Have been thinking about this for a while.
Understanding RPGs could help you understand vtubing by making some schizo tier random analogies, for instance, what makes an RPG character successful and what makes a chuba successful? in some RPG game usually characters have some properties tied to them, stats, skills, equipment, class, the stronger the stats/skills/equipment/class the stronger the character, vtubing is not too different
>stats
Personality, charisma, improvisation, how funny you are, etc, all those traits could be treated as the chuba's stats
>skills
In RPGs there are techniques and magic that characters learn usually depending on their class, in vtubing some people know how to sing, others know how to draw, some have creative ideas, some are hardworking, those can be the chuba's skills both active and passive
>equipment
Armor/swords/bows/wands/consumables etc are items that boost the character stats from the RPG, in vtubing it could be anything that helps the chuba do their job, an ASMR mic, an ukelele, a tablet for drawing, a new outfit, alcohol, etc, depending on the quality they boost the chuba's strength
>classes
RPG characters could be warriors, mages, thieves, etc. Depending on their class they have certain strategies and skills that make them shine at certain jobs. In vtubing you could say there are classes, like the hag class, the loli class, the succ class, the whore class, etc.
>buffs/debuffs
The individual power of a chuba depends on their stats, the higher their stats the more powerful she/he is, buffs help to artificially increase the chuba's stats, a chuba wins buffs by fulfilling certain conditions, for instance, If the chuba's traits have affinity with their own class (for instance, has a loli model and has a loli voice) they receive buffs for every trait that checks the mark, on the other hand if she has a roastie voice... that's a debuff right there, if the chuba does something by pure coincidence related to their lore, they gain a small buff, if the chuba has an event, there comes a small buff, some of these buffs are permanent and some are temporally, if you want growth aim for permanent ones, if you want to cash in your growth, aim for a temporally one.

Now let's talk about collabs and corporations.
>collabs
In RPGs you could clear some dungeon by yourself or you could join a party, success of the party depends on individual power of each character and teamwork. Collabs are kinda like that, the more affinity the members have the more successful it is.
>corporations
Here I will do an analogy with guilds, guilds are associations of individuals moving to achieve certain goals, by fulfilling missions they win gold and exp. The more members it has in theory the more missions they can do and the more power the guild has in general. But, if there is a limited number of jobs/missions to take and big number of members (let's say, around 200), only some members will be trusted with the hardest missions and the rest will lack the exp and gold needed for them to grow (level up/buy equipment), in order for the guild to keep up with high rank missions the guild has to keep sending their best while the rest slowly grinds their way to the top.
On the other hand, having a small number of members (let's say around 50) at first it leaves your guild with low power, but the members can take more missions on average thus letting them win more exp and gold allowing them to level up much and have better equipment at faster and more uniform pace.
Some guilds have certain focus, if you go to any mixed guild you can find someone able to do the job among all of it's members, but a guild with focus, let's say a magician guild, a magician guild's main focus is to have the best magicians and it moves towards that goal, in here magicians learn higher tier spells improving their individual power as magicians, and the more magicians inside the guild and the more powerful they are as magicians, the stronger is the magician guild.
In a similar fashion, chuba corporations's power as a brand depends on the individual power of their chubas, that shouldn't be hard to understand, the more famous their chubas the more power they gain, but the brand could have themes too, the most obvious one is hololive and it's female idol theme, maybe now you are seeing where I'm going with this, the more members that follow that theme and the more powerful they are, the stronger the buff coming from that brand theme gets and it's applied to all the members that follow that theme, on the other hand, members that don't follow the theme (like a warrior in the magician guild) or are not in the company (out of the magician guild) lose that brand theme buff partially or entirely and keep fighting with their own individual power.

From this point of view, the current state of vtubing makes sense.
Thoughts on my schizo tier analogy?