Streamers with jobs

I initially started streaming on UG:CW because I wanted to show that it could be played successfully on the highest difficulty, and to demonstrate the issues we were seeing to the developers (it was early access at the time). I did some other games after that, but kind of petered out last year while searching for a new job. I very rarely had people in chat while I was playing, but I got a few views here and there, and became fairly well known in the small Ultimate General community. I think it helped a great deal that Ultimate General: Civil War was very episodic - I'd do one stream for each battle, and one stream for each camp session. This worked very well on Youtube, as did streaming at higher resolutions.

Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:

I was pretty active in another streamer’s channel (I started watching him over 2 years ago, playing Dark Souls) - he had a pretty consistent dozen viewers, and we were a pretty chatty bunch. A few of them stream, themselves - I feel like we all follow each other. They’re much better at it, than I am, but they pop in my stream when they can (they’re mostly UK, so... 6hr time difference means they don’t stay long). My stream is very empty 99% of the time - 2 viewers is a high number, and chat is non-existent.

I think this is probably your best bet for getting into streaming and have it be something meaningful. Twitch is extremely oversaturated and basically puts zero emphasis on new streamers, so just setting up a stream and expecting to get viewers is basically impossible.

Instead, its much better if you try to find a small but established group of friends, and make yourself a part of them. At that point, streaming becomes less about getting viewers and more about hanging out and keeping in touch with people. For instance, I started streaming by speedrunning Super Metroid, which is a very specific but dedicated group of people who love to watch each others runs and offer advice, encourage one another, etc. The downside was that when I quit speedrunning that game, those viewers dried up too, but it was a good example of how to seek out and integrate yourself with a community.

Currently, I am in a situation similar to Wink_and_the_Gun. I started following a small streamer and getting really involved with her chat and community, and although I stream rarely, when I do actually do it I can often expect one of those friends to drop by and say hi. I'll never get mega viewers but its nice for being able to connect with people.

To respond to the whole "just playing" thing, that's specifically what I'm hoping to avoid. If I were to try and start streaming it would probably be once a week, and I'd go through games I'm familiar with enough so that I could comment on the design and my thoughts on it as I play. So I would definitely be trying to provide commentary rather than just going through.

As for aspects of growth and communities... that's where I'm uncertain about what I want or why. I see that a "converstation" is happening and I want to try and find my way to be a part of it. The problem is I'm just as bad at it in a figurative sense as I am in a literal sense. So it's possible – even likely – that I'll end up having a minor to non-existent following and then start fighting all the negative voices in my head. As I had said, I don't really follow Streamers myself, and therefore I don't have an "in" that way. I also don't know what good streams are like. I'm the sort of person that wants to play a game rather than watch someone else play it.

But it could be that I'm also just not aware of people doing streams like I want to make myself. So I think I'll try and see if I can observe some first and get a feel for how they go about it. But when it comes to being part of a community first... well, that firstly feels insincere since I'm not finding that community naturally. It would be like if I found GamersWithJobs with the intent of having written on the front page rather than finding the community via Gone Gold on The Escapist and thinking "hey, I like these people, I think I'll stick around".

I'm in no rush at the moment. The only thing I've decided is that a "Tuesdays at 6pm ET" is probably what would work best if I were to begin streaming. Which is evidently already the "wrong thing" since people talk about needing to stream daily but, well, I have no plans on streams being my primary content anyway so that doesn't bug me.

Any GWJ Trans folk who also have experience streaming games, please drop me a line! DM through the site or email shawn at gamerswithjobs.com is great. Charity stream for Trans Lifeline will be happening Friday, Feb 1st and Saturday, Feb 2nd 10AM CST to 10PM CST both days. Woo! Looking to fill one and two hour slots.

We will be moderating chat and keeping an eye on things.

I am currently streaming Dark Souls (through the XBox on Twitch, see link in my sig) and have noticed the volume of my voice is really low. I am currently using the Micosoft XBox mic that plugs into the XBox controller.

Are there other ones out there that might provide better sound input for my voice, or are there settings on the XBox that I should be adjusting?

There really isn't much you can config on the XBox, but those microphones are mediocre over all.

Is it just the microphone that's low, and everything else is at a reasonable level (EG - is your microphone being drowned out?)

I ended up finding a setting in the XBox control panel that might help. It's a setting for microphone, and mine was at 5 out of 10. So I bumped it up to 10, and will give it a try later on today.

Also - BUDDY!!!

Edit to add - Yup, that did it.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/387634922

so i went and done a stream. :O that is a thing that happened.

Well, a test stream really. And Eleima was the only person in the audience who graciously meant i wasn't self consciously babbling to myself

Might do it again. If there's interest.

