Comment by paulryanrogers
4 years ago
I guess it depends on the grind involved. Some streamers are paid to play games. They confess they don't always enjoy it or every game that people want to watch, but it seems better than some alternatives. And a few YouTubers I follow have admitted to less than stellar career prospects otherwise.
Now if it's pure, unfun grind that only pushes numbers around in an MMO then I'd agree it's basically just outsourced cheating. And a net negative both because it compromises a social form of entertainment and doesn't produce anything else of tangible value.
They aren't paid to play games, they are paid to interact with the audience and tell stories. Looking at view counts of clips with just stories vs clips with gameplay going on will show it. Also, games have been the background in videos or streams for a long long time, people who were on YouTube circa 2010 will remember the YouTubers like WoodysGamerTag or whiteboy7thst who played Call of Duty, but that's never why people watched them. It was the hook but people watched for their personalities.