For three months, the Twitch developer community has been hard at work creating, building, and launching Extensions for the Twitch Extension Challenge powered by AWS.
And now the winners have been announced!
Watch the announcement show with special guests now! (There’s a unicorn onesie somewhere. 🦄)
This is panel Extension allows viewers to easily alert a streamer when a package is on the way to them. The viewer can post the tracking number in the same area, so the streamer doesn’t have to worry about where the tracking numbers come from and all the info is in one nice easy spot.
This Extension uses a service for Magic cards object detection and identification, such that viewers can click on the physical outlines of cards on-stream to see what the cards do. They also built a Magic decklist upload option, so that creators can display the hidden contents of a deck designed for a tournament.
Heat is an Extension for interactive experiences through clicks directly on the video feed. It captures click data on the video feed and routes it to the broadcaster. Now, it provides a number of front-end demos and instructions for creating custom experiences with a simple protocol based on socket.io.
Chat Heroes, created by Nick Phillips, Matthew Snyder, Mike Freudenberg
Chat Heroes brings Chat to life with animated characters as well as helps increase streamer support using bits. It allows both the streamers and viewers to show love, say hello, get salty, etc. Chat Heroes provides multiple characters and interactions to choose from.
Playground is the ultimate audience engagement Extension. Create custom engagements, and let viewers contribute and participate in your stream. Share the love and give your viewers the recognition they deserve when they contribute to your channel!
With Chat Translator, viewers can talk to streamers and have conversations among each other, each in their own native tongue as if all other chatters speak the same language. It automatically detects and translates messages from 21 different languages to the currently-supported five languages.
Imagine you can understand almost any language. This Extension is basically subtitles for viewers on a Twitch channel. Viewers can read subtitles in 20 different languages. With the help of this Extension, you can remove so many language barriers!
First Place
StreamBreak, created by David Fasching, Manuel Fleck & Oliver Wendelin
Multiplayer games for your audience! Keep your viewers during bio breaks and let them play mini games together! With StreamBreak, instead of a pause screen or a countdown, streamers can simply start a StreamBreak game and let their viewers play.
There were a total of 93 participants in the challenge, so there’s much more to see. Check out all the submissions here.
Congrats to all the winners and thank you to everyone that submitted! You’re not only helping to build the future of live entertainment, but also an awesome community.
Special shoutout to Devpost, our partner in running this challenge!
Ready to build interactive experiences on Twitch? Start now!
Next week is the Game Developers Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco! That special time of year when we get to show some extra love to our game developer community by highlighting what Twitch does best, celebrating video games and those that create them.
As we buckle in for this exciting week, here’s how you can connect with our team.
Monday, March 18
Amazon Developer Day sessions
1:20pm — Making Decisions with Big Data: Game development is all about making choices. But without the right data, how do you know what’s worth the development effort and cost? Learn how analytics solutions from Amazon can help you build (and refine) content that players truly enjoy.
4:00pm —Grow your Game with Twitch: Using Twitch to reach customers is a given, but now you can break through in all new ways. In this session, learn how to empower your streamers to win you customers through tournament creation tools, in-Twitch game invites, and much more.
Tuesday, March 19
Amazon Developer Day sessions
10:00am —Twitch for Games Playbook: This session dives in to explore best practices and easy ways to integrate Twitch into your game regardless of where you are at in your development lifecycle.
11:20am — Creating Player Engagement Through Content, Competition, and Conversation: By using smarter AI, intelligent conversations, and dynamic content, you can help create engagement. Learn new ways to leverage this technology to drive in-game real world prizing, easy to set up tournaments, influence marketing, and even Alexa — all available today from Amazon Game Tech.
Andddd .. we’ve got a sweet Booth to hang all day with you on the show floor! Stop by, say hello 👋🏼 , grab some sweet Twitch merch 💜, and come chat about growing your game with Twitch!
Wednesday, March 20
All Day — Stop by Booth #S741 on the GDC show floor
All Day — Stop by Booth #S741 on the GDC show floor
6:30–9:00pm — Twitch and Amazon Game Tech Happy hour: Join us in our booth (#S741) as well as Amazon’s booth for a happy hour where you can enjoy food, drinks, and networking.
Friday, March 22
All Day — Stop by Booth #S741 on the GDC show floor
Not going to be in San Francisco for GDC? Don’t worry! We have an array of live streamed shows we will be streaming this week.
Thursday, March 21
TwitchDev Weekly: Join Jon and Matt, Twitch’s developer advocates, as they present from the Twitch booth at GDC.
Friday, March 22
Extension Challenge Announcement: We will be announcing the winner of the Extension Challenge powered by AWS; don’t miss a chance to see all the great ideas as well as who won!
We are looking forward to connecting with you at GDC!
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Note that we will not be hosting our monthly Developer Update stream at its normal time; it’s moving it to the following week, Tuesday, March 26 at 10am PT. We’ll be recapping all the action from GDC along with new product updates and announcements.
With tons of enemies attacking you at all times, Warhammer: Vermintide 2 is a hectic game. It’s hard for Twitch broadcasters to read their Chat or interact directly with their viewers. That’s why the game developer Fatshark decided to include an innovative Twitch integration that allows viewers to change the outcome of the game for the broadcaster. Every 30, 60, or 90 seconds Chat can vote on what happens in the game. The integration makes it easier for the broadcaster to play and comment on the screen.
We caught up with Fatshark and Warwitch, a Twitch creator that often streams Vermintide 2, to get the behind-the-scenes lowdown on why the integration is so cool and the technology behind it.
Warwitch shows the power of Twitch integration.
Q&A withGunnar Johannson, PR Manager at Fatshark
Q: Can you tell me more about Fatshark and Vermintide 2?
Fatshark has been around for 12 years with the first title Lead and Gold debuting in 2010. It’s a tightly knit team of over 90 experienced and skilled employees, who do regular updates for Vermintide 2 and are always on the look-out for new and exciting projects.
Vermintide 2 is the sequel to the critically acclaimed Vermintide. It’s a fierce first-person, co-op slaughter-fest, featuring visceral and ground-breaking melee action set in the apocalyptic End Times of the war-ravaged Warhammer Fantasy Battles world. The game has sold over two million units and has about 397 million minutes watched on Twitch. It was also voted the co-op game of the year by PC Gamer — and is on the cover this month for the second time. Kotaku called it the “The Best Four-Player Co-op Since Left 4 Dead.”
Today also happens to be the first anniversary of the game. You can play for free on Steam until tomorrow!
Q: Why are you excited about this Twitch integration?
A: The integration is a really great way to get the viewers engaged in the stream as well as in the game. It lets a massive amount of people play together, even though only four are playing the actual game. The audience becomes the game directors, and for the players, it’s a bit like improv theatre. The viewers get their voice out there via the voting, and suddenly the players get a Chaos Warrior to fend off.
Q: Why did you, as a company, decide to invest in this integration instead of something else?
A: We have been talking with Twitch about possibilities since they first told us about the integration, and this was a long time before the game was even announced. We had it on our list of things we wanted to include at release or shortly after. About a month before release we had a meeting where we decided between what would be in the game on day one, and what would come within a few weeks after release. With the huge — H-U-G-E — success of the beta with streamers, it was an easy decision to include the integration at launch, because it would give the streamers more options to interact with their viewers, but also show that we appreciate what they do.
It’s also fair to say that our Twitch integration was a pivotal part of the success we had on Twitch when we released the game, and Twitch is an integral part of reaching out to gamers.
Q: What are you planning to do next?
A: The integration is played daily, and we get positive feedback from so many streamers when we visit any event, etc. We are looking into what we can add, and what would be appreciated by both streamers and viewers.
Q&A with Victor Magnuson, Game Designer and Producer at Fatshark
Q: Can you briefly describe your development process? Including how you came up with the idea, how long it took, what you did to test or troubleshoot, etc.
A: During the development of Warhammer: The End Times — Vermintide we realised that the system we use to populate the world (the Ai Director) would be pretty well suited for a integration of this type. The director already took into account how the players were doing and acted accordingly. For instance, if the players took a beating, it would lay off them for a while and if a player left the group, it would send an Assassin to kill that player. We realised that we could hand some of this power over to the streaming audience and let them be a part of the streaming experience in a very direct way. So when we started development of the sequel, a strong Twitch integration felt like an obvious choice. It was also during this time that streaming as a part of the general gaming community really took off.
Q: Describe the technology behind this integration?
A: It is quite simple actually. We ask the streamer to connect with their Twitch account name in the the game, we then send a request to “https://api.twitch.tv/kraken/users?login=“ .. <twitch_user_name> to collect their data. If we get a positive response we check their user_id with a https request to “https://api.twitch.tv/kraken/streams/“ .. <user_id> to see if they have an active stream going. We then use the channel name for the stream to connect to “irc.chat.twitch.tv” and join their channel. This allows us to constantly parse their Chat and use that to look for answers to the queries that we present on screen. We also make sure that the same user cannot vote multiple times.
Q: What learnings or best practices would you share about developing integrations with Twitch?
A: Keep it as simple as possible but make sure that whatever the audience is doing in the game is very noticeable; you want the viewers to feel like they are impacting what is going on in the game and easily recognise that what is happening is due to their involvement. Another thing is that the audience will most likely either try to always help the streamer or always make the life difficult for the streamer, so when you have multiple options for the viewers to choose from, try to make them balanced, otherwise the results tend to become very similar. For example, if the options are opposites (a good and a bad choice) dependent on the relationship between the streamer and their Chat, the result will always be the bad or the good choice.
Warwitch is saved by his viewers thanks to Twitch integration.
