Sari Piittinen

Last week I had a week off from work (I’ve been teaching mainly a variety of communication and writing courses at the unversity this fall). I decided to spend this week doing something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time, but always chickened out or postponed: a whole bunch of streaming gameplay on Twitch.tv. Somehow, in a period of 10 days altogether, I managed to achieve the requirements to become an Affiliate on Twitch. Affiliate status means you can (theoretically) earn money by streaming, as people can subscribe to your channel or donate bits. However, since I’m approaching streaming as a hobby and am very aware of how oversaturated streaming is at the moment, I don’t look at this as a realistic source of even partial income.

Saying it only took ten days to become affiliate is in a way an exaggeration. That’s because most of the people who attended my stream are friends I’ve made in other streams in the past year, and mainly SpaceKat‘s wonderful community. I’ve been an extremely active viewer and “fan” on Twitch long before I finally decided to give streaming a chance myself, and I plan on continuing as a viewer. When experienced streamers say that building a community is the most important thing to do if you wish to succeed as a streamer, I really can’t doubt that, because without this community I’m happily a part of, there is no way I would’ve had the viewership and follower numbers to become an Affiliate this fast, or at all.

How does it then feel to go from not streaming at all to streaming almost every day for over a week? Well, I can honestly say I don’t feel like I really had a holiday last week. Even if my streams were relatively short (by this I mean they were mostly under 4 hours), I was constantly thinking about streaming – when to start, what to do, how to modify some stream features (which pre-affiliate aren’t that many, but anyway). It had other mental effects on me, too. On one day in particular, I felt socially insecure; I was questioning my existing friendships, whether people really liked me, whether I really liked people… It was mentally taxing to wonder whether some relationships would change if I were to also start streaming, if I was taking a risk and making a mistake. Now, everything is fine again, but the move from a viewer to a streamer is no doubt a complex one.

So what did I actually stream? My current (most likely motherboard related) crashing issues whenever I play something more ‘demanding’ required me to focus on games that wouldn’t be too heavy to handle for my PC. I first turned to random indie games I’d got from a charity bundle for racial justice and equality on itch.io. I can honestly say that I probably wouldn’t have ended up playing these games if it weren’t for streaming to motivate me. Exploring new games is more fun to do as a shared activity. The game I’ve played the most so far from the bundle is Last Knight, … a silly and simple, but fun game in which you control a knight who occasionally does jousting to fight off enemies on his path. I’d never heard of this game before, but currently it’s a legendary one on my channel. Probably not for ever, but it was a fun one to start with…

The game that really helped me with the whole Affiliate thing is Phasmophobia. In this game, you explore evidence (with a group of up to 4 people) in haunted houses to find out what type of ghost is haunting it. While some players don’t experience this game as scary, or say that it quickly becomes less scary, I’m still very sensitive to the sounds and anticipation of the ghost hunting that I still get scared and get a deeply ‘concerned’ feeling in my stomach whenever I play it. It’s the kind of game I’d only play with friends because otherwise the effect it has on me isn’t worth it – I won’t lie, I’ve slept with the night light on a few nights since I started playing this game.

In any case, this kind of ghost game seems fun for people to watch, even if I tend to try to play it ‘seriously’ whenever I do. This is also because the game still scares me. The sooner we discover the ghost type and possibly complete extra objectives, the sooner we can get out of the house. That’s why I want to focus on doing what needs to be done, and not do so much of trying to anger the ghost for a laugh (even though it’s entertaining when people do that in other streams). Regardless, it seems Phasmophobia especially interested people enough to tune in for a while, which was fun and awesome.

A part of streaming is also setting up the stream and dealing with technical issues. For example, I initially wanted to stream by using my phone’s camera as a webcam, but for some reason this caused severe lag in my stream’s picture, so I had to give that up. The good thing is that I’ve finally had use for the rather high quality Rode microphone I bought way earlier when I was also planning on making some kinds of gameplay videos (but back then, probably for YouTube). It stands awkwardly on my desk (it doesn’t have very sturdy feet), but I’m quite happy with the sound quality. I’ve always been super insecure about my quiet, high voice, and I used to feel even worse about it when I used lower quality mics that didn’t pick it up properly. I thought I sounded weak, pathetic, and monotone. I still don’t sound exactly loud and super expressive, but at least the sound is more accurate. Sometimes proper gear can give you the confidence you need to try something new.

I’m now waiting for a webcam from a friend to arrive in the mail because the times I could use my phone as a camera I enjoyed being able to express myself with facial expressions and gestures in addition to just voice. I do wonder what I’m going to do about my appearance, however. I really can’t imagine myself putting any make-up on for streams – make-up has become such a non-factor in my daily life. But with female streamers especially, there seems to be an expectation of appearing ‘representable’. I kind of have a really red face and flat hair, and it seems that’s what stream is going to have to settle for… Maybe I’ll wear a funny hat or head accessory to distract folk, who knows.

Setting up the software initially was simpler than I thought (I use OBS Studio), but now after achieving Affiliate, setting up more customized stuff has taken more research. I still don’t have a proper “intro” to my stream. I kind of tend to just start. It’s been, again, a bit exhausting, but also fun to think about how to customize the stream more. I’ve tried to do it little by little after work. Another addition I need to think about as well is my first and only emote slot. I’d prefer to make the emote myself, but my graphics skills are… severely rusty… It may take a while.

Tomorrow (Saturday) is my first stream since Monday when I completed the Affiliate requirements, and it feels like it’s been a long time since I last streamed. It can be quite addictive. I hadn’t even planned on streaming last Monday, but an opportunity presented itself, and I ended up streaming for 5.5 hours after work. I’m looking forward to it, but also wondering if I’ll ever have a “proper” weekend again if streaming now becomes a part of my life…

The experience has also been interesting because I’ve been fascinated by streaming not just as a hobby, but also as a researcher. I’ve read papers about streaming, observed some phenomena in streaming that I would’ve studied if someone had funded me, and somehow thought I’d be able to apply this kind of critical thinking in my own activities once I started streaming. Well, thus far, I haven’t really had the time to stop and think about any of those things. For example, one thing I’ve been interested in is what types of skills one needs to stream, how they are learned, whether those skills are applicable in other types of contexts, and whether streamers can identify those skills themselves (or take them ‘for granted’). I was mostly interested in this from the perspective of wanting to help streamers who either weren’t able to succeed as streamers and had to look for other types of work, or wanted to switch careers for other reasons. At some point I need to sit down and deeply and critically self-reflect on everything to have my own thoughts recorded somewhere. One day, they might be valuable (to me or others).

I always thought as a researcher that streaming is a complex, multilayered phenomenon. Now I can also say that it’s a complex, multilayered experience.

Here are some helpful suggestions I received for how to end this post:
“and that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. THE END” – confushi_sushi
“that’s all fuckos” – Elentari
“and they lived happily ever after” – definitely not Mark