Giving you a super easy way to stream your gaming to others. You can specify that either only friends or anyone can watch your streams, or you can keep them private and invite individuals to watch.
It looks like any game that supports the Steam overlay will work, and the game hub community tab for each game will have a list of people currently streaming the game (if they have ti set to allow anyone to watch).
It looks like it’s using the same technique it uses for in-home streaming, so it should be hardware accelerated where possible, so if you’ve got a modern GPU, there should be no or minimal impact on your game performance.
Obviously not feature rich yet since it’s in beta, so no overlaying webcams and stuff yet.
I like this idea, since I’m not really a big fan of Twitch, for various reasons, but at the same time, most of the games I watch streamed are played on consoles, so it doesn’t actually do me any good.
I don’t know why it’s so compelling, but I occasionally do watch walkthroughs. Sometimes it’s because the gameplay is as boring as watching paint dry, but the story is engaging, such as in the last of us. Sometimes I want to see how people do things differently, specially in RPG’s. Watching another playthrough of Dragon Age Origins for example, making sure I don’t watch thing sI haven’t done yet.
It’s not any dumber than watching an episode of say, cake boss or anything.
I figure when folks are talking leisure time, they can spend it any damn way they want pretty much. Watching others game isn’t my teabag, but what do I care if others do?
Watching fighting games can actually be a pretty decent way of improving your own play, up to a point. It’s not a substitute for practice, but it’s an excellent supplement.
Edit: And anyway, I don’t REALLY want to go to Sports/eSports, but how is watching people play a video game and dumber than watching people play baseball/football/cricket/jai alai? In both cases you are watching people do something you COULD go and do yourself, if you wanted.
I just tested it out. It actually works really well. The performance hit is barely anything, at least with Far Cry 3 which I tested it with, so I assume it’s able to use my shadowplay hardware like twitch, otherwise I’d feel the hit more.
The maximum bandwidth you can set for it is 3500kbps, and if it hits that bandwidth, it starts lowering the frame rate. So at busy scenes in FC3 at 1080p broadcast, it would drop to about 20 fps, trying to keep it within that bandwidth, but when I set it down to 720p broadcasting it would broadcast 30 fps smoothly. In the future they may increase the maximum stream bandwidth, but you can definitely max it out with 1080p with games that are hard to compress (lots of changing elements on the screen constantly). But even then it does so gracefully - it doesn’t stutter or lag, it just drops from 30 fps to a lower rate.
The quality is really good too. My limited impression is that it’s better than twitch. It also gives you a live update of who is watching you, and creates a steam chat room for anyone watching you to talk to you, and for you to talk to them.
It also doesn’t display the steam overlay within the broadcast, which is nice, so I don’t have to worry about whether I was reading some Larry the Cable Guy / Walking Dead crossover slash fiction when someone was watching me.
It’s really smooth to see what your friends are doing and watch them if you want. It works really well. I’m impressed. I’m going to end up streaming our gaming tomorrow night (probably wreckfest and chivalry).
My buddy just showed me the relevant South Park episode.
Watching people play video games is as stupid as watching people play poker or bake cakes, IMO. Anything that a person can become easily proficient in should just be done, not watched. And video games (like poker or baking cakes) isn’t a difficult activity filled with arcane skills; ISTM that damn near anyone can do it. YMMV.
ETA: I get watching people play so you can learn how to do something, but watching someone play thru like they were the Michael Jordan of videogames (not a thing, btw) just strikes me as a stupid waste of time. I don’t really have a problem with people doing it tho, since those people will end up being my paying audience someday.
It also allows you to stream games that you’ve set up as “non-steam” games. Seems that if the overlay works, it’ll work - I was streaming Guild Wars 2 last night relatively well.
Also, do you mean to assert that you can easily beat professional poker players? Really? C’mon. Get real. Almost anything that’s directly competitive is nontrivial to master because you need to be better than another person.
ugh. The more I think about this, the dumber it is. I can shoot free throws real good! Does that mean no one should watch basketball?
We should play poker sometime for decent stakes. It’s super simple. You’ll probably win.
Anyway, the steam thing, while open to anyone to watch, is very friend oriented. You see what your friends are playing, you can ask to drop in (or just drop in, depending on settings), you can invite friends to watch stuff. That makes it a lot more social right off the bat than watching strangers. Maybe your friend is playing a game you’re interested in but haven’t bought yet. Maybe there’s a puzzle they’re stuck on that you can help with. Maybe you just want to catch up with a friend, and doing it during some other activity is pleasant, or you want to make something a shared experience - it’s more interactive than watching a TV show together, and people do that all the time.
For example, I had like 6 friends on voice chat collaborating to tell me how to build space ships on my first play of kerbal space program (“paint some flames on it!” and recorded the results. Steam broadcasting would’ve made that considerably easier.
