EPTIt all started like any typical Friday night, I booted up the stream and lost my first game. Then I won my second one and was placed back into Plat where I've finished the last 3 seasons or so. That alone made me pretty happy because I knew my MMR was high, and was just waiting for the league redistribution to kick in. So I play another game (straight up roach/hydra ZvZ macro game) that I thought I played really well in and won again. BOOM - Diamond. I hit the fucking ceiling. I haven't been Diamond since everyone was Diamond like 4-5 seasons ago. Such an incredible feeling. Went to bed so happy on Friday, thinking how could it get any better.
Then Saturday afternoon I have this thought that my son Brayden and I should play some 2v2's as we have done before a few times. Only this time I'm going to stream it and not tell him. Now up to this point I only usually have around a dozen people in chat when I stream, important to note. So we start playing, and I usually post a thread on r/ATZ promoting the stream because I felt it would just get buried in r/StarCraft. This time though, I thought why the hell not. It may take off, it may not. Well holy fuck did it take off. Within I'd say....15min I had about 70 people in chat....couldn't believe it. My heart was racing because I knew something big was going down. So the whole time I'm trying to interact with chat, keep up on the reddit thread, twitter account, eyeing the TL.net sidebar....all that stuff. My email is filling up non-stop with new follower emails. Meanwhile Brayden has no idea what's going on, so he's yelling at me to help him and get out of his way...lol It was so exciting. I'm getting text's from friends saying WTF is going on? Now important to note like I said is, I only usually have a dozen people in chat. I named one a mod, because I thought why the hell not? Well he didn't make Saturday's stream. So I get a message in game from one of my regulars and he's like "Halcyon, *other mod* isn't here. The chat is going nuts. You need a mod and you need a mod right now. Make me mod and if you want to take it back after that's fine but you need to do something". LOL I burst out laughing from excitement and gave him MOD. I've since named one more, because I don't want to be caught with my pants down again.
This goes on for around 2 hrs. Now my other son who is 2 was taking a nap, and I knew he would be up any minute. He actually poked his head in stream during the last 20min or so. I knew we wouldn't be able to keep this going, but that was fine. When I told him that people were watching he just cracked up. I don't think he understands how people were watching...but he thought it was super cool.
A few more hours pass after the stream goes offline and new follower emails are arriving in my inbox literally every 5min. The reddit thread is still up there doing well, so I posted a link to the VOD because I thought why not. I end up having a few spare minutes later on, and so I jump on Skype and start talking to some of my friends about it. They tell me, "Kerry, you need to make a 30sec highlight video of the baneling hit. It was incredible. Post it to Reddit, they will explode" Now I'm no stranger to Reddit and the internet mentality. I thought, if I make another post it may seem like I'm trying to cash in on Brayden in some way. Which I don't want it to come across that way. They said "Kerry, under normal circumstances your stream thread would be deleted after you go offline. All you did was play a game for 2hrs with your son and post a 30sec highlight of it. It would have ended up being one thread on any other day. It's not a big deal, just do it!" So I thought yah what the hell. It took me 5 minutes to do it.
Holy god. An hour or so later it's the top post. It took off again. hahaha I just started laughing, I couldn't believe it. Although at this point I knew I had to back off. Anymore of this and people were going to get annoyed. Then some guy makes a "parody" of it with Tastosis doing commentary for audio. Oh man that made me laugh too, but also cool that I was looking at my son at the same time. I still find it funny he really has no clue what really happened yesterday. He just knows he had a bitching time with his dad. Which is most important to me. I will never forget yesterday as long as I live.
The funny thing is, I didn't really plan any of this to happen. Was the possibility there? Sure. But for me, it was just another afternoon of Brayden and I playing StarCraft and if people liked it then great. I've only been streaming for 2 months or so, so anything that could bring new viewers in was OK with me. I found some of the comments funny (some obviously trolls) that talked about how I relate to my family through video games. I think in my head, "You don't even know me. We do a lot more than just sit and play video games. It just turns out today this is what we did" Another guy talked about how it was similar to mashing my kids wallet picture into someone else's face. LOL That one made me laugh. And then there were some discussing whether or not it's OK to broadcast your kid to strangers (assuming it had something to do with being creepy). LOL That one made me laugh too because guess what...everytime you walk out the front door your "broadcasting" your kid to strangers. I try not to dwell too much on those kinds of comments though, there are all kinds of people. I just surround myself with the ones who support me and ignore the rest.
Sunday. Talking with guys at Clarity again. I'm being tasked with bringing the coaching page up to date (I KNOW RIGHT) on the website and also organizing the entire coaching process. It looks like it may be quite a bit of work, so it was the first time compensation had been suggested by them. Oh my god, this was it. I'm going to make my first dollar ever that somehow involves video games. This is a big deal to me because it's something I've always dreamed about. Making money playing games. Granted I'm not making money by playing them, but organizing them is good enough for me. Just a great way to end the weekend.
Now, tomorrow night will be the first night I stream again and of course it will just be me. I'm fucking nervous as hell! I don't know how many people are going to show up, I don't know if they are going to enjoy the stream. I don't know if I can handle 200 viewers all saying, "His kid is funny as hell but this guy is an asshat" I'm nervous but excited at the same time. This is what I wanted after all, I just didn't think it would happen this fast.
All in all, these are the Twitch numbers after everything is said and done. (I still get the odd new follower indication every hour or so)
Before the BOOM
17 - Max concurrent viewer count
72 - Followers
60 - Max Unique visitors in a single session
34 - Most watched VOD
Presently
196 - Max concurrent viewer count
241 - Followers
2,240 - Max Unique visitors in a single session
638 - Most watched VOD (Some even checked out the VOD from night before boosting it to 80)
29,513 - Views on first highlight VOD
I guess a lot of people are probably wondering when I'm going to bring him on stream again. I'm sure one day we will do it again, but it will be weeks from now, if not more. It was just a spur of the moment thing, as it will be again next time. Reasons for this is that he obviously is in school during the week, so he has his routine already in place which does not involve streaming (or playing any video games for that matter) on a weeknight. Weekends - What can I say, I have two kids. Weekends are busy enough without worrying about having him sit down to stream for a few hours.
See you tomorrow night.
EDIT: I just realized I talked about how I could get more viewers in my last blog post. I guess this solved that problem. lol
. I do like going to the random, non-big name streamers though. Some people on TL are very interesting.
