I posted in the past regarding a stream paradox that I was having, and if it wasn’t clear I haven’t been streaming for a while. I could list several reasons, but they could be considered excuses. I tried to explain things I could change, such as alternating games or changing my schedule. This leads me to following up on that because I could continue to boil things down to those reasons. I could give real life reasons such as work, scheduling, life, to explain that I am not able to stream on my scheduled days, and that is why I said I wouldn’t stream both of my days in the previous post.

When considering the alternate game strategy, it quickly came to my attention that a decision still had to be made. What games should we play, I have a lot of games to choose from between the PS4 and the PC, and I can honestly say each game has its appeals and can be played in a solo game. The problem with several of the games is I started playing them with Mystic Beast, and then it became a situation where we had a good interaction that I wish was recorded. I tell myself frequently that this game would be great for stream, but sometimes I intend to play it with Mystic Beast as well. The interaction we have is golden, you guys have seen it with our Black Ops III zombie record when we got to round 26.

The struggle to determine a game isn’t just about Mystic Beast, in fact he runs into the same tough decision I have, we never know what game we play, we literally say yes, then no, on several titles. We will say all the things we could do, but then usually when we get to a negative thing, or realize that the next progress bump requires something we didn’t want to do, we say no. Maybe this goes back to wanting to start over on games theory. One game that we both stream when in the mood, and play in our off time is Minecraft, this is a great example of starting over, as Mystic Beast and I play the world, we may get tired of the base, we may get tired of hunting wither skeletons, or I decide to add more mods to change the world, when this happens I have to start a new world so the mods generate their items correctly. Over time I have started the world over twice on 1.7.10, and now three times at 1.10.2, and even now I find myself already thinking about upgrading to version 1.12.

I can safely say I am interested in playing all the games I have, and perhaps I should just start one and not think about how long it would last. I like the series concept, and I like establishing goals for each session. Mystic Beast and I do well with goals in mind. Using the same Black Ops III example, we didn’t think about getting to round 26, we thought about doing the rituals, getting perks, pack-a-punching a gun, building a shield, and eventually it became getting to flys around 5 or 6, getting cannonballs/meatballs around 9, and by that time it was getting to round 10, then getting to our average of round 17. Once we got to round 21, we didn’t have time to think about our record we just kept killing zombies. I don’t think the goals are a problem, because the games I could play like Sim Airport, Prison Architect, Oxygen Not Included, and even Academia, these are all sandbox like games that allow a lot of flexibility in how you design things.

I play each of these games, before I stream them so I can get a feel for how I want to stream it. If I play Prison Architect again, I may start a map first and it will look carelessly done, but when I stream it I usually have a prison in mind and start planning things out. This has always been my process, play a game, even if not to completion and then stream it to ensure I want to stream it. Mystic beast and I did this with Stellaris and Crusader Kings, which is why we always talked about previous offline games.

So why is it hard to decide to play games to begin with? We talked about how it wasn’t Mystic Beast’s fault, how I didn’t think it was a lack of interest, which brings us back to the Starting over Theory. I laid this out in the previous post, giving Stellaris and prison architect as examples. I am reluctant to say that I just like to start over, perhaps it’s a perfectionist stint, where if something doesn’t go right, I want to start over, but then that ruins the series anyway. I love having my own Minecraft server because I don’t have to rage quit, when I can just rage gamemode c. As I name off different games, such as Stellaris, I like space, we haven’t played it in a while, there is new updates, but then we get to things we don’t want I am surrounded by enemies, I don’t want to just build ships, and at a certain point in a Stellaris game it becomes war or ship building for defense. Perhaps that’s why I like sandbox simulation games like prison architect or sim airport, because it allows me to focus on different parts, I will build cells this session, I will expand this, or I will get more plane contracts.  The options are endless with sandbox simulations, even sims which we recently started doing offline, I can build places, or I can control lives. The problem remains that even with sandbox style games, it’s always the same thing, add this, expand that, and doing the same thing each session may lead to a burn out.

Now we are back to the beginning, choosing games to play and alternating between all the options, A primary game to run a series on, but with sandbox games that requires an end goal, and a secondary game with no goals, however, these games can also be the most fun so I feel like it should be a series, but with no goals it never has an end. This is probably why Zombies and Evolve make the majority of my videos (roughly 130) because these games only have the goal of survive, and can be a game that is relatively chill. So is it lack of interest, no, is it because I don’t have Mystic Beast every stream, no, well that leaves us with two options, burn-out and the start-over theory, neither option I agree with so I am forced to acknowledge them, because I eliminated the other two options. Ironically these are the same reasons for stopping stream, and no matter how hard I try to explain it the results are the same.

You may be asking your self what does this mean for you, well you can still see a lot of the videos on YouTube and I still plan to stream, however, the game may be different each time. Feel free to check us out on Discord as even during our offline games Mystic Beast and I use it to talk to each other. I am happy to answer any questions, and keep you guys updated there, here, and even on Patreon.