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It's tough to say, honestly, and it depends on how you define "gamers". The initial batch was all about gaming, usually centered mainly around a community (initially a single game (since there weren't many streamers around) but later also broader categories like speedrunning and competitive gaming). That actually held on for some years. But as the audience grew and grew, they opened the gate for alternative content like "IRL" which really created an opening for people wanting to serve (or exploit if you will) gamers and their needs (they used to have a policy in place where only actual gaming streams were allowed and you could report non-gaming ones). That had already been the case previously where camgirls/former pornstars streamed themselves "playing" a game, fishing for donations and the like. However, they never really fought that and in the end, just embraced it since it meant more money for them (via subs, later also bits as well as more traffic in general). That's not a wrong decision as a company, but it left enough people with a bitter taste in their mouth.

One of the main issues is that you basically have no filters. You can't exclude entire categories, you can't exclude individual streams. They have no proper tag system and they got rid of communities. All of that makes it more difficult to find new streams that might be interesting to you specifically. Then there is also the issue with performance. Twitch.tv isn't doing well in my browser and while I do have an "older" PC, other streaming websites don't have that issue. That and the fact that Twitch.tv is overloaded with pointless things I have no interst in ("new prime loot", despite having no such account, channel points which was mentioned elsewhere already, lots of notifications in the chatbox about who donated most, gifted most etc etc) basically forced me to watch Twitch.tv and chat with others (connecting to Twitch server via IRC client) outside of the website. It does work really well for channels you know you like but you will basically never discover new ones without going to the website.

Youtube is worse in general and I feel part of the issue is that they tried to bake the livestreams into Youtube proper. While it's not wrong to leverage existing platforms, it certainly wasn't good the way they did it. Also, due to the network effect as well as streamers being tied to one platform, competition isn't much of a thing anymore. As far as I can see it, the competition is long over and Twitch.tv won. The only real challengers were in the Justin.tv days when websites like Livestream and Ustream were actually larger and in the early Twitch era when own3d was still able to compete...until they ran out of money. As for livestreaming platforms for people who are into gaming only? It's possible that one such thing can become relevant even with Twitch.tv around but for that to happen, Twitch.tv would have to be enormous...and even then, they would still offer a larger potential audience. Still, if that happens, the emerging platform might have more of the "pure" gamers around who stream for fun, rather than for money (one of the larger issues I have nowadays - lots of people streaming to make money, having overlays practically begging for it).

It depends on what year you are talking about. I still fondly remember the times when Justin.tv was full of illegal cough restreams of the Simpsons, Futurama etc. I even paid for a "pro account" to get preferred treatment when it came to data transfers aka I paid, so that the streams wouldn't lag (and yes, that was a thing back then).

Now, if only they could spin off all the gaming content...maybe create a separate website for that. How about Justin.tv? That sounds nice, doesn't it?

I've been using the website for over ten years now and it's somewhat sad to see how it has actually deteriorated over time (from the perspective of how it used to be). Having been part of the community that made Justin.tv win against its competition, it feels like they built on our backs, only to slowly abandon us over time. The initial honoring by spinning off Twitch.tv for games exclusively has long worn off, as it was supplanted by non-gaming categories who continue to grow as they happily copy from other streaming websites (Afreeca first and foremost).

I really wish there were proper alternatives in the West but network effect is a thing and somehow, their websites are even worse than Twitch.tv (Mixer doesn't work at all at the time of writing this).

I've read that book two years ago and really liked it. As such, I was recommended "My Name is Red" by Orhan Pamuk which is supposedly similar and which will be the next one to tackle (after I finish my current one: "Faust" by Goethe). After that...no idea. I don't really plan ahead like that since the decision on what book to start depends most on how I feel at the time/what kind of genre/story/setting I desire the most. All I can say is that "The Three Musketeers" by Dumas is on my radar.

Twitch chat is IRC, so you can just join with a dedicated or web client irc.twitch.tv and chat away (OAuth token is required). Most of the offline chatters that I know use a client.

Apart from that I'm on several channels on Rizon and synIRC.

Rocket League is a football game which you play with cars. Depending on the mode, 1-4 players play against each other to score goals in a specific time limit. It's also not new though, Battle-Cars came before that.

Tenhou is rigged though. IIRC, if you are a non-paying member (and possibly use a non-Japanese IP - a claim I haven't verified), the game will steer you towards a maximum of 25% 1st places. I have seen good (non-paying) players with thousands of games and they did indeed reach only that percentage. Of course, there are ways to minimize the rigging (basically never riichi if you are 5-dan or higher) but those only help so much.

Which resulted in an incomplete second check of payments.

(Just to add the other small part.)

Hm, it would be a hard guess but in my opinion, readers of Shounen likely read the manga online on some reader or website (at least comparatively more than Shoujo fans). As mentioned in the earlier post, One Piece is absolutely relevant, being the last one of the Big Three still ongoing. SnK is ok, as are other Shounen. Sword Art Online is weirdly popular, although it's hard to classify that as Shounen/Shoujo, it attracts a rather large female audience for some reason.

