Blog & Guides

My Journey from Gaming Fan to Content Creator

Streaming Personal

Starting a YouTube channel or Twitch stream is something a lot of gamers dream about but never actually do. I was the same — I spent years watching other creators, thinking "I could do that," but never taking the leap. Eventually I decided to stop waiting and just start, and it turned out to be one of the best decisions I've made.

My journey into content creation started simply: I had been gaming my whole life, mostly on consoles and PC, and I wanted to share that experience with other people. The first few streams were rough — bad audio, an inconsistent schedule, and maybe five viewers if I was lucky. But I kept going, partly because I genuinely enjoyed it, and partly because I could see slow but real progress each week.

The switch from just streaming to building a full multi-platform presence came naturally over time. I started uploading clips and highlights to YouTube so the content could live beyond a single stream session. Then TikTok became a way to reach a completely different audience with short, punchy moments from my streams. Each platform serves a different purpose — Twitch is where the live community happens, YouTube is the archive and longer-form content, and TikTok is for discovery.

One thing I didn't expect was how content creation would push me to develop entirely new skills. I started making Android apps to complement the channel, and I picked up Unity game development along the way. The apps — a drink rating journal, a Pomodoro productivity timer, a fitness log, and a number puzzle game — were projects I built to learn, but they ended up on the Google Play Store and people are actually using them. That was a completely unexpected outcome from what started as just wanting to stream games.

Travel has also become a part of what I create. Being able to document experiences from different places and bring that into the content adds a dimension that pure gaming channels often lack. Whether it's setting up a travel-friendly gaming kit in a hotel room or just sharing what it's like to explore somewhere new, it keeps things fresh for both me and the audience.

If you're thinking about starting your own channel or stream, my honest advice is to just start. The gear doesn't need to be perfect, the setup doesn't need to be professional, and you don't need an audience already waiting. What you need is consistency and genuine enthusiasm for what you're creating. Everything else follows from that. I'm still building GamerGuyTV, still improving, and still enjoying every part of it. Thanks for being here — I'm glad you're along for the journey.

Why Star Wars Battlefront II Is Still One of My Favourite Games to Stream

Gaming Star Wars Guides

Star Wars Battlefront II gets a lot of attention for its rocky launch back in 2017, but if you haven't revisited the game recently, you might be surprised by what it's become. After years of updates, balance changes, and a dedicated community, SWBF2 has settled into a genuinely great multiplayer experience — and it remains one of my absolute favourite games to stream.

The game's biggest strength is its variety. Whether you're in the massive 40-player Galactic Assault mode, the more focused Supremacy battles, or the intense Heroes vs. Villains mode, each format offers a completely different experience. I rotate between all of them depending on my mood and what I think will make for engaging content, but Heroes vs. Villains is where I tend to spend the most time. There's nothing quite like the chaos of eight heroes and villains fighting it out in close quarters — it's unpredictable, fast, and always entertaining to watch.

My main hero on the light side is Luke Skywalker, and the choice is deliberate. Luke is versatile enough to handle almost any situation — Rush closes the gap on enemies instantly, Repulse clears out groups of troopers trying to mob you, and Saber Throw gives you a ranged option that catches people completely off guard. He rewards aggressive, confident play but also has the tools to survive when a fight goes sideways. For anyone new to the hero roster, Luke is genuinely one of the best places to start because his kit is intuitive and effective across all game modes.

On the dark side, I main Boba Fett, and he plays completely differently. Where Luke is about closing the gap and being physical, Boba is about positioning and controlling space from above. His jetpack gives him mobility that almost no other villain can match, and being able to hover over a fight, drop a missile, and retreat before anyone can respond is incredibly satisfying when it comes together. He takes more practice to play well than most heroes, but once you understand his rhythm and learn when to engage versus when to reposition, he's one of the strongest villains in the game.

Away from heroes, I run the Officer class as my primary trooper. The Officer is a team-focused role — you're dropping Battle Command buffs, deploying turrets to hold positions, and keeping your squad alive through the Officer's Presence passive. It's not always the flashiest way to play but it's consistent and genuinely high-impact. Getting a full squad energized with Battle Command right before an objective push and watching your team hold the point is one of the most satisfying moments the game offers.

