is twitch.tv a fad? - your thoughts on promotion and income generation

Boysano

Hi,
I didn't see a topic on this via search, and stumbled on this recently and was wondering if this really works.

By this I mean, making money on a twitch channel by just playing games and accepting subscriptions and donations,
the one guy is like 30years old and does this fulltime playing Hearthstone - that sounds like fun!
PS: If you play Hearthstone - friend me at Boysano#2759 or any blizzard game

Also what is your thoughts on using it as a promotion platform for your games?

Chippit

I think it works really well with games that have sufficient challenge and community involvement. Spelunky and Minecraft were and are huge on Twitch, because they're exactly the sort of games that are always interesting to watch (with that cool community-driven discovery going on all the while). I think games like Dark Souls and Don't Starve would also benefit strongly from similar things as well. Indeed, were it easier to do so, console titles like Monster Hunter would probably see huge audiences on Twitch too, with the right push in that direction.

All in all, I think as a developer it's serves a great way to build community interest in games, pull in interested players and viewers, and just connect with your players. All you need is the right group of people streaming for you.

dislekcia

Sreaming and LPing and casting are really interesting outgrowths of having good bandwidth. I don't think any of that stuff is going to disappear soon, it's also definitely a way to create value for other people, so that means it can be a career.

Individual streamers/LPers/casters need a good personality, good voice and whatever skills the games they're playing require - or at least, an understanding of the skills the games need. Good Starcraft casters have to be able to read the game, not just tell you what's going on right now. Many SA streamers are let down by their accents and/or their approach to trying to build an audience - they're not focusing on what makes them unique.

Using streamers as an indie is pretty easy - first you have to have a game that they want to play. Then you give them access to the game and support them. We did a lot of stuff with ToRNiS (Russian streamer, peka!) and MANvsGAME (DannyB knows him, really cool guy) around the launch of Desktop Dungeons. Both were great for us in terms of attention and people checking out the game. We also pushed to get lots of Youtubers interested, but I got a bit bummed when NorthernLion didn't get into the game despite it being basically the perfect fit for him (roguelike, deep, etc).

These days there are a lot of people putting up their DD runs on youtube, everyone from advanced players doing tutorials and community challenges, to newbies showing their frustration with the game. It's good fun to watch and we're hoping to do some stuff to the game to encourage streaming/youtube-friendly types of play if possible - make things more competitive, etc.

Boysano

I was thinking it can be a good way for us to promote each others games via a makegamessa stream channel, but then it may get messy..

I think your approach to find good streamers to promote your game is very clever!

iPixelPierre

One thing about streaming is : SA = shit bandwidth
I'm not sure of any SA people streaming but I know there are SA guys uploading to utubes.

WelshPixie

I've streamed a few times. Bandwidth really is terrible and makes for poor quality streaming. It's not great, if you want to appear professional, when people can only view your stream at some crazy low res with a huge delay between chat response time. :/

Boysano

yeah i tested it and had 15sec delay, at like 640x480 video quality

edg3

From work I can stream at full HD most of the time, but only if I don't use too much bandwidth on my downstream (e.g. if I watch a stream at the same time).

At home I can comfortably stream at 640x480 using a lower framerate (I find 15~25 works best), but that is also using some beefy resources for decent compression etc if I am using a res to play higher than 640x480.

We also have similar bandwidth limitations when it comes to pre-recorded video for YouTube upload. It took me ~12 hours to upload 700~900mb of video when I had that dream of doing YouTube lets plays, and even then I had to limit myself in terms of res to upload. I could save 40% of the filesize by going to 480p instead of 720p, but often people watching lets plays want higher quality (even in games that are essentially less detailed regardless of resolution). Besides having to look professional you need to be able to speak professionally ALL the time, it is a harder skill to master than one might imagine.

Ideally you need to try get international lets players to play your game as they have the facilities to actually do high quality video uploads (whether streamed or recorded for YouTube).