I never dreamed of being a Twitch streamer, either for fun or for profit.
Honestly I’m a pretty big introvert; part of what I enjoy about gaming is escaping from people, excluding distractions, and being totally immersed in something both visually and auditorily stimulating that fully holds all of my attention.
While there are some “tasks” I do enjoy layering on game play, interaction and communication are NOT one of them. For example, I like having educational material playing in the background as long as the topic is something I don’t really care about (mythology, for example), but still find interesting enough to enjoy hearing bits and pieces enter into my mind while I’m mostly otherwise consumed with my game.
Even having someone else in the same room with me while I try to play games upsets the flow and destroys the pleasure just with the sound of their breathing and the most minute movements (ex. lights and finger swipes on their phone). I really like being totally alone, totally immersed. If I add any other input, I want it to be like subliminal programming I’ve chosen for being interesting, but not TOO interesting. Just, like, a lecture droning on in the background where interesting words caress my mind and gently penetrate to a more familiar level of mastery while I am 89% focused on my games.
So why am I streaming my gameplay on twitch at all?
One reason is CURIOSITY. Another is HOARDING. The one I’m most conflicted about is JUSTIFICATION. And finally, there is some SPIRITUAL TEMPTATION.
CURIOSITY
Just before pandemic lockdowns happened, my friend invited me to take an online course with him about the science of well-being. Through that, I learned three things (well, MORE than three things, but three things relevant to streaming on Twitch as a Match 3 gaming addict):
- three of my signature strengths are “Love of Learning”, “Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence”, and “Curiosity”
- although “normal” socializing is not my strong suit and in fact I kind of fucking suck at it, it is possible for me to more-successfully meet many of my social needs by attending events WELL-ORGANIZED and HIGHLY-STRUCTURED to revolve primarily around nerding out over a specific special interest (like learning together about well-being and happiness, and committing to doing so at a certain time and place)
- Spending time IN FLOW and immersed in flexing my signature strengths is ESSENTIAL TO MY WELL-BEING AND MENTAL HEALTH.
Even though streaming my gameplay on twitch degrades the pleasurable immersion and relaxation I experience when gaming completely untethered and blissfully unaware of myself and others (for example I can’t hear and enjoy the music or sound effects of my games when my mic is plugged in, and it is really draining and demanding reminding myself to verbalize what is going on and having my already subpar language processors on at all), I am curious about the platform and like what it offers to other people. I am curious who else is playing my dorky cozy games. I also like being able to combine my curiosity about Twitch with something I enjoy and already know how to do (casual gaming) so that I am learning something new-ish while I am doing this familiar hobby/addiction.
On top of that, I am curious about camming on a mainstream non-adult platform and what it might be like to enter that world as a middle-aged person if I, you know, branch out into the “Just Chatting” category sometimes instead of just anonymously, facelessly, broadcasting only my phone’s screen in gaming action.
HOARDING
The biggest compulsive reason I have for streaming some of my puzzle game play sessions is simply that I want to archive and have access to features in special events after they’re no longer available in game. I want to be able to refer to and enjoy the music and sound effects from seasonal or special events that only last a few weeks or days, and also build up, capture and savor the excitement and fun of times where I’ve saved up resources to summon special heroes, etc.
Since video broadcast archives are built-in with Twitch, it just makes sense to capture these events by streaming. Even though streaming with my mic plugged in and my focus divided between the game and the stream reduces some of the immersive fun, there is a nice feeling of imagining it connecting me with other people in a very low-pressure, barely-interactive manner. If I were to just independently screencap video it would feel more embarrassing and unhealthy than broadcasting to zero viewers or one totally silent probably-just-a-site-mod presence. I don’t know why exactly, but it is more rewarding to create the archive via a platform like twitch and imagine maybe somebody else will also want to relive the spring festival puzzle game events off-season than to capture these things exclusively for my private library of totally useless hoarded things that take up massive amounts of storage where I will probably never access it or even label and organize it. Using Twitch to create these archives kind of forces me to be slightly more organized which gives the data more probability of usefulness, while also providing a platform that categorizes games and makes it easier to access later without sifting through hard drives and cloud storage. At least, it will when I do a better job of actually making highlights and publishing past broadcasts.
Which brings me to the hoarder’s problem that’s motivating me to consider streaming MORE, and doing it BETTER (like, actually getting followers and having viewers when I stream): Twitch now deletes archived broadcast videos after seven days or something if you are not a valuable “creator” with a minimum amount of followers and viewers. Sooooo …. it makes it hard to hoard what I want to hoard and continue having easy organized access to it if I don’t get my numbers up.