Q&A with Warwitch, Twitch Creator
Q: Can you tell us about yourself and your Twitch Channel?
A: My name is Warwitch from WarwitchTV and I’ve been a Twitch Partner for nearly five amazing years. I play a variety of exciting games, Vermintide 2 being one of my favorites, and also my first experience with Twitch integration.
Q: Please describe (briefly) your experience with Twitch integration.
A: I had actually never heard about integration until the release of Vermintide 2. I was naturally excited and interested, so I tried the feature out as soon as I was able. I immediately loved the fact that my viewers were able to shape events in the game directly. It’s fun to watch as they laugh and chuckle when their votes have a lasting impact on what happens.
Q: What benefits does the integration give you as a streamer? How does it enhance the viewer experience?
A: When my viewers are integrated into the game, I find it improves every element of my stream. I always try to make my viewers feel that they are a real part of the show (not just spectators), and integration really helps to make that happen. One of the coolest things I’ve seen about Twitch integration is how it empowers lurkers who may not otherwise have much to say to get involved in the stream. That’s very important to me. I try to interact with as many of my viewers as I can, and with Twitch integration that becomes even easier.
Q: How did you find out about the integration?
A: Vermintide 2 was the first time I had actually ever heard of integration in streams. When the devs announced that viewers would be able to have a hand in the events of a game I was playing I was thrilled. It’s been one of my favorite features to use during my live streams since.
Q: Any ideas for how it could be improved?
A: More options to vote on is always a good idea. More ways the viewer can impact and change the flow of the game. People also love to see their own names “up in lights,” so to speak. I’ve seen some integrated games that even copy the names of viewers who voted and place them in game as a boss or enemy to face. That’s a very fun experience for a viewer!
Q: Would you encourage other streamers to use Twitch integrations or Extensions? If so, why?
A: Absolutely! It’s a super fun way to get to know your community better and let them either help (or destroy) you. Either way, it’s a win. Twitch integration is an incredible way to bond with your community and just a whole lot of fun!
As always, let us know what you think by connecting with us @TwitchDev on Twitter, in thedeveloper forums, or on our live broadcasts (follow us for notifications when we’re live).
Ready to build interactive experiences on Twitch? Start now!
It’s that time of year again! We’re excited to share the nominees for the third annual Viveport Developer Awards. In total, there are 8 nominees across 4 categories for PC titles and 3 winners for Mobile titles. This year, we wanted to recognize the developers who are delivering exceptional experiences to our Viveport Subscribers and Viveport Arcade Operators. These 11 titles highlight some of the best titles in VR today. If you haven’t tried these nominees and winners, we highly recommend giving them a play and exploring them yourself.
If you need a refresher on the prizing, check out our announcement blog of the awards. Final winners will be announced at our private developer mixer on Monday, March 18, the first day of GDC 2019. Good luck to the nominees and congratulations!
Here are the nominees and winners in no particular order:
Want to catch up on the latest news and updates, get answers from Twitch Developer experts, just say hi, or make some new friends? Join any or all of our live streams!
New show announcement!
TwitchDev Weekly: Every Thursday at 11am PT
Hang out with the Developer Advocacy team, Matt Auerbach and Jon Bulava, every Thursday at 11am PT to ask your Twitch developer questions! We also use this time for special guests and demonstrating new technical content aimed at helping you get started developing on Twitch faster and easier.
Monthly Developer Update: Every 3rd Tuesday at 10am PT
Every third Tuesday of the month, we do an hour-long show catching you up on product announcements and updates, upcoming events, community shoutouts, and anything else going on in the Twitch Developer world.
$ npm start twitchdev-aws: Every Wednesday at 10am PT
Twitch Developer Advocacy is partnering with Amazon Web Services (AWS) Technical Evangelism to build a Question & Answer Twitch Extension using AWS services during a multi-episode broadcasting series. The series will contain eight broadcasts and walk you through the process of planning to launching a production Extension. The first episode with air on February 27 at 10am PT from the Twitch Studio in San Francisco!
We even have special guest streams like this one, where Jeff Fritz, Program Manager for Microsoft and prolific live coder on Twitch, discussed live streaming software development best practices.
Check it out now!
While we try to maintain the same schedule, some weeks and months are different, so visit our Events page to see what’s coming up and follow our channel for notifications for when we go live!
Speedrunning is nothing new to the Twitch community; in fact, it’s a formula that complements the Twitch platform perfectly. If you’re not familiar with speedrunning, it’s where skilled gamers smash through levels in a battle against the clock while viewers get to watch the best-of-the-best gamers flex their chops. It’s a win-win for all involved.
Recently, with the help of an Extension built by Warp World, speedrunning has evolved. Some of the most successful Extensions take the viewing experience from somewhat passive to a new level of dynamic by enabling viewers to join in on the action — and that’s exactly what the Crowd Control Extension does for speedrunning.
When streamers have the Crowd Control Extension enabled, viewers can literally help (or hinder!) the game by dropping in a range of in-game items. For example, while playing The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, viewers can gift armor, a heart, or Blue Potion refill to assist Link in a time of need.
The Crowd Control Extension allows you to drop in-game items while your favorite streamers are playing.
“The way we see it, audience interactivity is the future of speedrunning and game streaming, so we’re making sure that Crowd Control enables streamers to interact with and connect with their audiences in never-been-done ways,” says Matt (Jaku) Jakubowski, CEO of Warp World.
This might feel risky — to trust that the viewers’ actions will enhance the game versus derail it, so to keep the flow of incoming items manageable and fun for the streamer, viewers exchange Twitch Bits for Crowd Control Coins in order to unlock the different in-game effects. Items which carry a stronger effect on the game require more Coins, which effectively limits over usage.
The Extension adds a “new dimension” to the interaction between the streamers and their audience as well as to the games themselves. When the streamer is using Crowd Control they are no longer just playing the game, but rather playing alongside their community.
The Crowd Control Extension is integrated with a handful of retro speedrunning favorites, including Super Mario World and Zelda: A Link to the Past, but the Warp World team is working hard to get more games and platforms supported, both retro and modern titles.
In fact, today Jaku and team are announcing support for Pokemon Red & Blue in conjunction with a 3-day charity event for Direct Relief, a non-profit organization with a mission to improve the health and lives of people affected by poverty or emergencies. The Pokethon stream will be the first to showcase the Pokemon integration and will donate their 20% developer share of Bits received to Direct Relief. The GA release for Crowd Control Pokemon support will come immediately after their run.
Watch and support the Pokemon Red & Blue Direct Relief Charity event on https://pokethon.net/
Origin of Warp World
In October 2015, Jaku, CEO of Warp World, was streaming Super Mario Maker, a Mario spin-off which allows players to create and play their own custom Super Mario courses, share them online as well as download and play courses designed by other players, and realized there was not an easy and/or practical way to accept viewer levels via Chat. All “solutions” required users to go to another website, which may or may not have verification that the level they submitted was actually valid.
In turn, Jaku decided to create his own solution, Warp World, a service for streamers to accept Super Mario Maker-level requests from viewers in their Chat. It was geared toward solving multiple problems, but the primary goal was to provide a solution that was easy for both the streamer and viewer alike. It was quickly adopted and embraced by the Super Mario Maker community. It became an essential tool for the Super Mario Maker streamer community and that community is where Jaku recruited many early Warp World staff members like GrandPooBear, xwater and Chudbreeder.
As Jaku’s streaming community grew so did Warp World, but Jaku quickly realized that Warp World needed to expand outside of Super Mario Maker. So the development company started building other tools and services for streamers. At its core, Warp World is a company of streamers and developers. They use their knowledge and insights to bring unique tools and experiences to the Twitch community that you won’t find anywhere else.
Crowd Control IRL
As Crowd Control neared release, Jaku and team decided they wanted to showcase their closed Beta at an event, since at its core, the Extension was made for the crowd. They partnered with recognized Twitch streamers from the Randomizer, Retro and Speedrunning communities to showcase Crowd Control to their communities and viewers. It had an awesome reception, and it kept people hyped for the Open Beta.
Next, they hosted a “Live! from TwitchCon: Crowd Control Showcase” campaign with streamers at Warp World’s TwitchCon booth. Streamers were invited to demo a game on stream with the Extension active and people live at TwitchCon could interact with the game from the booth as well as the viewers who were watching back home.
That same weekend Crowd Control was featured at Mario Master’s Colosseum, a three-day marathon that raised over $100K for Direct Relief.
The Crowd Control Race Feature is still in the works, but they’ve already teamed up with communities like speed gaming and Super Mario World to showcase the feature on crowdfunding events.
“We’ve seen a huge amount of positive responses from viewers and streamers alike. The amount of game ideas, effect ideas, and overall feedback we have been given by users have been tremendous,” Jaku says.
To add icing on the cake, streamers have seen a significant increase in Twitch Bits used on their channel when the Extension is active. Warp World reported that in October 2017, the month they launched, over a million Bits passed through the Crowd Control Extension. This is core to the ongoing growth and momentum the Warp World is riding.
What’s Next?
The Warp World team is heads down focused on adding more games and new features to the Extension, having just shipped mobile compatibility which was a highly requested feature from launch. They are also actively in talks with certain members of game communities to help get more games supported as soon as possible. They have some big plans for some future Extensions on Twitch, because as Jaku says,
“We see them [Extensions] being a crucial part to the growth of the platform and our company in 2019. Our primary goal for this year is to work with new and interested developers to bring additional unique, Twitch game experiences and also see those games with a ‘Supports Crowd Control’ as a listed feature.”
The Twitch Developer team is coming to meet our community of developers and builders across the world this year!
