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Why I Bought a Money Gun Instead of a New Streaming PC: Making the Right Improvements for My Streaming Setup

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A while back, my wife and I were at a local clearance outlet. Scrounging through the store’s toy section, we stumbled upon the Monopoly Cash Grab Game. Unlike its classic tabletop predecessor, this one essentially boils down to one player shooting Monopoly money out of a money gun while the other players grab as much of it as they can.

I bought it with the intent of using it as a prop on stream. Finally, to celebrate reaching 200 follows on Twitch, I emptied the chamber in a blaze of glory to the delight of everyone viewing live and for those who saw the clip on social media afterwards.

[SIDE NOTE: Thank you for your ongoing support! The best part of streaming is the opportunity to spend time with you. Will continue my best to make this show valuable to you!]

The money gun was a blast to use. But was it a better use of my limited streaming budget at that moment? Especially when I’ve squeezed every ounce of life from my aging PC?

Yes. 

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Essential Hardware Upgrades for Console Video Game Streaming

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Looking to start streaming?

Having the right hardware is just a part of the overall experience, but it’s an important foundation to have. Without the right gear, your stream could suffer from lag, blurriness, your voice sounding scratchy through a crappy microphone, or any number of other problems that negatively impact your production quality. With so many good streams out there, it’s important to not let your hardware deter others from enjoying your show.

Compiling the lessons I’ve learned over the past two years, here’s a list of hardware upgrades to consider as you build the streaming rig of your dreams!

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My Failed Attempt at Upgrading My Streaming PC

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For months now, I’ve been preparing to upgrade my PC. Though I’ve never done anything of the sort, I’ve had friends coach me on what parts to buy and how to install everything. As soon as all of the parts came in, I cleared off the kitchen table, got a screwdriver, and got to work. This is my story of PC upgrading failure.

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My Hardware Roadmap For Better Video and Streaming

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When it comes to producing video content, I’ve come a long way from pointing a webcam at my TV. I can output video in 720p HD, live stream, and produce video segments for shows like Board Game Talk. Hope you have enjoyed at least some of my output thus far.

While there’s still much for me to learn in terms of the things I can do to produce a better product that go beyond hardware, I can’t ignore my hardware deficiencies. As I’ve become slightly more proficient at this, I continue to run into the same or new challenges that either slow down my workflow or prevent me from executing on my ideas as originally intended.

Below is a list of things I would like to add to my repertoire someday. It won’t be cheap, and I certainly don’t have the money to add most of these items to my collection any time soon, but if I want to push this video thing as far as I can go, I should have the right tools for the job.

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Dreams of XCOM 2 Appearing on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One

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XCOM: Enemy Unknown was one of my favourite games last generation. It was an excellent (and sometimes brutally difficult) turn-based strategy game that really put your skills to the test. I loved it so much that I beat it multiple times on console and then played through it a third time on iOS. While I am glad that XCOM 2 is set to be released in just a few days, I’m hugely disappointed in Firaxis and 2K’s decision to go PC-only.

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Can You Play Borderlands 2 From a Third Person Perspective?

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Since the release of Borderlands 2, my site has been slammed with traffic from users searching “Borderlands 2 third person” and all variations of that query. It seems like a lot of you want to know if/how to play Borderlands 2 from this particular camera angle, and coincidentally, my blog is called In Third Person. Though I appreciate all of the extra traffic to my site, I really hope Google isn’t driving people here that will ultimately be disappointed when my posts don’t answer the question. With that in mind, I’ll answer this seemingly burning question:

“Can you play Borderlands 2 from a third person perspective?

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The Walking Dead Episode 3: The Long Road Ahead

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The Walking Dead series has been my biggest surprise of 2012. Going into it with no real interest in the franchise, or adventure games, its first two instalments have taken me on an emotional roller coaster unlike any other game has before. Based on what I’d seen of the trailer for The Long Road Ahead, I had concerns that the base premise wouldn’t be as interesting as the one in episode 2. However, all my fears were quickly quashed as revelation after revelation took place.

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Binary Domain Impressions

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Though you’ve probably never heard of it, Binary Domain was a landmark title for Sega (in a bad way). As Sega’s most recent boxed release, it’s failure at retail contributed to substantial worldwide layoffs and a major restructuring of its publishing strategy.

Was it a bad game? Not from what I’ve read from the reviews, and general discussion on the internet. Because I was looking for something to scratch my Vanquish itch, I had this on my list of games to pick up when it hit $20. Though the game isn’t very old, it didn’t take long for it to drop to that price in my area. Is it the Japanese Hamburger I was looking for?

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Super Street Fighter IV’s Absence On PC and the Bigger Discussion About Piracy

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For all of those PC gamers anxiously awaiting the follow-up to the great PC Street Fighter IV port, you’re out of luck. A few days ago, Capcom Producer Yoshinori Ono during an interview with 4gamer revealed that there are no plans to bring Super Street Fighter IV to the PC due to piracy. Even though the original sold great, it also was a pirate favourite.

I know there are a lot of people who feel that video game piracy is a victimless crime because they feel like they’re only one person taking a product away from a faceless, multi-billion dollar corporation. However, there are consequences to pirating, and this is one of them. Not only does it hurt legitimate gamers that actually wanted to pay for it, but now pirates can’t even pirate it.

Don’t blame Capcom for this. They’re not here to just give away all of their work for us to enjoy. They run a business, and their purpose as a business is to make money. Releasing that type of game on the platform that is a pirate-haven such as the PC has proven time and time again to be bad business. I’m sure that the potential sales they lost due to piracy far outweighs the money they made on legitimate sales. To be honest, from a business perspective, I don’t know why any major companies would want to put out their big budget games in the traditional fashion on PC.

Where paying gamers can complain is the fact that Capcom doesn’t want to distribute this digitally through a protected system like Steam, which they feel is unfair to gamers who don’t have the service and limiting to gamers. Maybe someday they’ll change their mind on this decision.

Say what you will about much cheaper it is to pirate games rather than pay for them, but this is the end result of rampant piracy. The catalogue from which to pirate from will disappear and everyone loses. I sympathize for the PC only crowd that would have to buy new hardware to play Super Street Fighter IV in some form. As for the pirates that ruined everything…

Lineage II Lawsuit and The Bigger Discussion About Video Game Addiction

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A few days ago, Wired’s Threat Level blog reported that a man from Hawaii was suing the makers of Lineage II because the virtual-world game supposedly made him “unable to function independently in usual daily activities such as getting up, getting dressed, bathing or communicating with family and friends.” The man claims to have played 20,000 hours of Lineage II between 2004 and 2009, which breaks down to 80 hours per week for 5 years. A federal judge is allowing the lawsuit to proceed, in spite of Lineage II developers NCsoft asking for it to be dismissed.

Game addiction can be devastating to a person and the loved ones around the addict. I feel bad for the guy that has grown dependent on this game. However, I don’t think this case should see the light of day in court because I think the fundamentals of his claim against NCsoft are based in flawed logic.

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