Twitch Live Streaming For Dummies – Max Lang-Orsini

You’ve most likely clicked on this article to learn how to stream professionally, and that is exactly the right reason you should be here for. Live streaming on Twitch, or on any other streaming platform takes a lot of energy and work, much more than you may believe. So, how do these popular streamers do it and how can you get your hands on Twitch Affiliate with consistent returning viewers?

Video Game Broadcasting For Beginners

In this article, I, Max Lang-Orsini, will break down the important points to help you become a consistently ‘good’ streamer. We will focus on some nerdy algorithm facts whilst also giving you advice for your broadcasts. But first, how do you begin and what’s the best software to use for your live streaming endeavours?

Live Streaming Software

Picking the right live streaming software to start streaming may seem daunting at first, or easy from what you’ve heard. There are a fair few streaming softwares that are worth a mention, but OBS Studio is the most obvious choice. Compared to other softwares, Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) is free and is placed at a high standard amongst many other streamers.

What makes OBS great is its user friendly navigation, as well as it’s optimised capability to encode streams effectively and efficiently. Those top twitch streamers you watch are more than likely using OBS (OBS Studio to be specific), and understandably so.

Remember that you will need a capture card to stream from your console to your computer to Twitch.

Even I would recommend OBS, however, if you believe it’s not for you, here are some other great broadcasting softwares that deserve that mention;

Decast Live Streaming

VidBlasterX

XSplit

The Basic Setup

First, before streaming, you will need to follow some tutorials on building your stream up from the ground. If you know some good editors or artists, commissions are an extra you can do to help improve the quality of your stream, remember, you’re not alone!

Follow these YouTube tutorials to make sure you have the correct settings for your broadcast, no one wants to watch 5fps gameplay. Speaking of people watching, interact with Twitch chat as much as possible, you’d be surprised at the amount of people that don’t talk to the viewers in their stream. Engagement and interactivity is what drives twitch streams, so engage with the viewers the best you can!

Furthermore, setup hotkeys to mute your microphone and headphones and add the ‘noise suppression’ effect. This will help to reduce background noise and the hotkeys can be used to prevent audio you don’t want being broadcasted live.

Keeping Viewers Engaged

Remember that you are here to stream and have fun, not gawk over the numbers. These numbers you keep looking at can prove to be a very distracting factor. I would recommend to hide the viewer count number, as seeing low or less than usual can be very demotivating.

To keep viewers retention, engagement is your best way of doing so, remember that returning viewers are better than unique viewers! You want people to come back to your stream, not watch once and never again, interacting with your chat is key to keep that retention for as long as possible.

Communicating and talking a lot is also important, if you notice things becoming silent, start a conversation about a topic that the viewers may be interested in, or further, tell a story. Streamers prepare their streams throughout the day and some write notes on conversation topics they think of, this is a great improvisation technique.

If you can get them to follow you on your other social media platforms, that would be a great outcome. Posting when you’re about to be live or any other notices on streaming updates

Be Yourself

As silly as this sounds, try your best to be yourself and avoid putting on a persona, some can see through this. On top of this, be as positive as you can, as well, it’s a known fact that humans drift away from negativity, so try your best even on days you don’t feel 100%.

For that matter, if you don’t feel like you have the energy to stream, do not worry, it’s better to have no stream than a bad stream. Chances are, those viewers will come back another day when that bad stream might have driven them away from your twitch account.

The Algorithm Tips

Once you’ve got all this, it’s a matter of finding your audience and your audience finding you. However, there are workarounds to help you get these viewers more effectively.

Finding the right categories for your interests and audience is difficult when put together. Starting out will be you finding your footing. Focus on games that are big but are not oversaturated with professional players or the big named streamers, i.e Valorant and CS:GO.

Games like Sea Of Thieves or Stardew Valley are popular games without it being oversaturated. Finding these games that suit you too is that hardest point, but once again, find your footing and where you stand on streaming games.

However, if you play games that you know you can be good at, you may find viewers tuning in to watch your skill. I noticed that on Call Of Duty: Cold War Zombies, most of the higher up streamers are on the high 100 rounds, so if you know you can get to that, do so and put it in your title!

Furthermore, your title is the first impression a viewer gets of your stream, so making them want to click will be important. Puns are a great way of doing so, especially if you give off a ‘funny’ atmosphere. It’s also worth mentioning that only the first 36 characters will be shown before it gets cut off, so make the first 36 characters count!

A huge tip for much smaller streamers is the ‘5 viewer rule’. For those that don’t know, when you have 5 viewers, your chances of discoverability are much higher because you get pushed much higher in the category. This leads onto my next point;

Friends & Family

As much as it may be embarrassing to show your friends and / or family you playing games online, having them simply ‘lurk’ within the stream, or interact every now and then helps your viewer count. Having those friends tune in to help build the numbers will furthermore help your discoverability, and if they talk in your chat, it’s extra conversation starters, it comes full circle.

These are the few tips for live streaming beginners I believe to be the most helpful, especially when I started out. Remember that you do not need a separate streaming PC or even a green screen, let alone a camera, being yourself is why your viewers will keep returning (obviously if it’s watchable).

Please share if you found this helpful and reply with your input, it’s always interesting to read up on other people’s experience.

Written By: Max Lang-Orsini

How Are Simplistic Games Running The Industry In 2020?

Gaming has advanced significantly over the past few decades. Playing games has become a common and cultural thing, however, the video game industry this year has been dominated by the simple type of online games.

How have the games ‘Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout’ and ‘Among Us’ managed to influence and gain control over the gaming market?

