An Interlude With Meho

Last night I viewed a stream that Meho2007 was doing on Twitch. I managed to get him between games – he’d just finished one and was moving on to Halo by the time I left. When I dropped in I said Hi to Meha and the chat. Meho, who is very loud, immediately shouted out Hi back, and told the chat (about 48 people) that I was FacelessJim’s dad. There were several people I’d met online before, and lots that I hadn’t. A number of people said hi back. Meho went on (again very loudly, I think his internal amp is set to 11!) to tell them about my blog and how Faceless (and friends, as it turns out) are helping teach me how to game online, as I’ve mentioned in the first blog posts that I’ve done on here. He also told them the blog site url, and posted it for others to go to.

All this time Meho’s close-up camera was on as he was preparing packs of Pokemon cards that he was selling, and preparing for a giveaway game that happened a few minutes later. His regular camera was set to record him – standing and pacing up and down and dressed in a grey tank top. I suspect he works out as he kept pulling the shirt up to reveal an impressive set of abs and pecs. At one point he stopped and suddenly shouted “everyone go follow Old Geezer (me) – he’s going to start streaming soon and needs followers!” A few minutes later I had a look at my site – the number of followers had jumped from 3 when I first signed on, to 13 after Meho’s shoutout. I figured I’d better get on there & start streaming asap (see next blog post for how that went).

Shortly after the shoutout, the stream took a more emotional turn, with Meho revealing that a friend of his had died about 15 years earlier, and he started talking about his friend, and shedding a few tears along the way. Chat was very supportive, with others revealing heartbreaks that they had had in their lives. Meho walked out of the frame for a few minutes to compose himself, then came back and continued opening packs and commenting on the cards in it. I had to leave at that point.

I had no idea before I started this project that gaming could become such an intensely personal experience, allowing for the expression of deep emotion and compassion. I had thought it was a place where little was said and the gaming experience was paramount. How wrong that impression was.

First live stream

Picture of Old Geezer's Xbox controller — `Old Geezer's nifty looking controller`

Monday night was my first live stream. FacelessJim set us up for a game in Grounded. Much to mastervara77‘s chagrin, a new home base had to be built separate from the one they had set up in their previous game. However, the fourth participant, gymleadrbryan happily spent much of the game constructing a home base, stopping occasionally to fight spiders and ants and things. He did disappear for a while when a monster spider attacked him – apparently he’s not very fond of spiders. In a masterstroke of subtle humour FacelessJim named the home base “The dog park,” in reference to our mission of “teaching an old dog new tricks.” mastervara77 was much amused by that, as evidenced by her laughter about 25 seconds in to the recording, which can be seen on FacelssJim’s channel embedded below. Unfortunately, Twitch doesn’t have a nice embed interface, so it’s just an url to click on instead of a pretty picture.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1802830673

First up was to select a character – I chose Pete, because he looked like the nerdiest of the options. A short explanatory video gave the backstory – the town’s teens were all going missing, turns out they were being shrunk in a “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” type of scenario. FacelessJim had me learn the controls. Once explained they seemed fairly easy, and will get easier with practice. I finally figured out (with FacelessJim’s assistance) how to move around the world we found ourselves in. After a while, he showed me how to pick up objects and how to zip into the inventory to get things. Lots of fun.

I was online with them for a couple of hours, before marital duties called me away (my wife and I watch television together starting around 10 pm for a couple of hours). Even though I got killed by giant spiders and things a few times, it was quite enjoyable. Probably the best part was when I finally got an axe and a spear and was practicing. The one button on the controller swings the spear or axe, and the one underneath it throws it. Once I figured that out by accidentally throwing instead of swinging I had a great time throwing it, because FacelessJim, who was shepherding me throughout the experience, would retrieve it from wherever it ended up and bring it back to me, just like a pet dog would. Lotsa fun!

Looking forward to joining them for another game soon!

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Ready to Start

Getting to the point where we’re ready to start the gaming process has taken longer than expected. First there was the delay when we realized my laptop wasn’t going to be able to handle Grounded, even though the system check said it could. FacelessJim then had to order the parts and build it, as detailed in the post “New Computer Build” from March 27. After the build, Faceless loaded Windows & some essential stuff, then I had to pick it up, and buy a couple more things that I thought Faceless was getting, and he thought I was getting. I had no controller, mouse or keyboard. I swear he told me to get a PS2 controller, but when I called him from the store to say I couldn’t find any he insisted he’d said an X-Box controller for Windows 11. I could hear his thought process – “Oh, no, this is going to be disastrous!”

I decided to make a separate profile for gaming, as I have grandkiddliewids that also use this computer when they’re here, and I don’t want them getting into the OldGeezer3 account. By the time I was ready with the profiles and downloading other software and applications that I use, it was time for me to fly off to the American Southwest to present a paper, and attend other presentations, at a conference. I got back in the early hours of this morning. One of the bonuses was that I saw a bird there that I had never seen before, so one more for the life list (I’m also a birdwatching twitcher). It was a yellow-crowned night-heron.

A few things that I had noticed when I got back. Faceless’ followers had risen to 273, up from less than 100 when we started this project. The fundraiser for Hemi, Faceless & Vara’s ~~son~~ dog’s operation had exceeded both the original target and a supplemental one, thus allowing them to go ahead and book it, which is going to happen in May. I’d mentioned earlier that Faceless and Vara are living on a shoestring budget as neither has a job, so we are hoping that gaming will help in that regards. Many, many heartfelt thanks to those that donated, and for those who joined in the games they played and participated in the rewards and sent them the various effects that they get a percentage of the price of them. At some point I’ll get the lingo down – that is, after all, the point of me starting to game with them, to teach and old doggie new tricks, even though trix are for kids.

