From YouTube to Twitch
It may be easy to dismiss this post as yet another #YoutubeIsOver story. But far from it. It is what it is: a personal experience.
Hi, I’m Chris, also known as 8Bit and I’d like to take you back to April 2014. I was just playing a lot of Tower of Guns, a game that would become the launchpad into my career as a game developer (a story for another day) and I was in the process of making a video about it for my YouTube channel ‘Memories in 8Bit’ which was coincidentally just about to hit 3000 subscribers. Life was good and just about to get a lot better.
The video about Tower of Guns was one of my bigger projects. With a runtime of approximately 19 minutes, I tried to address every little detail of the game. Yet, it wasn’t even a review! I believe that fun and entertainment, the most important aspects of video games are subjective. Assuming to be objective and assigning artificial scores was never my thing. Instead I tried to be entertaining myself and at the same time be informative enough for viewers to be able to form their own opinion. Additionally, I created all my videos in two versions: one with German and the other with English voice-over and on-camera segments. That’s how I rolled and it was a lot of fun, despite a ton of work. This video project took me around 3 weeks from the initial idea to the finished upload.
These videos were like art projects to me. Like a block of clay, I could shape them the way I want, add any detail I desired and work on them until my needless sense of perfection was satisfied. Especially the ‘Life — The Game — The Show’ videos in which I comedically applied video game logic and mechanics to the real world were a lot of fun. But I generally liked to talk about games. After all, games are fun and fun is best if shared with others. At the end of the day if even just a single viewer left a comment, telling me they enjoyed the video or better yet the game itself, I felt my work was absolutely justified.
When my channel finally hit the 3000 subscriber milestone, I was overjoyed and felt the need to give something back to these nice people who took time out of their day to watch my videos. So I organized my first giveaway. Despite being mostly a console gamer, I was just about to rediscover the PC as a gaming platform again thanks to GOG.com. I am absolutely in love with their DRM-free philosophy and I strongly believe that this is how video games should be handled. Due to my last project it seemed only natural to me to give out a copy of Tower of Guns from GOG. So I put together a quick video in which I (naturally) thanked my viewers for their support and announced the giveaway.
Somehow, GOG got wind of this contest. I am not sure anymore how it happened. It’s possible I asked them to share my giveaway video via Facebook or Twitter. But I got their attention — left an impression even. Just a few weeks later I received an email from GOG inviting me to join their brand new Twitch Stream Team which was little more than just an idea. Needless to say, I felt honored. Yet also intimidated. Due to the nature of my YouTube videos, I learned to play by script. I didn’t feel I was an ‘improv guy’. Actually I still don’t! To perform in front of an audience, whether live or online, what’s the difference? I could feel the stage fright already!
It felt as if two worlds were suddenly colliding with each other: YouTube, the place where I could play with my creativity at my own pace and Twitch, were I had essentially ‘one take’. Now this does by no means apply to everyone. I know a lot of Youtubers improvise a lot, too and/or work with single takes. Vlogs come to mind. But for me, it was frightening. Yet, I absolutely wanted to do it.
In fact there was absolutely no way for me to pass up this opportunity. As stated before, I loved GOG and I felt this was the chance for me to be part of something… big. To be realistic: Why would I not take the chance if it was offered to me on a silver platter? Of course I said yes! I would still take a few months, December 2014 in fact until I could make my debut. I didn’t have an online connection that would allow livestreaming in an acceptable quality and my ISP was in no rush to provide me with an upgrade. So I had plenty of time to emotionally prepare myself. But sure enough, when the day arrived, I was not!
I kept telling myself: ‘Try it. You got nothing to lose. After all who knows if they’ll invite you to do this again! You’d be stupid to decline!’. I know how silly it may sound to be so concerned about a livestream and while I still deal with stage fright — sometimes more, sometimes less — I am much more relaxed nowadays. But without actively realizing I was already dealing with one of the main differences between YouTube and Twitch: The Audience. I was afraid people wouldn’t like what I do. On YouTube, chances are, you will eventually find somebody who enjoys your video(s) and even without any feedback, you can look at your work and be proud of it. On Twitch you are sitting in the focus for hours. I was terribly afraid of that.
