I think it goes both ways. Sports fans, clueless to the eSports scene, might say, “what’s the fun in watching someone play video games when you could just play them?” And I could say the same, and indeed I regularly say as much: “why watch someone play basketball, let’s just go play a pickup game.”
I don’t watch sports or esports, nor do I watch streamers very often, but I understand in all aspects that it’s for the entertainment value. In picking a team/player, watching their improvement, attending their games, proudly sporting their merch, etc etc.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, don’t let a clueless nobody disparage you doing what you enjoy.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Water will reach its own level so to speak, if a developer releases a game that is far too much for a majority of gamers to run, those gamers won’t buy the game and it won’t sell. Obviously that also isn’t always necessarily true, but enough terribly optimized games have released recently to be met with 40% rating on Steam that I’d like to think this is the case. Are some developers going to do it anyway? Absolutely, but that’s true regardless. I think that no matter what, indie developers will always tend to keep their games lightweight either by principle or by design necessity, and bigger game studios would also sorta get the message and keep their games reasonable. With obvious exceptions… goddamn 400 GB games these days.