The Great Big Bye-onara in the Sky

Or "Sunset Falls on the Twitch Streamer"

Like most people, I have changed a lot over the past half decade. As crazy as it is to acknowledge, 2019 was five years ago now. Five years ago, my partner and I were aware of each other, but I had no idea we’d be getting married in a little over six months. Five years ago I was still an undergraduate student who took eighteen credits in Nuclear Engineering and Mathematics, worked 8+ hours a week in an office and almost 15 hours a week as a student researcher, was Chapter President of a large student organization, a Vice President of a DIFFERENT student organization, and then also tried to keep in shape and maintain a social life. Five years ago I wasn’t thinking about where I’d be one day setting down roots and about what I want to do to support people besides myself.

Also five years ago, I started streaming Chrono Cross.

While I didn’t start blocking out a period of 3+ hours every week to stream until the summer of 2019, this is the origin of my period of streaming on twitch.tv. Since this point, I have streamed 81 total games (unless I’m stinky and missed one). I won't list them all here, go watch my VODs and you tell me if I miscounted :]

So here I am, talking all retrospectively, why is that? Sorry for invoking a rhetorical question. Maybe you already guessed it based on everything leading up to now.

I’m not the same person with the same priorities as I was five years ago. They’re similar priorities, definitely, but they’re also quite different, in the way time always distorts things. I don’t feel the need to go into too many specifics, but I think it’s best to say it out right:

I am going on an indefinite hiatus from streaming on twitch.tv/voltagevo

While I don’t think any creator is required to give a thorough, page-long retrospective about themselves and their work and their real life circumstances to their audience at the sunset of their current exploits, I personally do feel inclined to do so. I don’t want to seem self-important. I’m a twenty-six year old man with a lot of life left to live. And I’m from the Midwestern United States of America (the fact of which there can be no debate), and we are folks who don’t care to talk about ourselves all that much. But here, maybe you all want to know why I’ve made this decision.

In short: there’s a lot going on in life now, and my priorities have shifted. I cannot stream 8+ hours a week in any capacity. I cannot find 2.67 hours on three nights, and I cannot find a day where I can go for 8 hours. The numbers aren’t even lining up for 3 hours a week anymore, at least not in a way that would 1. meaningful for me, 2. meaningful for you, 3. meaningful for twitch.tv. So that’s the math. Short and sweeet and ultimately the reason why. Anything else is a whirlpool of details. Lots of water rushing around in a circular fashion that ultimately arrives at the point all the same.

I think there’s a non-zero chance I come back to streaming at some point in the not-so-distant future. Maybe it’ll be when things have settled, I have a career-job, and maybe some other familial responsibilities. Whatever the circumstances, I feel confident in my claims. I’ve been playing video games for an audience for more than half my life at this point. I was making Let’s Plays at 12 in 2010 (something you don’t need to tell YouTube btw), and I was making let’s plays at 24 in 2022. This is a passion of mine that ebbs and flows like the tides. For better or for worse, I have my entire vocal maturation recorded in .mp3 and .wav files sitting on some server somewhere. I’m sure an voice bank training neural networks that will eventually voice the telemarketers of the future would kill for this kind of stuff. Then again, they probably already have it and could train an AI of my entire voice at their whim. That’s what happens when you make Let’s Plays for as long as I have. I digress, I don’t think I’ll give up this hobby forever.

And no, you're not watching any of these.

But while I expect myself to return to this hobby in the not-so-distant future, I don’t know if it’ll look exactly the same as it does now. That’s of course, because I am always growing and changing. When I made videos at age 12, it was because I wanted to be the next big Let’s Player. Eventually I got into other activities and hobbies, focused on high school and got into college. Then I came back around to making videos in 2017 as a depressed college student who had decided it was, in fact, NOT GOOD to smother his inner weirdo in an attempt to reinvent himself for college, and it was worth it whenever I could find the time to record for an afternoon whenever academic and societal commitments were in a lull. These responsibilities also ebbed and flowed and I found myself unable to commit to my self and my desire to play video games. And so I then returned to streaming to “block out time for myself”. In 2019 - 2020, I figured that if I was able to play video games, I had ought to stream them since at least then I’d be doing something more with my time than “just playing video games”. Maybe it was spending time with friends, or practicing voice acting, or even something as basic as playing a game I had been setting aside for a while. My hobby of playing games for others allowed me to learn to respect myself (a rare personal development from gaming). I’m sincerely grateful for this and would not have it any other way.

And wow, what friends I’ve been able to make along the way! I’ve met so many people from this hobby of simply “playing video games on camera”. There’s no bones about it, I have made some lifetime bonds and friendships from the excitement and willingness of others to “watch me play video games”. I Am eternally grateful to every single person whose voice has graced the airwaves of twitch.tv/voltagevo and twitch.tv/voltage12o2. I would not have had such a wonderful five years had I not had every single one of you there on stream in some capacity. Whether you were someone who joined me every week to journey through a tremendously long story-heavy game, or someone who performed their heart out in the multiple visual novel live dubbed we did here, or even just someone who joined the call for a single stream (perhaps even for ten minutes total), you have contributed to my life and I am honored to have had you. I don’t intend for this to be the end of any friendships, of course! It’s just a fun activity we’ve done together coming to a close for now.

