Struggle of staying relevant on Twitch
Living in the age when streaming becomes a valid career and takes over huge chunk of life for a lot of us, topic of relevancy comes up to mind more and more often. And it’s not an easy topic to talk about.
I’m Outstar, partnered Twitch streamer, working daily as GOG.com Twitch manager and caretaker. It’s been my task for years to make the channel grow (back in the days, it meant exact numbers) and this article is written to sum up my experience with battling viewer decline and sharing it with others.
“Am I interesting enough to keep them coming to my streams for years to come?”, one may ask, trying to plan the future of his channel. The problem is, it takes a prophet to predict trends, especially on platform changing as rapidly as Twitch does. Who would predict two years ago how popular IRL becomes? Would you say before release of Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds that, despite “Top 5” watched games on Twitch haven’t changed since Overwatch premiere, it will storm the charts — being just another early access multiplayer game?
Well, I wouldn’t. Maybe it was luck, maybe it was sixth sense, or — more likely — just another coincidence when I bought the game right in the middle of upcoming storm, luring new people to my channel without a plan. Same coincidence happened when my friend on GOG.com channel streamed the same game as CohhCarnage, unconciously “stream-sniping” him and getting his viewers after Cohh finished. Luck plays a huge role in raising concurrent viewers — sudden raids, great game choices, you name it. But it’s not a deciding factor when it comes to channel’s relevancy, and that’s what matters in the long run.
I’ve been streaming on Twitch.tv for over three years now and my luck often pulled me up immensely. I was raided by TotalBiscuit once, I somehow got invited to stream with Cryaotic and his crew, hell — I even got raided multiple times by 4chan and underground Discord channels, just to have them stay and behave like proper citizens. (I consider this my superpower. Last month after my speech on Creative Coast Festival, one person from the audience approached me to take a selfie and told me he found me via 4chan raid. He was extremely nice and polite.)
But being pulled up quickly means you can fall just as fast, if not faster. Raids and hosts leave you grinning in a follow train, to be continued by unfollow train right after the event is over. You suddenly gain great numbers while streaming PUBG? Well, good luck with coming back to creative streams and keeping the same crowd around. “Green” and “red” days are a common pattern for most Twitch channels — “green” are the days where your followers go up a bit and viewer count raises considerably, “red” are the ones where amount of unfollows is bigger than follows and, reasonably, you start worrying if everything is OK.
While getting just one new follower per day might be an achievement for small streamers, “stars” worry about relevancy just the same, comparing 1000 new followers gained on one day to 20 on the other. It’s important to add, follower number is not that important on Twitch, as most streamers / sponsors / Twitch itself focus on concurrents more. There are patterns combining these two, though — more concurrents mean more follows, so SocialBlade statistics are often helpful in diagnosing channel’s problems.
Through the years of my work, I’ve been able to “isolate” some of these problems and connect them with hard statistics. We had months of “in decline” periods to be followed by months of “prosperity”, which was based on some changes to the way we stream, what we stream and how we approach it from the get-go. Back in the days, green periods happened to us only around celebrity guest streams or huge releases — now, we manage to mantain them in our own group, streaming games we love. It might not last forever, but it taught me some lessons I’d love to share.
So hey, how do I stay relevant, Outstar?
I. Don’t focus on one game. It might work for a few lucky people in the business that specialize in LoL or Hearthstone, but more often it causes a problem — you’d really enjoy playing something else, but your audience wouldn’t. I’ve seen it happening with raising stars of Gwent scene — a lot of them suddenly raised from being very small channels to few-hundred-concurrents-per-stream channels, milking the game through long streaming hours. Problem arised when they tried to play something else: numbers they gained fell as quickly as they showed up.
What to do then, ma’am? See the next point, amigo.
II. Find ways to switch the focus from game to personality. Naturally, I don’t mean being obnoxious and pausing story-driven game every minute to insert a story (that sounds like my channel). Start the stream by talking to your audience, exchange opinions about games, popculture and tech, ask things, answer things. Make people hyped for your plans involving different games by talking about them and explaining why you’d like to play them. Change your Twitter from stream announcement dashboard to place where people can talk with you or find interesting content. Become a person folks want to hang out with.
III. If something doesn’t work, change it. We share this advice often with GOG.com Stream Team, where game series can be dragged on for months because of game’s length and busy streaming schedule. Sometimes streamer stops enjoying this, sometimes audience doesn’t want to watch the game anymore, often — both come in pairs. People tend to stick to the game though, “because there are few people that want me to finish this”, “because I may disappoint someone”, “because I promised”. There will be always few people unhappy of your decisions, but if it makes a greater number happy, it was a good decision from the start.
IV. Play games you enjoy. Most of the times, streamer’s enjoyment while playing favorite game is a reason enough to make people stay. Some games may not “click” with the audience at all — I enjoy playing MOBA games privately, but I always fail at convincing my audience Heroes of the Storm matches can be interesting. I managed to convince them to a wide array of totally non-visible Twitch games though, starting from old Disney’s Lion King, ending on Harvester. Don’t be afraid of trying retro or indie gaming if you follow previous three points.
V. Don’t plan your career years ahead — plan it from event to event. Charity streams, marathons, mulitplayer with invited guests, giveaway sprees — all these events can help in keeping your audience around. Plan them in advance and think about them as something special to give back to audience that watches you. They deserve a treat.
VI. Invest wisely. We’re not talking multimillion investment in streaming house, but something you can afford with your pocket money — video games. Try to be informed about new releases, read gaming press or websites, check GOG and Steam every now and then. One game a month shouldn’t drain you, but may help your channel’s relevancy and gain you more viewers.
VI. Network, honey! It’s dangerous to go alone. Other streamers go through the same struggles as you do. If you go together, your audiences will support each other, you may exchange viewers — and most importantly, have fun together talking, sharing experiences and playing video games.
Last but not least, caring too much about numbers or income on Twitch causes inevitable burn-outs and disappointment. Don’t forget to enjoy what you do, and do what you enjoy doing. Stay healthy and be happy of every single person watching you.
Now, go stream and take over the world! Or just have fun for a bit.
Outstar is a member of GOG.com Stream Team. We stream DRM-free games everyday in TV-like schedule. You can follow us here or get some games while supporting Outstar here!
