Broadcasting Gameplay to Twitch.tv

A no-nonsense guide to live streaming success

In the same way that YouTube has made online superstars, live streaming services – such as Twitch.tv – are doing exactly the same thing for gamers. Playing games such as League of Legends or WoW for just an hour in the evening can attract a massive audience to your virtual door step, but in reality there’s no limit to what you can achieve – Twitch.tv’s CEO, Emmett Shear, once marveled at a user who played through the ancient PC game Myst from start to finish, amassing healthy viewer statistics in the process.

While it’s difficult to separate game-specific figures from industry data (which usually incorporates music and TV streaming), you only need to look at massive usage numbers generated by Twitch.tv to get a clear indication of where live streaming gameplay is headed. In only a year of operation, Twitch.tv sees over 15 million gamers log on each month in order to watch an average of 60 minutes of gameplay every day.

Truly, there’s never been a better time to dive right in and carve out a live streaming niche of your own. Today we’re going to get you up and running.

For the purposes of this how to, we’ll assume you want to stream gameplay footage and that you’re using a Windows-based machine. Streaming from an iMac is an entirely different (and way more difficult) ball game, but if you want some Mac-specific advice here’s a fairly concise video tutorial.

1) First Things First

To start with, understand that there isn’t a ‘standard’ way to go about live streaming. Everyone’s set up and machine limitations are different, and even individual preference can have a bearing on the method of live steaming.

As such, it’s impossible to provide a set-in-stone guide but feel free to tailor the following advice for your own needs.

2) Sign Up For a Standard Twitch.tv Account

You’ll need an account with Twitch.tv, which is the most popular streaming platform currently available. Premium accounts are available, but standard accounts are free and suitable for most purposes.

3) Finding Your Broadcast Key

Once you’ve got an account with Twitch, you will be assigned a streaming key that is unique to you. This key is what you’ll use within the broadcasting software – never share this out (or accidentally have it on the screen when broadcasting!) as this is all anyone needs in order to stream to your Twitch channel.

When you’re logged into Twitch, go to http://www.twitch.tv/broadcast. In the top right corner you’ll see a button ‘Show Key’. Hit that, and copy it down.

4) Which Live Streaming Software is Best?

Twitch itself doesn’t offer the tools for live streaming. For that you need third-party software, and this is usually the step that sees people diverge simply because there are hundreds of options available.

Because of this, many companies vie for your attention and trying to separate the wheat from the chaff is something of a nightmare. To cut through this, common consensus leads to four options: XSplit, Open Broadcaster Software, Wirecast and Flash Media Encoder.

Flash Media Encoder is free and very powerful; it’s also one of the only options for Mac users. However, while highly recommended it’s also a bit more involved to set up.

Wirecast Pro is, as the name would suggest, a professional studio option for serious live streamers. Since it offers TV quality production, it’s often used in game design schools and other professional institutions, but at $495 it’s probably a bit overkill for the standard gamer.

XSplit has been designed specifically for use with Twitch, and is the go-to software for thousands of live streamers. Unfortunately, unless you’re willing to fork out $40 for a yearly license, you’ll be stuck with the free version which is heavily limited.

Open Broadcaster Software is still in beta so has its quirks, but is less CPU intensive than XSplit (and is totally free). It’s also a little better at handling audio.

Whether it’s ‘better’ than the paid version of XSplit is a topic of debate, but OBS is certainly a great place to start for the beginner.

5) Getting Set Up

No matter which software option you went for, a good reference guide to each can be found here.

You’ll also need to really tweak the settings for maximum performance, which is hard to advise in a general sense. However, an excellent tutorial on the factors governing live stream quality and performance can be found here – it’s a heavy topic, but the guide covers everything you need to know in a concise manner.

And that’s pretty much it. You’ll end up doing a lot of test streams in the pursuit for optimal settings (you can preview the stream in Twitch by going to the top-right drop down and choosing ‘dashboard’.)

To close, here are some pointers which don’t often get covered in technical live streaming guides…

So What on Earth is Justin.tv?

There is a lot of confusion online as to the differences between Twitch.tv and Justin.tv. Without going into too much unnecessary detail, Twitch was created as a by the Justin.tv team as a separate portal dedicated specifically to gaming content. However, the division between the two is very blurry, and they practically merged back together at one point with servers being swapped and puzzled users being redirected all over the place.

As of April, they’ve been separated once again. To keep things simple, consider TTV as a game live streaming service and file JTV under ‘everything else’. You may see some the Justin.tv url pop up in server addresses and deep within config files, but don’t sweat it too much.

Is Your Connection Up to It?

Watch out for broadband throttling. It’s generally more convenient (for the live streamer and viewers) to broadcast in the evening, but depending on your ISP that can be when your connection speeds are at their lowest. Use speedtest.net regularly to figure out how consistent your connection is and work around the low points, but if your evening/weekend speeds really take a nose dive take the issue up with the ISP. Some peak time capping is expected and written into the T&Cs, but there are limits to what they can get away with.

Dependability is Part of the Job Description

Try to stream regularly. As you start to build a following, it’s useful to figure out when’s a good time for the majority of your viewers and make sure they can expect you online at the same time every week. Naturally you can’t please everyone, but evenings and weekends generally pans out best for the majority (factoring in time zone conversions).

You should also establish a line of contact with them so they know where to go for updates, rescheduling or impromptu stream notifications – let them know which social media platforms you’d like them to follow you on, and perhaps urge them to subscribe directly to your Twitch channel itself.

And Lastly, Combatting Nerves…

Even for the most confident of us, live streaming can be inexplicably terrifying! Recording narrated gameplay for YouTube is daunting enough, but having scores of people watching you live at the same time adds considerable more pressure to perform. To combat this, there’s only one thing for it: relax, be yourself, and remember to enjoy the experience. It’ll greatly improve the viewer’s experience and you’ll settle into your own broadcasting persona in no time.

Chris Swain

Chris Swain is a leader in the game industry having co-founded the Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab at USC and leading over 50 products in industry including games for Disney, Microsoft, Sony, MTV, and Activision, among others. His USC thesis student, Jenova Chen’s masters project was the game Flow. Serious games that Chris has created include Ecotopia, Play the Game Save the Planet, a cinematic, story-driven game focused on environmental protection, and The Redistricting Game, which educates citizens on how the U.S. congressional redistricting process leads to polarization in government. He is the creative director in the Game Design program at the New York Film Academy.