Live streaming gameplay is nothing new but has gained popularity in recent years. This has allowed many streamers to share some wonderful experiences. From informative to comical. I myself have witnessed some amazing events. Not only that, the pleasure of meeting some incredible people with great insight into the games I love. These and the exciting list of games set to release this holiday season are why I would like to try my hand at live streaming my gameplay.
Doing this will allow me to share my experiences and confront my tendency to revert to my introverted mindset and shy away from social interaction. I’m not interested in changing into some social butterfly, although I do believe in personal growth my making oneself uncomfortable through shared experiences and different perspectives. The platforms I will be deciding on using will be between Twitch, Mixer (formerly Beam) and YouTube Gaming. These are the most familiar to me and easy to set up to stream using my Xbox One. Monetization is something that interests me but is not a priority at this time. My priorities are connecting and sharing my experiences here
Twitch
Twitch has been around the longest out of the three I’ll be choosing from and has the largest user base. The more people using the platform the more people I’ll have the opportunity to interact with. The biggest downside to using Twitch, will be the fact that the community can be extremely toxic. Although this can be difficult to deal with, I am confident enough in my personality and spending many hours in the world of trolls, I doubt I’ll be greatly affected. The Twitch app on my Xbox will make connecting user friendly. Even though I’ll be live streaming, I would like to save those videos for viewing later. This can be done through Twitch but I have run into issues with saving videos in the past, so I might try and save them to my regular YouTube account. Since YouTube and YouTube Gaming are separate.
YouTube Gaming
Given that they are separate entities, YouTube Gaming and YouTube share many of the backend aspects making connecting the two a more seamless process. Much easier than others to YouTube, of course. The issue with streaming live gameplay from my Xbox will be that I’ll have to utilize encoding software for my videos. That means buying equipment or using a third-party site. Equipment like Elgato Game Capture HD60, which is a suggested option from YouTube itself. The other option would be downloading software like OBS(Open Broadcaster Software). This is open source software that can be downloaded and used to stream my videos without buying equipment. I might have to connect to my Xbox through my computer making lag or delayed gameplay an occurrence. If I were to go this route I would use the free software until I got better and would be able to purchase the required equipment.
Mixer (a.k.a. Beam)
Being new to the scene Mixer would be a platform that I could grow with. Direct integration with my Xbox would make things world easier and eliminate the need for any other software or equipment. Issues and bugs are always a part of new software and platforms in general. Embracing these and adjusting along the way would be part of the adventure. Stream latency with my Xbox would be my biggest concern with using this choice. Since the site has had latency issues every time I visited it. Like I said before, part of the adventure. Reading through the content guidelines it would appear that they are trying to create a more family-friendly stream platform. I could see this being a good thing and a bad thing for content creators. Good in the sense of people not being allowed to troll or post highly offensive content. On the flip side, I see it putting content creators on a short leash with limited creative potential for the morbid.
Conclusion
With each having great points and drawbacks, deciding is not going to be easy. There are other factors that I’m considering, that for the sake of not turning this post into a ramble, I will leave out. Nonetheless, I am giving myself until September to come to a decision, since that is my birthday month. I will post my decision and gameplay once I start here on Steemit. I will also go more in-depth as to why I made the choice I did. See you then!
Any feedback on any of these services or suggestions are always welcomed and encouraged.
As always Thank You for your attention