The Twitch Streamers Who Spend Years Broadcasting to No One

July 16th, 2018

Via: The Verge:

When John Hopstead first descended into the virtual world of Dark Souls in 2013, his mission was to save a decaying world. Famed for its brutal and exacting gameplay, Dark Souls is a popular game to live stream: if you’re going to die hundreds of times, you might as well perish with some digital company to lighten the mood. What Hopstead didn’t know then was that this would be the start of an even more difficult journey to make connections with other people. Hopstead has been streaming to largely nobody for the last five years, and he’s not alone in this pursuit.

Perhaps the biggest motivator for people who stream for extended periods of time without a viewer is the possibility of meeting like-minded people.“The reason I started streaming was that I was kind of looking for human connections,” said Richárd Szélesy, a streamer who has spent the last few years mostly broadcasting hardcore games to zero viewers. Szélesy says he grew up feeling isolated, largely spending time in front of the glow of a computer. “[I streamed to] escape loneliness and depression,” he said. While he has mostly been streaming without an audience, every so often an errant person will drop by and stick around. Even if this person never comes back — and they often don’t — the small spark is enough to keep Szélesy going.

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