I wouldn't necessarily give an Amazon list too much weight. Bookstores here in Germany are everywhere and people like to buy there, especially because you can take a quick look into the manga you are buying. So the lists from publishers tend to be worth more. The good part about the Amazon bestseller list is that it includes Carlsen manga where I couldn't find any info from the publisher regarding sales.

Another publisher I couldn't find anything on is Egmont Manga. The list for spring 2019 says it all though: https://www.egmont-manga.de/fruehjahr-2019/

So no, 30% is definitely wrong.

Absolutely not. I unfortunately don't have sales numbers like it's the case in Japan but the Shoujo/Shounen Ai/Yaoi manga consistently rank very well. If you aren't into those, going to a bookstore is basically pointless since they occupy most of the shelf space. As an example, the top 20 Tokyopop manga in the month of March 2019 [1] had 8 Shoujo, 4 Shounen-Ai/Yaoi, 5 Other and 3 non-defined in it with one Yaoi manga selling the most. It wouldn't surprise me if the sales are actually around 65-70% of the total number, and that's with One Piece still being around.

[1] https://www.japaniac.de/tokyopops-meistverkaufte-manga-im-ma...

Here is also the top 15 of 2017 for KAZÉ (the covers say it all): https://www.anime2you.de/news/183746/die-top-15-meistverkauf...

> Shoujo manga is not popularized / suppressed by the western community.

Really, do you have some numbers? Here in Germany, Shoujo/Shounen Ai are the most popular genres. I would imagine that those are pretty popular in France as well for example.

What do you mean? Shenmue II was released in Europe with Japanese audio and subtitles even (which is the best kind of release, in my opinion).

I also think that both games hold up very well today. Played them for the first time around seven years ago and was blown away. Personally, I prefer the first one because it has a more concentrated setting as well as a nostalgic atmosphere. Despite being rather familiar with games in general, I haven't encountered anything comparable.

That's not exactly new and it has been a thing for over a decade already in South Korea.

"The top professionals now make six-figure salaries and earn even more with endorsements and prize money."

Same in this case, six-figure salaries were already being paid a long time ago. [0]

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20100202002307/http://www.mymym....

As an aside, the website mentioned in the article, "Spiel Times", seems to be an Indian and not a German one. No idea how that came to be, considering their website and Twitter account show it rather clearly.

> Nowadays (Mass Effect, Tyranny), it leans more towards a two-scale solution, where your "good" actions are measured alongside your "bad" ones.

That's good to hear. It always bothered me in a way that you were able to make your "bad" deeds become forgotten by doing some "good" things here and there. One notable exception was the "Childkiller" status in the early Fallouts (haven't played 3 and beyond) which led to possible encounters with bounty hunters.

> Do you have any idea why is that so? Is there some sort of mode-switching happening between the workplace and home, where different priorities take hold?

I do think it's because of the "tension" disappearing when you are at home. However, even that doesn't work entirely for me. For instance, I'm a night owl. On weekends, it's impossible for me to get up the same time I would on a work day, regardless of how often the alarm bell goes off. So while I would easily get up at 6:00 in the morning on a Monday while going to bed at 2:00, it would be impossible to get up the same time on a Saturday, even if I went to bed 2 hours earlier. One exception would be having to get up to travel somewhere. Now, one could argue that that "tension" isn't tied to a physical environment but that would point against the learning at home/homework stuff we experienced. Of course, there is the possbility that our body distinguishes between getting up at the right time to get to school/work and doing school stuff at home after school due to undetermined differences. I'm also trying to remember how it was when I had, for instance, two hours of school, four hours of free time and then another two hours of school. I do think the tension disappeared once I was home (unless I had a test or something later that day) but it gradually came back when sitting in class. So it's probably a mode that is on as soon as you wake up until you are home again. That mode is likely also emotionally and physically taxing on our body due to the tension. As soon as we hit home and are powering down, we (ideally) recuperate. Getting back up and increasing the tension again is maybe not ideal for our body (?) which would mean that longer pauses (like the four hours I mentioned) are not really beneficial. Something like that, I would guess.

> Grammar, phonetics, even subtle semantic differences – I grasp all that pretty well, but vocab?

We are similar then, as we grasp the feeling for a language rather easily. For instance, I was very good at writing French words (and also pronouncing them) and getting all the accents right. That was due to the sound of the word but also how the word "flowed" or looked. Of course, if I didn't know what the word meant, it would be pretty pointless. At least for me, ideally, I learn the language from the ground up, seperately from any other language. This really helps with trying to translate something from one language into another one when it simply can't really be done, as is often enough the case. And yes, learning words from context is the best.

I didn't really have any other value in mind (though, there are likely possibilities, depending on the perspective from which you want to view the whole thing). The problem is, if you only place a single dot...where would you put me? As mentioned above, I'm one of the dutiful learners that benefit from being interested in the subject matter (like maths, history, computer science). If both values weigh against each other, I would be somewhere on the "dutiful learner" side. However, both values don't exclude each other, that's why I'm not really a fan of a spectrum.

