Twitch - The Nikolas Hayes Channel

Do you play computer games? Do you know Assassin's Creed Odyssey, for instance? If you've ever played some of these games you know you can get stumped, frustrated. You can read about them, follow posts about them. Try to learn the hints and tips for how to get through a game or just through an especially difficult part. But there's another way. You also know it's fun and can be informative to watch some others play.

Heard of the streaming site Twitch? It lets you do all of that. You can follow people, some who are very good players and, in real time. There is a CNBC article on how some of these players can even make six figures on Twitch.

Twitch.tv. ... Twitch is a live streaming video platform owned by Twitch Interactive, a subsidiary of Amazon.[3] Introduced in June 2011 as a spin-off of the general-interest streaming platform, Justin.tv, the site primarily focuses on video game live streaming, including broadcasts of eSports competitions, in addition to music broadcasts, creative content, and more recently, "in real life" streams. Content on the site can be viewed either live or via video on demand. - Wikipedia

You can watch on your phone, tablet, laptop or home computer. Some of the gamers put their video recordings of live play on their Youtube channels. Or you can just follow thing in real time, listening to their live commentary. Even talking to them.

Twitch console

It's an interesting experience. There are quite a few channels on Twitch to follow, to jump into and follow their live play. Then leap to another user, or game. I found one lifelong experienced player who is somewhat new to Twitch. So I contacted him. He literally won his first computer game as an infant, playing a very simple computer game back in 1988. The year he was born. It's not that he's a savant. He just happened to win that day. But it makes for an interesting legacy as a true story...for a gamer. 

I watched some of the big time players and that was fun. But it's interesting to watch some of the not so big players, too. Not big because they've not been on Twitch for that long and so don't have a big following. Yet.

There's something exciting about finding someone before everyone else does. To be one of the first. 

What you get either way though, is insight to not only gameplay but also to the life of a gamer and... it can be quite fascinating. 

So I followed Nikolas Hayes' channel. Nikolas also has some of his videos of live play up on his Nikolas Hayes Youtube channel. There you can watch some of his past sessions, going up to four hours or longer. Also, you can follow him on his Twitter, Steam and Instagram accounts and there's more on his Twitch profile. He currently has up on Youtube some of his Assassin's play (one is almost six hours of initial playthrough), Middle-Earth (2.5 hours of play), Mass Effect (nearly five hours of play), and others.

Young Gamer Nikolas

His Twitch channel says:

"Hello and welcome! I am the owner of Forethought United (art+science) and love gaming. So I just started streaming with spare time when not hanging out with the love of my life or family/friends.

"On my twitch stream, there are adventures in single player games to be had, plus some multiplayer. But my ADD.kind of takes me all over. Looking at various aspects of different games to see and show what they have to offer for new worlds and mechanics to interact with. As I said I do some multiplayer games but not a lot. Although the overall list is heavy on single player. But it's fairly varied. The channel does have mature content so just stay strong. I hope you enjoy the journey. I look forward to talking with everyone that joins in! Safe travels and have an amazing day!"

Like I said, I got together with Nikolas to ask a few questions. I've not included everything but here are some you may find interesting...

High School Nikolas

 Tell me a bit about yourself, Nikolas. What brought you to Twitch?

Today's gamer interview, Nikolas Hayes

A: I’m a new Twitch streamer, mostly streaming single player and I dabble in multiplayer periodically. I like to have an open-minded stream with people of all kinds that can hang out and chat while watching the many worlds that unfold in the games. I’d say that’s what brought me to Twitch, too. Having some company in my favorite hobby.

Q: What games do you stream?

A: There tends to be a lot of open world and sandbox. I love the ability to have a whole world that I can jump into. And watching the consequences of the choices and actions from whatever I do in that world, come to life. I love seeing people’s stories unfold and help untangle complex situations like saving a multiverse, all the way to fetching a lost donkey. Whether it’s science fiction, fantasy, or anything in between, it’s the ability to immerse into a new world and interact with many outcomes that I love so much. And, games are art that you can play with!

Nikolas and his dad, early 90s

Q: It seems like you enjoy games. When did you first play a video game?