We will kick off the tour in Tel Aviv this April and join the rest of the Twitch community in Berlin during TwitchCon Europe. Then we head to Paris and London — with more cities around the globe being announced soon.
Come learn about why working with Twitch and Twitch technologies like Extensions, Drops, and Twitch Prime make sense for your game, and see how building streamer tools help engage the streamer and viewer communities on Twitch. These technologies are a fundamental part of engaging the Twitch community and creating unique interactive experiences.
You can also meet with the TwitchDev team, share your ideas, give feedback on the product roadmap, and connect with your local Twitch Developer community.
In each city, you will also have the opportunity to hear from special guests and local partners who will dive into what Twitch brings to the table for the entire community.
Spots are limited — secure yours now.
Upcoming Events
Click to learn more and reserve your ticket today.
Yes, I understand the title is a little dry and not very interesting; however, let’s focus on the task at hand.
Let’s remove as many dependencies on non-Twitch services as we can!
Top Clip — Remastered
Me, yes, ME!
Some know who I am, but for those who don’t, let me run a quick introduction. I’m LuckyNoS7evin (Lucky Number Slevin) or Andy in real life. I’m a developer and have been since I was eight, professionally it’s been 14 years. I have worked primarily in the web development field and for the past two years have been streaming on Twitch while doing extra development.
So what do I know about Twitch Extensions? Well, that’s a long story which starts in September/October 2017 when Extensions were first released and runs through several TwitchDev associated streams, speaking at TwitchCon Developer Day 2018, judging the TwitchCon 2018 Extension Hackathon, and now guest writing for the TwitchDev blog. I have two live Extensions, there are two to three in the pipeline, and I have consulted on several other Twitch Extension projects.
Enough about me, let’s get on with why you’re here: learning how to remove as many of the dependencies on other services as you can when building a Twitch Extension.
The Request
In July 2018, I was asked if I wanted to take over the administration and development of the Top Clip Twitch Extension. At the time, I was busy and didn’t really need more projects, but ended up taking it on anyway. The original developer couldn’t spend the time he wanted on the Extension, as a child was incoming and a major bug in the EBS (what Twitch calls server side code or Extension Backend Service) was creating a memory leak. The idea was simple; investigate the issue in the EBS, get the Extension up and running, create new artwork, and then release to the world.
The Bug — A Memory Leak
The memory leak ended up being an issue in the way the video URL was being retrieved from Twitch. A Chromium instance was run using Puppeteer, the clip embed URL was loaded into memory and the video “src” attribute was then scraped from the final in-memory render of the page. This on a Twitch scale is impossible to do at a cost suitable for a free Extension, making it a non-viable option to keep running the Extension in this way. I managed to find a fix for this with an easier way to get the source video.
Initial Re-release
Once a solution was found to the memory leak, it was time to get everything up and running, which went smoothly and worked as expected. I could have at this point stopped…however, that’s not me.
Version 2.0
After the initial re-release, the Extension was being rendered around 100,000 times a day, and the EC2.micro instance was never spiking above the 10 percent mark. I soon realized that this would never change — and me being the guy who tries to find a bargain in everything — started to investigate a way of further reducing the cost. To nothing!
Around the same time as the re-release of Top Clip, the Configuration Service was released by Twitch. This gave me the ability to save settings that the broadcaster selects on a service Twitch provides and something Top Clip was handling itself.
A combination of storing the settings using the Twitch Configuration Service and calling the Twitch API from the viewer’s browser meant I could remove the dependency on my EC2.micro instance completely. I hear people shouting at their screen now, asking themselves how to call Twitch API locally from the users browser? The answer is simple: create a Twitch Application from the development dashboard and use that ClientId in your API calls from the client side. As only two API calls are made on load with no further calls after that point we are good to go.
So there we have it: an Extension re-written to have no dependency on external services not provided by Twitch!
What Now?
As of the 4th Jan 2019, Top Clip is completely independent of any external services that are not supplied by Twitch and the cost to the developer (me) is now — nothing.
A new feature was added during the redevelopment called “Broadcaster Choice” where, alongside the Top Clip, a broadcaster can now choose one of their own clips to be displayed. I have further changes in the pipeline with improvements, fixes, and adding more to the Extension. At every point, I’m going to be thinking, “Do I really need an EBS for this or can I do without?”
Final Word
Although I have told you the story of the evolution of the Top Clip Extension, I hope that you can take away from this that there are several factors that are important when developing a Twitch Extension.
The first and most important is Scale: make sure your Extension can handle thousands of renders a day/minute/second in random bursts.
Cost: don’t be caught out by how much running an Extension may cost. There are programs run by Twitch which allow you to apply for Amazon Web Services (AWS) credits. Think outside of your normal thought patterns. Where you think you need to add services, think hard about if that is completely necessary.
Finally, have fun creating what you want and what you think streamers and viewer want; you may fail in your first attempts, but something will click.
Celebrating a new year is one of the few events in which almost every culture in the world takes part in some way shape or form. And while it’s always exciting to be at an event IRL, there is something particularly new and exciting about celebrating online in a shared real-time experience with a global community.
Many streamers ring in the new year with their own communities, and this year — in partnership with Red Bull — Ninja (Twitch’s most followed streamer) brought in the new year with his global community at one of the world’s most iconic NYE parties, Times Square in New York City. It was a fitting end to a wild year for Ninja, his loyal viewers, Twitch, and the gaming industry as a whole.
Ninja and friends ring in the new year in Times Square.
To enhance the viewing experience in true Twitch form, the Ninja New Year’s Eve broadcast featured an interactive Trivia Extension that presented a series of questions to viewers. Guessing correctly resulted in a bounty for viewers: free Bits. Throughout the New Year’s Eve event, Twitchmade available an unprecedented pool of 10 million Bits across Ninja’s and his co-hosts’ channels.
The Extension featured Ninja and Fortnite-related trivia questions. (Disclaimer: This Extension is not endorsed by Epic and does not use any game or player data.)
This event and the Extension execution was a stellar example of how to execute a highly engaging and entertaining, shared real-time experience on Twitch.
While not every event and Extension will have access to the elements that went into the Ninja NYE broadcast, here are a few key learnings and best practices any live event that includes an Extension on Twitch should consider:
Outline Extension Value to Both Viewers AND Streamers: Prior to development, put yourself in the shoes of all who will engage with the Extension and make sure it’s not overtly geared to providing value to only the streamer or the viewer, but properly enhances the experience for all involved. Twitch viewers are eager to not just watch but also engage and interact via desktop or mobile, and conversely, streamers are eager for new ways to level up their live stream experience.
Make Sure You Scope and Scenario Plan, and Then Do It Again: Once aligned on the primary goals of the Extension, rigorously prioritize. Scenario plan for both positive and negative outcomes as much as time will allow, beginning with the end of the stream and working backward to the event kick-off. Outline a run-of-show document not just for the stream itself, but also for the content of the Extension and different stages of audience interaction. Anticipate large spikes and dips in interaction and engagement as viewers flow in and out of the stream.
Have a Real-time Communication Strategy: There are often many fluid elements and stakeholders, so the project or team lead should be well defined and ensure that other relevant team members are informed of all progress and notified about how each element could affect them. Ensure there is an on-call team to troubleshoot Extension issues, monitor Twitter chatter, and anticipate and resolve any speed bumps that that may arise during the event itself.
Watch a full walkthrough of the Ninja NYE Extension in action.
Behind every live event Extension, there’s a hidden hero — the developer, of course. For the Ninja NYE Trivia Extension, that hero was Muxy, a company with a solid Extension portfolio that develops a range of high-performing streamer tools, including a comprehensive back-end solution for extension development called the MEDKit. We talked with Muxy CEO, Peter Bonnani, about how they built the Extension and some of the lessons they learned.
Q&A withPeter Bonnani, CEO of Muxy
Can you tell us why you’re excited about this Extension?
The idea that we could manage determinations about how to award a pool of Bits to viewers via the Extension appealed to us. It’s something many of our clients have asked for in the past but has not been something we’ve been able to do up until this point. The other exciting thing was the fact that the stream itself was ambitious and live from Time Square with Ninja.
Can you briefly describe your development process? Including how you came up with the idea, how long it took, what you did to test or troubleshoot, etc.
The development process for this Extension was very rushed. We were contacted just a couple days before Christmas and already had some staff out of office visiting their families for the holidays. Myself and the remaining team in Austin had to work quickly with Twitch to determine the scope of what could be delivered on this timeframe. Luckily, we already had our MEDKit platform to do most of the heavy lifting on the backend.
In this particular case, we were able to leverage many things that were built into the MEDKit APIs to deliver the trivia experience and had to do a little magic on the backend; viewers had the opportunity to obtain Bits through the Extension and Twitch fulfilled the winning viewers. Since we didn’t know the size of the potential audience, we worked with Twitch engineers to load test the backend system at 1.2 million trivia answers in the 90-second timeframe. The first few iterations revealed some minor bottlenecks that we were able to fix before show time.
Describe the technology behind this Extension (i.e., MEDKit).
All of the more than 20 Extensions we’ve built since Extensions launched in 2017 have run on our Muxy Cloud backend and are built using our MEDKit Extension framework. It allows us and any developer who uses it to not have to rely on building their own Extension Backend Service (EBS), which dramatically shortens development time. We also don’t typically have to worry about load issues when using our framework as we’ve designed and hardened it over the last two years and offer it as a service to other developers.
We were able to make use of existing endpoints for polling that we recently augmented with trivia support. Everything went very well with the Extension from a technical standpoint, and we didn’t seem to need all the hardening we did to the Muxy Cloud backend; however, that hardening is now available to any developer wishing to build an Extension using our backend. If you’re more of a frontend person and looking to build an Extension, please check out our services and let us take care of the backend while you focus on your product.
