Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - How to be a Video Game Streamer (2024) - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

Andy and Mike breakdown all thier live streaming tips and tricks for 2024. Run of Show - - Start - Housekeeping - How to Be a Streamer in 2024 - What Equipment Should You Have? - What Software Should You Have? - SuperChats Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's time for the annual Kind of Funny membership drive. This year is half over and we've been busy. We've created a membership option that gets you all of the core content at our lowest price ever. We've moved the Kind of Funny Games cast to a daily format and you've gotten more than 130 Gregways in 2024 alone. If you love what we do and haven't gotten a membership or let your membership lapse, we're asking you to support the 11-person independent small business you love, even if it's just for the month. We've even added a limited amount of pledge upgrades on Patreon that would get your A Burger dozen into Kind of Funny Games Daily.

This month, look out for free Gregways from the vault on the weekends and weekly public happy hours where we take Patreon member calls live for everyone as previews of what a membership gets you each and every month. We couldn't do this without you. So thank you for your support. What's up and welcome back to the Kind of Funny Games cast live for Monday, August 5th, 2020. Of course, I am your host, Tim Gettys. I am joined today by a very special team of boys, starting with The Master of Hype, Snowbike, Mike.

What up, big dog? Hey, Tim, good morning. And ending with the natural rifle, Andy Cortez. Mike, how's your back feeling? I'm in a lot of pain. But you know what? We'll save that for another time. You know, I'm good.

I'm good. We're going to push it out. You don't push out of pain. You don't. You don't. You're just like back pain. You know, this is, yeah, this is the start of something big. one of those like when you were younger and your mom

or dad would look at you and be like oh my god I'm in immense pain they'd be walking around like this and like I was like nah she's finally shake them like what is you talking about? And then there I am today like oh shit like I can't put on my own underwear type of stuff but like don't worry about it I'll be fine

I just want to say that I got a text message from Roger yesterday regarding this whole situation and a screenshot of just a little text exchange between him and Mike Mike says my back hurts so bad today the last time I almost couldn't get out of bed

today I barely could barely put my socks on we may have a problem L.O.L. Roger says Jesus, please go to a doctor and Mike replies absolutely not. Roger replies with the thumbs up which is all you can do. That's really all you can do. It's just okay fuck you. Then you can't complain about it. I walk in today and I see Mike first time

Simon Cardi's here. We're having a great time. I walk over a hug Simon and Mike looks to me and goes Tim we have a problem. And Mike's saying that, I'm like, that's such a non- step one. And it takes character growth. And it's about 20 steps to get to step one.

Yeah. Well, I got to it, though. Yeah. So I'm happy with that. I do double down on you. You probably should go to a doctor. But before you do that, have you talked to Nick? Have you talked to Nick about this?

Because I feel like Nick. Yeah. He's had a bad back before. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we saw. His age definitely. And he knows my pain. Yeah.

He could bear. move after a jiu-jitsu thing and then was on the ground, couldn't stand up, and then had to crawl back to his desk backwards. He's going to what I'm going to. He was going at the old studio, that little hallway.

At the old studio he was walking backwards and like, we didn't know it's one of those things. Whenever Nick is serious about something, you're on kind of, you're walking on eggshells. But in that moment, I was like, what do we do right now? He's like, no, just leave me alone. I'll walk back. Yep.

D's gonna come pick me up It was really scary It was the most serious day And kind of funny here We all knew we're like There's not even a Levity right now Yeah

It is just deal with this We got to act yesterday Yeah And it's we got act yesterday But it was still Nick's back That was like That was the moment for sure Mike we'll talk about this later

Yeah we'll talk about that I'm fine now God And the chair I'm fine I'm fine There's no wheels on it Unfortunately It's no wheels on it unfortunately

It's no wheels on the chair. Oh, everybody. This is the kind of funny games cast. Each and every weekday, we get together. Just talk about video games. Sometimes we do reviews. Sometimes we do previews.

Sometimes we do fun discussion topics. And sometimes we try to help you guys or at least give you an understanding of where things are at in the many industries we are a part of, whether it is live streaming or YouTube or video games or media. Anything in between. We try to share our knowledge or whatever you want to. call it, share our experiences with people out there that might want to be doing a similar things. So today we're going to be talking about live streaming. We have two of the coolest and best live streamers I know. I want to ask them some questions about where we're at in 2024, where they think we might be going. And if they have any tips and tricks for y'all

wanting to either get into streaming for the first time, or if you've been streaming, what are maybe some big key milestone points for you to be looking forward to or to kind of set of some goals to be working towards because there is a lot of moving parts out there for you to figure out. But after this, of course, we're going to keep the fun going because kind of funny is a live talk show network. Every day on Twitch and YouTube, we're live. We already did kind of funny games daily where me and Simon Cardi talked all about

about a vowed getting delayed on some other things. Last of Us 2 teaser being shown. That seems like it's coming a lot sooner than I expected. And the hot new shape. And a lot, yes, a lot of shape talk, a lot of smoothie talk. Just a lot of good times in general. After this, though, Mike and Nick are going to be hanging out doing a little just-chatting stream. Just chatting afternoon?

We've got a lot to catch up on. Yes. Did you know, a man missed out on an Olympic medal due to his massive bulge? Talk about that on the stream. Big donk. Big one. Yeah. Giant hog.

Big one. Yeah. You get that hog the gold medal. Yeah? Yeah. Hell yeah. I mean, I need it just in like one sentence, Andy, what happened? Pole vaults couldn't get over, dong in the way.

Dong knocked on the show The fuck up Yeah, yeah, yeah True Don stuck out too much You watch that shit in slow motion It's magical Carried that thing

Yeah, it's a different Like, there's a bounce This dude's carrying a baby In his like Mids, lower midsection It looks like there's a specimen There Nick This guy's got a hog

Yeah, yeah yeah yeah This guy hung out of the pole He hung out of the pole For a good five seconds Before he dropped in the garage It was a goddamn monkey It was a tall He's probably Italian though right

If I was one of the judges, I would have been like two people can't compete. It's only me. I'm like, oh, shit. I thought you had a little friend with you. A little friend. Oh, my God. We're going to get more details on that, I'm sure. Yeah, it's going to be Mike and Nick hanging out.

So expect some fun. And remember, as we do the show, y'all can super chat us. If you have questions, I think today's going to be a great day. This is, again, a bit more of a Q&A type situation with these boys talking all about streaming. So if you have any questions about streaming. send them in and we'll try to get to them. Lyrics Spencer's kicking off the little YouTube super chat

hype for us saying got to call out the sick nasty red and black theme the boys have going to want today. Two best friends. You gotta love it. I need you to pop my back for me later. No. Get a hold of me. No. Got a hold of me. You need to just see somebody, please.

Then later in the day, if you're a kind of funny member, you're going to get an episode of Gregway just like you do each and every day. But we're also recording Twister in review. today and I can't wait for you to hear all my thoughts about my very first time watching the 1990, whatever, classic Twister. Finger gun. Have you watched

the next Twisters? Not yet. Not yet. This is going to be a really good in review for Tim. This is going to be a great time. I'm excited about that one. Did you watch part one? Yeah, I've watched one a long time ago. You know, I still have nightmares of the universal theme park attraction, I'll call it, of

Twister, where you go and they simulate the twister in front of you. They got a fake cow flying around, but they have like roof and the edge of the roof looks like it's going to peel off. And as a child, nothing was scarier than that moment right there. You're a little baby. You got sucked up in that tunnel. It's over.

Lost at Universal. Yeah. What a film. Karen went to talk to you all about it. Thank you. The suck zone. We'll talk about this later. Sorry.

Thank you to our Patriot producers, Carl Jacobs and Delaney Twining. Today we're brought to you by Monster Hunter now and Better Help. But we'll tell you all about that later. For now, let's begin with what is and forever will be the topic of the show. Touch, Suss. Like I've been saying, the topic is streaming, live streaming in 2024. I feel like a couple years ago, we would have said Twitch streaming in 2024. But these days, there's a couple other big hitters out there that have entered the fray,

trying their best, I would say. Andy, I want to start with you. What is live streaming in 2024? When we say that, what are the various platforms available? And what are some of the kind of key differences between them? Okay, so Twitch is, I would still say, the main one. We've seen a lot of people and their contracts end on YouTube recently. Some of the people who signed a lot of the big YouTube live streaming contracts,

their contract went up and they came back to Twitch. And so I think that kind of shows you where we're at, where Twitch I would still say is the place where people think of live streaming to be at. YouTube, I would say, is the second place. Because a lot of people with their large YouTube channels can just go live. They can create a little live event. everybody you see that little thumbnail pop up on your YouTube app or on your web page or whatever

you see this thing's going to go live in a couple of hours or tomorrow or in a week from now you see that scheduled thing up and you prepare for that and then third I would say the other one that's available is kick kick is probably not the best place to be that you know that usually go to kick if you've been banned everywhere else because kick usually like accepts you know some of the more troubled streamers.

