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(Hey all, I understand this isn't an esports thing, but I do post my stream to Team Liquid and they do allow me to stream here even though I don't always stream esports. I made the same post on swtor reddit as I am here and I figure if you are into gaming you may enjoy this type of thing as well.)
Introduction
Hello Everyone! My name is Jonathan Grogg and I am a gamer. Before I start in about my idea I would like to give a brief background on myself (Skip to the next bold part if you don't want to read this). First off, I have been a gamer for nearly 15 years. I started playing video games when I was 8 years old. I live in a house full of gamer which consists of my father and two brothers. I am the youngest at the age of 22.
My gaming background is extremely varied. When I was young I played all sorts of games from Command and Conquer to Sim City to Mech Warrior 3. I eventually became a sort of amateur gamer in a Mech Warrior 4 league at the age of 13. After spending over a year grinding out practices and match after match every day, I quit Mech Warrior and started to play other games. Since then I got big into MMORPGs and have experience in Star Wars Galaxies, Lord of the Rings Online, DAoC, Guild Wars, Darkfall Online, Star Trek Online, Champions Online, CoX, and a few other smaller MMOs. Recently I have been palying games such as Starcraft 2, Skyrim and Battlefield 3. I have also been dabbling in Minecraft from time to time.
My history of streaming has mostly been with Starcraft 2. unfortunately for the past year I have been experiencing a time of bad internet and slow upload speeds. Luckily that has recently changed and I can start streaming once more.
The Interactive Character (Start reading here if you want to get to the point)
My viewpoints when it comes to streaming are simply: Interact with and entertain the viewer. Streaming isn't about making money, but about providing fun entertainment and showcasing a joy of gaming. Since my pre-ordering of SWTOR I have been developing an idea that I feel I personally would enjoy to be a part of if I was a stream viewer (And I often times do watch streams).
The idea of the "Interactive Character". It's a straight forward thought: have the viewers choose what the character looks like, the class, the specialization, light side/dark side or neutral, and even what the character does. SWTOR is the perfect setting for this type of stream because of the mass amount of choices the character makes that affects the story. So here's what I am thinking. I have a website set up to take botes through polls on faction, class, spec, alignment, race, server etc. I will give this site one week to generate votes and then I will start the broadcast of my interactive character starting from creation on January 23rd, 2012 at 8:00 PM EST. From there on out I will use chat to have audience votes on dialogue choices and stuff I should do (PVP, Quest, Flashpoints, Dance in odd places to weird music....)
You can find the website with polls and announcement here: http://chaosfactors.net/atlashub
You can find the stream here: http://www.twitch.tv/atlas_550
It's simple, you want to participate in SWTOR and aren't able to, then simply watch my stream and make your votes while I play the interactive character. Now... The FAQ!
FAQ
Q. What is this?
A. It's an interactive character.... You decide the choices my stream character will make.
Q. Why only one monitor!?
A. Sadly, my second monitor broke and since I currently jobless and broke I cannot afford a new one. (Don't worry, I AM looking for a job)
Q. Will you only be streaming the interactive character?
A. No. I regularly play with my father and a few friends on stream. I will also be playing other games like Skyrim and Starcraft 2 on stream. You can still tune in for the interactive character when you like so that you won't have to watch the other things that I stream just by following my twitter (https://twitter.com/#!/Atlas550) where I will make an announcement that I am playing the interactive character.
Q. Will the character be purely solo?
A. Of course not! If the audience wants Flashpoints then I will of course need a group to come play with me.... And who better then members from the audience!
Q. Will this have a schedule or not?
A. That is up to you really. If you want me to stream at a certain time everyday then I will. Otherwise, I will go by when I have free time. Don't worry, I will still be doing the interactive character as often as possible and at least for a couple of hours each day. Note: This can change depending on when I get a job.
Q. Will your stream ever have better quality?
A. I am committed to trying to obtain the best stream experience possible. Therefore as resources become available, I will upgrade what needs to be upgraded to make the stream look better and run better.
(Please all don't be afraid to check it out! Give it a chance it could be fun!)
 
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Very interesting idea, I am curious to see how this experiment turns out.
