Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
The only think that boggles my mind more than people watching videos of OTHER PEOPLE playing video games instead of playing video games themselves is people watching videos of OTHER PEOPLE rolling dice.

Just wait till we get "Miniwargamer Dave REACTS on Tabletop Tactics playing Chaos" - so people can watch other people watching other people rolling dice .

I'm honestly shocked it hasn't gotten to that point already...

I like watching them mainly to see what kind of cool models people have, different terrain, different ideas for narrative games/missions, checking to see if I'm even playing the rules right. They definitely have their uses, though you are right, much rather play a game myself.

I try to support Dice and Brushes and Slider Games since they post to these forums so I consider them part of this community.

Keep up the good work people!

I don't watch a lot of batreps because I can't find a good Crusade series, which is what I want.

Scaredcast came closest- I think he's got 4 Crusade games with the same army posted. But he doesn't make as much out of the campaign elements as he should if he really wants to highlight Crusade content.

I still put them on while I'm painting. I prefer slide-show style reports where they summarize what is going on and their thoughts going into it rather than the overproduced ones with 3 different cameras, cringe banter, and the dice cam is the most prominent making it so that you can't really see the table all that well.

I don't watch any batreps that are on a digital/virtual tabletop.

I find the ones who cut a single camera over to the dice tray for every roll to be the most annoying...just delete those parts and show what happened in the game.

I cannot recall the name of the channel, but there was a youtube video series of a guy who made a bunch of "His dudes" and did a narrative story of his dudes facing off against other threats in small 500pt battles. After the battles he would do narrated reenactments of funerals, and full break downs of each of his dudes.

Come to think of it, it was a very similar style to a lot of the videos on youtube marketed towards kids and telling stories through playing with toys.

My ex's son used to watch videos of people playing with lego ninja toys, and it was like live action cartoons. Very odd that the kid was soooooo hyper into it. He didn't want the toy, he wanted to watch others play with it and take it on adventures. When he played with the same toy, he would just try to mimic what he'd just seen on that week's episode.

I think that's a small window into the adult(Liberal usage term here) reason for watching bat reps.

My viewership is pretty much all about background noise while I build, paint, etc. Yes, I’d much rather pLay than watch but that isn’t realistically feasible time wise.
Reading this thread so far just reinforces how we are all different and have varied tastes, there is no one answer to enjoying this hobby.
I’m a big fan of the Tabletop Tactics crew, but they have had ups and downs in my opinion. Unlike the other poster here, I find videos with Lawrence to actually be the better ones. I used to like Beard and Bone (sounds like a rock band) except when they played each other as the silliness would go off the charts. I’m getting the same vibe now with Beard and Bard. Separately, they are both entertaining, together? Can be a tough listen.
Katy was like nails on a chalkboard when she first started, it was really tough and had me stop watching the group for awhile, but I feel that she has found her comfort level within the group and fits in great now.

SS82 might not have improved film wise, but his effort on terrain is unmatched and so visually it makes the game appealing.

40K in 40mins often have interesting content too and I generally like the visuals and effort.

Cannot watch tabletop titans as it’s just too long and slow for my tastes.

Generally, I don’t have time to watch a lot of content, but it’s an easy way to pass the time while doing something else.

I don't think there has ever been a time where video battles were 'good'.

They're a pointless exercise if you ask me.

I personally find games like 40k incredibly boring to watch because there are very few decision points per unit of time. That probably also is why there is such a focus on trying to be funny and dice rolls because there isn't much happening most of the time. Or at least, nothing interesting.

Another aspect is that I feel a lot of players don't really understand tactics to communicate them to players.

You talk about building, painting, collecting, army list building and you can get mountains of theory, practical and a whole set of language terms and phrases and such. It's honestly areas that are really well developed

But as soon as you put models on the table the understanding, teaching, knowledge, experience and language dries up.


It's hard to engage people and talk tactics if you don't understand them yourself and if you can't outline your plan beyond "go for the objectives". It's also hard to then engage an audience when you don't have those fundamental building blocks established.





I'd liken it to chess. If you've very little to no interest in chess chances are watching it is dead boring; if you understand it and you understand the moves and tactics then suddenly it can become a whole lot more interesting to watch as now you can start to understand what the players are doing and aiming for; what potential moves they might make; what it looks like when they make a mistake but then it turns into a smart move etc...

Wargames - at least fantasy/sci fi - have a dramatic whole in the gameplay side of things at almost all levels from local gamer to GW at the top end.






Now this understanding is clearly out there, but its not being communicated, picked up on nor passed on well.

