FullStreamNovember

Alright, here goes nothing.

Last Saturday (oct 27th) I was a little out, fairly drunk and made an announcement I had in my head for a couple of months to be honest.

This was that I wanted to give daily streaming a shot and I will stream every day during the entirety of november... and I still plan on doing that.

It's been over a year since I announced that I do not want to stream for a living anymore.
This was still one of the best decisions I made as it allowed me to progress a lot in a variety of ways.

I did not enjoy forcing myself to stream - that was my argument back then.
But it wasn't the "forcing myself to stream" part - it was the part of which content I had to stream in order to maintain numbers in order to pay my bills.

With that out of the way, I enjoyed playing things casually at first because I felt I free from the numbers.

Well, that mindset didn't last too long.

Over a certain amount of time I once again (even if it was more or less subconcious or me just not wanting it to be true) was pushing towards games and categories that brought in more viewers.

I felt uncomfortable with the thought of streaming something casually - may that be gamedev, danganronpa or something that wasn't zelda.

And I still feel that way - and this is exactly why I want to do this.

There's a part in my head that argues that there should be some "synergy" with the amount of followers and the amount of viewers there is.
And having 21k followers but 20 avg viewers would make you seem like a failure as a streamer - because why else would so many people "abandon" you if you aren't boring or whatever.

This is a horrible argument - I got the most of these followers during my "competitive" 100% days back in 2015.
A lot of people hopped off of watching speedruns, hopped off of twitch or just followed for the "high level gameplay"... or they followed because I was featured on front page for about a week.

So while I am well aware that this argument hardly holds any water, it is still the main argument for my lack of streams.
And it makes no sense.

And this is what I want to break out of.

By streaming every day, I will eventually (and hopefully) force myself to stream casual content - just something I'd enjoy doing when I'm offstream.

The word "content" sounds like something people put effort in.
It's something that is created with a purpose - may that be informing, may that be entertaining or may that be competing.

If I think about myself just streaming games, I have a hard time seeing that as "content".
It's just some dude in front of his pc playing a game and maybe chatting with a couple of people ... so why would anyone watch?
At least that's the argument in the back of my head against this kind of stream behavior - but I watch other peoples streams as well just cause I like their personality ... and possibly cause of the game they're playing, but usually that's not too important.

So with that in mind I really have no real argument against streaming casual content, I guess?

But it is still really hard for me to start up a stream and be like "Hey, I'm enjoying a game, let's just chat a little and enjoy the game", which is why I want to force myself in order to prove to myself that these thoughts do not reflect reality.

I would love to just be able to pop in a stream at the end of the day - may that be a run, something casually or some game development to just relax from either work, university or possibly both.

A third argument was something I thought about for a very long time.
It's the "what makes you unique" argument ... and this is probably my weakest point.

BaconDonutTV made an article about this some time ago (Link: https://medium.com/bacondonuttv/the-problem-might-be-you-d84d3a4bb306 )

And going through it ... yeah, I don't really have anything that makes me stick out.
With speedruns or zelda related content I can sort of stick out ... but am I really limited to zelda? Do I want to be limited to zelda?
The answer is no... I definitely do not want to be limited to zelda only.

I do have a fairly strong technical setup compared to the majority of streamers but I struggle to find an argument for myself.
but the more I think about that point, the more I realize that there isn't really a "Unique Selling Point" to streamers, which leaves me without any direction to go to as I usually try to pick something I can build on ...
But what can you build on if there was never a foundation to begin with? And I'm not talking about myself here, I mean in a general sense.

(Also there is also this little document by dansgaming that basically says the same: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1djyOfrwWGbp471-fdHJgPCZwzFo3aD2mDZT-1Zcwenk/edit )

Alright: enough babbling.

What's my plan for november?

From Nov 1st on, I will stream every day - no matter my condition (Hungover, exhausted or whatever).
I will stream for at very least one hour per day.

Within that month, I will probably do oot randomizer, relearn oot 100%, but will also play games casually - really depending on how I feel and what I feel like doing.

I will also include the lost levels in this since I promised to do that quite some time ago... also maybe an alttp playthrough? dunno yet, I'll just let it come to my mind when the time comes.

I know that everytime I got over myself and streamed something I enjoyed, I stopped the stream with saying something like "That was more fun than expected" - and it's true.
But every time I think about streaming those things again, I just get sucked up in uncertainty, which ultimately leads to me not streaming at all.

Maybe I enjoy this so much, that I will try to maintain daily streams over a longer period of time?

I'm not sure where this will lead... so I guess I'll just let it happen.
Without trying to analyze anything, without trying to reach a certain amount of viewers or followers ... just be that streamer who enjoys interacting with his chat, I guess.

Thank you for reading and let's see how november turns out :)