If you've never played Battlefront II or you dropped it after the rough launch period, I genuinely recommend giving it another shot. It's frequently available for just a few dollars, the servers are still active, and the community that's remained is passionate and knowledgeable. I stream it regularly on Twitch — come watch a session and ask questions in chat, I'm always happy to talk strategy, loadouts, or which heroes are worth investing time into.

Building and Publishing Android Apps: What I've Learned as a Solo Developer

Development Android Unity

Alongside streaming and creating content, I build Android apps and publish them to the Google Play Store. It started as a way to sharpen my programming skills and push what I was learning in Unity into new territory, and it's become one of the most rewarding parts of what I do creatively. There's something genuinely satisfying about shipping something that real people download and use.

My first app was Poured — a drink rating and journal app that lets you log what you've tried, rate it, and build a personal collection over time. The idea came from a personal frustration: I'd try a great craft beer or an interesting cocktail, enjoy it, and then completely forget what it was by the following week. Poured solves that in a clean, simple way. Building it taught me a lot about Android's UI system, how to handle persistent local data on a mobile device, and just how much thought goes into something as seemingly "simple" as a list-based journaling app. Every interaction — adding an entry, editing a rating, browsing your collection — has to feel natural, and getting that right takes more iteration than you'd expect.

The Pomodoro Timer came next. The Pomodoro technique — 25 minutes of focused work followed by a short break — is genuinely effective for studying and deep work, and I wanted a clean, minimal implementation that didn't have ads everywhere or a mountain of unnecessary features. Building a timer sounds straightforward until you get into how Android handles background processes, notifications, and keeping a countdown running reliably when the screen turns off. I learned more about Android's architecture from that one project than from almost anything else. The app is available free on the Play Store and is exactly what it says it is: a simple, effective Pomodoro timer.

The Fitness Tracker was a practical project — I wanted something clean for logging workouts without the subscription model that most dedicated fitness apps push. Building it meant designing a data structure that could handle different workout types, thinking carefully about how users would actually interact with it across multiple sessions, and keeping the app fast and lightweight. No subscriptions, no account required, just a straightforward fitness log that lives on your device.

The most recent release is 529, a number puzzle game. You're merging cubes with matching values and working toward a target number — it's satisfying in the same way that 2048 is satisfying, with simple rules but real strategic depth once you get into it. Building a puzzle game is a different challenge from building a utility app because the experience has to feel good to play, not just work correctly. The feedback loop, the sound of merging tiles, the moment you realise you've boxed yourself in — all of that is part of the design in a way that doesn't exist in a productivity tool.

What I'd tell anyone thinking about publishing their first app: build something you actually want to use yourself. The motivation to push through difficult bugs and polish the details is much higher when you genuinely care about the end result. And don't underestimate how much you'll learn just from going through the Play Store submission process — setting up a developer account, writing store listings, handling permissions and privacy policies — it teaches you things that no tutorial covers. All four of my apps are free to download. Find them on the Apps page.

Balancing Streaming, App Development, and Travel: How I Make It Work

Lifestyle Productivity Travel

Running a multi-platform content channel, building Android apps, and travelling regularly sounds like a lot to juggle — and honestly, it is. But over time I've figured out a rhythm that lets all three coexist without any one of them taking over completely or burning me out.

The key for me is treating each activity as its own distinct mode rather than trying to blend them all constantly. When I'm streaming, I'm focused entirely on the game and the chat — I'm not thinking about the next app feature or what I want to see on the next trip. When I'm deep in a coding session, streaming is done for the day. That separation keeps each thing feeling fresh rather than like an obligation that's competing for bandwidth with everything else.

Travel actually makes the content better, even when I'm not explicitly making travel videos. Having experiences outside of gaming gives me more to talk about during streams, different perspectives to bring to the content, and a natural way to keep things from feeling repetitive week after week. Some of my best stream conversations have started from something that happened while I was in a different city — viewers are genuinely curious about what you get up to outside of gaming, and it makes the channel feel more personal and human.