Some of the people with a lot more controversy surrounding them. Twitch, kick really, really like, is like, hey, 90-10 split. You get 90% of your revenue. We take 10%. But

to offset that, like, they don't do ads. Like, that's kind of why you're not getting, that's why they have that revenue split because it's so hard to advertise on kick because of how controversial it is. While we hear 90-10 split on kick, what's the split on YouTube and Twitch. So Twitch is still 50-50. YouTube is 70-30 with Twitch if you

stream enough and if you sort of gain enough of a following, you can get into the partner plus section. And partner plus means that if you had 300 sub points, sub points are kind of Let's just call them 300 subs. We'll just even it out. If you have 300 subs a month for three months in a row, then you get into the Partner Plus section, which then gives you the 70-30 split. So Twitch, everybody hates their 50-50 thing.

They finally made it available to get the 70-30 split. Twitch has really good ad revenue. The nice thing about going live on YouTube is that all those live views sort of go towards your live, your VOD at the end of that. Yeah, so that's going to kind of boost that as well. I've put a couple things recently on YouTube for Premiere, and I noticed a lot more views coming from the recommendation section,

not just like the people's subscriptions, pages or whatever. Like, I feel like YouTube's kind of pushing that a lot, so there's a lot of things there. TikTok is another thing to go live on. You didn't bring up TikTok, but that's definitely a live streaming platform as well. Absolutely, yeah. TikTok is another vertical that you could go. go live on. And there's such great tech out there where you could do multi-streaming to all these

other places. We use multi-stream here. That lets us go live on Twitch. Restream. Yeah, we use restream here that lets us go live on Twitch or TikTok or YouTube all the same time. And the tech's getting better all the time because there are, there's a lot of people doing really great work innovating out there, allowing people to let me format this 16 by 9 widescreen footage. you could reformat that, reformat that into a vertical section so it'll pop up on your IG Reels or your IG Live

or your TikTok. So there's a lot of different sort of ways to go about it, a lot of ups and downs, a lot of pluses and minuses for all of these platforms. Yeah, you could become an MPC streamer on TikTok. Hello, I'm doing that. We never know. We'll talk about that as well. Yeah, yeah. Mike, do you have anything

to add on top of what Andy was saying about it? No, I think Andy really hits you with the basic sites that you'll find live. streaming on. I think we'll get deeper into the pros and cons of each what we like, what we don't like from each one of those. But yeah, those are going to be really the main sites that you will find live streams

on if you're looking for it or the opportunity to live stream on if that's what you want to do as well. So there's let's say that there's the big three being Twitch, YouTube and Kik. Obviously us are kind of funny. We have nothing to do with kick. We don't do that. We do

use Twitch and YouTube for various reasons. You guys, both what would you say your situation is, Mike? I live stream exclusively on Twitch. I've been doing it since 2015, and I've really made a home on Twitch I like Twitch a lot. If I was going to encourage someone new, I would say take advantage of live streaming everywhere.

I don't think there's a reason for you to only be holding to one, especially now that there is no incentive or restrictions on multi-stream, and they'd really loosen that of like stream wherever you want, right? And so you should be streaming on not the big three, including kick, but you should be YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok is what I'd say you should be. Once Twitch allowed that, that really opened it up for a lot of people. It used to be that if you were a Twitch partner, and in order to become a Twitch partner, you have to meet a certain threshold of criteria.

And I think it's like you have to average 75 viewers for a certain amount of days. Once you do all that, you become a Twitch partner. You get more emotes and all that stuff. You get the little check next to your name. But that would mean that you also can't. on YouTube. You had that exclusivity contract or whatever. Recently in the last year and a half or two years or so, Twitch opened it up to everybody to where Twitch partner or not, you can also go stream on YouTube. You can also go stream on Twitch. And that really opened it up for a lot of people

to be able to get more eyes on their streams. So you, though, are still exclusive live on Twitch by choice. And then you upload VODs to YouTube. You want to talk a little bit about that strategy? Why you would do that? Yeah. Well, sometimes I'll go live on TikTok. as well. I have that TikTok app, and it's one of those things where you have to go live a certain amount of times on TikTok in order to keep that. And if you stop streaming on TikTok for a while, they'll be like, hey, sorry, you haven't streamed here in a while. So we've revoked your access or whatever. But I'll do Twitch and TikTok every once in a while, usually just Twitch. And the reason I don't stream on YouTube as well is I'm a big stickler for video quality. I love like having high

quality vods and I want my shit to look really crisp and clean and when you stream on when you stream on YouTube you're limited to 1080P if you're trying to do both of those streaming either on streaming on Twitch and

stream on YouTube and when you stream on YouTube you're limited in quality and that the vod will end up just kind of looking the way it looked when you streamed it and it just looks lesser than and I don't love that I want my shit to look really really good so I upload my VODs afterwards

because I'm recording at a much higher quality through OBS. Does it have anything to do besides the quality with a strategy of wanting more viewers or more subscribers in one place to be able to either hit or maintain the different things you need to do for the Partner Plus

program or things like that? Yeah. Oh, you know what? That's a good call. I just like I just like having eyes on Twitch in that moment. I don't love Yeah, you just start juggling a lot of different Yeah, having to juggle stuff gets kind of a But also, I don't love YouTube's live setup. We often mention it here when we do our long marathon streams,

when we've done our big Pokemon 12-hour things or whatever, or our Final Fantasy rebirth, 12-hour streams. We never do it on YouTube because YouTube is kind of annoying with how they're set up. You can't just hit, bam, go live. You have to create a little event and you have to put metadata and a thumbnail and a title. and it's a lot more like presentable in that way because they want that to show up on you know people's subscription feeds or whatever but um after 10 hours of streaming you it ends it because that's their well no you can keep so the the thing with uh youtube is you can keep streaming

but then once you stop streaming on youtube um anything after 11 hours and 55 minutes gets cuts off yeah so yeah we learned that i think with the uh maybe the launch stream. Studio launch stream where I had to make two separate streams. So, like, we wouldn't lose just, like, 12 hours of content on YouTube. Yeah. And so that's part of the annoyance as well. I think that, I think YouTube really, really wants that.

YouTube wants you to go live and they will assist you with those, like, with those extra views or whatever. YouTube algorithm, like, it's hard. If you pigeonhole yourself into long form content like I have with my VODs page, then I feel like my vods rarely get in other people's eyes other than whoever is subscribed to me. And even then, sometimes not even then will that happen. But it does seem like they will kind of favor you in the way that TikTok will be like, hey, go live and you have this much more of a chance to get seen by extra people, you know.

And so they're really trying to push those verticals, but it's more of a pain in the ass and I would say it's worth. And I would, if I were to go live on YouTube, I would then have to take down what I just went live with and then upload the thing that I want to stay on YouTube. I don't love the discoverability on YouTube either. Right? I'm currently on their gaming live streaming page. And Tim and Andy and I are looking at Aidan Ross with Donald Trump,

a lot of crypto casino gambling. And it just doesn't feel like gaming to me. When I go to Twitch, I feel like I can go to their categories and browse. And sure, just chatting is, always at the top. But there's a number of games that I can identify with from League of Legends to Call Duty War Zone to anything in between. And I feel like there

it feels like a home for gaming live streaming. If I was doing something different, maybe I'd look at this, but whenever I go to YouTube and search that, it just doesn't feel like discoverability's at the top. It feels very much like if I'm not subscribed to Tim, I'm not going to see his live streams.

Correct. And it's tough on this platform over here for that. And it is, it's one of those things where you have a giant company like YouTube and it's like, oh, how can they, how can this possibly not succeed? Right? They have all the resources. They got a buttload of money. They're going to make YouTube gaming a thing.

