In the previous post, I had mentioned that our six year old planned to start a new project involving gaming and YouTube. I am happy to announce it has begun. The B.B. Wild Gamer channel has been born. Currently he has only two and a half videos of him playing Minecraft on our Playstation 4, only two and a half because he is currently recording one as I type this.

A little background to lead up to this launch. Unlike myself who’s parents were always against video games growing up, Michelle’s family were all big gamers. Our kids have grown up with gaming consoles around, with mom and dad playing when we had some down time. Naturally the kids got into playing as well. Our youngest son loved watching Michelle play and as soon as he could start holding a controller, learned to play as well. With encouraging his quest for knowledge before he officially started homeschooling, we found a YouTube channel that was a great educational tool for the kids called Brain Candy TV and once and a while game videos would come on after an educational video. Our son fell in love with those as well and after watching some different gamers with him we start allowing him to watch certain creators that we approved of. The past couple years our now six year old has become quite good at playing certain games that we allow him to play, to the point where he has beaten some games before his mom and grandfather (who still plays regularly) had not been able to beat. Last year B.B. had shown interest in possibly making videos like one of you YouTube heroes, Craftee, so I asked around to some friends that livestream their game play and got some recommendations of what I need for him to start.

After talking to friends, I finally determined what to buy for the project. I chose a value priced video capture device, the *Rybozen 4K Video Capture card which was really the only thing I had to buy. With the capture card, I just downloaded OBS (Open Broadcast Software) Studio which free open source software that is used a lot by video streamers and other content creators. Thankfully there are Youtube videos and a lot of people out there using OBS, so it was easy to find information on configuring the program to use the capture card to record his gaming. Last year I had bought him *headphones so he could play games without us hearing the game play, now we are trying to use it with his videos. We also had to buy B.B. a cheap *flash drive to store his videos on since they take up too much space to remain on the same laptop that they use for homeschool.

Future plans for B.B. Wild involves more videos of him playing Minecraft. We have a general rule for our kids playing Minecraft and video games in general, and that is to play with challenges as much as possible. When they started out playing Minecraft, they liked to play the game in creative mode which was not challenging at all because it is specifically for creating worlds without the threat of “hostile mobs” attacking while building. Creative mode also gives unlimited access to all the components in the game without having to search or mine them. B.B. will be videoing play in primarily “survival mode” so he is always challenged. Other games that he will most likely be posting on his channel is games from the Horizon series, Rocket League, FIFA Soccer, Minecraft Legends, Cool Math Games, Sonic the Hedgehog, various Nintendo Mario games, and probably some retro games that he finds on Michelle’s *Retro Pie computer. Not sure when ,or if B.B. will decide to livestream, but it is a possibility once he gets older. I have also bought a domain name for a future website for his content as well. I would like to make it very clear, WE ARE NOT DOING THIS TO EXPLOIT OUR SON. All of this is because he loves watching gamers play and would like to emulate some of the stuff he has watched his content creating mentors doing. I would like him to learn to turn it into his own business someday and I will help him in any ways I can. Ultimately, if he turns this into a revenue model, any money he makes, will be his. Michelle and I are just here to protect him, help him succeed, cheer him on, and promote him as much as we can.

To help support B.B. and his new project, please feel free to subscribe to B.B. Wild on YouTube, watch, and share his videos if you like his work. Thank You.