Thursday, December 20, 2018

Atlas Launch delayed, but the hype meter was on overdrive

Atlas Launch has been delayed, viewers showed up in mass on Twitch.

During the failed launch of Atlas on Dec 19, we saw over 210,000 viewers on Twitch waiting to see what the game is all about. For a game with very limited information other then some screenshots and 2 trailers, I find the hype meter really high.

210,000 viewers
Some of the biggest streamers on Twitch all switched from their regular scheduled formats to showcase this new game. Here is a look at the game directory on Twitch with some thumbnails of majority of the streamers.

Dec 19 streamer directory twitch
Judging by the interest in viewers and of streamers, this game may do really well if the next launch window isn't delayed again. What makes this game different from other mmo's is how they are saying its going to be similar to EVE Online with having a majority of players on a single shard.  If they can pull that off, with ARK like mechanics and trading economies from EVE, this maybe one of the best games for streamers to get into for regular sessions.

Check out our new PlayAtlas wiki website being developed.

That being said, if it gets into EVE Online mechanics with full loot and ship loss it may turn off a lot of players. All of it depends on the time it takes to create ships and gear. If its very easy to create ships and gear then that also makes things alittle gimmicky. Since its on a single shard type of server setup, stream sniping is going to be a issue for streamers.

12/21/2018 - Latest Update from community manager states they will be allowing some streamers into the game before launch. Here is the discord screenshot of the full statement.

community manager
Overall this entire roll out has been poorly managed for the game in my opinion.  A lot of things should of been setup and handled better way before launch date(s).



Thursday, December 13, 2018

How to get free game keys sponsor for your twitch stream!

Listed here are a couple of websites that provide the link between game companies, developers and content creators to connect for sponsorships. If you are a streamer, you should definitely think about joining in on these sites for possible free game keys and more. The more viewers, followers and content generation you create, the more sponsorship doors open up.

Guide on how to get free game keys for live streaming and video content creation.

Game developers are looking for influencers to play their games on live streams and on videos for youtube. What makes these services very helpful is how they screen out fake content creators. Each content creator supplies connections to their Twitch, Youtube, Social Media and other accounts which then pulls in data to verify the authenticity and traffic levels of the content creators.

Here are some of the services I use for my stream!

1. Woovit - is a self service key distribution platform.


2. Keymailer - key distribution platform and other offers. NOTE: Keymailer may sometimes lists games to which they don't have any keys for but collect your requests in order to sell that to game publishers.


3. Noiz.gg - distributes keys, sponsorship opportunities


4. Terminals.io - key distribution platform, PR


5. Gamesight.io - key distribution platform, PR


6. Arsenal.gg - analytics, key distribution platform


7. Xsolla - keys, affiliate programs, performance-driven
Xsolla Influencer platform

These are all the different key distribution platforms that I have signed up for and use regularly to get free game keys for my channel on twitch. If you happen to know of any that are not listed and provide similar services, please fill free to comment below or message me so I can review it and add it to the list.
Thursday, October 11, 2018

Android App - Browse games by number of viewers

How to sort on the Twitch Android App by number of viewers!

So Twitch by default it seems has a preference setting that says the following; "Language Ranking" - Show me streams where a large portion of the viewers share my language first.



This setting makes games and streamers of your language have higher placement on the directory listing sections on the app.  If you want to have it so its all sorted by viewer numbers and no language, you will have to turn this setting off in the preferences.

Steps to get to Preferences, since it seems alittle cryptic to finding this settings option.

Login to the Twitch App

On the Top Right corner there is a Icon for your profile.



Click on that, then scroll up to see the Cogwheel.



Click on the cogwheel, select settings

Then click on Preferences and move the language ranking setting to the off position.

Thursday, September 27, 2018

Tags Guide

How to use the tags system on Twitch.tv!

The new tagging system is now live as of September 26, 2018 on Twitch.tv. Tags can be used to categorize channels with additional details. To add tags to your channel go to the dashboard and check in the "Stream Information" for the tags section.

Tags panel
Search for the tag that best fits your channel, you can have up to 5 different tags. Your language setting is also included in the tagging system. Once you have added in all the tags for your channel, press update information button.