A: My dad began teaching me when I was about six months old, back when MS-DOS was the operating system. I've also been into playing musical instruments for as long as I can remember. And I was into art nearly from day one. Learning a keyboard for me was just, natural. My dad was a computer expert (to be brief about it) and wanted me to start young. My first computer was a terminal and metal keyboard from an old mainframe. It was so tough I could beat on it as a child and not hurt it. But it would display green numbers and letters on the screen. So before I knew what I was doing, I was experiencing computers as a natural extension of myself. On an actual PC, I remember using a paint program, Commander Keen, Cosmos Cosmic Adventure, Doom, Duke Nukem, and all kinds of things. Including Pong and Centipede! One of my favorites though was the Windows 95 spaceship demo disk. That kept me up many a night with all the fun games to check out as a new gamer. Mostly I’ve played PC but I’ve also got an Xbox 360 and used to have a PS2. I grew up with that and a Sega. Go Sonic! As an adult, I was a lead on a video game testing team including Microsoft games for several years. Also including working on a NASA sim.

Q: When do you usually stream?

A: Lately it tends to be around 7am-12pm Monday through Thursday. But it can swap to nights on those same days depending on how work schedules are. I tend to do a lot of other things like running my company Forethought United. We are currently working on the online store to start selling digital copies of our art. Currently brought to you by Marvin Hayes. Amazing works of art!

Q: What is the latest game you have been streaming. What do you most like about it?

A: Lately I’ve been streaming Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, a sequel to Assassin’s Creed Origins. I would say it’s the best of the newest Assassin’s Creed games of the series. Right next to Black Flag and AC3. They kept a lot of features from Origins and refined them while adding a lot of new mechanics. I love that they are doing a good job of adding myth into a fresh new storyline that follows after AC Origins. I’m going to take my time on this one. Especially since I got it on sale when it was $23 down from $60. Although, if I had the money I would have still bought it at $60 for what an amazing job they did!

Q: Last question. Any thoughts or comments for closing?

A: I just wanted to say thank you for your time and hanging out. It’s awesome fun talking to people in and out of the entertainment industry and I like your writings! Especially Death of heaven. Certainly paints a picture, just with the title. I also hope to bring some solid and enjoyable content with my new stream and see how things build in the future. I love connecting with new streamers to see what is going on around the world. It’s a fascinating place! Thanks again and...have an amazing day. Hope to talk to you soon!


So there you have it! Thanks to Nikolas for taking the time to answer some question and best of luck to him on his Twitch and in all his endeavors! I suspect we may be hearing more from Nikolas Hayes in the future. Remember that name!

Game on! Cheers!

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On Creating Great Story Titles

Properly titling a story is extremely important to me. In thinking about creating titles for stories, I thought I would share what my process can be. For at least one type of story title, anyway.

I believe that a good title can contain half of a story's meaning, in theory. It's something to shoot for anyway. By changing a title it can alter the entire meaning of the story. It can twist a story's meaning in unforeseen and  interesting ways.

Sometimes I write a story, from a short story to a novel, based upon a title I came up with first as inspiration. Sometimes that title lasts all the way through to publish. At times once I finish the story, another title becomes apparent.

Sometimes the title comes last once I discover what the story is through discovery as I write it. When that happens, I try really hard to come up with the right title. I try to find the title in the story. I'm not always successful to the degree I want, but it's usually worth the effort.

A good title can make a world of difference in reader perception as well as story meaning. One of my best titles came out of this story:

Nikolas Hayes as "Simon" on the cover of one of my free ebooks
Simon's Beautiful Thought

Having a story where the title pulls things all together at the end, can be very pleasurable. It's good to be careful however about taking a string of words from within a story as the title, as it can come off as cliche or in the worst case, simply annoying.

For our purposes here, I'll just use a story of someone I know, Nikolas Hayes. This is from his first published short-short story on Wattpad.  It's a cool little horror sci fi tale, a dystopic that worked on his first draft. It's a good title. Not quite the kind that alters a story outside of its obvious meaning or intent, but a good title nonetheless.

Wattpad, if you don't already know, is a site where you can find a lot of interesting and free writings. In some cases, authors are writing entire books online there that you can follow along with as they are written, chapter by chapter. You can comment on them, sometimes affecting how the book develops. Many of these stories are first drafts, written on Wattpad and published without a second draft attempt. Many find that interesting. 

