Hi there! I’m Kelsey (kelpsey on Twitch). I’m a Crowd Control Ambassador and a long time user of Crowd Control. I’ve streamed a ton of games and had many memorable experiences with streaming games with Crowd Control enabled. Crowd Control as a product has incredible user support and versatility for you to have a headache-free session, but what about maximizing potential?

Here’s some tips I’ve compiled over the years that I believe have made a difference in my Crowd Control sessions:

1. Picking Your Game

There are definitely a few lines of thought here as to what the best game is to stream with Crowd Control. While I don’t really think there’s a wrong answer, there are definitely trends that should be considered, given your community and your pre-existing content.

Your Main Game (That game you stream all the time, or one you talk about often).

This is the ideal choice for a first-time Crowd Control user. Your community knows you for playing this game, for dedicating potentially dozens of hours of it, you’ve shown competency and mastery of this game. Viewers love upending a “master” of a game (looking at you, speedrunners) and giving them complete chaos to deal with. Sometimes this leads to truly epic moments — your mastery could get you out of a tight spot that would never exist normally in the game, for example, but sometimes the enjoyment is just looking like the fool. One of the unspoken rules of Crowd Control is that you’ve got to be okay with laughing at yourself — you did turn on the client, after all!

That Game You Said You’d Replay (and you haven’t yet).

I love using this game selection as a surprise for my community — my tip here is to have some games in your “back pocket” for a Crowd Control session. Go ahead and peek at the 100+ games supported with Crowd Control and pick the ones you feel, “Yeah, I’d be okay with trying that!” As an example, I’ve played my fair share of Super Mario 64 as a kid, but I’m certainly no master at the game. Sometimes a great session is simply a game you’re familiar with and you haven’t seen the wacky effects that Crowd Control has to offer.

Include a Variety.

For the majority of users, Crowd Control is not a daily feature on their streams. Since you’re already experimenting with your regular stream content, featuring a different genre of game can potentially get some new viewers to drop in and see what you’re about! And trust me, using CC on the same game over and over… it does get old. Variety prevents burnout, and honestly, the developers at Crowd Control have created so many different effects for so many games, it would be a shame not to see what else is out there to try out.

Note: While I personally haven’t done a Crowd Control session with a game that I’ve never played before, there are many CC users that have done this to experience a game for the first time. I don’t think I can honestly recommend this, but let us know how it goes!

2. Make a Goal (in your game)

This is one of the more important decisions you must make for your Crowd Control to be successful. Ultimately, it’s you versus your community when it comes to a CC session. Crowd Control sessions can go on forever, but it’s up to you to say where your end point is. Are you trying to beat the game? Are you trying to beat a randomizer within a certain time? Are you racing another person, maybe with a Crowd Control Lobby (more on this later)? Are you trying to get to a certain score or a certain point in the game? Answering these questions and communicating what you’re trying to do to your community will drive your engagement, as they try to help or deter you from success. With sandbox games like Minecraft, Stardew Valley, or Terraria, you might need to get a bit creative with your goal setting (and don’t use a file that you care about).

Remind your viewers semi-frequently about your goals, and also, bait them. “You guys wouldn’t warp me once I got to this spot, right?” Planting ideas of what they could do with effects will encourage viewers to try them, or to work together on pooling their coins.

It’s also worth noting that your crowd has a limited attention span, so doing a Crowd Control session for several hours may not be a good idea. I would keep it to fewer than three hours for a session to maximize engagement.

3. Appropriate Pricing

There’s a lot to be said for appropriate effect pricing, as every community is different in terms of size and engagement. Crowd Control packs come with suggested prices, but I would always recommend looking over those prices and making adjustments. Ask yourself, “How much would I pay for this effect, if I were the sole purchaser?” as well as, “Does this price make sense for one person, or for a pool?” Generally, I tend to make my prices cheaper than the suggested prices, and if it’s getting out of hand, then I can easily raise the price during the session. If an effect is being spammed and discouraging enjoyment of the session, then it’s time to change the price.

Fellow Crowd Control Ambassador Xwater hosted a super thorough and insightful Pricing Session not too long ago, you can check it out in THIS BLOG POST.

4. Hype Up Your Session Beforehand

This goes hand-in-hand with your skills as a content creator — marketing your community engagement days is something all creators need to know how to do to grow in this space. You could make a Crowd Control session an incentive for reaching a certain number of followers, for instance, or for reaching a subscription goal. It could even be an incentive in a charity stream, or something you do for a stream celebration, like a Partner/Affiliate anniversary, or your birthday. Build up the hype days (or a few weeks) in advance, announce it on your social media or wherever your community finds information about your content. Crowd Control also offers assets that any user can use for their stream or socials — and if you tag Crowd Control, they will most likely interact with your posts to boost visibility of your session so that more folks can see it happen. Sharing clips of your previous Crowd Control sessions is also a great visual way to get your viewers hyped for the next session — as well as share with new viewers what it’s all about!

Another feature you can use to hype up your session is using the lobby feature of Crowd Control — why not invite a friend to your chaos? Joining together with another creator’s community can double the fun (and the chaos) and is a super fun collaborative tool.

5. Lastly, preparation is key here.

I always recommend testing out Crowd Control off stream before actually doing it. Get the troubleshooting out of the way so that when you transition from one game to the next, you’re ready to go. Nothing kills the hype more than 45 minutes of live troubleshooting.

And that’s it! Those are my tips and tricks from an experienced Crowd Control user to you. I hope I’ve provided some insight that will boost the potential of your sessions. Good luck and have fun!

Kelpsey (Kelsey) is a full-time creator. Her streams feature speedruns, score runs, randomizers, retro games, and daily puzzles. Find her on Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

Crowd Control is the app that lets your viewers interact with the games you play on stream. Crowd Control supports +100 games and has been installed by over 70,000 live creators.

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