Read Between the Lines of Your Twitch Chat

The Twitch Playbook: Tips for Twitch Streamers · 205 - Read Between the Lines of Your Twitch Chat

Comments from viewers are a big part of the Twitch streaming experience. In the entry Up Your Showmanship on Stream, I spoke about how you can always give a dynamic response to even the least dynamic chat messages. This is a subject worth exploring a bit more, however. Many streamers take chat messages too literally in my opinion. Just because the question someone asked only really warrants a one-word answer doesn’t mean your answer actually has to be one word. It’s your stream, and you can talk about whatever you want. This person’s question is merely a jumping-off point for whatever you want to talk about. In my view, questions on a livestream aren’t really meant to be taken literally, but rather as a suggestion for larger conversations. In this entry, we’ll look into how you can read between the lines of your Twitch chat.

Many people aren’t naturally very talkative, and this applies to Twitch chat as well. Sometimes they can’t express what they really mean. I often try to see the intention behind whatever the person said, and instead of responding to the question they asked, I respond to the question they wish they asked. Even if someone asks what you think of as a stupid question, it’s always within your power to lift them up, instead of pointing out their question’s flaw and knocking them down. The entry How to Flesh Out Stream Ideas touched on how standup comedians use the philosophy of ‘Yes, and…’ to ensure they’re always building on the jokes of others, rather than shooting down ideas. This is a hugely helpful mindset when dealing with comments on a Twitch stream. 

➢ SPINNING NEGATIVITY

I got a lot of hate when playing 
this one. 

In the past, when I used to work for another company and each broadcast would have anywhere from 100 to 1,000 concurrent viewers, the comments would fly very quickly, and they weren’t always very nice. From early on however, I decided that I would try not to shut down even the nasty remarks. I was trying to help grow the company’s brand, and I wanted to ensure that everyone felt like a part of the show. I also knew that when people say mean things, they aren’t necessarily mean people at heart. So I’d take a comment in which someone said, “You’re horrible at this game. Please stop trying,” and instead of reading the comment word for word, I’d say something like, “[viewer username] sees room for improvement in my playstyle. Definitely let me know if you have any tips!” Not with irony or condescension, but with real genuine interest.

For some reason, people would also get really mad that I had a job where I played video games for a living. They’d say, “This guy is terrible. He’s so annoying. Why did [company] ever pick him to do these videos?” and several much more vitriolic versions of the same idea. This of course hurts to hear, but I’d try to take it in stride. I recognized that these comments often had a deeper unspoken meaning, and I’d respond with something like, “[viewer username] has a great point, I’m lucky enough to get to do what I love each day and get paid to do it!” And then I’d go into a story about how I was able to build a body of work and get hired by a company to make these kinds of videos. I’d give tips for other viewers who might want to start a career doing the same thing. I wouldn’t brag, preach or put down the original commenter, but would actually thank them for bringing up such a helpful subject. 

➢ SPREADING POSTIVITY

These kinds of responses would usually have one of two effects. First, they would often get the original commenter to turn their attitude around. Many people on the internet don’t really consider the consequences of what they say, because they feel anonymous. But when you put their comment in the limelight and give them a bit of attention, they quickly realize that they’re having an effect. Believing the best in someone is also a strong motivator for change. Notice that in the above examples, even though the original comments were pretty mean, I wouldn’t treat the commenter like a mean person. Rather, I treat them as someone nice who maybe asked a question they didn’t intend to be hurtful. I ask the question hidden within their question, rather than the question itself. And psychologically, if others see the good in us, we want to meet those expectations. This causes the chatter to come around, start posting other more positive comments, and sometimes even apologize, even though I never said they did anything wrong. 

Paint the chat however you want. 

The second effect of this kind of response is sometimes even more important than the first. Because of the way I phrase my answer, the chat becomes flooded with a higher volume of positive comments than negative. In the first example, I asked for the commenter’s tips for the game. This often gets other viewers talking about their own strategies, in addition to the person I asked, and populates the chat with more constructive comments. In the second example, by talking about my own tips and tricks for becoming a professional livestream producer and video host, people are more interested in asking about how to get into that world themselves. People in the chat are suddenly engaged in talking about something far more interesting, and might even begin to police themselves. If the original commenter persists in being negative, other chatters (who are now more interested in the new topic than the previous negative one) would actually ask the negative person to stop. By creating a topic where positivity is more engaging than negativity, you’re turning that negative person into a minority within the chat. And it’s much more difficult for that negativity to gain a foothold when nobody else is on their side. 

