If you’re looking to start earning revenue in your Twitch channel with Streamloots, adding a Streamloots Original Collection is a great first step. Streamloots Originals are templates with pre-defined cards that are prepared by the Streamloots team for some of the most popular games on Twitch, YouTube, and other streaming platforms that allow any streamer to quickly finish their setup when they register on Streamloots and start earning revenue from their fans’ support in just a few minutes.
But what do to if your favorite game doesn’t have yet a set Streamloots Original Collection, or if you’d like to have a specific themed set of cards? As you’ll probably know, you’re able to create your own cards using the Streamloots Card Creator, or even edit current templates found on the Originals. But we wanted to take it a step further, and that’s where Streamloots Community Originals come into play: these are official Streamloots collections created by the Streamloots community and made available for every user to add and enjoy.
We are always extremely happy to see the creativity of our community of creators! That’s why in today’s blog post we’ve enlisted the help of Streamloots Partners TheGCU to walk us through the process of the recently created and released Monster Hunter Rise Community Original Collection, available right now! Read all about it below to get inspiration for how to get started on the creative process of making your own collection, and how to apply for your personal collection to be an official Streamloots Original!
What should streamers pay attention to when creating a collection?
TheGCU: The keyword is balance, first and foremost. Each collection needs to feel integrated into your type of content and if that balance isn’t found then it risks feeling overwhelming or, even worse, not having a visible impact and value, so it isn’t worth the purchase for your audience. We definitely think that balance is the key to all collections. This is something that can be incredibly hard to find sometimes, but it’s worth always keeping in mind and looking to actively improve.
How do you get inspiration when creating new cards?
TheGCU: This depends dramatically on the collection we are creating, but we don’t shy away from drawing inspiration from other creators’ collections, or searching the internet for already made challenges (Nuzlocke challenges in Pokémon being an example). But we would say what gives us the most inspiration is undoubtedly our Collection Creation Process: We begin a 2-day phase (48 hours) in which we accept and record all ideas that come to mind, not focusing much on why an idea is or isn’t viable. This is the most important step: bad ideas are actually easy to build and improve to make them work and creating working and balanced ideas from scratch is SUPER hard.
Our next step is the “Weeding Phase”: here we take a look at all of the ideas and exclude those that don’t work with the collection’s overall design, or don’t follow the flow of what the collection is trying to achieve. In the second step, it’s a very natural reaction to want to automatically sort ideas into rarities based on how much they affect the content, but we save this for the last step. Instead, we focus SOLELY on whether or not an idea will work and if it serves the purpose of the collection.
Lastly is our organization phase, where we take a look at all of the ideas that made the cut and give them assignments. We ask ourselves how do they feel in the scope of the collection, and go through them again with a more refined and focused look, trying to consider ways in which they might be misplaced or placed correctly. Once all ideas have been considered, weeded, and sorted into their respective rarities, then we move on to the actual creation phase with artwork and such.
What’s the right amount of challenges vs playful cards that you enjoy having in your collections?
TheGCU: We suggest that this is just another aspect of balancing to be determined by the purpose of the collection. For game-specific collections, we think there needs to be about a 50/50 split of challenges versus others. Griefing cards definitely need to be the rarest as viewers love to troll but hate to annoy… and you walk a fine line with griefing cards.
I will say that the best cards are a combination of all three of these aspects: competitive, challenging, and playful. A good example is the “Make an animal noise when you get hit by a monster” legendary card in this collection. When played, the streamer has to make an animal noise every time they get hit for the rest of the quest: so this ends being playful, it adds the challenge of “don’t get hit or you have to make an animal noise”, and it also adds the ‘trolliness’ of “if you do get hit, you have to make an animal noise”. As an implied rule you can’t repeat the same noise… what it meant for us is that quickly we ran out of noises and started inventing animals, like the “Midwestern Buck-toothed Hippopotamus” which creates its own line of jokes on our stream.
What’s your favorite distribution of rarities and the number of cards to feature in a themed collection? And what are your favorite cards in this collection?
TheGCU: Personally, we like to have even chances across all rarities but don’t mind stacking one rarity for increased value. So for example, sometimes we go with a 7/7/10/10 distribution (legendary to common) so that there are a few more Rare and Common cards to choose from since they are what viewers will get the most of, but sometimes we flip this around and load heavily the Epic rarity so that when the community redeems Epics they get a variety of different cards and we don’t get stuck with only 1-3 cards being truly sought after.
Our favorite card from this collection is DEFINITELY the “Take a Monster Selfie”. In Monster Hunter you are fighting these giant wyverns and beasts with big pools of HP and damage… so when this card gets played, you have to strike a pose, pull out the camera and take a picture all before the monsters hit you, leading to some of the most hilarious screenshots ever.
How did your Monster Hunter Rise collection become an official Streamloots Original Collection? And how did you choose this game for the submission?
TheGCU: A month ago we messaged a Streamloots Team Member in Discord to let them know that the PC launch of Monster Hunter Rise was going to be a big moment within the Monster Hunter Community, and suggested for Streamloots to think about releasing a Collection for its launch since the game fits very well into the cards’ integration.
We have a lot of collections that we use, but our Monster Hunter Rise collection is a community favorite and is decently well-balanced around creating challenging and sometimes chaotic content. Plus, with the Launch of the PC version of Rise on the way, it made sense to use our collection and its ideas as a base for a Streamloots Originals Collection if the team decided to make the push to get it done. We never expected that they would use our Collection as is!
What’s your advice for streamers looking to create their own collections and wanting to make Community Originals?
TheGCU: Playtest your collection thoroughly and make sure that your descriptions are very informative – you’ll have to consider the fact that other people besides you will be trying to read these cards to determine if they want to use them or not, so its very important that they are able to discern what the card does.
If you have extra rules like the no repeating animal noises rule that are implied in the community, make sure you add it in the description for others. Aside from that, balance the collection well and consider that others may not make the exact same content as you do!
Finally, definitely think outside of the box. Everyone can come up with the “Don’t attack” “Don’t dodge” cards… but it’s the “Serenade a Monster of the Viewers’ Choice” cards that REALLY make an impact on the communities using it.