How Game Developers Reach New Customers with Twitch
by Marcus Graham, Ernest Le
Author: Eric Gergely
February 20, 2017
Tags: GDC 2015, Marcus Graham, Twitch, Ernest Le, free content, Programming
Track: GDC 2015 Moscone Center San Francisco - Programming
Url: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022047/How-Game-Developers-Reach-New
Speaker: Marcus Graham, Twitch Speaker: Ernest Le, Twitch
Abstract
This paper is about Twitch and how game developers can use it to make people recognize
their games. Twitch is the largest social video site for streaming games and other content.
This is not only important for indie-games but also for big companies. There is more than
one way to use Twitch in order to build a community around a game. The first section is a
summary of Marcus Graham’s and Ernest Le’s talk from GDC 2015 in San Francisco [1]. In
the second section an overview of the current state of Twitch is given.
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1.1
Summary of Talk
Twitch 101 - What is Twitch
Twitch is the largest social video site for gamers and Twitch also added a developer directory on
their site. In addition Twitch is growing rapidly. In 2015 they reached more than 100 million
unique viewers per month. Two years before, in 2013, they only reached 22 million unique viewers.
But not only the viewer base is growing. The ones that provide the content, the broadcasters, are
increasing in their numbers as well. From 300 thousand broadcasters per month in 2013 they went
up to over 1.5 million by the beginning of 2015. The average user spends 106 minutes a day on
Twitch. Twitch focuses on interaction and is growing faster than traditional TV. There are five
pillars into which you can divide Twitch. Namely that are media, communities, developers, events
and E-Sports. Each of them takes on an important role.
1.2
What are developers doing?
In fact there are tons of possibilities on how developers can use Twitch. However, there are four
main aspects that the talk focuses on.
1.2.1
Original content
Developers can gather a big viewership by creating their own original content on Twitch. This
content can be new items, modes, worlds, bosses, levels etc. that the developers want to reveal.
Furthermore developers can broadcast live programming sessions or a developers talk. There is
also the possibility to use Twitch for announcing a game release and make people excited about
your game. H1Z1 for example did a 12 hour Twitch stream with their developers.
1.2.2
Engage broadcasters
In the talk they mention that broadcasters can be seen as new age journalists. Gamers turn to
their favorite streamers when they want to know if a game is good or not. There are broadcasters
that have 20 to 40 thousand viewers on average. Engaging them as a developer can make the
difference between your game being realized by the community or not. Therefore developers are
giving alpha and beta keys to known broadcasters.
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1.2.3
Gather feedback
Listening to community feedback is a vital aspect for a game to become and stay successful.
Twitch audiences can help developers guide development and also deliver an understanding about
different trends of the gaming industry. Developers start using transparent development processes
more often. An example of this is early alpha access.
1.2.4
Competition
Competition is exciting to watch and increases the publicity of a game in the long run. E-Sports
also attracts sponsors, media and events. So if competitions and E-Sports are applicable to a game,
it should be taken into account.
1.3
Case Study - Roblox
Roblox is a game-development and distribution platform. Users can create games and also play
those created by others. Roblox went from 100 000 minutes watched per month to 5 million
within a year by leveraging their community. Roblox takes advantage of community interaction.
Thus they receive instant feedback from their customers and can find out what players love or
hate. Community driven weekly programming results in a transparent development process. In
addition they encourage their community to broadcast what they are doing in Roblox by supporting
broadcasters with in-game currency and other benefits. With help of this strategy Roblox increased
the number of people broadcasting it from 0 to 2170 per month.
1.4
Case Study - Warframe
Digital Extremes takes a different approach on Twitch. Roblox goes for frequency and constantly
engaging their community. Warframe goes for unique content. Non-frequent usage was beneficial
for them because every time they stream they achieve high peaks in viewership. Warframe uses
streams to unveil new wings, gear, weapons etc. Most of the time this is the first chance for the
community to see upcoming changes to the game. This means that Warframe is using content to
create massive community broadcasts. Every time they broadcast they have a big reveal and thus
traffic triples or even quadruples. They are also doing developer streams where they talk about
game changes that directly effect the community.
1.5
Case Study - H1Z1
When announcing H1Z1 Sony Online Entertainment turned to their community on Twitch and used
it as their marketing strategy. They saw Twitch broadcasters as their core marketing distributors
and their viewers as their general consumers. Since it was an early alpha a lot of community
driven weekly programming took place. Twitch presence was one of their main goals with weekly
programming, developer talks etc. Therefore the consumers’ feedback could find its way into the
game fast. For this reason they also did further developer Q&As live on Twitch.