The way you respond to a comment is kind of like planting a seed. If your most recent response is negative or dismissive, negativity is going to grow. But if you plant the seeds for interesting conversations, you’ll soon see the positive effects of that choice.  

➢ POSSIBLE AT ANY SIZE

Since starting my own personal Twitch channel, these kinds of mean comments very seldom come in anymore. The amount of viewers and chatters is much smaller, and I don’t really have to go out of my way to please everyone watching either. But the same principles often come in handy for me, even at a smaller scale. Whether someone asks a question that only really requires a one-word answer, or they make some unintentionally cruel remark like ‘You look/sound really tired,’ I’m always able to spin it into something more interesting. Don’t forget however, that just because something can be spun into a better topic, doesn’t mean that you have to spin it, or deal with it at all. I put up with a lot when I was working at that high level of streaming, and I found ways to make the job easier to take. But that kind of constant negative bombardment still takes its toll, even if you spin it to make the show itself better. In my personal streams, I don’t care as much whether every single chatter stays around. If someone is being intentionally mean, I will often timeout or ban them. Like I mention often throughout this podcast, stay true to the priorities of whatever kind of show you’re trying to make. And if you want to raise engagement on your streams, try keeping this subject in mind. It’s always better to read between the lines of your chat. 

Streaming from Japan

The Twitch Playbook: Tips for Twitch Streamers · 204 - Streaming from Japan

A few days ago, I arrived back in the US from Tokyo. Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Nick, weren’t you just in Japan?” You’d be right! I took a short trip two months ago, and then came back again last month for another 18-day stay. Once you’ve been there, it’s a hard place to stay away from! I’ve been to Japan five times now. I wouldn’t say I’m an expert on the country by any means, but I’ve been there often enough to have a general idea of what’s right and wrong, and I can speak the language well enough at this point to avoid most major snafus. On top of that, I have the somewhat specialized distinction of having livestreamed regularly from Japan on three different trips. In this entry, I’m going to share some of my thoughts and experiences as an American in Japan, both as a Twitch streamer and as a traveler in general. If you’re planning a trip of your own, hopefully this will help you to avoid some of the larger sticking points for foreigners. 

➢ FILM RESPONSIBLY

Japan is one of the tech capitals of the world. When you’re there, you’ll see things that westerners could only dream about. But just because the country in general is responsible for much of the modern world of electronics and video games doesn’t mean that everyone there is comfortable with technology being in their face. As a Twitch streamer creating IRL content in a foreign country, it’s always important to be extra-sensitive to what may or may not be appropriate. Of the kinds of places I’d frequent, there are three locations that are off-limits for filming: bars, arcades and trains. The idea of not filming in bars you can probably understand without me explaining it to you. Arcades however, are probably a bit more of a surprise. Or at least they were to me. I’m not entirely sure about the cultural paradigm here, but it’s generally considered very bad form to film (or even take photos sometimes) in a Japanese arcade. Trains are a pretty obvious one as well. Someone else doesn’t want to be face-to-face with a random livestreamer while trapped in close-quarters on a train. It’s also useful to keep in mind that you’re not really supposed to talk at all on a Japanese train. So depending on what kind of stream you do, you probably wouldn’t want to stream on a train anyway. Having said all this, I’ve filmed in all three locations at different times, keeping in mind basic manners. It helps to know the language in this regard. I’ve gotten permission on entering an empty bar to film myself, I’ve asked arcade employees about shooting video of the game I was playing, and I’ve gotten onto mostly empty trains to point my camera out the window the whole trip. Use common sense and you’ll probably be fine. 

Try to stick out as little as possible.

Like with any IRL streaming setup, the quality of your final video isn’t the only important thing to consider. Your crazy camera rig with numerous massive accessories may create a brilliant looking broadcast, but it’s also likely cumbersome to carry around, and hard to blend in with. People are going to stay away from you, shops will turn you away, and you’ll get exhausted faster lugging everything around. Put simply, the larger your streaming rig, the fewer authentic experiences you’ll be able to have. If you’re planning to build a streaming backpack from scratch, or if you’re thinking of paring down an existing setup, I’d recommend sacrificing small amounts of quality for large amounts of convenience. The less intrusive you can be, the better. In the entry Travel with an IRL Streaming Backpack, I spoke about the various options you have in that department. 

