This week David talks with Sachie, a Facebook Gaming Partner and content creator who streams cozy games like The Sims and Animal Crossing. Sachie gives us some hot tips of her own as a streamer, describes what it was like to transition to a career in content creation, and defines what a cozy game is. David and Lisa discuss where they have felt most at home within gaming and read some of your answers to the question, “What video game would make a great TV adaptation?”
For more information, follow @OtherGamingPod on Twitter and Instagram and join our Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/thatothergamingpodcast.
This week David talks with Sachie, a Facebook Gaming Partner and content creator who streams cozy games like The Sims and Animal Crossing. Sachie gives us some hot tips of her own as a streamer, describes what it was like to transition to a career in content creation, and defines what a cozy game is. David and Lisa discuss where they have felt most at home within gaming and read some of your answers to the question, “What video game would make a great TV adaptation?”
For more information, follow @OtherGamingPod on Twitter and Instagram and join our Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/thatothergamingpodcast.
This week David talks with Sachie, a Facebook Gaming Partner and content creator who streams cozy games like The Sims and Animal Crossing. Sachie gives us some hot tips of her own as a streamer, describes what it was like to transition to a career in content creation, and defines what a cozy game is. David and Lisa discuss where they have felt most at home within gaming and read some of your answers to the question, “What video game would make a great TV adaptation?”
For more information, follow @OtherGamingPod on Twitter and Instagram and join our Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/thatothergamingpodcast.
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David Jagneaux:
Hello, and welcome to That Other Gaming Podcast, where we take a look behind the scenes of virtual reality, online gaming, streaming, and more. I’m David, a Tech Comms Manager here at Meta, a full-time nerd, and lifelong gamer obsessed with the future of video games.
Lisa Brown-Jaloza:
And I’m Lisa, a fellow Tech Comms Manager at Meta, recovering academic, and as he loves to remind everybody, David’s boss. So what have you been playing this week?
David:
Did I mention you look very nice today, Lisa?
Lisa:
Flattery will get you everywhere.
David:
Yes. I’m only going to talk about one game. I’ve had one game on my mind for weeks now. That is Zenith: The Last City. This is an upcoming VR MMO from Ramen VR. It was funded on Kickstarter, I want to say four years ago. I can’t remember the exact amount. I want to say it was over $120,000, I’m pretty sure it was in that ballpark. It was quite a bit of money, and they’ve gotten external funding since then. And I am beyond excited for this game. I’ve been a big MMO fan for decades now. So seeing a game like this come to VR is just, it has me so hyped, and the fact that it’s going to be cross-play between Quest, PC, and PSVR all simultaneously—this is just, it is literally a dream game for me. I am so excited.
Lisa:
Yeah. And it’s huge for the VR market as a whole. I mean, the fact that it’s one of our first, if not the first fully-fledged MMOs, and then the fact that it’s opening up cross-play really for VR in the state that it’s in, that’s just a recipe for success I think.
David:
Yeah. It’s so smart on their part to really put in the work to make sure their cross-play works well. I played the Beta on Quest 2 over the weekend, and I had a great time. It’s so fun. It really is a fully-fledged MMO. You’ve got multiple classes, different roles, you can set up guilds, all the combat is real-time with your hand movements and weapons. And you can glide around, you can climb things. I mean it does two very cool things that I think are very VR-focused. And one of those is you have to physically wave your hand at NPCs to talk to them, which I love. And whenever you die, you put your hands together to pray to be respawned. I think that’s a really clever touch. There is another VR MMO, OrbusVR that’s been out for a while. It was a good proof of concept, but I feel like Zenith really takes it and runs away with the whole idea of a VR MMO. So highly anticipated game for me. What about you Lisa?
Lisa:
Oh, and I was also going to plug the fact that Andy, their CEO is an Oculus Launch Pad alum fellow from 2017, which is pretty cool.
David:
Oh yeah.
