YouTube Gaming Launch

I was very excited to try out the new YouTube gaming service so I started streaming Dota 2 on the old service an hour before the new service was officially rolled out. I had about 10 viewers up until the new service launched when my viewers jumped up to 65+! I was excited to be part of the launch and to be amongst the first streamer viewers were seeing on YouTube Gaming! I was so pumped by that stream that I went back to YouTube Gaming later in the evening to stream The Witcher 3. I changed the name of the game I was streaming in the dashboard but people just weren't tuning in. I discovered later that I was still appearing on the Dota 2 page instead of The Witcher 3 despite a couple of stream restarts. It was very disappointing as I was looking forward to meeting new viewers that might be interested in watching me play The Witcher 3. It sounds like there are numerous small problems with the service like this that Google needs to work out ASAP if their service is to be a successful alternative to Twitch. For now I'll likely keep using YouTube for Dota 2 and everything else will be on Twitch. I love that I can stream at a higher bitrate on YouTube Gaming and not have to worry about people buffering but if no one is watching because they can't find me then what's the point!

The unexpected 24 hour stream

Well I completed my first 24 hour stream yesterday and it was crazy and totally unplanned. I'm currently in a competition with pocketClint to complete Dark Souls the fastest. After wasting a bunch of time going the wrong way I decided to just have fun and started to play a lot more clowny than I usually do. I was having so much fun that I ended up going about 12 hours in one sitting before I stopped. I went outside to grab some breakfast and coffee and figured, since it was morning now, to just carry on going as my sleep schedule is a bit screwed up now. I ended up going the full 24 hours before I decided to stop for good. Can't believe some people stuck with me throughout most of the show! Was an awesome experience and look forward to doing my planned 24 hour stream soon. During this planned 24 hour stream I'm going to play games that inspired me from the 80s!

My First Twitch Raid

After a really fun and successful first stream of the great strategy survival game This War of Mine one of my regular viewers, ThatBlueNinja, suggested that we go on a raid. I was hesitant since I only had about 5 viewers at the time but all of a sudden a few more joined the channel and decided to go for it. I decided to raid someone that had no viewers and noticed there was one other streamer playing This War of Mine who fit the bill. I established the trigger which was based of a character that just joined my crew of survivors that causes some controversy in my chat. I'm trying to play This War of Mine in a morally good way so when Cveta asked if she could stay with us in our shelter, even though she had no useful skills, I had to accept despite my chats repeated attempts to get me to turn her away. We all moved to nipawomsett channel and my viewers waited for the raid trigger before speaking up. I said "Who do you love?" and my viewers spammed Cveta!! nipawomsett had no idea how to react as he had only started streaming a few days ago and barely had any viewers! He was such a nice dude though and we talked for about an hour where I shared some of my streaming tips! The raid put such a smile on my face because nipawomsett reaction was so innocent and genuine. He legitimately had no idea how to react kind of like me when I was viewer bombed and he couldn't concentrate on the game at all haha!

Moding Story

Had a great experience yesterday being a moderator for Christopher Odd,who is a popular fellow Canadian YouTuber, and is trying out Twitch streaming. He was streaming Her Story which is a game I streamed on release day to great success! I tried to make sure no one was spoiling the game while encouraging discussion and I think people really responded. Chris was nice enough to let me talk a bit on his stream after he finished which helped me connect with his audience even more and let me share some theories I had about the game! I got some new followers and hopefully more regular viewers but more importantly I had a great time! Greatly appreciated Chris and I look forward to helping out with future streams!

It's All in the Name

I rushed to pump out game play footage of a new non linear story based game called Her Story as I wanted to be one of the first to play it and get videos up. The game is everything I thought it would be and more. I fiended on it all day! I was one of the first to stream it on Twitch and post game play on YouTube as I wanted but I wasn't getting the views I thought I would. When I posted the new episode of Game of Thrones, even a day late, I got tons of views because it was new but I wasn't hitting anywhere near those numbers on Her Story. I realized it was probably the title. I called the videos Her Story Episode #. New viewers weren't finding it on the search page as people tend to search for gameplay or let's play. I changed the names of all the videos to Luckless Lovelocks Let's Play Her Story Episode # and bam the number of views more than doubled in an hour and the views are still coming on strong! It's all about marketing. The name is really there to get people to watch while being descriptive. If you want to see my game play it's here

Sir Action Slacks Viewer Bomb

It didn't take long to top my top streaming night. Last week while I was streaming dota 2 I suddenly received several followers and then my chat was flooded with messages. I noticed Sir Action Slacks, a Dota 2 celebrity who built himself up from nothing, in my chat and quickly realized he was stream bombing me! All of a sudden I went from 8 to 263 people watching me play a hero I'm not very good with at 5am after already streaming since 7pm!!!!!! Some funny fails and my charming personality and streaming stamina seemed to make an impression as I kept a solid 50 viewers through until about 11am and I consistently get some of these viewers watching me still. Shout out to Sir Action Slacks for doing this and I encourage other partnered streamers to do the same and make someone's day!