They're going to make this YouTube live streaming a thing. And I'm not going to say that it hasn't been a success, but it's kind of just brand awareness. And it's, you know, when you think of streaming, you think of Twitch. When you think of watching a video, you think of YouTube. And yes, it's there as an option. And I honestly, it's one of those weird things where like, I think. Twitch live viewership is still a bit below

what YouTube does because there are so many large YouTube channels that do go live every once in a while, but you just don't really think of those brands doing that sort of thing. And so on with Mike. I don't think of YouTube as a place where I would go watch a live stream. There's a popular

streamer goes by the name of Thor, but his Twitch thing is Pirate Software. And Pirate Software, he's the guy that ended partnering with famous streamer Ludwig and they they're making their own little gaming publishing thing he's a former game dev used to work at blizzard and he has some he had a really fascinating video that i saw on one of the breakouts on tic talk recently about how he kind of got propelled in his career and he was like what i would do i would do analytics and i would see there's just

chatting is the most popular section right during this time of of the day or whatever here there's drop off. I'm going to go live then. And so he would stream it, I don't know. This is kind of just like a guess, but I know he would stream like from midnight until 7 in the morning or something. He lives in America, which is like kind of nuts, but it's like he would go live

from those hours. And that just goes to show you that there are people browsing Twitch in that moment to go who's, like there's an audience out there going, who's live streaming right now and just chatting. And that's how he built that audience, which seems like a one in a million way to do things, but there's

sometimes where you just assume that people are going to go watch you if you're live, and they're not going to watch anybody else. But there's a lot of people on Twitch, clearly, that are looking through these categories to try to see who's a, who's, let me just pop in right now. I'm bored. My normal streamers aren't live right now. All the big streamers are asleep, you know, all the people that I watch, it's three in the morning now.

Who's this dude? Let me follow him or whatever. And that's how he built his following, which is kind of nuts. It seems like such a weird way to do it, but it worked. I feel like that is like the, you know, there's a lot to talk about here about Twitch streaming 2024. And like I feel like we, we jump straight into platforms. We didn't even really talk about like what it's like being a streamer.

I think we should talk about that in a little bit. But I do think that some applicable advice for any of this type of stuff is to think about it from the perspective of what is something people aren't doing that I could be doing the people are looking for. And so I think that's a great example of like, yeah, like, where are the drop-off points and where can I do something there to stand out and be special? Having said that, though,

you always need to start with the content first. You need to start with like, I got the stuff to show off to people. Don't try to gimmick and play the game before you have a game to play, you know? So don't get obsessed with like the analytics and the technical side until you are comfortable and know exactly what you're trying to do.

But once you have that, I do think that the earlier on you could come up with a strategy that is going to present you in front of an audience that might like you. That's the easiest way to start building and snowballing. Yeah, I think one of the main things to do would be, I don't want to say gimmick. That sounds like a pejorative, but find something that people can know you for. Get your face on the camera. I know some people recommend not putting your, you know, if you're making these TikTok clips or you're making these IG Reels or whatever, YouTube shorts, don't put your social info in there.

I kind of, I disagree with that because I've, I'm, I've seen people pop into my chat. I be like, I came from IG Reels. I saw you on TikTok. Like, it works. It does happen. The flips out of that, people say that it kind of looks like you're like an advertisement or it just feels, you know, disingenuous or whatever. but I do it because I've seen it work.

So that's, you know, different shows for different folks sort of thing. But get known for a thing that you're doing that makes people entertained. Do something kind of silly as hell. Do something out of the norm. And if you can have whatever that is and have like three different versions of it that kind of go viral, like if you're doing something creative enough, people will see it, I feel, especially with how great discoverability is on TikTok and IG Reels. and the amount of times we talk about,

oh, yeah, that one clip from somebody, they put out another version, and it's hilarious, and they're popping off, and they're doing massive numbers. You won't always see that direct translation. We see a lot of people that are massive on TikTok that don't have that following on Twitch and are maybe slowly catching up,

but sometimes it works. And I think if you make a YouTube short or a real or a TikTok clip that really, really gets popular, don't just be known for that one. try to do something else similar that is maybe a derivative of this follow up on that win

try to do another one see if that gets popular again and people know you oh you're that guy who does the whatever whatever sort of thing and like it's really really hard it's hard to try to replicate that sort of success but once you are able to sort of

see these wins here and there I think that's when you can kind of all right I found my thing I found my following let's build off of this And I think a perfect example of that is Andy Cortez, where in the last week you just did your big blood-borne stream, I mean, two days ago, right, seemed to be a massive success. Yeah. And that was a success that didn't just happen. You have been playing Souls games.

You have been building that as part of your personality and the ethos of the nitro rifle and what you stream. And you care about quality. You care about the performance of games. And like that is another part of your brand. you seeking out in a very complicated way how to get BloodBorn running at 60 frames per second and turning that into an event combining two of the passions and two of the expertise areas or at least the entertainment areas the people come to you for the tech side and the the the soul side combining those creates an event that makes you stand out and you know randomly Kaysenat one of the biggest streamers of the world also playing Blood Born at the same time but that then created an opportunity for you to have people with eyes on bloodborne. This was an accident, coincidence, but be able to be like, oh, wow, I do want to see, I care about tech.

I want to see the different version. But that was all, I mean, I haven't talked to you about this, but like, I'm sure that those were all decisions you made to get to that point of like, yeah, I'm going to do this because I want to be the face of this thing. Not that other people haven't done it before, clearly you got the information from other streamers that do that. Right, right. But I feel like they do it more from the tech.

side for different games. Whereas you, I feel like, bring the tech to the entertainment side of the gameplay. Yeah, I'd say, well, I think I was mainly influenced by Maximilian Dude, because Maximilian dude was the one that was able to get his hands on one of these modded PS5s to run Bloodborn. But I agree with you. I think we both have that enthusiasm when it comes to tech and making things look good and we want like the best quality possible.

But I don't think that I would have had the viewership that I did have. I not cared about Souls games. So I see what you're talking about, the entertainment side of things, because people are also excited to see one of their favorite games being played, like, in the best technical possible way. But I'm also really enthusiastic about this game's story and the character moments and these big, you know, reveals or whatever. So, like, all of that sort of, like, culminated in what happened this weekend.

So I don't know if I would have had the numbers that I did had I'd been missing. seeing out on one of those things, whether it's enthusiasm for the genre, enthusiasm for the game, or enthusiasm for the tech, you know. And giving your audience something that they clearly have been asking for and wanting, not necessarily the 60 frames per second, but you play the

Blood Born DLC. You've created the narrative for the community to be able to follow along with, which I feel like that, again, all of that is the more important part than the tech side or the where am I streaming and all the details. Yeah, it became kind of a meme within my

smaller community that Andy never played Bloodbone. Of course, those videos aren't up on YouTube. And that was before I was putting stuff up on YouTube and trying to like make a page and have this history and catalog of all of my experiences with all these games. And so because I didn't have a YouTube page, it was like, well, it's not on YouTube, Andy. We have no proof that he actually played Bloodborn. So it became a stupid little meme or whatever. But all of that sort of like followed up and again, culminated in, you know, this weekend or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Really, really cool stuff. want to go to our ads in just a second. But before we do that, I want to close out the platform conversation because

obviously you guys are talking about Twitch being the big live streaming thing. I do just want to give a couple shoutouts to YouTube because while Twitch, I do think, I mean, I more than think, it is the definitive live streaming platform. And I feel like the tools that it has are vastly superior to YouTube. YouTube does have a couple pros that Twitch doesn't. One of them being you're able to rewind the video live as the things happening, which as a viewer is something that I often will pop into your guys' streams on the weekends and I'm like, I want to see how we got here, but I can't because it's on Twitch.

There is a way to do that, but there is a way to do that on YouTube, by the way. But like it's clearly not meant to be that way. To like rewind or whatever. On Twitch? Yeah, on Twitch. So you can like, you can go into my YouTube, you can go into my Twitch page or whatever and go to past broadcasts. and it'll show you the in current

the current video that's live right now and it'll say like, you know, six hours in or whatever. And you can click that past broadcasting and it'll show you everything that's happened until the moment you click that VOD. Yeah. But it's not like,

but you also just can't, it's not meant to work that way. You can't just hit a live button and then get caught up or whatever. So that's how I usually will watch past moments that's happened on our kind of funny streams or whatever. Okay, cool. But it's not intended to work that way.

