How I Stream On Twitch

I’m a rarity amongst my friends in the mid 30’s – I stream on Twitch. I started mainly to cut down on drinking, but it’s made me connect with some amazing people, become better friends with people I already knew, as well as earn a little bit of money.

In recent weeks, with the Coronavirus issues, people have been looking to get more into Twitch streaming, and asking me how I did it. I’d thought I’d teach you how I do it. Here is a guide of how I did it.

Starting for “Free”

Before starting, I’d recommend getting things up and running as quickly as possible for free. I started with Retro Gaming with a stream of Championship Manager 93. For this I simply needed an emulator, ‘acquired’ copies of the game, and Open Broadcasting Software. Open Broadcasting Software (henceforth referred to as “OBS”) is a piece of software that has Mac, PC & Linux alternatives and allows you to put together a “scene”. This scene can pull in any window on your machine, images, your webcam, as well as any audio associated with it. You can then immediately stream by connecting the software to Twitch (here’s a guide on how to do it). Test everything is working (you can run test streams) and then go live!

My OBS for when I stream ZX Spectrum games (in this case Manic Miner)

Your first streams won’t have many viewers, that’s fine. I think my entire first 2 months of streaming I had less than 1 average viewer per stream. If you can bring people in that can be useful (my first regular viewers were people I knew outside of Twitch). But you should use this time to speak and get comfortable, which is why a game like Championship Manager is great as it’s slow paced and you can talk about what you’re seeing. Things like that. People may show up. People may not. But you should decide if you enjoy it, which is why I say a game like this is perfect. You can stream direct from Xbox/PS4’s, however they don’t have features like webcams, and it’s far easier to connect when you see somebody.

Investing in Streaming

Decide you enjoy it? Great stuff! Now let’s spend some cash

My entire streaming setup (outside of games & consoles) cost me about £250-300. I had some elements already (like the computer), and I did use some tokens to take some of the damage off, but this is what I bought.

When all the gear arrives, in between your console and your TV put the Elgato Capture Card and your console. You’ll want to capture the signal to put it into OBS, there are millions of ways to do this and my way is rather complicated (but works for me!). So I’ll not share it. However you should have something that looks like this.

I don’t usually put the streaming card this side of the laptop, but you can see how it is structured with the grey HDMI cable being the input (from the Raspberry Pi) and the black being the output (into the monitor).

Notice the fact that what I’m watching on the screen (top screen) is not running at the same time as my stream (bottom screen). This is deliberate as there will be a delay. Also it’s a good idea at this point to run as lean as possible – close all programs, drop the bitrate of the video (I stream at 760p standard definition as for retro stuff & my ugly mug it’s fine) and generally try and run the games in the resolution they were intended in on your monitor.

Bots

A Chatbot is a good thing to have in your stream. They can do basic moderation, help sort out spam, and respond to events as well as provide commands. You can see this in action by going to my stream and typing in commands such as !social, !discord & !prime. Or just write a few messages relatively slowly (so not to set off the spam filter). Here are a couple of ones.

  • Streamlabs Cloudbot – probably the simplest to set up, and I’ll talk more about Streamlabs offering in another part.
  • Nightbot – Popular with some elements of the community.
  • Phantombot – What I use. Self hosted (so you have to pay for server space). Complex to setup, but I love their dashboard and it is open source. Plus it allows me to tinker and improve it however I wish.

Dashboards

You can also setup a dashboard. Dashboard are what you look at whilst streaming. It can tell you things like the bitrate (how your internet connection is), how long you’ve been streaming, how many viewers you have watching and anything that’s happening on your stream.

The Default Twitch Dashboard

Some dashboards I’m familiar with are the following.

  • The default Twitch Dashboard. If you watch it disable your video, as I found it make things all a lot slower.
  • The default Twitch Dashboard on Mobile – again can be useful and easy to setup, running the dashboard on your mobile. I started with this.
  • Phantombot’s Dashboard (this is what I use). I found it light and didn’t take up as many resources as the default Twitch Dashboard.

I’m not sure about any other Dashboards, but I’m sure there are plenty more. If you set up a dashboard switch off viewers. It can be distracting and disheartening when you’re performing to an audience of zero.