Finally, it’s not guaranteed that you’ll even be able to stream from the room you’re staying in. The walls in an average Japanese residence are very thin. I’ve stayed in Japanese AirBnBs where you could hear the person sneeze in the room next to you. This meant I had to adjust the way I did my daily morning Duolingo shows, so I wouldn’t disturb everyone around me. If some part of your content requires streaming from your room, keep in mind that you may need to adjust your shows as well. 

➢ NUTS AND BOLTS

On the tech side, there are a few things to be aware of. You thankfully don’t need an adapter to plug your electronics into the wall sockets in Japan like you would in Europe, but they don’t use grounded (three-pronged) power cables over there. Make sure you’re using a two-pronged cable for whatever you use. I personally recommend getting a two-prong power strip with several ports in it. Then you can plug in whatever electronics you have without having to worry. 

One very specific technical thing I’ve noticed is that you might get a strange flickering effect while filming IRL video content in Japan. It took me a while to realize what this was, but I eventually found out it was because the fluorescent bulbs in Japan operate at a different frequency than in the USA. For anyone old enough to have been filming video in the era of CRT tube televisions, this is similar to the effect you’d get when trying to shoot video of a TV screen. Unless your shutter speed was at an exact setting, you’d get a very undesirable-looking static effect. The solution for Japan, as I found out, was to set the shutter speed in my camera to 50, rather than 60. This may already be the default depending on where you live, but it’s useful to keep in mind either way. 

➢ TRAVEL WELL

I have a few general travel tips for Japan as well, which have helped me to have progressively more interesting experiences during my time there. First, give yourself chances to explore. Instead of booking a whirlwind trip where you only see the most popular checklist items every day, build a few days into your vacation when you can simply get lost. I grew to like those parts of my stays so much that I’ve recently ended up doing entire trips that way. For my two Japan visits this year, I spent over three combined weeks just in Tokyo, by myself, without a single plan for where to go, what to do, or having looked up anything at all. I’d just pick a direction to walk every day and find places, people and food along the way. Like when playing an open-world game, sometimes the most interesting experiences on a foreign vacation are what you do between your big plans. 

Every street and alley has amazing 
places just waiting to be found.

Second, for food I recommend trying to go to small shops rather than restaurants. Get a feel for what’s popular in whichever part of the country you’re in, and try not to lean too hard into your own preconceived notions of what Japanese food looks like. For example, many friends and relatives are surprised that I almost never eat sushi in Japan, but in the parts of Tokyo I frequent that’s not such a common food. Many dishes that westerners think of as Japanese are not as popular over there as you might expect. Ask waiters what they’d recommend, try going outside your comfort zone, and experiment. You’ll find plenty of amazing foods you’ve probably never heard of that are hugely popular among Japanese locals. Not many Americans would think of barbecue skewers or fried chicken as Japanese specialties, but in my experience these are more prevalent than any other type of food I’ve seen in the major parts of Tokyo. 

Finally, and most importantly, don’t impose your own values on the country you’re traveling to. This applies to Twitch streaming as well as general traveling. Americans tend to do a lot of complaining, and we’ve built a reputation in Japan especially for causing scenes. The cultural difference plus the language barrier essentially makes Americans into ticking time bombs of cultural faux-pas, and many Japanese businesses aren’t equipped to deal with it. Unless you speak the language, you might even get an instant refusal upon stepping through the door. I can’t say I blame them either. As an American myself, I can attest that we’re pretty annoying. I’ve watched with embarrassment as other Americans drunkenly stumbled into a peaceful little Japanese bar, or argued with a small shop’s owner-operator about something wrong with their order. If you’re going to Japan, try to let the culture sink into you, without forcing your own culture onto them. My personal trick before I could understand the language was to simply assume I was wrong in every scenario, and never complain. Even asking questions often makes Japanese people flustered, because they’ll typically assume you’re complaining in a way they can’t understand. Just try to internalize whatever happened and not do it next time. Travel like that and you’ll have a much smoother experience.