It's kind of like a little work around. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I know what you mean. YouTube makes it easier for that. The other thing is the monetizing. And like, obviously this is kind of many levels into the Twitch streaming. Like, once you're actually caring about making the money and how the money is made,

there's definitely pros and cons on each side where Twitch being able to gift subs and that whole ecosystem is so amazing. And the Twitch Prime and all that stuff, there's just a lot of value there for creators and for the community to be able to interact in ways that feel satisfying and, like, good. they've made a lot of missteps, but I think overall they do care and are trying to get things right. On YouTube,

it's just such a different system where it's like, it is clearly not as good as it needs to be. But the one shout out I will give is YouTube. If you have YouTube premium, it means you don't get ads when you're watching people live on YouTube. And from a business perspective,

the YouTube premium money, while not directly going to us, that is such a boon. that there's a lot of money there for the percentage of cash we're actually getting from people when they're watching our streams with YouTube premium is a lot higher than even gift, even subs, even like all that stuff. And it's because YouTube ads, Twitch ads are kind of, YouTube ads are like, I mean, ads are so fucking volatile.

But there's a premium level to the Google AdSense side of things. So paying for a premium subscription and watching the stream. So a lot of people, if you just have YouTube premium and you, hang out with us all day watching our shows, it is very, very good for us. So thank you for doing that. But that's something the Twitch doesn't have. Twitch is way more normal ads playing,

and you get money from it, but it's not like the ad money is going to, like, change into one's lives. Right. And if you, like, they also did make it very, very known that if you have Twitch Turbo, which is Twitch's like ad-free version, their YouTube premium or thing,

watch all Twitch streams. For a while, there when me, Mike, and Nick would get together for our stream meetings. We'd be like, are we getting money from Twitch Turbo? And then it finally felt like they were putting it in front of your face. I'm sure you saw it too, Mike. When you go to our Twitch Dashboard, you would see, yes, you are making money from Twitch Turbo. Here's how much you are making from Twitch Turbo from people that have that thing.

Because otherwise, we just didn't know. We're like, are people just kind of like watching this? What are the breakdowns there? So they did make that available. But yeah, you're right. Like they, a lot of strengths and a lot of weaknesses on both sides, I would say. Yeah. And I hope that they can keep learning from each other when we get to a better place.

But it doesn't seem too likely, if I'm being honest. I feel like they're both, there's enough similarities, but there is enough differences that they're being stubborn about that we'll have to see how it all shakes out. But we're going to keep this conversation going. I want to talk a little bit about the tech and some of the programs and applications that we're using these days. But we're going to do that right after a word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Monster Hunter now. There's never been a better time to jump in and play Monster Hunter now. The game allows you to embark on a global quest in the real world

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That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P-D-com slash kind of funny And we're back everybody So there's a lot of YouTube videos out there Breaking down like If so you want to get into streaming Like here's what you should do

And I feel like a lot of times Those people focus on the The cheapest budget entry points possible I feel like With who we all are for different ways Either kind of funny snow bike Mike Andy Cortez We are past that

And I don't want to go into that. There's a million resources out there for people to get into that. I want to talk about for y'all, what do you think are the worthy investments, the important pieces of tech that are actually worth buying? And on top of that, what are the programs y'all are using and are any of them the premium version? Are you paying for anything? Or is it free software out there? Mike? You know, we're not going to go with the cheapest route, Andy, because, of course, I started on just an Xbox.

And you can do that, right? Like, nowadays, you can stream from your Xbox or PlayStation and boom, you're all. live. But we'll take it one step to the next one is what I think we should go with. I think you got to have a PC, right? Like you need a dedicated PC that is strong enough to be able to stream from. I don't think it needs to be the mega beefy PC where you're playing games and streaming, but I think you do need to stream from a PC to be at that next level and be able to do the things that we do here kind of funny and with me and Andy with what we're doing day to day. Would you agree with that? Yeah, for sure. Like, when I

first started streaming in 2016, and even like 2018, when I finally rejoined, like when I joined Kind of Funny and finally rejoined kind of the Twitch landscape, because I would stream from home every once in a while, back when I still live in Texas. But when I finally did it here, I was streaming off of a laptop. So I had a gaming laptop that wasn't very powerful with an Elgado capture card,

and it was the Elgado, I think it was just the HD60 at that point. Now they've gotten the plus and the HD, all that stuff that adds better bitrate and better, you know, it was one of those that still had, I think, USB. It was one of the old USBs that looked like a camera plug or whatever. It was pretty old, right? But you want a capture card in order to capture whatever you're doing off of your console. Or in some cases, if you're not trying to be a game, streaming streamer, which I'd highly recommend.

That's the big market right now. It's just chatting. It's such a, it's becoming kind of a niche nowadays to game on these places and become very, very popular for it. You still have people like Maximilian dude who is all about fighting games or some of the Frumsoft games. Or you have people like our good friend Ray Narviz, Twitchi-TV slash Ray, where Ray is going to be playing games. He's not going to do an IRL stream. He's not going to go out and eat at a restaurant and then

get into Uber or whatever. Like he is always streaming games and he has built up such an awesome fan base because of that. I'd say it's a lot harder to do that nowadays. You do have recent streamers like Jinxi, who JinCee plays Rainbow Six Seed or you have a sketch who plays a lot of Madden. And there's ways to kind of

there are definitely the outliers but I'd say like a really really popular way to get big quick is like just chatting. Just chatting reacts. Reacts is like the big thing right now. You're reacting to other people's content. You're sitting there and

hopefully providing some sort of fun but that's the big stuff right now. Yeah if you can do React stuff and post that stuff on TikTok and you know IG Reels and make a name for yourself. I feel like that's I'm going to make a name for myself, yeah. I'm going to make a name for myself.

That's got to be the most cost-efficient way to do it without needing a console and a capture card and all that fun stuff. But if you're like me who wants to be gaming 95% of the time on Twitch and for the 5% of the other time, it's usually during a long marathon stream where I'm watching videos with chat or I'll stop and we're drawing a piece of art or whatever the hell.

If you want to be gaming, you need a capture card, card, you need some sort of computer that's powerful enough to stream to these websites, or, you know, to Twitch or YouTube. And a good enough microphone with a decent enough camera. And that's it, right?

And I feel like with that, everything that you just mentioned besides the PC, am I wrong in saying El Gato is the go-to at this point? Mainly because they have focused so much on streaming and on the streaming experience of making it accessible and good,

enough at the very least with options to to upgrade as well in the sense of they have mics, they have cameras, they have lighting, they have all of it like what would you say Andy? I would say absolutely Elgado's helped us out a lot but only because we were so enthusiastic about their software

to begin with and their hardware. So I was always like buying Elgado stuff as it is I think Elgado's definitely made a lot of right decisions getting into different areas of hey, if you're not the hardcore gaming stream or a gaming streamer you don't need all this stuff. We made a more casual

line of stuff that's for people who are more budget conscious and people who want tech that isn't the most top of line but still very, very good and it's kind of going to get you by or whatever. You know, I was always like just get your little logitech whatever the hell web cam it was

and then Logado started coming out with their versions of it as well and they both have pros and cons but I would say like just get a decent enough camera you don't need the most amazing thing. You can also pop off like what I was just mentioning with a streamer like GingC or Sketch who go off of their headset mics. And like,

I don't recommend that. But damn, like there's a lot of people out there that have shown that you don't need any of that. You don't need the top of line tech to be, you know, something like I would say like, you should anyway. That's my thing is like you don't need that stuff.

I do think though that there is a baseline of, expectation and if you are expecting for people to actually want to listen to you and come back, I think that a mic is actually very important. I don't think that you need the mics that we're using right now that a lot of streamer, you can. You know? Oh yeah, yeah.

Like, streaming and this type of stuff is one of those limitless type of hobbies where you can always make it better and better and better. It doesn't need to be audio file quality though. Like there are mics out there like the Elgado Wave 3 that they have. And even now there's the

wave 1, I think it was called. That is more entry level in terms of budget, but the quality difference between using a headset mic and that is astronomical. Yeah, I mean, think of the amount of career started on blue microphones. Like, I had a blue all for the first, like, three or four years of streaming, you know?

