Re: Swamp, zombie FPS by Aprone
Well, my thanks to everyone who has taken the time to share their thoughts on this matter. I am so glad to see that there is community interest in this content. I will now provide a bit of general information in this section, then respond to each of you who has responded regarding my previous post. And finally, I shall provide a small list of useful resources at the bottom of this post. Alright, so in regards to when one could actually expect to find me live on Twitch. My standard schedule would typically be Friday, Saturday, Monday and Tuesday from 10:00PM EST until whenever, (one can usually expect at least three to four hours of content, but I have been known to go until 10:00AM EST, so there will certainly be plenty of content, no worries on that). I also do have Sundays available, but not 100% of the time at the current moment. Also, to all who are interested, I would actually suggest that you not follow my channel until you're watching me live. The reason for this is that my channel has a FollowerKitty that pops up and thanks you for following. The FollowerKitty does have audio, however, it does not, as of yet, have text-to-speech, (I am currently working on remedying that though). And no worries about missing the first stream due to not following as of yet. I will be sure to announce here before it happens. Wouldn't want anyone to miss out on their FollowerKitty, or their personal "thank you", so be sure to wait until I'm live before following. However, to anyone out there who is more the lurker type, and would prefer not to be mentioned on-stream, by all means, feel free to follow whilst I am offline.
@Aprone, thank ya kindly for the video share. Yes, that actually does help immensely. Though I may not be able to see what's actually going on during a match, having a mental image of what the map the match is being played on actually looks like makes it much easier to learn good positioning and whatnot. In regards to my stream, my channel link is actually posted in my signature, and is set as my "Website" link on here. I will however also post a direct link to my channel at the bottom of this post. Looking forward to seeing ya there.
@SLJ, It's wonderful to hear that Twitch is, in fact, accessible. I am still very new to the world of audio games, and my knowledge as to what is, and is not, accessible is pretty much next to nothing. So I'm really depending on folks in this community to help me out whit that kind of stuff, so that I am able to provide the most enjoyable content for all viewers, sighted or not. So yeah, any advice that you, or anyone else, is able to offer is greatly appreciated. I'm glad to hear you feel that way about my ideas regarding streaming this content. I think it'll be equally as awesome to see you there as well.
@BlindJedi, I too 100% share these sentiments. My aim is to help great games like Swamp get the exposure they may not yet have, but certainly deserve. Swamp may have been designed to be accessible to a blind audience, but by no means does that mean it should be the game's only audience. Regardless of the initial target demographic of games like Swamp and Manamon, that does not change the fact that these are objectively good games. Especially in these current days where, to be brutally honest, an overwhelming of mainstream video games are complete trash, it's nice to play a game that gives off the vibe of a developer who actually gives a shit about their product. Mainstream gaming these days has pretty much turned into over-saturation of micro-transactions and how pretty the graphics are. I must say, I am quite sick and tired of spending 60 or more USD on games that I can 100% complete in as little is under 6 hours. If great games like Swamp get more exposure, the accessible games in general will get more attention. More attention means more financial potential, thus resulting in much higher developmental interest and potential in the field. To think that there could one day be an audio based division of professional eSports is honestly not an unrealistic dream. The only obstacles in the of this would be lack of content designed for such a purpose, and lack of demand for said content. Both of these problems are solved by an increase of exposure to the general populous of gamers. However, to achieve the level of exposure needed, it is necessary for those who already have their foot in the door with a lot of other gaming communities to help bring attention to the potential that accessible games have. That being said, I intend to help out as best I can to bring that dream a bit closer to reality. Now, regarding Twitch, the information you've been able to provide regarding accessibility is also much appreciated. In return, I'll share a bit of knowledge of my own. First of all, there is actually a desktop application version of Twitch that is much nicer than the website interface. It's called TwitchApp, and I'm not all too sure how accessible it is overall. It is completely free though, so couldn't hurt to check it out. I'll post a link to it at the bottom section of this post if you'd like to check it out for yourself. In regards to accessible Twitch chat, I actually have two products I've used pretty extensively. I'll tell you a bit about each of them, and provide links to both at the bottom section of the post. The first of these is called ChatterBot. This program is a pretty straight-forward and simple interface that allows an individual to connect to any Twitch channel's chat with their own Twitch account via an IRC relay. Once connected, this program will output anything posted in that channel's chat room both in simple text and text-to-speech form. This is a great option for people who are interested in a simple solution to participate in chat in small to medium sized view count streams. This program is not however the best solution for watching extremely high viewer count streamers. This is because ChatterBot will always read everything posted in the chat. If you are familiar with how hectic the chat can get in some of those super big channels, I think you can see where I'm going with why this program wouldn't hold up so well in this scenario. ChatterBot does have a free trial, and is also set at a great wallet-friendly price at only around 13USD for a life-time licence key. The other program I've used is called StreamTalker. Now, this application is a much more professional-geared chat-reader. It has a huge selection of extremely useful features, such as being able to customize the chat read-out. For example, you could tell StreamTalker that you only want it to auto text-to-speech messages directed at you. This software is much more versatile than ChatterBot, and is compatible with extremely high viewer count streams with very active chat rooms. The big downside to StreamTalker is that, as it is a much more professionally focused application, it does have a more professional level price tag stuck on it. A StreamTalker licence is around 60USD (though currently, there is apparently a Christmas promotion going on reducing the cost to 35USD), and the major version yearly upgrades do have an upgrade fee if you want all the newest features. There is unfortunately no free trial period available for StreamTalker, however, there is a trial period available that provides full server access for a limited time at the cost of 5USD. I would also 100% recommend StreamTalker over ChatteBot to any individual who wanted to try getting into starting up their own live-stream. But which one of these two is more worth it overall would very much depend on the needs of the person buying it.
