Leave Lurkers Alone

When I was in university I was walking home late one night with my headphones in. The only other person around was a man walking down the sidewalk the other way and he said something like "nice night" or other some pleasantry. I wear headphones to avoid this sort of thing, and I was not …

Keys for Streaming

Streamers getting keys for the games they play seems like a topic that should be well covered, but I notice more anecdotes on Twitter (usually frustration with the current system) than exposition. In setting out to fill this gap, I now realize there are a few reasons why this is the case. I am acutely …

The Numbers Game

Follower numbers are either the most or least important metric to a stream depending on who you are talking to at the moment. This isn't unique to streaming as we're perfectly happy to make scorecards for anything: Citation counts, CPU benchmarks, salaries, horsepower, awards, sales, years, credentials, ELO, ancestry, land, height, if it can be measured, …

Battle Royalties

You're hanging out with your friends and take out your mobile phone to show them something. Before you can get to the site, one of your friends notices the carrier and proceeds to berate you for going with that other company that came after their own carrier. How could you support such a dishonest practice …

Copyright Revisited

I wrote a blog about copyright. I am happy with its content (perhaps not the style) but given the latest streaming controversy I thought it would be good to revisit the topic and make some ideas more explicit. Because so much of this topic deals with the recognition of an author's work, I would like …

The Secret Reason Your Favourite Streamer Hates You: Backseating

Introduction This article is the first in an intended series on 'viewers behaving badly.' I say intended because I am familiar with the frustration that comes from an author proposing a series only to leave it unfinished and so take David Kreps' approach in his Microeconomics Foundations I: Choice and Competitive Markets: advertise the proposed series (a …

Streaming Other People’s IP: Are Streamers Any Good at Selling Games?

Twitch broadcasting lives in a bit of a weird space so far as intellectual property (IP) is concerned. While obviously I do not have any legal credentials to back this up, I think it’s safe to say that most gaming content that is broadcast is infringing. While this is open to debate, mostly centring around …

Talking on Stream

Whatever failings I may have as a streamer, one fairly consistent (positive) comment I've gotten has been my ability to keep talking. It's easy for someone of my temperament to fall into a reflective 'chicken or egg' cycle regarding my format and my ability to talk, but if I'm honest with myself I can say …