Lisa:
Yeah. And then as far as what I’ve been playing on the Switch, I recently finished playing through Life Is Strange: True Colors, which was absolutely beautiful. Really good ending, won’t give away any spoilers, but definitely lived up to the hype I think.
David:
You spoke very highly of them. Yeah.
Lisa:
So really enjoyed playing through that. And then I finally cracked and gave Wordle a shot. So that’s been eating up a little bit of downtime.
David:
Yeah. I tried that one too. You would think I would love word games, but I don’t really.
Lisa:
Really?
David:
I don’t know. I think it reminds me of work. I guess I’m just like, I don’t want to have to think about words, I’m good.
Lisa:
I could see that. I did think it was really interesting. Apparently there’s a hard mode where any clues that you unearth, you have to use them in your subsequent turns, which from a strategic standpoint, why wouldn’t you? So I really don’t understand the hard mode on Wordle.
David:
That’s how I always play those kind of games.
Lisa:
Same, right? So, little unusual there but, so apparently I enjoy hard mode for Wordle, but—
David:
Living life on hard mode.
Lisa:
Yes. And then other David, my David, he recently finished playing through Guardians of the Galaxy. So really enjoyed watching that.
David:
I really want to play that one. I got that on Black Friday for 20 bucks, and I’ve been waiting to crack it open. I need to soon.
Lisa:
Yeah, and then our youngest just discovered Mario Kart on YouTube. So we’ve been playing that around the house, and he gets a huge kick out of it. He’s three and just laughs and laughs. When you get hit by a shell and the reactions that the different characters have, he finds it really fascinating and entertaining.
David:
Yeah. I need to try that with my son because I know there’s an assisted mode, right?
Lisa:
Yes. So we’ve handed it over to him to let him play, but he’s a little more at this stage, I think, comfortable just watching us play versus taking over the reins himself. But my daughter, who’s six, she’ll play Mario Kart on the assist mode and has a lot of fun.
David:
Awesome. Cool.
Lisa:
Yeah.
David:
There’s so many games nowadays that are more accommodating for kids and accessible than all different types of play styles out there. You don’t have to just play games where you kill monsters and shoot people. It’s all different types of games out in the world. This is a good segue way because today’s episode is about finding your own space within the world of gaming. So I’m kind of curious: Where have you felt at home within gaming, whether that be an event or something physical or in a digital world or anything like that?
Lisa:
For me, and this is probably an obvious answer, but really heavily narrative-driven games. Gone Home is one that really resonates for me and makes me—
David:
You know I haven’t played Gone Home.
Lisa:
It’s so good.
David:
I need to.
Lisa:
It’s so good.
David:
I know. I keep hearing this—
Lisa:
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. I’m dying for another game from that studio, The Chinese Room. They’re just fantastic. And then in terms of physical spaces, really gaming conferences with an emphasis on the players, but also with an emphasis on academia are my sweet spots. So PAX, some of the more esoteric of their talks that they have. I felt really welcomed in those spaces. And then also outside of the strictly gaming sphere, different academic conferences that touch on gaming. So there’s ICFA, the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts. And then also PAMLA, the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association. They have an annual conference and both of those have a lot of content around video games where you just hear fascinating talks about the symbolism and cultural commentary coming out of these different works of art, which is really cool.
David:
It sounds like you are not taking the recovering academic part of your intro very seriously.