One practical thing that helps with travel is having a minimal gaming setup that actually goes with me. A Nintendo Switch is the obvious solution — it goes everywhere, the library is deep enough that I never run out of things to play, and the battery life is solid for long travel days. For streams while on the road, a decent laptop and a reliable internet connection covers most situations. I don't try to replicate my full home setup while travelling — I scale down, adapt to what's available, and lean into the limitations rather than fighting them.

For the apps, most of the development happens in consistent focused sessions at home. I find that shorter, concentrated work periods — a couple of hours a few times a week — produce better results than marathon coding nights that leave me burned out and stuck on the same problem. The Pomodoro technique I built an app around is genuinely something I use for my own development sessions, which is a bit circular but completely effective.

If you're trying to balance multiple creative projects, the most important thing is being honest about what's actually sustainable for you. You don't have to operate at maximum output across everything all the time. Some weeks the stream is the priority, some weeks a new app feature comes together, some weeks you're just out exploring somewhere new and gathering experiences that feed back into everything else later. That variety is what keeps it enjoyable long-term rather than something that starts to feel like a job you didn't sign up for.

Best Nintendo Switch Games for Streaming

Gaming Nintendo Switch Guides

The Nintendo Switch has one of the best libraries of any console for content creators. It's versatile, portable, and has a game for every kind of stream — from high-energy competitive titles to relaxed story-driven games that invite genuine conversation with your chat. Here are some of the best Switch games for streaming and what makes each one work well as content.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the obvious starting point. It's one of the best-selling games of all time for a reason — the gameplay is instantly accessible to viewers who've never held a controller, the races are short enough that each one is its own self-contained moment, and the item-based chaos means something unexpected is always about to happen. It's also one of the best games for viewer participation: racing tournaments where chat votes on your character, kart, or course add an interactive layer that keeps people engaged between races and gives viewers a sense of ownership over the stream.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is another cornerstone of stream content. The roster of 80+ characters means there's almost always someone in chat who mains whoever you're playing, and that creates natural conversation and genuine debate. Switching characters based on viewer suggestions, trying out characters you've never touched before, and grinding through online ranked play all translate extremely well to stream format. The skill ceiling is high enough that there's always something to improve on, which keeps the content from going stale long-term.

Pokémon games — whether it's Scarlet and Violet, Legends: Arceus, or the Let's Go titles — work well for a completely different reason: they create moments of genuine discovery and reaction that feel authentic on stream. Catching a new Pokémon you've never seen before, stumbling across a shiny in the wild, or grinding through a tough gym battle are the kinds of unscripted moments that streaming does best. Viewers love being present for those moments in real time.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is worth including for variety. The pace is completely different from most streaming content — relaxed, conversational, and low-stakes — which makes it ideal for days when you want a lighter atmosphere and deeper chat interaction. Viewers often have their own islands and will share opinions, memories, and design ideas, which generates natural community conversation without you needing to drive it constantly.

For indie titles, Hollow Knight, Celeste, and Stardew Valley all have passionate communities and work brilliantly for first-time playthroughs. Genuine reactions to difficult moments, surprising story beats, or unexpected difficulty spikes are what live streaming does better than any other format. Those three games are designed in ways that produce exactly those moments consistently. The Switch library is deep enough that you can match the game to the kind of stream you want to run on any given day — that flexibility is one of the reasons it's stayed a central part of my setup.

My Twitch Streaming Setup: What I Use and Why

Streaming Setup Guides

One of the most common questions I get from people thinking about starting their own stream is "what gear do you use?" The honest answer is that the equipment matters less than people expect, and the things that matter most aren't always the most exciting to talk about. Here's a breakdown of my actual setup and the reasoning behind each decision.

Audio first, always. Bad video is tolerable — bad audio makes people leave within the first thirty seconds. A USB condenser microphone is the minimum I'd recommend for anyone serious about streaming. The market has a lot of solid options at the $50-100 price point, and buying second-hand brings that down further. Whatever you get, position matters as much as the microphone itself: 6-8 inches from your mouth, slightly off-axis to reduce plosive sounds, and in the quietest space you can manage. If you have a choice between upgrading your microphone and treating your room acoustics, treat the room first.

