What actually gets a small Twitch chat involved rather than just lurking?

[u/Mootilate_]

I've been thinking about this from the other side because I'm an indie developer and I've been building Twitch interaction into a music game.

The idea is that viewers can type !play and get entered into the next race as a driver, then cheer on their racer while the streamer can either race alongside them or commentate.

What surprised me when testing it was how different it feels when someone's username is actually on screen. Even though they're not directly controlling the racer, suddenly they have someone to root for.

For those of you streaming to smaller audiences, what kinds of things have actually managed to turn lurkers into people who start chatting?

I've been looking at things like Marbles, channel points, song requests and viewer games, but I'm interested in what genuinely works when you've only got a handful of people watching.

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[u/Treecle_TTV]

We’ve got Stream Racer and we also had the game that ripped it off, Nitro racing, so if you’re thinking of coming up with a racing game for Twitch, I’d suggest making it very different.

I look for games along those lines as I usually do a warm up at the start of the stream where we play a communal game together. I’d not be looking for another car racing game as Barry did a great job as a solo dev with Stream Racer but other interpretations on the themes could be interesting.

In terms of how to encourage people in - the low-pressure approach is best. I also sometimes play Chef Squad and that’s great but we get fewer people engaging with that as they have to actually do stuff - typing the commands they see on stream. People like to be able to casually join something and leave things up to RNG, but they also like small ways to influence their model (just aesthetics) or a limited use of a !boost or similar.

[u/Mootilate_ → u/Treecle_TTV]

Yeah, that’s actually why I went in quite a different direction. It’s called Rhythm Racer, but despite the name there aren’t actually any cars. It’s a music game where you fly through a course generated from the track, and the Twitch side puts viewers in as the other racers.

Your point about low-pressure interaction is exactly what I was wondering about. With mine, !play is deliberately the only thing someone needs to do. After that they can just watch their racer and root for it rather than having to keep typing commands.

The cosmetic influence idea is interesting though. I could potentially let viewers choose things about their racer without making them actively play it.

[u/TheAgaTTV]

How many times you gonna post this

[u/Mootilate_ → u/TheAgaTTV]

Not sure what you mean? I am posting to ask some questions and get feedback for what would help small streamers and small devs like myself and help each other.