Lisa:
It’s been a while since I’ve been to one of those spaces, but—
David:
Oh okay. For me I’ll give the two answer as well. First I’ll go and say relating back to what I said about MMOs, I felt incredibly at home whenever I first played Guild Wars 2. That was an MMO that I was really excited about. And it came out at the perfect time. It was summer right before senior year of college. I was totally burnt out on school, completely willing to just skip class and stay home and play an MMO all day. That was the first year I’d ever left or lived by myself in an apartment. I went no-life binge on that game for a while. And I graduated fine. It’s okay. Everything worked out. But I was heavily into that game. I had organized a guild of 40 people before it even came out. I was hardcore into it. Yeah. It was a short six-, seven-month time frame, but some of my favorite memories came from that. And then on the other side of that, something that’ll probably never happen again for me is going to midnight launches for games. That was such a cool, awesome experience. And Skyrim, I will never forget waiting in line on November 10, 2011 at midnight showing up for the 11-11-11 launch and waiting outside in the cold. And the north Texas freezing weather in November. And I met a person that was behind me in line that I still talk to. We’re still friends. We still talk on Steam. And he lived down the street for me. And it was such a cool, that collective hype feeling, where it’s just palpable, where no one even has to speak. You could just feel the energy in the air. I don’t know if that’ll ever be matched, because when the new one comes out, whenever it finally comes out, it’ll just be a digital download or you’re ordering on Amazon. It’s not the same, so that, I miss stuff like that a lot.
Lisa:
Yeah. I worked at a bookstore during the height of the Harry Potter phenomenon, and when they had book launches and people would come in costume and it was just an event. Yeah, I definitely miss things like that too.
David:
And you know, we’ve got a really cool interview guest today.
Lisa:
Yeah. Super exciting. Her name is Sachie. David actually gave her a shout out in an earlier episode of the show. She’s a content creator and a cozy game streamer. She’s amassed quite the following on Facebook Gaming where you can catch her streaming games like The Sims and Animal Crossing.
David:
That’s right. We sat down and we talked a lot about how she found her audience, what life is like as a full-time content creator and streamer, and what exactly a cozy game is or a wholesome game. So let’s cut over and listen to that now.
David:
Hey Sachie, how are you doing today?
Sachie:
I’m doing well. How are you?
David:
I’m doing very well. Why don’t you go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself and who you are.
Sachie:
Okay. Hi, I’m Sachie. I’m a content creator from Toronto, Canada. I stream mainly on Facebook at fb.gg/SachieTV, but I also create content all across the internet on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, all of that good stuff. And I’m mainly a cozy game streamer. So I’m hoping today we’re going to have lots of nice cozy, happy vibes.
David:
All right. Give me your top 10, most gruesome deaths and head shots you’ve gotten.
Sachie:
No I, when I say I’m a cozy streamer, I try to protect my brain from anything that will make me feel any type of emotion. I don’t want to cry. I don’t want to be afraid.
David:
Is there a way to define that for people, if they’re not familiar with what a wholesome cozy game genre is, but what is that exactly?
Sachie:
So I would say cozy games are a genre where it’s usually some type of life or adventure simulator. So some examples would be Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, Sims, a lot of them are very creative games where you’re either decorating or building something. And a lot of people use them as a distraction where you’re not going to have jump scares popping up in Animal Crossing or anything. It’s just kind of something to get you in a nice, happy mood. And usually they have a list of tasks or things that you can do in the game, but usually very creative based, very mellow. Just something to take your mind off of things that are going on in the outside world.
David:
Got it. And have you been always into those kind of games or is that kind of a newer phenomenon since you started streaming?
Sachie:
Well, I always liked cozy games, and when I started out on my gaming adventure, when I was a kid, I always played Flash games, Neopets, things like that. I was really into Flash games, but also when I got my first console, which was a Nintendo DS, my first games were Animal Crossing and Pokémon Diamond and Pearl. So they always made me feel really happy. Later on, when I started venturing into FPS games and adventure games, it was a little bit of a shock for me. For example, the first time I played Team Fortress, when your character dies, they explode and there’s blood everywhere. And I actually had to step away from my computer and take a breather. But yeah, I’ve always been drawn into cozy games. I kind of just like the slow pace of them. There’s no rush. You kind of figure out what you want to do, what you like doing in the game, and you can pursue that instead of always having to follow a storyline or complete things by time-based game modes. And streaming it has been a relatively new thing for me. When I started out with streaming, I was actually streaming Fortnite and Overwatch. It was in 2018 when Fortnite was the big thing. So I was like, okay, everyone’s playing, I like the art style. It’s kind of cartoony, it’s very fast-paced, so we’ll start streaming with this. But then when the pandemic hit, Animal Crossing had just come out, two weeks after everything kind of shut down. I always really liked Animal Crossing. So I decided to stream it. I had no viewers, all of my viewers were FPS fans. So they were kind of like, no, this is not our thing, but I really enjoyed the game. From there, I kind of discovered a whole cozy game community, or I guess they kind of discovered me. We found each other.
