Per Twitch's stream analytics, on one of my data science programming streams on Twitch the majority of my viewers came from the Explore page, under the relatively-less-popular Programming category.
I wonder if there's a bit of game theory in play where it's impossible to be discovered when playing a megapopular game like Overwatch/Fortnite, and it's more advantageous to play relatively more obscure games. It wouldn't be the first time working the long-tail has been effective.
> I wonder if there's a bit of game theory in play where it's impossible to be discovered when playing a megapopular game like Overwatch/Fortnite, and it's more advantageous to play relatively more obscure games.
I do not think most twitch streamers are trying to be professionals. I think most streamers are just trying to add more fun into their game time. In game theory everyone's main objective is the same, in this case measured in either revenue or viewers. In the twitch world most streamers are trying to maximize fun instead of viewers or revenue.
(Disclosure: I stream relatively obscure games, and know many other streamers in both megapopular and obscure games.)
It turns out that if you do the basics, and make content that is not terrible, then you can be the "#1 live stream programmer in the world", pretty easily.
But it turns out that getting to the #1 spot at the top of the twitch programming category only nets you about 10-20 concurrent viewers.
At that point the goal should be to grow the category as a whole, I guess.
Reading this made me curious. I'll probably check out the programming category tonight if I have time. How is the quality of those programming streams? What goes on in them? Do the streamers answer questions about techniques, etc? Is it just shoptalk/circlejerking?
I'm usually a self-starter on learning things, but I can lose interest quickly if I don't get some sort of feedback or have someone to ask questions. MOOCs, forums, etc are a waste of time for me in most cases; too slow and impersonal. And now that I think about it Twitch/streaming would probably be a better suited learning medium for me.
The quality is poor. It's mostly gamer streamers trying out something different. They're usually going through a udacity course or hacking a crud web application.
There is lot of blindly looking at the screen, reading tutorials or getting frustrated with compilation errors.
I think this is an unfair characterization, there are some REALLY good programmers, some new programmers, and people at all stages of their programming journey.
A lot are doing game programming, I'm less interested in this, but some are very interesting. For instance...
He's the game developer and designer behind Braid and The Witness. He's designing a programming language (JAI), works on that and shows off features, as well as doing game development, on his channel. (And occasionally playing games.)
He's primarily a game streamer, but also a consistent Ludum Dare participant, with some high placement in many of them. He has a series of programming videos.
Yep. I get almost no one finding me when I play hearthstone, but I always have ~10 viewers when I stream speedrun attempts of popular snes games. It really is a matter of finding your niche when you start out.
It's definitely true for some people I know because it gets you above the fold for the game/category.
Most people watch above the fold in browse, and then above the fold for those games, so the streamers get all or nothing depending on the fold. So when you start out, that's nothing.
But for the minority of people who care about specific games/categories that usually aren't above the fold on browse (which hn is probably biased towards), this gets you quite consistent growth and engagement, especially if you're competant at the game or interacting.
an interesting side effect of something like that is the hop-ons during the games done quick streams -- often times you'll see streamers switch games to whatever's being played on stream in the hopes someone will... misclick, or get bored and check out the other streams in the game or something. you also see it when a large streamer is playing a relatively unknown game (sodapoppin used to have a semi-weekly stream where he played games subscribers recommended, usually bargain bin or free to play shovelware)
I wonder if there's a bit of game theory in play where it's impossible to be discovered when playing a megapopular game like Overwatch/Fortnite, and it's more advantageous to play relatively more obscure games. It wouldn't be the first time working the long-tail has been effective.