I was going to continue with my social media conversation today, but I've decided to pursue a different topic based upon what my streaming friend Jon decided to do with his stream recently.
Live-streaming and recording game play has become an increasingly popular thing for gamers to do. The most successful people have managed to make the practice of sharing their gaming experiences a full-time, and lucrative, job, but it's a relatively small segment of the population that's been that successful.
For the rest, it's a struggle to find a foothold, even if you manage to become partnered and make a little bit of money. Some are trying to make it a full-time job, others, such as myself, do it strictly as a hobby. Many though have unrealistic expectations of what's going to happen and fail to understand how much work it takes to grow a successful gaming channel.
I wanted to talk about this because Jon recently made a decision to make the chat in his stream subscriber-only, meaning those who aren't subscribed to his stream can watch, but they can't actively participate in the chat. It wasn't an easy decision for him to make, but he laid out his decision in a VOD (video on demand) on his Twitch profile that was well-thought out and helped me understand why he was making his decision.
It's easy for me to be okay with it though. I've been subscribed to his stream since he was partnered last summer and will stay subscribed as long as he continues to stay active with it. Yet I can understand why those who were unable (or unwilling) to subscribe might find this upsetting; Jon's chat is one of my favorite parts of the stream. I've known many of the active members since I started watching him 2 years ago and they've been a tremendous help anytime I've had a computer-related question or issue.
However, it may hurt his audience in the short-term as people are turned off by the notion of not being able to chat unless being subbed. His decision is sound though.
I won't get into too much detail about why he made the decision, but he essentially has a one year time frame to grow the channel or he may have to walk away. For more details, you're going to want to watch this as he lays it out clearly and even gets a little emotional about 30 minutes in, which was very touching and clearly was touching towards the people watching him live.
This post isn't just about that kind of decision. I fully support any streamer that makes a decision that they think is best for their channel. As Jon said, you can still watch the stream at high quality for free, you just can't chat unless you sub. I know other streamers have either made their chat sub-only permanently or have select sub-only streams.
No, this post is about how difficult it really is to operate a stream or gaming channel and grow. A good portion of people who watch have no clue how much work goes into it, how much money these people are investing in this. Some have put thousands of dollars of their own money into PC/recording/editing equipment in exchange for only getting a few hundred follows (or subscribers on YouTube).
The first problem is there are a TON of people trying to record and stream right now. The idea of putting your gameplay up on the internet caught on a few years ago and has exploded recently as the tools to do so have become relatively affordable. Most anyone with a decent PC can download recording software for under $50, a microphone for under $100, and OBS (streaming software) for free and get up and running with YouTube and/or Twitch (or any other streaming service that's available).
Many see the bigger names apparently raking in the money and think that they can do the same. They start streaming/uploading their games and wait for the views/follows/likes/subs to start rolling in. When the success isn't instantaneous, many just stop out of the blue and cease video production. They learn it isn't as simple as recording or streaming some gameplay, that there's actual work involved.
Yes, it takes work to put out high quality videos and streams. You have to have a machine capable of maintaining a good frame rate while recording/streaming, good internet for uploading your content, and some artistic ability to create overlays and such. For YouTube, you need to be able to at the very least do basic editing and be able to create decent thumbnails. For Twitch, the overlay is more important. It also helps to have a web cam, a "bot" to handle advance chat options, and a good set of moderators once you become more popular.
It's a lot of work and it's very time consuming for most, which often leads to people becoming burned out when the growth isn't as fast as they would have hoped.
Let's be honest. If you put hundreds of hours of work into your channel and you weren't seeing any growth, you'd probably become frustrated and wonder why you should even bother to continue going forward. For me, this isn't really an issue. I'm not doing this full-time and have no plans or aspirations of doing it full-time. It's strictly a hobby and nothing else.
But for people like Jon who are trying to make it work full-time, lack of growth can become increasingly frustrating as time goes on. You start to wonder why you're even bothering and the pressure to do better makes the games themselves less fun.
I've seen it with Jon. He doesn't appear to be having as much fun as he did a year ago. The pressure of trying to get his channel to grow has been wearing on him for a while and once you get in a funk, it becomes very difficult to break out of it if things don't turn around quickly. I'll give Jon credit for fighting through it, but it's not easy to do and he seems to be hard on himself, which isn't a bad quality at all.
Most people don't think about playing games as being stressful, they don't think it can burn you out, but in reality, if it's what you're doing to try and earn a living, it becomes a job, and jobs can become stressful no matter how "fun" they might be.
Imagine you HAVE to stream or upload videos 4-5 days a week, every week, and if you don't, you lose your audience. Imagine if you miss a couple of days, people stop watching your content and never come back. Imagine if your audience wants you to play certain games in order to stick around.
It can become pretty stressful very quickly, and that's without the rude viewers who show up simply to harass you until you finally ban them, only to have them sign up under new names and continue the assault. Imagine if people are telling you awful things about your content, or worse, you and/or people you know.
Now, it's not necessarily going to be always be that bad, but it could happen and I've seen a few people give up YouTube/streaming because they couldn't handle the noise. I've seen people burn out because the pressure of keeping up daily content became too much for them to handle, or they actually got sick of playing games and trying to keep them interesting.
I myself, even only doing YouTube on occasion and just starting up with streaming, have grown tired at times of it. I burned out on Minecraft a while back and have struggled to consistently get back into it even with new updates pushing across recently.
My reasons are more due to having a 40 hour work schedule and a two year old I'm often chasing when I'm off work. It leaves me a small window at night to do my recordings/streams, and often I'm just tired and don't have the energy to make content, which sounds absurd since it's not the most strenuous thing in the world.
But trust me, it isn't that easy. You have to be into the game you're playing, be up to recording/streaming it, and if you record it, you have to have the motivation to sit and edit the footage into something interesting. If you're like me, you also have to go through and do noise removal because you have a noisy PC fan, which adds to the process. Then you have to wait for the render to finish up, compress it (if the file is big), and upload it with a description and thumbnail ready-made.
It's time-consuming, and when you don't have a lot of time, it can make you feel a little pressure to go a little faster, which sometimes leads to mistakes.
It's why I am constantly telling people who have no kids and can afford to work on videos full-time to appreciate it and enjoy it as much as you can. That time isn't always there forever and before you know it, you're trying to do as much work in a smaller window of opportunity, which can deter you as well.
I know I've made it sound like a chore, but it's still something that I enjoy doing. I don't have the same time as others, and I certainly don't have the same resources, but I make the most of what I have and when I do record/stream, I try to enjoy it as much as possible.
For example, my third stream was me playing "Goat Simulator." I didn't have many viewers (in fact, I don't think it went above 3 at any point and virtually no one chatted with me), but I enjoyed the hell out of the game regardless and if anyone did watch, they got to see me run around with an NPC glitching into my goat most of the time. I eventually gave the character the name of Jerry and turned it into a game of "what can we do with Jerry next."
My next stream was "Borderlands," which garnered me a few more views (as high as 10), and a new follower and again I enjoyed it despite not garnering a lot of attention.
But it can be frustrating for those who want to see their channel and brand grow and make something of it.
Live streaming and recording your gameplay has become a very popular thing to do over the last couple of years. While some have become successful, many struggle to retain viewers. Here's to hoping if you're considering jumping in you keep your expectations reasonable.
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