What learnings or best practices would you share about developing Extensions for large, live events?
Twitch traffic is bursty. We’ve designed MEDKit to be able to handle this type of load at affordable pricing. If you’re trying to build your own backend, do extensive load testing with very high bursts of traffic versus moderate traffic over a sustained period of time. Also, whenever you’re doing an Extension that is coupled to the event’s run of show, don’t be tempted to make planned events timed, because the run of show always seems to slip. To combat this for high-profile installs, we have all events that are pushed out to the Extension controlled from a single admin panel, so that they can make adjustments on the fly.
We caught up with Steve Filby, Marketing Manager at Motion Twin, an indie game studio based in Bordeaux, France, to talk about their wildly popular game Dead Cells and its integration with Twitch.
Dead Cells had one of the most innovative Twitch game integrations in 2018. Leveraging Chat, Dead Cells uses chat commands that let game viewers play an active role in the outcome of the game for the streamer.
Check out a quick Dead Cells demo from TwitchCon Developer Day.
TwitchDev: Tell us a little about your company, goals, and experience with Twitch. Filby: Our goals with Twitch have always been about reaching new players and engaging with them. We’re acutely aware of the cult status that Twitch has developed among gamers and the way that’s changed the landscape in terms of how to get noticed. These days, there are literally hundreds of games coming out each week (even if you’re only competing against the five good ones), as well as many, many esports and F2P games that command a huge share of the audience at all times, so you really have to be thinking about how to break in and get some eyeballs on your new title.
Our experience has been that if you pay attention to the most important discoverability platform on the internet and build a strategy around it, as well as make an exceptional — good is no longer enough — game, then you can break through the noise.
TwitchDev: Can you tell us a little about the Dead Cells integration and where the idea came from? Filby: Well, the idea really came from trying to work out how to get streamers to cover our game a second time, given that we launched into early access and a lot of people had already played the game. We needed to offer them something that was built for them and took their needs into account, so we talked to a bunch of them and asked what they needed as streamers.
Overwhelmingly, they told us that new, exciting ways to engage with their audience was really what was missing. They often referenced the few “good” integrations that they had seen (Choice Chamber, etc.) and encouraged us to do something like that. So we did.
TwitchDev: Who did you build this integration for? We built it for streamers, particularly our friends who have followed and pushed the game since early access. They worked with us giving us ideas, beta testing for us, and generally helping us to build something that they could use to engage their audience.
Obviously, to engage the audience, the thing needs to be fun for the viewers too, so we built the platforms as much for the viewers as for the streamer, perhaps a little more so in terms of the gameplay. Chat can really give the streamer hell if they want!
TwitchDev: What does the integration contribute to the Twitch community? The integration is really meant to create a new type of hybrid gameplay, where a kind of hive mind collective of people (Chat) are all playing with or against the streamer. This really makes the viewers feel like they’re part of the game — because they literally are. Chat will literally replace some of the algorithms of the game, replacing the Random Number Generator (RNG) with ChatNG and allowing for bargaining between the streamer and the game; you can’t beg your game to give you good RNG, but you sure can beg Chat.
We’ve noticed that the integration is seen as a kind of extra value by the streamers in that they use it complimentary with their standard runs of the game. It provides a new way of interaction with the fans and an entirely new way of playing the game, kind of like an NG+.
TwitchDev: Can you talk about any events you’ve done in conjunction with the integration? Our launch (PC 1.0 and console) was built entirely around our Twitch strategy and the integration was a core part of our “second” launch. Basically, we used the integration to build buzz among bigger streamers. About three weeks before launch, we were distributing the integration to hand-picked friends and key people. This piqued the interest of certain bigger guys, so when it was time for our PR team to reach out and hustle for reviews and coverage, we already had a decent amount of inbound requests for access. This allowed us to reach a huge audience during the launch week.
In fact, it was something that really, really surprised us in terms of impact. We pretty much doubled our all-time minutes watched count in a month…
With the Twitch integration, Motion Twin almost doubled their Dead Cells all-time minutes watched count in a month.
TwitchDev: What results and community response have you seen so far? As I mentioned above, we pretty much doubled our all-time minutes watched count in a month.
Since then, we’ve seen a baseline pickup in the amount of people continuing to stream the game after an initial playthrough and our base audience numbers have gone up. It’s just been across the board a success.
TwitchDev: What are your future plans or considerations? What else would you like to build? We’re actually in the process of building an influence program; the idea being to reward streamers and viewers alike for playing, watching, and generally liking our game. So we’re thinking about ways that we can include some kind of non-abusive incentive program in the integration.
Outside of that, we’ve got a bunch of ideas about how to improve the actual gameplay. We’d like to consider an actual Extension, but right now we’re holding out for an official game SDK. Basically anything that we can do to reduce latency will allow us to include a bunch more real-time stuff, things where the player and the viewer can work together in a much more direct way.
I’d really like to see a more custom version of the game available, too. For example, Chat could choose from all of the known levels in the game and put them in any order they wanted for the streamer to playthrough. Really giving the keys to the community when it comes to creating challenges for the streamer.
For more information on Dead Cells or Motion Twin, visit motion-twin.com.
With over 60 percent of Partners and Affiliates already using Extensions, they’re quickly becoming one of the best ways for creators to connect with fans and support their channels.
For developers, it’s good to know that themed Extensions around events and holidays are something that streamers love to use to engage their community and customize their channels.
Check out how these Extensions are helping them do it during this holiday season.
This Christmas Extension helps streamers engage their community and even give has a new way of monetization. Viewers can choose among different Christmas tree decorations and even leave a message on every decoration.
The Christmas tree will be displayed on the stream, but the viewers have always the option to hide it. If a tree gets too full with decorations, viewers will also be able to add new trees.
This Extensions allows streamers to automatically import an Amazon Wishlist and show the items in their channel. This let’s fans see what streamers want and maybe they’ll do their part to help their favorite streamers get these items.
‘Tis the season! The Tiltify Donation Extension makes it easier than ever to fundraise for charity. At a glance, viewers will know who a streamer is fundraising for, what the fundraising goal is, how much has been raised, and an on-page donate button to take audience engagement to the next level.
Hopefully these Extensions will inspire you to think about the possibilities for other big experiences that streamers come together for like New Year’s Eve, major sporting events, or other seasonal celebrations.
The growth of Twitch as a targeted developer destination is creating a cottage industry of developers who build custom and off-the-shelf solutions that allow Extensions developers to create powerful experiences.
Still, a common blocker we hear from Developers eager to build Extensions is knowing where to start. While we recommend working backward to solve a specific streamer problem, want, or need — it’s also just as crucial to be aware of the tools and building blocks at your disposal. In other words, there’s little reason at all to go it alone.
The Power of the Genvid SDK
Imagine building new ways for viewers to engage and interact with their favorite streamers and having access to things like multiple camera angles or secure interactions into those games. The Genvid SDK does just that and a whole lot more. Genvid is an interactive streaming engine, but the SDK they created allows game developers to easily pull data from games to power synchronized interactivity. This enables developers to create incredibly powerful Extensions that communicate directly with a wide range of mainstream and indie games.
“Our goal is to enable new, interactive experiences on Twitch for game developers. There are a lot of tools for streamers, but we pride ourselves on having the first developer-grade SDK for interactive streams,” says Jacob Navok of Genvid. “We have support for UE4 and Unity out of the box and a suite of tools to help you deploy on AWS, as well as samples that you can draw upon to create your first experiences in hours.”
Lately, Genvid has been busy powering Twitch Extensions, from fighting games like Omen of Sorrow to the first-person shooters like the Counter-Strike Twitch Premium Pass for their Counter-Strike: Global Offensive FACEIT Majors, as well as arcade games like Killer Queen and even a Japanese 3v3 competitive VR tile called Blitz Freak.
Take a closer look below at how developers have used Genvid to power their Extensions.
CS:GO by STATSHELIX
StatsHelix was founded with the goal of providing the best stats and analytics products to esports games and players. Since then, they have become known for using game data to enhance gaming experiences and delivering tools for broadcasters, pro-gamers, and viewers.
StatsHelix empowers viewers to be more than mere spectators. Their Extension, built on top of Genvid’s datastreaming building blocks, allow users to interact with the live stream in the way they please.Want to know the scores? No need to wait for the broadcaster to bring them up!
“Twitch has a great and diverse community, and not every viewer wants the same experience. These Extensions make the stream more enjoyable for everyone, by letting users decide what’s important to them,” says Moritz Uehling, COO, StatsHelix.
In the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive FACEIT Majors, StatsHelix exposed internal game data to power new experiences for the tournament viewers, and using Genvid’s datacapture and web APIs made those interactive and synchronized to the Twitch video frame. Some of the features that viewers gravitated toward demonstrated the pent up demand for viewers to be a part of the game rather than simply watching a game. Some of these features were a customized UI, which — among other things — allowed viewers to change the weapon’s crosshair view, the ability to call the scoreboard at any point in the game, and a live-updating minimap that showed a more detailed view of the main map, including player positions.
StatsHelix has shared some key learnings from building the CS:GO Extension that will help developers create their own Extensions. First, people love to customize things and will use almost every option you give them. It’s not necessary, of course, but it makes the experience feel so much more complete.
Onboarding matters. Viewers aren’t used to clicking on videos — make sure to teach them well.
Viewers still love the stream! Any Extension you build should enhance the stream, and not distract from it. A feature like the scoreboard is a perfect example; it helps the viewer just when they want.
And most importantly, StatsHelix says they learned that the Twitch community is amazing, and they are eager to provide the feedback that will help you build a better game for them. Don’t pass up this opportunity!