Japan is an incredible country, and if you’re planning a trip there you’re going to have an amazing time. There’s so much to see and do, I’m sure you’ll feel the same itch I always do upon getting home, that you need to go back. As an American however, I’ve done my best to respect the cultural differences and avoid becoming a nuisance. And that goes double as a Twitch streamer. Despite making some embarrassing blunders at first, I’ve since carved out a pretty solid set of guiding principles while streaming in Japan. If you’re hoping to stream during your time as well, or even just to enhance your travel experience, I hope these tips can help your trip go that much smoother. 

Solidify Your Streaming Habits

The Twitch Playbook: Tips for Twitch Streamers · 203 - Solidify Your Streaming Habits

Streaming is all about forming habits. In order to become consistent in your live schedule, regularly fix behind-the-scenes problems, interact with your community, or become better at speaking on camera, you need strong habits which keep you on track. I cover this subject a lot, because I’ve personally struggled with it in the past. Forming a habit, whether for streaming or for anything else, is an elusive pursuit. Oftentimes as soon as you think you have a grip on a certain habit, it slips right out of your hands. Today, we’ll go into a few more of my thoughts about forming habits, and how to stick to them once you start. 

➢ OBEY WITHOUT QUESTION

Imagine you’re driving a car on a road with no other cars or pedestrians in sight. You come to a red traffic light. Even though there’s nobody around, it’s likely you’ll still stop your car. The light turns green and you keep driving. Now you come to a stop sign. Suddenly your level of obedience might change. You look around and there’s still no person or vehicle in view at all. Maybe instead of coming to a full stop, you simply slow down and then keep going. I’m not saying that’s the right thing to do, but it’s definitely not uncommon among drivers. Your mileage with this analogy may vary, especially based on where you live, but you can see what I’m getting at. Both of these signals legally require you to stop your car, and under normal traffic circumstances most drivers will stop at both. But when put into a situation where the driver’s judgment says there’s absolutely no need to stop, they might ignore or only half-obey the stop sign, while still stopping at the red light. 

Maybe these drivers wouldn't stop at 
a red light. But you definitely should!

Twitch streamers, when they’ve built a streaming habit, will treat their streams as either a traffic light or a stop sign. Anyone can stream when they feel like streaming. But when the day gets busy, or we’re tired, or we don’t like the way we look, that’s when we really find out what kind of habit we’ve built. There are very few reasons I can think of that would ever make me want to miss a stream. And to be honest, most of those reasons are so horrible I’d rather not think of them. Like when stopping at a red light on a deserted street, I simply obey the habit I’ve built. I don’t make a value judgment, and I don’t deviate from the routine. I stop the car. And when a new day comes around, it doesn’t matter how badly I want to skip my stream that day, or how tired I’m feeling. I just do the show. 

That’s not to say I always do the show the same way. As I’ve laid out in many entries, whether you do the actual livestream should never be up for debate, but the way you do them should. If you’re tired, go live for as long as you can and then stop early. If you don’t like how you look today, turn off the camera. Instead of having ‘no stream today’ as an option on the table, imagine how you’d solve the same problem while still doing your stream. In the entry Become a Solution-Oriented Streamer, I posed one of the biggest problems a streamer can face: a lack of suitable internet to do a broadcast. And then I gave examples of three different ways I’ve solved the same problem on my own channel over the years. Each solution was chosen based on what was important to the specific stream I was doing at the time. You’ll find that when you stay solution-oriented, you can suddenly see where sacrifices are possible without hurting the core of what you’re trying to create. 

➢ PUTTING HABITS INTO PRACTICE

Now, all of this is fine to think about in theory, but actually enacting a habit in reality is difficult to do. I’ve been able to keep this kind of unshakeable mindset about my streams by simultaneously building up the ability to follow my own orders. That takes time and practice. I can’t overtly make you any better at upholding your habits- that’s something you have to do yourself. What I can do is show you the kind of mindset that will help to facilitate those habits. The entry How to Get in the Habit of Streaming explored how life can (and will) throw obstacles in your way, whenever you want to try to form a new habit. Learning to stream consistently is partly about battling this unpredictability, and partly about learning to work around it. In that entry, I talked about how I use a calendar app to schedule my day. I can easily shift items around when necessary, which helps with the unpredictability of everyday life, and I can easily see what personal or stream-related plans I have coming up, so nothing takes me by surprise unnecessarily. 

Stream without obstacles!

