As a community, we should be streaming more.

[allmhuran]

Yup, per m1sz and other responders, KSP doesn't lend itself to streaming because the iterative nature of construction and testing doesn't lend itself to entertaining anyone other than the person actually doing the iterative construction and testing.

Making KSP videos is also really, *really* hard work. Throw hours and hours of gameplay (including hours and hours of trying to find good camera angles, good lighting, etc), then hours of editing just to cut out unwanted footage, and then hours more doing beat synching for audio tracks, reprocessing sped-up audio back down the correct pitch (because you have to speed up the video to get the framerate back above non-slideshow values), captioning, blah blah blah.... and after all that you end up with somewhere between 1000 and 5000 views (unless you're Scott Manley, in which case you do none of those things and then get 250,000 views).

Speaking for myself, but this probably applies to many others who make KSP videos as well - I don't do it because I honestly believe there's an audience for them. I do it because it's something creative to do (much like making the craft in the first place).

Hell, images of "first mun landings", or 5 second gfycats of craft containing hinges usually get way more upvotes on the kerbal reddit than pretty much any videos, because people can't be bothered spending a minute or two to watch a video. An image or short gfycat only takes a second or two.

Edited July 16, 2014 by allmhuran

[Bloodlance]

Would make 1080p vids to my Youtube channel, but cant as no one is interested to see earlier builds then 0.24 at the moment.

Streaming Kerbal is a bit pointless as its low action and usually takes a long time before anything interesting happens. Perhaps a twitch channel with title "How to Kerbal" semi tutorial channel...

[m1sz]

Yup, per m1sz and other responders, KSP doesn't lend itself to streaming because the iterative nature of construction and testing doesn't lend itself to entertaining anyone other than the person actually doing the iterative construction and testing.

Making KSP videos is also really, *really* hard work. Throw hours and hours of gameplay (including hours and hours of trying to find good camera angles, good lighting, etc), then hours of editing just to cut out unwanted footage, and then hours more doing beat synching for audio tracks, reprocessing sped-up audio back down the correct pitch (because you have to speed up the video to get the framerate back above non-slideshow values), captioning, blah blah blah.... and after all that you end up with somewhere between 1000 and 5000 views (unless you're Scott Manley, in which case you do none of those things and then get 250,000 views).

Speaking for myself, but this probably applies to many others who make KSP videos as well - I don't do it because I honestly believe there's an audience for them. I do it because it's something creative to do (much like making the craft in the first place).

Hell, images of "first mun landings", or 5 second gfycats of craft containing hinges usually get way more upvotes on the kerbal reddit than pretty much any videos, because people can't be bothered spending a minute or two to watch a video. An image or short gfycat only takes a second or two.

100% agree with you

it's really a hard work to make KSP videos. More if you work with cuts, music beats, scenes, and really hard and complex crafts!

From what I've seen, people prefer to hear someone talking and doing things , me for example, love to see KSP videos, and watch a lot of them. And I like both types: commentaries like the ones from Scott, Vaos, Andrew Hansen and EnterElysium, and funny music/text videos like most of us! (danny, allmhuran, wooks, xacktar, cupcake, me)

[Rhyunix]

A simple thought from reading the first page- in order to make it as entertaining as possible, the viewers must laugh very hard at what can be achieved in several minutes of footage, not the complex launches, more like "I'm gonna fly an asteroid, here's one I made earlier" ?

[allmhuran]

From what I've seen, people prefer to hear someone talking and doing things

Yeah, you might be on to something there. My highest viewed videos are commentary videos... but having said that, they also both involve pretty specific content... one being the original "thrust plate" tutorial video, the other being the "max out the tech tree in one launch" video.

I can't imagine putting out a commentary video of more generic gameplay and getting much interest.

[Epthelyn]

Imagine a world in which high-quality, top-tier players could actually make a living streaming KSP, the way top-tier streamers in other games do.

You have to consider that KSP is nowhere near as popular as the games streamed by "top-tier" streamers (in quotes because they're not necessarily any better than a person who gets far fewer views per session, just more popular or well known). It's not as if KSP doesn't have some form of fame already (albeit fairly limited), but it's not LoL or WoW or anything like that - it's a slow-paced space simulator with pre-release status that has a relatively small but great community.

[Wallace]

I think the first post sets off with a bad premise, namely that League of Legends, DotA 2 are even vaugely the same sort of thing as KSP.

Firstly, LOL and DotA are not the biggest games around, that would be minecraft. 27m players for LOL, 7m for DotA, 54 million for Minecraft.

What the thing with LOL and DotA is, they are highly competitive battle arena games, which is why they are so watchable, KSP is not a competitive game, so it's not so good to watch other people playing

It's like comparing football to fishing, no-one wants to watch anyone fishing, but the fact is, more people go fishing than play football.

Ksp is more similar to Minecraft than LOL or DOTA, it's all about what stuff you can build over the long term rather than what happens in a fast battle, so I think if people want to make a bigger comunity then we should look more at Minecraft, and there's a fair bit of Minecraft streaming, but it's only 6th on twitch, behind 5 competitive games which have less players put together. Minecraft videos on youtube tho are always showing up in the top views and top rated, way way more than any other game, there's always at least 5 Minecraft videos on the youtube front page every day.

