Let's face it lads. Summit is the reason the game is getting attention again.

I don't think one streamer is going to make or break Sea of Thieves

He's been playing the game 12 hours a day every single day for more than a month now, so wheather anyone likes it or not he's part of the community. I think it's time he's treated as such... This will be my last post in a summit themed thread.

So now we're worrying about streamers, particularly one who pretty much trolls exclusively? No, thank you!
I'd much rather see people like him LEAVE the game entirely, so here's to Summit1g getting bored with SoT...

@pk-r0ckin said in Let's face it lads. Summit is the reason the game is getting attention again.:

Do people actually base the games they play off of an online personality? I can understand killing time, reviewing a game, or people's opinion. However, making a choice to play a game based on if someone who plays for a career sounds silly.

Yes and no. I bought this game because I saw how much fun summit was having during the beta. I think after release it just clicked better with me as I happened to find the right group and be on the right servers at the right time to hit the highs that sea of thieves can deliver, while he was bored looking for a fight.

Sea of thieves never needed more content and just needed to tighten up the experience to engage players. The adventure system was a failure IMO because a shared adventure world where there was 0 sharing of adventure without someone deciding to turn around and gank someone created a lot of hit or miss game moments. It needed to have more coop/contention built into the loop to keep players engaged with each other. Otherwise you have a game where you sail to random islands to pick up random loot completely unimpeded for hours on end. It can be fun at first but after a while you just zone out, it doesn't engage, it doesn't demand your attention.

SoT PvP is brilliant, its one of the few games where less is more, a lot more. And never falling behind, all the play space is still utilized, and everyone is essentially equal apart from skill/coordination its one of the few games this isn't trying to get me to grind all day but allows me to just have fun.

Maybe it's a generational thing, but I just can't stand the idea of watching someone else play a video game. Just because i'm unconcerned about streamers doesn't mean it's not important.

But I still could not care less.

While sure, "Streamers" and "Content Creators" can oft help drive Short-Term Influence … hence why they are useful to get 'on-side' during Release Periods (such-as Game Launch, Expansion Launches, Event Periods, etc.)

These individuals themselves do not drive player attachment or engagement., instead that are a myriad of potential factors that culminate to drive metrics... and these are not always easily ascertained.

Typically speaking Publicity (as a whole) is what will poke people into either noticing or remembering that a Game exists, as to then make them go "Huh... I've not played that in a While" or "Oh that looks fun, I want to try it"

And sure, in this respect Content Creators can especially today have a more dominant role in this regards due to how Audiences (falsely mind you) will see them as "Friends", thus will trust their judgements on said basis.

It's quite a potentially dangerous social precedent but there's little point delving into such here as I'm not sure what sort of Adult conversation could be had about such between the general attitude of those on the Forums but also in regards to the Hyper-Restrictive Forum Rules that are somewhat subjectively applied to the whims of the individual Moderator interpreting them.
And to delve into such, you also have to tackle "Uncomfortable" Topics.

Still I'd argue it's why most of the "Big" Developer / Publishing Houses today are so out-of-touch with not just their Audiences but basic Reality., as said "Sanitation" on discourse doesn't just extend to their Communities but also in regards to Internal Discussion as well... meaning various important topics simply become Taboo., or at least for all intended purposes unless those who try to engage in such wish to be seeking new employment.

After all, if you can not speak frankly and honestly about a problem., then you're limiting the avenues to resolve it as you're not accounting for all of the potential factors.

But, eh that's a bit of a digression.
Point is more to remain Careful and Weary of attributing weight and influence to Individuals... and no, I don't for a second believe that Developers or Publishers should be rewarding those who merely have popularity.

Remember that from a Developer / Publisher Standpoint., Influence isn't strictly the most important element in terms of Public (Media) Relations but rather the TONE of said Influence that is in-keeping with how you planned and would like your product to be viewed.

