Nothing much has been going on with me for the last month and writing takes a special level of effort when my head’s in a bad place. I haven’t left the house much – if at all – thanks to a wombo combo of mental health, physical health, and a brand, spanking new lockdown imposed in my area of the UK.

As is tradition for me at this time of year however, I’ve been giving a lot of thought towards streaming again. I streamed on and off a few years ago as an offshoot to contributions I made to a certain fan community, and continued to do so in dribs and drabs off my own back in the year or so that followed.

In late August/September this year I did a couple of private Oxygen Not Included streams for friends who were interested in the game but either had no idea of how to start playing it, or who were up for listening to some old bird with a muddled British accent talk exhaustively about heat exchange, circuitry, stress and wellbeing, and extra-terrestrial farming/ranching for an appreciable chunk of time.

It wasn’t the most thrilling or polished set up (done as it was over Discord), but it still managed to scratch an itch that had been caused by lack of social interaction and – apparently – a desire to talk uninterrupted for 4+ hours. I enjoyed it – exhausted and out of practice as I was for the second stream – and my brain keeps flopping back to the experience.

All this to say that I think I’d like to start streaming ‘properly’ again over Twitch. With a schedule and everything. I currently work part-time and – between me and the Ginger – have a decent enough income to pay the bills so this wouldn’t be something I’d push as a full time job or an abrupt change in career. I certainly wouldn’t be positioning myself as some high-octane MLG competitor banging drums for hype trains or raids. Instead, I’d look to stream calm games that an audience can dip in and out of, or have on in the background while they do other stuff. It would fit into my life as-is and would work more for a European late-afternoon/evening audience, or US mid-morning/early afternoon audience.

(I specify this as it’s been really annoying trying to watch some of my favourite US-based streamers as they only stream at 2am GMT/BST)

I’d mostly look at chill strategy/survival stuff, maybe some horror. Games like Oxygen Not Included, Darkwood, The Long Dark. That sort of thing.

I’m not looking for subs or bits (I’ll be honest, I still don’t actually know what the fuck a ‘bit’ is), and I’ll probably stick to old, reliable OBS until I get sufficiently motivated to try out some of the newer streaming studio platforms like Streamlabs. My current laptop is barely able to handle multiple Office files being open at the same time, much less run anything fast or graphically intense.

But, yeah.

This is about as enthusiastic about something new as I’ve been for a while so I’m curious to see how it goes.

If you’re interested in seeing what comes of it, then please consider chucking me a follow on https://www.twitch.tv/skeleheron/ and I might see you in the coming weeks.