I have little recollection of my first stream on the GOG Twitch channel. But I do remember that the community was so incredibly friendly, supportive and I credit it to them alone that I thought to myself: ‘I want to do this again!’. Of course I wasn’t sure if G-Doc, who took care of the channel back then, would invite me again. That is until the next day, when I logged into the GOGcom chat and saw this:
Honestly, it did indeed make my day. My whole week in fact. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. Before I knew what was happening, I had my regular slot in their program and part of a group of colleagues which I feel honored to call my friends and a channel I call my home away from home. More so than my own Twitch channel.
Looking back to almost three years of streaming now, it’s almost like a blur, which brings me to yet another really important difference I began to realize as I grew more comfortable with Twitch: The pacing. On average I invested something between 40 to 60 hours to make a YouTube video. Your mileage may vary, of course. But you can imagine how many livestreams you can do within this timeframe. Not to mention that all the time you invest being ‘live’ equals the time of actual content you produce. While on YouTube, dozens and dozens of hours amount in a video of a few minutes of length.
Now with that I do not want to say that streaming is easier. Especially not if you want to make a career out of it. Both YouTube and Twitch require an incredible amount of work if you want ‘to make it big’ and even then, success is not guaranteed. Both you have to do it because you love it and so do I. As I slowly began to realize that what I wanted was to be a game developer, I knew that I had to make compromises. The decision to abandon YouTube came sneaking in from the back of my head and I always reserve myself the opportunity to come back one day. No reason not to. Being flexible and adaptable is extremely important.
But Twitch provides me with the opportunity to instantly produce content and connect with an amazing and friendly community. About a month ago, May 9th 2017, the game STRAFE was released. Considering my available time, I would have taken me three or four weeks to make a YouTube video about it. At least one I’d be satisfied with. But instead I was installing it as soon as it released and just a few minutes after I finished my daily work I started streaming it on my channel. Considering how fast you need to be to stay relevant, this is a huge difference and in this regard, Twitch offers me the possibility to do just that, even as a casual streamer.
Naturally I still miss the freedom and creativity of working with that brick of clay that is a YouTube video. On Twitch I do not get the chance to do a ‘second take’ and if I say something wrong, play badly or otherwise fail to entertain, then that’s that. Of course the same thing can happen on YouTube. But then it truly is set in stone! A piece of misinformation you can fix with an annotation, a followup video or a blatant new version of the original video but for an obsessive perfectionist like me the damage is done! But shouldn’t bother me that even more so on Twitch? No, it doesn’t.
Here is where the two lessons I learned come together: The Audience, the pacing. On Twitch I connect with friendly and supportive people in real time (not considering the obligatory Twitch delay) and nobody expects me to be perfect. You don’t get that ‘second take’ and you don’t need it. Producing content on Twitch is a much more organic process. If you don’t do well today, you do better tomorrow. Of course I do not want to imply that every YouTube video has to be perfect. Flaws are always inherent of human nature and have their charm. Once again: Your mileage may vary. I take great comfort in the fact that whenever I end a stream and no matter if it was a good or a bad one, my friends in chat will say: ‘Thank you for the stream!’ and I cannot deny that this real time gratification is amazing. The viewers are in fact. They got your back. You learn with them grow with them, have fun with them. Fun is indeed better when it’s shared, isn’t it?
And the same goes for my friends. Joining the GOG Stream Team was one of the best things that has happened to me. We are now a group of over 20 streamers from all over the world. All unique with their own personalities, traits, flaws and approaches to streaming and life. I can’t imagine where and who I would be today if it weren’t for them. In fact I don’t want to imagine. This way, the GOG Twitch channel I still see as my primary headquarters. This is where I started my journey on Twitch and this is where I focus my attention. But this is a story for another day…
8Bit is a member of GOG.com Stream Team. We stream DRM-free games everyday in TV-like schedule. You can follow us here or get some games while supporting 8Bit here!