Yetty snowballs, yeah. Yeah, the Yeti snowball, Mike, absolutely. These ones at Best Buy, you can just go and, you know, drop 60 bucks and get a really, really good mic. You got to kind of remember who you are, what kind of audience is going to be hanging out with you. And also, you have to remember, like, there's just kids out there that are just having fun streaming.

And like Andy said, right, I'm turning into some chat and they're just blaring music as loud as possible. But there's 150,000 people. They're just having a good time. So it depends on the audience you're trying to attract, right? Like there are certain people who want a nice crisp camera, a nice sounding microphone. And then there's just people having fun, just doing whatever. So you don't have to go crazy.

It depends on what kind of audience you and your gaming or your habits will entail. From a production standpoint, for people that are interested in that, I would say in terms of priority, audio should always be first because I feel like audio is going to be the takeaway. I always say this, no matter how pretty something is, if it doesn't sound good, like, it's shit. Like, that's the, if you're watching a movie and it sounds like garbage, it's like people can't turn that part off their head. There's something about the consistency and the through line of audio that I feel like you really need to be at least good enough. And again, I'm not saying you need to buy $400,000. Like there are $50 mics out there that are more than good enough. But beyond that, I would even say, because I know a lot of people are going to want to jump into like the super nice cameras, like the mirrorless cameras and getting that depth to feel like the type of cameras that we use.

I would say before you'd make that jump up, lighting is the next big thing because even a shitty camera with lighting is going to look better than an amazing camera with bad lighting. and lighting doesn't need to be anything crazy. It could just be lights that you have around you. At this point, there are so many different options. But again, Elgado has some really great ones to look into. Man, yeah, I'm such the basic guy. As Andy knows, I'm not the super tech guy. And so I go by just the basic brands that all these streamers have always talked about, right?

Like, I am an NZXT computer guy. I buy the basic NZXT. It's good enough for me. I buy the basic Algado stuff. It's been good enough for me. And so it's really fun because we can go down a list of way more computer people. We can talk about all the streaming stuff, but I've always just been the two basic brands

that have gotten me in at a cheap price, an efficient way to get in, and I'm often streaming. Yeah, and then, you know, free programs like OBS have made things just incredible. So that's what I want to ask you guys now. So we were talking a little bit out of the production tech and like needing a computer.

What are the, if you do not know about these applications, you can't even get into streaming? Yeah, so OBS would be the first one, right? And that's like the, that's the bare bones of it all. The free program, open broadcasting software that is constantly getting updated and being supported and they're finding new ways to kind of innovate and bring in other programs. And it's just really, really damn good. I'm just always impressed that it's still like a free

program. And I use Stream Labs OBS. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. I've like to do that to yourself. I use both. Andy has kind of walked me into using OBS more. I started with OBS. I went to Stream Labs OBS because I liked what they had done with making it easy for beginner streamers to kind of learn off of their tutorials and also integrate different things like alerts and different mixtures of I could sell merch through Stream Labs OBS. So like stream labs, when you look at it, Stream Labs itself as a website, they have a lot of things for beginner streamers to feel more comfortable as where OBS feels like it's just the bare bone streaming software. That's what you get. It's everything. They're both the exact thing. But the other one feels like a little bit more, hey, this is. beginner level we can teach you. Real quick. What is OBS? OBS is the program you used to go live on any of these platforms. And again, it's a free software. And if you bringing up stream labs OBS, it kind of reminds me of going with the PC versus the Mac. Yeah. Where stream labs OBS, stream labs is a program that is usually the kind of the first go-to you'd have to set up unalert on your stream when somebody follows and somebody leaves a tip when somebody subscribes or whatever.

You see that Streamlab thing pop up with that default sound, like, Jules play or whatever. And the neat thing about something like StreamLabs OBS is, StreamLabs OBS, like Michael was mentioning, has all of those things built in. So you can not only go live, but you can also hit, let me add an alert to this scene. Let me add a graphic to the scene or whatever.

And it's all sort of tied in together. They have your follows and recent events in there. Makes it a bit more user-friendly for sure. But I like OBS because it's definitely less weighty. Stream Labs OBS is built on top of OBS. So they, you know, they kind of like build. It's similar to getting like, you know, getting a Samsung Android phone where Samsung's putting their software on top of Android

instead of getting like the clean vanilla experience, you know. It also, I would say Stream Labs and my kind of experience runs worse more often. I feel like it's more taxing on the PC. Depending on what you're trying to do for streaming, it might be a little bit too much. And it's also just like, and this is just a preference thing. I think the interface of Slabs is sloppy. Slop me.

Slobby, you know, I don't like it. So here next to me, if you're watching the video, I have just like basic OBS up just so you can get an idea of just like, like the boys are saying. It is the very basic of like the software. That's what you get. And that's what you see. Now what's incredible about OBS, though, is that not only is it the program that you use to start streaming,

and they do make it very simple to be able to do that. And while it is more complicated than StreamLabs, OBS might be, once you look at a tutorial, it's pretty clear of what you need to do to make things happen. You make scenes. You can click between things. It's like fairly user-friendly. But what is incredible about it is that it's free, and it's also the best way to record footage.

So like it's not even just about the streaming. It's also a recording software. So if you want to record gameplay video, if you just want to screen capture record from your, like whatever's on your Google Chrome or whatever your browser is, or if you actually just want to record camera footage, webcam footage, whatever it is, if you want to record a vlog or something,

you use OBS to do that. There's a lot of more proprietary software that comes with different cameras and there's different ways to do it. But like OBS is the standard even of just, I'm going to talk to the camera and record. Yeah, back in the day when I would try to record gameplay footage off of whatever El Gatto's gameplay capture suite was, like that just, it felt so clunky and it just rarely, it rarely works smoothly, I felt. That brought me back to God, the early days, man. Yeah, and then I would say over the pandemic, when El Gada started their sort of campaign with like the wave microphones and the wave software suite.

That made things a lot easier for me. Because over the pandemic, we knew that things were going to get really complicated, trying to have audio routed certain ways. How is Mike going to hear my audio if I'm sending him my gameplay feed on Discord? And how are we going to make this sort of work from home thing work? And that's where I started looking into sounds sweets like, oh gosh, what's it called? Banana. Yeah.

Republic? Blanking on the name of it. I still use that to this day. Chat knows what I'm talking about. But it's an audio routing software. Voice meter. Thank you. And voice meter has a bunch of different versions of itself.

Voice meter banana was one of the versions. And I was like, oh, go with this one. And I was looking at tutorials. And it was very, very complicated. And it's node-based. So if you ever worked in like 3D software, like 3D textures software. If you worked in game dev, you know, like, here's this node. and I'm going to connect this texture to this like material.

It's just like it's, it was really, really complicated for me. Gurkbles? Huh? Purple's? Uh, greebles. Grebles.

And Nernies. We learned a lot last week. We learned a lot last week. Oh, nice. I like that. Gribles and Nernies. Um, but Wave 3 came along and just made it very, or the Wave software, rather, made things very, very user friendly.

Wave, not a perfect software. We get crashes a bunch. Like it, but I feel like it's, it's, rerout audio all the goddamn time. Like, even as an example, right? Just for Wavelink, sorry, really quick. Before we were going live with Games Daily,

Tim was like, oh, Chats saying that we weren't getting any standby audio. I had to go to Station 1, which is the computer that we actually stream from, to both YouTube and Twitch, and the WaveLink software had rerouted all of the audio for whatever reason over the weekend, which is, again, very fine. I know it makes it very organized of where you want to route audio,

but it's so inconsistent on, like, keeping shit where it is. And this is the thing that I feel like a perfect example of where we're at is WaveLink is incredible software that you do need to buy, unless I'm wrong about this now, you need to buy some. You need to buy the microphone. It needs to be a Wave bike from Elgada, which, again, I think is a worthy investment. One thing you can do if you don't want to use a Wave mic is like the Wave XLR. The Wave XLR, and you can just put it, plug in any.

XLR, but you need some sort of wave. A wave device for Melgano to be able to use the wavelength thing. So unlike OBS, which is just completely free, there is a financial investment to be able to use wavelength. I think Wavelink is incredible for what it offers because of the simplicity with versatility as opposed to something like voice meter that is so complicated. So it's a situation that's different than the Stream Labs OBS and more on just the, it's simple, but it works, but there's a lot of tech issues.

but I would argue the tech issues are worth it for how easy it is to actually use for whatever you might be needing to do as a streamer. When you start getting into the crazy audio stuff, yes, you're going to want to move on to something more complicated, but I'm incredibly impressed with how well wavelength works most of the time. Yeah. I also love my stream deck.