I watch Hearthstone streams of expert players from time to time to get a feel for what sort of strategies advanced players use against each other, and the person playing is trying to narrate and teach you something about the game.
For whatever reason, video games seem to make people angry about how someone else is spending their entertainment time. People often feel free to tell other people how stupid gaming is, and this seems like an extension of that. Oh, sure, you can watch really stupid TV shows, or competitions on TV, but if you watch a friend do something that might potentially be just as competitive or more enriching than the stupid story of a reality show, boo, loser.
Yes, poker is fairly easy game to play. There aren’t many rules and there are a fairly small number of variables in a limited array. I have no idea where you got the idea that I claimed I could beat anyone at poker; it seems like some bullshit you said so you could claim that what I said was dumb. :rolleyes:
Shooting a free throw is also a fairly simple activity; damn near anyone can prolly get good enough to make about 50% of their free throws (even Shaq). You’ll notice that no one is yet clamoring for the elimination of dribbling, jump shots and dunking from basketball, in order to transition to a purely free-throw based game.
It just takes some practice, like any activity. But there’s no special brain-power required to play poker, no particular athletic ability that makes people better at free throws. Tall people don’t bake better cakes. And there’s no special ability necessary to play video games, either; most humans can do it.
I didn’t say that some people wouldn’t be better than others, but I’ll maintain that there is no particular inherent ability that anyone needs to engage in those activities with enough a great deal of proficiency.
I also have no interest in watching people collect stamps, go fishing, grow crops or make large twine balls. YMMV.
If you wanna spend your time watching other people do the things that you could be doing, please do. As I said, I don’t really care if that’s what people want to do, but it does strike me as a really stupid waste of time. Once again, YMMV.
Another poster trying to say I said I could beat all-comers at poker? WTF? :rolleyes:
No, none of that is what I was talking about and I specifically said I could cetainly understand watching others play as a learning exercise.
What I think is stupid is watching people play video games as a spectator sport, rather than ever playing the games themselves. Have you seen the South Park I mentioned? Because I know kids and even a few adults who are like that: all they do is watch youtube videos of other people playing games or watch streaming video of the same. They rarely if ever actually play the games themselves, and to me that’s a waste of time. I’d think the same thing of an avid reader of hiking books who never got off the couch themselves and set foot on a trail, IMO.
I don’t see any need to defend something I never said; I’m not sure why you think I would.
Expressing my opinion and clarifying a couple of sentences in one of my posts since I was obviously not understood (you both think I said things I didn’t say, after all) isn’t threadshitting, it’s a discussion.
Having and expressing an opinion different than yours on the recreational value of being solely a spectator to other people playing a game that you could be playing yourself isn’t threadshitting either, as far as I know.
If I had said “Watching people play video games is always stupid and the people who do are cretins. I can’t believe y’all are such pathetic losers!” that would reasonably, IMO, be called threadshitting, but I didn’t do that, did I? Do you know why I didn’t say that? Because it’s not what I think.
YMMV. Feel free to report these posts to a mod if you really think they are threadshitting.
Or you could try and tell me why you think video games are awesome as a spectator sport, instead of simply challenging me to a duel (at poker) and trying to be dismissive and condescending. I have no beef with you, SenorBeef (or you Airk); there’s no need to create one.
Someone came in here to discuss a cool new feature that’s part of something that a whole lot of people in this forum use. You come in saying “Watching people play video games is as stupid…” - that’s the very essence of threadshitting. You’ve come in here to tell people who want to discuss something how dumb they are for discussing or enjoying that thing.
I already did explain why this feature is useful and the reasons you might use it. You deserve to be dismissed and condescended to, since you’re threadshitting.
I played with it some more and I was wrong about the resource cost. It definitely causes some sort of stuttering or input lag. It’s pretty subtle. The actual frame rate doesn’t drop much, but something else happens that makes it less smooth. Some sort of microstutter or something. I don’t think it uses the shadowplay hardware on GeForce cards because that’s imperceptible.
It’s still a lot better than other streaming clients I’ve used in resource usage, but you can definitely tell when it’s on.
This does, in this mod’s opinion, come close to being a threadshit. Saying your opinion is fine, but when it’s pre-made as a specific topic aimed at a specific group of people or a specific interest (not one asking for opinions or discussion doing it as a whole), it can come across that way.
That being said…
If you have a post you think is against the rules, report it, because this comes close to jr modding just as much as SnowboarderBo comes close to threadshitting.
This forum already has mods, so just report the posts you think are outside of the rules and it will be handled if the mods see the need to say something.
In both cases you are watching people do something you COULD go and do yourself, if you wanted.