Thoughts On Streaming

"Oh look at me! I'm a grill playing Warcraft! LOL how does this work, guys?"

Low cut shirts, caked-on makeup, full of giggles while the web-cam is bigger than the game window. 

What the heck did I just describe? Am I describing myself? The other women that stream?

Video game streaming is blowing up right now. Both men and women stream their games and their faces on webcams while hundreds of viewers critique their skill and their personality in a chat room. 

I started streaming last December. I put on the makeup. I pressed play in World of Warcraft, and I raided while talking to my friends over the internet. Immediately, my ex flipped a bird. "They're looking into your bedroom while you're playing video games!" 

Yeah, they are looking into my bedroom while I play video games. 

Does it matter, though? 

Does it matter that I enjoy wearing makeup and feeling pretty while I game? That I enjoy laughing with my viewers?

This is something I've been struggling with ever since I started streaming. I want to be recognized for my expertise at playing a game I view as challenging. I've had my 10,000 hours in World of Warcraft and then some. I've played from multiple perspectives, both casually and competitively. I've gone from playing the least female-dominated class to arguably the largest female-dominated class in the game, experiencing all of the reactions that go along with being a tank and being a healer. 

At the same time, I want to be personable. Accessible. Engaging. I love interacting with my viewers and sharing a passion for the game I've had so many fond memories in while playing. 

I'm a woman in the streaming world. Does that make me different? A commodity? Honestly I have no idea. Guys and girls who stream get more views than me. 

At first I didn't take donations. I thought people who took donations were cheap, and the perceived value of gaming was little to nothing. It wasn't until a few friends I had made insisted they help me out that I made a paypal account, and I was surprised that people were willing to assist me with keeping myself online. 

The woman I was talking about at the beginning of this post: I don't care if she's giggling or what she's wearing. Streaming is entertainment. She's entertaining. 

What strikes me is that men and women alike put an immense amount of work into their gaming skill and expertise. Unfortunately, much of their work is not returned to them in the form of follows, donations, or interactions unlike entertaining streamers that can live off of the compensation they get from donors. 

A huge part of the reason I believe these streamers aren't seeing a return is because they simply aren't captivating enough to retain a steady viewer base. 

Long story short, I need to find that medium of being skillful and entertaining. 

We'll see what my channel will look like in the next few months. I'm planning on having a concert on it once my sound channels are set up. I think music and gaming have an immense amount of synergy that will work well in my streaming environment. ;) Time will tell! 

What are your thoughts on "gamer girls", specifically in terms of streaming? When you see a woman streaming, do you click the channel because they're playing your favorite game or do you choose to watch it because the streamer is female?

Gamers in the MA area: if you'd like to be ON my stream let me know! Twitch is all about socializing and what better way to do it than in person in front of a live audience?

The Next Two Months

Gigs

Before I get all up in the personal space, I have a few gigs that are #1 priority in my book for you guys to know about!

Thursday, March 26 – 95Hyde interview with DJ Victoria at Boston University’s Radio Station WTBU from 8-10pm. We’ll be doing a live acoustic set too! Listen here.

Sunday, March 29 – I’M BEING A CELEBRITY JUDGE in Vermont Has Talent this Sunday at the Barre Opera House, 3:00PM. My Vermont friends, I miss your faces. Come have lunch with me before the event!

Friday, April 10 – Healing Tones for Hasbro with 95Hyde, Cat Has Claws, Sic Vita, and the Dust Ruffles. The benefit is for Hasbro Children’s Hospital and hosted at University of Rhode Island’s Ballroom Dance Club. The event starts at 7:00PM. $5 with Student ID/$7 to the public.

Friday, April 17 – 95Hyde at PA’s Lounge in Somerville, MA with We Are Ambushed, Lure of the Animal, and Big Time Kill. Bostonians come get a drink with us! Doors at 8:30PM. Video link soon!

Back In the Saddle Again

I’m so stoked to be gigging again after this brutal winter. You’d think I’m getting complacent or something. If I didn’t have that itch to be on stage killing my inner demons with music, I’d be a sad, sad person.

This Tuesday Cam, Jon and I are going to get a practice going for our interview/acoustic show on WTBU. The DJ, Victoria, is so passionate about music. She’s talented, too. She not only DJs, she writes for HOWL magazine. I met her over a phone interview last summer in addition to a gig we had in Lowell and she’s the sweetest person. I’m wicked jelly, she’s just getting back from SXSW now! I better be careful, half this interview might be me salivating over SXSW stories. Her writing about 95Hyde can be found here.

