STACK #168 Oct 2018

GAMES

NEWS

DarkViperAU's Top 3 content creators: Letofski Distortion2 Destiny

before. The average stream quality has also increased due to there being better streaming software, Twitch’s increased bandwidth, better internet, more affordable streaming capable PCs, and streamers having more time to hone their skills. How many hours a day do you devote to producing videos/streaming content? That is a hard question to answer. On average I probably stream at least seven hours a day, seven days a week. After a stream, there is usually two-to-three hours of work that I put in revolving around editing (Speedrun Tutorials, Casual Playthroughs, Stream Highlights, etc) and answering messages from social media platforms (email, Twitter, Discord, Twitch messages, etc). Some of my time is also spent learning about the most recent online ‘news’ that viewers will likely ask me about or would want to hear about. It is always good to have something to talk about, or to have something to say on any topic that comes up, when you are streaming. When you think about it, streaming is not like most jobs. There is no time you couldn’t hypothetically be working and improving your standing on Twitch – this makes it hard completely to relax. What is some advice you’d give to anyone who would want to take up a career as a streamer or a content creator? I wish I could write an essay to answer this question. Someone

trying to make a career online right now would have a very hard battle ahead of them. There are a handful of people making a lot of money, a bigger handful making enough to get by, and the vast majority struggling to get noticed, with the competition getting fiercer every day. Discoverability (the odds of a new viewer finding your content) is the lowest it has ever been for new creators. This doesn’t mean it is impossible, however. For example, the YouTube channel ‘Knowing Better’ made great videos for two years but only amassed 10k subscribers in that time. Two months ago the channel exploded to 200k subscribers. The channel didn’t change, the YouTube recommendation algorithm just started to share the channel’s videos to everyone. The moral of this story is that you need talent, persistence and luck if you want to succeed. My advice is that you should not only focus on making your content good but also seeking to create ways for people to find your content, many of those at the top got lucky, but sitting around hoping for luck is never a good move. If you weren’t doing this as a career, what do you think you would be doing? I would have hopefully used my ‘Bachelors of Social Science – Psychology’ in some meaningful way. I would likely be in the public sector somewhere, perhaps I would have gotten into a graduate program. I would likely have been less happy.

We’re profiling some of Australia’s biggest content creators to see what really makes them tick. This month we spoke to DarkViperAU!

DarkViperAU

When did you first start out making online content? I got my start in 2012 on YouTube making content about my views on social, political, and religious topics. Since 2015, I have been largely focused on speedrunning GTA V on Twitch.tv/darkviperau, although I do still occasionally get into discussions with viewers on the topics I used to make YouTube videos about. In late 2014/early 2015, I became enamoured with Twitch after finding the website through advertisements for Hearthstone Tournaments. I soon began streaming myself, largely on Warcraft III custom maps. There were quite a few popular speedrunning streamers back then and I thought it looked like something I would enjoy. I didn’t really have any suitable games to speedrun but I happened to stumble upon the streamer ‘WitWix’ who was doing one of the very few GTA V speedruns he would ever do. He didn’t take it too seriously, but I still found it interesting and decided to What got you into content creating in the first place?

try my hand at it. I had perhaps 100 followers before speedrunning and I now sit with 95k after three years. I also have most of the speedrun world records for GTA V (I may have them all again by the time you read this), which isn’t bad considering I had never played a GTA game prior streaming. How has the scene changed since you first started? The biggest difference is probably how many streamers there are. In 2015 there were 15-20k streamers online at any given time; today there are 45-50k. While Twitch’s viewership has also increased, discoverability has not really improved over time. A streamer starting out today would have a much harder time being found and growing their channel than ever

1 The first game you ever played? Super Mario Bros . on the NES. 2 The last game you finished? I think it was probably Horizon Zero Dawn – the other 'horizon'. 3 Your favourite game of all time? Good question – that's really hard to answer. It'd have to be between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Ico . 4 Most underrated game of all time? Hmm... oh! Body Harvest on the N64. 5 A game you wish you'd worked on? Body Harvest on the N64! Haha, do you know what, I'll actually say Breath of the Wild, it was absolutely amazing. I like to think that when people play our games, you can tell that we've had fun making them. I think that's part of what makes something special, you can feel when there's been a good environment around a creative piece of work. I totally get that from playing Breath of the Wild , you can tell the level of love the development team had for that game.

Art Director, Forza Horizon 4 BEN PENROSE

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