2020: The Simplistic Gaming Experience

We all play video games as a way to relax, but recently the emergence of the simple games have taken over, and with a fair few reasons. In this article, we will explain how these popular games exploded in popularity, and I’m sure this is obvious, but both games require an internet connection!

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout

Released in February of this year, the game developers ‘Mediatonic’ published Fall Guys through Devolver Digital. Instantly, the game was a success, reminding players of how the basics of games at times can be a lot of fun. Fall guys is available on Windows and Playstation and are extremely popular for console gaming.

Building up to the release of Fall Guys, they caught a lot of their attention through social media. Their social media manager, @OliverAge24, has brought a lot of attention to their games by cracking jokes on the Fall Guys accounts making their followers laugh whilst interacting with them constantly.

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is sort of like a Mario party crossover, but instead vs in 60 players. There is a maximum of 5 rounds and only a certain number of people each round can qualify until one guy is the last one standing and wins. From winning, you earn a crown, and you can spend these crowns on cosmetics in the game, making winning worth it.

Among Us

An older game that has recently blown up was released all the way back in June of 2018. The Among Us game concept is all about you and your crewmates in space having to do day to day tasks, but, there is an impost among you. It’s your job to suss out and eliminate the imposter, or eliminate everyone if you are the imposter! It’s significantly more fun with friends, especially how it’s become ‘the norm’ to mute your mic at certain parts of the gameplay to be more immersed.

Arguably, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout could have been an influence for the rise of Among Us since people began having an interest in the basic style games. To say the characters look fairly similar, this could also be another reason for finding out about the game.

If you didn’t know, you play Among Us through mobile gaming on IOS and Android.

Looking At The Statistics

To show you how big these games have gotten, let’s look at the statistics to get a better perspective.

If we look at steampowered statistics, Fall Guys had it’s an all-time peak in August of 172,000 concurrent players at once on Steam alone. It is estimated that Fall Guys have an active player count of 15.6 million players in their first-month launch.

Among us had an extremely low player count with an average of ~25 players until the boom this year. Its concurrent player peak hit 306,000 with an estimation of over 2.7 million players.

Typically it’s gaming companies that own the bigger and higher quality games, but as a fun fact, Among Us is run by a small team of 3 and they’ve been taken by surprise with this popularity boom! They’re working many hours to keep the servers stable and generally keeping the game a happy place, bless them.

Battle Royales

Almost everyone is aware of the battle royale craze that lasted from 2017 to 2020. Whilst battle royales are still fairly popular today, I would argue that the complexity of such a genre has exhausted games that require a lot of skill, like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Call Of Duty and Fortnite.

I’m not in any way downplaying the value of these skilful games as they take years to master, but in terms of the casual market, they seem to be looking for simpler games to pass the time. These types of games that have blown up prove to have been explicitly made to have a laugh with your friends, something that has over time slowly been forgotten about.

Live Streaming Services & Video Content Creation

One of the biggest reasons for the popularity boom is high-quality live streamers broadcasting this hilarious game to the world. This is no surprise, the majority of smaller games that gain popularity is through video creation content and gaming live streams.

Fan content is one of the leading carriers to the rise of both games. Both have managed to respond to their communities in a great manner, keeping their players entertained through their social media. This is showing other games how you should handle your social media, even though it appears as ‘less business-like’.

Both of these games have done tremendously well and deserve the top spots they have, I’m excited to see what Among Us 2 brings us next year!

Written By: Max Lang-Orsini

Computer Games – a Waste of Time or Not?

Computer Games

Computer games have been a subject of many debates in the past few years. Are playing video games too violent or too addictive, or take too much time to complete. The main question people and parents ask, are computer games dangerous for those who play them as their main hobby?

Video Game Violence

Many words have been said about violence in games but way less is spoken about all the violence that we see on television or in books. Why would games be different? When you watch a movie you can feel down, or feel scared or even laugh, but you somehow know that it isn’t real. It just doesn’t give such strong sensations.

Gaming, on the other hand, can sometimes be so real that it becomes easy to forget that you are outside the screen. Some people give into this feeling with such devotion that they stop paying attention to their real lives and the real people around them.

Ambition

Such obsession can be as dangerous as any other addiction. We dream to be successful, strong, and smart, to win all the time. Sadly in reality these goals are achieved only after a lot of effort and hard work and sometimes it is difficult to feel accomplished and in harmony with yourself if you are not moving fast enough to reach your ideals.

Many people tend to feel lost and insecure when thinking about what they have not achieved yet. In contrast, when you create your profile in any given game you can become everything you ever wanted to be.

Why leave the place where you are confident and powerful only to return to the normal world?

Skills Gaming Can Build

There are a few physical aspects of gaming that are a boon in real-life:

Playing games helps to sharpen your senses such as reaction times
Gaming helps with coordination
It creates a different view of the world that can translate outside the computer

If you have a good balance of your life and you don’t spend too much time playing computer games, the skills that you develop while playing can help you make better decisions and even be a better leader of other people.

Studies show that computer games can contribute to a better learning process. It seems that students tend to feel more motivated about a given school subject if it is presented in the form of a game. This provides a huge area for thinking of different ways teaching can be approached.

Sometimes It’s Nice To Walk Away

As reality can sometimes be hard, there is nothing wrong with pushing the escape button for a while. It clears the mind, refreshes the brain and makes us happier with our own selves. As long as we remember that nothing can replace the priceless moments of our real lives, games can only do good.

By Max Lang-Orsini