 Sim-Life wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So I know this is crass and immature, but from a marketing standpoint, if my key demo was sweaty nerds, I'd be hiring waaaay more hot busty redheads to run these Battle Reports, but instead it's all middle-aged white guys. How has no one marketed from this angle? Granted, their are some independent hobby channels with "influencers" leaning towards the camera while painting their minis, but very rare. Seriously, why has no one tried to "americanize" this demo? Just make it boobs, beers, and battles!

Duff man approves!

We have to be inclusive now. Such a channel would be torn apart by virtue signallers.

You have it basically completely backwards. The channel would be attacked by paternalistic misogynists who can't abide women being in male-dominated spaces, and would accuse them of using their appearance to generate engagement instead of supposedly "valid" things like skill at games, rules expertise, hobby skill, etc. Look no further than the large subset of the gaming/streaming community that rages against hot tub streamers on Twitch.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I used to love watching 40k battle reports online. Long ones. Short ones. Any of them, really. But these days, I'm finding it more difficult to pay attention to them. Maybe I've just had my fill? Maybe it's because so much of the game is tied up in stratagems that aren't visible on the table? Maybe it's just trying to follow along with the stack of rules interactions that I'm growing increasingly unfamiliar with? I'm not sure. But it's a shame, and I'm hoping my interest in that sort of thing is rekindled at some point.

Has anyone else found their interesting in video battle reports waning lately?

I feel like I might be able to sink my teeth into more of a narrative style game or one of the small-scale variant systems MWG sometimes does, but those seem to be a rarity.

I found them enjoyable during COVID lockdowns but personally I prefer to play or spectate a game at the FLGS. A narrative style battle report would be pretty fun though, especially if the player's are both very into describing the turns and rolls as if they're a scene in a novel. I personally haven't found any of those for 40k but have seen people do them for historicals.

I have to admit that until I read the rest of this thread, I had not considered that folks would enjoy watching BatReps in a similar manner as a sport or a chess match.

I still have zero interest in watching them and don't get the appeal but I maybe I understand those who do a bit better now.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
A lot of video batreps now sound like men reading spreadsheets out, instead of genuine friends genuinely having fun.

To me this is what playing 40k has become, ditto for batreps.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Eilif wrote:
I have to admit that until I read the rest of this thread, I had not considered that folks would enjoy watching BatReps in a similar manner as a sport or a chess match.

I still have zero interest in watching them and don't get the appeal but I maybe I understand those who do a bit better now.

Exalted.

 Altruizine wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So I know this is crass and immature, but from a marketing standpoint, if my key demo was sweaty nerds, I'd be hiring waaaay more hot busty redheads to run these Battle Reports, but instead it's all middle-aged white guys. How has no one marketed from this angle? Granted, their are some independent hobby channels with "influencers" leaning towards the camera while painting their minis, but very rare. Seriously, why has no one tried to "americanize" this demo? Just make it boobs, beers, and battles!

Duff man approves!

We have to be inclusive now. Such a channel would be torn apart by virtue signallers.

You have it basically completely backwards. The channel would be attacked by paternalistic misogynists who can't abide women being in male-dominated spaces, and would accuse them of using their appearance to generate engagement instead of supposedly "valid" things like skill at games, rules expertise, hobby skill, etc. Look no further than the large subset of the gaming/streaming community that rages against hot tub streamers on Twitch.

Don't have to go that far. Just go back to the responses, right here on dakka, every. single. time. GW got Becca Scott to do a 'How to Play <game>' video. Despite the fact that she does game and nerd stuff professionally and has been up to her ears in nerd culture pretty much her entire working life (and as a kid).

I don't recall many complaints about her doing the videos. I know I recall that they'd do that odd camera thing where they zoom in and there's half a wall behind her head being shown and her face pushed up against the opposite side of the screen. But that wasn't a problem with her, just a problem with the choice of presentation.

If anything I figure more people would want more video since I recall her videos were only covering the very basics of getting started (which likely makes them less useful for many average dakka fans as we either already know or can work out the basics

Voss wrote:

Don't have to go that far. Just go back to the responses, right here on dakka, every. single. time. GW got Becca Scott to do a 'How to Play <game>' video. Despite the fact that she does game and nerd stuff professionally and has been up to her ears in nerd culture pretty much her entire working life (and as a kid).

I genuinely don't recall that being the case. A quick search of the site also doesn't seem to back this up. There were a few comments from people saying they weren't massive fans of hers but most of the comments I could find were actually generally positive.

