leveling up HeatherJustPlay on YouTube and Discord!
tom and i work side by side most of the day. i pulled up this picture of Oliver Benley, tom saw it out of the corner of his eye and for a second, thought it was a picture of me... SO WE’RE AT THAT POINT FOLKS. our warriors of light have become extensions of our real selves 😝 which i think is a really fun thing, just to be clear. 😉
today, i wanted to share a bit about what’s going on behind the scenes because THERE’S A LOT! 🥳
first off, tom and i have been trying to level up our streaming setup each time we go live. there’s been a lot to learn and plenty to adjust, but we’re having fun with it.
i mentioned this before but i hadn’t really planned to stream more than a few times a month on HeatherJustPlay. a big reason is because historically, livestreaming used to take it out of me. 😴 after streaming for just an hour on my other channels, i would immediately sign off, walk to the couch, and pass out because i so wiped. imagine tom’s surprise when he came home from his hockey game on Saturday and i told him that i’d streamed for 4.5 hours and felt great! 🤯 fun is fuel!
on a personal level, i had a lot of feelings to work through about streaming. i wasn’t sure how it would feel to watch cutscenes on stream. i thought it might come off as forced or unnatural. just thinking about people watching my reactions seemed so awkward.😬 but during our raid stream on saturday, i had to watch some cutscenes, and surprisingly, it felt very natural! i didn’t feel self-conscious and most importantly, it didn’t feel like it was taking away from my own experience of the game.
maybe that’s another reason why i was hesitant. video games have been mostly a solitary activity for me, so i thought streaming would take away from my enjoyment of the game since i’d be splitting my attention. but if anything, they’ve have enhanced it to a completely different level! 🤩
tom was also unsure so he did HIS very first gaming stream EVER when we streamed on halloween! you know what i never thought was in the realm of possibility?🤯 1) tom playing an RPG, 2) tom playing FFXIV, and 3) tom streaming himself playing FFXIV! 🤯 for our halloween stream, we had two goals: 1) figure out if it’s possible to show tom’s gameplay, and 2) see if he’d actually enjoy it. and the answer to both was a big yes! 🥳
we’re also continuously tweaking our production setup to streamline things. we’re planning to do a super casual hangout stream today to test a few things. we’ll probably start with non-FFXIV things and wrap up in Eorzea!
another delightful surprise has been this discord server, which has truly been one of the best decisions of my HJP journey so far. it’s been so great getting to know all of you. tom and i love how diverse this group is and that we seem to have a lot of overlapping interests. nerds unite! 😊
as a discord newbie though, i’m still learning how to use this thing! 😋 i have ALL of the ideas and i have to ask our amazing mods like, “is this possible?” or “how can we make this happen?” shoutout to the @Mods , and thank you all for your patience as we go through these “growing pains.”
i also feel a sense of responsibility to people who might be playing FFXIV or even trying video games for the first time because of the HJP YouTube channel. and not in an obligatory way, but because video games have just been such a positive force in my life. if i could be a gateway for others to experience the magic of video games, then YES, that’s what i want to do! 💜 so if you see content or discord channels that go beyond FFXIV, that’s where i’m coming from.
i feel like with HeatherJustPlay, i’m on this incredible journey like Oliver Benley. but all of you feel like my “road to 90” experience buff: helping me figure things out, guiding me along the way, partying up with me, sharing your perspectives, and contributing. it’s just so cool. SO FREAKIN’ COOL. I WISH I HAD BETTER WORDS TO DESCRIBEEEEE THE FEELS BUT THIS IS WHAT I GOT 😜
-heather