David:
I’ve watched some of your Sims streams and Animal Crossing, and I can see the vibe you’re going for. It’s kind of a, if someone were to walk into a gaming coffee shop and just sort of have people hanging out, listening to music, chatting.
Sachie:
Yeah. I find because cozy games can go at a little bit of a slower pace, you don’t need to be focused on the game all the time. I can kind of almost use that as background visuals, I guess. For example, in Animal Crossing, I’m usually decorating something, but then I’ll be talking about daily life. Like, “Oh, hey, I went into the supermarket today and I found this,” “Oh, also we’re going to add a bush here and some flowers. And then this thing happened to me.” It kind of goes back and forth.
David:
Right. I guess if we want to shift gears a little bit here and talk a little bit about what led you to streaming, what was your career, what was your life like before you started streaming and before you became a partner on Facebook?
Sachie:
So I always remember watching gaming videos. Some of the first videos I found on YouTube were gaming videos and surprisingly as much as I dislike horror games, but I will watch someone else scream. So I’ve always been watching gaming videos on YouTube and then kind of the rise of streaming and especially with Fortnite, so many streamers popping up on Facebook, on Twitch, on YouTube, former Mixer. I was watching them everywhere. At the time when I guess I started getting into streaming, I was streaming quite sporadically on Twitch, just kind of here and there because I had some friends on Discord and they would just watch me play Overwatch, not really broadcasting it out to the world or anything. And then once I started working a full-time job, my job before I started streaming was, I worked at public relations in a hospital or a research firm.
David:
Oh, okay.
Sachie:
A research Institute. And so no one at my work was really interested in gaming at all. And I didn’t really have too many friends outside of the internet that were interested in it, but I still really enjoyed gaming. I was really into Overwatch. And I just thought that if I started streaming, maybe I could make more friends that were also interested in the games that I was interested in. So I guess my whole venture into streaming was just to find companionship and friendship online—to find other people to play with, really. I wasn’t expecting too many people to watch. I just kind of wanted other people to talk to and play Overwatch with. So I started streaming on Facebook kind of as I had seen some people’s streams pop up on my feed. Most of the people I found were Fortnite people. So I was mainly streaming Fortnite then, but I didn’t even know it was a thing. I was like, oh this is kind of cool. It’s very convenient. I’m on Facebook anyway. And then slowly over time, more people started coming into my stream and I had a little community going and I thought that was really cool because I’m like, I can’t believe people actually want to watch me play Fortnite. I’m not the best at this game, but at least I can hopefully keep talking enough to make people feel like they have a friend to talk to. From there it kind of grew. And then I find now I have quite a big community of people that like to hang out on my stream. So it’s kind of grown over the past few years.
David:
Yeah. You could brag a little bit. You have a hundred, 150,000 followers on Facebook. That’s—
Sachie:
Oh my God.
David:
That’s not a small amount.
Sachie:
That’s crazy.
David:
Yeah. That’s more people than most cities in the world so that you, that actually—
Sachie:
Oh my gosh. So I kind of went from just streaming as a fun hobby after work, I’d work my nine to five, come back home, eat dinner, and then stream for a couple hours at night and then go to bed. And that was pretty much what I was doing. And then the world changed and things kind of started shifting. And then, so I actually ended up leaving my job and I started using streaming kind of just, we’re going to, my numbers were starting to climb, decided to kind of take a bit more of a risk there and see if streaming could be a thing that I could pursue and kind of exploded from there. And things have been that way since. I’ve been streaming full-time for almost two years, dedicated just only to streaming content creation.
