When people mention Twitch, avid gamers instantly know what it is.

But for those of us who aren't "in-the-know," Twitch is the premier live streaming platform for a majority of the world's best and most popular gamers worldwide, where viewers from all around the globe create amazing communities that help support their favourite content creators. This has resulted in one of the fastest-growing and most lucrative gaming industry.

Brunei's first Twitch partner - Daniel Dean Noorhaizamdin, 33, better known by his handle Lysium - who is also an Education Officer and part-time Twitch streamer, spoke to the Borneo Bulletin about the platform.

Asked how he got into streaming, Daniel Dean said he has always enjoyed playing games at a high level - from being a part of Brunei's best CS 1.6 team to raiding with Oceania's best guilds in World of Warcraft, and having some of the highest regional performance ratios for First Person Shooters such as PlayerUnknown's Battleground (PUBG).

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"Having a natural affinity towards performing at a competitive level of gameplay and entertaining made me feel very confident that people would watch my content, so I decided to just jump right into the thick of it and create my very own community," said Daniel Dean.

"If you enjoy playing games, watching people play them and having conversations about them with others with the same types of interests, Twitch is the place to be," he added.

Becoming an official Twitch partner after gaining a majority of his audience from playing the action role-playing game Dauntless, the enthusiastic Lysium said that it has been both a very stressful and enjoyable experience as Twitch requires a streamer to maintain an average of 75 viewers for 25 hours over at least 12 different days.

Once meeting the first requirements, streamers would then have to submit a full application that Twitch must finally approve.

All this is done to ensure that a streamer is worthy of being partnered, said Daniel Dean.

He shared that it takes a lot of dedication, time and effort to build a community from zero to more than 75 viewers, with many Twitch partners having to go through three or four applications over years before they were finally approved.

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In some cases, there are streamers with more than an average of 75 viewers whose applications are still rejected.

"To have become a Twitch partner in Southeast Asia, in a country like Brunei (in which Twitch is yet to be a popular platform), while working full-time is definitely something that I am tremendously proud of and I continue to feel blessed every day for having the chance to do what I do online," he added.

As the first and currently only Twitch partner in Brunei, Daniel Dean spoke about the amazing experience thus far. He said it makes him happy to see the occasional Bruneian viewer dropping by his stream, and always getting an astonishing response asking if he's Bruneian.

In terms of streaming perks, he explained that it depends very heavily on the popularity of a streamer, with some of the basic perks being early access to games, allowing viewers to preview games at times weeks before they are publicly available, which allows streamers to gain more viewership, as well as the provision of whitelisting by some companies for streamers in very popular games.

This is to ensure that you do not have to wait in any type of queue to experience any sort of gameplay that others might have to typically wait behind thousands of people for, along with free game keys for streamers as one of the top perks that many partnered streamers can take advantage of.

He noted that one of the biggest benefits of being a Twitch partner is the fact that it allows a streamer to receive revenue directly into his Bruneian bank account, so whatever he earns through the Twitch platform goes directly to his account, unlike platforms such as YouTube and Facebook Gaming that do not allow Bruneians to monetise content on their platforms.

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As a Twitch partner, he also faces tough challenges with trying to introduce a variety of games to his community as people tend to gravitate towards streamers based on certain games they play and it is dependent on the streamer to show how entertaining they can be in the hopes of gaining viewers for what the streamer is actually worth, rather than simply basing it on the games they play.

"Another major challenge of being in a region and country in which the Twitch platform is not as popular, together with the fact that I am working full-time, makes every week a very arduous experience of having to plan and schedule streams for my European and North American viewers which sometimes is almost impossible," said Daniel Dean.

There is no simple fix for these issues, he said, adding that he tries his best to persevere and turn his stream on four days a week to entertain those who are supportive.

"As of right now, I am focussing a lot on roleplaying in a game called Grand Theft Auto on a server called NoPixel which is known as the world's most popular FiveM server and in which you play a character that is effectively an actor in a big, never-ending movie. It's trending as it is one of the most-watched games in the world at the moment and I am thoroughly enjoying it as well," Daniel Dean said.