OBS Studio is what I use for streaming software, and it's what the majority of streamers use. It's free, it's powerful, and there's an enormous community around it with tutorials for every possible situation. The learning curve is real but not steep — most people have a working basic setup within a few hours. The most important OBS settings to get right are your bitrate (4500-6000 Kbps for 1080p60 is a reliable target for Twitch), your encoder settings (NVENC if you have an Nvidia GPU, x264 if not), and your audio mix. Get those three right and everything else is refinement.

Lighting makes a bigger difference than most new streamers expect. A basic ring light or two soft box lights positioned correctly will improve how your stream looks more than almost any camera upgrade. Natural light from a window works well during the day if it's in front of you rather than behind you. Backlit faces are the most common and most easily fixed stream quality issue — if you're not sure where to start, just make sure there's a light source facing you.

Nintendo Switch capture runs through a capture card — I use an Elgato HD60 X, which is the standard recommendation at that price point. It adds a small amount of setup complexity but it's straightforward once you've done it once: Switch goes into the dock, HDMI out to the capture card, capture card into your PC via USB, and OBS picks it up as a video source. The latency on passthrough is minimal and the quality is excellent.

Internet is the most underrated part of the setup. You need at least 6 Mbps of consistent upload speed for a reliable 1080p60 stream, and a wired ethernet connection is strongly preferred over Wi-Fi. Packet loss and connection drops will ruin a stream faster than any equipment limitation. If you're on Wi-Fi, getting a powerline adapter or a long ethernet cable to your router will make more difference than almost any gear upgrade. If I were starting from scratch with a limited budget, I'd prioritise in this order: audio, stable wired internet, lighting — then everything else.

Getting Started with Unity: My Experience Learning Game Development

Development Unity Guides

Unity is one of the most widely used game engines in the world, and it's the one I chose when I decided to get serious about game and app development. After using it to build multiple projects — including games and Android apps that are now live on the Google Play Store — here's what I've learned about getting started and what actually makes the difference between people who stick with it and people who don't.

The first thing to know is that Unity has a significant learning curve, but it's not as steep as it looks from the outside. The interface is dense and the documentation can feel overwhelming at first, but the fundamentals you actually need to build something functional are quite limited: understanding GameObjects and Components, writing basic C# scripts, and knowing how to work with Transform, Rigidbody, and Collider covers the majority of what you'll do in early projects. Start with those and ignore everything else until they feel natural.

The mistake most beginners make is starting with something too ambitious. Wanting to build an open-world RPG or a competitive multiplayer game is a goal that will defeat you before you learn anything meaningful. The right approach is to build something tiny and finish it — a working Pong clone, a simple platformer with one level, a basic puzzle game. The goal isn't to build something impressive. The goal is to finish something, which teaches you everything tutorials don't: how to handle edge cases, how to structure a project so it stays manageable as it grows, and what it actually feels like to ship something complete.

My first Unity project that reached completion was 529, a number puzzle game where you merge matching cubes to reach a target value. It's deliberately simple — a 2D grid, basic mechanics, a clear win condition. But getting it from an idea to a published app on the Google Play Store taught me more about real development than months of tutorial videos. The moment you're dealing with actual users, actual devices with different screen sizes and OS versions, and bugs that your own testing didn't catch, you learn things no course can prepare you for.

C# is Unity's scripting language, and if you're coming from no programming background it's worth spending a few weeks on the basics before adding the Unity layer on top. Variables, functions, loops, conditionals, and classes are the building blocks of everything — understanding those concepts first makes Unity click much faster. If you already know another language like Java, Python, or JavaScript, C# will feel familiar within a day or two.

For resources, Unity's own official tutorials are genuinely good and I'd start there before looking anywhere else. The Unity forums and Stack Overflow are invaluable once you're building real projects and hitting specific problems — which you will, constantly, and that's completely normal. The most important thing is persistence when you hit a wall. Every developer hits walls constantly. The difference between people who learn game development and those who don't isn't talent — it's just the willingness to keep going through the frustrating parts. If you want to see what I've shipped so far, the Apps page has everything I've published to the Play Store.