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we seriously need to get rid of this anonymous help group thing "My name is X and I am thing-that's-shameful-and-socially-unacceptable" x) i know that's not why you said that, but that's how it sounds -> please don't do it again ^^
do you really think, waiting for the chat to chose something on each dialog opinion is going to work? To me it feels like the waiting for viewer feedback - especially when you have a 30 second delay on your stream or maybe even more - makes the process of getting through the dialogs sooooooooo slow that it becomes rather unfeasible and incredibly long and boring for viewers. How do you plan on addressing this? Of course you could map out all the dialog options beforehand by pre-playing the content with another character, noting down all the choices and let the users vote before you then really play through the content on stream, but that sounds like a ridiculous amount of work and i don't believe anyone would want to do that. So what's your plan to keep these delays brief?
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we seriously need to get rid of this anonymous help group thing "My name is X and I am thing-that's-shameful-and-socially-unacceptable" x) i know that's not why you said that, but that's how it sounds -> please don't do it again ^^
Okay, you sound kind of angry. I don't see anywhere where I say that I am something that is shameful and socially unacceptable, but whatever. You will think what you think.
So what's your plan to keep these delays brief?
Since this is the question at the core of your entire paragraph it's actually a lot simpler then you make it sound. Simply put, there are a maximum of 3 dialogue options and even with a 30 second delay it's not hard to wait for a flood of responses from chat. It's as simply as saying "Vote 1 2 or 3 in chat, go" and then waiting (Because each dialogue option is given a number). And it won't be hard to make a quick count of what the majority of chat says. I even may be able to figure out the app that Destiny was using with his chat at some point to take votes using numbers to make it even quick and more accurate.
And as far as you don't think anyone would want to put in a ridiculous amount of work? As far as I am concerned I was raised on patience and putting hard work into what you love to do. So that is what I plan to do. It's actually not that hard of a thing and it's not that I have anywhere I need to put where I need to do things quickly as is.
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On January 16 2012 20:12 Atlas_550 wrote:Show nested quote +we seriously need to get rid of this anonymous help group thing "My name is X and I am thing-that's-shameful-and-socially-unacceptable" x) i know that's not why you said that, but that's how it sounds -> please don't do it again ^^ Okay, you sound kind of angry. I don't see anywhere where I say that I am something that is shameful and socially unacceptable, but whatever. You will think what you think.
Don't worry, i'm not angry ^^ I just think, like if a random "stranger" walks by and reads a post starting with "Hi i'm X and i'm a Y", he probably immediately gets the impression that this guy has a problem and needs help with being that Y, just because it is that typical anonymous self help group introduction sentence that everyone gets tought through media (no clue if all the self help groups actually do that, never been to one and i imagine a lot of other people have neither). I just think it puts the reader in a bad mindset towards the author Oo
On January 16 2012 20:12 Atlas_550 wrote:Since this is the question at the core of your entire paragraph it's actually a lot simpler then you make it sound. Simply put, there are a maximum of 3 dialogue options and even with a 30 second delay it's not hard to wait for a flood of responses from chat. It's as simply as saying "Vote 1 2 or 3 in chat, go" and then waiting (Because each dialogue option is given a number). And it won't be hard to make a quick count of what the majority of chat says. I even may be able to figure out the app that Destiny was using with his chat at some point to take votes using numbers to make it even quick and more accurate. And as far as you don't think anyone would want to put in a ridiculous amount of work? As far as I am concerned I was raised on patience and putting hard work into what you love to do. So that is what I plan to do. It's actually not that hard of a thing and it's not that I have anywhere I need to put where I need to do things quickly as is.
i mean no one would put in the ridiculous amount of work of mapping out all the dialogs on a separate char so people can pre-decide before the actual on-stream playthrough.
And still, a 30 second delay might not feel like that bad to you, but imagine you play in group. A 30 second delay before you get your reponse simply causes you to time out on all the votes. So you can't do any group flashpoints for instance with your chat voting, because the game will time-out you on your dialog options before the chat responds.
