Allow nesting of Categories and Sub-categories.
Categories as they are are a bother to search through. Looking for Pokémon games? Well, look through all these people that have "pokémon" in their names, then all over these streams that might not be for Pokémon!
Categories nesting with Sub-Categories could change this altogether. Let's say we would want to look for Pokémon games. We'd type "Pokémon", head into the "Pokémon" category and look at all the streamers doing different games. If we want some more precision into the category, different sub-categories like "Mystery Dungeon" or "Main Titles" could work, so on and so forth until you reach the "end" of that branch.
This would go like "Pokémon" > "Mystery Dungeon" > "Rescue Team DX", for example.
But the wonderful thing about this, is that it doesn't restrict itself to games.
For example, "Creative", can behave like "Creative" > "Pottery", or "Technology" > "Programming", instead of the smaller tags that people use less (or that don't exist in the first place)!
These kinds of categories could make looking for a particular type of niche that much faster, as well as condense some of the game categories into much more agreeable to see for the viewer, and much more discoverable for the smaller streamer.
You could also check the global interest in single games or whole franchises by sorting them into full nested categories (like "Pokémon", "Zelda", "The Elder Scrolls", "Final Fantasy", for example), or by "individual category", like Twitch usually does.
Makimoke
shared this idea
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Violaycious
commented
LOVE this idea! As someone who plays retro games it is hard to pick between categories. Retro is too broad and missed people who really love the specific game, but picking the game means that only a few people actually see the stream at all through the search.
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DarkGothicFayt
commented
While we know retro gamers use the retro tag just as a broad category, and using the actual game title sometimes doesn't work especially for an obscure game. I think that with the retro category there should be a sub category that can be selected with the actual game as well or even together with it for example
Sub Category
Retro > Taz-Mania
So it would show up both under but show which actual game is being played
or
2 categories in the retro instance
Retro & Taz-Mania
so they show up under both categories in case someone is actually looking for this specific game.
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CarlThePumpkinMan
commented
I had this exact same idea--I also find it a little silly that HD remasters are sometimes separated from their original games. I don't really care if anyone is playing, say, Skyward Sword HD or the original Wii version; the gameplay itself is almost identical. I just looked right now, and if you search up the category "Pokemon Sword/Shield," there are many streamers playing other games in the series but who are mis-categorizing their stream as Sword/Shield, presumably intentionally so they have a higher chance of being discovered. It would seem in this case, the "Pokemon Sword/Shield" category is already being awkwardly used for this purpose, which clutters the experience for those who really are just looking for streamers playing Sword or Shield. Doing this in conjunction with tag filters could be great-- if I want to see someone speedrun a Pokemon game--any Pokemon game-- I could just look at the "Pokemon" category and filter using the "Speedrun" tag, instead of searching every Pokemon game I can think of and filtering by that tag there.
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Failmore
commented
The Retro category can be just about anything. When streaming retro there should also be a 2nd option to add the game title in the category so it can be searched by both retro and the actual game
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TheBestHeadEver
commented
Fantastic idea, love it!
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きさらぎりな
commented
When looking for a streamer by category.
We have to choose a game title.
It's inconvenient to find a game without knowing the title of the game.I stream horror games in the middle of the night in Japan.
I do play some indie games that don't show up in the category
New people can't find me and only my followers come to see me.This makes it difficult for me to distribute only games that inevitably get viewers and the concept of playing horror games.
There will be viewers who want to see me play a horror game, or an adventure game, etc., even if they don't know the title of the game.
When we look for content, add a way to find streamers in the game category as well.
I'm sorry if my English is wrong.
(Supported by DeepL) -
CruxCapacitor
commented
The way Twitch works now, a streamer has to either choose a game or a custom category, like Retro or Creative. The problem with this is that for obscure games, a category like Retro will have a much bigger audience and more people following who might get the chance to click on a channel with a game they weren't following. On the other hand, this means that anyone that IS following that game will never get the chance to know that people in the Retro channel are streaming it unless they frequently check the channel.
If we could make it so that category channels were broader and secondary to the game channel itself, this would enable streamers to get access to the audience for both.