If there was one, I missed the Beta testing rounds for the upcoming thriller Detroit: Becoming Human. Sony pushed out a short demo of the title and I was sold straight away. I didn’t even bother to explore the demo much but the gaming idea is simple; all your actions are consequential and lead to different storylines and conclusions.
The illusion of free choice is cleverly crafted for the gamer as you ponder what to do.
I’ve nearly reached the FarCry5 Platinum trophy so while Europe tackles new Data laws (GDPR) I will have to Become Human with Detroit robots.
Detroit: Become Human – Beautiful graphics and intense story
In less than 3 days the Second Life effect has kicked in. Playing The Division as a 4 player squad commits you in a different way than any single player game ever could. Firstly, there is the session commitment where it would not good form to quit unexpectedly. Unfortunately, this is often the case if you pay attention to your physical life and a 2-3 hour session is broken in the middle of a mission so you can bath the cat WTF.
Skill level
A strong feeling of ‘must do better’ strokes your ego as you seek to improve your abilities and skills so you can bring a brilliant experience to the team.
Enough is enough
Knowing when to stop as a team without bad feelings is key as well as actually playing with like-minded people. Of course, this just relates to titles where you have full voice chat enabled.
Lost in the crowd
Titles like Star Wars BattleFront give you the mass experience when 20+ players can jump in and out of games without it really getting too personal.
Warping space and time
There’s a real distortion of your physical world and you could easily miss important events like Weddings and such.
Heading back to my safehouses
For now, I’m deleting The Division to focus on more self-paced titles.
Two big titles are going head-to-head over the next few weeks in the Person versus Person (PvP) squad environment. Following a classic Pirates of the Caribbean theme the games tap into our natural urge to hunt for loot as a crew.
Seas of Thieves is a Microsoft exclusive while Ubisoft launch Skull & Bones on all platforms.
Sailing in your own ship creates a natural team bond where members can’t really wonder off and get killed. Decisions on which quest to tackle or where to go are done over team voice chat so get your microphones ready. Time will be the killer resource you need to play either game as you’ll probably need to commit to a loose schedule and gameplay duration, this sits well with any streamer.
Microsoft exclusive title
I signed up for the Skull & Bones Beta so let’s see how they stand up.
These extra 10-20 hours I’ve gained from no gameplay have been used for creative thinking and strategizing as well as considering the look and feel of my new infrastructure. Tactically, I feel ready for the grind I’ve set-up for myself and settled on aiming pretty high this year.
I’ll be investing in 2-3 streamers this year on Twitch and a couple of them have already caught my eye since actually listening to their background story.
Streamers have plenty of real-world challenges, the issue for me is to identify the fakers and actually talent hunt the folk who have a good balance of high-quality gameplay, personality and authenticity.
Considering Pro-AM game streaming? Think about
Promoting the stream - schedule
Staffing the stream - moderators, tech support
Career dev – what are the channel goals
Real world Events
Money management – game budgets, giveaways, sponsors.
I watched enough broadcasters and streams to see clearly why some fail dismally and some gain massive viewers and sponsors. I’ve recently taken to hosting channels with tiny viewer levels just to boast their confidence and getting abit more involved with chat although I typically lurk (stay in chat without interacting).
Coming up to 2 year anniversary – no one streams this anymore
Why watch streamers anyway? Well, as a veteran gamer it’s always good to watch gamers do things I don’t have the time or talent to do. Right now, my PS4 is off-line and boxed up so naturally, I’ll just watch my favourite streamers.
Gamers voice and talent
The layer of talent management is a brilliant niche offering streamers services like event management, sponsorship negations, channel staffing, PR, career management, legal and finance.
This is a true recognition of the massive variety of streamers representing an actual legitimate career path and free channel of expression. An interesting detailed article appeared in The New Yorker this week featuring Online Performers Group…….Read the full article here
According to Twitch.TV FAQs there are 17,000 Partners globally, so this is still very much something the Marketing people have not figured out how to truly monetise.
I’m guessing Streamer fall into
these broad categories
Skill-based
Variety
Casual
Full-time
Sponsored
Fan-based
Broadcaster
Journalist
...the list goes on
Seems to me the market is still trying to figure out the ‘Path of a Streamer’ but when a free-flowing arena gets formalised the community just morphs into something else.
Remember when you could say anything on mainstream social media channels?
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