In that same vein, I will not be terminating the Discord server. Just because there aren’t going to be any current activities doesn’t mean I’m going to close the community center. For one, I really would like to pivot into other kinds of creative work: videos, writing, etc. and I would love to have a single central place were I can chat about it with you all. I understand that I, as a figurehead of a community do have a responsibility to ensure that said community is one unified in a healthy way, and that I acknowledge the impact that decisions I make have. I will not lie to you all, I am honored that even the smallest, silliest stream moment may have been the thing you needed on a dark day. To know that this is the case for a non-zero amount of people has made streaming these past five years as completely justified.

With that in mind, please allow me to share my favorite moments on stream.

Five of My Favorite Moments from Five Years of Streaming

In no particular order, five of my favorite moments from Stream.

1. The Great Midwest Debate

from “Yes, Through a… White Door! ~ Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward | 4/23/22”

As I alluded to earlier in the piece, the midwest region of the United States is hard to define. I have strong opinions, of course, as I am FROM the midwest. But of course, there comes a time in everyone’s lives where the “which state is a midwest state” debate pulls into the parking lot and enters the arena of discourse. On stream ,this resulted in a set of moments fueled by passion and unbending commitments to believing objectively wrong information (who am I referring to??? hahaha you’ll never know!). It’s just a lot of fun, and I still think about these conversations every so often

2. The Iris Ending of AI: The Somnium Files

from “WE HAVE TO SAVE IRIS DUDE!!!!!! - AI The Somnium Files Livedubbed! | 1/28/23 | [7b]”

This scene is not complete without acknowledging my scene partner Somni for being a wonderful Iris Sagan. I do not do any kind of public acting (that is, acting in front of others) and have not for a very long time. I think I speak for a lot of my fellow freelance voice actors that we rarely get to have truly raw and powerful emotional moments like these that we get to share in front of others in the moment. When we voice act, we are alone with nothing but the sound-suppressing foam of our homemade booths. Even for professional voice actors who record in studios in LA or Dallas, it is so rare that you get to have any kind of scene partner to bounce dialogues off of. How lucky I am that I was able to have a scene like this, a performance like this in a live space. I am so proud of this moment, it is proof that I can truly play pretend.

3. Picking Up Explorers of Sky and Finishing the Post-Game

from these videos dude, I mean they’re right here.

Let me say outright, Explorers of Sky is my favorite playthrough I have done on stream and it’s not close. This series was the one that brought me closer with so many of my friends which gave me a sense of community when I would’ve otherwise been very alone. But then after the main story mode wrapped up, we took a break and that was that. But in truth, it always bothered me that I stopped playing Explorers of Sky on stream around Crevice Cave. I’m so glad that I decided to reconcile that fact at the end of 2023. The return to Explorers of Sky resulted in three of my all-time favorite streams filled to the brim with manic improv bits, gut-busting amusing gameplay moments, and a true conclusion to an in credible “project” of sorts. When people ask me what friendship looks like, I point to these videos. Thanks Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky. I will never be able to write an objective review of you ever again!

4. Naming Weapons in Fire Emblem Awakening

from “Grinding out Supports for Tomorrow ~ Fire Emblem Awakening - 7/21/21 [7A]”

and “The Fire emblem I forgot to export ~ Fire Emblem Awakening - 7/22/21 [8]”

While on a grinding stream, Travis dragondropit revealed to me a poisonous truth which would forever alter my experience playing Fire Emblem: Awakening.

The result was this:

And this:

Many more moments like these were had until the game wrapped all up. I think they speak for themselves. Thanks, Travis. Very cool.

5. Emeralda’s Scene in Xenogears

from “Time to get Existential! ~ Xenogears - 6/22/21 [20]”

Spoilers for Xenogears.

Maybe it’s a case of the right place at the right time, but it’s my list god damn it. After 20 weeks of playing Xenogears every Tuesday, I found one of my most resonating moments in gaming. So much so that I even made a little video essay about it (pardon my eyepatchwolf-like narration, I was trying out something).

The fact is that I don’t think I see this moment is I’m not streaming. I have trouble playing games longer than 40 hours to completion, and, well, Xenogears is at least twice that length. I was rewarded for my commitment to this long, arduous JRPG with one of my favorite stories in any game ever, and this scene is what sold it for me. I understand that there are deeper scenes than this in the game, and they’re wonderful, but the dinner scene between Kim and Elly is one I’ll never forget, especially given the way my life was when I first saw it. Please, do yourself a favor and play Xenogears. It is long, yes, but it’s well-worth experiencing one of the best stories of any video game ever made.

In Conclusion

I’ll be making more stuff in time, or at least I hope so. I also want to let myself truly do things without any expectations along with them for a change. Streaming has been an outlet for me, but I think now it falls to me to consider what I’ve learned here and adapt it for a new way of life. But that’s the magic of life: things change, they adapt, they transform. I will still be around doing stuff, hell I might even stream every so often just because I feel like it. But this marks the conclusion of regular streaming for me on twitch in this capacity. It has been a true privilege to have done so for you. I encourage you to not renew your twitch subscriptions, you will be giving me money for nothing and I don’t think that’s a very good thing to do from a financial advice perspective (though hey, if you forget, you’re still helping pay my wi-fi bill, so thank you?). I’ll be wokring on things that inspire me, and I hope that I can inspire you to do so as well. I want to explore other creative avenues and bring forth the feeling and experience of being me, whatever that looks like from here on out. I look forward to sharing everything I make with you when the time comes to do so.

Follow me on bluesky @voltagevo.neocities.org and on my main which isn’t too hard to find too. I’m also on Youtube through all the channels linked in this post.

But beyond anything, don’t forget: We had fun here.

Until then, see you next time.

VoltageVO, hit dude who might again stream at twitch.tv/voltagevo one day.