Streaming: Part DEUX.

Sometimes my cat meows at the most inopportune moments … like when I’m trying to stream Settlers of Catan.

You see, the other night I gave online video game streaming another shot. It was only my second attempt using the programs to live stream. Let’s just say it went … badly. So I suppose at this point cute animals can only help my streaming career.

My cat’s christian name is Oliver (I’m the & Company), but he goes by Kit.

Kit enjoys sitting on my lap when I use my desktop. He’s a very vocal cat. When he wants your attention, he’ll meow at you until you pet him. He doesn’t care if you are trying to talk to your stream viewers (Kit’s very self-absorbed). But maybe he’s just trying to “make it” in the world of internet cats.

Regardless of his motives, I think Kit stole the show when it came to my second stream. I ran into several technical difficulties, which distracted me, thus causing me to do poorly in all three games.

When I started out, I couldn’t get the mic to work. After adjusting different settings for about 20 minutes, I had to call the boy (who’s been streaming for quite some time) to ask what I was doing wrong. Turns out every time I unplug the mic, I have to re-selected it in Windows.

Once I got the mic working, I finally got a game of Catan going. Streaming Catan is tricky, because I’m playing other real people online. Apparently they all have very important things to do IRL and don’t like to be kept waiting. The version I play online opens several different windows, so I have to wait until I’m actually in the game to set up the streaming window for the game through Open Broadcast. I end up having to do it as quickly as possible so my opponents don’t get impatient and try to spite me the rest of the game (which does happen).

Setting up the stream window for the game quickly is difficult with a large cat sitting in your lap.

Then when I finally was playing and stream and petting Kit, I had other issues with Chrome crashing during the middle of games. Awesome! I’m not really sure what I could do to fix this issue, other than restart Chrome (if anyone has any tips on this, let me know).

By my final game, I was tired and ended up not having much to say to my viewers. I think I’m definitely in the running for the worst stream of all time.

But, I’m determined to get better at it. My goal is to stream at least twice a week. I think I’m going to try a game that doesn’t involve live players. If anyone has a suggestion for a game, leave it in the comments below!

If you are interested in watching part of the debacle that I’m officially calling: “Streaming: Part DEUX – Going down on a sinking ship” you can check it out here.

As always, thanks for reading.

Oh yeah, and Kit says, “meow” (Google translation: “hi”).

Love,

Astro