twitch triggered

Ever since I was a young lad I was one of those people who enjoyed going to the arcades to watch people play fighting games well. I vicariously played the game the way it was meant to be played - even if my skills weren't quite as stratospheric. At the downfall of the venerable arcade scene (circa 2000's) we all moved indoors to play multiplayer games - but I at least still wished for a medium where I could watch people play games competently. And this was where twitch stepped in. And all was good in this world - up until now.

Perhaps it was the level of moochers or perhaps it is the ever-driving desire to wring every last dollar out of the unwashed masses but Twitch in recent weeks has made a serious misstep. In the early days it was relatively easy to watch a Twitch channel and get some instant entertainment - and possibly a few ads every few hours or so. This is no longer the case. Now, if I click on an unsubscribed (i.e. unpaid) channel I am greeted with an unskippable 15-second ad (or even five ads back-to-back) before I have even seen one second of this channel. This is incredibly alienating and, at least based upon my viewing habits, motivates me to avoid watching Twitch (for the most part.) 

It really disappoints me - and I would presume the content creators - that Twitch has turned to this model for making teh moneys. But, rather than simply complaining, I would suggest a few different options which may prove more palatable:

• Have the heavy-handed ad break 15 minutes into previewing the channel - that way at least you get to see whether you like the current stream
  
• Integrate the ad break into a break-out panel - rather than overriding the live stream (and missing out on clutch plays)
• Buffer any lost content while the ad is playing and then allow the viewer to fast-forward (at their own volition) or continue watching from the buffered offset
  
• Allow the channel creator full control of when ads are shown with, possibly, a minimum ad quota on an hourly basis
• Provide the Twitch viewer an x-minute window of free viewing before forcing an ad break - ideally with some kind of count-down

Dependent upon Twitch's desires to maximise ROI any of these options are better than the current solution they have in place. Unless Twitch is very careful they will lose their audience (and their content creators) to better solutions which don't have heavy-handed revenue models which penalise new viewers and dissuade you from discovering new content. 

 You have been warned, Twitch. You have been warned.