David:
Awesome. That’s great. Congrats on the success so far. It’s—
Sachie:
Oh, thank you.
David:
I think it’s well-timed because as we talked about cozy games, those types of games are really growing in popularity with the pandemic. Like you said, there’s whole new classes of gamers, finding games and finding out how diverse the gaming industry is and how you don’t just have to play shooters. You don’t just have to play online games. Yeah. So that’s awesome. So one of the things that we’ve talked about in past episodes is finding your niche as a streamer, playing Overwatch and Fortnite, games that are so saturated by a lot of the top streamers, it’s just very hard to find an audience consistently. As you have clearly found your niche, what do you kind of give as advice or recommendation to other content creators and finding out what their niche might be.
Sachie:
So when I first started streaming, from what I saw and what was showing up on my feed quite often, and I guess cross streaming platforms, was FPS games was where it was at. And everything I saw on Twitter, people were saying that you had to be streaming Call of Duty, Fortnite, any of the big shooter games. And I was like, well, I really like games, but I’m not the best at that. I know where my strengths lie. I really like talking. And I really like just happy, slower-paced games. And I didn’t think there was a community for that. I decided to go forth with it anyway, because it’s what I enjoyed. And I figured that if people were going to find my stream, it’s best that they find me when I’m in my element and not suffering through a game that it clearly shows on my face that I’m like, I wish, I want to get out of here, get me out of here. I guess this is one of the unique things about Facebook, especially when the pandemic hit and Animal Crossing had come out, everything just kind of aligned. There are a lot of different groups on Facebook that are dedicated to cozy games. And so when I started streaming, I saw my audience change and I found that a lot of especially younger women, my age, were coming to my streams because they were also playing Animal Crossing. And because they were interacting with groups, trying to find different items, trying to find friends to play with, my stream was being suggested to them. So I started acquiring a larger audience that was mainly women between the ages of, I want to say 20 to 40 years old that were interested in Animal Crossing that also wanted to find other women or just a nice, friendly, cozy space. A lot of them were moms. A lot of them had younger children and wanted something more family-friendly that their kids could also watch and play along with. So those were the people that were kind of coming to me. So I had this whole revelation of, your demographic can be different to what you see in the mainstream. I think a lot of times when we see big gaming communities, big streamers, it’s primarily male, they’re usually playing FPS games and there are gamers out there, casual gamers that don’t feel like they fit into those spheres. And when they do find a place that they really like a streamer, that they like a community that they like, they will stick with them. So I’ve really made an effort to foster that community over the past two years and really grow it. And that community has been so incredible to me. So I would say to any budding streamer that doesn’t feel like they fit into the mainstream category of what they think a streamer should be, they don’t see themselves reflected in who’s the most popular, there are very active and successful communities for casual gaming or retro gaming or any specific circle.
David:
Yeah. Well, what you said about Facebook Groups, it’s a really good point because that’s a great discoverability feature that Facebook has as a platform.
Sachie:
I find a lot of the times when you’re on Twitch, if you want to connect with your audience, you got to bring them to Twitter, you got to bring them to Discord, and trying to get an audience member to follow you on everything. It sometimes can be a bit of a struggle, but with people that are on Facebook, they’re already there. They have Groups, they have Messenger. They have their feed that they’re scrolling for. They’re using it as a search engine. So there’s a lot of different possibilities. One of the things I think that really helped my page grow was I ask people oh, if you’re enjoying this stream so far, if you guys are part of any Animal Crossing groups on Facebook, Sims groups on Facebook, if you’re able to, I would love it if you could share the stream with a friend. It’s all condensed there, so you can just kind of, you don’t actually have to leave the platform—everyone’s already there and it makes things a lot easier.
