Today my new computer came, and after a good four hours of loathsome troubleshooting and assembly time, I finally got the goshdarn thing working; that meant one single thing. Starcraft II ladder streaming time. My first session started at 8:40PM, and as I usually try to go to bed by midnight every night the session was cut short at a mere two hours. After doing so, one thing is abundantly clear: I love doing this. Yes, Starcraft is a great game, but tonight I had more fun with it than I've had in a long time. I'm not going to give all the credit to streaming, some of it came from the fact that Starcraft is just so much more enjoyable when you can actually micro away from banelings without massive amounts of lag killing your whole army. That was definitely fun. But the funnest of all was the fact that my game was being broadcast to the world.

I'm not going to pretend to be a fantastic streamer, stealing all Destiny's viewers. I'm aware I spent some of my time viewerless, I'm pretty sure the peak viewership I hit was four, when a friend asked me to 1v1 custom. However, not too far into the stream there was one guy in my channel - strategy_what_strategy - and he was one of the engaged viewers. Commenting in chat, interacting with the stream; guys like him are what make it worth it. I finally understand what all the various internet authors and content creators have said in the past: one engaged fan is easily worth 100 unengaged ones. And it's true. When I was playing, I was talking briefly, if I was going to tech switch from bio into tanks I would have to justify that decision to the viewers, if not during the game then after when they mocked me for losing due to a stupid decision. I ended up losing more games than I won on stream, and on a normal day that would get me down, but when I was streaming it didn't. I went over a couple replays, and I saw what I did wrong. When no one's looking, it's easy to pretend you did everything right and your opponent just cheesed or did some wonky strategy that caused you to lose. However, when you're in front of other people - or even if your stream is empty and you're under the threat of someone tuning in and seeing, it forces an honesty, that causes one to improve in the game.

In a similar vein, my attitude playing the game was so much greater: I didn't get angry at losses, because I hate watching angry streamers, and I don't want people to hate me. So I made an effort after every game to be polite and happy, and after the brief ten seconds of forcing myself, I legitimately was happy. The game is so much more fun when you're trying to have fun instead of winning. Again, all of this could totally be done on your own, with no one watching. But then it's up to you, and you have no oversight. With the stream on, you've put yourself under the perpetual oversight of other people.

Now, at the end of the night, I'm left with a good taste in my mouth in relation to Starcraft. I want to play more. I'm excited for tomorrow to come, so I can fire up XSplit and stream some more games. I don't have any find match anxiety, ladder fears or weariness in relation to SC2. I don't have to fight with myself to improve; no need for new years resolutions to motivate me - I just turn on XSplit and you all take care of that. And that's really, really cool.