What is your favorite game to livestream?

I used to be a Twitch streamer. (Guess my Twitch name. Go on, guess!) I don't stream anymore, because until fairly recently, I streamed GTA for heist setups... set up a casino heist or two, and that was a stream. Then June of this year rolled around, and suddenly I didn't feel comfortable streaming cops going murder hobo on people who, in some cases, did nothing more than look at them. The whole copyright calamity sealed the deal, and I am officially retired.

But, my favorite game to stream? It's a game that no longer exists, but I did three years of nothing but Marvel Heroes content. (Marvel Heroes was a game that was basically a Diablo style ARPG but with Marvel comic book characters, with fantastic voice acting.) I miss that game so much, and I might still be streaming if the game hadn't folded.

I really only tune in for esports. I understand the appeal for others to watch "personalities" game, but it's not for me (I don't like late night talk shows or variety shows either, it's just not my thing).

That said, I usually only watch games I've played because it's easier to follow. League, Overwatch, Smash Brothers are all a lot of fun. I do sometimes watch DotA2, but to be honest it rarely holds my attention because I don't understand the nuances of the game like I do those I've played.

I don't like to watch streamers play games I want to play, but will watch games I'd like to be able to experience. It saves me money, and the stress of playing through a horror game that has caught my attention but I know I won't want to finish.

Some examples:

SCP Containment Breach, either the original, or the in-progress Unity port, is a good example. I watched Markiplier play it, and tune in to every new addition. I booted it up on my computer and the ambience was so well-done that I couldn't continue with the game. I'm totally fine letting him play it for me.

I watched Gassy Mexican play The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope, and I watched Markiplier and his friends play the company's previous game. I like what that games devs are doing, it's a game built entirely around following the story, making decisions, and executing quicktime events, but it's just not my sort of game, it's so cinematic it's like watching a long-ass movie with two people (he was playing with a friend) offering occasional, entertaining commentary.

There's stuff I've experienced and simply don't like, and won't watch, like FPSes, turn-based strategy, and that sort of thing, or games I want to experience that I won't watch unless I've gotten my money's worth out of them already.

I don't watch a lot of streaming but when I do watch Twitch or the like it's usually to improve at a multiplayer game by watching much better players' decision making. In practice the last couple years this has mostly been watching professional Magic: The Gathering players like Gabriel Nassif or LSV who do lots of streaming. It's really interesting to see how different decision trees can look at the highest levels of gameplay as professional players are not only much better at reading information from opponents from a given game-state but also at identifying what information they are signaling to their opponents.

I don't livestream yet, as I'm waiting to upgrade my CPU to even be able to handle streaming any game that is decently graphically intensive, but one game I can't wait to be able to stream is Hot Dogs Horseshoes and Hand Grenades. It's a firearm simulator with tons of guns and "scenes" that are basically game modes. The Take and Hold mode in particular is my favorite. You move around an underground bunker looking for holds to capture. When you go to a hold and then start it, you have to fight waves of enemies while waiting for the "encryption" to appear. The encryption floats in the air above you and must be destroyed to move to the next encryption. There are often 3 waves of encryption per hold, and different types of encryption present different challenges. Throughout the map, you'll encounter Supply Depots, which are shops where you can buy new guns/attachments/melee weapons, or change your ammo types.

That mode is super fun to play, as you're always looking to improve your aim and speed for a better spot on the leaderboards. I'd like to stream VR in general, but H3 in particular is fun to stream. Ideally I'd want to stream whatever I want (Jerma, Vinny, and Tomato are all favorite variety streamers of mine), because I rarely focus on a game for very long unless I really like it

Outside of watching Dota 2 matches, I mostly watch a handful of streamers who have tastes similar to my own, playing games that I've already played at least once.

There are some games that you just can't ever really play a second time, at least not in a way that will recapture that first experience. Outer Wilds is a recent example, where the core gameplay component is just acquiring knowledge about the game world. Once you have that knowledge, you can never just forget it all and rediscover everything fresh.

Watching someone else play through the same experience with fresh eyes, seeing their reactions (and hanging out in the twitch-chat peanut gallery) is a fun way to share in that excitement and discovery again.

As an added bonus, the communities that grow up around some streamers can be a lot of fun, Joseph Anderson's streams of Ace Attorney and Outer Wilds had some really impressive fan art.