👩🏼🎤 stream if u wanna go faster
CodeMiko makes her return to the big stream
You are cordially invited to this week’s brew of High Tea, your dispatch of 🔥 internet culture served piping hot. This week: we explore the mechanics behind next-gen Vtuber CodeMiko, reminisce over our young internet selves, and ball out with Pokémon.
Drink up 🐸☕️
p.s. if you’re not a paid subscriber, here’s what you missed from this week’s Bucks Fizz: our Thursday dispatch covering the best of TikTok’s unsigned and emerging talent.
🥂 Souly Had, Lyn Lapid & Kim Dracula
what we’ve been sipping on:
“For Miko I just wanted to create a live interactive performance game” – The Technician
ICYMI: Vtubers (or “virtual YouTubers”) and faceless streamers are a hot topic right now. With Corpse Husband, the streamer and musician, sitting at 7.1M subscribers and 100M+ plays on Spotify and top streamer Pokimane debuting her own Vtuber model back in September, we’ve been chomping at the bit (pun intended) to cover the rise of one of the most creative, technically-savvy and interactive obsessed streamers to ever grace our IRL world. We are, ofc, talking about CodeMiko, who last Friday made her return to the big stream, aka Twitch.
Who is CodeMiko?
According to her Twitch bio she is an “NPC game character, travelling through different game worlds.” Having streamed with Twitch royalty Pokimane back in December and ofc, T-Pain this week (in which we heard “OMG I used to twerk to your music when I was 12”), it’s fair to say the CodeMiko with her unapologetic personality has garnered much attention from the gaming world as of late. To prove it, her growth stats are outstanding. Soaring from 505 Twitch followers in Dec. 2020 to 410K+ at the time of writing, (plus 270K+ on YouTube) Miko has defied even Twitch bans (hence the comeback) to increase fan engagement via interactivity and immersion like never before. She has the ultimate recipe for success. Let’s dive in:
Source: Twitch Tracker showing growth from Nov 30 2020 to Feb 13 2021
IRL & digital
Vtubers typically never show their face. But CodeMiko is a hybrid of an IRL persona (Miko’s creator) and Miko herself. Why do we love this? One word: authenticity. CodeMiko’s developer, who goes by the name of ‘The Technician’ is very transparent about the creation of the character, so much so she opens up some parts of her stream to showcase her very ‘human’ side, pulling back the curtain on her technical set up, mocap suit, personal life an’ all. Although her background is suitably elusive, we do know that The Technician was previously working in R&D for a large gaming corp and after being laid off decided to utilize her live animation skills. Miko was born:
“I wanted to basically create a live animated character that you can talk to...so when I’d play Final Fantasy VII...I’d wish I could talk to Tifa and Cloud and see what is going on inside their heads.” – The Technician
First she crafted the backstory: Miko wanted to be in a big budget AAA game but can’t due to a glitch in her system and so she is left to wander different game worlds. With this narrative Miko has the potential to be anything and anywhere she wants to be within these worlds, leaving lots of room for visual customization, exploration and playful storylines.
content & creativity
CodeMiko changing outfits mid-stream in real time.
With immersion one of the most important parts of her stream (dw, we’ll get to the 🤯 tech later), The Technician designs all of her set to depict CodeMiko holed up in her own virtual world, with assets that change for every guest. On Saturday’s stream she had a framed picture of Lord Farquaad and Pepe the Frog; on the Pokimane stream she had a copy of ‘Normies’ and ‘The Burn Book’ (hiiii Mean Girls 💅 ), plus Pokimane’s SOLD OUT YouTooz collectible merch in digital form. Next it’s the outfits. Although her trademark cyan sweater ain’t going anywhere, Miko can change into different outfits and skins and can summon props at the drop of a hat, making her streams unpredictable and exciting to watch every time.
Lord Farquaad and Pepe center stage on CodeMiko’s stream
‘just chatting’
In the virtual world, Miko’s most popular streams are those when she doesn’t play games, although you could argue the whole experience is an RPG (role-playing game) within itself. Since joining Twitch last Fall and already braving three bans (most notably for saying the banned Twitch word ‘simp’ and for accidentally sharing a fan’s email on air) Miko has found most success interviewing famous guests within her own virtual world. With her audacious personality combined with letting the Twitch chat guide the conversation, CodeMiko is the ultimate virtual chat show host you never knew you needed. With Pokimane the most notorious guest, let’s face it pals, our gal is now set up for life 😎.
interactivity with fan$
CodeMiko is totally unique in how she uses interactive elements to work directly within the stream in real-time. This includes polls, donation-related animations and even allowing the Twitch chat to modify Miko herself and the scene around her. By controlling the actions within a stream in real time, fans feel they are part of the conversation and can actively influence the outcomes. While some streamers use Twitch Bits (effectively a streamers’ virtual currency that allows fans to show their $upport) to similarly affect the streamer’s appearance live, CodeMiko’s version is an animated 3D masterpiece: ‘Explode Miko’ and ‘Big Head’ are some of our visual favorites. It’s especially fun to hear The Technician IRL reacting to the changes in real-time as CodeMiko flies about the room.
A screengrab of her updated Twitch Bits list. Once a fan donates via ‘bits’, the action or visual on the right occurs mid live stream.
mo-cap, less problems
The Technician shows how her IRL actions affect the digital world.
Twitch seemed to be the perfect hosting platform for CodeMiko and would allow for a higher level of immersion and interaction – but The Technician didn’t want to use typical Vtuber software (which can be slow and glitchy for livestream). Instead she donned a $30K (!) motion capture suit while animating her facial expressions via face-tracking technology. As seen in the above image, she has rigged up her whole apartment to mirror objects in the virtual world. CodeMiko works because of her insane calibration quality and technical expertise.
Trust us folks, we think The Technician is creating something much bigger here. She puts it best: “This is a quasi-interactive, RPG, live stream where it's kind of like an arcade and a game and a stream and an RPG at the same time, it’s crazy just know that” – oh, and did we mention we're only on version 2.0 👀.
Brb, just learning Unreal so we can work with the next big thing to happen to Vtubers and virtual influencer culture (Lil Miquela who? 👀 ) 👇👇👇
kettle’s on: ones to watch
Bebo anyone? This week, friend of High Tea, Jerry Lu took us on a trip down memory lane with a Google Trends report showcasing the ‘peak buzz’ of our best loved social platforms. 08’ was a great year for our faithful Bebo, the first place we ever became our internet selves...not to mention the custom skins and scene queens ruling the roost. Now all 👀 are on TikTok, oh and did we mention we have a midweek dispatch diving into the best of TikTok’s unsigned and emerging talent? Sign up here.
Bitch, I’m an heiress. We did it, Anna Delvey. We did it. Just when Gossip Girl gets pulled from Netflix, we have a new matriarch (fresh from the can, no less) to spill the tea on the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite. Anna revealed she was a free woman after tweeting a link to “First Day Out” by Kodak Black saying “hey that’s me”, not to mention an update to ADD (Anna Delvey diaries, ofc) where you can find the details to follow her, sue her or pay her (only in Bitcoin or Ethereum tho, pls). It’s the comeback story we’ve all been waiting for...
Pika x Postie. Pokémon have been upping the ante on their collaborations as of late. Couture one week, rappers the next – and we’re all about it. This week the Pokémon Company announced a virtual concert headlined by none other than Post Malone as part of its year-long P25 Music celebration. Mark your calendars folks, on Feb 27th you’ll want to 👀 this!
Okay, you made it. Now you can get back to CodeMiko’s 12pm PST stream.
ttyl,