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by cableshaft 1283 days ago
I'm kind of one of those people (I took a long break, but want to start doing it a bit more again soonish).

I do it in part just because I'm playing the games anyway and have the equipment, might as well stream it. If no one watches, oh well, no big deal, I'm still playing the games I was going to play with that time anyway.

And secondly, I am wanting to start doing some coding in public more. It's fairly stressful having to articulate what you're doing while you're doing it (tried it a couple times), and it sort of feels like I'm in a whiteboard interview at times, but I think it's good practice to become more comfortable doing it, and articulating what I'm doing as well as getting feedback from others could help me become a better coder.

Also the game I'm working on in my spare time (a sequel to my old Proximity strategy board game that was popular once upon a time as a Flash game and on Xbox 360) will eventually have support for a Twitch audience to play along via the chat, so I'll need to stream in order to test the game properly anyway, and hopefully by the time I get to that point I'll have at least a small handful of people who will be on there and can playtest it with me.

Also part of the reason I took a break is it turns out using an ultra-wide monitor isn't ideal for streaming (aspect ratio is off). I love my monitor but when I go into games I have to mess with borders and things can get cut off without adjustment, etc. I did get a Cam-Link recently though and got streaming from my Switch to work (and presumably my PS4), and it let's me stream 1080p without stressing my computer (no worry of dropped frames) and also letting me use my monitor still for Twitch chat, so that'll probably be easier to manage.

I've got some time off starting next week so I'm hoping to start getting into the habit of it again. If anyone's curious, I have the same account name on Twitch as on here, although I'm debating changing it to something that can be a bit more ubiquitous online, and haven't decided what yet.