For the past few years, pretty much every evening for a couple of hours, I would stream while playing games on my PS5. Before that I went through a period of streaming while playing games on my VR gaming setup, often mucking about in things like cyubeVR and Gunman Contracts. It was a fun time and I got the chance to make some fun acquaintances online. All of this was made possible by the fact that I had a really nice, fast fibre connection where I lived.
Late on last year I moved. Unfortunately the location I moved to didn't have fibre available. That's not to say the house lacked fibre; it was that it wasn't even possible to get it to the house. For some time it wasn't clear that it ever would be. So I was back on 35Mbps down and 3Mbps up, on a good day. Not a good streaming experience at all.
I tried. I had a few sessions. Sometimes it would fail. Sometimes it would work but the quality would be bad. It wasn't a good time. Because of this I've taken an extended break from streaming.
The complete lack of availability of fibre changed a couple of months ago. Since moving I've made a point, every few weeks, of going and seeing if there are any plans to run fibre to our location. Finally, back in March, one day, I checked and I COULD ORDER FIBRE!
I'd actually been through this whole thing once before. When I moved back in 2019, I went from a 35/3 connection (which still seemed pretty fast then) down to a horrible 5/0.6, on a good day, kind of connection. That was hard (although a deeply worthwhile trade under the circumstances at the time). When I finally got fibre at that place it was amazing. I went from 5/0.6 to 950/150 overnight. It felt like I had my whole Steam Library locally available the whole time.
So, when I realised that fibre was available to me again, that was an instant sell. As I say, this happened back in March and I still don't have it, because actual digging and stuff has had to happen. People had to write to people to get permission to do things, and so on. It's been kind of agonising watching the slow but steady progress towards being very online again.
But, soon enough, I should be back. I won't stream as much as I used to, just because the move entailed having other things to be doing in my evenings, and having new responsibilities. But I do aim to get some gaming in two or three times a week, most weeks. Also, whereas the last few times I've streamed it's been me mostly messing about in Death Stranding 2, once I have a reasonable connection again I think it'll be time to pick a new game and (attempt to) play it through.
No plans on which game yet, but there's a handful on my "to consider" list.
