In 2 weeks our channel will have been going for 1 year, believe it or not!
In that time I have shared vids from many games; MGSV, Journey, Until Dawn & Satellite Reign (plus others), just in the last month alone. We have over 100 videos in total on there now and counting, and I will continue to put stuff up when I can and when my net allows.
I even bought myself a camera and chose to share some of my music videos on there too (since we don't restrict our community talk to just games, but tv, music, anime etc too) rather than create a separate/private channel of my own for them, as I knew they'd bring us extra traffic. They did. Lots. More than my other videos infact lol.
I say that (rather than create a separate channel), but everything on the channel (bar maybe 3 videos which BD has shared in the past), was recorded & uploaded by me anyway. So, a few things:
Seeing this place get quieter and seeing less of some folk (like SL33PY who created the channel) had me a bit worried as I've continued to put my stuff out on YouTube. As such, ownership of the YouTube channel has now been transferred over to me. I just feel a little more comfortable knowing that I have full control & ownership over all of this content I'm sharing, especially when some of those vids are very important to me. The channel is still (and will continue to be) the STR channel but after a year of using it by myself I do consider it to be my channel now. Like Twitter, @ShatteredStar97 represents the group but I've managed it on my own for a year now, it has my name under it and I use it as a personal account too with a little disclaimer ("M.Steiner of The Shattered Star gaming community. All opinions expressed are my own") so I don't just post like a robot on there, but can actually share some views & opinions from time to time too.
Point being, if I ever went anywhere (I've been here for 12yrs, I have no plans to leave lol) or anything ever happened to the group, the channel I've been building up by myself will go with me. We still have other managers on there like we have all year, just keep this in mind if you suddenly decide to start sharing stuff on there. If there comes a time when people here want a true group channel where several of us are putting stuff up equally, we'll open a new channel or something. We shall cross that bridge if/when we come to it though. The channel we have will continue to represent STR as I've said, so don't worry there. Nothing will change. I just wanted to make my thoughts clear that's all. I've put a lot of time and effort into it
Anyway, from my next video onwards (Star Citizen videos aside which will continue to link to the SC org page) I'll be using an updated version of the intro, as well as removing the outro. This new one will not link to here though, but Twitter like so:
As I've said above, the forums have been worryingly quiet as of late. I still post here more than anyone but even I've had to pull myself back as sometimes it can be really frustrating just to try and get a conversation going (or a question answered) when there's nobody else around. Sometimes for days at a time. I always make a point of including the STR intro on all my gaming videos which link here but continuing to link people back when forum activity levels are as they have been, is kinda counterproductive I think. So, I'm going to link to Twitter instead as our page on there is far more active, frequently gaining followers, incorporates my YouTube updates and is generally more likely to draw interest for us right now. You don't gain followers on Twitter by being quiet and never posting anything. The forum is no different really. We need to work on that as a group.
Twitch - We have a page on there but it's only ever been used a handful of times. I am not able to stream due to my connection though otherwise I'd probably do a bit of that too. Says a lot when Twitter & YouTube are so active and Twitch just never really went anywhere heh. This video of SOMA I've just uploaded will have taken around 9hrs for example. Crazy I know, just means leaving it on overnight whilst I sleep. I don't mind, but streaming is out of the question for me lol.
I'm sure we have other people here with decent internet who could stream something every now and then though, no? Just looking on Twitch right now.. you always have stuff like LoL, CS & Dota but there's people streaming all kinds of games on there; Fallout 3 & NV, Battlefield 4, Witcher 3, TWD, Life is Strange, WoW, Dark Souls, Minecraft, Skyrim, Civ V, FFXIV. You can stream anything basically. How's your internet? What are you playing atm? Why don't you stream a bit of it?
Twitter & YouTube have taken off well but I've personally made sure of that. It would be great to see Twitch get some love too, even if it's just the odd stream here and there. Any streaming is better than none, right?. You're going straight to the gamers there.
That's about it methinks. So yeah...
- #1 Let's work on forum activity. Activity on our other sites is great and was a really good move for us but the forum is supposed to be where the community comes together and the place we ultimately bring people back to. Tis no good if this place is lifeless and it will only get worse.
- #2 Push the Twitch streaming. Nobody here is going to become the next Lirik (either in terms of viewers or doing it full time) but an active Twitch account with a few casual members collaborating with each other could be very good for us, especially in conjunction with Twitter and an active discussion forum. A nice little network.
- #3 Lastly, let's look at some group games again too. Anny recently suggested Rocket League for anyone who has that on PC. If some of you manage to get some games going of that, why don't you stream it too? Also, who's getting Star Wars Battlefront in November? (for which there should be an open beta of in a few weeks). How about we play some games of that together? There's Star Citizen too don't forget. Something lots of us have already backed and have access to (and we now have a TS server of our own thanks to NF!). I've played many, many games with BD this year as well as a few with Kahn (before he had to uninstall), Chaos and even Rah which was great. Would be great to see some more peeps in there.
Apologies for the length!