Twitch times: the future for Later Levels’ streams

Over the past fortnight, I’ve brought you a series of posts on streaming. We’ve looked at what it means to accept an Affiliate invitation from Twitch, the video games are made for playing on air along with advice for new streamers. I’ve also introduced you to a few bloggers who stream that are well worth following.

This was the lead-up to my other-half and I making a return to the Later Levels’ channel last weekend. After realising at the end of May that we’d stopped enjoying ourselves on stream through feeling as though we had to be constantly online, we decided to take a break for several weeks. It was difficult to admit it was what we needed to do back then but it turned out to be for the best: it gave us the space we needed to refocus, and the chance to think about how we want to do things going forward.

Thank you so much to everyone who joined us for The Great Blog Crawl 2020 stream on Saturday evening, and congratulations to Frostyilyte from Frostilyte Writes who was this year’s winner. I’d also like to give a massive shoutout to Solarayo from Ace Asunder, my partner-in-crime for this event and all-round awesome friend. We had so much fun putting together the quiz and would love to do it again next year – we’ve already had some ideas about how we can improve and get more blogs involved so there’ll be more news coming soon.

The blogger-friends who joined us for that session and Sunday morning’s hangover stream may have noticed that the channel looked and behaved a little different. This was because Pete and I didn’t just sit around eating cake during our break (although we did a lot of that too); we took the time to really think about what we wanted to achieve and introduced a few new things to help with that. Here’s a round-up of the changes and what you can expect from Later Levels’ streams in the future.

New branding

Pete was never all that keen on the channel’s old retro-style branding so one of the priorities on our to-do list was to update it. After an awful lot of hours spent watching Adobe After Effects tutorials, he came up with something which looks far more modern. We realised that we needed a design which ties in with the blog rather than being an entirely separate entity, and I think this is why we’re so happy with it; it finally feels as though we’ve got a ‘brand’ which is a cohesive whole and represents us.

Still no subs, but more viewer interaction

Taking some time out from streaming confirmed for me that not accepting the Twitch Affiliate invitation last year was the right thing to do. Being Affiliated has no bearing on whether we’re having fun with the channel and seems like a way to turn an enjoyable hobby into a job. That doesn’t mean we aren’t able to show our viewers how much we appreciate them though: check out the Affili-cat panel on our Twitch page for a list of commands and try using them in chat when we’re next live. There’ll be more coming soon.

Plenty more #KaraokePete

Although Pete still insists that he doesn’t constantly sing while we’re on stream, this video proves that he does – and you can expect plenty more #KaraokePete in the future. Along with the commands mentioned in the section above, I’ve also created a few which allow VIP viewers to play one of his songs whenever they feel the need to hear his smooth tones. Keep making clips of his performances when we’re live and we may have enough content for a charity album for next year’s GameBlast21 marathon event.

Games we want to play

I think the biggest lesson we’ve learnt through all our streaming experience is not to play titles we’re not going to enjoy, even they seem as though they’d be good for Twitch. It’s a sure-fire way to turn a maintaining a channel into a chore: it’s not fun for you and that means it’s no fun for the people watching. From now on we’ve promised ourselves that we’re only going to play games that appeal to us, regardless of whether they might attract viewers. So that means more adventures, full-motion video (FMV), Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 and Eurovision Division events.

Fun without the pressure

The thing that kicked off our need for a break from Twitch was the feeling that we had to make ourselves constantly available online, whether to stream or to watch others do the same. That’s not good for anybody. We’ve realised that we should only go live when we’re feeling motivated to do so and it’s ok to put down the controller when we’ve had enough. If we’re live when the desire to stream grabs you, go for it; please don’t feel as though you’re stepping on our toes, and let us know what you’re playing so we can give you a shoutout.

That’s enough about writing about streaming – it’s time to start doing more of it. Thank you to everyone who has supported the Later Levels’ streams, and congratulations to those who started their Twitch journeys during the past few months. We look forward to seeing you live soon.