1856: Streaming from Every Orifice

I decided to fiddle around with the “ShadowPlay” feature on my graphics card tonight. This is a feature of more recent nVidia cards that takes some of the strain off the main computer when either recording or streaming video of games. I hadn’t tried it at all before, owing to the fact that I’ve never really had occasion to, but I decided to give it a try with Final Fantasy XIV this evening just as an experiment.

I’m impressed! There was absolutely no impact on the game’s smoothness whatsoever, and the footage that was being streamed to Twitch (only at 480p and 30fps for this initial experiment) looked nice, clear and stutter-free. The ShadowPlay software also provides the facility to stream your voice through your microphone at the same time as the game audio, too, so talky types can speak all over the top of their favourite games like “proper” streamers do.

I’m slightly coming around to the idea of streaming, since a significant number of people seem to think that so far as video games are concerned, streaming and YouTube are the way forward, while traditional “print” (i.e. text-based) journalism and reportage is dying out. Certainly with the recent folding of Joystiq, one of the most long-running blog-style games sites, it seems that there are tough times ahead for the games press. I still doubt it will die out completely — and, moreover, I still vastly prefer reading a well-written article to watching a video in most cases — but it’s probably worth embracing these newer things that don’t seem to be going away any time soon rather than plugging my ears and going “la la la la la”.

While I have a bit of time on my hands, then, it would seem prudent to use some of this time to experiment a bit. (I hasten to add to those concerned for my employment status that I have also been writing to various places in search of work, so please don’t think I’m sitting on my arse playing games all day!) I’ve tried my hand at some sort of vaguely Let’s Play-ish videos before, focusing on bullet hell shooters, but perhaps I should have another go. Arguably even more so than games writing, it’s extremely difficult to get established in the fields of either streaming or YouTubing, but I certainly have the skills to do both and, on the off-chance things happen to go well, there’s the potential to make some money there.

I’m under no illusions, though; this is very unlikely, and pretty much reserved for the already well-established personalities like PewDiePie, Boogie2988, TotalBiscuit and their ilk. Still, it just takes a few people talking about you — and the production of decent content, of course — to start the ball rolling on something potentially bigger, and it can’t hurt to give it a try. In fact, it might even be quite fun. There are, I feel, some obvious gaps in the market so far as streaming and YouTubing are concerned, much as there are in the games press, so that’s probably the place to start; let’s explore it and see what happens.