I want to directly address concerns about the built-in chat at twitch.tv/nony and ask that you please try to tolerate my stream of consciousness style of writing here as I jot down everything relevant to the situation that comes to mind.
My thought process for streaming right now is something like this: When I'm playing games, if I don't mind being watched, I may as well turn on the stream because some people will get something out of it. Furthermore, if I don't mind making some comments while I play, I may as well turn on the mic, and if I don't mind people seeing me, then I may as well turn on the camera. And if I feel like chatting with some people watching the stream, then the chat room is there for me to use. I have taken advantage of every degree of exposure. Sometimes I don't stream, sometimes I stream with no mic/cam/chatting, sometimes the cam is on but no mic, sometimes the mic is on but no cam, sometimes everything is on but I don't chat, and sometimes I chat.
But the chat is different than the other things because its existence is something I have to take responsibility for. It's like chatting in-game in SC2: there's no option to turn it off so you're interacting whether you want to or not, since ignoring something is a form of interaction in its own way. If someone says "gl hf" and I don't respond, some people think I'm rude, but if I could set an option to mute and deafen myself and an icon showed this to my opponent during the loading screen, then some of those people who thought I was rude for not obeying their etiquette will now not think negatively of me. Some people will not like me for instances of not wanting social interaction no matter their context and that's fine because not everyone can like everyone. However if it's clear that I'm opting out, then many people seeking interaction can respect that.
Specific to my stream chat, I'm very infrequently interacting with people there, and yet there's an expectation that I'm reading and even responding, so there are some things I see that irk me. People make suggestions and ask me questions and give me comments intending for me to read them and possibly respond. It's a waste of time for them and it's creating expectations of me that I'm going to fail to meet. Psychologically this really irks me. Just like you will behave very differently when you know no one is watching you versus when you know someone is watching you, I feel very different when I know these demands are being made of me, even if I know most people are very polite and tolerant and don't terribly mind me ignoring them, just like most people can't quite bring themselves to act like they're alone even when the only person that can see you doesn't care about you at all and you'll never meet again for the rest of your lives.
I understand that stream chats have become as integral to twitch as possible without actually being integral. But from my point of view, it's a sort of arbitrary feature that I wouldn't ask for or implement in the first place. It's there automatically and twitch culture has made it a very big deal and so I'm put into a weird spot. I don't want to participate in chat rooms in general. And just because I'm streaming doesn't change that. In fact, it especially means I don't want to join a chat room because I've decided I want to be playing games at that moment and additionally I've decided I want to stream those games for others to enjoy, so stopping to participate in a chat room contradicts both. Of course, it's not so absurd when it's specifically the people watching your stream who you're chatting with, and you're presumably chatting about the games, but it's still a bit absurd from my perspective. I play games because I want to and I stream because people want to watch me play games. Stopping to chat goes against that.
I want to emphasize that I'm not playing dumb about how a stream chat pertains to a stream and how other streamers, and most prolific and successful streamers, use the chat. The stream I've spent the most time watching, sodapoppin, is a polar opposite to the way I envision my stream in many ways. A lot of time his actual gaming content is so dull that it's purely his personality and the tone and mood of the stream that make it worth watching. And it's the endless conversation that he can have by interacting with his viewers (for him it's mainly donation messages nowadays, not stream chat) that enables him to keep talking and keep the stream going despite dull gameplay. There are other streamers, like seagull (twitch.tv/a_seagull), who are competitive players and read their chat and answer all the questions, even basic questions that get asked over and over again, so they're able to stream their gameplay and do even more on top of that. I'm just saying I'm aware of positive ways to use the chat to enhance the stream.
My goals with streaming at the moment are not to get as many viewers as possible, not to get as many subscribers or donations as possible, and not to please as many people as possible. Again, I'm simply playing games and capable of streaming them so I turn on the stream for people who will get something out of it. I also think there is something nice about having a different kind of stream rather than have everyone conform to the broadcasting formula that has proven most successful on twitch thus far. There are actually people who get upset that I don't conform to what's popular and what's supposedly to my own benefit and to the benefit of all the viewers, as if I'm stubbornly doing something sub-optimal just to spite people and harm myself. Some people take an extreme view of me as some kind of anti-social hermit just because they're aware of a circumstance (gaming/streaming) where I choose to focus on the task at hand rather than social interaction. Some people take my failure to conform to their etiquette and meet their expectations as an indication that I'm "salty" or "butthurt" about something. There are a lot of people who think I'm some kind of professional doing a job and that they're the "customer" despite using adblock and not subbing or donating and so they criticize me on the basis of me doing a bad job. I don't care about your critique of my stream. You don't get it at all but if you've read this far hopefully you do now. All of my actual financial supporters have always been very cool and seem to really get it.
It is all a bit much and a bit ridiculous and being at the center of it makes me often not act like myself when I'm on stream. This hurts the stream and it also hurts my hobby. So I wanted to find some way to turn the chat off and the best I could do was to set up a bot to timeout most kinds of messages. It was a distraction at first but by the end of the day I was able to focus and was in a really healthy and good gaming mindset, like back when I was good at BW (although unfortunately just having a good mindset doesn't instantly make me that good again). If I can continue to focus on my games that well while having the stream on, then I'll be very satisfied with the stream I'm putting out there, despite how little I talk in the mic or interact with viewers. If I do that and get my skill level up to basically be streaming tournament-level games, then that'd be the ideal stream in my eyes. And I'm 100% aware that there'd be a lot of things I could tweak from there to get more viewers, donations, and subs, and maybe I'd be interested in doing that some day, since after all it would be pleasing more people and creating a career for me. But right now that's not the vision.
I think there are people that have been in my chat that are worth talking to and people that I'd be friends with under different circumstances. It is the circumstances that I don't like, specifically that it's while I'm streaming and that it's an internet chat room. It's also the fact that in order to interact with anyone, I have to read what everyone is saying, and there are a lot of messages not worth reading mixed in there. There are even innocent messages trying to help me by explaining things to me when I'm the type of gamer who likes to figure things out on my own in some situations.
I also do still harbor some hope of being a good SC2 player again and my focus simply can't afford paying attention to other things when I'm trying to get good at SC2, which is obviously a really hard thing to do. Some people may have a mindset that is able to draw support from interacting with their chat but that doesn't work for me.
It is incredibly easy to set up your own private chat rooms on twitch. Anyone can go to my channel and invite everyone on my viewer list to their own room that they can moderate however they like. I wouldn't be surprised if there's even some bot or tool out there to autoinvite people. If you want to chat with people, feel free to take up the burden that I've dropped off and establish your own room. It doesn't even have to be very inclusive. If you want to form your own clique, go for it.
I have used the chat to make me aware of technical issues with the stream but lately everything seems to have been working pretty well. My camera doesn't freeze anymore, the sound levels are good, the scene switcher is always working, etc. Sometimes when I have the camera on but my mic muted, and I'm listening to music that isn't going out to the stream, people think I'm trying to talk to the stream when I'm actually just singing along or saying something to myself. Probably someday I will have it muted when I mean for it to be on but it should be rare and honestly you probably won't be missing out on much since I don't talk much even when it's on.
I am considering changing the bot to allow chat again and to regularly send a message explaining that I don't read chat and the chat is there just to chat amongst yourselves. I think this may be a much better implementation. I may also mod some regulars just so they can ban anyone who is being extremely disruptive and they can use the messaging system on twitch if they ever need to contact me.