And for chat votes, if you just go like "type 1, 2, 3 in chat", there will be tons of hate, because that one kid who spams the fastest gets a voting advantage about which other people might get upset. I remember some streaming services provided the option to have on-stream polls. I don't know if those still exist, but you should certainly look into that.
maybe you could solve both these problems by making a small custom application that you embed on your stream website. Whenever you encounter a dialog option, you press some hotkey which makes a screenshot of the subtitle + dialog options section on your computer. that screenshot is then shown to the viewers in the application on your stream website and allows people to vote to circumvent stream delay and includes some kind of spam-vote blocking mechanism.
(of course with like 5 to 10 viewers that's again a lot of work for very few benefits, but if you manage to get to 100+ active chat voters, you might need something like this just for moderation. The question of stream delay remains in any case, you should do some testing of that before you decide on anything i guess.)
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And for chat votes, if you just go like "type 1, 2, 3 in chat", there will be tons of hate, because that one kid who spams the fastest gets a voting advantage about which other people might get upset. I remember some streaming services provided the option to have on-stream polls. I don't know if those still exist, but you should certainly look into that.
Well I won't be counting votes more then once cause its normally easy to spot a spammer (When you play MMOs long enough). And if I can get an application for votes I know the one I mentioned (That I can't think of the name) that Destiny used actually prevented spam voting by reading the chat names as well. So that would be something to get if I could find it. But that is only providing the app is available for use and that I have the viewer numbers to require it.
And as far as how group content would go I have already thought about that problem. The solution to getting most heroic quests would be to talk to the NPCs before getting into a group (For heroics this eliminates most talking). As far as Flashpoints, I would probably end up testing with the audience at first to see if it would work, but if it doesn't it would simply have to be that I make it clear when they vote to run flashpoints that I will have to make the decisions on the chat options based on alignment of my character and maybe how they have voted conversation options during solo play (Getting a general feel for the personality of the character the audience creates).
And unfortunately I can't really do real testing on how this works on a mass scale without actually doing it. And that is what next week on Monday will be. It will be basically an opening run to gauge interest and a test run of sorts to see where the problems are and how I could possibly address them. I understand it's a large undertaking, but to make the most entertaining stream possible I am willing to go the lengths to find out how to make it work.
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Alright, an update on the voting so far as it has been a few days and we are reaching the midway point in voting.
So far there have only been 14 total responses to the survey. Not many, but enough that I will STILL be streaming the interactive character. I want to see this thing work. But here are the leading votes so far.
Q1: Server - Deathwind Corridor is leading with 5 of 14 votes.
Q2: Faction - The results are tied at 7 a piece.
Q3: Alignment - Neutral is winning with 5 votes.
Q4: Class/spec (Empire) - The Imperial Agent/Operative is leading with 5 votes.
Q5: Class/spec (Rep) - The Sumggler/Scoundrel is leading with 6 votes.
Q6: Gender - Female is winning with 8 votes
Q7: Race - Twi'lek is winning with 5 votes.
Those are the midway results. Please fill out a survey I would love you to participate!
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Okay, it's show day. I will keep the polls open till roughly 7 PM EST tonight. But there have been 17 votes so far and here's the results so far.
Q1: Server - Deathwind Corridor is leading with 5 of 17 votes. Jung-ma is a close second with 4.
Q2: Faction - Republic has taken a 10-7 lead.
Q3: Alignment - Neutral is winning with 7 votes.
Q4: Class/spec (Empire) - The Imperial Agent/Operative is leading with 5 votes. Most other classes are at 2 votes.
Q5: Class/spec (Rep) - The Sumggler/Scoundrel is leading with 7 votes.
Q6: Gender - Female is winning with 10 votes
Q7: Race - Twi'lek is winning with 5 votes. Zabrak is a close second at 3 votes.
Tonight's Interactive Character segment starts at 8 PM EST. Be sure to be there for character creation so that you can also help decide how the character looks!
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Sounds fun! Throw in some Warzones with viewers too. Then being the same level won't matter as much  .
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Indeed. Well I made the character on Deathwind Corridor and they are a female Twi'lek Smuggler named Ne'l. Add me to friends if you want to play!
Not a lot of turn out for tonight and since there were no viewers and I am starting to get sick I decided to call it early. Will try to continue this more in the coming days.
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EPT