All the various tags will be available as filter options in the directory pages. The tagging system will also be used in personalized recommendation section(s) to show more similar streams based on past history and tag listings. For instance, if you watch channels that are tagged as 'PvE', the recommendation sections will show more of those types of channels.

Notable Changes
 
The gaming directory now has unique tags dedicated to genres.

List of Game Directory Genres:
  • Action
  • Adventure
  • Adventure Game
  • Battle Royale
  • Card & Board Game
  • Compilation
  • Creative
  • Driving
  • Driving/Racing Game
  • Educational Game
  • Fighting
  • Flight Simulator
  • FPS
  • Gambling Game
  • Horror
  • IRL
  • MMORPG
  • MOBA
  • Non-gaming
  • Pinball
  • Platformer
  • Puzzle
  • Rhythm & Music Game
  • Roguelike
  • RPG
  • RTS
  • Shoot 'Em Up
  • Shooter
  • Simulation
  • Sports
  • Strategy
You can not set your tags to any of these genres, they are only listed for games and special categories.

The POPULAR listing is now called Live Channels, this still includes 'ReRun' streams.
live channels section

If you are looking to search for specific languages, you can either type it in the filter or switch the 'Showing' section to 'Live Channels' and find it in the drop down list.

 search by language

Creative Section changes
creative section on twitch
The creative section has changed, "Creative" is now a genre with tags that are searchable.
  • Music & Performing Arts
  • Art
  • Food & Drink
  • Makers & Crafting
  • Beauty & Body Art
IRL Section changes

irl section on twitch

The IRL section has changed, "IRL" is now a genre with tags that are searchable.
  • Just Chatting
  • Music & Performing Arts
  • Talk Shows & Podcasts
  • ASMR
  • Travel & Outdoors
  • Food & Drink
  • Makers & Crafting
  • Science & Technology
  • Beauty & Body Art
  • Special Events
  • Sports & Fitness


Update 4/18/2020

Make sure to use all 5 tag slots for your stream because Twitch is using certain tags for their sitemap indexing pages that search engines crawl and then index into their directories. This is sadly going to only benefit the top viewed vod and the most live concurrent channels but you maybe lucky with a smaller channel to still be index'ed in time to time because many top end streamers are to lazy to add in tags.

Here is a list of the current specific tags used in Twitch's sitemap index that you should be using.


Channels VODS
100 100
12 Hour Challenge
Achievement Hunting Achievement Hunting
AMA AMA
Analysis
Animals Animals
Animation
Anime Anime
Any Any
Arena
Auditory ASMR
Backseat Gaming Allowed Backseat Gaming Allowed
Basketball  Basketball
Beginner Players Beginner Players
Blind Playthrough Blind Playthrough
Cash Game
Casual Playthrough
Celeb Celeb
Challenge Run Challenge Run
Charity Charity
Closed Captions
Coaching Coaching
Competitive Competitive
Cooking Cooking
Cooperative Cooperative
Cosplay Cosplay
Digital Art
DJ DJ
Drawing Drawing
Duos Duos 
Early Access Play Early Access Play
Educational  Educational 
Electronic Music Electronic Music
End Game 
Epic Level Characters
Esports Esports
EU Server EU Server
Evil Characters Evil Characters
Exploration Exploration
Family Friendly Family Friendly
Farming Farming
Fashion
Finance
First Playthrough First Playthrough
Game Show Game Show
Gaming News Gaming News
Hard Mode Hard Mode
Hip Hop Music Hip Hop Music
Illustration
Improv
League League
Let's Play Let's Play
Leveling LGBTQIA
LGBTQIA
Live Vlogging Live Vlogging
Marathon Marathon
Match Commentary Match Commentary
Meme Runs Meme Runs
Mental Health Mental Health 
Mindfulness Mindfulness
Modded Modded 
Mode Battle Royale
Mode Survival Mode Survival
Multiplayer Multiplayer
Music Performance  Music Performance
Music Production Music Production
NA Server NA Server
News News
No Backseat Gaming No Backseat Gaming
No Spoilers  No Spoilers
Party Game Party Game
PB Attempts PB Attempts
Permadeath
Playing with Viewers Playing with Viewers
Pro Fortnite Pro Fortnite
Pro Hearthstone Pro Hearthstone
PvE PvE
PvP PvP
Racing Racing
Radio Radio
Ranked Ranked
Retro
Roleplay  Roleplay
Singing Singing
Singleplayer Singleplayer
Soccer Soccer 
Social Eating Social Eating
Solos Solos
Speedrun Speedrun
Squads Squads
Standup Comedy Standup Comedy
Strength Training Strength Training
Tournament Tournament
Tutorial
Twitch Stream Aid Twitch Stream Aid
Visual ASMR Visual ASMR
Voice Acting Voice Acting
VR VR
Warming Up Warming Up
WR Attempts




