Circus live-streams?

[Martin]

I'm on mobile so I'll keep this short, but given how there is a push being made to put the Smogon twitch to good use I was wondering if there was any interest in maybe using it as a way of promoting Circus and drumming up interest in this part of the site.

While obviously live mafia is one of the things that could be done, there is a lot of scope for things that can be done on-stream, ranging from live D&D to whatever that drawing game that gained traction on Discord for a while was called to audience participation games and who knows what else: its a blank slate that has the potential to reduce the section's obscurity even just a little bit.

Any thoughts on this?

 

[Yeti]

I think the biggest handicaps to this are does anyone within Circus already stream Twitch (in that nobody is experienced and knows wat do) and getting enough people online, regularly, to stream multiplayer games.

Live mafia obv yeah, forum mafia is out cause the streamer can't be like "and here my teammate makes a slip I will bus him for" since other players could watch the stream and learn info..

I think Survivor would be a strong candidate for this but I'm not sure if they would be able to play the games clustered together enough to warrant advertising Survivor battle stream.

Like this is a good idea but I think we may struggle to be regular enough in streaming or like, "long enough." Cause sure we could Skribbl but that game has kind of a limited duration of how long you can sit there drawing the same word bank, y'know?

I'm totally on board to try and set this up.

 

[UncleSam]

We could stream live mafia games that might actually get viewers honestly, I like this idea

 

[Blazade]

I think the biggest handicaps to this are does anyone within Circus already stream Twitch (in that nobody is experienced and knows wat do) and getting enough people online, regularly, to stream multiplayer games.

Live mafia obv yeah, forum mafia is out cause the streamer can't be like "and here my teammate makes a slip I will bus him for" since other players could watch the stream and learn info..

I think Survivor would be a strong candidate for this but I'm not sure if they would be able to play the games clustered together enough to warrant advertising Survivor battle stream.

Like this is a good idea but I think we may struggle to be regular enough in streaming or like, "long enough." Cause sure we could Skribbl but that game has kind of a limited duration of how long you can sit there drawing the same word bank, y'know?

I'm totally on board to try and set this up.

I do regularly live stream on twitch and have for over 5 years. I get about 20 people when i do but still I can handle myself and walk people through it.

Dailymafia, resistance, diplomacy, a live outside contact game could all work imo.

 

[zorbees]

Blazade do you really think outside contact game would work when a lot of the action goes on privately? I don't think it would be that entertaining to the viewers compared to a NOC

 

[Yeti]

Yeah the issue with an OC game, ever, is that a lot of info needs to be private. The mafia shouldn't be able to watch the stream and see the village leader's spreadsheet.

NOC format mafias are about the only option I think.

 

[Blazade]

With some really good production and absolute honor from the players it could be done well from a host's perspective. The way I see it being done is 1-2 hosts commentating on the state of the game, one collecting and resolving actions, the other cycling through text channels and sheets

 

[Blazade]

In fact give me a month and I will absolutely do this.

 

[Whydon]

I think the biggest handicaps to this are does anyone within Circus already stream Twitch (in that nobody is experienced and knows wat do) and getting enough people online, regularly, to stream multiplayer games.

Live mafia obv yeah, forum mafia is out cause the streamer can't be like "and here my teammate makes a slip I will bus him for" since other players could watch the stream and learn info..

I think Survivor would be a strong candidate for this but I'm not sure if they would be able to play the games clustered together enough to warrant advertising Survivor battle stream.

Like this is a good idea but I think we may struggle to be regular enough in streaming or like, "long enough." Cause sure we could Skribbl but that game has kind of a limited duration of how long you can sit there drawing the same word bank, y'know?

I'm totally on board to try and set this up.

Just a question, but when you mention Survivor, do you mean as something that would be played throughout a series of live streams, or in one single live stream? It would probably have to be a series of streams, which could be fun to both watch and play, but what would the live stream host do? Would they be like a "recap" person and describe what's going on in the game, or actually host? Would they also show battles and announce who wins certain competitions and whose voted out? And would votes be revealed? Or would it work a different way?

 

[Yeti]

I was thinking that normal-Smogon Twitch like, must be battles, so you would stream the Survivor battles, but the problem is they take place so sporadically that it'd be hard to actually advertise them or show more than 3 m inutes of battling at any one time.

You could probably air a bunch of the battles' replays at the time of the voting reveal. Like the hosts of the game commentate on the battle replays and then right after do the voting reveals. Maybe?

 

[zorbees]

honestly i feel like there are so many better sources for good battles than the survivor game, it'd be better to stick to actual circus type stuff

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

Gdi zorbees is ninja

Circus has no battling niche to exploit over all the other competition etc

 

[Yeti]

Sure the battles aren't great but my thought was, for people who come to the Smogon channel "for" Pokemon battles, it would catch their eye and maybe get them to watch our other streamed games.

I'm not pressed at all if nobody wants to do it I just thought the format could lend itself to streaming and be a way for us to hook people who initially only want mons.