CHKN by KATAPULT
Katapult Studio is an interactive entertainment company committed to developing products for creators. Their game CHKN is an fantasy game where you choose your own adventure. Players can design fantastic animal creatures using “life blocks” that are powered by AI. It’s a toolset for players to create their own stories and characters.
Viewers can interact with a brand new Arena mode for CHKN that exists only through the stream on Twitch and is powered entirely by Genvid + Unity on AWS. Using the Twitch Extension, viewers can vote for the CHKN that will appear, clap, and cheer for their favorite CHKN, and buy items to enhance the CHKN via Bits which Genvid encourages.
“ The interactive Extension allowed us to think about how a larger community of players, streamers, and non-playing viewers could all interact with the world of CHKN. We are still early in our journey with interactive streaming but excited to be learning from our streamers and beta audience,” says Kyra Reppen, CEO of Katapult Studio.
A major part of Katapult’s journey with CHKN has been seeing just how their player community creates unique and extraordinary creature characters — that were as entertaining to watch as they were to build or interact with in-game. The interactive Extension allowed Katapult to think about how a larger community of players, streamers, and non-playing viewers could all interact with the world of CHKN.
“ Working with our Twitch users from the prototype phase, we’re able to focus on making the best experience possible through iteration on features, including balance of the level of viewer interactivity (including viewer control moments), in-game camera behavior during broadcasts, the pacing of the Arena rounds, and even in-Extension UI,” says Reppen. “We see this as the future of entertainment.”
KILLER QUEEN by BUMBLEBEAR
BumbleBear is an independent Brooklyn-based arcade game company focused on multiplayer games set in real-world environments. The flagship product is Killer Queen, a competitive 10-player arcade game. Two new arcade games are in the works, including Black Emperor, a motorcycle endless runner that is based on the teenage bike gangs of Japan called Bosozoku.
Killer Queen is a public game meant to be played in arcades so it has no customization; this is where the Genvid SDK Extension comes in — data normally not accessible became accessible, and games normally only watcheable in arcades could be seen anywhere. The Extension allows spectators to customize characters and add flair and functionality that does not exist in the game, as well as educate players about aspects of the game by allowing them to click on key elements to find out what they mean and how they are useful in the game. In future versions of the Extension, the BumbleBear team plans to integrate more stats that will add new dimensions to the game.
“The response so far has been very positive,” says Nik Mikros, CEO of BumbleBear. “We showed a prototype of the extension at GDC and many of our players came by and checked it out. I think they were all universally excited by what it will grow into.”
BLITZFREAK by ACTEVOLVE
ActEvolve are a startup developing VR content. Blitz Freak is their first title, and it was created to focus on both player and viewer entertainment.
“VR games tend to focus too much on immersive experiences for the players and leave out the people not playing,” says Kei Sato from ActEvolve. “For VR games to develop commercially, and become an esport genre, it has to be appealing to the people watching. As we were searching for ways to make the game more appealing to audiences, we engaged with Genvid Technologies, the developer of the Twitch Extension.”
The Genvid-created Twitch Extension allows the audience to not only see player status as an overlay, but also to actually participate in the match. Extensions were used to add cheer buttons and bomb buttons, which allow the viewers to cheer or bombard chosen players. This gives viewers the ability to affect the outcome of the game through active participation.
A Blitz Freak tournament was held and live streamed on Twitch with the Genvid Extensions in September 2018. Over the course of the two-and-a-half hour live stream, they had an average of 200 viewers and 313 viewers at the peak. There were over 5,000 likes and 1,000 bombs initiated via the Extension.
One learning from the tournament was the difficulty of getting the players to actually use the Extension features and getting them involved in the match. “Since the Extension features are a completely new thing for viewers, they are not used to the viewing experience they provide,” Sato says. “To have viewers constantly using the Extension features to interact with the game, we need to communicate the potential that it has, and show them how it can change the game viewing experience.”
We hope you are inspired by these shining Extension examples and leverage the growing community and powerful tools like Genvid’s SDK to power your next Extension — and you can always reach out to TwitchDev for help through our forums, on Twitter, or during our monthly live streams.
Simple front-end Extension working without a back-end
Technology shouldn’t stifle your creativity. We want you to spend time realizing your great ideas, not on the infrastructure to make them work. Until now, developers had to build out — and scale — all parts of their Extension backend, even for common scenarios like handling channel- and Extension-specific configuration. That’s why we built theConfiguration Service.
The Configuration Service enables you to store persistent per-channel and per-Extension specific data, and have it provided to your front-end on Extension start up. This is a common pattern needed for most Extensions, and in the past, developers would need to build this themselves. With the Config Service, developers can quickly support scenarios like enabling broadcasters to customize your Extension, store UserIDs to call third-party APIs from your Extension back-end service, or save Extension-wide settings. More importantly, you don’t need to expose your backend to the frontend on initial load, reducing your need to scale.
Sample Extensions using Configuration Service and Extension back-end Service
The Config Service is one of the first of our Scaling Solutions and it’s not a panacea, but it does reduce the complexity of building an Extension backend, because developers shouldn’t need to build for and scale a very common scenario. You can focus more on bringing your ideas to life. That’s certainly what Casperr is excited about.
Casperr has been a web developer for six years, but in his free time, he likes to build things that relate to streaming and gaming. He was already using the Twitch API to experiment, so when Extensions were announced, he got right to work.
“I saw Extensions as a way to integrate concepts I was already working on more easily. I wanted to see if it could be helpful for the community.”
That’s where most of Casperr’s Extension ideas come from. “Most of my Extensions are just things that I thought would be useful. My first Extension was for a notification about latest followers. My stream is tiny, so a new follower is a huge deal,” Casperr said.
For Casperr, while generating revenue is a nice bonus, Extensions are about personal development and the fulfillment of creating something that is useful for the Twitch community.
While Extensions and the Twitch API helped Casperr get started bringing his ideas to life, he hit a pretty big roadblock right away. To build a Twitch Extension, developers needed to build and operate the backend. “I’m a full-stack developer, but setting up the backend put me off some of my next ideas.” For instance, Casperr wanted to develop a Twitter feed, but someone would have to approve the handle and he couldn’t do that without building the server and database.
The Configuration Service was built to help developers just like Casperr.
In mid-November, Casperr launched a new Extension implementing the Config Service: Featured Viewer.
“This one was exciting for me, because it was one that I had the idea for all the way back when I first considered building a Bits-enabled Extension, but held off because I wasn’t comfortable doing the back-end work required. Now with Config Service, I was able to build it with no worries!”
The premise of the Extension is that a viewer exchanges Bits to become a “Featured Viewer” on the channel of the streamer with the Extension installed. This could either be as a means to advertise their own channel, or simply to showcase themselves as a super fan. The Featured Viewer is displayed for 10 minutes, so the metadata about that viewer has to be stored somewhere in order to serve it to all the other viewers who are watching the broadcast at the time of the transaction and those who joined the stream sometime during those 10 minutes.
Without the Config Service, Casperr said he would have likely needed to design and build a relational database with multiple tables and records for every single streamer with the Extension installed, write to it on every transaction, and read from it on every single page view. “While this may be a relatively simple database application, it is not an area I have much experience in,” Casperr said.
With the Config Service, Casperr can store a very simple JSON string in the Config Service itself, which is specific to the streamer’s channel so no fiddling with relationships was required. After 10 minutes, rather than delete the data, Casperr simply stops displaying it. When a new Featured Viewer comes along, the config is overwritten and a PubSub message is sent so all viewers current and future will see the new Featured Viewer.
Casperr does still have to use an Extension Backend Service (EBS)to verify the transaction, update the config (as the initiation of config update comes from a viewer as opposed to broadcaster), and send the PubSub message. However, the Config Service took away his personal concerns of database architecting.
Casperr is next planning to upgrade hisLatest Followers Extension to have monetized features and use theConfig Service to give users the option to toggle features on or off, so that feature will use just the JavaScript API without needing to send any calls from the backend.
With Config Service, Casperr is able to bring his ideas to life easier and faster — and you can, too!
There are a few ways that you can get started with the Configuration Service.
Twitch is partnering with Capitol 360 Innovation Lab as a Founding Member to bring you Capitol Royale, a two-day tech conference and hackathon at the iconic Capitol Records tower in the heart of Hollywood — and we’ll be streaming live for the duration.
The event features a hackathon, partner expo, startup demos, guest speakers, a gaming activation, artist performances, and other activities at the intersection of music, technology, and culture.
Check out the live streams for all the action!
The 24-hour hackathon kicks off at noon on Saturday with hackers competing to build the most innovative products that reimagine the way music and interactive entertainment is consumed and discovered. Participants will be given access to Universal Music Group’s catalog of over 14,000 tracks that have been cleared for streaming, including never-before-seen original content and archival assets.
They’ll be working with APIs from Twitch and other partner companies, including Consensys, Cloudinary, Spotify, TiVo, 7digital, and Qloo.
In addition to all of that, Twitch is issuing an exclusive Twitch Challenge: Build an interactive experience with music, gaming, and live streaming using Twitch Extensions, and the winning team will receive a grand prize of 100,000 Bits.
Then, as a special capstone to the event, Ninja will be making an appearance to stream Fortnite from the famous Capitol Records Studio A, alongside some of today’s biggest Hollywood stars.
None of this would feel complete without an afterparty — and that’s why we’ll be closing out the weekend with an epic party to launch Ninja’s new soundtrack album “NinjaWerks.”
Click the links below to follow these channels and be notified when we go live!