On the general subject of video batreps, I happened to catch a small part of the Vanguard Tactics livestream last night, which was Tau vs Emperor's Children. They have a really professional set-up, with an announcer/chat moderator and two players, multiple cameras and a decent overlay. I couldn't watch more than about 5 minutes before becoming completely bored and lost. This isn't a criticism of the presenters or the channel. There are fundamental problems with streaming 40k, I think. The models are often too small and insignificant to get a good idea of what's going on. In this game, for example, you could make out the Tau battlesuits easily enough, and all the vehicles, but I had no idea where the EC or Tau infantry was. There are so many dice rolls that you quickly lose track of what's happening, and that's with the players explaining what's going on. Watching the same thing, but with a non-playing commentator trying to keep up makes the whole thing worse.

It gets a little better with professionally edited games with overlays, as we see from the likes of Tabletop Tactics. Even then, I'm finding the actual mechanics of playing the game just get in the way of making things entertaining. What happens on the table seems to matter less and less compared to triggering a dozen different buffs from strats, auras, psychic powers, etc. That leads to the problem Johnny Hell highlighted, where the game feels like people reading rules at each other rather than playing a wargame.

Then this only means you just don't like that way of playing of the game. When someone watches sports they don't get a close up of every move, especialy when you are at an event or at a stadium. But you have watched enough of the players plays, you know how he moves, what he can or can not do, what he likes to do durning the match and you have the list or line up of the team memorised. There are entire industries that exist where the actual player, durning the game is an blue or red X on someones tablet or phone.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Altruizine wrote:

You have it basically completely backwards. The channel would be attacked by paternalistic misogynists who can't abide women being in male-dominated spaces, and would accuse them of using their appearance to generate engagement instead of supposedly "valid" things like skill at games, rules expertise, hobby skill, etc. Look no further than the large subset of the gaming/streaming community that rages against hot tub streamers on Twitch.

Aren't hot tub streamers just giving people a sesion of "porn" light though. And of course questions about someones views are put in to question, when the statments they make are cathegorical. If I suddenly went to a female gymnastic forum and started giving advice people would be in full right to ask what the hell do I know about it and what my creditential are. That is how it works every where. Opinions are taken at face value from people who have been already proven to first know what they are talking about and second be right multiple times. And even then it is good to check what they are saying from time to time, as people with time tend to get lazy.

So, I'm honestly thinking more like "Top 3 with Lisa Foiles" That sort of crap. Here is a rather useless review of 3 new units GW is releasing this week, with a incredibly attractive redhead with a push up bustier, jumping up and down and making not so subtle jokes about sex. Tell me that gak wouldn't SELL out at 40kcon or whatever.

The "esports" style warmachine or 40k stream battle reports are mostly terrible. You need to be extremely familiar with the factions in 40k or Warmahordes to follow the paly by play

Karol wrote:

Aren't hot tub streamers just giving people a sesion of "porn" light though. And of course questions about someones views are put in to question, when the statments they make are cathegorical. If I suddenly went to a female gymnastic forum and started giving advice people would be in full right to ask what the hell do I know about it and what my creditential are. That is how it works every where. Opinions are taken at face value from people who have been already proven to first know what they are talking about and second be right multiple times. And even then it is good to check what they are saying from time to time, as people with time tend to get lazy.

There are several foolish ideas in your post, so I'll try to focus on one or two.

For your comparison you selected the concept of a "female gymnastic forum," a choice which bears little accuracy in relation to Twitch. Your analogy also proposes that you would be "giving advice". Twitch is neither a pure videogame forum (it started as a website with a guy livestreaming his life) nor is it centred around advice (it is centred around entertainment, which can often include things like playing a game incompetently or breaking a game for the purposes of speedrunning it, etc.)

However, the structure of your post makes it unclear whether the "people with views who are making categorical statements" are the hot tub streamers or the hypothetical sexy battle reporters. Fortunately, either way you're offering nonsense, so it's not necessary to parse your unclear formatting.

The disillusionment with video batreps is partly a challenge of the format (video alone is a difficult medium to convey the tactical board situation because it's very "messy" and hard to tell what's really going on) but I think it's also significantly a function of the kind of game 40K is or has become.

Older batreps during older editions of 40K had more (IMHO) spatially visible decision points because frankly things like position and maneuver, influence of terrain, and the unmitigated chaos of raw die rolls drove more narrative and unexpected outcomes. We can argue about whether it makes for a better tactical game or not, but older editions were more dramatic and varied in the situations that would unfold in unexpected ways, forcing players into conundrums they didn't anticipate. All of that creates drama and interesting storytelling. Hence more interesting battle reports.