Another thing I love to do besides performing music is helping young entertainers. I’m honored to be a judge for Vermont Has Talent this Sunday. They’re a nonprofit that helps young performers in Vermont area gain recognition for their talent. In addition, the proceeds from this event go to support the Miss Vermont Organization's Scholarship Fund. My friend Susan got in contact with me to help them out and I couldn’t be happier to do so! She’s a talented singer/songwriter herself. (Check out her music!) The grand prize for this event is $500. I’ll be posting on instagram/tweeting/social media’ing the HECK out of this thing, but if you can be there in person to support these young adults it’d be even better.

April 10 for the Hasbro Children’s Hospital is another event for everyone. Proceeds go towards helping children. I don’t know of any other cause more worthy. Our friends The Dust Ruffles are performing with us again and I can’t wait to see them! This’ll be 95Hyde’s debut at URI as well.

Dave Crespo, the man of the Boston Music Industry and co-DJ with Carmelita on WAAF’s Bay State Rock sent me a message last month about a show at PA’s on April 17 and I had to jump on the opportunity. (Did I mention he’s the man?) We’ll be performing with some fantastic bands, too. 95Hyde’s making a video right now for the event that I’ll post as soon as it’s done. The show is on a Friday, which means you have no excuse but to come out and party with us in Somerville. I’ll sing you something you’ll know.

Life. What’s the meaning of it?

That’s about it in my life right now. Nope, no wait. I take that back. There’s a ton going on, haha. If you didn’t catch it on my social media posts, I wrote an article on the 2015 Winter NAMM Show that got published in Berklee’s Music Business Journal this past month. I’d mean a lot to me if you gave it a read. :]

I’m also a co-director of Berklee’s Heavy Rotation Records this semester. We had our record release show this past February and had 500 people attend. (BAM!) Having my own band is great, but helping other bands really rounds out the musician/marketing experience. All of our artists have members that attend Berklee, and there’s literally a genre for everyone in our music. Check out our roster here.

All of this being said, I’M GRADUATING IN MAY. WHERE THE HELL DID TIME GO? I’ll have a BM in two months (with some sort of music business major thrown in there).

The big question my peers and I are asking ourselves: where do we go from here?

My band is my love. Music’s my life. Gaming is my escape. If I can find a way to encompass all of those things into a service or product and monetize it, I’d be the happiest person on earth. That’s the goal, friends.

Speaking of gaming, I’m streaming World of Warcraft now! I spent so many hours last week making my Twitch channel pretty and professional. Still not done yet, but I’m getting there! My game time has been divided into brainstorming ways to have engaging streams and analyzing discipline priest logs. My apologies if that last sentence was a foreign language to you. To my nerd friends who get it, I’m buying you coffee.

I’d immensely appreciate it if you tuned in Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 9:30EST-12:30EST. I love talking and I especially love talking on the Internet. Sometimes I even whip out a guitar and serenade my viewers. I take requests. I’ll be streaming TONIGHT! To those who watch gaming streams from time to time: what experiences keep you watching a streamer’s channel? What do you want to see in a gaming stream?

I think that’s it for now. Keep on keepin’ on. 

PAX EAST in 3 Days!

AHHHHHHHHHH I’m so excited! For those of you who don’t know, PAX East is a gaming convention hosted in Boston that has everything to do with all kinds of games and it’s happening in 3 days. Board games, card games, PC games, platform games, indie games, tablet/phone games…

ALL THE GAMES.

In addition to attending the con, I’ll be meeting up with some of my friends from around the United States. Georgia, Ohio, Michigan, Colorado, and Pennsylvania.

That’s what I LOVE about gaming. I get to meet up with people I’ve had genuine connections with from around the world, and that connection is arguably deeper than a lot of the connections I have in my everyday life.

Yes, yes, it’s true. People can be whatever they want to be on the internet. Having a screen in front of your face, however, can also make you more comfortable. Not having to deal with physical judgment can make you feel safe to expose the real you, your dreams and aspirations to people you’ve only talked to through a piece of technology.

I’ve known some of these friends for a few months, some of them for six years. It just boggles my mind how many people are connected with one another and how many meaningful opportunities come out of these friendships. Did I mention I got a gig at Wheaton College once through friends in World of Warcraft? Mad skill.

I’m going to be taking so many photos of the events this weekend and posting them later on, probably sometime next week. Goals for Friday: Seeing the Blizzard panel/announcement and meeting MarkiPlier. <3 And of COURSE spending time with my friends!

I got this shirt for the con and I’m SUPER excited. 

Have any of you guys made some friends on the internet you still keep in touch with? :) 

In the meantime, I have to clean my house. My place is going to be full of nerds this weekend. THIS IS THE DREAM. 

"I don't like being known as the guy who hangs on the girl all the time"

Hey everyone,

I love being on the breaking edge of what careers and types are considered "appropriate" for women. I'm a frontwoman in a rock band that plays bass. (props to more women who've been playing bass lately.)