I heard a well known writer once say that you CAN make a living as a short story writer, you just have to be able to write a first draft, send it off and have it bought by a publisher, every single day. Not a lot of people can produce a finished, polished purchasable story in one draft. 

Some people have even gotten book deals in publishing like this on Wattpad.

Here is one of my latest stories on my Wattpad, titled: "To End All War". It's about a scientist who misuses an experiment he and his coworker are working on, in order to affect the entire world to his agenda. He's finally had it and felt that he had to do something; something, to stop the madness. Hopefully in the end, it will work out for everyone for the better. 

Or perhaps, he's just sadly deluded as so many seem to be now a days. Yet, I wonder....

One last thing before I get to the point of today's blog....

Death of Heaven by JZ Murdock

A few years ago before I published my currently re-released epic book, Death of Heaven (you know, I don't use "epic" lightly either, the book IS epic in scope, there's simply no debating that...read it, you'll see what I mean), it still had no title as I approached the final edit prior to publishing.

Years before, Nik had produced a music CD of his original music on keyboards and there was one song titled, "The Death of Heaven" ( the link is to the video book trailer for the book using Nik's song so you can actually hear it). 

You can also see the web page for my book here, Death of Heaven.

In my search for a title for a book I scan a lot of art and music for ideas, to tweak to my own purposes. So at some point, I ended up looking over his song titles. I was starting to worry that I wouldn't find a title worthy of this book.

I loved that title when I saw it again. Perhaps I subconsciously directed myself to look at those songs again, songs I had previously listened to more than once. Although it wasn't quite how I was thinking of titling my book, over that next week, the more I thought about it, I just couldn't get it out of my head.

It started to make total sense to me. It fit the book the more I thought about it. So, I asked him and he allowed me to use that title. I dropped the leading "The" in the original title, as that isn't a great idea to use in book titles, but over all, the title was his.

In supplying Nik now with the title to his first short story published online, I've finally been able to pay him back in some small way for using one of his titles. I'm not saying that title doesn't exist elsewhere in the world, just that he came up with it independently on HIS own. 

Anyway, back to Nik's story and my method for devising a title, that would go something like this....

In his story there is mention of air, breathing, freshness and stars. These seem to be primary elements of the story, so good to focus on. 

Immediately I think:

star air

or 
air star

But that’s boring, right? 

It has the gist but not the cadence or pizzazz needed, especially in a short-short story. So I go and look things up in an online thesaurus. 

Maybe I’d keep "star", as it’s so immediate and recognizable. 

That leaves, "air".

So I enter into my browser URL field:

air syn

for 
air synonym

I pick a good site from the search results. This time it’s one on top:

thesaurus.com/browse/air

From there I get:

breath breeze wind blast draft heavens ozone puff sky stratosphere troposphere ventilation waft whiff zephyr

So 
zephyr 
seems cool to me. I like that word. 

Star Zephyr?

Except, now "star" seems boring and doesn't really match up well.

So maybe not "zephyr" after all.

Maybe:

star breeze?

Waft and whiff are both wrong; more silly than useful and this is in no way a comedy.

star wind?
That isn't too bad, but they don’t fit the story very well in my mind. 

So maybe "star" just won’t work.

star breath?

I like that, but it feels backward to me somehow. Maybe not "star" but "starlight"?

breathing starlight?

That just might work!

But not quite. It's too obvious, too straightforward, and I need something less obvious, with a twist somehow, something minor.

So if not breathing? Another sense? Feeling? Smelling? Tasting? Or maybe, drinking?

Drinking Starlight!

Drinking indicates thirst and that is a strong feeling. So is breathing but drinking twists things on its head and that's usually good.

So that’s it then. 

And that is pretty much how I go about creating my titles. Usually, anyway. 

I mean, that and other ways.

So check out Nik's cool little dystopian sci fi tale, Drinking Starlight, published just last week on Wattpad. I hope to see many more from him over the years as he has a unique vision on our world, our human condition and for that matter, our universe.

Drinking Starlight by Nikolas Hayes on Wattpad

Enjoy the free stories and as always... 

Cheers!