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My thoughts on twitch.tv/Speedgaming
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I looked at the SpeedGaming schedule today, and saw only three games on it that weren't A Link to the Past, and none of them were on SG1.  This is the norm now, so I had to unfollow the channel.  The channels have become about 90% ALTTP, and I didn't grow up with a Super Nintendo, so ALTTP and its randomizer don't interest me at all.  I get that there are ALTTP tournaments going on, but SpeedGaming does an extremely poor job of giving exposure to and promoting other speedgames, and that's where my problem is.


As a viewer, I don't care that they show ALTTPR, but they need to show other things, too.  They brand themselves as a variety channel, but they don't have variety.  Their Twitter description is, "We host a variety of speedrun events and tournaments at http://twitch.tv/SpeedGaming."  It's not a bad thing for them to primarily promote the game that's the biggest draw, but they fail to live up to their own channel description.


As a speedgamer, my main perspective on this channel comes from the Zelda 2 Randomizer community.  There's a weekly Z2R race which is restreamed on SpeedGaming, but we're lucky if we even get put on SG3.  Many weeks, we're on SG4 or even SG5.  One race a week, and we can't bump an ALTTP race off of SG1 or at least SG2?  On top of all this, no promotion of the Z2R weekly is done by SG itself, and the restream chat's usually dead for most of the race as a result.  I know Z2 isn't the most popular game in the series, but if you advertise it as something worth watching, people will give it a chance.

To SG's credit, they came to us, asking if the weekly Z2R race could be brought to SpeedGaming, but it's ended up being more hassle than it's worth.  We aren't getting any new community members, racers, or Twitch followers out of it, and often the restream chat is less active than some of the runners' chats.  I'm personally not willing to stream mic-less just to be featured on Speedgaming 3, and I'm not alone there.  If my community and channel aren't growing from the restream, I shouldn't hurt my own stream's quality to improve the restream.



Anyway, tl;dr I followed SpeedGaming because a channel dedicated to showcasing a variety of speedruns was exciting to me, but instead all I got is one game that I didn't grow up with.