This week we were given a brief rundown of what we’re going to be doing for our second assignment coming up. My partner Nat and I spent a fair bit of time talking about what we each wanted to do in terms of characteristics and content. The main thing we wanted to be sure of was that our content would somehow be interactive and unique to the internet. We talked about doing some sort of ‘choose your own adventure’ type of thing – a short story shown through videos that would take you to the next, through the eyes of somebody’s computer.

Our other idea was a livestream: we both enjoy gaming and watching other people play games online, so a livestream would be a great way to combine our interests with an interactive medium. After thinking it through and talking with other groups, we’re leaning towards doing a livestream. It turns out some other groups also had the ‘choose your own adventure’ idea, and while it’s a good one, I think a livestream is better suited to our tastes and the characteristics we explored in our first assignment.

What a typical Twitch livestream looks like

A livestream could be the perfect way to respond to the ‘amateur’ characteristic once again, in combination with obviously the ‘livestream’ characteristic. I think these will intertwine nicely and are quite closely related. Only through the internet can amateur content be shown live around the world – 15 years ago the costs and equipment necessary to do that demanded that only professionals be allowed to create content live. Much of the content currently streamed is rough around the edges or niche. The popular livestream platform Twitch mostly consists of people playing video games and talking over the top of them. We also looked at live feeds of puppies that are circulating online with some classmates. In the next couple of weeks I want to find out just how easy or difficult it is for the average person to livestream, as well as continue thinking about the interactive aspects of livestreaming as we prepare for our project.