Look Ma, I’m a Twitch Streamer!
So recently I’ve been taking my own advice and learning a new skill: live streaming.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve dipped my toes into Twitch previously but I figured there’ll never be a better time to immerse myself fully than during this CB period.
“Streaming’s a skill? Nah…” I hear you say; literally anybody can do it right?
Hol’ up a minute, it turns out…
Streamin’ ain’t easy
While it’s true that anybody can hop on Twitch and start broadcasting, it takes more than making funny faces while playing Valorant to create enjoyable content. I’d never fully understood Twitch or the hype behind it until I made it my aim to hit 100 followers and sustain a minimum viewer number every time I streamed.
This is just how I’m wired — whenever I have a new interest I always get really deep into it, so it became a personal challenge for me to be an interesting enough streamer that someone watching my broadcast wouldn’t immediately click away to some other channel. What I did first was to check out many different streamers in all sorts of categories to find out what makes them tick. You know, like proper research?
Notice me, senpai!
Something I found to be true is that successful streamers like Kiaraakitty had consistent viewer engagement. Even basic things like saying hi to viewers or thanking new followers and subscribers had a way of making them stick around. I should know, I’m a total simp when she says hi to me during her stream.
Personally, nothing turns me off faster than when streamers just do their own thing and ignore viewers, so I keep telling myself that Twitch is interactive and I’m not shooting a video. I mean there’s literally a live chat sidebar with people who are invested enough in my stream to stick around and leave comments and emotes, so the least I can do is to acknowledge them. Most of the time I even enjoy the jokes and requests for me to do a Chen Hanwei dab.
They see me trolling
That said, I also try my best to ignore the nonsense that crops up too — that BS comes with the territory. There are trolls and bots everywhere so I guess it’s inevitable that Twitch will have its fair share too. What I did was to give moderator access to a few trusted friends and followers to take care of business i.e. delete comments and skip awful song requests. I swear if I have to listen to ‘Bitch Lasagna’ one more time…
Obsessions in my head
Initially, I started by streaming Fortnite games that I was playing with IRL friends. Pretty much the only viewers were the same people I was gaming with, so that was kind of a bummer. Since I also play a lot of FIFA Mobile (like, my-gf-is-worried-about-it levels), I decided to stream a few games cos I figured, why not?
That’s how I found my niche. Before long, I began streaming daily to a core group of viewers and engaging them by playing FIFA matches with my channel followers. I’m sufficiently advanced enough in the game that I also get viewers asking me to look at their own FIFA squads and making suggestions. So I feel like my FIFA obsession’s paid off when I look at the small community I’ve managed to build here on Twitch.
I do switch up and play other games, but I don’t want to force myself to play something I don’t enjoy for views. You’re not gonna find me gritting my teeth through League of Legends to get my viewer numbers up, and the salt from MOBA games would give me high blood pressure.
It’s time to build community
After streaming for a while, I finally hit the 100 followers target that I aimed for when I started and became a Twitch affiliate. To be honest, I was confident that I would hit the numbers but I didn’t think it would happen so quickly. In addition to followers, I also had viewers subscribing to my channel!
So the difference between followers and subscribers is that subs support the streamer by paying for the content (of which Twitch takes a cut). I had to scramble to thank them so I quickly commissioned and added exclusive subscriber-only emotes for them to flex with. I also created a Discord server so I can chat with my followers when I’m not streaming and to coordinate FIFA tournaments. Told you I’m obsessed!
Too tough to scuff
This is probably the most important bit! Luckily my friends helped to troubleshoot my stream and squashed the weird bugs early, but I still make sure to test my setup before going live.
All the stuff I said earlier won’t matter if viewers can’t reliably tune in to my stream, so I’ll try to fix anything sketchy like a laggy connection, bad audio, messy background, etc, cos I don’t want to end up scuffed — that is, a low-quality streamer.
What’s next?
I do wonder if I can sustain my interest in Twitch once CB gets lifted fully and life goes back to normal, but right now? I’ll continue paddling down the stream. Also, follow me here! https://www.twitch.tv/khairulazmas
