Don’t drink the water. Seriously, I brushed my teeth with tap water the other day, not thinking about it, and since I have a compromised immune system (due to liver issues), I feel like drek now. And we just had another algae bloom, the fourth since May, which means more toxins in our water supply coming soon!
So, since I am feeling poorly, I decided that, starting this weekend, I’ll be adjusting my streaming schedule. Yes, again. But this time, it really should make a difference, not just in allowing me more time to rest, but also to actually conduct my streaming more like an actual professional.
Yeah, right! Me, a professional?
Anyway, here’s what I have in mind. I am planning to do four livestreaming events each weekend, which will then be rebroadcast on YouTube and available on this website Monday through Wednesday and Friday. On Thursday, we’ll have the “Pixels & Dice” podcast, and of course blog entries whenever I feel like writing.
So, how will this all play out? Well, on a normal weekend (such as this coming one):
- Saturday at 9am Pacific: “Rantcast” on my 2nd channel (Scormus), for 30-60 minutes, as needed.
- Saturday at 11am Pacific: A shorter Livestream on Scormey, featuring ‘quick’ games like Gwent, Hearthstone, or Diablo III
- Saturday at 9pm Pacific: A longer stream on Scormey, maybe 3-4 hours long, with at least one break taken, so I can stretch my legs. I think this will be focusing more on longer content, such as MMORPGs like Rift or World of Warcraft.
- Sunday at 9pm Pacific: Basically just like what I’ll be doing on Saturdays at 9pm (above).
Usually I would break those longer streaming sessions into multiple videos, to be rebroadcast on different days, but I have been thinking about it, and that’s just hurting my progression on Twitch. How? Because when I stop the stream to go take a quick break, then start back up, I lose about half of my viewers, if not more during that time. But if I leave the stream going, switched over to a “Taking a Break” scene I have that allows viewers to chat amongst themselves while I’m gone, I have a better chance of keeping some of those folk around while I take a “constitutional”, shall we say.
Now some people would say this will hurt my YouTube views, since folk over there avoid longform content like I’ll be doing on Saturday and Sunday nights like the plague. Well, they would be right in that, but…
- Ask me how many f**ks I give about YouTube views? Go ahead, ask me!
- Those stream replays I put up on YT are just to provide content on this website, so the length of the videos don’t really matter.
- Bigger videos take up more space on YT’s servers, meaning they cost YT more to host, and since they f**ked me on Monetization multiple times in the past, I have no problem with making them pay.
Bitter? Who, me? NO!
Whether it is shorter form videos (by comparison) like “Rantcast”, middle-of-the-road length replays like the Saturday 11am stream, or the epic length ones at night, none of them really pick up much in the way of views on YouTube. I use that as a long-term storage and broadcasting service for my videos, nothing more. So just keeping the weekend night streams running, rather than splitting them into 60-120 minute long broadcasts, is just fine. I can upload up to 12 hour long videos on YT, which I might end up doing at some point, such as if I end up doing something for a charity event someday, but that doesn’t matter for the day-to-day stuff.
But here’s a thought: Should I occasionally change games during those weekend Nighttime streams? Like if I played Rift for a couple of hours, and during the break, switched over to Guild Wars 2, for example. What would people think of that? I’d have to make some combo thumbnail graphics, but otherwise it should be fine, and provide some variety which might be welcome on occasion.
If you have any thoughts about this plan, please leave them in the Comments section at the bottom of the page. Thanks, and I’ll see you in-game!
