Here’s a rather unceremonious way of announcing a side project I’m working on: I’m trying to put together a let’s play series!
Everyone and his mother is doing it these days, and being the trendy fellow I am, I had to jump on that particular wagon. Gotta pay those bills.
Really, though — I’ve wanted for a while now to expand my videogame-talky-guy stuff into another format. I’ll always have the blog, but it would be nice to have something else on top of it. Something verbal and more off-the-cuff — something conversational, even. Let’s plays, then! Except, to have a real conversation, you kind of need another person.
I’ve been looking — quietly — for the perfect co-host for years. Really, it’s been that long.
Enter: Scott. No no, not me. A different one. My new buddy and totally-not-internet-boyfriend-I-swear Scott (oh gosh we have the same name, it must be fate). Not only is he interested in sitting down and playing some games with me, we’ve got some pretty good chemistry and enough conflicting opinions to keep things interesting. Awesome, right? Let’s roll!
Except wait. This is actually really difficult. Nevermind the worries about dead air — keeping a discussion going and worth listening to for a whole episode — or finding enough material to talk about over the course of a long game. We ran into problems before we even got that far. Problems like…
You should probably be seeing what I’m seeing if we’re planning on talking about it. Do you know anything about streaming? No? Okay, cool. Neither do I.
As it turns out, Skype actually lets you stream video of your screen — but only to one person. So if we ever wanted more people on board… tough luck, I guess.
Uh… oh dear. This shouldn’t really surprise me, but between recording video and streaming to you… I’m getting a buttery-smooth five frames per second.
Welp. No games from the last few years until I upgrade my computer!
Good news! This game is old enough to record at close to 30 FPS! Except Fraps has decided it doesn’t record audio.
I could always record audio separately, but that’s another program running in the background. And it hasn’t worked out much better, anyway. The only thing I can capture is my own mic. Not really super useful if you can’t hear the other person.
…also, I’m not sure if you’ve considered this, but we should probably have a name for our show.
Uh… baby steps.