Like the year before, 2019 was once again full of trial and error. In 2019, I spent a great deal of energy trying to liven up the stream and our community. I tried introducing new games, commentating games, and inquiring about games for us to play as a community both on and off stream. Unfortunately, most of these things led to dead ends. While I still hope we can find more common interests besides idle games, we’ll be going back to basics in 2020 so I can focus on work and better improve my own personal productivity. This will be somewhat similar to my old stream format from 2016-2017. Here’s what you’ll see on the stream in 2020:
CNE Idle Games: These are the most popular games in our community and they’re still my favorites too. I will be streaming them a lot more in 2020, but I won’t be monitoring Twitch chat during the week when streaming these idle games. It is very rare that there is any chat activity during these games, so this should not be much of an issue. All are welcome to use our Discord for idle game discussion. I can’t always respond in real time, so this is an easier way to communicate without anyone feeling ignored. (You can still find me on Twitch on the weekends if Discord isn’t your thing.)
Marbles On Stream: I’m happy to be enjoying this again after a few months break. I think this is a great complement to the idle games, and we’ll be playing it again on the weekends as long as we have people who want to participate. It’s fun, it’s simple, it’s easy to play, it’s our number one interactive game in terms of participation, and it’s the only game that brings new viewers to the stream with any regularity. All of these reasons make it a good fit for our community. I can also answer your idle game questions during these streams.
Other Games: I won’t be streaming a whole lot of non-idle single-player games, but you will see an occasional Minecraft or Cities Skylines stream from time to time on the weekends, and possibly some other games too.
TL;DR: I am now exclusively using Discord for chat on weekdays. You can also find me on Twitch every weekend for live idle game Q&A sessions.