Relevant links:
| Social: | |
| Twitter: | |
| Gaming: | |
| Twitch (newest): | |
| YouTube (all): | |
| PeerTube (perivid) (all): | |
| PeerTube (shmalls) (newest): | |
| Patreon: | https://www.patreon.com/malcolmgin |
| Cancer: | |
| TikTok: | https://www.tiktok.com/@malcolmgin |
Introduction and Remarks
I’ve lately taken up Streaming (just games for now, but it’s to get used to being on recording and video, to support my cancer vlog/resource project). I use OBS Studio with Twitch to record/broadcast the raw stream, then post either raw or edited stream videos to YouTube for long-term archiving, and I keep local copies of the videos too, just in case.
As of March, 2022, I set a modest schedule to stream for an hour each morning Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, at 8 am Pacific Time. I may have to go on occasional vacation, but how else will I get better? My goal here is primarily to get practice and experience, but I’d very tacitly like to build an audience. I’m not super great at self-promotion and building a social media presence, not really born to it, but it doesn’t really bother me to do the work or practice. I’m also happy to schedule special sessions if you think a different schedule would work better for you.
I do enjoy streaming a great deal. I find that talking about my logic and decisions helps me engage with a game and enjoy it a lot more as I play it.
Also please note I’m Gen X, so early to mid 50s. I have been video gaming since I was in my teens, but I have never been super fast or super good or high accuracy. I can’t make pixel perfect sniper shots from virtually kilometers away, nor do I regularly dominate death-match type competitions. I tend to like to play long, intentional, planning and management games but will play some first person action and open world games. I’m just not hyper confident or hyper competent. I do, however, know a lot about game dynamics and how the game world works for some of the longer running games, e.g. Minecraft.
I should note that since I may be seen as a shining beacon of social justice, equity, access, opportunity, behavior, etc., some of the games I pay are deeply problematic. They’re often violent. Sometimes written and published by developer studios that have deep problems themselves. I often play indie games because their development groups’ and studios’ politics tend to be better and more diversely cast and more equitable in general. But gaming, especially video gaming, has a lot of endemic toxicity. I try to avoid that toxicity in my commentary, or even call it out and analyze it in my commentary, but it’s still in the games.
I’m a particular fan of open world adventure games like Halo, Far Cry, Tomb Raider, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Borderlands, some of which go out of their way to be offensive along certain axes. Some I play out of a desperate need for irony/sarcasm. In other cases it really is just fun to take down huge monsters and/or blow stuff up. It is all fantasy, but I understand that fantasy can fuel imagination and bias, though there’s pretty much no evidence that it fuels actual behavior. I think most humans are capable of telling the difference and in general violent video gaming can help us vent and process violent fantasies rather than making us intensify.
You can connect with me via Twitter, and I’m happy to set up a Discord too if folks are interested.
I’ve mentioned it on other pages, but my Patreon to support the cancer vlog/resource project is here, and the supporting Wiki is here. My TikTok account also hosts related videos to the cancer project. To be frank, they’re all pretty nascent, but work continues, despite cancer recuperation-related fatigue. Given the game streaming, I may add some patron levels for supporting the streaming itself. We’ll see.
For game streaming, I pretty much choose my own games and priorities for now. If you join me, you’re welcome to help suggest what to play.
I’m an Xbox Games Ultimate package subscriber, as well as have a bunch of games (more than 500) licensed on Steam, as well as a few on Epic Games, Itch, EA Play, and some independently licensed games on Microsoft, including Minecraft. I also have a Minecraft multiplayer server that I administer and do builds both in creative and survival for a few other occasional players.
For gaming hardware, I’m fairly capable.
- I have a high performance Windows gaming laptop from early 2022. It runs Windows 11.
- I have an Xbox One S.
- I have a couple of reasonably performing Apple macOS machines, both Intel-based but relatively high powered. These run macOS Monterey.
- I also have Gigabit Fiber internet service, which helps high quality streaming immensely.
Feel free to look at my libraries/games lists below and suggest things if interested. If I can, I will install, run, and stream them. In most cases I can overlay a shot of myself while playing but I will probably elect not to until I have a live audience (and may not even then – we can talk about it when it happens). I also won’t play any NC-17 games because of, e.g. Twitch’s policies. I may be convinced to license more games if you’re interested. Again, join me and we can talk about it.
To see a list of some of the games I can play as I Stream.:
- Steam Library.
- Xbox Game Pass Games Library (defaults to Console games but you can choose PC Games – and changes over time – slowly).
- It doesn’t look like I can list my personal purchases with Microsoft automatically, but I remember owning:
- Astroneer
- Minecraft
- Just Cause 3 or 4
- Same for EA Games/Origin/EA Play:
- Theme Hospital
- Spore
- I don’t think I can list my Epic Games Profile or library.
- Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands (expected 3/24/2022)
After all this, I hope you enjoy the content, and I really hope you can join me at some point.