Do you want to help build the future of live entertainment, but don’t know where to start? Or have you been wanting to build a Twitch Extension, but just need an extra push? Today, we’re announcing a challenge that might be just the motivation you need.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Twitch are working together to launch the Twitch Extension Challenge powered by AWS. To enter, all you have to do is build a Twitch Extension and integrate with any AWS service!
An Extension is an interactive experience that works as a stream overlay or as a panel on a channel. Streamers activate Extensions to further connect with their viewers and provide new ways to engage, such as leaderboards, mini-games, polls, and much more.
We will be selecting eight winning Extensions based on the criteria outlined below. The grand prize includes cash awards up to $15,000, tickets to TwitchCon 2019, and even meetings with Twitch leadership to talk through your ideas.
The challenge is three months, running until February 26, 2019. While that may seem like plenty of time to submit your Extension, you can get started now! If you’re not already a Twitch developer, check out these five reasons why you should become one today:
Twitch has a large, highly engaged viewership with 15 million daily active users and 355 billion minutes watched in 2017. This means there is a high potential to get a lot of visibility building on Twitch.
With millions of people gathering on Twitch every day, developers have the opportunity to create new ways to consume and contribute to live programming with Twitch Extensions.
We’re seeing lots of enthusiasm for Extensions from our community of viewers and chatters. Since launch, just over a year ago, people have interacted with Extensions over 4.9 BILLION times.
There’s a full set of developer tools for Extensions, enabling developers to build these immersive experiences easily and quickly.
Developers can monetize on Twitch. Bits-in-Extensions enables viewers to show support to the streamer, enhance gameplay, or express themselves. Streamers and developers share the revenue generated from these Bits.
This year’s TwitchCon Hackathon saw 70 developers from around the United States come to team up and build Twitch Extensions over the course of just 24 hours. We invited some of Twitch’s partnered broadcasters to participate by offering up challenges for the teams’ Extensions to solve.
And the hacking begins! Photo courtesy of Bernard Marger.
At the end of the hackathon, we had 13 diverse Twitch Extensions to show off from our developer teams. You can check out all of the projects on our Devpost page, but here are a few of our favorites:
A. KnowClips integrates user-generated Twitch clips into an intuitive video overlay Extension to drive viewer engagement and retention in a stream.
Q. How did you come up with the idea?
A. Seung Woo and Nolan initially had the idea to auto-generate Twitch clips from exciting moments in a stream. As a result of technical barriers and time constraints, we realized that would not be feasible. We instead pivoted to an anomaly detection engine that did the opposite: to look for moments of low activity / engagement in the Chat and to recommend Twitch clips to viewers to keep them engaged in the streamer’s content.
Q. What did you manage to get done in 24 hours?
A. We managed to build out the anomaly detection engine on top of a Twitch Chat stream by looking at message volume on a given interval. We also managed to build a UI that overlays Twitch clips on top of a stream and embeds a video within the stream window itself to enable easy clip viewing and interaction.
KnowClips won the grand prize and our partnered broadcaster challenge sponsored by savinthebees: “Build an Extension that gives a viewer the tools they need to promote a streamer’s content.”
A. We were tasked with engaging a viewer within 15 seconds to 30 seconds of them joining a stream. So we asked ourselves, “What’s the most natural way of saying hello in real life?…*pause for effect*…You wave! And with that, HandEmote was born. Our product utilizes a Leap Motion to capture the hand movements of someone watching a stream. With our platform, you can wave hello to your favorite streamer and they’ll be immediately alerted that you’ve joined their stream! Since we’re able to capture every hand configuration possible, we thought: “How can we take this to the next level?” Not only are you able to wave at your favorite streamer, but you can also pat them to reassure them after a bad play or you can high five them to show your approval for something good! We’ve completely removed the need to use a keyboard when interacting with your favorite streamer in order to make the most human, realistic interaction possible.
Q. How did you come up with the idea?
A. We thought about the feeling of everyone doing the wave together at a concert, feeling that collective power to cheer on a band you all love. We knew that many Extensions already existed that let streamers interact with viewers via a hardware hack on the streamer side, but we wanted to give the power back to the people — to team up and cheer on the streamer they love. Another great source of inspiration came from within our team. Having never met each other before, we somehow became best of friends almost instantly; we’re literally memeing on Discord while we collectively write this on a Saturday evening. With this newfound eternal friendship (and lifelong memories), we decided we wanted to spread this love from our community to Twitch’s.
Q. What did you manage to get done in 24 hours?
A. – Learn how to build a Twitch Extension – Set up React applications for the overlay and the live config – Attempt to use Twitch PubSub, fail miserably – Integrate Unity 3D to encode and recognize gestures – Set up REST calls to get gestures from the Unity 3D application and send to the overlay and live config feed – Make tons of people laugh and be surprised by our demo – And most importantly: Be a wholesome, loving team with great synergy, communication, and humor! – Sleep one hour
HandEmote won an honorable mention and our partnered broadcaster challenge sponsored by DJTechLive: “Build an Extension that gives a personalized twist to stream engagement.”
Team HandEmote shows off their work to the judges. Photo courtesy of Bernard Marger.
A. Twiffle streamlines the raffle giveaway process with four unique types of raffle giveaways: “custom,” “trivia,” “boundary,” and “random”!
Q. How did you come up with the idea?
A. Giveaways and raffles should be more common on Twitch, but setting them up is difficult. There are a lot of pieces which need to come together, purchasing the item, setting up the giveaway and conditions, and finally getting the winner’s information in order to receive the prize. Twiffle solves this problem by: allowing to hold an item directly purchased from eBay (or give game keys directly, etc.), set up what type of giveaway you want to have (currently four supported types), and finally collect the necessary information to give the winner their prize. This cuts out two of the most inconvenient current problems when making a giveaway and will promote more giveaways at a higher frequency, allowing for more viewer/streamer interaction.
Q. What did you manage to get done in 24 hours?
A. We managed to get a simple Python 3 backend using the latest async I/O features running in tandem with a Twitch Extension frontend that was built with Javascript and ReactJS. We were able to pull live item listings data from eBay all the way to the checkout process. We chose to use the eBay API instead of the Amazon API as there is an implemented break of endpoints between submitting card details for a card transaction and actually finalizing a transaction. This was necessary for the streamer end, so that they may fulfill billing information and for a stream viewer to “finish” the transaction by placing their shipping address. The Python 3 backend also sported universal multi-processing queue endpoints which allow for fast, in-memory based push/pull event messaging, which supported a lot of real-time events/notifications that need to be made on a granular app/user level for the Extension.
A. Twitchlight is a Twitch Extension (and more!) that allows streamers to interact with their viewers through a physical decor piece: an LED strip light that flashes colors in response to special events like subscriptions and to communicate the winner of streamer-initiated polls. Instead of an overlay on the screen, viewers can control a physical device that sits right beside the streamer and in the camera frame. Twitchlight is also a customized branding tool, for the LED lights can be used to create logos of streamers.
Q. How did you come up with the idea?
A. We searched for a creative way to promote streamer engagement with viewers, but we wanted to something different from a normal overlay. The LED lights were an appealing new challenge to tackle since none of us had solid hardware experience, so we decided to make a “real-life overlay”!
Q. What did you manage to get done in 24 hours?
A. We put together the LED piece by constructing the Twitch logo out of strip lights, which we programmed with Arduino to flash specific colors. Our Node.js Extension listened for special events like subscriptions and donations, flashing the lights to celebrate. Streamers could also administer polls by typing in questions, choices, and their corresponding colors. Within a certain time frame, viewers vote by sending emotes of that specific color, and the color of the winning choice is flashed by the strip lights. We also created an overlay that would assist the LED light in flashing the winning color and communicating the poll questions and event celebrations.
Twitchlight won our partnered broadcaster challenge sponsored by wish: “Build an Extension that helps a streamer celebrate a subscription.”
A. Streamer Trivia is a Family Feud-style quiz Extension that allows viewers to guess what the broadcaster would answer to a multiple choice question and collect points over time by guessing correctly. It’s a great way for for the streamers to bond with their viewers and for viewers to show how well they know a streamer!
The streamer will send out a request for a set number of questions and the first viewers to respond to that question will get to create a short multiple choice question that follows channel guidelines. Once the viewers create questions, the streamer will review and answer them. The streamer can reject any questions that don’t follow channel guidelines. After the streamer answers a question, viewers have a minute to guess what the streamer would answer. Once all the answers are in, the correct answer is revealed and viewers are awarded points based off of how right they are! Scores are tallied in a leaderboard to celebrate viewers who engage and know the streamer.
Q. How did you come up with the idea?
A. Our ideation process was to first learn more about streamers and viewers by exploring TwitchCon and talking with Twitch Staff. Then we thought about different types of viewers and how we wanted to engage them. We identified two different types of interactions we wanted to focus on: how to reward subscribers and how to create ways for lurkers to feel safe enough to engage. A few ideas we had initially were making Twitch Emote heat map, a prize wheel, a rewarding viewers for emote spamming to welcome new subscribers, and subscription based question asking system where new subscribers get to ask a question. We finally decided on a Family Feud-like quiz system that polls viewers for questions and allows viewers to get points.
Q. What did you manage to get done in 24 hours?
A. We managed to get all the front-end functionalities for our Extension up and running, but had troubles making our backend usable in time. We underestimated the amount of time we were actually going to spend at TwitchCon (a lot) which ate into the amount of actual work time we had.
StreamerTrivia won our partnered broadcaster challenge sponsored by SirSlaw: “Build an Extension that lets a streamer engage their audience with a question.”
Congrats to all the winners and wonderful entries! Photo courtesy of Bernard Marger.