 

[Andy Snype]

if you're gonna stream mafia, i feel like the main thing that could be interesting is an rtm 5-minute day phases with 2-minute night phases for a 10-15 person game where people scramble and playercams to see people's reactions.

i wonder if there could be some input feedback like TwitchPlaysPokemon or something to involve chat in action decisions or something.

 

[Ampharos]

gunboat diplomacy stream

watch unclesam's face discover new shades of purple in real time

 

[JALMONT]

Live mafia is best imo, although that's something we've tried to do for a while and never gotten going so...

I wouldn't be worried about the fact that survivor games aren't high quality battles, no one watches Survivor irl because they want to see the best puzzle solvers solve puzzles and so on, but because they're interested in the larger narrative that survivor crafts. that being said, i don't really see to do so in a way that is compelling enough to an audience. It would prob require a lot of work by the hosts to "film" the episodes and even though probably isn't that interesting. Perhaps maybe a live stream of the final tribal council might be interesting enough (preceded by a quick game summary), but then again, it's hard to believe that the numbers would be there to make that happen.

I guess I just don't think Survivor is super feasible to stream for now. Perhaps the battles might be interesting enough if you know the context behind the players (e.g. Twin vs. Haruno) but otherwise it's just too difficult to communicate in a live stream what actually makes the game of Survivor interesting to an audience.

 

[Josh]

harsh truth: nobody would watch streamed circus survivor. it's flat out boring for those not participating. we don't have any survivor narrative to tap into due to being people sitting behind a computer screen occasionally putting 5 minutes into a virtual survivor, as opposed to being stranded with only x other people. there's just no appeal for a spectator. nobody will be invested in players either, so even in the most extreme examples I doubt anybody even in circus (never mind the rest of smogon) cares whether or not twin bests haruno in little cup.

the way we get viewers is streaming mafia and perhaps other fun niche games once in a while. mafia is what circus is known for though, and real time mafia can be interesting. people playing in a Skype call, ideally with webcams, would get some attention assuming they're entertaining people. idk. just not survivor and the like pls.

 

[Da Letter El]

I can guarantee no one wants to watch my survivor pokemon battles rofl

 

[JALMONT]

harsh truth: nobody would watch streamed circus survivor. it's flat out boring for those not participating. we don't have any survivor narrative to tap into due to being people sitting behind a computer screen occasionally putting 5 minutes into a virtual survivor, as opposed to being stranded with only x other people. there's just no appeal for a spectator. nobody will be invested in players either, so even in the most extreme examples I doubt anybody even in circus (never mind the rest of smogon) cares whether or not twin bests haruno in little cup.

the way we get viewers is streaming mafia and perhaps other fun niche games once in a while. mafia is what circus is known for though, and real time mafia can be interesting. people playing in a Skype call, ideally with webcams, would get some attention assuming they're entertaining people. idk. just not survivor and the like pls.

Not really a harsh (or all that interesting) truth given that the opinion has already been stated in this thread before you...

Survivor is being brought up because it is very accessible to people on the site and the goal of this (as far as I am aware) is to advertise circus, not become the next multimillion dollar twitch channel.

I do think Survivor could be better advertised, I think it's definitely a strong point of Circus. Even if people don't want to stick around and play mafia, it's cool to get people to have some exposure to the circus subforum in any case. At this point, I don't think streaming is the answer, but perhaps a little better advertisement beyond just word of mouth might be a good idea. I guess that's a bit off topic though.

If people actually want live mafia to happen, then we should start with actually running a live mafia game over skype or whatever before even considering streaming anything. I'm down, especially once I'm back in the states so hopefully we can get something going especially during the summer.

 

[Ditto]

1. I've always wanted to have stream updates maybe once a week on Big (or expert) mafias, but it would hard to regulate whether or not players were watching the stream. It would require a lot of trust.

2. I think it'd actually be pretty cool if we had a RTM game type that used facecams and the lynch was decided by the viewers. Viewers trying to make reads on who is mafia and such.

3. I still don't understand why Survivor is part of Circus, it always seemed more like a tournament, but I haven't followed it since the first one so I don't really know.

 

[zorbees]

3. I still don't understand why Survivor is part of Circus, it always seemed more like a tournament, but I haven't followed it since the first one so I don't really know.

The battles aren't the key to winning, rather the social politics are more important, which fits the circus atmosphere

 

[JALMONT]

I am back in a reasonable timezone and I would be interested in getting together some skype mafia if anyone else is???

If someone's down to host, I think it would be cool to do like a test run (we could even play cop5/dethy) and then move on to actual setups if the test run goes smoothly? idk if we can manage it since this never seems to happen, but if we can get it together i think it would be a lot of fun. maybe even make it weekly or make it into a tournament of some sort to keep it going, i dunno. just throwing some ideas out there

 

[MoodyCloud]

Re Ditto's idea of stream updates of big games I'd like to see something like that happen, though for starters there'd need to be more big multifactions happening. I don't think settling for a system where people promise to not watch and get game-related info would work, factions providing and sharing some stuff with the hosts in a way that's agreed upon and part of the game from the get go could however be a compromise.

 

[Da Letter El]

I am down to mafia but can't do anything for 2 weeks because vacation

 

[Ampharos]

I am down to mafia but can't do anything for 2 weeks because vacation