Introducing: myself

Hello dear reader.

I’ve been lurking around here for a while now, so I thought it was about time I made an #introduceyourself post.

Who am I, you ask? Well, as my profile bio snippet says, I’m a gamer, game tester, streamer and YouTuber. I also do a fair bit of graphic design and video editing, since that sort of comes with the territory when you are a streamer. I’ve been playing video games since I was a kid. Back in the day, one of my friends got a Commodore 64 (ancient, I know!) for his birthday, some of my classmates and I got really hooked, and gaming has stayed with me ever since. (You might call me a nerd, and yes, you would be correct.)

^{If you know what this is, you’re either my age or older. Or a bigger nerd than I am. Or both.}

The games I play, test, stream or make videos about, have a very wide range with regards to genre, gameplay and budget, ranging from AAA to indie, FPS to puzzle to adventure to RPG to card games, from closed alpha tests (I do a lot of alpha and beta testing) to launch releases to games more than 10 years old, single- or multiplayer. To me it doesn’t really matter, as long as I’m having fun playing. I do find myself being partial towards horror, adventure and puzzle platformers though.

When it comes to crypto and games, it seems like a majority of games which incorporate cryptocurrencies use Ethereum, so I’ve been looking into that, but it’s time-consuming and a daunting prospect, to say the least. I have a feeling I’ll have more coming on the subject of cryptogaming and cryptostreaming in future posts. There are some interesting-looking games on the Steem platform which I haven’t had the time to dive into yet, so those are high up on my to-check-out list for sure. I’ve already invested a bit in one of the games, to show support for the project and also because I see a future for the game in question, as well as the business model.

My main platform is PC, but I do have a PlayStation as well. Over the years, I’ve owned several generations of different consoles from most of the biggest makers, but nowadays its #pcmasterrace for me.

I get pretty excited about new hardware, so I’ve built my own main rig and my streaming rig myself. I built my first PC back in 1996, and I still build or upgrade whenever I have the time and resources to do so. Again because, to me it’s fun.

^{Here’s my current setup. I’ll describe my rigs, their specs and setups in a future post.}

I don’t do all of these things (gaming, testing, streaming or any other content creation), in order to financially support myself, but as a hobby – because to me it’s fun. Within the streaming community, there’s a saying which goes something like “streaming is a hobby, until it isn’t anymore”. Nobody can really tell who coined the phrase, the origin of the statement has been lost. But basically, what it means is, if you get into streaming (or any gaming-related content creation for that matter), don’t expect financial wealth overnight. The same sentiment could be applied to any online platform for content creators (including this one), whatever the content itself may be. Building up a following and/or network takes time. Choices of platform are few (and in fierce competition with each other) and money is hard to come by.

The platform of choice for streamers has long been – and still is – Twitch (formerly known as justin.tv). Wanting a piece of the pie, YouTube set up their own streaming service a while ago, Sony and Microsoft each have their own for the PlayStation and Xbox respectively, so does Steam (no, not Steem) and most recently, Discord. You might think then, that a streamer is spoilt for choice. But being the behemoth that it is (owned by Amazon and all…), if you want the most fully-featured back- and front-end, Twitch cannot be beaten. At least not for a while yet. So, I’ll definitely continue streaming on Twitch, but I am also looking into other platforms, to see what they have to offer. The connection between Steem and streaming live content seems an interesting one to me, and one that could be explored further. So, lately I’ve been looking into Vimm (which seems like it’s completely deserted), and I have also read a bit about what happened to DLive (which seems like a complete mess). Suggestions would be more than welcome in a comment below.

I’ll also continue (or get back into, rather) uploading videos to YouTube, because, well, it’s YouTube… and it’s free… Despite the fact that YouTube very recently completely shafted smaller content creators, it’s still the best free video hosting solution on the market, in my opinion. If nothing else, then simply for archival purposes. Dtube seems like something I definitely should look into, since it’s relevant for a Steem user who posts video content. But at the moment it doesn’t even come close to YouTube, regarding features and functionality.

In the future, I plan to post videos of game tests and/or reviews, along with full videos, highlights and clips from my streams, and maybe links to live streams. Posting “User X just went live”-links doesn’t lend itself particularly well to this platform, as opposed to Discord for example. I also plan to post tutorials for streaming and/or recording games, how you can set up your rig, what software you can use, editing videos etc.

I hope you enjoyed reading this brief introduction, and please feel free to get in touch if you want to. Besides here, you can catch me on the following platforms (among others):