The entry Strengthen Your Twitch Habits introduced an unexpectedly effective strategy, which has served me well for the past 10+ years. In college, I always used to forget my room key, causing me to get locked out of my dorm room quite often. To combat this, I simply shifted my habit from the mental to the physical. Instead of asking myself whether I had my key before leaving the room (which I clearly couldn’t bring myself to do consistently enough), I would instead stop the door from closing with my foot every time I left the room. No matter what, that door would be stopped before it could close. Then I’d have to look in my pocket, physically hold the key and be looking straight at it. Only then could I close the door. I haven’t been locked out a single time in the ten years since. It sounds absurd- if I couldn’t stick to the first habit, why would switching to another habit be any different? I think the physicality of this habit might reach a different part of the brain than the purely mental process used to. What do I know though? I’m no scientist. All I know is that it worked. 

I’ve since enacted this same rigid habit-forming strategy in several aspects of my Twitch streams. If I forget to do a step in my pre-stream setup process, even if it’s not necessary for that particular stream, I’ll actually start the entire setup process again from the beginning. Not because I needed that step to necessarily happen in that order to make the stream work, but because it creates a strong mental association. Like an actor on stage using their co-star’s lines to remember their own cues, doing everything in a certain order in my setup process allows me to avoid missing crucial steps when it really counts. This sounds obsessive, but don’t knock it until you try it. Habits are built on repetition, so the more repetition you can create for non-creative aspects of your stream, the better. And the better you are at executing various stream tasks, the less friction you’ll have in forming the larger habit of going live in general. 

➢ RITUAL IS KEY

The ritual of stopping my door to remember my keys, along with the stream setup routine, are both examples where I’ve turned my habits into a traffic light rather than a stop sign. No matter what, and absolutely without question, I obey these time-tested rules I’ve set for myself. Every single time. Many people are uncomfortable with this kind of robotic compliance, but I can tell you it works wonders. Take some time to build a ‘traffic light habit’ of your own, for whichever aspect of your stream’s consistency is giving you the most trouble, and see your frequency of mistakes come to a halt. 

Growth Check-In: How Are You Doing?

The Twitch Playbook: Tips for Twitch Streamers · 202 - Growth Check-In: How Are You Doing?

I talk a lot about Twitch streaming on this podcast. One would hope so, I suppose, considering its title and theme. But there’s a critical factor in making Twitch streams which I also try to focus on: the Twitch streamer. Whether on camera, on a microphone, or pulling strings behind the scenes, a Twitch stream needs a streamer to make it go live. And optimizing your stream isn’t just about making things look better on a broadcast. Make sure you’re taking care of yourself as well. In this growth check-in entry, we’re going to focus on your stream’s greatest asset: you. 

➢ FIND HAPPINESS ON STREAM

If you’re going to spend lots of time streaming on Twitch, it’s critical that your actual streams bring you joy. In the entry One Must Imagine the Streamer Happy, I spoke about the concept of a ‘Sisyphean task,’ where an end goal can never truly be reached, because any goal you set is always replaced by another. Streaming, of course, is a Sisyphean task in itself. You’ll never really be done with it, short of giving up, and any goal that you think will bring you contentment now will only be replaced by another goal once it’s reached. This can be a great source of stress and dejection for streamers, but I personally see it as a positive thing. We have the ability to do something we love for as long as we want to do it, and we call the shots on our own channels. If you learn to love the climb, rather than looking forward to reaching the summit, you’ll be in a much better headspace for streaming.  

Embracing your passions can help you 
become happier on stream.

There are also ways to reinvigorate yourself by using your streams to advance your larger ambitions. In the entry Let Twitch Further Your Goals, I spoke about how I was able to utilize the various failed and discontinued ideas from my past Twitch broadcasts in order to help accomplish a major life goal: self-publishing an illustrated book! This was an instance where streaming my progress making the book on Twitch not only kept me accountable and on-track during the project, but I also gained the ability to see my work grow from its infancy to the final product. I feel immensely proud of this accomplishment, and it means even more to me that I was able to do it on my Twitch channel. The entry Create Streams You Identify With goes even deeper into this mindset. Many people never even start streaming because of a perceived flaw in their character. They feel that people won’t accept their shows because of how they talk, or how they look, or the kind of content they want to show. As I said in that entry, I won’t trivialize whatever aspect of streaming they’re scared of sharing- the fear itself is real. But pushing past that fear can bring great happiness and fulfillment. It’s often said that we’re usually afraid of doing the things we desire most. Let that feeling guide you toward your greatest ambitions. 