David:
For sure. Speaking about communities on other platforms, you do have a large following outside of Facebook as well. On Twitter, Instagram, you have your own Discord community. How do you go about building a community like that, that is willing to engage with you outside of your stream?
Sachie:
I think giving each platform a specific purpose really helped out, for example, highlight videos are on YouTube. If you aren’t able to watch a full four- or five-hour stream, here’s an event that we did or a stream that we did, here are the highlights of that. On Discord, for people that want to engage with other community members, or if you’re looking for certain items or any in-game things, you can come here and talk to the community. If you just want to see me and my cats, you could go on Instagram. So putting everything, all your links together so it’s very easy to find and you’re very accessible. It made things a lot easier for people to find me and kind of branch out.
David:
Got it. Would you say that each of those other platforms really experienced their growth from the stream? Was that the initial funnel was your streams or did you hit it big somewhere else first?
Sachie:
I had a YouTube channel a couple years ago, but I never really updated it consistently. It was kind of just here and there, anytime I had something interesting to put up. I really started to focus on it once my streams started taking off, because I found that people still wanted to catch up with the stream, but didn’t want to have to go through and watch through an entire stream to know what happened. We can make it a little bit more entertaining. So then I started looking for editors to help condense my streams down into 10-minute videos. So yeah. Then from Facebook, which was the main point, I had all these people coming in, I was funneling them towards YouTube, Discord, things like that. So I’d say Facebook for me was the main hub.
David:
Got it. So on the flip side of all that, that’s great advice for what to do, but do you have any advice on things that you should definitely not do? I know for example on Facebook, spamming groups as yourself, if you’re a streamer, is a huge don’t do that. So do you have any sort of hacks for things that you should avoid?
Sachie:
In general, the best way for growth is to do everything meaningfully. I know something that annoys some people is, especially when you’re trying to grow your stream is connecting to streamers for collaborations where, you’ll all join a game of Among Us or you’ll join an FPS game, you’ll play together and you don’t really connect after that.
But I feel like if you’re able to grow your communities together and show that you’re friends, you banter back and forth, there’s an actual relationship there—it is very entertaining for viewers to watch because then if you can find other people that are kind of growing at the same pace as you or other streamers whose content you enjoy, you all lift each other up. As you mentioned before, spamming your stuff in groups will usually just get you kicked out or your posts... It doesn’t really do much, right? It’s just a link thrown out there and it probably won’t really drive that much traffic to your stream unless you actually put some effort into engaging with that group and post meaningful content.
David:
Yeah. I think you mentioned earlier, viewers that are already active members of groups, those are more useful people to share into a group that they’re already engaged with rather than joining a group, just to share your stream and then never doing anything else.
Sachie:
Yeah. Because it’s like, oh, if you’re just coming in here to throw your stream link or share your stream, it doesn’t really tell me much about you or why I should watch your stream. But if you’re in there posting content already or you’re engaged in commenting, then it prompts me more to see what you’re about.
David:
That makes a lot of sense. Are there any other games coming out this year that you’re particularly interested in? I’m assuming that you’re probably not going to be there day one with Elden Ring playing the new FromSoftware game.
Sachie:
I would say for me, it’s mainly been Nintendo games. The one I’m looking forward to right now is the new Pokémon game because yeah, I just, I love Pokémon games. I feel like when I get really into them, I just get sucked into them and then it’s all I want to play. But I guess for me being an OG Overwatch fan, I don’t know when it’s coming, but Overwatch 2, at some point I’m hoping they’ll give us some news.
David:
Yeah, no, Overwatch I got really into that for a while when it first came out and I haven’t kept up with it. There’s so many new characters now. It’s all almost overwhelming to think about going back to it.
