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Twitch Los Angeles Meetup: One of the Best Events, Period

I'm kind of in awe. About two years ago, I attended a Twitch Los Angeles Meetup in Burbank. Back then it was still named Twitch Hollywood. But I knew I wanted to be a part of this because it was all about Twitch, video game livestreaming , and enjoying ourselves as gamers. Our last event, Saturday February 8th, was one of the best events I've ever been a part of. Small enough that plenty of folks knew each other, but large enough that we got deserved attention. Red Bull , Voodoo Ranger Beer , Need for Kneading , Twickle , artists, all sorts of companies came out. It was a fantastic night. We had a wonderful venue, the Hungarian Cultural Arts Center in Los Angeles. There were a few mishaps with moving in, but thankfully we were able to clear out whatever the previous guests were doing. Which strangely had to do with setting a bathtub on fire. People lined up around the block after parking about a mile away. We didn't think we'd get the attention

How to Tell if Someone is Viewbotting (and other malicious things)

There's an aspect of livestreaming video games that gets under my skin a bit. Viewbotting. A lot of streamers have done it in the past. In fact, I once caught someone viewbotting and looked at who the bots were "following." A laundry list of very familiar names showed up, many partnered accounts on Twitch with millions of followers. Well-known streamers making a living. It's definitely abused a lot on streaming platforms, sort of the "black hat" method of livestreaming. Thankfully, nobody I saw listed from those bot accounts was any streamer that I was supporting. I don't bother supporting anyone trying to find "get partnership quick" methods. If you want to build a business out of streaming video games , then please don't bother viewbotting. You'll eventually find you wasted your money and your community will likely abandon you. However, if you feel that someone is viewbotting, here's a few ways you can tell someone is

Is Streaming Worth it for the Money? (And Other Questions Answered)

An In-Depth Look into ROI on Videogame Streaming I'm certain a lot of people ask this question. S treaming video games is a weird thing--suddenly anyone can see you on camera, into your living room, while you're playing a video game. It's always important to figure out why you do what you do. If you're streaming for a business , best of luck to you. But there's a lot you need to consider if you're considering streaming for the money, because at this point in time it's become a heavily-saturated market--not just Twitch alone. In short, is streaming worth the money? No . The longer answer is a little more complicated, so if you'd like to learn some details, stick around. I'll preface this: this is not meant to discourage anyone from developing their business. Instead, this reveals the necessary work, efforts, and sacrifices you need to make.  Streaming for the Money Let me preface this: I will never stop streaming. The thought has cros

TwitchCon 2019: A Look at the Rebranded Livestreaming Service and Some Advice on Conventions

The Livestreaming Service Keeps Itself at #1 Twitch has demonstrated again that they're the king of livestreaming video games. In the wake of a lot of negativity surrounding the platform, especially when it comes to upholding their Terms of Service, Amazon has the capability of pulling their platform out of infamy to revival. TwitchCon 2019 was the best convention yet, even better than the first time the livestreaming service was in San Diego. And what's better is they're returning to San Diego again, likely to step their game up. Here are some highlights that happened to me and others. I had the extremely lucky chance to meet Pokimane , a hugely popular streamer (and unbelievably gorgeous woman) that gave an entire crowd of people pizza and some select few (including myself) her own branded jackets. That was probably one of the greatest moments of TwitchCon yet, although I felt a little bad because a lot of people wanted to get pictures with her and she didn'

Streaming Video Games for 6 Years: A Look Back

I really didn't know what I was getting into in 2013. I wanted to practice some video editing skills and see what I was capable of, but building a video editing machine turned out to be one of the most positive mistakes I've made in a long time. My very first stream was of Heavy Rain, and I remember messaging a friend at work to check my stream page. Sure enough, Heavy Rain was on his phone at the time. I nearly dropped the phone because I was so happy with the result. Over the course of the next few days, I cobbled together my stream setup with all my resources. I remember getting Final Fantasy XIV (an early copy under NDA) and started streaming it...I even tagged SqaureSoft in my "going live" tweet. It turns out the game was still under NDA at the time, and I received messages on twitter from other streamers to turn off my stream. Not that many people saw it to begin with, but it was a fantastic learning lesson--read and understand NDAs. All of them. Nearly 6

E3 2019: Quite Possibly My Favorite E3 of All

Phil Spencer recently admitted that the E3 show for 2019 was weaker specifically because Activision and Sony weren't at the con. I couldn't disagree more with his opinion, as I thought this latest con was probably the best--at least for me. And I'll tell you why. Why E3 2019 Was Impressive For Me So, my first foray into E3 was through AOL. I had a very strong misconception that I would be trying the latest games, meeting awesome folks, and partying a ton. The latter part was somewhat true as I got some pretty decent party invites, but the former aspects weren't. Attending E3 under media, especially controlled  media, is a lot more work than you might think. It's quite literally going to an interview, record interview, sit down, write the interview, and go to the next interview. That's about it. You're there to work, and that's what they make you do. Or, of course, you lose your job, and while I can think of many jobs I wouldn't want over

Using Restreamio and Expanding Your Video Game Streaming Audience

It's been a minute, that's for damn sure. I tried re-signing up for the Twitch affiliate status only to realize it wasn't the path I wanted. Restricting oneself to one avenue of video game streaming really isn't the best method of learning the entire market, so I decided to focus my efforts with something that I knew about in the past: Restreamio! Using Restreamio for Video Game Streaming Content Restreamio acts as a streaming hub for several different platforms. You stream to it, and it rebroadcasts to all of your channels. It's convenient and can potentially expand your audience much wider; the only problem, I think, is the matter of hosting. If you're streaming on Twitch, Mixer, YouTube, and Facebook, then it's a matter of hosting who you want to on each individual platform. That's not a very easy task, unfortunately. But if you're looking to get into video game streaming and you don't want to limit yourself to one platform, I think