[air805ronin]

If my ISP would give my little Midwestern suburb more than 1 meg uplink, I would probably stream every night. As it is, when I try streaming from the xbox it reminds me in the worst way why I can't stream. delays, graphical issues, and more just dishearten me.

[SpaceXray]

It is Unfair how when I or another 1-5 streamers stream we get like 0-7 viewers. We try to talk, but we end up talking to ourselves. Wen Scott Manley or Harv starts streaming, They instantly get 100+ viewers! It's like Scott became the center of the Universe!(no offense towards Scott, he's good but I feel like per streamers should be given a chance)

[VR_Dev]

I'll start streaming my mech building, and you all can watch my macbook slowly melt

[panfish5]

I think the only way that KSP will ever get popular is if we have some really funny streamers to make people laugh even when they are building rockets or other boring parts of the stream.

[skyace65]

there is a large difference between LoL, CSGO, Dota2 and KSP. KSP isn't something competitive, plus not that much goes on in KSP to be interesting enough to watch someone else try and fly a rocket.

Maybe if the game had more VFX and detailed terrain that would help. One thing i believe could come close is if once multiplayer releases(and assuming enough people can play at once) people streamed races. Something like building the fastest spaceplane possible to get to the arctic. But thats the most basic form of a race the game could get, with this community(mostly wackjob) imagine how convoluted it could get. Flying a plane to the artic and having to drop a rover/car on the ground and than racing those to the goal.

[Xacktar]

I think the first post sets off with a bad premise, namely that League of Legends, DotA 2 are even vaugely the same sort of thing as KSP.

Firstly, LOL and DotA are not the biggest games around, that would be minecraft. 27m players for LOL, 7m for DotA, 54 million for Minecraft.

What the thing with LOL and DotA is, they are highly competitive battle arena games, which is why they are so watchable, KSP is not a competitive game, so it's not so good to watch other people playing

It's like comparing football to fishing, no-one wants to watch anyone fishing, but the fact is, more people go fishing than play football.

Ksp is more similar to Minecraft than LOL or DOTA, it's all about what stuff you can build over the long term rather than what happens in a fast battle, so I think if people want to make a bigger comunity then we should look more at Minecraft, and there's a fair bit of Minecraft streaming, but it's only 6th on twitch, behind 5 competitive games which have less players put together. Minecraft videos on youtube tho are always showing up in the top views and top rated, way way more than any other game, there's always at least 5 Minecraft videos on the youtube front page every day.

Excellently explained. I think you hit the nail on the head.

[Worst at Video Games NA]

I think the first post sets off with a bad premise, namely that League of Legends, DotA 2 are even vaugely the same sort of thing as KSP.

Firstly, LOL and DotA are not the biggest games around, that would be minecraft. 27m players for LOL, 7m for DotA, 54 million for Minecraft.

What the thing with LOL and DotA is, they are highly competitive battle arena games, which is why they are so watchable, KSP is not a competitive game, so it's not so good to watch other people playing

It's like comparing football to fishing, no-one wants to watch anyone fishing, but the fact is, more people go fishing than play football.

Ksp is more similar to Minecraft than LOL or DOTA, it's all about what stuff you can build over the long term rather than what happens in a fast battle, so I think if people want to make a bigger comunity then we should look more at Minecraft, and there's a fair bit of Minecraft streaming, but it's only 6th on twitch, behind 5 competitive games which have less players put together. Minecraft videos on youtube tho are always showing up in the top views and top rated, way way more than any other game, there's always at least 5 Minecraft videos on the youtube front page every day.

I dunno, maybe I'm overly optimistic about people's willingness to watch KSP, but I think this is a cop-out. Hearthstone is consistently near the top of twitch rankings in number of viewers and it's a strategic card game with almost no action or activity, and right now has 24k viewers. As I type this, over 14k people are watching Minecraft streams. Civilization V, a personal favorite game of mine but a game that even I would never watch on stream, has almost 700 viewers. KSP, by comparison, has less than 60. We're pulling a tenth of the viewer base of Civilization V.

I don't think that's a genre issue. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's not what it looks like, at least not to me.

[leax256]

I've tried streaming and got a few viewers, most i had at once was ~18 and that was when I walked away for a minute and my sister started talking to my viewers. maybe I should get a female friend to co-commentate...just need to find one first.

[m1sz]

Could 4 people stream together at the same time? xD, that way we can atleast talk to eachother

[Boomerang]

I'll admit that I don't really understand the appeal of either doing the streaming or watching it, for any game, but I can't imagine for that KSP lends itself to it, as others have said. There's a reason certain videomakers are more popular - they're good at parsing down their content to the important bits. No one would seriously watch a series of 7 hour videos of someone setting up a colony over a couple days and I can't imagine they'd want to watch it live either. Better to see the good bits, either for straight entertainment value, or to take whatever inspiration there is to be had and jump right back into your own game.

[freedomispopular]

Out of curiosity, I checked the "currently in-game" numbers of some popular games on Steam. As of this very moment (5 PM EST):

Dota 2 - 728439

CS:GO - 144881

Civ 5 - 44531

KSP - 6732

That right there is gonna be the best answer as to why there are so few streamers.