The Odd Effect

Wow! Best night of streaming ever! One of my favourite YouTubers Christopher Odd and his friend Mystic joined me and my buddies for a couple of games of Dota 2. It was both surreal and exciting to play with someone that got me into streaming. It also got a bunch of people watching the stream and I think my YouTube channel as I've gotten a bump in viewership on both! Thanks Chris you're awesome and a good Dota player be sure and support his YouTube channel which I linked above! I also had fun during my first Follower Friday. I taught a couple of people how to play Dota 2 and Heroes of the Storm which I really enjoyed. Not sure how well I did but looking forward to helping more people out!

Game of Thrones Telltale Episode 4 Great Streaming Day!

I took a chance and streamed the 4th episode of the Telltale Game of Thrones series even though I hadn't streamed or recorded the first 3 episodes and it was a big success on my YouTube channel! Sure I'm not getting thousands or even hundreds of views but it looks like it's going to be one of my most watched videos which I'm really excited about! I'm considering going back and doing the other 3 episodes over again on stream and posting them but I'm a bit concerned I'll mess up one of the decisions I've made. Maybe I'm over thinking things haha!

Streamer Trolls

This is the first time this has happened to me. I was playing The Witcher 3 a couple of days ago and having some very interesting discussions with my viewers when someone popped in and dropped two spoilers in one post and then appeared to leave the channel. Why do people do this? Do they really have so much time on their hands that they would rather drive by troll then say play a game or actually have a real conversation with someone? Anyone have a suggestion on how to prevent this in the future? I mean I can post rules saying NO SPOILERS in ultra caps but I feel like that won't make a difference for the drive by trolls.

Getting Followers Without Streaming

I spent a very enjoyable several hours chatting with people on pocketclint's twitch stream while he was playing Bloodborne. I love pocketclint's commitment and enthusiasm to his stream and he has a very magnetic personality and I truly believe he will be successful. The funny thing is that I streamed for about 5 or more hours today and was not able to secure a single follower but I got 2 followers just chatting with people on his stream. Clearly he is the better streamer and I am the better..... nah he's just better than me haha! Either way I had fun today playing The Witcher 3 for my first entry into the series and look forward to more adventures in that story. That game is clearly made with dedication and love for storytelling and it comes through in every facet of the game which I appreciate!

Patreon

I started a patreon "campaign". Curious to see if I will get any support. I'm doing this for fun but I would like to give my viewers a better experience and I can't really afford that right now so hopefully this will help.

The Game that Didn't Exist - Dark Echo

This is the first time this has happened to me and thought I'd share it with you. I went to stream the excellent mobile to PC port Dark Echo last night but couldn't select the game in Twitch. From the brief research that I did, Twitch gets it's game database from Giantbomb.com which I thought was a little strange. I would think they had a connection with Steam where he game is available but that got me thinking about all of the different platforms out there and how much of a headache it would be to manage connections to those databases as I've done work in that area before. So ultimately they've decided to go with a connection to a manually curated database by way of the Giantbomb.com game Wiki. My first hastily put together submission for the new game to the Wiki was quickly rebuked by one of the moderators as I just copied and pasted some data from Steam. They said that the only post original text so I wrote something up quickly to describe the game from my experiences so far. Waiting on approval. Hopefully it'll be in there before I stream next time so the game can get the credit/exposure it deserves. It's quite a fun and unique game.

Great Stream Tonight with Conflicted Feelings

Had a lot of fun streaming Outlast tonight. A streamer who is an experienced Outlast player, spent most of the stream with me and really made me feel like he was enjoying it. We bantered back and forth mainly discussing the game and the DLC/sequel. Towards the end he mentioned that he had to go to bed to make it to school tomorrow but wanted to stay to see the end. I told him I would feel bad if he did that and eventually decided to take off even though he didn't want to. Made me feel like I was putting on a good show but I also felt conflicted that he might miss school just to watch me. First time I've experienced this kind of guilt. I want viewers but don't want people skipping school to watch haha! I decided to follow him and will check in from time to time as he seems to have a similar twisted view on life that I do.

Supporting the Smaller Streamers Like Me

I've decided to watch a gaming stream on twitch.tv every night that has fewer than 5 viewers for at least a half hour. I'm picking streams that have people that interact with their viewers and play games that I've played before or games that I'm thinking of buying. I'll keep looking until I find one that's good and talk with the streamer for a while. If they're cool I'll throw them a follow. Tonight I watched DeathTrooper421 who was streaming Alien: Isolation which is a game I played on my Late Night with Lovelocks series. He was doing a great job and had some interesting conversations with the people watching. DeathTrooper421 and one of his followers DarkHerobrine421 ended up following me. This was a really fun experience that also helped both of our streams out which is exactly what I was looking to do!

Intro

I've recently started video game streaming on Twitch.tv and uploading my game play to YouTube. It's been a great experience so far and I'm going to share some of my thoughts and experiences here when I feel like it.