Mostly it's an exercise in improving my enunciation and speaking skills (partly for just general life, but mostly for D&D if i'm honest :D) so right now i've started a fresh game of Sunless skies. Which is...a LOT of reading.

Fair warning, my accents are TERRIBLE.
it'll be here if and when i do...

Probably going to stream another hour or so of sunless skies from about 7.00pm GMT if anyone wants to stick their head in and stop me talking to myself for an hour

I'll assume GWJPyxistyx is you. Followed!

I'm going to stream for the first time in a while tonight. I've really been enjoying Minion Masters casually. It's an F2P, Card driven, RTS AI Strategy combat arena game. Seems to be mildly popular on Twitch too.

If I could do it at night and not wake up the house, I'd be all about Twitch Sings. My stars.

twitch.tv/zoso1701

Hey guys, just chiming in because later today I'm doing a charity stream for AbleGamers via Sentinels of the Store, so watch me play SpaceBourne, which is an amazing game. It starts at 4 PM Pacific, and you can learn about the campaign here or donate to the campaign here. Hope to see y'all on either YouTube, Twitch or Steam! Thanks for your time!

Veloxi wrote:

Hey guys, just chiming in because later today I'm doing a charity stream for AbleGamers via Sentinels of the Store, so watch me play Star Citizen and Stellaris

Now we're talking.

*Legion* wrote:
Veloxi wrote:

Hey guys, just chiming in because later today I'm doing a charity stream for AbleGamers via Sentinels of the Store, so watch me play Star Citizen and Stellaris

Now we're talking.

Thef*ck?

I've started streaming some Warships a bit of other stuff over at dlive, because I'm interested in learning more about the platform. I'm streaming in the mornings and late at night because I work nights now. Sorta get paid to watch! On your phone ... not a lot ... but it's interesting.

https://dlive.tv/Aetius

Dlive did something interesting this weekend. The "treasure chest" they were using before would accumulate as you watched and interacted with a streamer, and eventually it would fill up and you could click it and it would give you 1-4 Lino (usually 1). They were using recaptcha to provide anti-bot protection. This apparently didn't work very well, as they restricted the chest to the mobile app only back in April due to abuse and clearly weren't happy with how it was working and rewarding viewers.

They've now changed the chest to accumulate only by "interaction", which seems to largely consist of chatting. The streamer determines when the chest is handed out, and it then distributes Lino randomly to followers currently in the channel.

This has had several effects, not all of them necessarily good. First, getting rewarded as a follower is completely dependent on the streamer - you can watch and interact for hours, but if you're not there when the chest is released, you get nothing. Second, streamers are able to put Lino into the chest, which means they can pay to attract viewers. This has led to a lot of channels advertising the available chest points in an effort to attract viewers - as I write this, the top ten or so channels on the front page are pretty much all advertising 10k+ chests (which is a lot - at the current Lino price, that's more than $100).

I'm not sure this is a good idea, but it's at least an interesting attempt to solve a very hard problem: how do you make sure that people are actually watching a stream? I think this is still exploitable, though, because it can't be that hard to make a bot to "interact" in a channel. Still, it's pretty fascinating to watch the effects. Stream on!

Yeah, not sure how to feel about that. I think I kinda don't like it.

Handing out chests? Is this something for partners only? I don't think I've ever given out anything of the sort and I'm an affiliate. (incidentally, I'll take any Prime subscriptions you folks are inclined to toss my way )

Eleima wrote:

Handing out chests? Is this something for partners only? I don't think I've ever given out anything of the sort and I'm an affiliate. (incidentally, I'll take any Prime subscriptions you folks are inclined to toss my way )

This is a Dlive-only thing - I'm assuming that you're referring to Twitch with the Prime stuff. Opening the chest doesn't require Partner status on Dlive.

I had my first viewer last night, and experimented with the chest. It seemed to accumulate relatively quickly at first with the two of us talking, getting up to 1 Lino in a few minutes. I dropped 10 Lino into the chest (it has to have at least 5 Lino to be opened), and opened it. Unsurprisingly, my one viewer got all 11 Lino. After that it stayed at zero for about an hour, even though we were still talking, and then started accumulating again.

I also tested with another streamer. He put 50 Lino the chest plus 3 accumulated, and opened it. I got all 53 Lino because apparently I was the only person in the chat who had been chatting and was still around - even though I had followed his channel only about 15 minutes before he opened the chest, and several other people had made comments in the interim. I think ignoring the engagement of people no longer in the channel is a problem, but I can see why they did it - they'd have to track engagement on a much larger scale if they included past viewers.

Right you are, if completely missed that, sorry!

