Trail Thoughts ✦ April 2021 (Patreon)

Hi friends! Let's look back on April together. Also, I can't believe it's fucking May already.

April Stats:

• # of Streams: 12
• Avg Viewers, Incl. Hosts & Raids: 44
• Avg Viewers, Excl. Hosts & Raids: 30
• Unique Viewers: 2,198
• Unique Chatters: 302
• Chat Messages: 11,045 (avg 920 per stream)
• New Followers: 88 (avg 7 per stream)
• Subscriptions: 112 (avg 9 per stream)

April Thoughts:

April felt super smooth af for me and I had a blast with streaming this past month! Moving two streams a week back to nights was definitely the move for me now that we're a month into it. Even though it made my body go back to its old sleep schedule, my mental health is better for it. While school is important, it's only temporary, whereas I'm hoping that streaming will last longer. Being happy with a hobby is important, right? So very glad for this.

April was the first time that I branched out with games on Flex Friday and man, I had a blast! At the beginning of the month, I replayed Firewatch, a game that I had played very early on in my streaming journey. I had so much fun revisiting it. I then played A Short Hike, which was a super cute pixelated hiking game. Next, I was able to get a key from the developers of Festival Tycoon, and I had a blast exploring the sandbox mode. I am very excited for that game to get fleshed out more and we can expect to see that back on streams when the game is completed. The last new game was Dorfromantik, which I played yesterday for a whole 6 hours. A very addicting and simple (yet not so simple) city builder game.

April for me was all about the feeling of how things were going, but since I do chat numbers in these trail thoughts, I will say that I'm super pleased with the stats for April. Moving back to nights meant a couple things: 1) I was raided more than I was during the day, which means we had some new friends find us that way, and 2) This month saw more people finding me through the game directories than I can remember from Jan-Mar. I don't have follower goals up anymore on my stream at all, as my follower growth has definitely stalled, but we did pass 1,400 followers this past week which is super exciting! I was in the 1300s for what felt like forever so it was cool to see that tick up.

One thing I want to mention that I thought was super cool. In the last Dragon Age: Inquisition stream, I felt like chat was super busy that night, when typically during my big story games it is not crazy busy. When I checked the stats after stream, the # of chat messages was actually incredibly low compared to past streams. So I was confused. When I checked the VoD, I realized that the chat messages were LONG (instead of many being sent). This is just one example of how numbers can be misleading to an overall stream experience. 

Thoughts for May:

As you all know, I am taking this first week off of streaming and will be back on May 9th! The plan this week is to get all of my bot stuff switched over to Firebot. I also want to create some redemptions in Better Points, not only bringing back some that I had before, but introducing some new things as well.

May Game Plan: We're still gonna be truckin' through DA:I and ME:A this month. I am going to be playing some DA:I over my stream break though. I'll be completing some minor side quests just to ensure that when I return on May 9th, I've got a stack of power ready to go and we can just really dive into the remaining companion quests and then proceed with the end game. With respect to Flex Fridays, the first thing I'll have to do is play whatever game YOU guys decide because we hit the April sub goal! Check Discord for more info on that one. Outside of that game, I still have one game to play that I got a key for: Rain On Your Parade, and I have requested another game: Insurmountable. 

Exciting News:

This past week I followed up with the artist that I had reached out to way back in November for my stream rebrand. I've talked about them a couple of times. Unfortunately, they are not able to take me on any time soon. However, they did refer me to someone else and I've been in touch with that person now about all of my ideas, and the great news is that they are willing to work with me with the budget I have given them! This person has worked in graphic design for 10+ years and also specializes in custom type design (fonts). They are very proficient in Adobe After Effects, which is exactly what I was looking for. They are super excited about the ideas that I have and we are getting on a video call in a few days to really discuss things in more detail. I didn't give them a deadline, as I am truly in no rush to have this stuff done, so they will be working on my rebrand alongside their major projects.

They plan to have "Stage 1" stuff to me by mid-May. This means they will create mini style boards that show the general look and feel of my 'brand' which will include a logo, colours, type usage, and anything else that adds to the whole feel of my brand/stream. They said they try and present 2-3 slightly different directions, just so I have some options and stuff to think about. My rebrand is not going to be a "cliché" Twitch style. I am really looking for something a lot more professional, and a lot more "me" than what I've done on stream before.

Some of the info I sent them:

• This link as general inspo: https://www.instagram.com/p/B99qr80FdKJ/
• General outdoorsy, adventure theme. Clean and crisp, simple, not cluttered. I'm a BIG fan of geometry, and mountains and trees work very well with geometric designs
• Keep the "time of day" vibe that I have in my current Starting, BRB, and Ending scenes

The designer asked me if I wanted to have things done in "chunks" for release or if I wanted to implement everything all at once. I told them the latter, because I think it would be more fun to change everything in one go.

It sounds like they are willing to do a complete package for me. This would include alerts and sub badges and panels as well. I'm going to clarify this when we have our chat.

Since I didn't provide a deadline, I'm going to guess that the rebrand will be done mid-late summer. 

I will definitely be keeping you guys posted on this, so stay tuned for separate posts for updates. I would love to bring my Patrons on this rebrand journey with me.

Merch Items! Important!

Today, a bunch of you became eligible for the physical merch in your Tier! But a few of you haven't put your mailing addresses on your Patreon profile. Please ensure you do this so you are able to get the item you're eligible for! :) I definitely don't want you missing out.

Thanks for being amazing and for reading this! <3