One of my favorite parts of streaming is actually playing with the people who show up. Whether that's clearing dungeons in Final Fantasy XIV, surviving a co-op horror game, or just goofing around in a lobby, there's a place for you.
How we do it changes a little depending on the game, so here's the honest rundown of how I run things and why. It's all built around the same idea: keeping the stream fun and welcoming for everyone in it.
FFXIV is the main game we play together, on Mondays and Fridays. It's the heart of a lot of our community time, so there's a simple system to keep it fair when a bunch of us want in.
The big one, and the thing I care about most: if you're running alongside me while I work through the Main Scenario Quest, you get priority to jump into dungeons with me.
It's nothing against anyone who's off doing their own thing, life happens and people play how they want. It's just that the folks who spent the stream on the journey with me are the ones I want to reward first. They showed up to be there for the story, and that means a lot. Beyond that, a few simple things keep everything running smooth:
At the start of stream, roulettes are open to everyone. First come, first served, so hop in when you see me queuing.
When more people want in than there are slots, I'll use /random to pick fairly. Lowest rolls sit that one out, and we go again.
If we've got several dungeons unlocked, we rotate players so everyone who wants a turn actually gets one. Nobody gets left in the dust.
Little etiquette stuff: no giant mounts parked on top of NPCs, and go easy on the spell and emote spam during quests so everyone can follow along.
Outside of FFXIV, we jump into all kinds of stuff together, horror co-op, party games, whatever's caught my eye. Before you queue up with me, it helps to understand how I actually run these, because it's probably a little different from most streams.
Here's the honest truth about how I do this, because it shapes a lot of what you'll see when you play with me.
I actually love the struggle. The fumbling, the figuring-it-out, the spectacular failures, that's the whole point for me. That's where the real sense of accomplishment comes from, and honestly it's what makes for a fun stream to watch. So I'm not chasing high ranks or playing the "meta," and I don't want to be carried or coached through a game. Let me trip over it. Let me learn it the hard way.
That's also why I might choose to play a co-op game solo even when I could bring people in. Sometimes I want that experience of working it out myself, for me and for everyone watching. And if a game starts getting steamrolled, carried to the point where I'm barely part of it, I may cut to playing alone. A game that just gets completed around me makes for a pretty boring stream, and I'd rather be in the thick of it.
The other big thing: my attention lives with chat. I get overstimulated pretty easily no matter what we're playing, so I've built the channel around working with that instead of against it. That means even when a game has in-game voice chat, I usually keep it muted. I'd rather stay locked in with the people watching, talk out loud to them, type to whoever I'm playing with, and read their responses back. If I split my focus between a voice channel and chat, chat is what suffers, and chat is exactly who I don't want to leave behind.
Games with no voice chat at all are easy, I'll happily play those with community members all day. Games that have voice but don't really need it, like Labyrinthine or Meccha Chameleon? I'll have it muted and we'll type. It works great.
Some games just don't work without real-time voice. When that's the case, voice comes on, but only with people I've built genuine rapport with. Here's how that actually works, and what it isn't.
A handful of games lean so hard on fast, in-the-moment communication that muting voice would just break them. Recent ones we've done in voice include The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu, Sponge Break, and Storefront. For games like those, I'll bring vetted community members into voice with me.
Games that genuinely need tight, real-time voice to function at all.
The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu · Sponge Break · Storefront
Games that offer voice but play just fine over chat and in-game text.
Labyrinthine · Meccha Chameleon
Now, the important part, because I want to be really clear about this. If I don't invite you into voice on stream, it isn't personal. There are a bunch of factors, and none of them are about whether I like you.
Rapport is a big one, and I'll get to that in a second. But the practical stuff matters just as much: mic quality, background noise, whether push-to-talk is being used, and whether someone tends to talk over people or dominate the conversation. Live, on stream, that all shapes the experience for everyone watching. And yes, if there's ever been a reason we've had to step in, a community-guideline thing, or someone who tends to teeter the line wherever that line sits, that factors in too.
So if you're ever not in voice on a given night, please don't read it as a snub. It's me protecting the experience for everyone in the room, which is the same reason any of these systems exist.
This is where a lot of the real connection happens, and honestly it might be my favorite part of the whole thing.
Most nights, once the stream wraps and I've handled some self-care, gotten food, walked and hung out with Sir Walter, or grabbed dinner with ValMom, I hop into the Discord for post-stream hangout time.
Here's the thing about it: it's not performative. I'm not "on," I'm not entertaining, I'm not putting on a show. I'm just spending time alongside the community in a relaxed, low-key way. Sometimes we're all chatting, sometimes we're sitting in comfortable silence in voice while everyone does their own thing. Some nights it turns into games or a movie night. Most nights, though, I'm just doing my actual job while hanging out with you all instead of doing it alone.
When I'm in voice after stream, I'm usually working through the behind-the-scenes pile: scheduling upcoming streams, making thumbnails, doing research, responding to and coordinating with developers on collabs, managing brand and streaming-platform partnerships, and keeping up with things like the exclusive YouTube Creator Community I'm part of directly through YouTube. It's a genuine full-time workload, and most people I've let peek behind the curtain walk away rethinking whether the full-time creator life is really what they want. It's a bit of a wake-up call for how much happens when the camera's off.
But I choose to do a lot of it right there in voice, alongside the community, because that time together matters to me. If I'm overstimulated or I'm heads-down on something that needs deep focus, I might drop out of voice or sit a night out, and that's okay. I still make the effort most nights, because that's the whole point of what we're building.
At the end of the day, this whole thing is just a community of people who enjoy each other's company, with the stream as the thing that brought us together. If that sounds like your kind of place, pull up a chair.