Alerts

One thing I quite like is Alerts. They help improve interaction between you and your streamers. These are little animations that pop up when things happen on your stream. Two of the most popular ones are the following:-

  • Streamlabs Alerts – I have this, and has a wealth of tools available to handle alerts for anything from followers to subscriptions.
  • Soundalert Extension – This will allow users to donate bits (more on Bits later) or use channel points to play sound effects on your stream.

Maintenance

It’s up to you, but I put my streams up on My YouTube Channel whenever they are finished. Streams last on Twitch for a couple of weeks, but can be exported with the click of a button in Content > Video Producer.

Anything you clip, or one of your users clip last permanently though.

Growth & Monetization

And so the big one, how do you grow or monetise it? Well let’s start with growth.

Growth kind of happens slowly. It’s a good idea to have a community or things you can latch onto to help. If you can bring viewers to Twitch in some way (say if you have friends that enjoy games) that’s an easy way. Other than that, my three tips are.

  • Share the love: once finishing streams “raid” a random person. Raiding is passing on your viewership to somebody else. Some people switch it off as it can be a bit overwhelming, but if you have a few viewers, find a streamer of a similar/larger size, and raid them. Be friendly and chatty and hang out for a bit – I try to end a stream earlier than you wish to make sure that I can have a small chat.
  • Jump on hashtags: Some such as “#SmallStreamersConnect” and “#StreamFrens” retweet go live notifications – though you may want a dedicated Twitter account.
  • Sit and watch other streams: Some of my earlier viewers came from people I had previously watched. You can do that.

Some communities exist that can help you grow. These are things such as the following:-

And finally onto earning. Well you cannot earn straight away, you need to become a Twitch Affiliate, to do this you need the following:-

  • 50 Followers on Twitch.
  • Stream on 7 Different Days over the last 30 days.
  • Stream for 500 minutes over the last 30 days (8 and a bit hours).
  • An average of over 3 viewers on your streams.

It sounds like a lot but it’s quite easy to get, it took me about 2-3 months to achieve but if you are committed you can do it quicker. Becoming Twitch Affiliate allows you to earn using the following ways.

  • A share of the ad revenue.
  • “Bits”, small donations when something cool happens (usually works out at 1 bit for $0.01).
  • Subscriptions.
  • Affiliate income from games – rarer.

Subscriptions are the best way to earn as if you have Amazon Prime you can get Twitch Prime as well, which allows one subscription to somebody that’s not yourself on a monthly basis – you can read a guide on how to subscribe to a streamer with Twitch Prime here. So ask your friends to subscribe to you!

The only thing that is lacking is that it doesn’t auto renew, and designed to be a service where you share the wealth. A good alternative is my side project Streamer Sub Alert, which allows you to generate a link that you can put on your profile, or activated via a bot which allows people once subscribed to put a calendar reminder into their calendar to resubscribe. Paid subscriptions do auto renew though.

And how much can you earn? Well, it’s a slog, I’m after 9 months about a third of the way to the payout level. But it’s something to look into a side project rather than a main source of income. Do it for the love, rather than the money.

Thanks For Reading!

If you’ve enjoyed this article, great! I hope I answered questions. My inbox is open for any further questions. If you are on Twitch, please follow me on Twitch. Also YouTube, Twitter & Discord for my other services. If you have Amazon Prime and haven’t used your Twitch Prime Subscription, please consider using it with me – you get a cool emote that you can use on Twitch & Discord (thanks to ArdonPixels for the design). You can do so from my Twitch Profile by clicking on the “Subscribe” button at the top. If nothing else, thanks for reading and please share.

3 Best Video Games I’ve Played In 2017

Yes. I’m well aware that 2017 isn’t over yet, but I’m not sure what else I’m going to play this year, and in a vain hope to blog more here, I’m going to run 4 posts a year. Four posts! The first is end of September, where I share my favourite games of the previous 12 months, before the Christmas rush.