I'm more of a world of warcraft nerd than 70% of the guys that play the game. 

This post just scratches the surface of what sometimes happens in a gaming environment when you're playing with mostly men. 

I'm the only woman that raids in my guild on World of Warcraft. Raiding involves killing monsters with anywhere from 10-30 other real players. It's really like working on a team project. There's coordination, scheduling, skills needed by everyone, a love and passion for what you're doing, etc. 

Like I said, I'm the only woman. I'm sure this next sentiment echoes through the numerous work places and situations where there are single women working in an environment with all men:

Some guys will hit on you. Some guys will ignore you. There are about 40% that are indifferent whether you're a girl or a guy. 

In this specific case where I'm about to let off some steam, here's the context. I have a good friend in the guild, let's call him Bob. Now our guild uses voice chat for raids and when we're all playing together as a group. Sometimes, if Bob and I were the only two playing together we would use Skype instead of the regular voice chat. No one really knew him and I used Skype. Other guildmates would see us doing dungeons and killing monsters together but other than that it wasn't anything special. 

Bob developed a liking for me, and in one fell swoop confessed his love for me. For those of you who don't know, I've done the internet dating thing before. It never works out well. Bob lives thousands of miles away from me and feelings weren't reciprocated. 

After politely explaining to him why it wouldn't work out, I became a little uncomfortable. Skyping one-on-one with a person who still has those feelings... I mean you all can probably relate. Would you want to be in a room with someone you just shot down with a really sharp arrow to the heart? 

I asked that in the future we could use the public voice chat service until things get back to normal. He then presumed to say this:

"I don't like being known as the guy who hangs on the girl all the time in the guild. [hanging out in the public voice chat] makes me reserved like I don't want to interact with you in front of people."

Way to hit me with a fireball, dude. 

It's not the first time this has happened to me, but it's definitely the first time someone has admitted this. I'm the token girl in the guild. Better watch out, I could sleep with you and everyone else in the guild because I'm female and have a vagina. 

I like being a girl. I like being feminine. Why the hell do I have to cover that up in order to play with guys or interact with them? Do I need to pretend I'm a guy to get acknowledgement in a conversation, even someone else's attention for things like just playing a video game?

A lot of this may be overboard because the burn happened thirty minutes ago, but it's still an issue I feel is important. I love the guild I play with on warcraft and I love the people in the guild. Just nasty bits like this happen sometimes, and I'm equipped to deal with it with a swift ass kicking. ;)

In short, be proud to be a woman. We're pretty damn tough to get over obstacles like this everyday. 

Now excuse me, that Bob guy's about to get a piece of my mind.

Edit: This may look like I'm being oversensitive. A lot of these feelings and situations similar to this are a culmination of playing MMOs over 10 years. To be honest, this gentleman and I are still friends. Just trying to figure out how to make him comfortable with talking to me again in front of people is going to be a process - hence why I said I'm equipped to deal with these things. ;) 

1/4 of the way there...

I thought I'd try to start writing again for a few reasons.

1)I've been sitting in the Starbucks for the past 3 hours and I'm starting to get the hipster/urban/beard-wearing blog vibes that are seeping in my old cappuccino.

2)I write lyrics all the time. While I love the coupling of song and words, sometimes lyrics are too boxed in. Sometimes you just have to let it all out in plain type.

3)A LOT IS HAPPENING and I can't keep it all in.

With that said, I'm doing pretty well! I'm writing more music and trying to get back to the single life after two years of a beautiful relationship that just... yeah. I'm talking too much already! ;) I've been meeting so many new, fantastic people through all mediums - gaming, tinder, working, college. etc. Also graduating in May from Berklee. WHAT.

I'm still playing World of Warcraft. The game has so many politics of its own! I'm playing a discipline priest and I'm the BIGGEST nerd when it comes to simulating numbers/bubbles/raid healing. Shameless armory plug here 

I've also been twitching, as I like to call it, while I raid. Yep, that's my bedroom. You might think it's clean. It's all just green screen. ;)

The band's been doing well! If you live in outer space, we've changed our name to 95Hyde. We're actually a Van Halen cover band now. (Jon persuaded us.) I wear spandex, chain mail bikinis, and a perm at all times.

Kidding. Seriously though we're writing more hard rock music and playing a couple shows this April. I'll keep ya posted.

All in all, I just... need another outlet. I don't really mind if no one reads this, it's more for my own sanity than anything else. If I can't get things out here, I'll just spew it all out to my friends who are already sick of my ramblings. ;)

I'll see if I can separate these posts so if people -do decide to read- them, there will be separate sections for warcraft, band, life, etc.

-Jessica