Here's What a 'Good' Second Life Stream Would Look Like

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Another week has passed without a response from Twitch regarding their behind-the-scenes ban on streaming Second Life. But I haven't stopped thinking about it, because Twitch be damned, there's another lingering question that needs to be answered.

From the beginning of this streaming discussion here on NWN, there have been those wondering just what a Second Life stream should look like. It's worlds away from the usual fare being broadcast on sites like Twitch and Hitbox, so how do you keep that fresh and appealing without resorting to trolling? The quick answer has been content-creation, but that's not the limit of what a Second Life stream could do well.

So what would a 'good' Second Life stream look like? Here are my thoughts.

When I say 'good' I mean that relative to two things. First, there's 'good' in the sense that it doesn't run afoul of site moderation. Although a Second Life stream's mere existence runs afoul of Twitch's current (non-public) policies, on Hitbox this means keeping the stream more-or-less PG. And then there's also 'good' in the sense of the audience. The stream has to be entertaining in some way, it has to offer them something. There are a lot of games that you can stream like no one is watching you, but I truly don't believe that Second Life is one of them.

It's also important to realize that what a lot of people are really asking is "Why would I watch someone play SL?" which comes back to the same question that gets levelled at game streaming all the time. Why would you watch a game when you could be playing it yourself? Well, you could go out and play football on Sundays if you wanted to, too, but most of us won't. We watch because it's entertaining, or because we're working on something else, or because we want to learn some new strategies, or because we like the players/commentators broadcasting, or because they do things better than we can. We watch people play games because we're interested in the games beyond our own limited experiences with them. There are any number of reasons, but the point is that spectating and playing are two distinct ways to enjoy this hobby.

This is all Streaming 101, but it should inform your ideas of what a 'good' SL stream would be. The reason that content-creation is the go-to suggestion is because it's a skill that the majority of Second Life users haven't fully mastered. It presents the opportunity to watch someone you admire at work and to learn from what they're doing, which is exactly what people engaged in the MOBA, speedrunning and fighting game streaming communities are typically doing.

Then there's that other side of streaming, because not everyone's there to pick up techniques. Sometimes you're just hanging out with a few familiar faces, checking something out. Maybe it's something new, maybe it's something you've seen before. Like the 30-50 people who tuned in every single day in October to watch me playing a witch-themed Animal Crossing knock-off for the original Nintendo DS interspersed with clips of singing French-Canadian skeleton puppets. Yes, that happened, and it happened for 40+ hours and it was maybe the most fun I've ever had on the internet. They're the crew who want to be entertained, to decompress at the end of the day, to experience one game in the background while playing another, or working, or reading, or whatever.

It's probably not going to be enough for these folks if you're standing around, camera to your back, silently shopping and waiting for things to rez or unpacking gacha items on stream for an hour. That's not very entertaining. But frankly you don't have to raise the bar much higher, particularly if you're engaging with your audience while you play. When you're streaming you may be physically alone, but you're not really alone, and the slower-paced the game the more you need to keep that in mind. So do what you would do with some energetic friends around, because you're in a very similar situation when you're broadcasting. Go on a field trip or make a goal, like finding 10 different Eiffel towers across 10 different sims. If you really must stay in one place, sort through the oldest items in your inventory, or rez everything in your Lost & Found folder. That's always a good time.

Of course this all presumes that you're streaming SL for a crowd of SL users. Things can get a little trickier when you run your Second Life stream for a non-SL audience... But that's what chat moderation is for, right?

So what kind of Second Life content stream would you watch? Would you like to see someone working mesh-making magic, or checking out new sights and destinations? As always, share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Janine Hawkins (@bleatingheart on Twitter, Iris Ophelia in Second Life) has been writing about virtual worlds and video games for nearly a decade, and has had her work featured on Paste, Kotaku, Jezebel and The Mary Sue.

Comments

[icecreamjones]

I had a lot of fun and a lot of people were watching when Pendleton Ward invited a handful of his twitch viewers into a google hangout and we just sorta went looking for weird and cool stuff in SL, tried on weird costumes, and so on. Would gladly watch people investigating stuff, especially since I've rarely gotten great performance out of SL despite years of settings tinkering.

[Rose Mackie]

Live performances, inworld meetings, office hours, classes and other inworld events would be perfect candidates for streaming, especially with RFL kicking off. It would allow more people to participate as you can stream and chat on a lower end device. I've watched and participated in Twitch streams on both my NOOK and Chromebook.