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I've been a games industry tester, journalist, community manager, marketing guy, you name it and I still love video games.
Email: jared[dot]rea@gmail[dot]com

Art by Kat Smith
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    Entries in livevstream (4)

    Monday
    May312010

    Super NCR Intro Video Madness

    When I talked to people online about the previous NorCal Regionals, more often then not they mention the NBA-style intro video to the stream. It was cheesy for sure, but it brought the hype like none other. So for Super NorCal Regionals I decided to step it up a bit and aimed for video intros to every game represented at the tournament. My friend (and NorCal boxer) ILLiterate helped out a lot with the the brainstorming and script writing process, but to tell you the truth the collaboration went a lot like this-

    ILLiterate: I have a dumb a idea!

    Me: And I know how to make that idea even dumber!

    When you're editing video all your lonesome until 4AM every night with little to no oversight, you tend to surrender yourself to your creative processes regardless of where they seem to take you. That's about as best as I can explain the utter insanity we at iPlayWinner subjected the audience to with these intros. Overall they went over pretty well and John Choi didn't punch me in the face for all the Sandstorm, so I'll put this one down as a win.

    So here they are, all the intro videos as seen at Super NorCal Regionals, minus one: Capcom vs SNK 2, of which I'd like Switcher to upload that one himself.

    Click to read more ...

    Monday
    May172010

    Super NorCal Regionals

    You'll have to pardon the dust as just about all my spare time has been dedicated to either gaining employment or working on the stream for Super NorCal Regionals. This includes tons of video production (such as the trailer above), staff management and of course, copious amounts of beer and Street Fighter.

    If you recall, last November, the iPlayWinner crew and myself essentially set the benchmark for fighting game tournament streams with our work at the previous NorCal Regionals. If that was a revolution, Super NorCal Regionals will be much more of an evolution as we've taken a hard look at everything that went right, and wrong with our previous broadcast and doing everything we can do either maximize or eliminate these issues.

    The biggest improvements you'll see as a view will be the visual fidelity as we're now armed with HD capture equipment and the hardware to process it. As for everything else you'll just have to wait until Memorial Day weekend to see.

    Monday
    Feb222010

    Live Streams: What Would You Like to See?

    You may have noticed that I've been running a lot more streams than usually lately, and fairly random ones at that. From a late-night SSX3 fit to Shelby and I playing Pokemon Snap, I've been running a lot of test streams not only for technical purposes, but to figure out what folks enjoy watching most when we're out of the tournament season.

    I have a lot of fun hosting these streams as I like playing games in a more social fashion and so Im looking to turn these into regularly scheduled events. This is where I need your help because I'd like some input on what you'd be interested in watching. To startthings off, here are the ideas I've currently been kicking around.

    Social Gatherings & Tournaments: This is the big obvious one, and from the Thursday Night San Jose gathering to co-ops with iPlayWinner.com, gatherings and tournaments are my top priority when it comes to streaming game footage. Most of the time this boils down to Street Fighter and Tekken, but it's also meant Bomberman and other random games in a group setting.

    Jared vs The World: You may have seen this before, where I play Street Fighter IV and ask viewers to send me game invites for everyone to see. It's a lot of fun since and everyone gets to showcase their skills. I want to make this a regular occurrence, though extend its reach beyond just Street Fighter IV. It'd be fun to do this with other competitive multiplayer games.

    Endurance Runs: Similar to what my friends at GiantBomb did with Persona 4, this is where we pick a game and then I play it until its completion. When I lift an idea, however, I like to put my own unique twist on it. I was thinking of possibly attempting a multiplayer endurance run featuring Diablo II or even possibly 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, with the viewers filling in the co-op slots.

    Retro Nights: I love introducing people to my favorite games, or those they may have missed, so I'm interested in having a night where I run through a favorite classic of mine. This could also turn into something of a challenge night where I push myself to complete a very difficult game.

    These are just a few of my ideas, but I'd really love to hear what you guys think since you're most likely one of my viewers. 

    Wednesday
    Jan272010

    Advice on Live Streams

    I've been creating and hosting live streams of Street Fighter gatherings for a little over a year now and not only have I learned a lot since I first began, but I'm actually still learning little tricks here and there that makes this hobby of mine as fresh as ever. With more and more outlets jumping into the fray of streaming live events, I've become something of a go-to person when it comes to figuring all this stuff out, so I thought today I'd share some of the knowledge that comes from constant streams a year later.

    For everything technical regarding what sort of equipment or software you should be using, my good friend Niedel over at iPlayWinner (of which I'm a media consultant) wrote up a great guide that covers all of that. When it comes to hardware, really, just about setup you can come up with will probably net decent results and in software, nothing beats CamTwist, which is a Mac only live editing application. Without it, I have no idea how I'd be able to do a lot of the cooler aspects of my streams.

    As for everything else, here's my all-purpose advice for running a live stream.

    Click to read more ...