Today I performed a test livestream ahead of my planned “Moral Gamer” play next week. After a few technical hiccups I managed to get Twitch connected to my PS4 account and then link them both to twitter. Now when I choose to stream, a message will also be sent to twitter when the broadcast begins.
As far as the stream itself, the quality and audio seemed fine although I did identify pretty early on that my microphone was not working, I will need to purchase a new one. The test stream lasted about 1 hour and two viewers were nice enough to stop in and check it out. I even worked out how to clip parts of the stream to share later, a few examples have been added to this post, mostly of me dying… a lot!
I thought I would also share some analytics from the test as well:
Today I spent some time taking a look at what other students were planning to create for their BCM215 digital artefacts. I was impressed with the range of ideas that my peers had come up with and am looking forward to seeing these project come into fruition.
The first project I looked at was Isaac Percy’s “Press Start“. Isaac’s blog post was a little bare at the time and lacked a pitch video so I just assumed it was a work in progress, my comment to him is below:
Isaac is looking at revisiting games from his past and making a video essay about his experiences. I am interested in this project for two main reasons: I am interested in the non-gamer perspective on gaming culture and I want to see if his nostalgia for these games holds up with a revisit. I see a lot of potential with this project and hopefully he has a video posted soon that I will be able to check out. I am hoping that my comment here will be useful to Isaac in highlighting some interesting avenues for him to pursue with his DA if he wasn’t already considering them.
The next Digital Artefact I looked at was Caitlin Olsen’s “DIGITAL ARTEFACT PROJECT PITCH“. This pitch was well fleshed out and highly topical. The issue of mental health in gamers and whether games can be have a positive impact on personal well-being is one that I have personal experience with.
Although Caitlin’s focus is on the positive effects of games, she does mention addiction and I thought I might point her in the direction of a video that caught my attention a few weeks ago on the subject. This video by Jim Sterling of the Jimquisition highlights some of the more unsavoury practises of the industry that tries to capitalise on addiction rather than addressing the issue and helping people suffering with this problem. I am hoping that this comment will encourage Caitlin to continue with the project and maintain her research on this topic. I am also hoping that I may have introduced her to a new source that has a wealth of information when it comes to current issues in video games.
The final project I looked into was Ha Thu Nguyen’s “BCM215 pitch: Movies are based on video games“. This project is focused on looking at movie adaptations of games and investigating why they often fail in terms of critical and box office success.
The video in Ha Thu’s pitch was well animated and colourful. Compared to some other pitches I had watched, I found this approach to be a lot more captivating and engaging. Her ideas were well communicated in the pitch for the most part however, there was some parts of the video that were very text heavy. In my comment I had suggested that perhaps this information would have been more at place within the blog itself. I also pointed her in the direction of The Jimquisition’s Spin Off Doctors show for a gamer’s perspective on films to do with gaming.
I am really interested in seeing where these projects go and how they develop. If I were to get the opportunity to comment on these project again further into their development I think I would try to use a wider variety of sources as recommendations for these projects and spend some more time looking into their selected sources. I think perhaps next time I could also probably be a little more critical and try to offer more ways my peers can improve on their pitches.
According to Jason 