I'm one of the people I've described (first example). I do excel in school/work environments. Paying attention for hours on end, regardless of whether it was "boring" or not, was never an issue. That's how I aquired pretty much all my knowledge. However, at home, I had trouble doing my homework, doing assignments or even learning for a test. The latter two I would usually do the day/evening before (at the latest possible opportunity). Homework, I sometimes skipped cough cough. If one class would have been suddenly canceled, I would have had no troubles doing the homework in that time frame at school. My home environment was generally neutral and it's also not like I did something more interesting with my time that I couldn't do it.

That's pretty good. Latin is a case where I wish I had been forced to learn vocabulary at home...because it was absolutely necessary since we basically only read Latin texts during class, every single time, with the exception of grammar every blue moon.

Ah, I know what you mean but I don't really like the visualization of a spectrum either. A radar chart with both being pretty much opposite each other should work better, right? At least that's how I would best visualize it.

That's actually another very interesting aspect. The environment (on the basic level) can absolutely matter. Students that pay attention in class and do everything they are told with utmost care may slack with homework because their home is completely different from school. The opposite can be true as well, with students, not being comfortable at all within a school setting, excelling at studying on their own.

Hmm, you are talking about it from the perspective of a teacher. I, on the other hand, was talking about the perspective of a student which I had been. And while I did take pedagogy classes, I absolutely wouldn't comment on what works best as a teacher, considering I lack sufficient knowledge there.

> I wonder if there's a divide between the type of student who could dutifully learn something because it's the thing they're supposed to do, and the type of student who won't learn much if they aren't interested, but will quickly become proficient, if not master, the subject if they have the passion for it?

I'm not really a fan of the word "divide" here because the dutiful learner can absolutely benefit from the positive effect of being interested in the subject matter. On the other hand, he/she won't suffer the negative consequences of not really being interested.

> Isn't it related to the concept of "eustress"?

Related in the way that some students probably had a positive response. As for me...it was definitely a negative threat, although not as bad as citing a poem in front of the class for example. It also didn't lead to any growth in that department, it was an ever-recurring hurdle to be feared. But, as I said, it worked really well when it came to the aspect of learning the vocabulary. For that alone it was absolutely worth it.

It really depends on the student. If one has great work ethics, the connection to the teacher doesn't really matter because one would learn regardless. Similarly, the student can also "just" respect the teacher in his position and for his knowledge and be animated to learn because of that.

Also, since the article mentions it...fear can have a really positive effect when it comes to learning something. One year, we had a teacher who made us stand up in the beginning of the class and he would then ask for vocabulary. You had only little time to answer and if you got it correct, you were allowed to sit down. Obviously, no one wanted to be the last one standing, especially in a class of 31. It was the best class I've ever had and I learned a lot.

Needing an ID to buy a SIM card is a rather recent requirement though (1st July 2017). So it is unlikely that the perpetrator used his/her ID to buy one.

I can confirm it and have to add that it's the same with riding my bike. Moving at a "normal" speed becomes even somewhat hard when with other people who always tell you to slow down (because when you are not paying attention, you are already speeding up again).

Maybe it's not a problem for you but it certainly is for others. Personally, I don't want to have to install a client (DRM) just to be able to download a game. Thus, I stick with stores like GOG instead and don't play anything that is limited to Steam and the like.

What is the "lesser evil" though? It highly depends on how you perceive things and issues.

Greece screwed up Greece before they even joined the eurozone. They weren't even eligible for that but still managed to do so by cooking the books (with the help of the likes of Goldman Sachs etc).

Exactly. People seem to forget the effect it has when Google promotes something on their search engine as well as Youtube (where they also forced you to get a Gmail-account eventually after taking over) etc.

Yes and no. The thing is, the majority of the viewers usually doesn't write to the streamer. They simply watch the stream, nothing more. So having five real viewers but no one is writing anything (or answering) is definitely possible. Still, interacting with viewers is where it gets interesting and it is live-streaming after all, so that's actually the point (otherwise you could just create a video and upload it somewhere).

> first class support for emoji

If you look at Twitch, as an example, I say that emoji support is absolutely fine. Though, I guess you somehow excluded that when you said: "[...]in its current form"? Nevertheless, it does show that implementing such a thing is not that much of a problem.

Coming from someone who played Vanilla WoW (and also WoW in general) for the first time last year on a popular private server: Everyone always expects you to know everything, so one has to mention it quite often, especially when it comes to dungeons where the party decides to go for route X to farm possible loot item Y and you have no idea what they are going to do/break. I still had a lot of fun getting my character to level 60 though (and raising some others). Open world PvP is particularly great.

All of them work for me, same with the search function or even the actual 18 books. Same ISP as freeflight. Well, that's interesting...

Works fine for me for all books I tested. Can you name some specific ones which are blocked for you?