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Hey @Kiraz, thanks for the thoughtful response. I don’t think twitch is a dead end, I just don’t think it should be much of a priority at all. Late night chill hangout solo streams are probably the most effort I’d say is worthwhile outside of specific events (reactions/HoG) it would also make group streams more special in general. I love your addition to the off the cuff Huber idea. I really want that now, even if that’s just how it opens, and then goes into a more VO type video essay. Hopefully this will get back to him somehow because I think he’d also enjoy writing about one of his favorite series. Hell each ally could do something like that if they want about games near and dear to them. As avid gamers as they are, I’d be shocked if they didn’t each know a few dozen games by heart they could do a strict storyline essay on. Then it could be something like “Storytime With Huber” or “Storytime with Damiani” etc. I want this hard now 🥺 And apologies if anything I said came off overtly negative. I love the Allie’s. They’ve been with me over a decade at this point. It just comes from a place of love, frustration, and wanting them to succeed far more than they have been. I’d love to help guide them in the right direction but alas I’m just a patron and one opinion. I wish they would reach out to larger YT channels for guidance. I know a bunch of them do consultation work on the side for growing channels. MatPat from Game Theory for instance might be a good one to reach out to. Idk.

Tony

@tony While I think your paragraph sways a bit too hard into the sweeping-negative territory over constructive criticism. I think one point you're getting at is - a lot of the twitch content doesn't answer the "what can EZA do that nobody else can do". I encourage Bloodworth's initiative to find ways to use the editorial / review process to create more content. Mysterious Monsters is great! I think there's opportunity to review the setup of the game and streamline it... but ultimately, solidly fun content! How many other gaming youtube places have access to a full studio now? It's such a differentiator of a space compared to other twitch stream / youtube channels. FLEX IT MORE. Get some new camera angles in that stream room and make some cool VOD content. I love the idea of Huber sitting in a chair, with a big fake book in his lap, like he's about to read you the night before christmas and instead it's a dramatic retelling of Resident Evil 1, or a story about the Mansion in the first game. (Good idea Tony :D ) And I disagree that solo streaming is a dead-end for the allies. Don Vs. Waverace has all the energy of a VOD wrapped into hours of weekly content. It's a masterpiece of streaming. Everything just needs to be re-examined and asked. "Okay, is "x" content we're making playing to our strengths/interests".

Kiraz

Agree, but let's not forget they are down 2 people who wrote reviews. I think Isla has the potential to write great reviews (focus on indie?) but afaik has no interest. All the high production stuff is the best but we can feel the returns aren't as great. Still, I wish there was more.

Lauri Laivo

same, twitch is very much a "watch press conferences and nothing else" app for me. I never touch any of that stuff, not because I dislike what the allies do, I just have no interest in watching people play games. Love the podcasts though.

potato potato also another potato

I would love OP/ED content from EZA

Steven Beaumont

Oh, I just meant that I didn't know what niche you were talking about. I was not aware that they were leaning into Twitch as I don't consume content there. I think the biggest evergreen content they did was Pop Fiction and the Retrospectives, but those took forever. Trash Babies and Hunting Huber are ither great shows that could be evergreen.

Tyler Travis

Oh and as far as them leaning into it, it’s milestone goals here on Patreon, has been a focus of many revamps, and is what has gradually gotten me personally to watch less and less. As someone whose met all of the guys, and went to EZA functions it just kinda stings that they’re drifting so far away from what I found interesting about their GT content and early Eza content. But it’s not my company and I’m just one viewer. I don’t expect them to bend to my will by any means. I just don’t want to see them go away because of very vocal people who want their twitch type stuff. Imo they pretty much need to diversify more. They touted friend code as evergreen content. It became Nintendo news after awhile. All of the podcasts have a shelf life for the most part, there’s not much of a reason to listen to news from a few months ago. Tabletop escapades was timeless but was scrapped. Cup of Jones editorials were the same. Fiasconauts too. Box peak is another one. Huber’s show varies for relevance over a long period of time as does Easy Update. Depends on what they decide to do that episode though. Sometimes it’s shelf life is similar to the podcasts. Achieve it yourself and mysterious monsters are great examples for the direction things should be headed, however I don’t think it is enough. They seem to eat up a ton of resources for not enough in return. There’s a lot that can be said about these YouTubers that literally just write a well written essay and have a VO with some BRoll going. They have both of those skill sets down to a very professional level, and it’s frustrating to me that they don’t do that type of content, as it’s the type of thing that will expand their audience. Like give me Huber telling the story of an entire resident evil game. That would be amazing. Not off the cuff. Written, and maybe even spoken by him. Just a random example though. At the end of the day, they’re gonna do whatever makes them happy and believe is a good idea.

Tony

It’s not even close. Granted their payment scheme is vastly different. Twitch has a bunch of subscribers that give more money than a YouTube view does. Twitch’s active user base is 140m last I checked, YouTube has 2.6b. Twitch Eza’s highest live viewership was 16.7k with a total follower (free) count of 68.2k. 6.3M views total for the channel. YouTube, eza has two channels. We will focus on the main channel. 259k Subscribers (free), 126.2M views for the channel. [ezap has less than 30k subs, 13.4m lifetime views] I like twitch and use it a lot. But I’ve listened to the same editorials on YouTube over and over when I enjoy them, but generally don’t care to rewatch random livestreams, and I’m in no way the minority for that one. Unfortunately twitch is just easier. You go live, and then upload the VOD on a YouTube channel with very little editing if any. A lot of people do it but they don’t rely on it for significant income. It’s essentially passive for many creators. Eza just leans heavily into this area and the twitch audience is just tiny compared to YouTube.

Tony

Is Twitch the niche audience? Are they leaning more into that? I'm genuinely curious as I probably haven't logged into Twitch since E3...

Tyler Travis

Hopefully most of the feedback is taken as constructive, and not in a hateful offensive manner. I feel like there’s a growing portion of the community that is rather discontent with the state of things for a while now. Agreeing with some (definitely not all) of those views, we just don’t want to see something that we have cared so much about fail because of going further and further into a niche audience. It’s definitely a balancing act, but it looks less and less sustainable with leaning into twitch as heavily as they do imo. But I’m just an outside observer, I’m sure there’s lots that make that seem less practical to the Allie’s than it looks to me.

Tony

Hope they post some of the results or what they will do to fix some of the issues, we just want easy allies to keep going for as long as possible.