A new documentation from ARD deals with German Twitch and accompanies streamers at different points in their careers for several months. DoktorFroid, a group led by YouTuber LeFloid, plans to professionalize on Twitch. Shurjoka (25) wins the award for German Gamer of the Year, but becomes embroiled in a boycott over Hogwarts Legacy. A young Berliner begins a career as a full-time streamer.
When can you watch the documentary? The one-hour documentary “OFF-CAM: How German Twitch Stars Tick” will air starting Tuesday, August 15th, on the ARD Mediathek.
We from MeinMMO have been able to see the documentary in advance.
Update August 15, 9:01 AM: You can watch the documentary at this link to the ARD Mediathek .
Twitch like television
How DoktorFroid is portrayed: The group around LeFloid has just established a new headquarters for €250,000 and wants to make “Twitch like television,” but with direct feedback through the chat.
The topic of this part of the ARD documentary is primarily how to balance the engaging job of being an influencer with family and private life and how to work professionally with people whom one considers friends.
Frontman LeFloid is on his phone for 12 hours a day and is teased by his colleagues for never being able to switch off. Because he now has 3 children, LeFloid has put on muscles, takes care of his health, and trains like crazy. He hardly puts his phone down. His life with the phone wraps him in a “permanent cotton wool fog,” explains the 35-year-old. He has to swipe here, click there, and inquire here. The entire life and work life takes place on the phone.
At one point, one of his partners asks him if that’s the reason why LeFloid finds it so hard to take a vacation because his phone is quiet then.
LeFloid reacts with disbelief, questioning what that even means. His phone is never quiet.
His partner Olli focuses on setting up the cameras correctly: He talks about the need to find a balance on Twitch, while everything is becoming increasingly professional. He is also seen at home with his wife, who is currently completing a 7-day stream on Twitch. Even everyday life requires a lot of coordination and planning.
The third member of the group, Paul, is responsible for finances in the team. He has brought his partner, Freiraumreh, along to work. The two co-host a big show for Twitch: This show “Exactly Like This!” also revolves around the segment about DoktorFroid. Twitch like television, with star guests, a budget, and always one more camera perspective.
This is the key scene: In one of the most beautiful scenes of the documentary, the three grill with their families in the countryside: Olli has a sausage in hand and explains how great and idyllic he finds it all. Next to him, LeFloid almost mechanically reaches for his phone and stares at it as if hypnotized.
Olli just looks at him, points a finger at him, and starts laughing. LeFloid looks up and asks, “What? – I just …” – Olli laughs and says, “Everyone in their own way.”
The streamers know each other, are aware of each other’s weaknesses and strengths, and have apparently learned over the years to deal with them.
Twitch as a means in the fight against the patriarchy
This is how Shurjoka is portrayed: The 25-year-old streamer Shurjoka starts the documentary with a victory: She wins the German Computer Game Award as Gamer of the Year. However, her part of the documentary also has the largest external conflict.
Next, you see how Germany’s largest Twitch streamer, MontanaBlack, explains that he can’t deal with her opinion and her toxic manner.
Shurjoka has also professionalized herself: She employs 2 staff members and has a partner, Freiraumreh, who encourages her to pay more attention to her mental health. Shurjoka has engaged in a conflict over the Harry Potter game “Hogwarts Legacy,” calling for a boycott of the game due to the transphobic statements of the author J.K. Rowling and is now receiving a lot of hate messages that affect her more than she might want to admit.
She is told to delete her account, and she is accused of having a psychosis. There are also threats of violence and rape fantasies. How should one deal with this? Freiraumreh is for “taking a break, making a pause”; it does not help the queer community if Shurjoka breaks down. But the streamer just helplessly laughs: That she prioritizes her mission over her own mental health is, of course, self-evident. She is surprised that this is even a topic for discussion.
The documentary gives Shurjoka plenty of space to present her own position, and she uses that space to present herself as someone fighting for good, without taking care of herself:
- She advocates for marginalized groups, even if it harms her own career.
- A manager from another agency advised her that she could earn much more money if she stopped doing that. But she just can’t do it differently.
- She wants to be the person she needed at 16.
