Greetings!
People often wonder how TJ, Jamie, and myself met. We’ve answered this question a few times on the show, but I thought I would jot it down here in a more permanent fashion.
I started streaming way back around December of 2015. I was just a little blue Muppet playing Magic Online, streaming twice a week at night for people to watch. Like most streamers starting out who did not already have an “in” to the Magic community, I only had a couple viewers for a long time. I also only streamed limited. Now, I know that the question that immediately came to mind to you when reading this was, “Certainly not you, Melvin! How could this be, with your good looks, excellent play skill, and incredible on-screen charisma!” This would be anyone’s natural response, so do not be concerned. But even I, Twitch’s only Magic-playing Muppet, struggled to grow my stream. A lot.
Magic-related Twitch was a lot different four years ago. There was no Arena yet. No one was coming from other platforms with a #sponsored tag. There were maybe 20 Magic streams at any given time. The average numbers of viewers for ALL of the streams together would hit about 2,000.. There were less people streaming, but there were also way less people watching.
It felt like a small community of Magic-streamers. If you were a regular, you probably had a good idea of who the other people were that were on and what they played. There was some guy named Numot doing a 365 day stream. This Jim Davis guy was streaming regularly, hot of some SCG wins. People almost entirely watched the top two or three streams and people below the top five names rarely had more than 50 viewers. I was a small fish in a very small pond.
I began to get to know some of the other Magic streamers. I met a few who were also having trouble getting their streams to grow and didn’t know how to go about it. I remember one night that three of us, myself, Dave, and Murph, got together on Skype to talk about it. We talked about our problems, what we could do, what we wanted to be. A little after this night we brought in a fourth person Dave knew, some guy named TJ who did commentary for his local game store. Why couldn’t we work together? We could form a group of small streamers who could help each other out. We could each use our streams to promote the group and the people in it. We could look for other like-minded people who wanted the same thing. We could have a group of people to talk to when things were rough, or when we needed advice, or just someone to share our experiences with. I suppose it’s important to note that this was before there were any official Twitch teams or anything similar. We were creating our own path. And so the Rogue’s Gallery was born.
We had a lot of interested people when we started up. We were quickly joined by by others streamers who were like-minded. People like Jamie, Zane, Zack Kanner, and a bunch of other great people. We had basically two rules: 1) Stream at least twice a week or 5 hours a week, and 2) don’t be a jerk. We had people who left or were removed for both reasons. We had a lot of people starting their streaming career asking to join us.
As time progressed, we grew and changed. Some of us took off in the streamer world. Some of us stopped entirely. Some of us still dabble occasionally or play other games on stream. After a few years, we were less about content creator synergy and more a group of friends. We still have a twitter group chat. I still watch my friends that stream when I can. People check in and out. That’s how life goes, and it’s no different here. I was happy that we created it, and I’m glad for the bonds it made.
As mentioned by TJ in Ponder Episode 85, this group directly led to the creation of the Ponder Podcast. So I suppose you could say that without the Rogue’s Gallery, none of this would be here. That thought kind of makes me happy, to know that the group helped lead to the creation of other great things.
So now you know the story. I decided to write it down not only for the reasons I previously mentioned, but because I think it’s an example of what small streamers and content creators can do to proactively network. If you create content but are not well known in the community aside from that, it can be tough. Even following the mantra of Dory and “just keep swimming” by creating more and more content may not help you advance as fast as you want, or help you reach new people. This is why networking is important. Look for people who are doing what you are doing and talk to them. See if you can work together. Form a group. Make a group chat somewhere. Promote each other. Advice each other. Support each other.
The Rogue’s Gallery is pretty much retired, but there’s no reason why it can’t be reborn in some fashion. Heck, even TJ mentioned he may think about doing something similar again in the future. You’d have to talk to him about that. But if this is something that interests you, don’t wait for it to come to you. Reach out and create your own thing. Get started. Talk to people. You’ll never know where it may lead you.
Warmest Regards,
Melvin
Co-founder of the Rogue’s Gallery
