Streaming...

Wow.

Just. Wow.

So, I knew the DC Universe Online streaming community is strong and supportive. I didn't realize just HOW strong and supportive it is.

I started streaming, almost on a whim, on December 31st. On December 30th I had no intention of ever streaming and would have laughed at the thought of it. Me? Streaming? Yeah, right. So I was as shocked as anyone when I had a bad pain day and turned my attention to Twitch and the mechanics of streaming and decided to give it a whirl. Just to see.

My computer is decent, but I decided to not try to capture myself on video, since I wasn't sure it would have enough power to capture the game I was playing and my face at the same time. So my stream is an audio stream, mostly. I created a stream avatar that sits in the corner for some streams and responds to commands in the chat, so at least there's something there besides just the game. And suddenly four days had gone by and I was streaming a little every day...

Now I'm actually a streamer, having streamed for five days in a row (!!!) and gotten enough followers to qualify as an affiliate. I don't have all the other requirements yet, but I have the followers and that's half of the hardest part.*

Why does this matter? Well, if you become an affiliate, you can start to make a little money with Twitch (and I do mean little) and, more importantly, can make emotes for people to use in your channel and other channels. And I like emotes. There's one I very much want to make, and I think I will be able to find something that works. Heck, just look on Etsy for "Twitch Emotes" and you'll see a bazillion excellent artists offering custom work for decent prices. The very little money I make will no doubt pay for the few emotes I want.

Now I just have to keep it up. I will continue for a bit and see what happens, and if people continue to watch/listen I'll enjoy it. For my part, I'm now thinking of ways to keep the streams from becoming too confusing with me blathering about nothing for an hour. I'm also thinking of other games to play besides my morning DC Universe Online stream. I'll be playing DCUO at 10 am every morning for an hour, and then at 2 pm I'll play something else for an hour. I'm going to limit myself to an hour due to my health issues, but I think I can manage it.

Here's the link: Realtegan on Twitch. I don't expect anyone to watch or follow, but feel free to drop by if you want.

* To become an affiliate, you must (in the past 30 days) stream at least 8 hours on seven different days. You must have 50 followers and average at least 3 viewers.