I’d mentioned to a couple of gamers at the conference what I was doing with Faceless and Vara, and they expressed interest in hearing about the journey at the next conference, at which point the light went on. What I am in fact doing by documenting this journey is an autoethnography, and yes, I could present a paper on this at next year’s conference. Interesting idea, that I’ll have to run past Faceless and Vara.

Anyway, I feel primed and ready to go!

New computer

Before we began the process of teaching an old geezer new tricks, and seeing if I could actually learn how to game, we did an equipment check. I already had XBox set up, as I have several grandchildren who come over and use my computer to play their games. Following FacelessJim’s instructions I downloaded first Grounded, the game we would be playing, and then Discord, which apparently you have to use in order to get into the livestream to converse with the other players. Sounded fairly straightforward, yeah? Well, not quite. Downloading Grounded was a cinch, and, first hurdle overcome, the computer check said that Grounded would work just fine with my system. Yes! No need to spend multi 💲

Then on to Discord. After setting it up, first they couldn’t hear me. Now I knew from doing Zoom meetings that the headset I’m using works just fine with both speakers and mic, with no reverberations. So I checked the settings in Discord and finally got the mic and headphones to work, just that everything anyone said echoed. After about 10 minutes I managed to get the echo off my mic, but everything everyone else said still echoed. The others (Faceless, mastervara77, and thennightmarefox) were being very noisy. Someone kept throwing things at Faceless’ face, and in addition to the noise it made when it hit his face, he would let out a squeal every time. Very annoying, especially when the real-time squeals and the echoing squeals overlapped. One of the benefits of having adult kids is that they go live on their own so you don’t have to hear them squealing and bleating on all the time.

Anyway, eventually with the help of Google I found a setting in Discord that allowed noise suppression, and, voilà, when I rejoined the game in progress (how long do these games go on for?) the echo had disappeared.

Yeah! Now I was all set to join in and whoop the butts of these upstart kids! (when you’re my age, a 32-year-old is still a kid). Problem is, when I tried to do anything it was slower than molasses. Worse than that, it was slower than Faceless getting out of bed in the morning. I logged off, then tried running it in one player offline mode, and it was just as bad. Turns out my computer was not adequate for the job.

Now the question became – do I love my son enough to invest in a gaming computer so that we could get this cockanamie idea off the ground, and help him supplement his income? Well, if we could get his career as an influential gamer off the ground then yes, it would be worth it in the long. run. My mother-in-law had just died at almost 103 years old, and had left me a small amount of money in her will, so I decided I would use that to help pay for a new computer. OK, the money hadn’t actually arrived yet, but I would use my line of credit & pay it off when the money did arrive (see: Micawber Principle). A look at the cost of a few computers made me gulp, then Faceless mentioned he could build one from scratch for a lot less money by buying the individual components. So yeah, one minor earthquake and an e-tranfer of funds later, and the building process was underway.

Yesterday, the last of the components arrived at Faceless’ house. He is going to record the build, and explain what he is doing, and adding it to his YouTube channel. That should be happening this Friday. I can’t wait to get it and to get started with the gaming process.

Getting Started

A few weeks ago I was discussing with FacelessJim his Twitch account, and he casually mentioned that he had received some money from subscribers and gifting. This brought to mind a conversation I’d had with a student who was attending the local university and was in the seminar I was leading on building branding both personally and in business. Every week, there was a homework exercise where the students had to answer 5 questions about what they actually do, and their goals and aspirations. One of the questions asked was “what is getting in the way of achieving your goals?” This particular student answered something along the lines of “I have a huge following on Twitch, and I’m losing income because I have to come to classes to get my degree.”

This was pretty much my first introduction to Twitch, so after class I asked him about it, and how he made money at it. I knew YouTubers and bloggers could make lots of money, but wasn’t aware of Twitch. I got his user name, and went home, made a Twitch account, and watched his livestream. At this point I have no idea what the game was that he was playing, but I was really impressed by the number of subscribers and viewers that he had. Personally, I didn’t see the attraction of watching someone gaming instead of doing it yourself, but apparently it was a thing.

Anyway, after the conversation with Faceless, I read a few articles about Twitch, how to monetize it, and I started watching some of the live streams. What became apparent was the connection that they had with their followers, and the pleasure that Faceless and mastervara77 were getting interacting with each other and their followers. I had been quite concerned about them, as they had a really hard time during covid, and hadn’t recovered well from it afterwards. This was the happiest I’d heard them in a long time. I realized that if they could get more followers and subscribers they could actually supplement their income and eventually make a decent income from this. Faceless’ brother derives all of his income from being a YouTube influencer and podcaster. I don’t know how much he makes, but I know last year he paid more in income tax with 4 dependents than my wife and I paid together. Hopefully FacelessJim and mastervara77 would be able to achieve that level of success also.

Some of the articles I read mentioned to have a “hook,” or a unique focus to gain followers. I was watching them game one evening and asking some questions about the game, but also the sounds and effects that their followers were doing, and someone gifted me a subscription to the channel. It occurred to me that perhaps the hook could be me – teaching an old dog, er, geezer, new tricks, as I would be starting from basically no knowledge of gaming and what it involves. I mentioned this to Faceless and Vara, and they were very enthusiastic about it. It will be an interesting exercise for us going forward.

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