I enjoy livestreaming on Twitch, but frankly, it isn’t very rewarding. Which is to say, I spend many hours at my Xbox or laptop, talking with people in chat and trying to be entertaining, while making no money for my trouble. Sure, it can be fun, but it is also stressful trying to please everyone, but that often ruins the fun I’m trying to have.
To be honest, I almost want to just play a damn game, and let people watch if they like. No chatting, just play the damn game and if people watch to watch, they can.
That seems kind of mean, and I don’t want to be rude to those folks who drop in on my livestreams, but I also don’t want to start up a night of gaming and come out of it feeling like I just worked a 12 hour shift of hard labor! It can just be frustrating and draining, which is why I just haven’t been streaming all that much anymore.
Well, that and the equipment I have.
I have been streaming for the most part on my Xbox Series X, which is fine, but I don’t have access to the normal overlays and whatnot I use on PC streaming, not unless I want to subscribe to a third-party service, and why would I pay them when I’m already losing money? It just doesn’t make sense.
Now I could play some games on my old laptop, like when I was streaming from 2017-2020, but that comes with its own issues. First of all, it is an old laptop. Sure, it has a lot of memory (64GB, if I recall), but has an old processor, and the laptop version of a GTX 1060 video card.
That just won’t do anymore.
I don’t have the money to invest in a new PC setup, and again, why would I invest more money into a hobby that is not earning any money back? Not to sound like a money-grubbing whore, just saying it like it is.
Maybe I should do foot videos on OnlyFans? I’m sure there would be folk with hobbit fetishes that would help me pay for a new rig…
Anyway, another issue is where my Xbox is, being the living room. I stream at night mostly, and my wife sleeps in her recliner in the living room, due to a variety of health issues. Frankly, its the only place where she can get good sleep. Now I could stream on my laptop in the office, but that again means playing only very old games that the laptop can handle, and who wants to see that?
I want to stream “Starfield”, “Avowed”, and the like. My laptop would shatter trying to play those titles, believe me, I’ve tried. So that would mean going back to games like “Lord of the Rings Online”, that my laptop can mostly handle, which to be frank, I don’t want to do.
So, now what?
If I get a bonus this spring, and am able to save a portion of our tax return, maybe I could buy a newish laptop that can handle games like “Starfield”, but I’m not going to bet on that. PC prices are skyrocketing right now, so I’d be better off sticking with the Xbox, at least for now.
I suppose I could Livestream on weekend mornings, while my wife is up, and thus I wouldn’t be interfering with her sleep? Sure, that would mean very long Saturdays for me (I work Monday through Friday nights), having just gotten off of work. But it would also mean I could stream on Monday mornings before I go to bed, so three days a week, if they were short streams.
It’s a lot to think about. Most of the folks who watched my streams were on at nights, so it would mean trying to build a whole new community, too. That could be good or bad, so again, something to think about.
UPDATE: I have done a little streaming on my old laptop, after tweaking a few things and picking up a “new” game on Steam. Basically, I love “Brotato” on the Xbox, but really wanted to play the two updates for the game which PC players have received, but Console players have not. So I dropped just under $6 to pick up “Brotato” and its DLC “Abyssal Terrors” on Steam, and jumped in for some streaming fun!
… It was only later that I found out I had plugged in the wrong mic, and the audio sounded horrible! But hey, I streamed! The plan is to try to stream on PC every weekend – playing games like “Vampire Survivors”, “Brotato”, and such – and save up the money I make (if any) towards buying a better PC in the future. And if I haven’t made enough within a year, I can reassess my streaming plans at that point.
I may also stream “Starfield” and other games off of my Xbox during the day on weekends, but we’ll see about that.