Sachie:
Yeah. And I guess, because it’s such a team-based game, the thing that made me kind of sad is when my friends started losing interest in it, because we would always play as six together. And now I’m like where did everyone go?
David:
Yeah that’s a rough game to play solo because no one does the objective. So it’s yeah.
Sachie:
No, I’m a support main. So I just feel like a babysitter.
David:
Before I let you go. If you don’t mind, tell us where people can watch you, what’s your Twitter handle? All that good stuff.
Sachie:
So I stream on Facebook at fb.gg/SachieTV. You can find me @SachieTV everywhere else, Instagram, Twitter. And I also make YouTube videos, so if you want a little preview of the types of streams I do, you can go to youtube.com/sachie.
David:
Cool. And that’s S-A-C-H-I-E. Is that right?
Sachie:
Yes.
David:
All right, well Sachie, thank you very much for the time today. I hope you had a good time chatting and everyone listening and definitely check her out. Her streams are awesome. Thank you very much for hanging out with me. I hope you have a great day.
Sachie:
Yeah. Thank you so much for talking to me today.
David:
That was a great conversation. I love talking with her. I really loved, especially, how she talked about making her streams feel like a community and a safe place to go hang out.
Lisa:
Definitely. And that it’s more of a group of friends just chilling rather than watching someone get head shots and kill streaks. I mean, FPSes, they’re great, but it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. And even if it is, it may not be your jam all the time.
David:
Yeah, I know, exactly. It’s so important to have that camaraderie that, like we already talked about earlier too. All right. Now it’s time for Jaloza vs. Jagneaux, where we each get one minute to make our case on a chosen topic.
Lisa:
For this episode, we’re going to debate which is the better cozy and wholesome farming game: Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon? Why don’t you go ahead and go first this time?
David:
All right. Harvest Moon is the OG farming life simulation game. If you were to describe Stardew Valley to someone, you would say it’s like Harvest Moon, but pixel art. And that’s, really, that’s all it is. It’s just emulating what already happened and was already perfected. The one downside to Harvest Moon is that a lot of the recent games haven’t really been as great as the older ones, but I have so many fond memories of playing the original on Super Nintendo and the N64 ones—and all the ones on DS and GameCube, and there’s just such a rich history of that franchise. And I really feel it encapsulates that essence of wholesome game with its very colorful art style, that’s got a ton of activities to do. It’s a lot more gamified, I think, than Stardew Valley. There’s a lot of objectives and missions to build up your farm and get married and have kids. And it really hits that sweet spot for me. And I think there’s a lot more nostalgia that really makes it kind of really stronger.
Lisa:
Okay. So definitely hard to come after that. With Stardew Valley, it’s definitely a love letter to the OG, as you said, but I think what’s so amazing and compelling about it is the fact that you’re dealing with a one-man band. That this is one guy’s quest over about four years to produce something really beautiful and breathtaking. And the fact that he was a single developer on his own for most of that time, and he did all of the pixel art. He did all of the music, which is beautiful and really evocative of that tranquil and immersive feeling that you get when playing a cozy game. And then the fact that he opened up the marriage, that you could have same-sex relationships, that it’s a little bit of a queer game, I think is a nice touch and something that sets it apart.
Now you know what we think, it’s your turn to tell us what you think. So head on over to our Facebook Group or Twitter and vote on whether Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley is the better cozy and wholesome farming game. And let us know what you think about the show on Twitter @OtherGamingPod.
David:
Last week we debated which form of input and VR feels more impactful: voice interaction or hand tracking. You all weighed in over on Twitter, in the Facebook Group. And the winner was hand tracking! Congrats Lisa. I don’t agree but you know, that’s fine.
Lisa:
You’ve made that pretty evident, but hand tracking hands-down—the community favorite this time around.
David:
Or hands up.
Lisa:
Yeah, there we go. Over on the Facebook Group, we recently asked which video games or nerdy books people would think would make for an excellent TV series or movie adaptation.
