Player.me
stargrace 3 years ago (give or take) I joined Player.me to reserve the user name and then pretty much forgot about it. I didn’t add anyone to my friends list (it’s more of a follow list than friends) and I didn’t pay too much attention to it. The social part of the site tends to be filled with toxicity, and while there are groups they’re not functional in any sense of the term because only the owner of the group can post, with everything being open to the world (even your own posts). I was never that enthralled with the site because it felt like they were trying to “do all the things” but not really good at any of it.
Then this week they announced Player.me Create (I’m not sure if that’s what they’re officially calling it, but lets say it is). It’s a built in system that lets you design and customize overlays for your game streams. Everything from alerts to labels to the frames. You can add your own graphics, and have control over everything from the colours to the fonts. You can browse they’re pre-created overlays and then customize those, or use them out of the box. You can also keep track of multiple overlays, and splash screens like intermission or stream is starting. It’s simple to use and you can import the URL to your layout to a streaming program like OBS or Xsplit without any hassle.
I think this is a FANTASTIC service. I played around with it a bit and @scopique also made a tutorial video on how it works which you can watch here. It makes creating a uniform overlay easy, and whether you’re new to overlay design or an expert, you’ll be able to create something for your stream that you’ll (hopefully) like.
I’m not set on the design I’ve chosen for mine yet, but that’s alright I’m sure there are others I can play around with too. There are a TON of different overlays you can choose from, and I imagine they will add the option for paid overlays with time which is fine so long as I can also continue to use the ones that are free, especially the ones I’ve already set up. As I was discussing with friends on discord I would find it frustrating if they suddenly made those pay to use.
So if you haven’t been to player.me lately, stop by and say hello. I’m there as Stargrace, as always.