Secondary Streaming Categories for Retro, Games + Demos Communities
The new Twitch mobile app has introduced a massive disadvantage across the Twitch Retro community.
Traditionally, the majority of us have been streaming directly to the "Retro" category for years. The alternative, specific game categories, often have single digit followers - if they exist at all - resulting in almost nil discoverability.
Many of us are already using tags, but as the Retro game category has been used in this way for so long, tags are rarely prioritised by viewers to the same extent.
As the new mobile app has removed clear visual cues (thumbnails), there's no easy way to tell what those streaming to Retro are actually playing anymore. This has already resulted in frustration from streamers, viewers and lower viewership in general.
There are multiple ways to address this, which have already been requested elsewhere (general changes to the app). However, I feel it would be hugely beneficial for streamers in select categories, which are well known to be used for discoverability (e.g. Retro, Games + Demos) to be able to stream to two categories at once.
If the secondary, broader category remained searchable but did not display as the dominant category on the app, this would be of a huge benefit for growth and relationship-building across the entire Retro community.
Emmfoolery
shared this idea
-
unknownnop
commented
Les catégories secondaires pour le streaming rétro, jeux et démos permettent de mieux cibler les passionnés et de créer des communautés engagées. Chez Nova TV, nous appliquons la même logique abonnement iptv, https://nova-tv.net/fr avec notre IPTV français en proposant des chaînes thématiques variées : sport, cinéma, documentaires, jeunesse, et même contenus rétro pour les nostalgiques. Une interface simple, un accès rapide et une offre pensée pour tous les goûts — c’est ça, l’expérience Nova TV.
-
ZachBussey 🔴 Join TOS.gg
commented
I definitely think there's an interesting use case here! Similar to how Just Chatting is a catchall for 'all' non-gaming content, offering a few other categories that act as catchalls with a subcategory could benefit both the creator AND Twitch by making sure that people who are interested in a specific game (that might eb rarely played) would also be aware - while offering the generalized catch all of the Retro category.
Zach || You'll love my Streaming Newsletter! https://tos.gg/
-
Tawejea
commented
I can see wanting to make some changes, keeping up with the times. But I have yet to find a SINGLE person who has thought these new updates are good. Please add this feature for searchability for the sake of the Retro community, and other tight-knit thriving communities here on Twitch. I've already noticed a slight drop in overall viewership numbers within twitch since these changes have taken place.
-
CoTeCiO
commented
Can we just roll back to the previous version of the app before all these changes were put into place? Clearly nobody is happy with the changes and the vast majority of people over here are asking Twitch to roll back. What are they waiting for?!
-
VeritasUnae
commented
The notion of a secondary streaming category could have even broader impacts outside of these particular use cases - while many in the Art category also use tags to specify what type of art they are working on, the breadth and specificity of those artistic disciplines could be made more precise by subcategories (traditional art, costume work, 3d modelling, music composition, etc), and people could tailor their wants and needs even more tightly. I might be looking for any sort of sewing art, but people streaming sewing art might only have a specific tag, like crochet, that I might not be searching for explicitly!
Additionally, as sonneveld mentions, when a streamer changes the style of art they are working on during the stream, such a change could be tracked via changing the subcategory, tying what was happening during the stream to the VOD chapters as well. While parts of this are somewhat serviced by tags at the moment, there seem to be many examples of further impacts that such a change could bring to the site at large.
-
sonneveld
commented
I agree!
I think the tag system was meant to solve this problem but experiments from some streamers have shown that more people seem to come in from the Retro category rather than retro tags. (it's difficult to see this in the Twitch dashboard, hence the experiments)
Another benefit of making the game category relevant for smaller games is that it is discoverable by the developers themselves and thus more likely to pop in during a stream.
It would also mean VODs are already correctly marked with the correct game. We would also be able to take advantage of the automatic chapter markers in VODs based on category change.