David:
That’s right. I just finished watching The Witcher Season 2 on Netflix, and it got me thinking, what other books or games would make good adaptations? And we had a really, a few really good answers. I wanna read one of them here from Roderick. He said Metro as a movie series, I think that is an excellent idea. He said a strong female lead kicking alien butt, like Sigourney Weaver, but with modern cinema tech. Can’t go wrong with that. And I definitely agree with him. The Alien series has a lot in common with Metro, and I really, Metro is just such a perfect setting because you have the dark kind of creepy alien-infested ruins of a forgotten civilization, and a bounty hunter and a badass suit with cool weapons, and it’d be great. I think that’s such a good, good pick.
Lisa:
Julian had a lot to say. He named off Cryptonomicon, Neuromancer, and made an interesting point that he doesn’t feel most games would really readily lend themselves to film or television adaptations because of their interactive nature. Which is kind of cool. Kelly mentioned Life is Strange and every season could be a different story, which is an interesting idea. And then Nicole said, I still think a Bioshock movie that takes place before the game and shows the downfall of Rapture would be cool.
David:
Yes, that would be great. And I like how she said takes place before the first game. I think mm-hmm, you know, movies that just take place in the same universe, but don’t try to retell the story of the game, I think is a good tactic.
Lisa:
Absolutely.
David:
Before we go, I want to drop a live streaming hot tip for my fellow content creators out there. If you think about it, whenever someone’s watching a live stream, they’re watching your gameplay, but they’re also there for your commentary and what you have to say. I know for me personally, a lot of the time I’ll put a stream out in the background while I’m doing something else and maybe I’ll look every now and then, but if the audio isn’t good, then you’re not going to want to listen. So you’re not going to want to watch. So having a great mic is crucial. I think that’s super important, more important than fancy cameras and all that. But even beyond that, you don’t have to spend a lot to make your stream look and sound nice because if you have an NVIDIA graphics card, you can use a program called NVIDIA Broadcast. It’s a really cool program that lets you make a virtual green screen. So you don’t even need to have a physical one. You can edit your audio on the fly. So it gets rid of background noise and it sounds sharper. All of that stuff works great in OBS Studio. So I recommend that program, and I recommend Stream Elements to manage all of your sources. That’s a great website because it handles it all in the cloud, which is really seamless and easy to use.
For our shout out of the week, I’m going to recommend you check out VR Bros on Facebook Gaming. There are partnered streamer over on Facebook Gaming. They play a lot of VR shooters, lots of new releases. So if you’re looking for someone that plays a lot of VR stuff, then check out VR Bros.
Lisa:
Very cool. That’s an excellent tip and another, not streamer but group of streamers that I’d love to shout out is GDQ over on Twitch. I don’t know if you were tuned in for all of that, but yeah—
David:
The Games Done Quick.
Lisa:
Yep. The Games Done Quick doing wonderful work, raising money for charity, which is fantastic. And there was someone speed running DDR who they had—
David:
Speed tapping.
Lisa:
—one camera on his feet and one camera on his face and his facial expressions, it was just classic. There are no words.
David:
Oh, I really want to stream DDR. I think that’d be so much fun.
Lisa:
One day.
David:
Thank you so much for joining us on That Other Gaming Podcast from Meta. Remember, we’d love to connect with you on our Facebook Group, and you can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram @OtherGamingPod.
Lisa:
This show is produced by LWC. Cedric Wilson is our lead producer and composed our theme music. Kojin Tashiro also contributed music. Jen Chien is executive editor. That Other Gaming Podcast is executive produced by Steve Gray and Juleyka Lantigua. Art by BJ Prema.
CITATION:
Jagneaux, David and Jaloza, Lisa Brown. “Cozy Games with Facebook Gaming Partner Sachie.” That Other Gaming Podcast. Meta, LWC, February 4, 2022.
Produced by LWC