The Very Start
Picture this. It’s 2016. Before Beam changes over to Mixer, before everything changed. You’re a viewer who came across this site looking for new content to explore. You come across this streamer who you believe to be awesome as anything.
For me, that streamer was @BeeYooHQ. She was the very first streamer I ever watched, not just on Beam, but ever. She was the reason I kept coming back to the Platform. BeeYoo streams not only gameplay from all different types of Indie games, but she also streams some ASMR, so there is something for everyone! BeeYoo is also an Ambassador for several Indie Developers! Want to see what I mean and what makes her streams so captivating? Pop over to her channel on Twitch!
But from here, I started discovering different streamers and content creators on the platform.
The Change to Mixer
Beam was bought by Mixer in the August of 2016. In Early 2017, Beam was rebranded to “Mixer”, Since finding BeeYoo, I have found many other content creators, many of which I still watch to this day (on Twitch, more about that later.) One streamer in particular caught my eye at this time. After spending a lot of time in his channel, I asked if he could take a chance on me and make me a moderator of his channel. He took that chance and said yes.
During this time, I spent a lot of time researching many chat bots. This then led me to working on his chat bot creating some cool interactive experiences we haven’t seen before! This extended to creating cool new experiences using the amazing “MixPlay”. This allowed streamers to create “Interactive Boards” that appeared under the stream.
Soon after this, my time with this streamer had ended. Some creative differences meant we had to part ways. But by this point I had created myself a name across Mixer, working with several Mixer Partner’s and other streamers creating great new viewer experiences.
Why had I never streamed before?
It’s January 2018, I start thinking to myself “I could do this… I could do the whole streaming thing.” And so, armed with my knowledge of Mixer, the features I could use, and with the hardware I had at the time (A basic PC that could barely play PUBG) I started streaming. Primarily Jackbox thanks to Mixers Ultra-Low latency. I started creating my own community and formed some lasting friendships, many of which are still going!
It was at this point I decided to revive a project myself and my friend Apocalyptic started in 2015. You see back then, I was creating (very rarely mind) videos on YouTube with my friend. Playing Minecraft and just simply having fun. But at this stage, Generation Gamers needed a new function. Generation Gamers was no longer the YouTube project we had once worked on. It became the new basis of a stream team community.
In October 2018, I made my first major investment into myself and my streaming career. I upgraded my PC and streaming gear, so that I could start using a webcam and stream other games aside from Jackbox! The following 18 months that proceeded were some great months, continuing to build on the success of my growing stream team, and continuing to build on my career.
In June 2020 however, Microsoft announced it was closing Mixer. It was here I needed to make some serious decisions about my future of a content creator. Having created a 600 follower strong community on Mixer, where next would I take my community. This took a while to decide, however I settled on Twitch by the end of June. As of 2nd July 2020, I became a Twitch Affiliate.
Learning to Code
Its 2021. Coronavirus has caused many of us to live in a lockdown state for almost a year now. And I wanted to challenge myself to do something I had never done before. I wanted to learn how to code. I wanted to create myself a Discord Bot.
I started by going all out following tutorials on YouTube on how to make a Discord Bot in C# (I know weird choice to pick. But GG I guess?) – GG-Bot was born. First only having the bare basics of announcing when people joined the discord (and left) and a basic XP system rewarding people for chatting in the Discord.
Almost a year later. GG-Bot has multiple Integrations including Music Playback, Twitch notifications, Automatic Announcement Posting and even (from what I’ve seen anyway) a one of a kind Quotes system. GG-Bot is rapidly growing in features. But to this day, it still remains a relatively private bot, being made primarily for Team GG.