Hey, look at that! A BLOG POST!
I know, I know… I need to write something here more, rather than relying on pre-generated content such as the podcast. Well, here you go!
Anyway, today I’d like to talk a bit about my Twitch endeavors. First of all, I’ve spent the last few weeks not streaming “Lord of the Rings Online” at all, and it’s been a bit… interesting, to say the least.
First of all, I have found that many of the streamers I thought were friendly with me, apparently ignore me now that I’m not streaming LOTRO. That’s rather sad, but hey, I’m meeting new people, which is just fine.
Secondly, I heard from some folk who thought I was making a mistake by dropping LOTRO from my streaming endeavors. They believed I would lose Followers, that I would get fewer Viewers, and it would hurt my channel. Well, in the short run anyway, I am doing just fine. Even with so-called “dead games” like “Rift” and “Secret World Legends”, I’ve been getting decent numbers of viewers, and the channel continues to grow. If anything, I have found I’m getting more chat interaction now than when I was doing LOTRO, so… yeah. My channel is totally failing now.
ZOMG.
Now I have tried each of three different games in all three of my standard timeslots, and I did learn some interesting things. Most importantly, I discovered that it doesn’t matter what I play on Saturday mornings, that timeslot will always get less Viewers and interaction. So that has led to my decision to no longer stream on Saturday mornings anymore, at least not on a regular basis. Tenknife and I will instead be having quality family time then. I may still stream on the occasional morning (Saturday or otherwise), but my focus is now going to be on the Saturday and Sunday night streams.
Speaking of which, I did an experiment last weekend with changing the streaming times from 9pm to Midnight Pacific, moved forward three hours each day. I thought this would work better for my viewers, since they mostly seem to show up in force after Midnight, but in the end, things were pretty much as usual… only starting three hours later… which completely screwed up my body clock!
So yeah, back to 9pm Pacific.
There was one good thing about the Midnight shows, though. I called those shows “The Witching Hour”, a name I really enjoyed, and which I’d like to maintain, really. So, what do? Well, it’s always Midnight somewhere, so the name stays.
Yes, this means my channel now effectively has a permanent stream title, which is quite nice. Less edits needed to be made before each stream, better brand recognition opportunities, etc. And you all know how much I love Halloween, so basically it can now be Halloween all year long!
Something else I have been trying recently is making a different stream overlay, which took the chat display out of the gamescreen area, and this of course meant the game display area would be smaller. While this did what I was hoping it would, overall, I just didn’t like it, so we are – for now, anyway – returning to the usual “green overlay” I’ve used most of 2019 so far. I will likely change the overlay now and again in the future, but I won’t be reducing the game display area again. Too much wasted screen space for my liking.
Anyway, here’s what I have in mind for future streams: As I said, we’ll be streaming at 9pm Pacific Saturday & Sunday nights… except for when we don’t (D&D waits for no Man, y’all). But mostly at 9pm. Mostly. I swear. Really. And we’ll be calling it “The Witching Hour with Scormey”, because it’s Midnight somewhere, even if we actually start at 10pm sometimes, and maybe as early as 7pm other times, etc.
Furthermore, I’d like to do two additional streams each weekend, aside from the 9pm to 1am-ish “Midnight Hour” shows. These would be a little less formal, a little more loose, and start after I have a break for food and whatnot… I’m thinking this would start in the 3am to 4am range, and run for maybe 3-4 hours. Neither of these two extra streams would be required, just something I might do, if I’m up to it. But it would allow me to feature more games each weekend, since only two streams each week means playing “Rift” and… only one other game at most.
Oh, yeah, one other thing before I go. I have applied to the Trion Creators Program, and should hear back in the next few weeks if I have been accepted or not. I plan on playing “Rift” in my Saturday night timeslot each week, so hopefully that will be enough. I looked to see if “Neverwinter” has a similar program, same with “Secret World Legends”, but neither seem to have something like this. “Neverwinter” has an official Stream Team, like LOTRO does, so there’s always a chance I get asked to join the NW team, if I don’t end up working with Trion/Gamigo instead.
So, that’s what’s up, y’all.