A Game Developer’s bittersweet experience of being an Animal Crossing Streamer (Part 3 of 3)
Hi there! Welcome to the third and final part of this story.
Once again, my name is Timothi Ellim, and I am a video game developer who is currently the acting Creative Director of The Doodle People studio in Singapore. Daily, I work with a diverse team of awesome developers from all walks of life to create interactive experiences that connect generations.
This is a three-part story of my attempt at being an Animal Crossing Streamer during the first month and a half of my work-from-home life due to the Covid-19 lockdown.
Every day, I played Animal Crossing for a month live on the internet. Because of that continuous playing and live streaming, I connected to players across the world, and found a community of both lofi music and animal crossing lovers. In the end, the “Lofi beats to play games with by Timothi Ellim” Facebook page reached a following of 2000+ with a total of 1900+ likes. Yet after a month, it all felt bittersweet. Why? Read on!
If you’ve already read the first two parts, welcome to the end!
Part 3 of 3 — Reflection
An anathema to the way I play
I play games to explore, to adventure through possibilities that are offered. Games are a system made of rules and I play the game to test out the questions and ideas I have in relation to the designed system. What if I did this, or what if I did just that? I quite enjoy spending minutes staring at a world designed by a team of developers from somewhere in the world. Sometimes I chase main objectives, but most often, I ponder around, live in the experience, play with the virtual objects, and when inspiration strikes, act out the ideas in my head on the world.
There are many ways to play games, and streaming a game online turned out to be a method of play that I struggled with. At first, I thought it was just about me being uncomfortable with a new way to play, and so I created a schedule for myself to create more videos:
- Read up on the latest Animal Crossing news, check out other streamers content.
- Ideate potential episode goals.
- Schedule the episodes into dates and times of the week.
- Share the week’s schedule with the page, groups and friends.
- Double check and setup the stream online.
- Share the link to the upcoming stream to groups and friends.
- Play the game and interact with the viewers.
- Unwind after the stream.
- Share snippets of the stream when available.
- Rinse and repeat.
Ten steps to do on a weekly basis, with streaming happening when scheduled. Now that I reflect on the experience, I found that I enjoyed planning out the episodes ahead of time, and being immersed in the game while performing my role as an entertainer.
At times, I wanted the game to create more unexpected surprises so that the streams would be less monotonous. I wondered about what I would do if I ran out of content. Most importantly, I really wanted to talk to people while on the stream.
The best parts of streaming Animal Crossing were always when someone would ask a question or would comment on an activity. Their interaction made me feel like alive, recognized, and no longer transient as another digital human. The worst part was that I was playing the game to continuously elicit that feeling of being a real human online.
Digital Performers Connect Faceless Digital Humans
Streaming has created a whole new way of interacting with content and the digital audience. Streamers are the nouveau method of connection in this interconnected digital world, where a majority of human lives are spent online.
We stare for hours at our screens, consume content, and through that consumption, are able to connect with others in real life.
What makes us feel human when we’re online?
I have watched streamers, I have seen their content help people, at times given others a reason to get up and face the day. I have come to realize that streamers give a face to a faceless digital world. Streamers play in the moment, their content is live, it is real, it is life in action. To watch a stream is to be in the literal moment with someone else while playing a game. You react with their reactions, you can talk with them through chat, sometimes you can even play games with them.
I enjoyed that connection with the audience in the moment. I really enjoyed the experience when I finally opened up the Animal Crossing Island to others. That part of being a streamer made me feel real online.
A Fishing Tournament to Remember
In that moment, both them and myself became real online. We became human and that was all that mattered.
In April, Animal Crossing held a Fishing Tournament Event. The event was designed with multiplayer in mind, which meant having friends over to the island to help fish.
I had a plan to open up the island to the audience of the stream! In doing so, I found a part of streaming that continues to be endearing — the interactive social connection.
A video of the Fishing Tournament event stream can be found below!
I remember being worried that no one would show up. I remember cleaning up the island and creating a path way to the town center so that other players wouldn’t get lost. Most of all, I remember the fun and laughs of playing with others online.
Most of the people who came by the island to play the event with me were strangers but I felt closer to them, especially when we talked through the chat. In that moment, both them and myself became real online. We became human and that was all that mattered.
How do we be human online when our entire existence is still very much based in a physical reality?
The Bittersweet Digital Reality of Humanity
The connection we have online as digital humans pales in comparison to the connection we share as physical humans in real life, and that is the bittersweet realization of attempting to be a streamer.
Where we are at right now in 2020, has really shown that our digital infrastructure is too nascent, too underdeveloped to fully express us as physical tangible humans. Yet, a majority of communication takes place through the digital world. We learn about the rest of world, about each other, and about the happenings of humans through our screens.
We need to be more real as digital humans, we need to be more than just a photo, a video, and a name. We need to be more than the total amount of likes, the posts we select, or the number of LinkedIn connections we have. The connection we have online as digital humans pales in comparison to the connection we share as physical humans in real life, and that is the bittersweet realization of attempting to be a streamer.
In streaming Animal Crossing, I realized that what I craved was not to be real online, but to answer a question of my own connection. The more I used digital media to connect, the more I felt less real, less physically tangible.
Just like how I used the data analytic tools to find others to connect to, so too did I end up feeling like a bunch of data points. Online, we have the opportunity to not be ourselves, we can create an entirely new digital persona to encapsulate our physical being, and in doing so, can strip out what we deem as undesirable and showcase what we believe to be desirable. Yet, in real life, we are who we are, human, and we are beautifully flawed.
Streaming is the first wave of many new styles of digital experiences that offer us the opportunity to express and connect through ourselves as humans in realtime. Even as performers or as curated personas, their streams and content offer us a way to interact digitally and come to realize who we are as individuals.
Yet, let us not forget the opportunity that games have given us, especially multiplayer games. In games, we recreate ourselves as digital entities. We make our faceless intangible digital human existence into a digital reality. In doing so, we are able to connect on a deeper level through a system of play.
Through games, we can explore, we can socialize, we can compete, and we can achieve. Together we can play. Together we can be human; beautifully flawed. Together we can fail, die, revive, and continue to play with the infinite digital lifetimes we have, so that we can further develop and understand the finite physical lifetime we live.