Now, with bigger armies fighting over smaller boards, with everything getting 15 layers of die rolling, everything is more predictable. But even worse, less and less of the game is resolved visually based on what's on the board and relative position, and is instead resolved via layers of stratagems and special rules, and re-rolls, and other plays that aren't "seen" on the table. When you look at the game state today, only a portion of the game state is what you see on the table, the rest is hidden behind intangibles and command points, and secondary objectives, etc. All of this makes it really hard to get a sense of what's actually going on when you look at the game as an outsider trying to watch a battle report.

 Altruizine wrote:

Karol wrote:

Aren't hot tub streamers just giving people a sesion of "porn" light though. And of course questions about someones views are put in to question, when the statments they make are cathegorical. If I suddenly went to a female gymnastic forum and started giving advice people would be in full right to ask what the hell do I know about it and what my creditential are. That is how it works every where. Opinions are taken at face value from people who have been already proven to first know what they are talking about and second be right multiple times. And even then it is good to check what they are saying from time to time, as people with time tend to get lazy.

There are several foolish ideas in your post, so I'll try to focus on one or two.

For your comparison you selected the concept of a "female gymnastic forum," a choice which bears little accuracy in relation to Twitch. Your analogy also proposes that you would be "giving advice". Twitch is neither a pure videogame forum (it started as a website with a guy livestreaming his life) nor is it centred around advice (it is centred around entertainment, which can often include things like playing a game incompetently or breaking a game for the purposes of speedrunning it, etc.)

However, the structure of your post makes it unclear whether the "people with views who are making categorical statements" are the hot tub streamers or the hypothetical sexy battle reporters. Fortunately, either way you're offering nonsense, so it's not necessary to parse your unclear formatting.

Did you watch Goodwill Hunting and make that your personality? haha

As for batreps, I find most of them can't clearly show the match very well. When I watch a game IRL I want to see the measuring and planning, stuff thats usually glossed over in batreps and replaced with weird filler which isnt always to my taste.

I do get a bit annoyed with MWG's tendency to use a number of prominent proxies in their armies. For example, I'm not a big fan of seeing the Ravaged Star minis playing such a prominent role in the CSM armies.

 Altruizine wrote:

There are several foolish ideas in your post, so I'll try to focus on one or two.

For your comparison you selected the concept of a "female gymnastic forum," a choice which bears little accuracy in relation to Twitch. Your analogy also proposes that you would be "giving advice". Twitch is neither a pure videogame forum (it started as a website with a guy livestreaming his life) nor is it centred around advice (it is centred around entertainment, which can often include things like playing a game incompetently or breaking a game for the purposes of speedrunning it, etc.)

However, the structure of your post makes it unclear whether the "people with views who are making categorical statements" are the hot tub streamers or the hypothetical sexy battle reporters. Fortunately, either way you're offering nonsense, so it's not necessary to parse your unclear formatting.

I was talking about the one specific person mentioned by other people, whose quality of videos about game related subjectes was, according to other people as I do and did not know of that person, put in to question. That is a separate matter from hot tub streamers making money of stuff bordering on soft core. It doesn't what Twich was or what isn't. It ain't female specific either. In my line of studies for example there is a big difference between , and this is regardless of sex, a wrestler talking about wrestling and an "american" wrestler aka an entertainer, speaking about wrestling the olympic sport.
One opinion about the sport in question matters more, then the other persons. That is why I mentioned that there are very good top demon players in w40k and no one claims they have been that because of their looks or some other stupid thing, they are just very good demon players.

If someone could have problems with videos about w40k or how the game it should be played is GW itself funels it in to people no one knows from being good at w40k. But that is not really a problem of what ever someone is specific sex. I mean otherwise one could say that good looking players have it better, because humans litteraly think that good looking people are smart and right, so a good looking player could make others , given proper social skills and social status, get results "ugly" players would not get. I does happen in sports, and it would affect more people then just the few female players that exist within the w40k gaming community.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Stevefamine wrote:
The "esports" style warmachine or 40k stream battle reports are mostly terrible. You need to be extremely familiar with the factions in 40k or Warmahordes to follow the paly by play

Okey, but that is like saying sports X is crap, because without in depth knowladge what it is about, you don't know what is going on. Cricet for example makes no sense if you don't know the rules in depth, and some specific rival/grude match ups, yet milions people love it. What americans like to call football is a beloved sport, yet to a euro dude the idea of a 50 people team is crazy. I have heard the reverse about football coming from people in the US, that it is boring etc. Everything can be boring when your both not really interested in it and don't want to learn anything about it. Doesn't have to be competitions, biology, history, getting dropped in to seson 11 of your grandmas favourit telenovela.

Karol,

Do you have any issues with women playing 40k and wanting to add to the discussion, make videos, etc, just like other players?