Twitch appears to have a special tag called "Celeb" which only a couple channels appear to be enabled for which include the following: xqcow, drdisrespect, nickmercs, timthetatman, lirik. Some other tags in the above list may also be not accessible, I do not have the time to check all of them.

Another issue to be noted on is that you can only set the tags before your stream or during your stream.  Currently you can not go into your VODS and switch tags. VODS take the tags that were made during the stream session. I hope they allow VOD tagging to be enabled in the future.



Friday, September 14, 2018

When external Influencers start to censor!

How a powerful external influencer starts to censor?
As reported a couple months ago on this blog, one of the biggest external influencers which is OWNED BY TWITCH has been promoting twitch streams on their wiki network. The more popular a wiki is on their network, the more traffic and embedded viewership it generates for Twitch streamers.

Some of the most popular Wiki's on that network include but are not limited to the following;
  • Minecraft
  • Terraria
  • Ark
The way they pick which streamer to promote depends on placement on the game directory. For instance, on the Terraria wiki, whatever stream is in the top spot (of the terraria directory on twitch) will get most of the traffic that is generated from this 3rd party embed on the Terraria wiki.

Now this sounds like great for getting additional exposure for your stream right? Yup it is and I wrote about that here - Free Channel Traffic / Free Views

And here is how the censorship starts due to complaints from streamers vs streamers.

My channel broadcasts 24/7 using the rerun feature that is provided by Twitch. I like to play sandbox games on my stream and sometimes do play through runs of games. I broadcasting each day for around 5 to 8 hours then run reruns until I stream again the next day. A month ago, I was streaming Terraria which is one of the games that is being VERY LARGELY influenced by this 3rd party. A majority of the streamers who regularly stream that game do not have the reach in views that my channel generates daily. So what happen was as soon as I took the top spot in the directory, a huge chuck of the 3rd party embedding traffic was being sent to my channel which made it very difficult for other channels to overtake the top slot on the directory. The "free channel traffic" was gone for them and they didnt like it at all.

Without the 3rd party embedding support for Terraria, its overall viewership is alot lower. Estimated additional concurrent viewers from 3rd party is 400 - 1500+ depending on time of day. Many people who stream this game only do it because of that additional embedding traffic, some use it to launchpad into other games. So once that was gone, they started to campaign against my channel. One of them talked negativity about my channel on their stream, which lead to trolling in my chat from their viewbase.

At some point they contacted the 3rd party to complain about my channel. The 3rd party agreed with the complaints and censored my channel from being listed + promoted on their wiki.

I messaged the 3rd party myself to see exactly what the reason was for not being listed anymore.

Here was the responses:
  • That channel was banned from our wiki after it was brought to our attention that they were exploiting the system, as documented in a blog.
    • So I guess they didnt like how I told people about how they are influencing/sending tons of traffic to certain games on twitch.... Is this suppose to be TOP SECRET? Who knows ...I replied and asked for more clarification.
  • The 24/7 streaming is the issue. Once you've grabbed the unit, you don't give it up because you fill up reruns. The point of the embedded unit is to promote LIVE content, not reruns.
    • They made up a rule that no one knows about, its not listed anywhere, how is anyone suppose to know? I replied, since doing reRuns until the next time I stream was the issue, I said I can stop doing that and asked to be unbanned.
  • You will not be unbanned. The embed is for promoting the games and platform, not for streamers to game for revenue.
    • This is a interesting reply, note the "Streamers to game for revenue". I didnt know streaming on twitch was a hobby, this person's mindset is very poor.
So they censored my channel, what happened then?



This person "HLAquarius" was monitoring the situation and ran to whisper me, but then for some odd reason they delete their username a couple days later? Hmm?


