PlusHeart Interviews: Recent Episodes

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I got to talk to my good friend Boesthius for this week’s interview, and I like how it came out very much.

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Boes streams on Twitch, and plays a number of different strategy-heavy games, like Civilization and Cities: Skylines. These games tend to have a steep learning curve, and that means that the audience isn’t as broad as say, a mainstream esport. Boes would be classified as a “small-to-mid-size” streamer: over the hump of getting viewership, but still working in that “100-300 viewer” range.

We talked about what that means for the ceiling of his viewership, how that impacts his onboarding process, and what it means when we overthink those things. We also touched on the idea of “knowing what you need to do, but not having the energy to do it.”

We also touch on the idea of “old esports” as a vibe, coming from his time with TeamLiquid.net, and learning streaming and community values from that environment.

All in all, a really good discussion; I think we had good chemistry, and I’d like to do another conversation in the future!

Housekeeping

I’ve been sick. It’s sucked. I took last week off, and I’m still not really through it. Forgive the smaller post for now 🙏🏻.

Streams are still going on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Join me if you can.

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Today’s interview is with Dr. Natalie Coyle (aka @PlatinumParagon), an academic who I’ve followed and enjoyed for a couple years now. Dr. Coyle writes about video games and related topics with a strong desire to share information and tell the truth.

Part of what drew me to her work was that it avoided the problem that plagues more academic writing on the topic: she knows the communities and forces at work, and it doesn’t come off as someone trying to go on safari somewhere unfamiliar.

While you could argue that academic writing benefits from a little bit of ignorance (instead of bringing in your own biases), I think that gaming suffers from a lack of closeness when it comes to people writing “serious” things about the medium and industry.

I think we can all think of articles by gaming outlets that parrot something “a study has found”, for better or for worse. While it can be easy to take the victories or dunk on ignorance, that kind of scoreboarding feels like a waste of time. I enjoy Natalie’s work because it speaks to subjects I’m passionate about (personal improvement, psychology, mental health) and they never feel like a waste of time.

Go check them out here.

Housekeeping

I wrote a new tutorial about recording podcasts with Voicemeeter. You can find that on my dotcom.

I also decided to start an infodump on my Github for specific software, sites and services that I use on the daily. Sometimes there's just a "I didn't know I needed this until I knew it existed" feeling with certain things, and eff it.

Thanks for the love. I stream on Fridays and Tuesdays. Join the Discord for events and content notifications.

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Hey all. Had to republish this for it to show up as a podcast on Spotify and other storefronts. You should read the real notes over here:

Thanks for the love. This should be fixed the next time I have to do one of these.

Get full access to PlusHeart at plusheart.substack.com/subscribe

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Hey all. Had to republish this for it to show up as a podcast on Spotify and other storefronts. You should read the real notes over here:

Thanks for the love. This should be fixed the next time I have to do one of these.

Get full access to PlusHeart at plusheart.substack.com/subscribe