the unique audience-player-creator dynamic statesmp has going on right now is kind of doing a better job at evoking some hunger games type bullshit than any of the actual structural details of the purge event do. you get this palpable sense of The Public in a way that a more standard smp can never exactly produce, if it has a small base of core players who all know each other... with something like lifesteal you can have a situation where someone's former perspective as a viewer becomes relevant to how they approach the server as a player, but you won't ever run into something like, fluixon going about mundane tasks & getting repeatedly interrupted by random people asking to take a screenshot with him. you definitely won't get a situation where you're effectively in the middle of the town square trying to deal with something going on in your life while random bystanders are remarking on the fact that you're standing next to the guy you betrayed last time around as if this were twitter—and the inverse experience of, encountering a stranger in-game who doesn't know who you are at all and seeming sort of relieved by that. you need a massive pool of potential players to get 1000+ people online at once, and that pool is going to come largely from people who watch the videos and get excited about them and necessarily form preconceived notions about the players central to those videos. the "repeat rule" works specifically to prevent a stable tight-knit group of central players from forming to some degree (along with the fact that even if you've played an important role in the past it seems like you'll always still have to apply to play & run the risk of being declined), and it creates a position where fame/notoriety becomes contingent on losing your ability to act freely, becoming further subject to scrutiny. everyone present understands that this whole thing is being done for entertainment's sake but not everyone is An Entertainer and not everyone is looking to make their own content. a lot of the time you, as a viewer, will not be able to access someone's pov even if you want to. it's awesome