I've never heard of Summit, and it isn't because I'm "Too Old" to watch Steams; although I will say that I tend to prefer VOD as opposed to Live Events., as well... I prefer to consumer entertainment around my schedule not that of the Live Service Provider.

And I'd argue this is why New Media (i.e. On-Demand Services) such-as Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime, etc. are rapidly replacing Old Media … and you see this clearly in terms of the differential between Live Viewing Figures (maybe 10-30,000 for Twitch means you're "A Top Streamer") where-as YouTube VODs., those viewership figures within 24hrs is typically "Low Turnover" that you'd see from a Small / Niche Channel.
Instead you'd be looking at up to 50-80x the Potential Reach from a similar "Top Tier" YouTube VOD.

Don't get me wrong here... Twitch / Mixer / YouTube Streaming., these are all viable services to earn a living. As "Donations", "Super Chat", "Tips", frankly provide a much more Profitable Income than Advertising Revenue.
Where said order of magnitude is typically reversed for Revenue Potential.

Heck, a single person donating say $10 during a Stream essentially equals the Ad Revenue of a VOD with 200,000 Views. So for the Content Creator, it's just more lucrative.
Still given the reach, it just doesn't really attain the same Influence Potential.

i.e. 2,500 Concurrent Viewers Vs. 320,000 Unique Views... (and yes, these are comparable avg. Metrics)

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Now beyond this., Rare nor Microsoft release Metrics beyond Milestones.
Microsoft Store and Xbox Live, do not provide Public Metrics... so you are reliant upon whatever a Developer / Publisher actually wishes to share.
Unlike Steam, where most of the Metrics are Publicly Available.

Still this doesn't mean that Microsoft Developer (Store/Live/Azure) does not have a comprehensive Metric Suite. Quite the opposite in-fact, as they're some of the best and most comprehensive Metrics that I've seen available without using a 3rd Party Metrics Firm (like Statistica)

So, it isn't like the information doesn't exist. It simply isn't available to us.
As such there is no way for us to really conclude if Influences are actually having any Real-Term effects on the Popularity of the Game... and even still, we can't simply conclude that a Correlation means Causation., without looking at the Full Picture.

Keep in mind that Sea of Thieves has recently seen a substantial uplift in terms of Game / Tech Media Coverage, as well as Microsoft running Adverts (Sea of Thieves, Xbox Live, Xbox Console, Xbox Game Pass) … which have been curiously positive, but again have much greater Influence Reach than not just Individually but the entire Streamer Ecosystem.

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With the amount of "Summit deserves X" posts on the Forums that I've seen as of late., it makes me curious if this isn't a campaign that Summit (himself?) has either explicitly or implicitly suggested.

The associative here with Fornite oft being cited, with their introduction of an "Influencer" Program where-in Registered Influenced receive 5% of all V-Bucks purchased by their Audiences; certainly makes me wonder if certain topics discussed via Streams of said "Popular" E-Celebs isn't a case of "Well they have this in Fortnite, wouldn't be it cool if Sea of Thieves did it too..." (which certainly not egocentric and self-serving behaviour at all :p)

Again I don't watch him, nor is the current gushing from his "Fanbase" exactly winning me over to... so it's merely a hypothetical, but would be one that in my experience would be most likely to be going on.

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Now personally I would love to see some official Metrics, especially in Longitudinal Form to comb over., as not only would it be interesting to see … but could definitely be used to back up potential correlations between Player Engagement and Updates / Balance Changes / etc. from which to drive a better argument for potential future Changes, Features, etc.

Still, I doubt it will happen as I have a feeling that Sea of Thieves isn't quite as Happy and Healthy in regards to said Metrics as Rare would like us to believe.
Plus there is a double-edged sword, where seeing Downward Trends further reinforce people to Abandon Ship (as it were) … which could potentially do more harm than good.

Not knowing means people instead just "Assume" the Health of the Game., and given servers are On-Demand Instanced as well as the Low Player / Ship Count per Instance … well this means there is very little way to tell outside of there not being enough On-Demand Servers / Account Servers falling over (which should be mostly resolved by now via improved scalability in the Network Backend) to really tell the Concurrent or Total Population Counts.

