Do you worry people might avoid your site/shop due to stigma around loneliness? I am curious is people might end up being embarrassed to be around because they would get designated as "lonely". If you find that people are slow to sign up, you could potentially do some A/B testing and advertise the same idea with a name that is related but feels like it has a more "positive" twist to it?(Could be called "Ludo League" [Ludo being the Latin root for 'game'] or something. Sorry I am crap at coming up with decent names lol)
Also, since you are in Germany, have you considered going to the next Spiel Essen board gaming convention? I haven't gotten the chance to go yet, but I imagine it would be a good way to make a lot of connections and get your gaming group known to a bunch of people.
Also, boardgamegeek/rpggeek are places where you could get your name out there(just in case you don't know about those).
Lastly, not sure how common board gaming shops/communities are over there but they are quite popular and common over here in the US so if there is any extra stuff you need to know regarding gaming shops you could probably get a lot of useful info by googling (random big US city like New York City) + "board gaming shop". Star City Games is a super popular one here and they have a high quality website that might be worth studying.
Best of luck from an aspiring board game designer!
I bailed the second I saw AI mentioned, I'd rather learn to do things myself than ask chatgpt to hallucinate up a program for me. I am really hoping AI goes the way of the NFT soon and humanity goes back to actually creating stuff themselves.
I'd ask chatgpt if the AI bubble will pop any time soon but it will probably tell me something unrelated and/or completely incorrect and I would just have to go find the answer on Google anyway. Maybe I should ask chatgpt if any of these AI companies will ever manage to make it out of the red.
VtubeStudio plus an iPhone for mocap is the standard for the big-time vtubers that use 2D avatars, however 2D avatars actually have quite a high barrier to entry because pretty much your only option is to have something commissioned. 3D avatars tend to be what nearly everyone starts out with because there are several free programs out there that can help you make a decent starter avatar.
VtubeStudio only supports the nicer 2D avatars and as far as I know has no intention of getting into the 3D side of things. There are a few decent programs people use with 3D avatars(links below), but it seems they aren't really as high quality as VtubeStudio so they don't have the market cornered like VtubeStudio does for 2D.
As far as tracking goes, on the camera side of things there isn't really any difference between 2D and 3D that might limit you to one or the other.
There is a pretty large demand for tracking apps on Android because there are no widely used apps currently available. Big-time vtubers usually get iPhones so they can use the ARkit tracking that is Apple only, but a lot of people just starting out have Android and are currently forced to use a regular PC webcam that tends not to be as accurate and also doesn't allow people to offload the computing resources needed for face tracking to their phones.
Do you know about vtubers? In case you don't, they are people that record or livestream themselves playing games and whatnot. Instead of using a regular face camera to put themselves onto the video feed, they use a 2D or 3D animated model.
Most people use a desktop webcam which can do decent tracking or an iPhone which does really good tracking through ARkit, but there isn't really a decent solution on Android.
It could be a good new market opportunity for you on desktop, iPhone, or Android - but especially for Android users since there isn't really any alternatives. There is a steady stream of new people getting into being a vtuber and I think a $15 app might be an easy sell considering people can end up spending up to a five-digit amount getting custom character models commissioned. If you are able to improve the eye/face tracking past the basic level you mentioned the 2.0 version having, it would be even more appealing.
At least when it comes to Discord(and Reddit actually), there are scripts that you can run that deletes all of your activity/posts/etc from the server. I am pretty certain that Reddit still maintains hidden logs of everything you do even if you have deleted everything from your profile, but at least this way it will hopefully be much harder for people to get into that info. As for Discord, I have no idea if they keep logs of everything you do but I would assume that is the case. On second thought, in the past I have had Discord server mods yell at me for things I'd posted but also deleted, so there is definitely still a record of your activities to some extent.
Yeah, there are a handful of (some retired) adult movie stars that stream on the site. I'm not sure how to distinguish the traditional adult movie stars from OnlyFans people in regards to this post, but for the "traditional" stars, they all seem super cheerful and friendly, and other than wearing tight-fitting shirts I don't know that any of them have done anything lewd at all. From what I can tell, they are good members of the overall Twitch community, same as tons of other people.
Not sure why you are getting grayed but you are right. Ironmouse has the record for third most subs held at a single time on the whole platform since it began tracking this stuff. There are unfortunately a lot of "hot tub girls" and similar on the site, but to say that Twitch is mostly that and barely any gaming streams is super disingenuous. The number of nsfw streamers is pretty small compared to all of the gaming streamers and the nsfw streamer audience is a pretty small portion of Twitch audience as a whole. It is also incorrect to say that Just Chatting is always the top category because of the nsfw content. KaiCenat, who is currently the streamer that pulls in the most viewers at between 90k and 200k viewers each stream and he is in Just Chatting quite often. There are also many, many streamers that make Just Chatting content that is perfectly safe for work(At least if you aren't getting in trouble for watching anything at work!). One of the streamers I watch most is always in Just Chatting and his content is exploring Tokyo and other parts of Japan. Other than the occasional crude joke, his stream is pretty wholesome. I think a lot of people underestimate the scope of Twitch and the size of it's userbase. For the year of 2022, Twitch had an average of 2.58 million concurrent viewers. NSFW channels are a small portion of that, they are just especially noticeable when scrolling through stream lists since they intentionally dress provocatively to pull in viewers.
I have been wanting to learn Japanese but have been putting it off, you just convinced me that I have to get started learning it already. I love a good pun!
I'm sure they have Chinese around other places, but one thing I've noticed around train stations in Tokyo is that for the major announcements they are read out in Japanese, English, and Chinese. Hopefully those announcements were something that helped them on their journey.
Also, since you are in Germany, have you considered going to the next Spiel Essen board gaming convention? I haven't gotten the chance to go yet, but I imagine it would be a good way to make a lot of connections and get your gaming group known to a bunch of people.
Also, boardgamegeek/rpggeek are places where you could get your name out there(just in case you don't know about those).
Lastly, not sure how common board gaming shops/communities are over there but they are quite popular and common over here in the US so if there is any extra stuff you need to know regarding gaming shops you could probably get a lot of useful info by googling (random big US city like New York City) + "board gaming shop". Star City Games is a super popular one here and they have a high quality website that might be worth studying.
Best of luck from an aspiring board game designer!