Over the last 5-10 years, streaming has become one of the most viewed media sources on the internet. Practically every game in existence has dedicated streamers, some of which have tens to hundreds of thousands of subscribers. At first you think, "Great! This will increase exposure to my favorite game and people will be more excited about it."

...but how often does that actually happen? Let me break down why streamers are a damaging influence to games, game developers, and their communities.

Game Balance - Lets look at how games are balanced nowadays. Game developers seem to try and find that fine line between fun experiences for low level players, and competitive game play for higher level players. I think this is a good thing as a whole, as it promotes universal enjoyment among the fans of the game. How do streamers influence this?

Well, its simple. Most streamers are high level or competitive players of their game. This creates a natural skew among the gaming industry to favor higher intensity and skilled player bases. This skew has taken away the "casual" feel of almost every online game, and has ultimately resulted in the ungodly current game trend of "Skill based match making". While it has been around for some time, streamers over the last 5-10 years constantly obliterating lower level players ON CAMERA and recorded for views has given developers reason to implement it. Why would you as a developer want your lower level players getting slaughtered like sheep and then recorded on Youtube/Twitch for thousands of people to laugh at? - You wouldn't.

Personality - How many streamers do you know that are genuinely nice, pleasant people that have built a following without insulting and degrading the game or their player base? Many of the biggest streamers are constantly insulting the people they are playing against, their teammates, or the game developers. If the streamers aren't happy, they make it known by making tons of videos crying about the "imbalance" the "brokenness" or any other clickbait that they know will either generate revenue or attention from the game developers. I believe that the current state of streaming has created the most toxic gaming experience in history. It is from their influence, and they know it well, that the trends of gaming have all evolved into a mutated monstrosity of the same thing spread across genres. Battle Passes, drip feeding content, half-made game releases, etc. With each "drop" of content, the streamer has plenty of new opportunities to rake in that sweet $$ from his subscribers, and the developers have easy money because the tens of thousands of followers will all copy what the streamer is doing.

Gameplay - You finally get off work from your 9-5 job and you decide you want to play an online game. For the sake of example, we will use League of Legends. You're an adc main and you're excited to keep working on your Lucian that you've been picking up for the last week. The end of ranked pick concludes, and you find yourself with a Nidalee support. What?!?! You ask yourself. Well it turns out, no less than 2 hour agos some streamer decided to do it on his stream with 100,000 viewers. Congratulations! You're about to see horrible off-picks for the next week because everyone wants to copy the streamer. Your game experience is ruined because some twitch followers think streamer play is a godsend law, and now you're not going to get a legitimate experience for a while until you get lucky and find someone who actually plays their role.

Now, on the topic of game play diversity. Like all things in life and the nature of humanity which we are all a part of, everybody does things differently. Take a game like Call of Duty for example. You have your rushers, your flankers, your campers, your snipers, and many other play styles. This diversity is what creates an enjoyable and unique game experience every time you turn on the game. But wait - your favorite streamer, who is a quickscope FaZe 360 champion, absolutely HATES people who camp. So what does he do? He doesn't say, "Well I don't like their play style but I'll find a way to counter it." No thats not what happens, they WHINE and complain for weeks/months about how horrible the game is, how imbalanced and stupid the guns are, and why this particular installment is the worst in history.

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Do they offer constructive criticism? Nope! Absolutely not. Why would they? If they throw a temper tantrum on camera they know they will gain more attention, which makes them more money, which causes the developers to make bad decisions... you see the picture. It is a never-ending feedback loop of game play degeneration until either the franchise loses its player base or the developers cave to the opinions of the streamers, which subsequently alters the entire fabric of what makes the game unique and fun.

In Summary - Gaming as a whole is a constantly evolving thing which has brought wonderful experiences and countless hours of enjoyment for many of us. It is shared through age groups, cultures, races, genders, and in many ways is a great uniter of humanity. However, streamers are detrimental to all of those aspects. Their personalities, influences, and dominance in the gaming marketplace is creating a toxic and degenerating world for many of the largest game franchises. If the gaming world is to get better, not worse, I believe that streamers need to take up the gauntlet and start leading by example. Less toxicity, more balanced perspectives, and constructive criticism which can be used to improve the quality of the game which they claim to enjoy so much, instead of poisonous rhetoric with no viable improvement options for the game play itself.