EPT
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/WHlOVBQ.jpg)
This setup was used from 21st of September to the 7th of October for a total of 210 broadcast hours on snipealot2(laptop back then), in other words more than 50% uptime through me alone controlling the stream for over 12 hours per day. I was between semesters and had a ton of free time, but even though it was fun watching broodwar it started to feel like a chore. At the same time I was bombarded with complaints regarding who was shown, sound issues, the quality of the stream etc. If it wasn’t for my awesome chat moderators back then I probably would’ve shut the whole thing down. This graph shows the uptime of snipealot2 from September:
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/KvQQz8E.png)
Luckily my original post received a ton of praise and support from the community, though not as many moderator applications as I wanted. Even now, 4 months in, I haven’t had the opportunity to turn down a moderator application. Everyone who has ever applied properly has been accepted. Most of them were known regulars in the stream chat already though. The constant supervision (changing streamers, restarting the stream when it crashes, and fixing general issues) requires the team behind the stream to be huge. With the help of new blood and very active moderators though we managed the following uptime for October (The remote desktop solution came online on the 7th):
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/CkXBxWi.png)
As you can see we did have a few bumps in the road along the way, but we still managed a massive 641 out of 744 possible hours for October. In other words an uptime of 86.1%. The total viewer hours for this month ended at a staggering 78197. To put this in perspective, if the stream was listed on the SC2 player stream rankings, it would have been number 11, just over Liquid’Hero for this first month.
At the same time I realized that although what we were doing wasn’t technically illegal, it was certainly immoral in some ways. Most of the streamers on afreeca do this as their main job, and while their income doesn’t come from commercials they certainly do benefit from having more viewers. The donation system on afreeca is what gives them money to eat and live, having more people donate is imperative for the constant content they produce. Still, getting registered on afreeca is one thing, being able to donate is completely different. While getting ‘approved’ for chatting on afreeca only requires a scanned passport, actually donating money(star balloons) requires a payment method(cellphone, credit card, bank transfer, t-money card) tied to a Korean SSN. Anyone with this handy would certainly already be watching on afreeca. I applied for twitch partnership but was swiftly denied on the basis that my viewership was low (even though the viewer hours rivaled that of the popular sc2 streamers). Still, I was determined to figure out a way for the foreign stream to contribute. Even though I sent emails (in Korean) to players asking them to open paypal accounts, nobody could apparently figure out how to actually create an account because paypal doesn’t have a Korean webpage.
Moving on to November I decided the only course of action was to improve the numbers on the stream and attain partnership. Something I must say we managed to do; we even managed to broadcast for a record 25 hours on the 4th of November, a record we have yet to beat.
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/mpg8pi2.png)
November was certainly an improvement compared to October, but I was running into some issues keeping the laptop functional. Most of the downtimes we had was me running fixes and optimizing the computer, also figured out a pretty silly bug with Obsproject – apparently if don’t run it as administrator it will desync your sound after a couple of days streaming. Even with the downtimes we had the uptime for November ended up at 99.3% - pretty good if you ask me. The total viewer hours for November showed a pretty decent 12% increase from October, bringing the total up to 88682. Compared to the SC2 streamers this would place the stream at rank6.
Towards the end of November SSL was getting into the final rounds, numbers on the stream were up but until then I had either been starting the SSL restreams myself or set things up perfectly for moderators to do it in 4 easy steps through remote desktop. I was planning on going to the finals in person though which meant I would not be home to control things properly. As the final stream would be at a different time with a different setup I couldn’t really prepare the streams like I used to do for the other rounds. Thus, the restreaming of the finals was in many ways a disaster – I apologize for this.
