A short while back, I was talking with a close friend of mine about streams and media clubs. They had been wondering about streaming some obscure games for the sake of getting to interact with others about those games as well as getting those games some more visibility, but they didn’t feel like they’d have enough of a voice by themself for it to mean much. The conversation segued into wanting some form of Games Club, and I ended up bringing up the merits of what media clubs SB currently has. In particular, I praised the format of SB Anime Club for an anime outsider like myself, sampling a collaborative and curated selection of semi-esoterica in a regularly-scheduled communal setting.
Some various ideas of games promotion later the twin ideas combined: a SB Game (Streaming) Club. Through the hosting of a single Twitch account, it’d have people volunteer to stream for pre-scheduled showcases of whatever unsung games one wants to show off / talk in depth about. Getting to show off and discuss many games without demanding people play a ton of stuff (no offense to the joy that is the Super Nintendo Exploration Squad podcast, but endless backlogs exist for many reasons), streams meant to appeal not to the greater Twitch sphere but to corral together the somewhat cozy community we’ve built. By default there’d be single-streams for games, but any game (and volunteer’s scenario) reasonable enough for a longform playthrough could become a regular feature.
It’s a decent idea, I think- a bunch of people in the SB Discord have expressed some interest in it. I don’t think I could arrange anything much for it myself- I’m quite busy with my own projects and executive dysfunction as always, and I don’t have the connection to stream well at all- but floating the idea out there might work out as well as the other two recent SB media clubs. Such set-ups are always are collective efforts, anyway.
Sample material:
For the original super-esoteric intent, DO listed what they found scouring every single last inch of Steam sales.
Miracle Fly
FLY’N
Reverse X Reverse
Environmental Station Alpha
Cryptark
Unexplored
When I was initially floating out the idea, @CourierRice brought up a variety of their own high-interest unsung games, which aren’t quite as unknown as the above but still are pretty obscure for beyond SelectButton meterage. Probably the biggest highlight, to let them still have something to post about, is Wuppo.
also there’s a few spare thoughts running around about having an SB Manga Club, with something like two volumes a week? I don’t claim any authority here beyond having an interest in getting more people to read My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness and Shimanami Tasogare, but @Tulpa and others probably could arrange a whole year’s schedule offhand with the selectbutton standard media hyperprowess. I think a textual setting would be best, at any rate- there’s already two podcasts and one set of viewing events, and one can use snipped-out pages and panels as reference with such static settings.
sb book club that’s just me and tulpa insulting other people’s taste until it devolves into just me and tulpa insulting each others’ taste until we finally ki
this is a pretty great idea. idk if i’d want to stream to SB instead of streaming to my own account, though. i like my setup and having full control of my videos, easy export to youtube, personal whispers. i might still do it sometimes, i’ve been working pretty hard on my streaming setup lately and have gigabit internet. i already stream almost every day.
Does Twitch have that thing where one channel can host another? I know that Mixer (formerly Beam) does that, so that could be a solution. Streamer maintains control, but it ends up on the SelectButton channel anyway
I would totally do this but would need to schedule decently in advance, like a couple weeks at least. Also despite being set up for youtube recording I have no idea how to stream on a technical level.
I would like an excuse to stream again. I’d probably only do an hour or two at a time though, I get exhausted with more than that. My tastes aren’t honestly that obscure though so maybe a bad fit?
Things I would play:
Daggerfall
Troddlers (SNES)
My World My Way and other GAE RPGs on the DS/PSP (I would love an excuse to explore that weird shared universe)
I’ll always play a good Super Mario World hack
I’m actually not hyperliterate in manga the way I am with books and anime so a lot of manga reading material would just be me picking out stuff that I’m interested in reading rather than curated lists of necessarily good stuff.
As far as games, is it ok to stream games that I haven’t played but reach my point of curiosity with them? I’d love to stream elemental gimmick gear (for the weirdest reason, its one of the few games made by the people who did Dream Master on the famicom)
I mentioned on the discord that streaming to the greater twitch sphere has been stressful and I even made a side account to get away from the teens who have followed me (too many kids using problematic memes and asking So You’re Not A Dude?). Broadcasting almost-exclusively to SB people would be less stressful I think, and ideally this would raise more awareness to SB of streams, rather than what the current thread does. Community efforts are cute and cool.
Index mentioned I’m down to show off Wuppo. I’m also down to showcase and talk about:
Live A Live
Rocket Slime
Retro Game Challenge 1+2
Monster World IV
Gotcha Force
Dragon’s Dogma
7th Stand User
etc
All of these are personal faves that I have a lot to say about. Wuppo is the only one I haven’t finished yet.
I want people to both literally and figuratively hold my hand as I play old adventure games. I spent 3 weeks playing D and next week I’m gonna play Lunacy for Saturn. I have no idea what Lunacy is or if my computer’s even powerful enough to emulate a Saturn game and stream at the same time but I am going to find a way to do it so I can pay tribute to this guy.
I don’t know who he is but I think he may be the “Father of Gekka Mugentan Torico”. I also think that hand may belong to a doll.
(Spoiler for Monday’s broadcast: That’s the Japanese title for Lunacy.)
I only read the reception section of Lunacy’s wiki entry, and it made me laugh. These two Davids would be quite the mashup…if you ask me.
Chances are this game is really boring but I still wanna poke at it. I dunno if it would meet the guidelines of a streaming club but I’ll be streaming from Bachelor Soft on Monday. So if no one’s streaming then I could hop into it.
I’m also gonna be streaming Fire Pro Wrestling some but I dunno if that’s Club Material.
further formative notes and outlining after discussion with @DracoOmega and the Discord
some timing between biweekly and monthly with relatively tight scheduling in rotating timeslots- it’d suck if overtime ends up not letting people stream or if most people drop out from exhaustion / timezones by the time they’d go. maximum of maybe forty minutes to an hour per time-slot, weekend afternoon or weekday evening. once everybody can confirm their streaming set-ups, should want some sign-ups and submissions set-up threads (per event) / google document for planning like how SB Anime Club’s prescheduling works.
despite this strict outline, volunteers can handle how they’d approach their games on a case by case preference basis. contents showcases or brief displays or blind playthroughs, running commentary or mostly brief reactions, expert play or flailing about, all of this is fine (though ideally there’s some controlled balance of the content output). streaming can be quite an anxious endeavour, and it’d be miserable to push people to perform well or sell their games well- this is a communal enjoyment effort first and foremost. maybe some of the edge might be burned off after a few nights, and it’s always possible to volunteer only a guest appearance rather than any huge particular list.
despite saying all this there probably should be some focus on non-boring games. like, hacks and mods and everything in the thread already from SNES games to year-old Steam games is fine as long as it hits the “unsung” criteria and focus, but the “so bad it’s good” quotent for such stream pressures is far too intangible to be worth the risk.
I don’t know anything about the other streamer sites besides Twitch, but it might be reasonable to use those if they’re less gross and still any stable.
what the heck I am becoming a manager for this even though I was originally just throwing out an idea to see if it’d work and hope others would pick it up
Maybe if you’re lucky someone else will come along and declare themselves Unofficial Honorary Founder of Stream Club and take credit for all your hard work.
Sometimes the Honorary Founder of Anime Club forgets his official title.
