The Brief Life of an Aspiring Twitch Streamer
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| Source: Twitch.tv |
Twitch is not for me. Not now, at least. Two months may've been too soon to hang my account, place it on the back burner, what have you, but I saw what it took to keep streaming. I learnt what it takes to live off streaming; the latter of which is personally the crux of my abandonment.
To preface all this, streaming is arguably a career that consequently popped up as technology gets better. I believe it is. However, what isn't said enough is what a new streamer has to do to get a modicum of success if that is his or her aim.
I started with a sum of money and a month's worth of research on how to get started. When I had everything set up, I had a mid-range computer, a decent microphone, and a webcam I scrounged off my sister. That was enough to set me for the short-lived one man show. Going live four hours a night from seven to eleven o'clock, Monday to Friday, I showcased single-player games that were heavily story driven. My main idea was to analyse the plot and themes of the games I played. In doing so, I swiftly ran into some problems.
First, with the way I was streaming, I had to fork out more or less RM200 for each new release. Starting from scratch with no following, I figured that it was one of the best ways to attract people. This is because the relationship between prospecting viewers and single-player games is such that people naturally gravitate towards the games that have been newly released. The system encourages this and due to the fact that it does, it deters people from scrolling down all the way to older, obscure games or other forms of media that only had say one, two, or no viewers at all. There are exceptions to the rule. Once in a while, a popular streamer might choose to broadcast an old game, then it'd become a matter a chance on whether I happened to own the same game at the time. Nevertheless, between rent, food, and bills, my pitch already had a crippling obstruction.
Second, Twitch doesn't allow my streams to be archived for more than two weeks; two months if I were to subscribe to their Boost program or package. This meant I needed to find an alternative of which the most obvious candidate was YouTube. Thus, the requisite of knowing how to edit videos suddenly sprang up on me. Now, I'm not against learning new skills. I'm all for it as a matter of fact. On the grander scheme of things though, this meant I was in a position where I actively had to create content. It snowballed into a bigger project, more than what I was willing to do with limited resources.
Lastly, I just fell out of interest with it. Playing video games for five hours straight on a fixed schedule burnt me out. It felt more like a chore than an actual passion. However, I would attribute that more to the mentality and how I approached streaming rather than anyone else's fault. I've learnt the hard way of what happens when interests become jobs and the effects that come after it.
All in all, I don't regret streaming. In fact, some days I look back on it and I would like to dip my feet back in it again. Just not right now, perhaps when my priorities free up and the stars align once more. For those who want to go into it though, the best advice I can give is do it for fun. Do it because you just like to share what you're good at, what you're bad at, what you do that makes it who you are. Never do it for the money.
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| "The system encourages this." |
First, with the way I was streaming, I had to fork out more or less RM200 for each new release. Starting from scratch with no following, I figured that it was one of the best ways to attract people. This is because the relationship between prospecting viewers and single-player games is such that people naturally gravitate towards the games that have been newly released. The system encourages this and due to the fact that it does, it deters people from scrolling down all the way to older, obscure games or other forms of media that only had say one, two, or no viewers at all. There are exceptions to the rule. Once in a while, a popular streamer might choose to broadcast an old game, then it'd become a matter a chance on whether I happened to own the same game at the time. Nevertheless, between rent, food, and bills, my pitch already had a crippling obstruction.
Second, Twitch doesn't allow my streams to be archived for more than two weeks; two months if I were to subscribe to their Boost program or package. This meant I needed to find an alternative of which the most obvious candidate was YouTube. Thus, the requisite of knowing how to edit videos suddenly sprang up on me. Now, I'm not against learning new skills. I'm all for it as a matter of fact. On the grander scheme of things though, this meant I was in a position where I actively had to create content. It snowballed into a bigger project, more than what I was willing to do with limited resources.
Lastly, I just fell out of interest with it. Playing video games for five hours straight on a fixed schedule burnt me out. It felt more like a chore than an actual passion. However, I would attribute that more to the mentality and how I approached streaming rather than anyone else's fault. I've learnt the hard way of what happens when interests become jobs and the effects that come after it.
All in all, I don't regret streaming. In fact, some days I look back on it and I would like to dip my feet back in it again. Just not right now, perhaps when my priorities free up and the stars align once more. For those who want to go into it though, the best advice I can give is do it for fun. Do it because you just like to share what you're good at, what you're bad at, what you do that makes it who you are. Never do it for the money.
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