Hey there Twitch loving friendos,

Categories on Twitch are fantastic and one of the major things that helps to connect us with each other. I think we can all agree that categories often help us find a new stream or even pick between which streams we want to watch in that moment. I understand why we have to pick a category when streaming instead of streaming in many or none, but there are some categories that are really hard to connect with others in and others where it's great it exists for the niche audience looking for it but if someone isn't looking for that very specific underrated gem or whatever... are never going to find you.

So imagine this, we have the category system much like we currently have where you could pick the specific game you're playing as always but if you select (for example) "Retro" and next to it it pops up an additional category field where you can pick "Secret of Mana" (a category that often only has 1 viewer even though it has over 35.3k followers as a category, a "dead category" as it were) - imagine how much that would help you reach both groups? The Retro crowd as well as the passionate fans of the specific game? Another example would be when you select "Games + Demos" and then get to also select the game/demo you're playing because they more often or not already have their own categories but there's nobody looking at those yet except the game publishers/developers. It'd help connect the makers of the games, the streamers, and potential viewers all together way more effectively than just being in the category for the game or the category for "Games + Demos". This applies to many categories that already exist but are much larger nets of things that also have their own infrequently looked at categories that are streamer CCV killers when used on their own, even though they have many fans/people interested in checking them out in the world.

There's also some weirdness where there are categories for just different releases/ports of the same game and it divides fans in ways it likely isn't intended to. If we could select the game as a main category and then the specific edition of it as a secondary category in case people search for it that way, that'd be amazing. A recent example I had several streamer friends all vent to me about would be: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim as a main category (a category that has 2.5m followers) and being able to pick "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Special Edition" (a release that cleaned up some graphics and loading screens which is a category that has only 180k followers). Many people are looking for Skyrim and don't mind which edition it is, but WILL miss a stream they might've loved depending on how they searched the category yet some people might be pretty upset if they can't distinguish between the versions of games.

I LOVE the Games + Demos category and the Retro category, but I know for a fact that there are many games that fall under them that have their own categories with fans of these games I love that I wish I was reaching also. However right now you have to pick between those and which wonderful people you are going to exclude. Some things can be done with tags, but we don't have enough tags already as it is sometimes and we all know tags and categories hit different. They are used so differently - they are followed different since categories are followable and tags always have to be searched, the custom tags are GREAT but also not having some standardized tags means a typo or just a slightly different stylization of the same thing means you miss everyone you're looking for like a ship in the night but a category will never let you down like that.

The argument for sub-categories like that Retro -> Secrets of Mana or Games + Demos -> Rabbit and Steel Demo, Makers + Crafting -> 3D Printing 👀, or other such examples is one that I can elaborate on further if desired. But I have another thing I'd like to bring up.

In addition to/alternatively to a stacking sub-category system, it might be more beneficial to add the ability to add multiple categories to the same stream at the same time even when they are unrelated. So unlike Retro going with Super Mario World, an example would be if you were in the category Placid Plastic Duck Simulator but you're also doing Stream Raiders battles every half hour and doing Art in the meantime while both the others are still on stream. Which category do you pick? If you're doing Makers + Crafting stuff but you're also doing Nitro Stream Racing, why should you have to pick between them? And which one is the "more correct" to pick.
Please consider giving us either multiple category fields by default, still keeping that it's against TOS to stream to irrelevant categories and stuff so people don't do anything weird with it, but making it so that we can do a main game + Stream Raiders or Art + Nitro Racing or whatever AND/OR please consider letting specific categories trigger unlocking an additional category for things like Retro + Specific Retro Game or "Games + Demos" and Specific Demo. If it was both, the ideal would be having [Number Higher Than 1] default category fields AND when you select broad umbrella categories like Retro or Games + Demos then it'll prompt you to select an additional subcategory that you'll also show in, in addition to the blanket category.

The amount of success this would help people playing obscure games that are related to much larger viewer bases could help, or the people doing multiple types of activities at the same time could be aided by this... it's just off the charts what this would do for streamers.

It would also be amazingly helpful to be able to have multiple categories on the VODs where you have done multiple things in that stream instead of it just being categorized as the one you started with. It would help so very much. There are many streamers who do more than one thing in the same stream and would love to be able to at least expand what the VODs are listed as.

Thank you for your consideration!