➢ DON’T GET CARRIED AWAY

If you’ve been streaming for a while, you may be running into a problem which new streamers will find hard to understand. The entry Your Content Should Make You Happy dealt with the idea of a project growing large enough that it begins to threaten your creative vision. This implicit pressure happens in any field, and Twitch streaming is certainly not immune. Many of us feel we need to start adding things, or changing the scope of our content, once it reaches a certain point. This occurs because we see others doing the same, because we start receiving requests from viewers (who are also watching others do the same), or just because we get antsy and feel the need to change. I’m always pro-change on a Twitch stream- I think it’s healthy and can help to jumpstart your creativity. But oftentimes these kinds of pressure-based growth changes can do more harm than good. 

Some streamers feel trapped when they reposition their whole channel around playing one game for example, as I explored in the entry The Dangers of Attaching Yourself to One Game. In the entry Know When Not to Do What the Audience Wants, I addressed the somewhat controversial opinion that the viewer isn’t always right. And in Streaming for Money, I spoke about how even monetization in general can bring unforeseen headaches. Don’t forget that it’s okay not to change. If you like your content the way it is, you don’t have any responsibility to make it larger or more complicated. Sometimes it’s even about scaling back and reversing things you’ve already added. On my own brand, I’ve removed various features over the years when I realized they brought me more headache than fulfillment: custom reactions to donations, merch, even eventually monetization altogether. This doesn’t mean that everyone should dislike these things, or even that I’ll never do them again, but they weren’t right for me at the time. So I got rid of them. And I became happier because of it. 

➢ DOWNTIME IS IMPORTANT TOO

Always schedule some time for yourself.

Finally, always make sure to schedule time not to stream. In the entry Make Sure to Rest from Streaming, I spoke about how, especially for veteran streamers, the habit of working on streams can be as hard to curb as it was to create in the first place. Our minds can easily end up ‘taking our work home with us,’ and we might be distracted during other important life events because we’re too busy thinking about our streams and how to make them better. Schedule time every once in a while to make a clean break from streaming, working on your streams, or even from thinking about streaming. You’ll thank yourself later. 

Even though this podcast mainly deals with the subject of optimizing a Twitch channel, that doesn’t mean Twitch is the only thing I think about. As we’ve explored here today, it’s very important to keep track of your own well-being while streaming. Sometimes, your Twitch streams can help you to achieve a life passion that you weren’t able, or weren’t motivated enough, to achieve before. Other times, incorporating your own general interests into your streams can help you to feel more satisfied in what you do. It’s not only about adding though- many things that may already be on your channel, or that you’re planning to add, might end up hurting more than they help. Don’t be afraid to strip features away from your channel when they bring you less happiness than headache. And finally, take some time away from Twitch at regular intervals. Throughout my own Twitch journey, these various methods have helped me greatly to feel more satisfied with what I do on the platform, and more satisfied in my everyday life. So think about your own needs as a Twitch streamer, and as a human being. Is there anywhere you can help yourself become more content with what you’re doing? Don’t forget: when you take care of yourself, you’re taking care of your Twitch streams as well. 

Streaming with Heart

The Twitch Playbook: Tips for Twitch Streamers · 201 - Streaming with Heart

When you’re streaming, are you using all the parts of your brain? As streamers, we can sometimes get set into an overly limited mindset, where we focus too much on certain problem solving methods, and ignore all the great solutions and ideas that are floating just outside the borders of the ordinary. If we want to be really effective in our pursuits, we should try to get to the core of whatever we’re facing- whether that’s a tech issue or an overall gameplan for our channels- and approach the issue with new inspiration. I call this ‘streaming with heart.’ 

➢ CREATIVE PROBLEMS

Streaming with heart can help you with any kind of problem, but creativity is where it’s going to shine most. If you need to come up with an identity for your channel, or you want to decide how to best conduct yourself on stream, it always helps to look inwards. In beginner-focused entries like Three Steps to Start Streaming, as well as more intermediate or advanced-focused entries like How to Use Your Influences for Streaming, I’ve spoken on the importance of utilizing the things that are important to you when building your brand. Whether you’re passionate about cars, dancing, or solving Rubik’s Cubes, incorporating those things into your broadcasts will not only make your channel stand out more to viewers, but it will make you more excited to produce the shows.  

