Create a Game Development Category.
Creative and IRL used to be categories on Twitch. Everything that wasn't games was in Creative. This means everything from Bob Ross to ASMR (let's be real that's the same thing.) was all in one place and entirely unsearchable.|
Twitch broke up Creative and IRL into a bunch of new and rad categories to help discoverability. This included Music, Art, Beauty, Food, Just Chatting, Tabletops, ASMR, Science & Technology, and others. This category splitting really helped a lot of smaller communities grow. It was easier to find new and interesting streamers because you could now discover them in an otherwise bloated and unsearchable wasteland.
For a brief period of time Game Development was also a category right after Creative was brought down. We had a huge amount of new viewers in that category but Twitch removed it after only two weeks. We were averaging 7.1 new followers per hour under Game Development.
Science & Technology however did not gain any benefit from this. It's become another catch all like Creative was. Weed growing, animal cams, earthquake sims, and a few programmers mixed in. We average 2.8 new followers per hour in this category because nobody knows what it is.
If you search Game Development on Twitch right now the category doesn't show up, neither do streams with the tag of Game Development, in fact... nothing shows up. If you search for Science "AND" Technology you get nothing. You actually have to search for Science "&" Technology. This compounds the discoverability issue and makes the category even worse for developers. We need Game Development back.
It's a simple change but it can help build a lot of new communities on Twitch. It can also make more money for indie devs and Twitch at the same time. At the end of the day I feel incredibly lucky with the success we've had on Twitch. Because of this platform and our community we will never need a publisher or investors. We get to own 100% of our studio.
I want that replicated for game devs that come after us.
This thread was posted publicly on Twitter and has so far received a very large amount of community support.
https://twitter.com/PirateSoftware/status/1361911034219425792
PirateSoftware
shared this idea
Hi everyone!
We’re happy to announce that thanks to your feedback, we have created the Software and Game Development category! Thank you for all of your support around this idea.
Category: https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Software%20and%20Game%20Development
Read more on the Twitch developer forum: https://discuss.dev.twitch.tv/t/software-game-development-a-new-streaming-category/33364
-
herox_52
commented
yes
-
Jess_StPierre
commented
Would love to see a comeback of the "Game Dev" category since I see a lot of game devs (in science and tech and art) currently starting to blow up. Im sure they would appreciate a category dedicated to them. This includes, any art, animation, coding, level design and anything else that people do for a game! I'm sure it would motivate new game devs to stream on twitch vs going to a different platform to stream! Just a suggestion, please vote if you think this is a good idea!
-
Sliptrixx
commented
Please add a gamedev category. Currently gamedev is bundled with science and technology, which shadows some of the new developers that I'd like to learn about. Having the oppurtunity to scroll through a directory dedicated for gamedev (be it programming, 3d asset creation, or level designing using ms paint), would greatly enhance many user's twitch experience.
-
BenSciandGames
commented
We defiantly need this also to split up the science and technology category in to separate categories
-
Jacob McGivern
commented
Hello, my name is Jacob.
I, among many others, stream programming/game development on twitch. However, we only have 'communities' in which we can show up in the search categories in. I think there are ample amounts of viewers of programming/developers that we should have our own 'game' category of "programming". When you type in, for instance, 'Counter Strike', you get all the people who are playing it in decreasing viewer count order. When you search programming, you only get those who have that as a community, which isn't everyone. Having a game category for us would organize us better, and allow us to find other fellow developers more swiftly and properly.Right now, some of us stream in the 'creative' - game category, which really doesn't fit us at all. Yes, we are being creative in our 'art of code', but the other people there are doing crafts, like painting, novel writing, or making music. It is more of a catch-all space more than anything. There are nearly 500+ viewers of programming content at once (roughly), which would be ample to put us into the top 30 space of Top Games played at the moment.
Developers are streaming content on Twitch, and I would like us to be able to be found more easily and grouped more properly.