Karol wrote:

 Stevefamine wrote:
The "esports" style warmachine or 40k stream battle reports are mostly terrible. You need to be extremely familiar with the factions in 40k or Warmahordes to follow the paly by play

Okey, but that is like saying sports X is crap, because without in depth knowladge what it is about, you don't know what is going on. Cricet for example makes no sense if you don't know the rules in depth, and some specific rival/grude match ups, yet milions people love it. What americans like to call football is a beloved sport, yet to a euro dude the idea of a 50 people team is crazy. I have heard the reverse about football coming from people in the US, that it is boring etc. Everything can be boring when your both not really interested in it and don't want to learn anything about it. Doesn't have to be competitions, biology, history, getting dropped in to seson 11 of your grandmas favourit telenovela.

What you're missing in this comparison is the people commenting here are, by definition, familiar with and involved in the game. This isn't a case of not being familiar with the game, it's just that the game itself doesn't translate well to the video medium. Even when it's 2 factions I know well, the way 40k video batreps are produced often makes them boring to watch. For many people, no amount of in-depth knowledge of the game or armies will change that - it's an inherent flaw of the game system itself.

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
I do get a bit annoyed with MWG's tendency to use a number of prominent proxies in their armies. For example, I'm not a big fan of seeing the Ravaged Star minis playing such a prominent role in the CSM armies.

That's not proxying, though. These are CSM used as CSM. If they were used as loyalist Marines or Squats it would be proxying. Or if you used Blood Angels Marines as Ultramarines.

Blndmage wrote:Karol,

Do you have any issues with women playing 40k and wanting to add to the discussion, make videos, etc, just like other players?

How in the blue feth did you make that connection?

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
I do get a bit annoyed with MWG's tendency to use a number of prominent proxies in their armies. For example, I'm not a big fan of seeing the Ravaged Star minis playing such a prominent role in the CSM armies.

That's not proxying, though. These are CSM used as CSM. If they were used as loyalist Marines or Squats it would be proxying. Or if you used Blood Angels Marines as Ultramarines.

3P minis are by their very nature proxies.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
I do get a bit annoyed with MWG's tendency to use a number of prominent proxies in their armies. For example, I'm not a big fan of seeing the Ravaged Star minis playing such a prominent role in the CSM armies.

That's not proxying, though. These are CSM used as CSM. If they were used as loyalist Marines or Squats it would be proxying. Or if you used Blood Angels Marines as Ultramarines.

Uhm pretty sure you can't find ravaged star miniatures on GW's store...

3p parties while can be good are by definition proxying. Can be better or worse than say using loyalist marines as CSM but still proxying.

I've watched a few for a few years. I'd always rather play than watch, certainly, but getting a game is hard with my current calendar/work commitments whilst having them on in the BG suits.

I do ebb and flow, like warp tides. I remember straight after Covid I really went off watching battle reports for about 6-9months because I was busy and just went off 40k for a bit whilst I tried new things. It's just personal. You'll come and go with life, you may go off it personally. I always find they're a good way to keep a somewhat reasonable touch on the pulse of the game's rules too.

WintersSEO is a nice, smooth ride but I didn't find him overly entertaining. I still catch his free games as I enjoy his narration but I never had any impetus to pay.

Tabletop Titans are very different, ironically, in the same way that Ramsay's kitchen nightmares were different between the UK and US. They focus more on the social aspect of the game, yes, the game isn't absent but it's far more about interacting with their audience and a Q&A whilst they play. I tend to find I like their personalities but I don't care much for how they present the games, the relatively one fixed camera horizontally looking at the board makes it difficult to follow. Brian's absence is notable as he did bring a more technical side to it which I think they currently miss even though Adrian, Bridger and John are clearly capable. Zach frustrates the hell out of me, he doesn't seem to know any of the rules and can really make watching TT games painful. Practice off camera, dude. I wouldn't pay though, i've got enough mates already to chat to lmao

I catch Liam Dempsey now and then, he's cool enough but is similar to Tabletop Titans in that it's mainly about the social side.

Tabletop tactics I generally enjoy all round and I am a paying member (don't get me wrong, Chef can drone sometimes, Stig is dryer than the sahara and Beard can rarely be frustrating to watch as a seasoned CSM player but they're all still people i'd happily have a drink with). I do miss Bone a little but I think the others have stepped up (especially James) a bit in terms of creativity and entertainment. Their production value is second to none and it really makes watching their games enjoyable as you can easily follow the battle whilst being entertained by the personalities. The League they're currently doing is good. My biggest complaint would just be that they're light on the Tactics opposed to something like Vanguard Gaming/Academy (who I just find bracing to watch as their production quality and stage charisma are far below all of the above even if they seem like good guys).