What is that? Stream deck is a little device that Elgado makes at a lot of different brands kind of have their own version. Yeah, Razor has one now. Yeah, Razor has one. The Elgado Stream deck is a little device. It's got a bunch of buttons on it. Beren's showing it off right now.

And that's how I set up what my scenes are and what I'm trying to do on stream. So I have my intro button that has just the video playing with the chat or whatever. And I could switch to the gaming thing, which then switches my OBS scene to my little window in the top left with the gameplay. It's also my soundboard. where I have all just these stupid sounds that I play. I also recently set it up to change my voice where I can use my microphone, and then OBS is so great,

this program called OBS, what we've been talking about for the last hour, and you can add filters on top of OBS to, and this filter I added, it adds reverb, and it's a little plug-in that I downloaded, it adds reverb, and now with a push of a button on that stream deck, bam, now my voice has reverb,

verb. And I can turn it off with the push of another button. I can push another button. And then I have like the Metal Gear Solid Kodak sound effect on my voice. So I can have that effect. And there's just so much versatility with these programs. And like you can just be really, really basic with all of it. And that's totally fine. But the amount of depth that there is is really staggering. Yeah. Like for how we use stream deck was like a lot of learning during the pandemic. And then once we went into this new, like, studio, right? Like, the way that Kevin has wanted to, like, integrate stream deck into how we run shows has been, like, very important.

Like, you can program so many steps with the push of just one button. Like, for example, right, at the beginning of this episode, right, you had the 50-second thing with Greg telling you all about the Pledge Month, and then that went into the intro for Gamescast, and then that went into here, and all of those steps of like playing that video, starting the recording, turning on the intro for the show, and then transitioning over to this scene, all that stuff, like you can integrate into just like a push of a button, essentially.

And you can go super in depth with it. And on top of that, Steam deck, there's now like... Stream deck. Sorry, stream deck. There's like four versions out now that have different formats. One's really tiny. The one Barrett was using is the Excel, so you get a shit ton of buttons. There's also the stream deck plus that has a little screen on it and a bunch of knobs in case you want knobs.

And the versatility is just insane. I would recommend a stream deck to pretty much anybody, even if you're not trying to stream, because there is so much functionality to it of just being able to make the buttons do whatever you want. And looking at them, looking at the ones with the knobs and all that stuff. What are some things you're like, oh, I wish there was just a button I can press to do that for just normal PC stuff? Like I don't really stream But when I'm at I have my stream deck at home and I use it every day Like just even just to open up different programs or

Just to like change the lights in my room like things like that Yeah I think at at one point Gary Gary would have had his stream deck Button set to do different of the Or what were they called in hell divers where you type in your little I'm blinking on the name of the word To where you would call in like your abilities or a stratagems Yeah. You can do so many different things with the stream deck.

And it's such a cool piece of hardware that I recommend people have. And there's a lot of, I mean, you can dive deep and like set everything yourself, but there's also a lot of program integrations into it. So like you can download an Adobe Premiere, like set of macros that go to your stream deck that you can then change the different like you're,

you're in editing mode or you're in color grading mode or you're like, whatever. It's like, and Photoshop has its own thing too. It's like there's a lot of versatility. that they kind of give you so you don't need to think about it. But if you have needs of like, oh, I wish I could do this. Chances are you can.

Yeah. There's been maybe like two or three times I've ever been like, I wish they could do it. I couldn't figure out getting it to work. And even then you put a little bit of thought into it, you can get it going. Like one of my things is I wish I could turn my monitor on. But because there's just not a way for like it over Wi-Fi to like turn the monitor, like just monitor on and off. But there's ways around it where it's like, okay, just plug your,

monitor into a smart plug and then the smart plug can then connect to Wi-Fi and then your Steam Deck can do it. Stream Deck. Wild shit. Wild shit. The funny, the, the most fun thing that we've had, like Kevin has, like, have been toying around with is, like, this thing called Companion that has a plug-in for Stream Deck that, like, even though this stream deck is plugged into the computer that's recording

and streaming, right, we have this ability to also control things that it's not directly plugged into. So I can just press this button. And then boom, it's controlling, you know, a different computer that's running our wall and, like, our light system and all that stuff. And so, yeah, again, it's stream deck's so cool. So damn. Mike, you have a piece of hardware on your screen up a little while ago. Yeah, I have the GoXLR.

I got really deep. When we talk about, like, people you attach yourself to early on to learn about streaming and audio tech and stuff, I really attach myself on to Harris Heller a long time ago of, like, learning from him, especially on the audio side of things. and also cameras and streaming. He had it all, right? And so I had gone through a lot. And so I had followed him and went over to the GoXLR. So I actually don't use Elgado microphones or the Wave link over on that. I used the GoXLR into one of our microphones,

the sure microphones we use here. And I actually really like it. Unfortunately, I think that brand went through a whole lot a couple of years ago where they laid everyone off and they were worried if it was still going to get updates. I don't know where it stands now. but that piece of tech is solid, right? From everything that I can control from that, changing my voices, being able to use that for sound clips as well.

It is all of that and more. So I really like to go XLR on that one. Very pricey, though, too. There's a lot of super chats we got. So I want to close the episode out here, going through all of these. I want to try to. Let's get going with Modogneik 96 saying,

what are the pros and cons of simulcasting on multiple platforms? I feel like we got into this a little bit. But, Mike, if you had to, succinctly say what are the biggest pros and cons of simul streaming? I would say right now in 2024, very minimal cons that I can think of. I think it's all pros, right? You're putting yourself out there to a larger net of audience that could join you. I think your cons are you have to manage a bunch of chats, which, you know, as crazy as that

sounds, you'll be able to figure that out on your monitor, having them all up. Maybe you have a restream similar to Barrett and Kevin where it brings it all together. But I think in 2024, if you're just starting or if you're in the, the middle, you should consider trying to stream everywhere and having a good time because I think it will net you out in a better place. I would say the biggest cons we talked about this a little bit earlier. But if you are trying to take this seriously and trying to get to that point where you're building yourself up, where you're actually getting paid and getting paid the right rates and stuff, focusing on one is going to allow you to like build that platform better and have

more focus. But to Mike's point, if you're not at that point of like focusing on the money, you're more just focusing on to like trying to get your name out there and see what hits. Being in multiple places, there's definitely the pros there. But the, having multiple chats,

I think the biggest hindrance to it isn't the behind the scenes tech side of having to get them all up. That's easy enough. It is splitting the community. Like that is not like we, I hate it. I wish it wasn't the case for us.

And on top of that, having to figure out the lowest common denominator of features between the two platforms to then be able to build your strategy around it. That, for us, it kind of funny has been the hardest thing of, all right, what is the equal to a Twitch sub on YouTube and what does it get people,

and emotes and all that stuff? Like, if you're going to be in more places than one, you need to make the call of either. Am I treating one is superior and a priority to the other? And then the, like, let's say Twitch is the focus. YouTube's just the gravy. Or are you like, hey, we treat both equally. So that means we need to make choices that way.

Absolutely. I also wanted to recommend just some content creators to kind of look out for for help. And, you know, there's a couple of content here as like Michael was just mentioning Harris Heller. Super, super good. I haven't seen a whole lot of videos from Harris Heller, but I know that Harris Heller is kind of heading up a brand called Aetum, A-I-T-U-M. And recently they kind of released some OBS plugin that allows you to do all the multi-Twitch stuff without it being a massive burden on your PC. So look out You know

Search for AITUM Dot TV Because they They came out with a plugin About a year and a half ago I think we were already in the new studio And they're continuing to kind of like You know iterate on those pieces of software

And those plugins and they're making it super helpful A plugin that lets you stream horizontal video Because that's what gameplay is But then it also can make a vertical version So it saves you a lot of time And it's like really really cool stuff Yeah because I hope to Maybe check this out really soon

Because I stream on when I do my dual Twitch to TikTok sort of streaming, I'm using the TikTok desktop app. And it's like, it feels very, very early days OBS where there's just a lot of stuff you can't do. And a lot of the hotkeys that I'm used to on OBS, whether it comes to like cropping my camera in the right spot, like all that stuff isn't quite there yet.

