I will say this I didn't buy Ark because of streamers, in fact I never once watched anyone streaming anything about Ark until after I had bought the game, and needed pointers, or tips, or help figuring something out. That's how I do with every game. YouTubers and streamers don't influence my purchasing decisions whatsoever.
However on the other hand, to answer your question Joebl0w13, not only do people sit and watch someone else play a game, and listen to their commentary, they will also sit and watch someone else watching a movie, and listen to their commentary as well. I've noticed this is more popular in the younger millennial crowd, than the older millennial crowd, like me. My guess is mainly because us older millennials, were just starting to have access to the internet as we were growing up, and cellphones didn't all have cameras, and good web cams were pretty expensive back then, so YouTubers and the like, who post videos of themselves playing games, and watching movies and commenting on them, wasn't something we did, or had access to, but the younger millennials have.
This is why older generations, and us older millennials, don't use this as a tool to decide whether or not to buy, or watch something.
So yes, some streamers are the reason the younger crowd is buying these games, but no they are not the only reason it's still alive either. I don't know when the game was in early access, but I haven't owned a gaming console in years either, until 2018, so while I was deciding which console I wanted, I was also looking at games, and like someone previously mentioned, I grew up with Jurassic Park, so I wanted to play, because I wanted to play with dinosaurs, and pretend I'm in my own Jurassic World.
Just because someone does things differently than the way you do them isn't a reason to argue about it, or dismiss all of their comment, because, everyone who commented about this topic of streaming, in their own way was about 50% right.
Streamers do help for certain crowds, but have no influence on other crowds.
It's just the way the world works. What we should focus on, is that we all care deeply about this game, in one way or another, and we should be helping each other out to make this the best game it can be, rather than bickering and dismissing each other.
~ArkAfterDark~