As always, we were absolutely blown away by the quality of this year’s submissions. We hope that these Extensions will be fully finished and put on the Twitch Extension store for all streamers to add to their channels!
This event would not have been possible without the support of our partners at Major League Hacking and all of the resources they provided us. We had a blast with everyone in San Jose this year, and we can’t wait to host our next event. See you all in 2019!
Thanks to everyone who made our second annual TwitchCon Developer Day a success! Over 600 Twitch developers attended, which is 166 percent of last year. We even had over 24,000 concurrent viewers from the Twitch community at the height of our broadcast.
If you missed any of the action or want to relive any part of the day, the VODs and slides from the sessions are now available.
Keynote
In the keynote, we looked back on the year with community achievements, product launches, and the lowdown on multiplayer entertainment — as well as gave you a sneak peek of the product roadmap and some big announcements around building, engaging, and monetizing on Twitch. We welcomed streamers to the stage for the second half of the keynote to share their thoughts on using Extensions and what they’d like to see in the future.
Developer Advocate at Twitch, Jon Bulava, and Chief Technical Evangelist at Amazon Game Tech, Royal O’Brien, doing the live stream throughout the day.
We want to thank everyone who participated! If you are not a member of our developer community, take a few minutes to follow the channel page, follow @TwitchDev on Twitter, join the forums, or get started building an Extension.
There’s no doubt that Twitch Extensions are a great way to increase interactivity between you and your community, but changing your active Extensions based on your stream status (i.e., starting soon, gameplay, AFK etc.) can be clunky and time-consuming.
Well, we’re excited to announce a look into the future of stream status Extension management. The talented folks over at Player.me recently released a streamlined and automated Extensions management experience inside their recently launched desktop application. Now you’ll be able to assign groups of Extensions you’ve installed on your Twitch channel to support specific scenes.
Learn more about the future of Extension scene management at Player.me!
Why is this so cool?
So let’s say I’m a streamer, and I’m ready for a gameplay bio-break; therefore, I don’t need my accompanying live stats Extensions active anymore, I need a new suite of Extensions to keep my viewers entertained and engaged while I’m away from my keyboard.
With Player.me, I can automatically change to my custom AFK scene which can be set up with engaging game Extensions, like the new Twitch Arcade, designed to entertain my audience while I’m AFK, and potentially even grab some Bits in the process.
Twitch Arcade
This particular use case is just one of many potential scenarios leveraging automated Extension activation designed to empower creators to build much more engaging viewer experiences while significantly reducing the transitional workload.
To get started automating the activation of Extensions:
Click the ‘Manage Extensions’ underneath the scene viewer.
Activate Extensions in the modal by adding them into the dotted boxes. You’ll also be able to assign Extensions to activate on different scene types (i.e., Start, In-Game, and Intermission).
Now when you’re streaming with the Player.me desktop app and you switch scenes, your Extensions will automatically update to those assigned to that scene type.
If you have any questions or issues around this Extensions feature in Player.me you can always reach them through their support chat here.
At TwitchCon Developer Day 2018, we reviewed the many product innovations released in the past year. We also celebrated some of the amazing community contributions that have redefined how streamers and viewers create memorable moments on Twitch.
TwitchCon was a moment to rededicate our commitment to empower developers with the tools and incentives to build Twitch Extensions and game integrations. As such, we announced several product releases and an upcoming roadmap of the products and features that will help developers build, engage, and monetize their products on Twitch.
ICYMI, here’s a quick recap —
Available Now
For developers building Extensions, we announced a new web-based WYSIWYG editor to help you get started building Extensions, as well as an AWS credits program to help you host and scale your Extensions.
Online Sandbox
The Sandbox is a web-based WYSIWYG editor. It makes it easier for developers to build and ship Extensions with robust samples and real-time testing on a live channel.
We’re excited to team up with Amazon Web Services (AWS) again to provide an opportunity to receive up to $1000 of AWS promotional credits and educational resources to creators of promising Extensions for up to a year. These credits can be used to cover the cost of AWS services that will support your initial proof of concept and reduce your burden of building and hosting your own backend to launch Extensions.
We added “username” to the API and webhook payloads by default. This will simplify a developer’s workflow by using one API for user ID and username calls.
Smart Rate Limiting
Smart rate limiting makes sure that Twitch Extensions can scale with user growth, while ensuring reliability for everyone in the Twitch Community. For example, if Ninja adds your Extension, you get more capacity.
Be on the lookout for some new launches in the next few weeks. Here are few that help developers monetize their Extensions and add new functionalities.
Bits-in-Extensions Enablement
Developers will be able to add Bits-enabled functionality to already-existing Extensions, so that a single Extension can serve both monetized and non-monetized channels. This means that Extensions developers can start monetizing their already-existing Extensions without needing to build their user base from scratch.
Bits-in-Extensions Promotion
We heard your feedback that the developer revenue share on Bits used in an Extension may be limiting broadcaster adoption of your Extensions. From November through the end of the year, Twitch will cover the developer revenue share, so that more streamers try Bits-enabled Extensions. We are confident that streamers will love the increased engagement and delight in their channel and will want to continue using these Extensions after the promotion period.
Subscriptions API
The Subscriptions API provides long-term support, reliability, and webhook capability to simplify viewer subscriber status.
Global Emotes API
The Global Emotes API enables developers to build Extensions with a wide variety of Emotes with clear terms of service and policy compliance mechanisms.
Exploring
We’re also excited about our future roadmap. At TwitchCon, we announced a variety of products and services to help you along your product’s lifecycle. We are designing a roadmap that will give developers the power to build, engage, and monetize their products. Here are a few that are in the works.
Extension Cloud Services
We will provide a runtime for you to build your Extension backend, while also providing access to data services. Additionally, we’ll be delivering new Scaling Solutions to help you unlock scenarios like building viewer progression loops, dynamically segmenting your audience, and more. All these experiences will work seamlessly with our toolchain.
Analytics for Streamers
Streamers will get Extension analytics via Channel Analytics and Stream Summary pages so they can see their Extensions’ usage and performance, which will give them insight into how Extensions are helping them engage and grow their communities.
Social Proof for Streamers
We will deliver an Extension’s social proof through ratings and reviews to improve discovery and nurture feedback from streamers.
Insights Dashboard
The Insights Dashboard will offer better segmentation to help developers understand their audience from a regional, device, and preferences perspective. We will also add competitive benchmarking and industry comparisons.
Bits-in-Extensions Entitlement Service
Twitch will handle user in-game items, which will be a secure way to store and retrieve a users’ entitlements and will reduce the requirement to build and maintain a backend for many Bits-enabled Extensions.
Subs-in-Extensions Limited Preview
We will enable Extensions to be aware of the viewer’s subscription status and to trigger the subscription flow. This capability was launched in limited preview with Snap Camera at TwitchCon. We are also working on defining the business model that will enable developers to participate in the value created by Subs-in-Extensions and plan to have a path forward to share with our developer community before the end of the year.
Watching Ads in Extensions Limited Preview
In 2019, we will introduce advertising in Extensions. Our first ads initiative will enable viewers to support streamers and developers by opting into watching ads to access value in an Extension. We are very excited about the potential of ads in Extensions to unlock the power of monetization for a broader audience of developers.
Merchandise in Extensions
We are partnering with Amazon Pay to pilot the sales of merch in Extensions. Designed by Humans and FazeClan merch Extensions were launched at TwitchCon. These trailblazing Extensions will enable viewers to buy streamer merch while watching Twitch. Depending on the results of this pilot, we intend to expand this partnership with Amazon Pay to include more developers and more categories of physical purchases in Extensions.
Our top priority moving forward is to understand and deliver the tools you need to be successful on Twitch. Please let us know how we’re doing. We’re always looking for feedback from developers like you.
Follow our public roadmap here and post comments or ask questions and give feedback on the Developer Forums.
See some VODs of these Developer Day announcements, sessions, commentary, and more onwww.twitch.tv/twitchdev. Check back here next week for more details on how to get all the slides and the rest of the VODs from Developer Day!
Pokimane making it rain Bits with the Bit Storm custom Snap lens!
We at Twitch are on a mission to enable creators to make a living educating and entertaining fans. This TwitchCon, we’re excited to announce a suite of brand new partnerships that bring unique experiences onto Twitch via Extensions.
We’re always excited to integrate new communities and new functionality into Twitch. For years, you’ve asked us for more creativity, animation, and expression in the experience.
Search thousands of lenses in the Snap Camera App, which syncs to a Twitch Extension
Snapchat made history with its marquee camera lenses and magical AR experiences. Guess what? Creators can now use a library of iconic Snap lenses while streaming on Twitch, and viewers can change those lenses by subscribing via the Snapchat Extension.
Viewers can trigger creator avatars using Adobe’s Extension
Adobe has been a leader in art and animation for years, and we are announcing a unique integration between Adobe Character Animator and Twitch via an Extension.
Creators can fly in rocket ships, shoot virtual lasers from their hands, and even animate their entire persona (yes, just like Ready Player One) via Character Animator. Viewers can set off actions using the Character Trigger Extension.
A new shopping experience on Twitch created by Design by Humans
The FaZe Clan store is now available on Twitch
Before today, fans had to open up new tabs to snag their favorite hoodies and jerseys. Now, viewers can shop as they watch creators win chicken dinners.
“By building an Extension, we were able to embed a full ecommerce experience, from product discovery to checkout, all while keeping our fans where they wanted to be in the first place — watching livestreams on Twitch. Twitch Extensions are a creative way to allow developers and broadcasters to enhance their streams, and we look forward to seeing the full potential of this exciting technology for the Twitch community.” — Ben Sack, CTO @ FaZe Clan
Design by Humans and FaZe Clan are releasing their own storefronts via Extensions on Twitch, and more brands are coming soon!