What makes this censorship stupid is how the Twitch API gives details if channels are in ReRun mode or Live, if the 3rd party doesn't want to promote or list a streamer in rerun mode, they can easily code it to not do that instead of censoring due to complaints from streamers.

And now I recently started to stream No Man's Sky again, and guess what happened? Another complaint and tada censored on another wiki from this Twitch owned 3rd party.

Let me finish up with some words of advice, if you are a streamer do not become depended on any 3rd party traffic or embedding, one day it may help get more exposure and the next day it maybe gone. Build your own content, wikis, do your own embedding and promotions - be in control!



Thursday, August 30, 2018

What is launch padding for streamers?

What is launch padding and how are streamers doing it?

Launch padding is basically using specific games with high 3rd party embedding traffic to gain higher directory placement in new or more popular games.

launch paddingWhat are some games that are good for launch padding?

As of 8/30/2018 the day of this post, the following games in my opinion have the best launch padding potential.
  • Terraria
  • Ark
  • Minecraft
Some of the ways I have seen streamers exploit launch padding is by streaming game #2 and then when they finish broadcasting for the day, they then do reruns streams of game #1 (usually one of the games listed). Because viewership levels tend to drop during certain time zones and the amount of streamers also goes down, they are able to grab the top slot in game #1 directory and once that occurs the traffic from the embedding 3rd party boosts them. This is not always perfect but in general its works pretty well for some.

Or they stream game #1 until they grab the embedding traffic spike, then switch to game #2. A good example would be some people streaming Terraria, grabbing the embedding traffic and then switching to other games that have 'Twitch Drop' enabled like Warframe which further boosts numbers depending on directory placement.

If you have a big enough community, you can leverage this to possibly help with getting more exposure on the platform. But always keep in mind, 3rd party traffic is not something you control, it can end at any given moment.

Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Viewers in common analytics

Which channels have viewers in common with mine?

One of the newest pieces of analytics Twitch is offering to broadcasters is a top 5 viewers in common statistic. You can find this panel by opening up your dashboard, then going to the channel section under analytics on the left sidebar. There you should see a panel similar to this screenshot below, note I have censored the channels on this picture for a reason.

viewers in common



This section is extremely handy for determining possible co-streaming opportunities with other streamers on the platform. Try to reach out to channels in the list and see if you can work together in some fashion. Maybe even add these channels to auto host since the audience is similar.

Another interesting tidbit this panel is useful for is to determine streamers who are sending negativity your way via their viewer base. <--- Remember this line. If you find yourself wondering why so many chatters seem to have some agenda with what they are typing away, investigate this panel and see if these channels are talking about your channel.  In my situation, it easily pointed to a competitive mindset streamer who was indeed targeting my channel with negativity.
Thursday, August 16, 2018

Huge amount of follower bots are copying your stream channel name

Huge numbers of fake follower accounts have been created using channel names.

So overnight some entity has created thousands of Twitch accounts using streamers channel's name. Here is a screenshot of what it looks for one of my channels on Twitch.

fake channels on twitch


The format for the accounts appears to follow a pattern, its basically a streamers channel plus a random combination of one to three digits or letters. Some are also using pictures, avatars from established streamers in the profile.


Please be aware its not the channel owners doing it, if you get messages, alerts, /raids or whatever from channels that are following this format dont take it against the streamer.

Who exactly knows what the entity is planning on doing with all the fake accounts. Hopefully Twitch will investigate and remove these accounts from the system.

How to check if your channel was effected is by using the search function on the Twitch website.

Put in your stream name in the search bar and then click more on the channel section. Here is a screenshot to help you see where to click on to show more.

Again, be careful when clicking on things inside chat rooms, this entity maybe will try to post links with similar channel name to get viewers to click on them. It maybe a smart move to banned all accounts you find during search to prevent something like that from happening inside your chats.

Update - 8/19/2018

Checked to see if any of the new accounts have been removed for 'gamingwithdaopa' search and I still see a total of 30 or so fake accounts.  We are speculating the entity that is doing this account generation is trying to obtain 'free subs' from Twitch's new gifting option. I believe if they get a free sub, it may whitelist them inside that channel which will then allow them to post fishing links or other problematic links inside chat rooms.