Microsoft saying "5 Million 'Concurrent' Players on Sea of Thieves" at their X-18 Event in December sounds good... but Concurrent can merely mean "Active", or it could mean an Avg. Weekly, or it could mean Avg. Daily.

There's no real way to know for sure.
It's a bit like how Fortnite (on Xbox) has 46 Million associated "Concurrent" Players., except... Microsoft hasn't sold 46 Million Xbox One Consoles.
So you know out-of-context statistics can be quite misleading.

If there is an increasing number of players of late, it might also be because people got the game as a Xmas present, or a game pass, or even an XBox or PC.

It goes both sides, stop fighting.

Summit's viewers are going up because of Sea of Thieves, if he just stopped playing SoT, then he would lose alot of subs.

And on the other side, stop being delusional. SoT is growing because of Summit, and the Devs know it! Do you seriously think he has no impact? Are you seriously saying you'd rather have him stop playing? This community is growing because of him, alot of people here are only here because of him. He brings alot of attention to the game, for anyone who says he doesn't play a part in the growth of the game, you should probably go to a mental institution. AND STAY THERE!

It's basic math guys. Summit grows because of SoT, and SoT grows because of Summit.

Now, I'm not discrediting any other factors. SoT would not die if Summit stopped playing. And Summit wouldn't die either. They would both just lose a part of their fanbase!

SoT would lose some Summit viewers, and Summit would lose some SoT players!

BUT THIS IS ONLY A VERY SMALL PART IN ALL OF IT! Stop thinking either he doesn't matter, or that he means everything. And for the fanboys, stop thinking it's all because of summit, this game is amazing, and even though it is not free, all the content updates are, which is something really good.

Find the middle ground people!

Happy sailing.

PS: About the "he should be rewarded", hell no. He shouldn't be. He's playing the game and he's having fun! That's the reward he needs, fun.
Now though, he definitely deserves much more respect from some Forum/Twitter/Reddit users. He is not ruining the game! Stop saying stuff like that. In the majority of my games I never find players who even watch him, most people just heard of him. I'm not saying watch Summit1g, all I'm saying is respect Jared, as he's a SoT player, just like us all.

@lethality1 said in Let's face it lads. Summit is the reason the game is getting attention again.:

@reysstereo said in Let's face it lads. Summit is the reason the game is getting attention again.:

You guys still cant deny that the game has been getting more popular the past week because of him. The game is in News Medias everywhere now.

And even if we are not talking about summit here. Where is the content? We have drained all the commendation quests!

In my opinion, the attention though is due to the fact that his approach to playing flies directly in the face of Rare's approach to fostering a certain type of community. In almost any other game, that would be good attention. For Sea of Thieves, it's debatable because while more players is better for everyone (including Rare), too many of a certain type of player (that these games usually attract) can have an adverse effect on the community so far.

Its not at all debatable... he's completely in line with what rare wants as a community. Its all about having fun whether or not you want to fight/flee/sail around... the point is diverse player base to get diverse and emergent moments.

As for content - it's a sandbox. There is literally always something to do :)

Not really, its a sandbox without enough toys and activities. You end up with grinding or murder fests for the vast majority of people.

@reysstereo Pointing out what the guy does in the game, is not 'hating' on him. The fact is, he does little more than troll other players (particularly noobs).

A common discussion (argument) on these forums is about griefers chasing away players; what do you think happens to some of these people who Summit1g trolls, after he's done having his way with them? Do you think they all just laugh and say, "Hey, well at least HE had some fun during that exchange" or "Boy, am I glad I just got to have that experience, I think I'll stick with this game if everyone treats others like that"? Not likely.

So, yeah. The less we have of people like Summit1g playing this game, the better, in my opinion.

I really don't want to contribute to another of these threads, but there are some important things I think need to be said:

The Shrouded Spoils update is the reason the game has been getting so much attention again (not to mention all of the year in review and updated critiques of the game).