@john, Haha, no worries friend. Truth be told, I'm not the most top-tiered talented player yet myself. Hell, I'm still learning how a lot of the basics in the game work. So no performance pressure or expectations will be put on ya here. We just here to have a good time. I'd be much more accepting of a player who is absolutely terrible at the game but is hella fun to play with, then I would be of a player who's got some mad good skills, but is a toxic piece of shit to their fellow team mates. I mean, after all, it's much easier to learn to become a better player than it is to learn how to become a better person. I'm sure I'll be doing plenty of missions with viewers, and I'd be honored to join up with you in some good old zambie killin'.
@revan, yeah, I totally know how it is. Life does get hella crazy sometimes, and there's just not enough time in the day to do all the shit we wanna do. If you do happen to find a few moments to stop by sometime, you'd certainly be welcomed to join in on any viewer missions as well. Haha, yeah, I gotta learn how to not be absolutely awful at the game. I think I'm acceptably alright at it thus far. However, since sight plays absolutely no role in this game whatsoever, I am certainly at a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to the initial learning phase. I am not easily discouraged though. If these years of being a professional Dark Souls player have taught me anything, it would be extreme levels of patience and persistence. I may not be crazy good at the game yet, but I will be eventually.
@truecraig, I do understand where you're coming from. I'm not going to lie to ya, there are certainly folks in the sighted community who would be inclined to behave in that fashion. Hell, I'm certain there are going to be a couple of my followers who show up and say something akin to, "yo, wtf is this garbage, where's the Bloodborne Chalice Dungeon runs, or Dark Souls fight clubs? You used to play good games on this stream". But even though I know there will be a couple individuals like that, I can't let those few people get to me, and hinder me from providing content to the much larger group of people who would actually be curious as to what this content actually is, and be open to discovering new things. I'm the kind of person who's gonna do what I want to do, and if someone's got a problem with that, fuck 'em. These days it's so heavily reinforced that the only way to be a successful streamer is to always ensure that your stream is a "politically correct safe-space", to make sure you do everything you can to cater to the SJW crowd, and make it top priority to try to please everyone at any cost. That being said, I take great pride in the fact that my stream never has, nor will it ever, do any of those things. It's my stream, and I ain't gonna cater to no one, nor will I pretend to be anyone other than me. If someone doesn't happen to find that to be an enjoyable environment, then they are more than welcomed to take their leave. Ain't no one forcing them to be there. I do know that most people don't think the way I do though, and that for a lot of folks, this type of attitude towards provide content to the public is much easier said than done. The best advice I can give ya is, contrary to what everyone would have you believe, it is absolutely impossible to please everyone. Doesn't matter what kinda content you provide, for every few people who think it's pure gold, there's gonna be some person who thinks it's trash. If I manage to find my way into a stream that I do not much care for the content being provided, I do what any self-respecting individual would do and leave. But there are those people out there who seriously ain't got nothing better to do with their time than to sit there and tell you how terrible they think your content is. And quite honestly, you just gotta let that shit slide right off of you. And just remember, before you let someone like that make you feel like you're doing something wrong by not pleasing them, that's complete bullshit. Some ignorant dumb-ass who's only there to put you down, trust me, they ain't worth your time. That's what the "/ban" command is for. You don't want garbage like that in your community anyway. Believe me, if you're trying to build a great community on Twitch, it's much better to stream a game you truly enjoy for five viewers, than to stream some sell-out shit game for five hundred viewers, just because it's the current popular thing. And if anyone ever tries to tell you that's not true; that you can't be yourself, and do what you want to do, and be successful at the same time, I'd recommend directing them to a streamer called ExcessiveProfanity. He is ridiculously successful, and he don't put up with no one's shit. He's my streaming role-model, because he represents the fact that, if you truly commit to just being yourself, and don't let the haters bring you down, the people who actually matter will respect you for it. And hey man, if you ever need any help with any streaming stuff, either from technical aspect, or the social one, by all means, feel free to hit me up. Hell, there's so many cookie-cutter generic trash streamers out there these days, I'm more than happy to do anything I can to help get more people out there who want to provide quality content. And seriously, the way I see it, when it comes to getting great games like Swamp more exposure, the more content providers we can get, the better.
In conclusion, thank you all again for all the interest and assistance. Not even 24 hours yet and we're already off to a great start. If there are any other threads on here I should post in to generate maximum exposure to this new streaming venture, I'd appreciate any direction anyone could offer. Also, if I could ask you all to spread the word, I would be mighty grateful. I do apologize for the super long post, but I really wanted take the time to personally address everyone's reply.
- List of Resources -
TwitchApp (Desktop application for Twitch.tv)
https://app.twitch.tv/
ChatterBot (Twitch chat-reader, 7-day free trial available)
http://www.chatterbot.co.uk/download/
StreamTalker (Professional-level chat-reader, 5USD trial period available)
http://streamtalker.com/
My Twitch Channel
http://www.twitch.tv/WintergreenKitty
_______________________________________________ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