I’m not going to lie, this year has been dominated hard by Overwatch, as it’s been the game I’ve played more than any this year, but it was featured in the last rundown from the turn of the year, so that does not count. Instead I focus on games that I’ve played this year. Please note, these are games I’ve played, and not necessarily released this year, though in this list it’s only really applicable to one game.

3. Bricks Breaker Puzzle (Mobile)

Making it’s way into the third spot is this rather fun little puzzle game – Bricks Breaker.

Imagine a cross between Puzzle Bobble and Arkanoid. You control a stream of about 50 balls and you fire up to hit a number of blocks, each with a number on it. The blocks need to be hit by that number of times for them to be destroyed. There are special blocks, powerups, as well as the blocks slowly making their way down the screen. If the blocks hit the bottom, it’s game over.

This game has taken hours of my time since discovered in May, it’s so simple and yet so addictive. You can play one off games or games for an hour. It’s so much fun and so time sapping and yet so very, very simple. Well worth downloading for free.

It’s ad supported, which can get a bit annoying over time (hence it’s location on this list), but it’s so addictive you can forgive it.

You can download it now for iPhone and Android Phones.

2. Mass Effect: Andromeda (Xbox One)

Wait, hear me out on this (and there will be spoilers). Mass Effect: Andromeda is not as good as Mass Effect 2, but it is not a bad game.

I feel the original trilogy built up to a fever pitch that it was never going to live up to the hype, and I feel that it took away with something that was actually – once you got into it – a pretty decent game. It is rushed in parts, but generally if Mass Effect: Andromeda is the last Mass Effect game, I would be incredibly sad.

The actual colonisation part is average at best, and you shouldn’t do all the missions because they drag, but the characters and the actual side stories about the Ryder family, Jien Garson and the Initiative, the Archon and the relationships with the Kett, it’s actually a very solid story with strong characters. I really want to see it develop, as I feel there is things that could make a second game interesting. Couple that with decent combat, fascinating characters (I love Peebee), and some really good planets (H-047c missions are great). Also you have the Scourge, as well as the fate of the Quarian Ark. I really believe people didn’t give this game a fair chance. Skip all but the primary missions (there’s a lot of boring missions), get up to 100% viability on all planets, and you get a great game.

You can get Mass Effect: Andromeda for the Xbox One or PS4.

1. Sonic Mania (Xbox One)

Ah yes, if you want a guide as to how to revive a franchise, check out this one EA.

Sonic has been utterly utterly shit for years. Really really bad with few bright spots. It’s been rushed, it’s been buggy, and it’s been absolutely terrible. There have been some bright parts, but overall it’s been largely poor. Compared to Sonic’s Nintendo counterpart Mario, it feels like the blue hedgehog has been whored out mercilessly.

For once though, Sega listened.

Rather than build the game themselves, they handed the blue mascot back to the fans, employing PagodaWest Games and Headcannon – two huge fans of the original trilogy – to make these games.

The results, are stunning.

Sonic Mania is a game that makes me smile. It starts with a wonderful nod to the Green Hill Zone as each zone is split into 2 acts. Act 1 is generally a nod to the original level in the games, and when you realise this it’s incredible and genuinely leads to smiles. And the game goes on and on with this, the Dr. Robotnik Mean Bean Machine nod in Chemical Plant Zone, the Sonic R/CD esque Chaos Emeralds levels, genuinely remembering it’s past in this cracking release.

But all the love in the world these nods wouldn’t mean much if the game was terrible. Thankfully this is not the case. The game is excellent, it’s so well coded and you feel in control of Sonic (or Tails, or Knuckles, should you desire). It’s fast, the music is great, the graphics are great, and if you screw up, it’s you who screws up, not the game. With that said, it’s incredibly tough this game, and Titanic Monach is an incredibly tough level.

There’s so much to unlock, from classic cheats such as the debug mode, to new things including a special zone right at the end for really good players. There’s loads to get in this game, and for around £15, you cannot really go wrong. This has been my favourite game this year.

Sonic Mania is available for the PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.

And You?

What are your favourite games of 2017 (so far). Please leave them in the comments!

My Top 3 Video Games of 2016

One of the nicer things this year is the amount of video games I managed to play in 2016. I’ve not been able to play as much as I’d like in years gone past, so to play a lot of games this year has seen a welcome change.