Tolkien made sure his languages were 
supported by a world, not the 
other way around.

It may not come as a surprise to many who have read his works, but J.R.R. Tolkien was a very accomplished linguist. In addition to speaking dozens of languages himself, he also loved to invent languages from scratch. His world of Middle-earth is full of them- elves, dwarves, orcs, even different factions of men like the Rohirrim have their own fully fleshed-out tongues. And though many readers may assume that these languages were created in order to better serve the stories in which they appeared, in fact the opposite is true. Tolkien was quoted as having this to say about his passion for words: “what I think is a primary 'fact' about my work, that it is all of a piece, and fundamentally linguistic in inspiration. ... It is not a 'hobby', in the sense of something quite different from one's work, taken up as a relief-outlet. The invention of languages is the foundation. The 'stories' were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows.” 

To give you a reference point, Tolkien first started constructing one of his Elvish languages around 1911. He didn’t even start writing The Hobbit until the 1930’s, and of course The Lord of the Rings was even later than that. For J.R.R. Tolkien, one of the most famous writers of all time, his books were almost a sideshow, something to show off his real passion for invented language. Would The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit still be great stories without all the languages? Arguably they would. But would the writer have been as inspired to bring those stories to life in the first place, without his passion for language driving him to do so? Almost certainly not. By utilizing his ultimate passion in his writing, Tolkien was able to give his works a place among the all-time greats. 

➢ PRACTICAL PROBLEMS

Historically, the Greeks were responsible 
for solving many of the world's
toughest brain-teasers.

You can solve more mundane problems with a similar mindset. But instead of looking deep down to bring your passions into your streams, you’d be looking deep down at the root of an issue and coming up with an inspired solution. If 99 other people saw the same problem, they may not have come up with the same fix that you did, but as long as it works for you, that’s all that matters. In the entry Keep Your Twitch Goals in Sight, I told the story of Alexander the Great and the Gordian Knot. An oracle had foretold that anyone who could untie this incredibly complex knot would become the ruler of all Asia. Many men tried and failed over the years, and it was deemed impossible. Until Alexander came, cut straight through the knot with his sword, and fulfilled the prophecy. 

In the world of music, drummers will sometimes wear headphones in order to hear a recorded track while playing, so they can keep time for the rest of the band. Keith Moon, drummer of the rock band The Who, used to take this concept even further. His animated performing style would mean he was essentially putting his whole body into playing the drums, and in order to keep the headphones from falling off, he would duct-tape them to his head! Not the most elegant solution, but it worked for what he needed. 

➢ ANY KIND OF PROBLEM

In countless entries across The Twitch Playbook, I’ve outlined the various small and large solutions I’ve reached for problems across my streams. Whether I was recording my screen with a camera before being able to capture directly from an iPad, or lighting my streams with ordinary house lamps clothespinned with diffusion paper, I try to keep my solutions as simple to use as possible. Is it ugly? Maybe. But it works. When looking to solve your own stream problems or come up with creative overhauls, don’t look for ultra-specificity in your inspiration for fixes. For example, most of the things I did on my streams aren't going to apply directly to yours. But if you look deeper than that, into the core of the issue, you'll always find something. I often use examples from fields other than streaming in this podcast, to remind us that problem solving is universal. It’s not about the solution, but rather the mindset that led to the solution. If you can cultivate a problem-solving mind, the problem doesn’t matter. Creative or technical, big or small, you’ll be able to solve it. That’s what it means to steam with heart. 

How's Your Streaming Consistency?

The Twitch Playbook: Tips for Twitch Streamers · 200 - How's Your Streaming Consistency?

Life can be hard. Our days get complicated, and motivation rises or falls accordingly. We can’t really predict how our week will go any more than we can perfectly predict the weather- our calculations are accurate most of the time, but there will always be unexpected surprises. As content creators, we’re trying to swim upstream against life’s usual unpredictability, and create something consistent amid the chaos. Whether we want to go live every week, every day, or multiple times per day, keeping to our schedules is much more difficult in practice than it seems on paper. Have you been able to steadily produce your shows since starting on Twitch? Have you been able to steadily work on improvements or networking goals, or whatever else you've wanted to work on? On-camera or off, there are many ways to slip in our Twitch aspirations. How can we keep ourselves on track? 

