Twitch wants you to watch developers build their games

by Adi Robertson

Oct 29, 2014, 9:43 PM UTC

Adi Robertson is a senior tech and policy editor focused on online platforms and free expression. Adi has covered virtual and augmented reality, the history of computing, and more for The Verge since 2011.

You can play games on Twitch. You can watch people play games on Twitch. You can watch fish play games on Twitch. You can watch people write news reports on Twitch. And now, there's a section where you can watch people make games on Twitch. A new "Game Development" category features people who are building or modding games, whether that's doing coding or drawing concept art. The options for picking what to stream on Twitch are already pretty open, but a dedicated way to find developers raises the visibility of anyone who wants to do it. Polygon reports that this went live on October 16th, after the idea was suggested at PAX Prime at the end of August.

Right now, the overall category has 17 channels with a total of about 700 viewers, putting it somewhere above Ultra Street Fighter 4 and below Mario Kart 8 in popularity (the top games have closer to 100,000). Among other things, you can watch one person mod Minecraft and another design characters for the role-playing game Elysian Shadows while viewers give him feedback:

Twitch game dev chat

It’s not as if there’s any shortage of YouTube videos about designing games, and many developers offer alpha access to their game, or even live chats about its progress, to Kickstarter backers. But streaming adds a new layer of interactivity, at least to people who are comfortable enough in their creative process to open it up to the whims of a chat window. Polygon’s tipster has even come up with a long list of reasons you might want to start your own stream, if you’re considering building a game yourself.

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