With A Little Help From My Friends #blaughust Day 16

Yesterday I did a bunch of streaming, and it was fun – I even started a dwarf on LOTRO.  As I was streaming everything seemed to be working OK and it was fun – I will admit, this new streaming is a lot of fun and it’s much easier to set up than my old method with the ‘over the shoulder’ camera, with Carl the camera-bear and trying to make sure everything was lined up right… this was I can just start playing, hit the quick-key to start the stream, and then I kind of forget about it….

After I finished streaming and went back to watch some of the recordings, I realized that the sound was off – my voice was much too quiet, game noise was too loud… you can hear me, but it’s not great.  I knew I needed to fix it but I didn’t know to adjust it and make sure it sounded right while I was streaming without a lot of trial and error.  This morning I realized the simple answer – it’s a stream, I could ask people to jump in and listen and tell me how it sounded! 

That’s something I love about the gaming community I’m a part of – everyone is really great and lies to help each other out.  I’ll admit, I’m not a ‘group’ gamer – I’m a furry monster, and I play at strange hours and on weird random schedules, so I don’t have people that I ‘always see online’, there’s not a group I get together with for ‘Tuesday Gaming Night’ – I’d love to, I’ll admit, but life can be challenging sometimes and we have to make other plans.  That’s OK, though, because when I need help with something I have so many great game fans and friends I always get the help I need.

This morning I wanted to see if I could get my audio issues sorted out, and I posted to Twitter to see if anyone was around who could help – just jump on my Twitch stream and see if it sounded better after a few tweaks.  In about a minute, Sophia Lifecaster said she could jump on, and she graciously helped me work through my audio issues as I played LOTRO for a while. Chrissy jumped on too, and I got great feedback – I’m pretty sure all my issues are resolved (at least for now – I hear Twitch can be a little finicky at times)

And that’s just one of how many dozens of times I reached out to the community for help and got it – I’m really so appreciative of that.  I might not belong to a big guild or gaming group, but as cheezy as it sounds, I consider all my friends and fans my gaming ‘family’ and I know I can count on so many of them when I need help.  After over five years, that’s the best thing I’ve gotten out of this blog – it might seems silly, I don’t know, but I truly appreciate it.