It maybe time to prevent all URLs from being displayed in your chat unless its been reviewed by a moderator or channel owner. When reviewing links, pay attention to misspellings for domain names, and get a handle on URL shortener that will cloak links.
Monday, August 13, 2018

600,000+ Tune in for the start of Battle for Azeroth

At 6 PM Est time, the start of "World of Warcraft's - Battle for Azeroth" newest expansion launched and here are some screenshots of the numbers and top streamers on twitch!


Let start with overall viewers, it topped around 610,000 here is a screenshot from the Twitch directory.

world of warcraft bfa launch twitch
Click to enlarge picture.
With any large AAA Title, tons of streamers who usually do not play or stream world of warcraft all jumped in for the expansion launch. Here is a look at the top most streamers:

bfa top streamers list from twitch
Click to enlarge screenshot

Top  streamers for launch include the following:
  • sodapoppin - 84,750 viewers
  • Asmongold - 60,350 viewers
  • LIRIK - 31,170 viewers
  • ZeratoR - 29,728 viewers
  • TimTheTatman - 26,652 viewers
  • Reckful - 23,506 viewers
  • shroud - 21,415 viewers
  • AtheneLIVE - 16,513 viewers
  • Towelliee - 14,535 viewers
  • ungespielt - 7,612 vierwers

It is always amazing to see the viewership numbers for game launches like this Twitch. You can also view how much of a viewership hit some of these non wow streamers take by switching over to it for the launch window. As of 7:30 PM, overall viewership numbers have gone down to around 495,991 Viewers. I guess the core viewers are now busy playing the game and stopped watching streams.
Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Powerful Embedding Promotion

How embedding can be used to promote big events for your Twitch channel.

This past weekend Twitch had a major Overwatch League event and I noticed some of the various ways they used embedding advertising to promote the channel. For those of you who are not familiar with what embedding means its basically taking the channel video stream player and showing it externally outside of Twitch. A good example of embedding can be seen here on this blog, on the sidebar I embed my Twitch channel in the advertising section. You can also include chat as its own embed if you wanted to show that off.

So lets start with reddit, on numerous subreddits during the event they had a advertisement going which showed the stream as a embed. Here is a screenshot:

overwatchleague stream on reddit
This would show up as a reddit promoted post and as users went to the subreddits that had this advert going, they would be able to watch the stream inside of reddit.

Next up and most likely one of the best embedding options Twitch has in their portfolio is gamepedia. Here is a screenshot of the OverwatchLeague channel being embedding across the majority of the gamepedia wiki network.

overwatchleague stream on gamepedia
Even thou the event is over with that embed is still occurring which is extremely helpful when looking at how much channel views generation its generally doing. Lets take a quick look at some basic stats for this channel.

OverwatchLeague Stats, Followers, Views
The event took place on the 27th and 28th of July, on the screenshot I've added 2 black dots. Now look at what happened on Sunday, over 2 million views on a offline stream. And continued on to Monday another 1.2 million views mostly generated by Twitch's embedding of the channel on gamepedia. How interesting to see a big bulk of the views coming from embedding promotions outside of Twitch.


One more place that I've seen in the past Twitch used to promote a special event was on imdb. IMDB is owned by Amazon, its a movie-actor type of a database lookup website. I forgot to check to see if they had any promotional embed for the Overwatchleague channel.  But here is how they used it during a Call of Duty Black Ops announcement event.

Call of Duty Black Ops IMDB Embed

This was on the frontpage, top fold of the layout showing the channel as a embed.

Most likely they did additional promotion on facebook, twitter and other places but I didn't dig that deep. On facebook they do not allow 3rd party embedding, but on Twitter you can embed your stream.

Overall this shows how powerful embedding advertisement can be to promote your channel on Twitch. Check out my "How to get twitch viewers", guide for ways you can start taking advantage of embedding and other various tips that I have learned over the years of streaming.

Any questions or comments fill free to post below in the comment section.

Update 8/15/2018 - Noticed another embedded stream on r/twitch promoting Call of Duty, unlucky for them having a MATURE Filter enabled prevented the stream from autoplaying.

Here is a screenshot:



Additional examples of embedding, date of screenshots taken on 4/27/2021.



Alienware Arena embedding

Gaming.Lenovo.com embedding

MSN Esports Hub embedding / aggrogator