The buzz of how much fun and action had been brought to the seas had a lot of people returning.
And THAT is the reason this one, very successful, streamer returned to the game, right?

Streaming is a very strange business and there are a few very big successes. It is strange how the numbers play out and you just get some streamers that fall into the right places with their audiences.

I have always said, it's not that SoT doesn't have high stream views because the game isn't good enough... it simply doesn't have the views, because none of the bigger or medium sized streamers play the game - period.
We have a lot of excellent streamers regularly playing the game, but they are mostly newer (and/or smaller) streamers and are still building their audience size. It's not because of the game that they play, that they hover around 50-300 viewers - it's because that's where their streaming progression is right now.
We had several 1-4k streamers that used to play the game regularly (Burke Black and CrReam to name two), but, even though they played for a good few months, they stopped.
Basically - viewers watch their streamer(s) of choice.

Now, combining all that - I think SoT is an amazing game to stream, and streamers who do fall in love with playing the game can gain an amazing following.

The fact that this one streamer has such a large percentage of the entire viewer count, an average of 20k viewers (lately 30-40k, it seems), can confuse people about the meaning of those numbers.
Yes, it is fantastic to get those number of viewers, but a large percentage of them would be watching Fortnite, if that's what the streamer was playing.
And - those viewer numbers would be there if other larger streamers played the game as well.

Most importantly, the REASON the media, that streamer, and all those viewers, are buzzing about the game is - because of the quality of the game.
That's how this business works.

I think the release of Shrouded Spoils has more to do with SoT garnering all this recent attention than the antics of one streamer, IMHO. I know who Summit is, I've seen his gameplay. It's offered me useful tips for my crew to avoid players like him.

I'm going to say only that I would never change a Cpt Falcore or a Burkeblack for one thousand of Summits, despite the fact that the second now streams an, imo, worst pirate game than sot, and the first is a youtuber and not a streamer (and actually that reinforces my argument).

Summit deserves recognition to show sot to more people just like other content creators deserve not only that but more, because they actually sell the game in a healthfully manner (and I'm saying that while doing from time to time the sneaky mean things that summit usually do). But really, for Karen! I'm being pretty tired these days of "clever" pirates trying to board my ship thinking they we're unnoticed! In the other hand, sharks need more food so its ok that more people try that kind of stuff without experience doing it...

Streamers do not make or break any game. They are simple free advertising, good and bad. Typically advertising the worse part of the community, the principles, and the philosophy of the game they stream. Yes, there are streamers that do not highlight the worse in being a gamer. There are streamers who have better portrayed what Sea of Thieves is and should be. Sadly, the ones that are negative like in all the other games out there are typically the most popular who become worshipped as false idols.

The approach of the person you mention does not exemplify the best of the community, quite the opposite actually. Unfortunately, those who watch bad streamers, just soak in all of their bad behavior from their streams or videos and make it their own. Most streamers, especially in PvP environments, are nothing more than bullies. Bullies need to puff themselves up in real life and online forums falsely gives them numbers that intoxicates and emboldens them. Many followers just learn to be bullies themselves, trolling and promoting toxicity as a disgusting form of enjoyment and entertainment.

The core of the Sea of Thieves community has coalesced into something far better than this. Yes, there are still rotten pirates out there floating around on the sea. We do not need more joining their ranks. I have faith the true community will not drift in such a direction and allow it. I think the behavior being displayed in such streaming is fortunate timing that Joe Neate reminded everyone about the Pirate Code.

Like @KattTruewalker said, it is in part very favorable media coverage of where Sea of Thieves voyage has taken all of us together into the New Year. It is being recognized with an award for best family and social game. It is Rare bringing the game and the sea to a brighter, happier place with the Shrouded Spoils. It is the true community that new pirates meet on the sea. The best part of the community is what will bring new players and more importantly help them find a home on the sea, not streamers seeking to be popular for all the wrong reasons.