JUSTIFICATION
Here’s where the insanity sits: I know I spend way too many hours playing games on my phone. It’s not healthy, and it’s likely a huge factor in why I am not accomplishing more in life, helping get us out of credit card debt, and being a productive adult and good partner to my wife.
So part of me thinks I can rationalize my game play if I try (or pretend to try) to do some of it on a platform where some people (who are not I) make money streaming game play (in ways that are far more dynamic than I stream my game play currently, with games that actually have huge fan bases).
{{cringe}}
I am often ashamed of myself, often for playing games (often for hours a day). Somehow it makes me feel a little better knowing I’m not the only one, and having this whole entire huge website to prove it with tons and tons of people with all their own gaming and stream-watching addictions. And for some of them, it actually pays off on a financial balance sheet!
SPIRITUAL TEMPTATION
I started this blog and Match3Addict “persona” out of a genuine need for help with an embarrassing, serious and costly problem: being “addicted” to phone games.
While many people argue that compulsive game playing is not a true physical addiction and gaming shouldn’t be called “addictive” at all, the reality is that there are hundreds of thousands of people just like me who lose more time and money than they really want to on game play. It’s a fact. And it’s hard to get help with our compulsive habitual game-playing problem(s). People either won’t acknowledge it as a real problem at all, and/or they dismiss it as a simple problem of self-control that is extremely easy (in their eyes) to fix or reign in.
So what happens? We do it secretly. We hide it. We are not honest with ourselves about what it is costing us. Nobody cares, and they wouldn’t believe it anyway. We lack clarity about how many hours (and in many cases, how many dollars) we are blowing on our precious phone games.
I think problem “casual” and cozy gaming is particularly seductive, costly and totally ignored amongst middle-aged people of my and adjacent generations: Gen X, boomers, etc.
People looooooove to pick on porn as being addictive and costly and “harmful” (porn as a general entertainment genre or interactive service is not truly addictive or harmful any more than puzzle games are) but the same folks are completely unaware or unwilling to admit how distracted many wives, husbands, and parents are from life by casual games played on mobile devices, and the VAST amounts of money many folks mindlessly, compulsively spend to play them. I would be willing to bet, in fact, that the average amount of money dropped on games in 2024 by middle-aged players and hours spent by them in game is WAY HIGHER than the average dollar amount spent monthly by porn consumers and hours they spend looking at it. I know for an expert fact I would win this bet, and win so much money on this bet that I could buy myself a game-playing cathedral and never worry about money again, but I digress …
I don’t care what your not-physically-addictive socially-recognized habit is; if you want to reduce the harm your habit or compulsion or hobby is doing to you, I support you. I want you to feel supported. I want you to have tools, and for your progress to be celebrated and your struggles to be acknowledged as real and impactful.
I don’t care if it’s compulsive shopping, over-eating (the pancreas is a real fucking organ, yo, with real fucking limits), game-playing, or masturbating to the point where you are all cummed out and not even enjoying it anymore — if you say it is a problem for you and you wish you didn’t do whatever-the-thing-is as much as you do, I think you are on the right track and I want you to make progress towards the life balance you would rather have and envision for yourself.
Even if your compulsive game playing or eating or spending or wanking is not life-threatening or doing measurable financial or physical harm to anybody, and even if you’re doing those things is not the problem but is a actually a reasonably-healthy way of coping with a cadre of deeper troubles and challenges, if you suspect or know that the shit has gotten out of hand for you, I BELIEVE YOU. And I want you to feel better about yourself and have time and money and wellness in your body to do things you want MORE than playing games (or whatever).
I am tempted to focus my twitch channel on people like myself struggling to find some kind of balance, support and tools for clarifying whether their delightful and relatively-innocuous (but very-misunderstood or unrecognized by others) pleasure-seeking habits are a problem, how big of one, if so, and how to forge a path towards experiencing more of life without these compulsions and habits.
I am tempted to be of service, while being of service to myself, and to learn more about these seldom-discussed problems that are so distracting, expensive, and consuming to many of us alive at this age with these amazing hand-held computers and world-wide connections.
I think the first step on this kind of journey is getting clarity, and asking exactly the kinds of questions I’m asking myself here: what am I doing here? Why am I doing it? And what do I really and truly want, perhaps even more than this thing that may just be a symptom or distraction or palliative for something else?
And with that, I believe I have convinced myself to start “Just Chatting” on twitch. It’s not exactly a clear plan, but it’s a pretty clear purpose.