1.6
Reach new customers by jumping into the Twitch Eco-System
The audience on Twitch is not divided into separate communities but is rather a whole one. There
are a lot of overlapping areas. Therefore the best way to visualize the Twitch community is a
cloud.
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Figure 1: Variety cloud of Twitch community. Figure taken from [1].
The variety cloud has links to every game. Users do not exclusively watch a single game and if
a broadcaster with a lot of viewers goes offline his viewers distribute over to other games. In case
a broadcaster with a big viewership plays a game that is rather unknown this game can become
popular. Especially for indie-games this is a great opportunity.
1.7
What should you start doing?
Take advantage of the Twitch community and interact with it. See the case studies and different
possibilities to find the right strategy for your game. Work together with streamers and find
out who is playing your game. Furthermore you can contact Twitch because they want to help
developers with their games.
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Overview and Relevance
Nowadays Twitch is even more relevant than ever. According to metrics of DeepField, Twitch had
the 4th highest peak internet traffic in the US as shown in the figure below [2].
Figure 2: DeepField internet traffic peak ranking. [2]
Additionally Twitch continues to release further functionality on a regular basis. This functionalities can support viewers, streamers and developers. For example, on February 09, 2017 Twitch
launched Communities [3].As stated in [3] Communities is a new open beta directory where creators and viewers can share content based on specific interests. With this feature broadcasters
and viewers can connect with their most relevant audience. Taking this idea one step further
Communities can also be used by developers to attract customers, discover previously unknown
communities or even create completely new communities. There are a lot of tools like stream
wall, personalization (community specific rules), Moderation tools and a lot more that are used by
the Communities directory. For further reading on this feature visit [3]. Twitch is providing the
viewers a lot of ways on how to support their favorite broadcasters. Again, if you are a developer
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you can benefit from all of this, since the viewers have a wide range of possibilities to support you.
Another example of this is Twitch Prime. On September 30, 2016 Amazon and Twitch announced
Twitch Prime, that is basically a new version of Amazon Prime that offers a lot of benefits created
for gamers [4]. As mentioned in [4] viewers that have Twitch Prime receive free games, in-game
loot, they can watch streams on Twitch ad-free and also get a monthly Twitch channel subscription
to support broadcasters. In the short amount of time since Twitch Prime was released, already
over one million channel subscriptions were redeemed with it [5]. Aside from subscriptions viewers
can support streamers by cheering with coins that they can buy on Twitch [6].
In conclusion one can say, that Twitch is a great way for developers to make their games
popular, build a community around it, discover new target groups and offers fans a lot of ways to
support developers and gamers. To find out more about Twitch look at [7] and [8]. In case you are
interested in a survey by Lifecourse Associates commissioned by Twitch about gamers you should
definitely have a look at [9].
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References and Further Sources
[1] Marcus Graham and Ernest Le from Twitch, How Game Developers Reach New Customers
with Twitch, Game Developer Conference, San Francisco, 2015. http://www.gdcvault.com/
play/1022047/How-Game-Developers-Reach-New
[2] Twitch, Come Join Us and Change How the World Interacts with Media and Games, accessed
20.02.2017. https://www.twitch.tv/p/jobs
[3] BusinessWire, Twitch Introduces Communities, a New Way to Discover Content and
Reach the Right Audiences, accessed 20.02.2017. http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/
20170209006085/en
[4] BusinessWire, Amazon Prime ‘Levels Up’: Introducing Twitch Prime, accessed 20.02.2017.
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160930005962/en
[5] Evan Freitas, Presenting the Twitch 2016 Year in Review, accessed 20.02.2017. https://blog.
twitch.tv/presenting-the-twitch-2016-year-in-review-b2e0cdc72f18#.svsgomsh9
[6] Robin
Fontaine,
Updates
to
Cheering:
Pin
Top
Cheer
+
More
Settings,
accessed
20.02.2017.
https://blog.twitch.tv/
updates-to-cheering-pin-top-cheer-more-settings-2d1e76ad7de2#.293c5dbf4
[7] Twitch, Twitch in the News, accessed 20.02.2017. https://www.twitch.tv/p/news
[8] Twitch, Press Releases, accessed 20.02.2017. https://www.twitch.tv/p/press
[9] LIFECOURSE ASSOCIATES, THE NEW FACE OF GAMERS, accessed 20.02.2017. http:
//twitch.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/TheNewFaceofGamers1.pdf
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