So I'd never even heard of Dlive until this thread. Why use it above, say, Twitch?

Veloxi wrote:

So I'd never even heard of Dlive until this thread. Why use it above, say, Twitch?

DLive is built around a cryptocurrency called Lino, and (I guess?) uses a blockchain to transmit video.

They (until this change) actively paid you Lino for watching and/or streaming.

Though, there's some discussion about the value (or lack thereof) of Lino, and some concern over the fact that the creator of Lino holds some crazy-high percent (90%?) of the coin.

Some people swear DLive is the future of streaming, some say its a giant scam. Only time will really tell, I suppose.

(EDIT - I should point out I know people on both sides of that equation. A streamer friend streams there as his primary platform, and I know some people who swear they wouldn't touch the site with their worst enemey's browser. So, I don't wanna sway people either way.)

You had me at cryptocurrency... As in had me running far the f*ck away.

From my research, the advantages are mainly that the platform doesn't take a cut of what you give to a streamer, and viewers can also benefit from engaging with streamers (to a greater or lesser degree, particularly with the current design I was talking about above). 90% of any donation goes directly to the streamer, and 10% goes to people who have locked in Lino - basically, people who are investing in the system. To become a partner, for example, you have to lock 2,000 Lino. They can do this because they take a cut of the underlying currency as it is generated to pay infrastructure providers, app developers, etc - essentially making their profits through inflation of the currency.

From what I've seen it's not a scam, at least as far as the streamers are concerned - streamers have actually exchanged Lino for dollars (and bitcoin), quite a bit in some cases. The long-term viability for investors is much more of a question - there it's less of a scam and more of a risky investment, as is most blockchain-related technology. The Lino blockchain is still in testing and the Lino/dollar exchange rate is fixed. If the currency is floated on the market, it could fluctuate pretty sharply, and will lose value over time due to the inflationary nature of the system. This could cause problems for streamers who are depending on Lino for income, as viewers may not be able to adjust as rapidly as the market is fluctuating. And much depends on their ability to actually distinguish between humans and bots so that their measure of content value and engagement remains legitimate and valuable.

It's a pretty interesting system and product, and I'm definitely into it because of the nature of the system, not the money or even the streaming ... but I did get my first viewer yesterday!

So why choose it over Twitch, for example?

Right now there's two main reasons. First, when a viewer gives a streamer a payment, the majority of it goes directly to the streamer - the company doesn't take a cut (90% goes to the streamer, 10% goes to regular payments made to people with locked Lino, which can include the streamer if they are a partner). In contrast, I believe Twitch takes a 50% cut. Second, as a viewer you can also collect small amounts of Lino without buying anything, based on your engagement (this is the stuff that centers around the chest). I've collected about a hundred Lino total in about three weeks of casual watching and chatting for a few hours a week.

Streamers are learning fast, too. I sat through a 5k chest giveaway by one of the streamers I follow, and his advertising of that got him to 250+ viewers, a bunch of follows, and a chat that was a madhouse of spam. However, most of those viewers were what people have started calling "chest diggers", and as soon as he gave out the chest, they stopped watching and unfollowed him (which is interesting in itself - why bother to unfollow?).

After all that was over, he was kind of stunned, and said that he'd give out another chest the next day ... without advertising it, so that actual followers rather than diggers would get the rewards. Most of the channels have now stopped advertising because of the chaos it creates, and they've realized it doesn't actually get them real followers or viewers.

Finally got around to setting up my new PC for streaming with Xsplit Gamecaster. Holy crap was it easy to set up!! Hardest part was getting the audio levels for voice and game nicely balanced, and that was only because of the 10-second delay on twitch.

mudbunny wrote:

Finally got around to setting up my new PC for streaming with Xsplit Gamecaster. Holy crap was it easy to set up!! Hardest part was getting the audio levels for voice and game nicely balanced, and that was only because of the 10-second delay on twitch.

The audio balance is why I always do a test record before going live and I always keep an eye on the levels with OBS thrown up on the other screen.

Eleima wrote:
mudbunny wrote:

Finally got around to setting up my new PC for streaming with Xsplit Gamecaster. Holy crap was it easy to set up!! Hardest part was getting the audio levels for voice and game nicely balanced, and that was only because of the 10-second delay on twitch.

The audio balance is why I always do a test record before going live and I always keep an eye on the levels with OBS thrown up on the other screen.

OBS??

Open Broadcaster System. That’s the program I use to capture my screen, deal with overlays, add time, date, handle transitions, etc.

Eleima wrote:

Open Broadcaster System. That’s the program I use to capture my screen, deal with overlays, add time, date, handle transitions, etc.

Thanks!