It is with a heavy heart that I have to announce this, and I’ve had an internal debate with myself for about a month now if I should even post this (I’ve written this so many times now), but I am taking an indefinite leave of absence from streaming, effective at the completion of the Dead Space 3 playthrough. The remainder of #IcetoberFest is being canceled. There are many reasons for this, but the biggest one is that I haven’t grown as much as I thought – or hoped – I would. While I never expected to become a partner in six months on either Twitch or Mixer (not that I really wanted to), I had hoped I would have a few more people – more new people – come out for my streams on a regular basis than I have had. I have always maintained if I could have maybe 10 people come out on a regular basis and be at least reasonably active in chat, I’d be happy. I don’t even get half that. I understand part of the reason for this is because of the time of day and the short number of hours I’m able to put in each day since I already have a full-time job, plus the hours I work. I have tried to balance my stream with newer and older games, streamed different genres of games, held giveaways, “given back” to my followers, had a Discord server, etc. I try to have a nice, simple, clean presentation with startup/shutdown/break screens, themes based on time of year, special events; I’ve done streams for charity; I have music, sound effects, games in chat, and I also maintain a website – all of that. I only know one way to do things – ALL IN.
While I’d like to think I’m good at the gaming side of things, I’m just not a good “entertainer” nor do I have the right kind of personality to make people want to come out and return. Don’t get me wrong – please – I do appreciate the support and viewership everyone gave me. It means more to me than you know – that you take time out of your day to stop by when you can to say Hi and maybe watch for a while. And especially for those of you that have supported my channel with subscriptions and donations. But, frankly, by the same token it’s also rather depressing to have only one or two people there on a regular basis – the “return on investment” from a viewership standpoint is just not worth it. I’ve been doing this for almost two years now – there has to be more. My channel, for the most part, is stagnant. This also isn’t me being burned out – I have a good schedule that works for me now. This is about results, and they’re just not there.
To close, this isn’t goodbye – I’ll still be around while I work through this, I’ll still be on Discord, I’ll still come out to other streams when I can (I haven’t been able to as much as I’d like because I just never had much time – my “days off” from streaming really weren’t days off all that often).
Again, thank you all for the kind words, words of encouragement, laughter, and your friendship.
Iceman
The Igloo 