But you can see how much the constant conflict affects her over time, while the ARD cameras follow her. She can’t find any distance on this topic, she says. It simply hits too close to home.
The documentary fluctuates between intimate moments showing Shurjoka in the woods with her dogs, where she talks about her depression and bipolar personality, and lively live-stream scenes, where the assistant jumps onto the stage in a plastic dinosaur costume and elicits laughs.
This part of the documentary also shows: Twitch is no longer “a young woman with a microphone alone in her room,” but rather an office and staff, albeit still two or three levels less sterile and professional than DoktorFroid in their €10,000 rent per month studio.
“Tell us something we didn’t expect, Cis-Hetero-Man”
This is the key scene of her part: In one scene of the documentary, it becomes clear why Shurjoka polarizes so strongly.
The 25-year-old reacts to the YouTuber “Der Dunkle Parabelritter,” who explains why the boycott of Hogwarts Legacy is doomed to fail: Just because an author expresses an opinion online about a subject that most have nothing to do with, a large part of the public is not willing to forgo a game that is also part of their childhood. He finds the call to boycott irrelevant.
Shurjoka shakes her head in disbelief and says: “Tell us something we didn’t expect, Cis-Hetero-Man.”
At the end of her part of the documentary, it is shown that Shurjoka experienced another shitstorm after the filming ended.
Twitch, when you want to live from it, but can’t
This is the part with Bdarf: Bdarf is a Twitch streamer from Berlin who actually wants to build a career but has decided to go all-in and stream full-time.
He doesn’t seem to see many other options for himself and his life right now: He doesn’t want to go back to his old job in construction. Selling drugs to finance his party life in Berlin is also not an option for him. So it’s Twitch.
He sets a goal of earning €800 monthly on Twitch. By the end of the documentary, it’s €200. The former installer painfully realizes that effort and willpower do not lead to immediate success on Twitch. However, he wants to keep going: Only those who take risks win.
Although his environment supports the idea of trying Twitch, probably no one really believes in his success. Even the streamer himself often implies that he is facing an impossible task. Because he has neither the contacts nor the unfair advantage to make it big enough for Twitch to truly be a viable livelihood.
This is the key scene of his part: At an event in Leipzig , he meets the big Twitch streamer Tanzverbot and has to gather all his courage to speak to him. He starts with “Do you remember me?” and receives a “Unfortunately not” in return. Ultimately, Tanzverbot does remember a scene from long ago, hugs him, and gives him a subscription.
Bdarf knows how the game works. Tanzverbot could push him, give him a raid or a shoutout on Twitch, the boost he desperately needs. But ultimately, the meeting will remain without consequence.
Significantly, both streamers are accompanied by their girlfriends at the event, both of whom just stand silently by and listen without saying a word.
ARD documentary shows how diverse and unfair Twitch is
Is the documentary worth it? Yes, it is worth it, as long as you do not expect groundbreaking new insights.
The documentary provides a brief overview of how the German Twitch works “behind the scenes”. However, the authors have taken on quite a lot by accompanying three such different projects; less could have been more.
DoktorFroid and Shurjoka are also unique projects and cannot represent the “typical Twitch” very well:
- DoktorFroid is actually not an original Twitch group, but a successful YouTuber who has sought partners to “also” do Twitch.
- Shurjoka occupies a special role on Twitch. Due to the focus on activism and how drastically she polarizes, there is hardly anything comparable internationally.
In both cases, the documentary lacks the backstory of how they became so big to finance their own spaces and staff.
The authors of the documentary let the streamers tell their own stories and only hint at the breaks and problems in the narrative. Especially in Bdarf’s case, one would wish that someone had explained how difficult it is to make a living with Twitch before he went “all in.”
Also with Shurjoka, who experiences a lot of backlash, one would wish for a more critical voice than Freiraumreh, who advises her to take more care of herself.
Ultimately, the documentary shows how diverse yet unfair Twitch is: Because the solo streamer without money, contacts, and reach competes with individuals and companies that have been in the business for years for the same audience and the same “placements”, i.e., advertising deals.
The streamer Shurjoka has, in recent months, involuntarily become a topic on Twitch:
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