As an example: the end of portal 2 and the "ending" of portal 1. You can only experience that stuff for the first time once. If you aren't the player, your experience is cheapened. Your satisfaction for figuring out what to do in each of those moments is a powerful feeling that cannot be replicated by watching someone else do it. It's diet vs regular.

if you can't see a difference between figuring out what you're supposed to do in those 2 specific moments I'm referring to for yourself as the player and just watching someone else do it, then there's no hope for you to understand what I'm saying.

Yeah duh that's why it's called eSPORTS I'm not really talking about 1 genre of videogames I'm talking the medium in general so we should limit this to concepts that can be applied universally here.

So you're admitting your entire argument is "story mode games are different from competitive games". That's what you mean when you say that watching games is profoundly different from watching sports. Gotcha.

Yes.

And then you're pretending that competitive games/gamemodes and other non-narrative/non-art focused games are A. all one genre or only exist as e-sports and B. don't make up a large portion of the most played and most watched games.

No. Youre just trying to sound like a shit head.

Then, you're pretending that it actually makes a difference to the viewer as to whether or not Alien Isolation is intended to be experienced "second-hand" compared to kicking a ball with some specific time and scoring rules.

No. It doesn't make a difference to the viewer that does it, obviously they seem to not care, because they do it anyway...but it isn't engaging with the content the way it should be engaged with.

The viewers aren't the ones solving puzzles, making choices, thinking, getting rewarded, progressing, leveling up, etc.

it's all second hand. The "player fantasy" isn't their own when they watch someone else just do it on a stream or supercut. It's fine, it's just not a true experience. It's a voyeur experience.

Clearly the average viewer of bakery simulator streamers or horror game streamers are getting the exact same sort of engagement and experience as someone watching a match of tennis or soccer. The end result, to the viewer, pretty much the same, which makes your "point" moot.

That isn't clear at all. I'm literally saying that it is explicitly a different experience even if it's similar. That's my whole fucking point.

The entire point is the experience of watching the content itself.

Watching isn't playing. This is my whole fucking point.

Your idea is that games "weren't designed" for it, therefore it must be an entirely different experience for the viewer. It isn't.

It is. To what level is dependent on the game and what differences can be discerned from someone watching it be played vs playing it. There is a spectrum here and every game will have a different "watched experience". Some will be closer or further from actually playing it yourself.

There is more disparity in how someone feels watching golf vs. American football than there is between someone watching American football vs. Halo Red vs Blue or Overwatch.

What are you talking about? Your comparing the difference of experience between watching 2 sports. Vs a sport and a machinima ? What is your point? None of this is an active experience?

There is more similarity between watching tennis and watching Omori than there is between watching tennis and watching Airsoft.

Idk what omori is

Sports are often times more different from each other than they are from games, and games are often times more similar to sports than they are to other games. It's not complicated to grasp, really.

This statement is utter nonsense.