This thing I do, these livestreams, are they Art? Are they a chatting session to discuss whatever? Or are they gameplay footage? Twitch has no good category for what I’m doing because what I’m doing is so niche and so different that it’s hard to categorize. If I want to write “The Story,” then I have to build on what I learned writing “Novel 01” to write “Novel 02” and part of that involves writing more interactively.

Spoilers?: Minor [storytelling through livestreaming]

These streams can get a bit wild as I navigate thoughts and opinions.

I have the “ask me anything” tag in the livestreams as a way to encourage people to talk about anything they’re curious about that’s related. I might meander toward current events, but talking about them directly doesn’t solve much, since when there are two sides committed to death matches against each other, there’s no compromise and there’s no room for discussion or growth. Outside of that, I present my livestreams as a space where we can talk about anything that might be on our minds to come up with solutions to problems, whether it’s in my fictional universe, my life, or the viewers’s lives.

It’s a tricky balance – art, chatting, and gaming – like livestreaming itself.

I have to keep in mind the audience that watches to actively participate, the audience that watches like this was a movie, and those that watch days, months, or years later. I think I’ve found my rhythm for reading off the chatroom and then responding to the messages. I don’t like the idea of having the chat appear on-screen, and although I save all of the chat logs, I don’t post them because sometimes they contain private information.

Yesterday, I saw a livestreamer have an extremely negative chat interaction.

The example I mentioned in the video is one example, where someone goes into a livestream to cause grief. These griefers and trolls are everywhere in life, but how do we handle that? Quickly must be the way, and in yesterday’s example, the griefer’s side of the conversation was scrubbed from the chat logs and only appeared on-screen as a reminder to those who might watch it of the grievances. I feel it’s important to moderate the conversation as I interact with it, so that I can moderate myself, and keep the conversation going.

This is what I’ve learned from livestreaming over the past few months.

I’m sure others have their ways of moderating their chats.

From what I’ve heard, when livestreamers that I hang out with in the Retro community/category switch over to the “Just Chat” category, they’re more likely to get griefers. It makes sense. I joked about this during my stream, but this is a category for people that want to talk directly with people, and sometimes, their idea of a good time is different than others. I’ve heard chatters talk about how they’ve said things that were taken out of context that caused them to get banned. I know I’ve typed things into livestream chatrooms that have been taken out of context, albeit never on a large enough scale to have been considered trolling.

These are thoughts I can meander through while chatting or building.

I blew up large sections of the diorama and I also did minor changes to the environment like adding in the mailboxes to one side of the apartment complex. I imagined that the mailboxes would be on the first floor of the complex in the fire escape, so there’s a possibility for four sections of mailboxes. I build them to fill the space, but I may have overdone it. Now that I’m thinking back to it, I would really only need 50 mailboxes per section.

I’ll see how it goes as I go.

Part of the process that I’ve been enjoying with these livestreams, and recording the building process, is looking back on each section. I hadn’t worked on the stairwell of the apartment complex in over a month, so when I returned, I made some changes based on logical choices I had made over in Zeal, the fourth-wall-breaking area, that could help me better convey certain ideas. I wasn’t aware of stairs when I built the stairwell, which is a funny statement to write, but true within the confines of a videogame.

If there is no built-in stair mechanism, you have to create it yourself.

Toward the end of the livestream, after talking about the category details, I switched the category over to Art. Maybe when I work on certain repetitive sections, I’ll switch it to Just Chat? Maybe if there’s a healthy balance of gameplay mechanics, then, Minecraft? If there’s one thing I won’t do, however, it’s troll the Retro community by putting my Minecraft builds there. Although the game was released in 2012, here’s what mindscan said: “i dont think most retro gamers like minecraft all that much.”[1]

I can see why.

Although I haven’t played it as a competitive game, whenever I look through the Minecraft category, all I see are people running around along with a hyperactive chat. If people are enjoying themselves, and no one’s getting hurt by it, then I don’t see anything wrong with it, but that’s not an environment I would want myself. I don’t know how things will turn out long-term, but at least since my health seems to slowly be getting better between physical therapy and maybe not focusing so much on my health as I was as I was dealing with the worst of it, I might be able to look forward to the days when I write everything from silly stories about customers getting mad, to the novella which will use all of these Minecraft setpieces to their full effect, to “Novel 02” and beyond. If I remain optimistic, in part because I’ve been having some frequent folks in the chat, then maybe I’ll be the one to make the category I want to see?

I am planning on playing non-Minecraft games in Retro.