With that said, the amount of games I did play was quite lacking, instead focusing on a few games rather than play a range of games. As such, I think I only played a small number of games in 2016. Here are my three favourites.

3. Golf With Your Friends

This was quite a find in Steam’s early access. Golf with Your Friends brings me back to my childhood of playing mini golf with my friends. Running around courses, not playing to the rules, but having a whale of a time. GWYF is probably my favourite Steam game I found this year. I covered it in a video below, but since playing it I’ve noticed more courses have been added to the game. This game is still well worth picking up.

2. Pokemon Go

For sheer changing the world, Pokemon Go should be up there. For a few weeks over the summer this game was my life. I was going out and exercising with friends on long walks, even having dates with my girlfriend which involved walking to the nearest pub or two. This usual ten minute walk took upwards of 45 minutes. As we were catching Clefaries, Machokes and Mr. Mimes. It was huge, so huge. Hell, we got so addicted so quickly that a pub crawl with a friend of mine saw us drink one pint in 90 minutes, as we were busy catching Pokemon.

It had a huge impact, but sadly fizzled out quicker than it began.

1. Overwatch

No game has taken more of my time in 2016 than Overwatch. I’m a huge fan of Team Fortress esque shooters and when I played the early beta 3 weeks before launch, I was immediately hooked.

Since May – when it came out, I’ve not played anything else.

I love Team Fortress shooters, as stated above. This is my new favourite. It combines a genuine e-sport with an in-depth lore. Characters are memorable, maps are engaging and Blizzard are geniuses. Content has been added constantly, with 2 new characters, 2 new maps, endless games and three seasonal events (even if I didn’t get the Tracer UK Skin or the Mercy Halloween Skin. Boo!). All for free. I cannot see me stopping playing this anytime soon.

Also, shout out to my fellow Symmetra Mains!

What were your favourite games of 2016?

Play Expo Manchester 2016 – Recap

Recently (well, about a month or so ago) I attended Play Expo Manchester, which is one of the premier events in the UK calendar for the Retro Gaming community. I recorded a video on the event, which was first shared on my retro gaming blog Retro Garden, but I’m now sharing here.

Play Expo Manchester 2016 Video Review

Overall, I really enjoy these events and this year was no different. They always seem to find new ways to improve these events and this year as well as the Baby Pac-Man hybrid machine I really enjoyed playing the Metal Slug esque Dragon Bros and the Uridium styled Hyper Sentinel.

Games Mentioned in Play Expo 2016 Video

  • Dragon Bros – is a very fun shooter based on Metal Slug and Gunstar Heroes with vibrant graphics and a great look. It’s well worth hunting out if you are a fan of the genre.
  • Hyper Sentinel – is a game based on Uridium but using all the power of modern day machines. With a great look and cracking soundtrack, this is made slightly more forgiving than the original. Be sure to hunt this out!
  • WiFi Wars – a massively multiplayer Mobile enabled stage show. Seriously, go and see this!

Be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel for more videos like this!

Golf With Your Friends – Review

After the popularity of my Rocket League Review, I’ve decided to do another review, this is for a game I have been watching on Twitch a fair bit and is quite popular on there. An early alpha game that has been greenlit and is available to play now. Golf With Your Friends.

Here are some other thoughts not mentioned on my Golf With Your Friends Review:-

  • The game was originally called “Golf With Friends”. However recent trademark troubles with that name has seen the game renamed as “Golf With Your Friends”. You can read about it here. The video refers to the game as “Golf With Friends”. I couldn’t really change it as between recording and putting it live, the name was changed.
  • I ran the Alpha 0.0.82 version for this game.

Overall Thoughts

Golf With Your Friends is a fun little game to play with – surprise surprise – your friends. It does seem to work better privately with private rooms than public rooms, but even with playing with strangers the game does work.

There are glitches, but it is an early release alpha game. If you can look through the glitches (and you should be able to), then you have a great game. This will only get better as the game approaches release date.

Golf With Your Friends is available on Steam now for £4.79 / $5.99. You can buy Golf With Your Friends here.