After the SSL Finals on the 1st of December I was facing a new problem though. I had tickets to go home to Norway for Christmas, but keeping a laptop running in my apartment while I was gone for over 2 weeks was not an option. I had already been having issues with overheating, and while it was mostly a long standing joke, I did fear it might burn down the apartment one day. The solution was crude but simple as it turned out my enclosed balcony has a power outlet. Putting the laptop on the balcony would mean using wifi but it did feel a lot safer having it out there. Another bonus was of course eliminating the overheating issue as it the outside temperature was -15C. We still had a couple of bumps in December though as you can see:
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7FnSm0I.png)
The early downtime in December was me preparing the laptop for my absence, mainly making sure everything was updated and relocating it to the balcony. The other downtime you see is what happens when you let your girlfriend borrow your apartment for a Christmas Eve dinner with friends. Her unplugging the wifi router as she left on the 25th turned into a 12 hour downtime, but she was kind enough to stop by before work the next day plugging it in again. Even though the uptime for December was lower (97.3%) compared to November, we saw a crazy increase in viewer hours due to one player alone. The average viewer hours jumped from 3000 hours per day to over 4000 hours per day (and stayed that way) mid-december when Liquid’Sea quit SC2 in order to stream broodwar on afreeca. Another crazy jump happened when Sea played his first Sonic Ranking Tournament (SRT11) on the 27th, setting a new record at 641 concurrent viewers. Although the following days didn’t bring in as many viewers, we saw a clear spike in viewers whenever he was on stream. I’m sure the fact that Sea utterly dominated his first SRT made a ton of people get a taste for broodwar. December saw 39.3% growth compared to November, bringing the viewer hours to 123490. Again comparing the stream to the SC2 streamers on TL, the stream would rank 5th for this month.
This is where the laptop was when I was in Norway:
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/fJPgvN2.jpg?1)
And this is the view it had out the window:
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/vBFICpT.jpg)
Coming back from Norway I brought with me some computer parts with the intention of setting up a proper streaming computer. The old laptop (now used for the snipealot3 sonic restream) still hasn’t really recovered from running at 90%+ CPU load for 3 months straight. I ordered a few missing computer parts I didn’t bring with me because of weight issues and received them all by January 3rd. Then I set up the computer and tested the setup thoroughly on a separate twitch channel before replacing the laptop on snipealot2. Even at the same bitrate I’m sure everyone (at least I did) noticed a big jump in quality due to the sheer processing power of the new computer. I later put up a chip-in to cover the cost of the computer parts (45$) which was covered in just a few days by some awesome supporters.
New computer:
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3VJvIT0.jpg?1)
At the same time the twitch partnership got accepted, meaning we could finally start supporting the players somewhat. It was clear early on that the amount of money would never be a lot (early estimated pointed towards around 300$ for January) but at least it was something. I informed Sonic on the 21st of January of this and he seemed genuinely happy. I still wish we could get paypal ids for all the players though as I’m pretty sure a lot of people would love to donate presents to their favorite players for their efforts.
Overall January was a pretty awesome month, even if we did have some uptime issues when inactive moderators coincided with the start of my semester. Luckily a plea to the broodwar community produced a few active moderators to fill the gap. We’re still struggling some days but January marks the month with the highest uptime yet, 741 hours out of 744 total (99.6% uptime).
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/LotJrO2.png)
Just like all the preceding months, January also showed a pretty good boost in viewer hours. A growth of 31.9% put the total viewer hours at 162937. It will be interesting to see the numbers compared to other streamers for January when those numbers are compiled. For now we can look at the graph for the past 4 months detailing both viewer hours and total video plays(views) on snipealot2 – it has been a pretty fun ride.
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/32KlMhp.png)
As today is the first day of February it’s going to be interesting to see if the stream can maintain the growth it has had so far. With own3d going bankrupt and afreeca currently developing an English client to move into the international market this stream might be obsolete in a few months, but until then both I and the whole moderator team will do our best to keep the stream running. That said, if anyone is interested in contributing – do not hesitate to send me a pm here on team liquid. It is only through the incredible efforts of all the moderators that we have been able to keep the stream on for the past 4 months, they are all true heroes:
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Harmtaro
Rlentless
mokegaye
Nekotrap
Nnspd
Voodru
StratosJ
Skmetaly
Iplaythings
Fold
Procyonarc
Chnama
Voddysc
Kompre_cl
Comradexkcd
Function1983
Kristofferag
Rlentless
mokegaye
Nekotrap
Nnspd
Voodru
StratosJ
Skmetaly
Iplaythings
Fold
Procyonarc
Chnama
Voddysc
Kompre_cl
Comradexkcd
Function1983
Kristofferag
- snipealot
