't change, either. What did happen, however, was that the pros stopped streaming HotS and got back to playing WoL, and it appears that most of us that watched HotS did not go back to watch WoL.
It could be the other way around, too. It's not possible from this graph alone to find out whether the viewers stopped watching HotS streams (therefore making the streamers play WoL again), or if the streamers stopped streaming HotS and the viewers lost interest. Either way, I did not expect HotS to have such a big influence in viewer numbers. Interesting.
Pros: Go and stream more HotS shenanigans!
I've added this to the OP.
This goes contrary to what DJWheat was saying about Twitch.tv SC2 stream numbers.
What did he say exactly?
Note that my numbers only contain players streaming their games, and so I exclude a whole lot of other stuff. The numbers don't contain casters or events or shows, etc. The recent premier events like MLG and WCS Europe had gigantic viewer numbers, up to 100.000, way more than any other SC2 tournament before. So player streams viewership going down in one month doesn't really have to mean much, it's just one of many, many variables to consider.
They were all talking about SC2 stream viewers when DJWheat said "Stream numbers are like, way, way up dude. They grow more and more every month, it's insane. And I work at twitch, okay? I know this."
Later, he did clarify that he was talking about overall twitch.tv views, and not game-specific views. He said that he doesn't see the problem if people are watching LoL instead of SC2 because they're still watching esports (I guess with the idea that people into LoL might get into SC2 as well, sort of an overall uplifting of esports).
This caused a lot of confusion though, because many people thought Wheat was talking about SC2 stream numbers, and not overall stream numbers. Painuser tried to clear up this confusion a few times, but he was unfortunately interrupted by Incontrol, Destiny, or Wheat.
On November 08 2012 04:44 Denzil wrote: Always amusing to see the result of a month of people telling me Starcraft is shit and the game is dead
And they wonder why numbers go down
id expect these numbers to go even farther down or stay the same next month, Alot of people including myself will probably watch less player streams due to the number of great tournaments going on soon.
MLG Dallas SC2 hit 95k and very close to 100k. WCS EU got 100k+. Thats pretty much as high as SC2 has ever been. We good son.
On November 08 2012 05:34 Conti wrote: Still, I'm a curious guy, so I've gone ahead and added every non-player SC2 stream to my plot. That includes every single stream that's categorized as "SC2" or "HotS" that is not already in the plot. So it has tournaments, shows, single casters, Day9 dailies, etc. Everything you can think of that's not a player.
On November 08 2012 04:44 Denzil wrote: Always amusing to see the result of a month of people telling me Starcraft is shit and the game is dead
And they wonder why numbers go down
id expect these numbers to go even farther down or stay the same next month, Alot of people including myself will probably watch less player streams due to the number of great tournaments going on soon.
MLG Dallas SC2 hit 95k and very close to 100k. WCS EU got 100k+. Thats pretty much as high as SC2 has ever been. We good son.
Actually MLG Dallas peaked higher than 100k, you're only counting the twitch.tv viewers now.
Who are even those people watching the WoL streams? I watched a few like a year ago and it was interesting to see some people play from their point of view, but I never got the urge to do that again. Particularly not with the amount of tournament games there are to watch for free. You can virtually watch casted pro games 24/7 and still do not catch everything now. So what is the point of watching the streams? I know that Destiny is hilarious sometimes, but you can pretty much find every of his true gems as a youtube highlight.
I wouldn't really be surprised when those numbers went much, much lower, because it just gets old and there is so much competition for people's attention. Definitely wouldn't use it as an argument for SC2's popularity decline. It's the numbers on tournaments that actually matter.
On November 09 2012 03:28 opisska wrote: Who are even those people watching the WoL streams? I watched a few like a year ago and it was interesting to see some people play from their point of view, but I never got the urge to do that again. Particularly not with the amount of tournament games there are to watch for free. You can virtually watch casted pro games 24/7 and still do not catch everything now. So what is the point of watching the streams? I know that Destiny is hilarious sometimes, but you can pretty much find every of his true gems as a youtube highlight.
I wouldn't really be surprised when those numbers went much, much lower, because it just gets old and there is so much competition for people's attention. Definitely wouldn't use it as an argument for SC2's popularity decline. It's the numbers on tournaments that actually matter.
I don't know about most of them either, but I personally watch a few streams for ideas on builds, some for the interaction which makes it fun. Pros don't really release that many replay packs, you see.
Also, the idea that they are supported with the ads makes me view the live stream instead of the vods in the archive of their stream. That said, I only watch roughly 3 player streams, TakeTV and JP mcDaniels (nonsc2) for fun.
On November 11 2012 19:05 Quintall wrote: Why is Destiny still on that list, or even featured on TL? Havent seen him playin SC2 for a while now, only lol...
Because the list shows the stream numbers for last month, where he was still actively playing SC2.
EPT![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/Total%20viewers%20by%20month.png)
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/Total%20viewers%20by%20month%20(non%20players).png)
If he'll only stream LoL from now on, he won't be on the list next month.