And this is hopefully a plugin that's meaning to do all that. But the reason I learned about this plugin was because of another really, really awesome content creator. And it's Nutty LMAO. Look up N-U-T-T-Y-L-M-A-O on Twitter. Nuddy puts out a lot of videos on whatever the newest, hottest plugins are, all the stuff that just makes street. Have you ever wanted to do this on OBS?

Have you ever wanted to have your video zoom out, animate, move to the time? Like, here's all these cool little plugins and tips and tricks. They're super, super awesome for all sorts of different tutorials. And then EPOSVox. EposVox. It would be the one that I, like, Harris Heller and EposVox are two people that I watch. Anytime a video comes through,

I at least look at it and like, am I interested in checking this out? Even if it's like them reviewing products I haven't heard of or don't really know. I want their take on this because I want to know. I trust them. They are authorities in the space. But EposVox is definitely somebody that cares about what we were talking about

what we were talking about early with Andy, about the tech quality side. Like, oh, they're going to get us where you need to go. Yeah, E POS, V-O-X. Epos Vox is incredible when it comes to learning, especially recently talking about all the recent Twitch changes that are happening when it comes to... API, the Codex. Yeah, when it comes to all the codex and streaming in really, really high quality and getting 1440P, 4K high quality, all that sort of stuff. They're the ones that I look to for the recent updates because Epos Vox and people like Maximilian dude kind of have early special access to these really, really,

advanced sort of tech stuff that Twitch is releasing and they're the ones that I'm always looking out for to kind of get me updated. We got Sky So Fly also saying is it better to stay dedicated to one platform or restream to multiple platforms. We kind of cover to the pros and cons there. Yang fam, Mike, this one's for you.

To everyone out there, pigeon pose and couch stretch for back health. Do these daily and thank me later. Thank you. I was doing a child position in the bed last night just trying to get my back loosened up. So thank you for that. Is that like the... That should just rest. Salute the sun.

Oh, yeah. Well, if you're doing your son salutations, you'll go back from downward dog into child's position. And that's where you just hold and you chill and everybody likes that and then you go back. Good little rest spot.

Oakley rides in and saying, what are the best parts of streaming on KF versus your own channels? Getting to create with others. I mean, it's really fun here. Kind of funny because I get to come in here with 11 people and kind of figure out what do we all like,

what does one person like, what is the audience like and how we can do that in this big, awesome, incredible studio with the help of Kevin and Barrack on production side and all of these guys with their fun ideas. I think it's a more collaborative experience than I've experienced when it was just me streaming at night. Yeah. I mean,

they both have pros and cons with the, like streaming at home. Since I'm the one running it, I have more access to just like, let me open up Photoshop, make this PNG, put it up, you know, silly bit.

I've, anytime I would die in bloodborn or if I beat somebody, I'd put up like a special graphic. I was like, oh, we should update that. Let me put up a gamer hydrated, a little graphic up top. And, you know, all that stuff is like a lot easier because I'm the one controlling all of it and quicker access. But yeah, for the kind of funny side, it's, it's the multiplayer games, it's laughing, it's the goofiness. There's not a whole lot that I would say is different apart from just being alone, whether, because when we play at home, we're on Discord anyway. Yeah, we're playing together. Yeah. We got Lemon Bendy, why doesn't it kind of funny stream on TikTok more often?

And what could TikTok change in order to attract you to the platform? It's always hard with kind of funny because we do so many different things and different shows. And we live stream in a way that I think very few other people do, where it is, we kind of treat it more like TV than we treat it like we're Twitch streamers, you know? Like our gameplay streams, obviously, we have been doing that for a long time. And I do think that that is treating it a bit more like actual streaming. But otherwise, like what we're doing right now, it's kind of just like a TV show's on. And we're streaming that TV show. So that makes it harder to get audiences that actually want that stuff in all the different places.

And we always try to when there's an opportunity, it's like we want to be everywhere. There's no reason not to. But we've found sometimes when it's like, all right, right now we're doing Twitch and YouTube. And it's working great. when we've added TikTok in the past, we just didn't see the demand there. And like TikTok's in a different place now. I want to be everywhere.

But there also just hits that point of, all right, we're already putting out a lot of content and putting a lot on Kevin and Barrett to make sure that the stream's working everywhere. And what if the TikTok stream for some reason just stops working 35 minutes into the show? We can't really be like,

hey, we got to stop everything we're doing to figure that out. So I think that's the reason we're not on it is just everything we add causes more potential for issues. And so we need to decide, is this worth that or not? And I would say so far, it hasn't been for TikTok. But I'd love to see that change. I agree. Yeah, I would love to be everywhere as well.

It's just it's an extra step. It's an extra piece of software. It's something else to kind of look at and have in mind that when you're up there, I've had streams on TikTok that I'm live for two hours and there's three viewers. And I've had streams that kind of like suddenly pop off out of nowhere because you're playing some random game with a certain amount of access. It's weird. It's random.

It's pretty inconsistent, I would say. Bobby Joe says, do you need a capture card for a console while streaming on Twitch to post vids on YouTube? Or is there an easy way to get the Twitch vids to YouTube? No, you could definitely, I mean, through Twitter. Twitch, you can have your YouTube signed in and there's a immediate sort of export to YouTube or whatever. I don't love doing that because of the quality.

I don't love doing that because I don't want to have all of the breaks there. I don't want to have a long intro being sent over to YouTube. I want to have all that stuff being able to cut out. On my keyboard, I have hotkey set up to where I have start record and pause. Start and stop record and pause and pause. so whenever I want to start my vaude, that's when I hit the button. Whenever I go to the rest of you,

my hit pause, you know. Twitch is in the chat, and they're asking for Barrett to come back. Barrett, can you come back? Hi, Twitch. He's here. Say hi,

don't. Oh, that's Zach Ryan. That's got, that's that guy. Yeah. What are you going to say, Barrett? I don't fucking remember.

Oh, we were talking about, like, TikTok and stuff as well. There's also always a fear of kind of what you were saying earlier, Tim, of spreading out your audience. Like, even between, like, Twitch and YouTube, I think that's been a good balance because we saw such a positive reception in, like, numbers of streaming on YouTube while not affecting Twitch all that much. And then, like, there is the, you know, the possibility and the fear of, like, the more platforms you're streaming on all at once, the more you're watering down specific thing. and that's another thing that you have to think about as well and realistic growth on those platforms

after that initial kind of launch on a new platform. Yep. Also, if something dies, then Kevin and I have to figure it out while we're still streaming while also cutting cameras while also taking time codes and no. Yeah, it's just a lot. It adds up. Cozy Bear reiterating something we said earlier, for those that want to learn OBS Nuddy,

a YouTuber slash streamer has a lot of great and funny tutorials on how to level up your OBS skills. Very recommended. Yes. I watched some nutty videos last week when I streamed from home for the first time for the Comic-Con reaction stuff and made it very simple to get going.

Bobby Joe says, do you have to pay for stream labs for console use? I've been trying to stream off my Xbox, but I have zero clue how to go about creating overlays. No. No, not at all. I mean, when it, to stream off a console, you're, you still have a PC, I'm assuming, because, or you're streaming directly from the console.

So you're the one, you're just hitting go live from your Xbox. I think they mean you're playing like, or you're plugged into the PC. Yeah, you're plugged. Now you have that and you're probably, probably overlays to me, mean like nice graphics is what you would be. Right, yeah. You can buy those or download those for free from Stream Labs, LBS. That's what I did early on. And then you always go to Fiverr.

You'll find someone out in the community. who will make them for you if you want that kind of look. All you got to do is just tweet out graphics, Twitch, stream, and then you'll have all these bots kind of pop them and be like, hey, I love your, I love your look, I love your stream. I would love to create assets for you. Yeah, don't worry about like the most professional type stuff. Not at all.

We always point out something. We always kind of have to remind, you know, someone like Kevin, right? Because Kevin's like so, Kevin comes, you all come from the IG in background. You have so buttoned up and it's like it's a production. and then we always have to remind people like the biggest streamers in the world will just sit there in silence for about 10 minutes and then they'll sit up, they'll go to the rest of you

and they'll come back, you know, like it's okay to just have your camera on top of your gameplay maybe you want to put your name on the thing use OBS to do that. There's a lot of simple things to do. A lot of free stuff, a lot of free. Simple. Yeah. A lot of free assets. Scar says, thoughts on V-tubers. Why do they choose this?

