Being a streamer is amazing. It is a unique form of content creation that not only allows you to play your favourite games but also do that whilst sharing it with a community you built. However, being a small streamer isn’t for the faint of heart, let me tell you about my experience.

During Lockdown in 2020, I like everyone else was bored. Bored of gaming. Bored of my schedule. Just bored. I was telling that to my friend on the phone and he suggested that I start a Twitch account and stream my gaming sessions. I paused for a second and then thought, what a fun idea, let’s do it. Thus TheTwistedEcho was born.

I am an Xbox gamer so my first hurdle was working out exactly how to stream. The result was using the Twitch app. It is a very basic but easy way to stream content. You can’t add a facecam, overlays or do anything fancy but you can stream.

You just load up the app on your Xbox, put in a title and then start playing. The first game I streamed was Red Dead Redemption: Two which I played with my friends. We didn’t get any viewers but it was so much fun. 

For me, the idea people could watch me (even if they didn’t) was exciting, it was new and it revolutionised how I approached gaming. I had found my cure for boredom. 

I continued streaming on the Twitch app for a few months and started to get the hang of it. I learnt the importance of networking by joining small streamer groups, I learnt how to manage chat and ensure it’s moderated and I also became much more confident being behind the mic.

As I began to grow, so did my love for the hobby which pushed me to begin upgrading. First, I changed programs to Lightstream.

Lightstream is a software that allows you to add overlays, a face-cam and alerts to your streams on Xbox. I hired an artist to design me an overlay package and self made some alerts. These upgrades felt good, I had yet to hit affiliate (Twitch’s term for being a streamer, it allows people to subscribe to you too) but I started to feel more professional.

I had also started to form connections and begin to build a small community. I had people who would come back stream after stream with several being from outside the UK including South Africa and America.

I had begun to make streamer friends who I regularly played with, several whom I still speak to now and we meet in person often.

Then after a few months of work I hit affiliate and it felt amazing. I began earning from my hobby. It felt like all my hard work was paying off. This led me to invest further and buy a camera (Logitech C920) and actually show my face on streams which was a huge step.

I also got into a great routine, I found myself more motivated to do my other passions such as writing and exercise. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier within myself than my first two months of affiliate.

However, after about six months of streaming, growth began to slow down. Viewer averages began to plateau and as we came out of lockdown, people began to get understandably busy. Regulars couldn’t come by as frequently, less newcomers were coming in and often it felt like I was the only one there. Streaming became a little lonely.

This was when it became a bit of a numbers game for me. I would pay a lot more attention to my viewer counts, stopping streams early if it dipped below three. I would compare averages and based my content on what people wanted to see, not what I wanted to play.

I knew at the time, this wasn’t good for my own mental health. I was internalising everything. ‘Am I not good enough? Should I quit? What game will bring in more people?’ These were all questions I would regularly ask myself. It turned this hobby which had been so great for me into a chore. I stopped keeping routine and my energy started to drop.

This led to huge burnout. I grew to resent streaming and I could recognise this. So, I started taking breaks. I decided on taking a week. This allowed a bit of a reset and for one or two streams it worked. However, all the problems I faced previously lingered and eventually my negative mindset returned.

My next idea was to completely overhaul my channel. I got to work and came up with series ideas that were ambitious but exciting. One example was a Skyrim roleplay series featuring other video game characters trapped in the game, try and think Spiderman: No Way Home vibes. They were at their core fun and creative which was a boost I needed.

I created graphics and teasers for each series before doing a goodbye stream and hanging up the mic for a month to get to work. Ultimately, this wasn’t enough. The changes I was making were good, they helped to slowly begin to readjust my mindset back to what it was when I just hit affiliate.

However, once I returned and began showing off my new ideas, very few members of my original community returned. This was even more demoralising because of the work I had actually put into the content. Looking back now I had stopped networking and trying to grow, I just hoped people would randomly stumble across videos which unfortunately is growing less and less likely as years go by.

With low viewer numbers, fading motivation and my next adventure of university on the horizon I slowly faded out streaming and my time on Twitch ended.

Upon reflection, I know I grew to have an unhealthy relationship with content creation and took the fun out of it for myself by being unable to manage low numbers. However, I did take away a lot from this experience. My three biggest takeaways were:

• Connections are everything. By reaching out to smaller content creators, you join their network of people. They will support you if you support them whether they sit in your streams, send over their viewers or introduce you to people. You also can make some amazing friends throughout this hobby, I definitely did.

• Make the content you want. If you decide to make a piece of content because you think it will bring in good numbers but you don’t actually enjoy it, it can remove the fun from it. If that content doesn’t do as well as you hoped, your motivation for continuing that series or to try again will be significantly lower compared to if you just love doing it. 

• This hobby can be quite expensive, whether it’s commissioning a logo, paying for a platform subscription or the tech itself there is a chance you will need to put some money behind your brand. Don’t feel pressured into getting the very best things because the big streamers do, I wanted the best and now know it wasn’t necessary. Your viewers will connect with you, not the tech you use.

These three things are what I learnt but what’s special about content creation is that no one’s journey is ever the same. If you get it right and approach it with a positive mindset, starting content creation is so much fun. I have fond memories of my time on twitch but know that right now it isn’t the right time to return.

That being said, I still periodically upload content to my YouTube as and when I fancy it which I’ve found is the best approach for me. I learnt a lot about myself through my time on Twitch and earned some great friends but I also learnt that it is far from easy.  

However, if you’re reading this and have been considering getting behind the camera, I say do it, who knows what might happen?