➢ A MINDSET OF CONSISTENCY

When I’ve spoken about streaming consistently throughout The Twitch Playbook, you may have found it difficult to understand where I was coming from. Many aspects of my personality may seem to clash at this nexus point. On the one hand, I often advise you to take it easy, to make whatever kind of content you prefer, and to do shows that last as long as you feel comfortable. I advise you to think outside of where most streamers operate, and create content that isn’t solely reliant on chasing metrics. Then, on the other hand, I’m constantly making vehement assertions that you should not, for almost any conceivable reason, miss your streams. No matter what you have to do, you go live. 

How do these two seemingly opposite perspectives make sense together? Did I change my mind? Am I simply contradicting my own suggestions? Or am I just trying to play both sides at the same time? 

These two warring perspectives actually 
work very well together.

Personally, I see no reason these two thought processes shouldn’t make sense together. The ‘do what you want, but just make sure you do it’ mantra is how I genuinely do conduct my own streams, and it’s led to a lot of happiness in my own streaming life. The flexibility in content and presentation allows for more creative fulfillment and personal freedom, while the rigid scheduling structure gives me a reliable routine. It can be a tough concept to grasp, but if you want to do something you love, you have to actively work to make it happen. People usually expect that their love of the thing itself is enough, but that really doesn't carry us very far in practice. In fact, it’s precisely this love for the task which often stops us from continuing to pursue our most deeply held passions. How's that for irony? We get too precious about it, and rather than do something that doesn’t live up to our standards, we’ll opt to give it up altogether. We’d rather keep a perfect image in our heads of what we would have made, rather than make something real, but less than perfect. It’s not glamorous to say, but following our dreams is often less about ‘following’ than it is about ‘dragging ourselves kicking and screaming.’

➢ JUST SHOW UP

Therefore, while I always cultivate maximum creative and personal freedom in my streams, I stay incredibly strict about one subject only: that I actually do the streams. If I’m having a bad day or a busy day, I still make sure to go live. I know that whatever problem I’m having will pass, and I know that whatever the problem is, it’s not worth breaking my streak over. Emotionally, I may feel that streaming is the last thing I want to do at that moment, but I still force myself to go live. And I always thank myself for it later. 

Even the slowest car traveling consistently 
will finish the race before a fast car 
that stands still.

There’s a concept popularized on Reddit, in which the user ryans01 suggested allowing ‘no more zero days.’ The main concept behind this thought process is that you’d simply focus on doing something in service of your aspirations every day. Whether you write 2,000 words or 20, do 50 pushups or 5, draw for 3 hours or 3 minutes, if you’re doing something then it’s better than doing nothing. Doing nothing is actually more dangerous than most of us expect. It’s habit forming, and it’s confidence-draining. When you do nothing towards your goal one day, it’s easy to fast forward and suddenly find you’ve done nothing towards that goal for a whole week, month or year. Instead, you’d avoid those ‘zero days’ in which you do nothing, by simply doing whatever you can each day. 

In Twitch Playbook entries like Streaming in the Face of Futility, I’ve talked about this as well. ‘Compromise’ isn’t a word that creative people typically like to hear, but it’s one you should be paying more attention to. Compromises will save your creative life. And that includes Twitch streaming. Long shows, high production value, going live at an exactly appointed time, and other traditional concepts be damned. These are nice-to-haves, but if you can’t do them on a certain day, then just do something different. As long as you do a stream. Don’t let arbitrarily chosen standards send you into a spiral of missed days and broken promises. Do what you can today, and do better tomorrow. No more zero days. 

➢ ASSESS YOUR STREAMS 

If you’ve been having trouble streaming consistently recently, keep this concept in mind. Do what you want, but make sure you do it. Or, in the much more eloquent words of ryans01, no more zero days. Even if you don’t have a problem with missing broadcasts, this concept can still help you. You can apply the same principle to putting in work on your show behind the scenes, seeking out creative partnerships, engaging with your Discord, or building connections with other streamers. Do something towards your goal every day. No matter what it is, it’s more than you would have done if you did nothing. Keeping this priority at the forefront of your mind will help you be much more consistent on Twitch.