When Mike was a bear and Andy was a cat, it was amazing. I mean, go for it, Mike. I think it's fun and different. I think it's cool. You know, I think Andy will tell you, we'd love to turn off the lights and the camera sometimes and just relax and be able to have that. I think it's a cooler way than, you know, the non-camera streamers, if you could make it like that, it's very cool, right?

You also, you know, don't share your identity, which is also can be one thing if you'd like to keep that secret. On top of that, I think the V-tuber look is pretty fun and different. It's something I'm not really accustomed to. I'm not really big into V-tubers, but I think it's novel. I think it's fun, and especially when you see, like, something like Code Mika, who does really cool stuff in that kind of space. You can find cool stuff. I like that.

Yeah, I think it's just a preference. I think it's people getting super creative with with how they can portray themselves on screen. Because you can do so much stuff with that little avatar that you are, when it comes like special effects, you can get really, really creative with that output. And I also just think it's a neat way to kind of create your own OC, you know? You're creating a little character for yourself. And it's engaging in a different way. I don't really watch too many v-tuber, like, Twitch streamers or, like, live streamers, but, like, it's a little different, but I watch a lot of YouTube videos, like, retro game breakdowns or even just, like, just any conversation about gaming.

And it's like they use, like, animated avatars and stuff. Like, even thinking about, like, Aaron from Game Grumps back in the day, like, just having all that stuff, like, really creating that style. I think it's cool because it's, like, it's engaging content that you're looking at on screen where not everything needs to be B-roll exactly about what they're saying. because now as they're saying something, there can be cuts and frames of emotion that you're seeing through these little characters. I think it's cool. Alec Bobco says,

do you guys have any favorite plugins for OBS? Some of the people need to check out is the vertical and multi-stream plugins from a company called Aitem, like Andy was talking about. Are there any other plugins that y'all want to shout out? That's Andy. I don't use any, I don't think.

I would, I mean, I just like messing with sound sort of plugins. So I would just look up VST 2 OBS plugins Like I think that's the best thing you can do because it has to be VST 2 It can be VST 3 But if you're looking at VST 2 plugins And you'll find

Better noise gate options Better noise gate options than the ones that come with OBS natively You'll find better sound boards, equalizers for sound You'll find stuff for your camera Like I downloaded a really cool plugin when we did the cyberpunk stream when we had the

Nvidia sponsored stream to do cyberpunk and I made it look like I was on a like a scan line monitor right and you know those are little visual effects you can download to be really creative with the look and how you want your stream to look I would straight up just look

like I would straight up just YouTube like best VST plugins for OBS. Yeah I like that. Maybe Andy will teach me some One of the one I want to throw it out is just like also look for just like fun scene transitions. Like that was something that we were playing with with like work from home was like moving sources from scene to scene. So like whenever I run a show nowadays like Games Daily from home, you'll see like the two host boxes. They'll move down into the bottom right corner and then like B-roll will pop up instead of just like a normal kind of like, let's see, like a fade like this, right?

And so just like, you know, find some stuff, have fun with it, see what you like. Yeah. And then the final Super Show of the day to close out the show, James Morris says, how important is branding on social media? I went from SUP I'm James 07 to not so famous James to stream slash create short form content under that name. Did Mike and Andy have a hard time creating their brands? I mean, no. I mean, I had head start, like, I mean, 90% of my community is from the kind of funny community. Like, I think it's easy to kind of go live when you know you're going to have a certain amount of viewership there.

But to create the brand, I just, I'm very visual with my stuff. I love making graphics. I love making my stuff look a certain way. And I don't really know if I have like a visual identifier, maybe just like the color schemes that I use or whatever. I didn't go with a, I used to be, I used to have Maximum Cortez. and then I just switched to Andy Cortez and I just found that easier to kind of get that name all over the place.

I don't know, I don't really have great advice there, I would say. It felt like back in Twitch 2015, a lot of the brands or like the logos you'd see as like their little identifiers where a lot of like created hand-drawn stuff now it's just people's faces. It very much feels like just your face seems to be the new current trend.

And of course that's whatever you preference, you know, but like that seems to be, it's not the logos anymore like I used to see back in the day. Yeah, there's so many people on TikTok that I don't know their names, but I see them all the damn time because they're just gaming TikTok people talking about the most recent news or whatever. And so maybe that is a branding issue. Maybe I wouldn't know them more had I seen their logo on screen or whatever.

But yeah, that's a tough one. I feel like it's so hidden miss. I don't think that it'd be a surprise for anybody to hear this for me, but I think branding is like the most important thing, but I also think it's not something you need to over. think. Like I feel like sometimes you hear branding and you think, oh man, I need this like entire thing. Your brand can just be Andy Cortez. If you're building the brand that people know that name and what when they hear that, they can associate what that's what they're going to get from it. Like you don't

necessarily need a fancy ass logo. That stuff's fun. And I think that all that enhances the brand when there's thought put into it. Just having fancy colorways and fancy transitions and fancy stuff. If you're using the exact same transitions and exact same kind of design line, language that everyone else is, that is actually not helping you stand out. Like, I feel like it's all about keeping things as simple as possible so that whatever your name is, have the same name everywhere. Because if you're like, well, I'm pushing my TikTok, Twitch and YouTube, but I have different names on all three, you're doing yourself a disservice there.

Like, that's where I think brands important is whatever's most important to you should have branding. But that branding doesn't need to be designed. It just needs to be choice. Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, shout to Leo King. I've just been going by Snowbike Mike.

and that was just a nickname. You know, we never really thought of that. We just did it. Yeah, and here we are. Here we are. That's the thing. I want to finish out one because there is a good one. You know, consistency is key we always talk about.

And people get down of, well, I work a full-time job. I'm tired as all can be. And I would say, as someone who has done that, you can do it. You just got to give your best effort. You've got to keep trying. You'll have your ups and your downs. But as someone who used to work outside, inside, inside, and freezing temperature, shoveling snow every single day.

for eight to 10 hours a day. I came home and I streamed and I had a blast. So if it's fun for you, you can make that happen. Take a night off. Chill. Come back the next night. Like,

this isn't go kill yourself every single day, but you can do it and you can work the full-time job at the same time. Yeah, I usually find that once I go live, then I'm on, it's just the convincing myself to be on is like always the, that's always the barrier for me. Because, yeah,

it could be, you know, it could be tiresome. I've done the thing where we've talked on kind of funny for five to six hours in a day And then you go home, it's like, do I really want to do that more? I already, I feel like I had that long full-time shift that Best Buy. Like my throat's tired. I just feel my voice kind of like, you know, horse or whatever.

Your social battery depleted. Yeah, but then once you hit Go Live and then you start kind of talking to it's like, okay, you activate, you know. Yeah. And we didn't really talk about like our passions and what got us all in. It's, you know, it's all about having fun. Step one, if you're not having fun, then we're not doing this. So make sure you're having a good time. Pick the game that you like.

Do the thing that you enjoy. People will come. You should never get down about numbers. You shouldn't even be worrying about that stuff. I mean, the first three years, five years, I was streaming to my mom and my ex-girlfriend at the time. There was no one there. Actually, I got viewers off of someone that was trolling me

that had so much fun trolling me that they came back after day after day. Shout out to that kid, toxic. Toxic? Yeah. I'm glad to see you grow up. up. That was really awesome to see, right? Made lifelong friends in all of my group of friends because of Twitch streaming.

So, yeah, you should never get down because no one's watching it. It will happen over time. You just got to try. I had somebody in my chat on Saturday pop in and say, you ain't Kyson at, Lilbrough? And guess what? Probably had the follow button. Probably a little 12 year old white kid somewhere. Lilbrow. Well, thank

you guys for this. This has been a very fun episode, a little different for us, but I like it a lot. I hope that y'all liked it a lot as well. Let us know in the comments below if you did. If you have other questions or if you have any advice streaming, I know a lot of you stream yourselves. I see it in the chat, but also we see you guys all the time popping off on all the different social medias and streaming platforms doing really cool stuff because there's an amazing creative community out there and we love to see that. But we are about to lead into our just chatting stream, Mike and Nick in a couple minutes.

Going to catch up and have some fun with all of y'all, catch up about their entire weekends and the stories of everything that might have happened. but until next time, love you all. Goodbye.