In these sad confinement times, we decided to organize an epic remote party with some friends. The idea is to make it a "burn" with different spaces, rooms, art, performances, some toilet paper burning, chill places to chat with friends - a marathon of maybe 72h, about 200 people.
I figured I'd come here for some technical advice. There is
1: the technical challenges of making this work at all
2: the user experience challenge of making it fun and not too convoluted
So we would need to have multiple rooms, livestreams, video chats and all. (Right now we're looking at having rooms on a pro Zoom account).
But maybe people want to stream on other platforms like Discord/Twitch/Youtube? Maybe we want some kind of IRC (or Hubski-style chat) where people can text chat/post link to private streams? Thinking of having all (or some) of the links on a "map" on a password-protected website.
Sounds like a fun technical challenge, so I was wondering how you would do it? Any cool ideas? Services that would be fun to integrate? Suggestions if you have experience in these kind of things?
And to make this a more fun thread - what would you do on such a stream? What kind of performance or fun activity?
Exited to push all this technology we have to the limits, see what kind of funky stuff we can come up with.
Edit: If anyone has experience watching/creating Twitch streams i'd love to hear from you. Basically trying to see what are the benefits to integrating it vs having people stream directly of Discord or Zoom.
I'm not as familiar with Zoom as Discord/Twitch/Youtube... Of those three, I'd use Discord for voice chat, map, and screen viewing, but it doesn't support streaming from your camera. SOoOo, here's my take: Discord lets can host your own private server, with each voice channel hosting 10 people watching a live stream. You can also create text channels to chat outside livestreams or place interactive games/links. Discord is what you're looking for in terms of a top-down, white-listed (or graylisted) approach. Creating and maintaining infrastructure of a Discord server is VERY straightforward. Another great benefit is the bots people have already made for Discord that could suit a variety of needs. For example, music bots are great for voice channel rooms where there are no live streams going, but people want to listen to music and chat in text channels (or have the music softly playing as others talk). It'd serve as a great place for the map you're looking for. As for video chats, Zoom is where I'd put my money on, and Twitch for shows. Twitch does everything you'd want out of YT livestreaming, but better - it's what it was made for. Discord was made for internet socializing, featuring a damn good voice option. TL;DR, Discord can work as a great nexus. A private server containing links for each show in chat/voice channels general voice/text hangout which can also serve as general chat/music/voice/screensharing hub. As always, there could be options out there that are worth exploring. Facebook Live, Mixer, and others.
Maybe a decent way to start would be to go look at what existing stream sites are putting out for content and see what you liked and disliked from the existing offerings? Like from the get-go it seems kind of obvious to me that you would not want any kind of gaming related stream content but maybe that's not true? I think that stuff like this is a great way of trying to figure out how to digitize real-world relationships like the economies that form at Burning Man type of events. Fun idea. A friend of mine has just sent me an invitation to a online music festival that's supposed to be going on until the 10th. Theres a lot of exploration going on in the realm of distance socializing.
No problem with a gaming component if that's what people want to offer actually :) Yeah - there is lots of regular streams going on already so we want to push the boundaries a bit a make it more "participative" vs performative. Which is harder than just putting up a couple streams with links if you want some kind of interaction going on. I also find it hard to interact when there is 7+ people on a video call, so it's tough to design a space for small conversation rooms and bigger scale watching of a singular event. Should be inclusive and open - but with fun small places and small rooms to "explore". What if i want to include a poll for example that would let people vote on what I do next? It's a challenge :)