Tiltify Donations
Donate on Twitch through the Tiltify Extension
Tiltify is no doubt a fundraising force on Twitch and is already working with many top creators. Now, viewers don’t have to miss a beat while donating, because they can give to their favorite charities right on Twitch through an Extension.
“Twitch has been an outstanding partner for Tiltify and some of our largest campaigns. We built this Extension to provide creators the ability to activate Tiltify’s live fundraising tools directly into their broadcasts and to allow donors to seamlessly donate to their favorite causes.” — Michael Wasserman, CEO @ Tiltify
The Twitch community raised approximately $30 million for charities in 2017, and we’re excited to make donations on Twitch even easier.
Popular battle royale, Surviv.io, is now live through a Twitch Extension
Surviv and Twitch have partnered to break the boundary between player and viewer. Surviv is a popular browser-based game and the first multiplayer battle royale available on Twitch via an Extension. Bleed purple with Twitch creators and viewers in a special Twitch version. Finally, you don’t have to leave your browser — or Twitch — to win a chicken dinner.
“Twitch Extensions are a great opportunity for games like Surviv.io to reach a massive audience we might not otherwise be able to reach. We’re really excited to see creators using the Extension to create new interactions and experiences with their viewers.” — Nick Clark, Co-Creator @ Surviv.io
Viewers will be able to play Dragon’s Lair in the Twitch Arcade Extension
Our next announcement is a retro gamer’s dream come true. Remember Dragon’s Lair, the classic coin-op adventure game? Well, on Tuesday, October 30, it’s coming to Twitch. Twitch creators will be able to host the game on their channels in the freshly updated Twitch Arcade Extension, allowing their viewers to play the full version of Dragon’s Lair, compete for places on leaderboards, and more.
Dragon’s Lair joins a number of Twitch Arcade Extension games and activities already available for creators, including the puzzle game Snap, clicker game Feline Flicker and press-your-luck game Wheel of Noms.
Creators can set up tournaments that engage their community directly from their dashboard
GameOn Tournament Organizer gives creators the tools to build a loyal community through tournaments created directly from their Twitch dashboard. Creators can spin up tournaments in supported games, making it easy for viewers to join and compete.
“I use social media to engage my community, but I haven’t found that perfect way to get them involved in gameplay without taking up tons of time and slowing down the stream. With this Extension, I will be able to keep a constant connection with my viewers.” — FaZe Dirty
Amazon Blacksmith offers creators gear showcases, polling, and Twitch Prime benefits
Gear on Amazon is now revamped as Amazon Blacksmith! Creators can showcase their favorite products and earn revenue from sales through the Amazon Associates program, enable viewers to access Twitch Prime benefits such as subs and loot, and create polls via the Extension.
Viewers can deep dive into D&D with the new Extension
We are also stepping up our game-specific Extensions. Introducing the D&D Beyond Twitch Extension, an interactive addition to your stream overlay that displays on-demand character statistics and status details from D&D Beyond. Watch as hit points are updated and active conditions appear on the screen in real time and click to view full digital character sheets on D&D Beyond!
Signing Off!
2018 has been a whirlwind for Twitch Extensions. Thank you to everyone in the Twitch community, especially creators and developers, for coming up with amazing new experiences and helping build the future of media and entertainment! We’re excited to see what else the community brings to light. Stay tuned for more new experiences soon!
The schedule is posted; visit the Events page and set reminders. While you’re there, follow our channel so you can stay up to date on what’s going on.
For extra points, we would love an auto host!
Join the party — how to turn on auto hosting for TwitchDev.
Live Stream Schedule
What’s going on during the day?
Keynote: Join Emmett Shear, Twitch CEO, and Amir Shevat, VP of Developer Experience, to hear our vision, how Twitch builds for developers and shared success, a look back at our product launches, and what’s coming up.
Streamer Panel: A candid discussion — where streamers discuss a range of Extension-related topics to help developers grow and optimize current Extensions or be inspired to create new ones — is immediately following the Keynote and will be moderated by Ethan Evans, EVP of Commerce and Developers at Twitch.
Sessions: Developer Day features 12 sessions on two tracks. The Grow track showcases new product launches, product benefits, and industry Q&A sessions. The Build track is more technical and features deep dives into products and features.
Workshop: Build a Twitch Extension from start to finish in a 90 minute hands-on workshop led by our Solutions Architect team. The workshop is for people who are proficient with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Don’t forget to bring your laptop!
Showcases: Six showcase pods offer you the opportunity to get to know more about our products and offerings. Come see how you can use Drops, Extensions, Mods, the Twitch API, Insights, and Amazon Game Tech to amp up your games.
Roadmap Feedback Board: Give us feedback on our roadmap. Get creative with stickers, post-its, and more as you engage with Twitch Developers staff on features you’d like to see in the future.
“This will be my first Developer Day at TwitchCon. I’m super excited to meet the Twitch team and developers in person and learn from them about their Twitch development experiences, especially everything about Twitch Extensions. Also, I can’t wait to see all new products and improvements Twitch will announce for their developers.”
— James van Eden (Altoar), Developer of Sound Alerts
Join Altoar and Jeff Chow, Product Manager of Monetization @ Twitch for their session: Monetize your Extension One Bit at a Time
“The second Developer Day is coming! Last year I attended, met, and spoke with my fellow developers. This year, I get to speak and share my knowledge and experience with them. If last year is anything to go by, it’s going to be an exciting day exchanging thoughts and ideas, and hopefully planing some collaborations with my fellow third-party Twitch developers. Furthermore, I’m looking forward to seeing what Twitch has coming for us in the coming year, and how I can improve the viewer experience for the broadcasters I work with! And, I hope my live coding does not go wrong!”
— Barry Carlyon (BarryCarlyon), CohhCarnage Infrastructure Engineer and OPG Consultant
Join Barry and Kristin Chen, Senior Product Manager of Insights @ Twitch during their session: Using Insights to Build Better Products and Grow on Twitch
“The past year and a half has been fantastic for me on Twitch. This led to being invited to speak at Developer Day. What am I excited about? Everything Developer Day has to offer…except standing up and speaking in front of a crowd.”
Hear Greg Humphries, Senior Software Engineer @ Twitch, and LuckyNoS7evin talk about Twitch Extensions 101!
Follow all of the Developer Day action on Twitter @TwitchDev and with #TwitchDevDay. And for friends who can’t join in person, have them catch the entire day on our TwitchDev channel page.
Building Extensions for Twitch keeps getting faster and easier. We recently announced the new and improved Developer Rig that helps developers build Extensions more quickly and intuitively. Today we’re announcing the Twitch Configuration Service.
Configuration Service removes the burden of writing a back-end to store persistent channel- and Extension-specific data. It then provides this data on Extension load, eliminating the need for your back-end to handle traffic from end users for this scenario. This means that developers only need to focus on creating amazing experiences, not on building complex back-ends. In short, with Configuration Service, we’re unlocking a developers ability to build better Extensions faster.
Let’s take a look at two common use cases that will benefit from Configuration Service immediately. We’ll use our Bot Commander and Animal Facts example Extensions for reference.
Build a simple Extension without building a back-end.
Developers can build simple front-end-only Extensions that let streamers configure the Extension to provide unique experiences for their viewers. For instance, a streamer may want to configure a list of Chat commands to use in their channel that viewers can see. In this scenario, the Extension’s front-end will validate the input and call a method to store it in the Configuration Service. On the viewer side, on start up, the Extension is provided an object containing the stored information seen below.
Configuration object for the list of Chat commands
Using a callback function from the Extension Helper Library, the Extension is notified when data has been delivered.
Using the Extension Helper library to get the broadcaster configuration data
The front-end can then use data stored in the Configuration Service to load the object, which means the viewer will be able to see and react to the Chat. All this happens without needing to build a back-end.
Simple front-end Extension working without a back-end
Reduce development and operational costs as part of your Extension back-end service.
For Extensions that do require a back-end, the Configuration Service can support scenarios that require the ability to persist channel specific data. For example, with data-driven Extensions, the Configuration Service lets the streamer store the configuration needed to call the appropriate APIs. The Extension back-end can query from Configuration Service to get the needed data. When the viewer loads the Extension, they will receive content relevant to the streamer’s channel. See the data below which is from our Animal Facts code example.
Configuration object for the Animal Facts example
If this streamer’s specific data is needed when the Extension loads, the Configuration Service can also provide that data without exposing the rest of the back-end to viewer traffic, reducing the scaling needs for developers.
Sample Extensions using Configuration Service and Extension back-end Service
Configuration Service opens the door for more developers to build on Twitch by empowering them to spend more time on the user experience for their idea, rather than building the back-end. Most Extension scenarios require a developer to persist channel specific data and retrieve it on Extension load to hydrate the experience. This required developers to support this in their back-end, even for simple scenarios, taking time away from building the best possible experience for streamers and their viewers.
Developers who have already built Extensions can start using Configuration Service immediately, either to add new functionality to their experience, or to replace the way they persist data on their back-end. New devs, can either build their back-end around Configuration Service, or just use Configuration Service to support their Extension scenario. All this is provided with love, by Twitch, with no additional cost to developers.
We believe that streamers and viewers will benefit greatly (and use Extensions more) from the increased functionality and stability that Configuration Services provides them. For developers, we hope this will motivate them to build more Extensions knowing that they can do so faster and easier than before without having to worry about investing in and building this aspect of their back-end.
There are many ways to learn and get started with Configuration Service.
You can get started with Twitch Configuration Service samples on GitHub:
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